How Slim Jim stays that way

Usually I don't ask people about their weight, but I was reading a review of "Economic Aspects of Obesity" (U. of Chicago, 2011), and guess what? It's just not our fault--it's a result of the "food environment." Since the doctors, nutritionists and social scientists couldn't solve the problem, the economists are piling on looking at food prices, wages, urban planning, geography, etc. Cha-ching--more gov't money for research and behavior modification.

So when Jim stopped at my table to say hello, I asked him how he stays so trim (no belly at all--flat as a teen-age athlete). He seemed a bit surprised because nowadays he only does 100 sit ups and 150 leg raises, so he's not feeling too trim. I was afraid to ask if that was daily or weekly.

I think it might be good for these researchers to graph the weight increase, especially of the low income, since the launch of the 1964 Food Stamp Act back in the days when hunger was a problem, or at the modern women's movement begun in the early 1970s when women flooded the labor force at the urging of the feminists and started the massive growth in the restaurant industry. I'm just saying. . . there's more than one way to hug and chalk.

$4.5 million grant creates program to train scholars in child obesity prevention

Is this the best use of obesity money--another academic program rather than pure research?

Do you need a PhD to learn that most obesity plans should be "eat less move more;" and for those that are metabolic, even many of those respond to increasing the metabolism through exercise. Do you need a PhD to discover that over regulation and unions have driven many supermarkets from the cities creating "food deserts?"  What next? Gastric by-pass surgery on 10 year olds?  What have they been doing at Illinois with all those nutrition, child care, and family study programs in place for years? Children have gotten heavier as women have entered (or been pushed into) the work force and started the restaurant route for feeding their families.  You can chart it beginning in 1970.

A five-year $4.5 million USDA grant to University of Illinois researchers will establish the Illinois Transdisciplinary Obesity Prevention Program (I-TOPP), an innovative research-based program that will combine a Ph.D. with a master's in public health (MPH) degree focused on child obesity prevention.

$4.5 million grant creates program to train scholars in child obesity prevention

Ohio State University also got part of a $4.5 million grant, but it is for the study of rural children and will focus on 2 communities and is shared with 24 other universities.

OSU Extension's Family and Consumer Sciences program will receive $745,744 for the five-year project, which is being led by Kansas State University and involves an additional five states (Indiana, Michigan, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wisconsin).

The Childhood Obesity Prevention Grant was one of 24 funded at the end of April by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture. The goal of this project is to find ways to help rural communities create a culture of healthy eating and physical activity to prevent childhood obesity in low-income young children, said Karen Bruns, assistant director of OSU Extension in charge of Extension's Family and Consumer Sciences programs. Bruns will serve as Ohio's principal investigator on the project.

Ohio Involved in Project Targeting Childhood Obesity — Ohio State University Extension

And what about all the childhood obesity prevention programs, state and federal, church and non-profit, of the past, many listed in the 2004 guide to financing them? Financing Childhood Obesity Prevention Programs: Federal Funding Sources and Other Strategies   Read through some of these programs--one was $999 million.  Where is the accountability?  Where are the children now at a normal healthy weight as a result of the nanny state?

If you search "grant obesity in children" in Google, you get about 8 million hits.

And did you know about BMI Surveillance: Another Flabby Idea

In summary . . . Research on Obesity and Overweight

"Over the past several decades, the prevalence of obesity among adults and children in the United States has increased dramatically and is now reaching epidemic proportions. The prevalence of obesity in adults in the United States was 30.5 percent in 1999-2000. More than twice as many adults (nearly 65 percent) were considered to be either overweight or obese. Some 6 million U.S. adults were considered morbidly obese in 2001. In 2002, an estimated 15 percent of all children aged 6 to 19 years were overweight.

Obesity is more common in women, but men are more likely to be overweight. Obesity is especially common among African Americans, American Indians, Native Hawaiians, and some Hispanic populations.

Obesity is the second leading cause of preventable deaths; smoking is the first. Obesity is associated with many significant health problems, including high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, stroke, osteoarthritis, sleep apnea, premature death, and decreased quality of life. Even modest weight loss can reduce an individual's risk for these diseases and outcomes.

Obesity is defined as having a body mass index (BMI, weight in kg/height in m2) of 30 or more. For example, a 5'5" woman weighing 180 pounds or more or a 5'11" man weighing 215 pounds or more would be termed obese. Morbid obesity is defined as having a BMI of 40 or more (35 to 40 with medical problems related to obesity). Overweight is defined as having a BMI of 25 to 29.9 (a 5'5" woman who weighs 150 pounds or more or a 5'11" man who weighs 180 pounds or more). A BMI of 20 to 24.9 is considered normal weight, and a BMI under 20 is considered underweight.

In children and adolescents, weight above a normal range has different terms: at risk for overweight and overweight. Being at risk for overweight is defined as a BMI between the 85th and 94th percentile for age and sex; overweight is defined as a BMI at or above the 95th percentile for age and sex." Research on obesity and overweight

Women in the Middle East

We've just returned from a Holy Land Cruise. When you visit Europe or the Middle East you do realize that Americans are much heavier, but they are just 20 or so years behind. It's like the economy. It's going around.

Russia in transition

Obesity is on the increase as Russia transitions to more freedom, a market economy, and choices. The calories seem to remain the same, but are coming from less healthy sources--alcohol, sweets, etc. The authors are from Iowa State University and University of Dublin, and guessing from their names, I'm guessing they are former citizens of the USSR.

Huffman, Sonya Kostova and Rizov, Marian, "The Rise of Obesity in Transition Economies: Theory and Evidence from the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey" . Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1106102

Surgery problems in obese children

A study on surgery problems in obese children noted airway obstruction and other breathing-related functions during surgery. It included some statistics about children and obesity.

An estimated 15 to 17 percent of children and adolescents in the United States are considered obese.

Major airway obstructions occurred in 19 percent of obese children, compared with 11 percent of normal-weight children.

Nearly 9 percent of obese children experienced difficult mask ventilation, compared with 2 percent of normal-weight children.

17 percent of obese children in the study experienced major oxygen desaturation (decreased oxygen in the blood), compared with 9 percent of normal-weight children.

28 percent of obese children had asthma, compared with 16 percent of normal-weight children.

It should be noted however, that despite the increased risk of adverse events among children who are obese, none resulted in significant illness.

Reference: Anesthesiology, March 2008, Vol. 108, Issue 3.

Nutritionism

Why are we eating "healthy" and just getting fatter? There's an interesting article in the NYT Magazine called "Unhappy meals" about how we eat, focusing on nutrients instead of real food.

Nutritionism may be the culprit, says the author. There are more government regulations, more nutritional studies, more diets (low fat, low carb, etc.), and there's a huge industry of journalists and authors (including the one who wrote the above article) who do nothing but write articles or publish books about what to eat and how to eat it. One nutrition/exercise/health web site I read recently said we are spending more on obesity per day than on the war in Iraq. I haven't crunched the numbers, but that's scary! Read the article (recommended by Janeen who combats food allergies daily in her family) and see what you think.

There are good ideas and points in this article--many we've heard before, but cherry pick. We are bombarded by anti-western this and that, and eco-friendly tidbits by the same journalists who wrote us into obesity! You need to be selective. In the 1970s women were literally pushed out of the home and kitchen; we've been getting fatter since. Now we're being reeled back. Barefoot and pregnant probably won't fly these days. But do try to eat real food.

If you can find it.

From a longer post at Collecting My Thoughts.

If you're over 65, you might want to reconsider BMI

A new study published in the American Journal of Public Health [may ask for registration] seems to show that being too thin or too fat is dangerous for older women, but being "just right" will mean reconsidering the ideal BMI.

For BMI, the lowest mortality rates were in the range 24.6 to 29.8 kg/m2. The U-shaped relations were seen throughout the age ranges included in this study and were not attributable to smoking or measures of preexisting illness. Body composition measures were not better predictors of mortality than BMI or waist girth.
Conclusions: Our results do not support applying the National Institutes of Health categorization of BMI from 25 to 29.9 kg/m2 as overweight in older women, because women with BMIs in this range had the lowest mortality.

Obese children at risk in surgery and for surgery

Using a database at the University of Michigan, researchers looked at 6,017 pediatric surgeries at the UM Hospital from 2000 to 2004. They found that nearly a third of the patients – 31.5 percent – were overweight or obese. More than half of those children qualified as obese, according to the study, which appears in Journal of the National Medical Association, VOL. 99, NO. 1, JANUARY 2007, p. 46-51 (this is a journal that promotes the interests of physicians and patients of African descent). You can read this article full text without registration.

"The prevalence of overweight children having surgery presents challenges to surgeons, anesthesiologists and their teams. Overweight adult patients are more likely to have conditions such as type II diabetes, hypertension, asthma and other breathing problems, and are more likely to develop infections in their wounds after surgery. The researchers on this study say those conditions also are becoming common among overweight and obese children.

The results also suggest that children who are overweight or obese have an increased likelihood of requiring certain types of surgery. The surgeries these children were having performed most frequently included the removal of tonsils and adenoids, as well as other surgeries designed to assist with breathing problems and sleep apnea; orthopedic surgeries to fix broken bones and other ailments; and procedures designed to mend digestive and gastrointestinal issues." Summary from the UMHS press release.