Diets don’t matter – calories do

As long as particular diet isn’t unsafe, there’s nothing “wrong” with it. There’s also nothing special about any of them, per the largest medical study ever.

Counting overall calories is the bottom line.

Obese now pass overweight in America - rapidly pass

Now, I take BMI measurements with a grain of salt, let me first say. I know they're pushed in part by health insurance companies, who have financial reasons to push the BMI as a way of labeling who is overweight and who is obese.

That said, people classed as "obese" in America now outnumber the merely "overweight."

And, here's real bottom line. As a percentage of population, the "overweight" has held steady in the past 15 years, while the "obese" has increased by 50 percent! And, that's not counting, apparently, the 6 percent labeled as "extremely obese."

Both "obese" and "overweight" top 30 percent, and both of them top "normal weight" numbers.

Canada more PC on obesity than US

The Supreme Court of Canada ruled that obese people can buy two seats and fly for the price of one.

This is so ridiculous. Even if body chemistry has a fair amount to do with obesity, personal eating habits are still part of the pic.

I'm 6-5. Should I get two seats for the price of one - mine and the one in front of me - for my legroom, over which I have even less control than an obese person does his or her weight? And, trust me, I've flown coach in enough MD-80s to really think this would be a great idea if I could get away with it.

World of science — Hungry thinking, early CO2, our black hole, more

Heavy thinking makes for additional eating. Problem — our now largely-sedentary society.

Astronomers are getting more evidence for the black hole believed to be at the center of our galaxy, with new radiotelescope imaging.

A new answer for why early earth didn’t freeze. Less carbon dioxide for greenhouse gas was needed than previously thought.

Not a slim American around

In 40 years, that is. At that time, all Americans could be overweight.

Some food for thought, if you will:

“We are terribly, ominously off-course,” says Dr. David Katz, co-founder of the Yale University Prevention Research Center. “To close the gap, we need to fix everything that’s broken — from neighborhoods without sidewalks, to the high price of produce, to food marketing to children, to misleading health claims on food packages, to school days devoid of physical activity and school cafeterias devoid of healthful offerings. The list goes on and on.”

Others cite individual responsibility for diet and lifestyle habits. Dr. Neal Barnard says dietary modification could be a crucial step in solving the problem.

“U.S. eating habits are nowhere near where they should be,” he says. “The average American eats 50 pounds more meat and 20 pounds more cheese per year, compared to the 1960s. ... I would strongly encourage Americans to adopt more vegetarian meals.”

Now, assuming he has a whole-grains focus, I agree.

Beyond that, it’s intellectual laziness. Foods have been labeled with at least basic health information for what, 30 years or more?

And, intellectual laziness by parents is hurting their own innocent children.

If this prediction becomes true, it’s in part because obesity problems may start as young as 2 years old.

Why you and your kids are fat

If you are, in part, it’s because you’re eating too much food. (Graphic from New York Times.)

The average American increased his or her food intake by more than 10 percent over the last 35 years. That 1.8-pound increase includes half a pound of additional fat, the highest gain in any food group. Worse yet was most of this fat was from cheese, cream cheese and sour cream, all saturated fats with cholesterol, especially when produced by fatter cows fed more grain and less grass.

Second highest was grains, which would be great if it were whole grains, but 90 percent of what Americans eat there is refined grains with no fiber. And corn, which is lower in fiber than whole wheat, etc. had the highest grain increase.

And the fat get fatter — and more hypocritical (Hypocrisy alert)

At the end of this Condé Nast story about the Baconator and its stroke-inducing cousins, the comments get ludicrous, many of them buying into the line of the parent company of Hardees and Carl’s Jr. to not let the government “pry my hamburger from my cold dead hands.”

Yet, as I posted in a comment in return, I’m sure that not one of these anti-government crusaders will forgo Medicare paying for his heart attack or stroke treatment and rehab if he’s over the age of 65.

Bisphenol-A linked to obesity too

The more you read about BPA, the more there is, tentatively at least, not to like.

BPA, whether through its hormone mimicry work or through other means, appears to be contributory to the rise in developed-world obesity. Given that it has been in plastic bottles for baby formula nursing for a number of years, this is certainly plausible.

“We are calling this an emerging hypothesis,” Jerry Heindel of the U.S. National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences said. “Most of the data is in animals and we want to develop some biomarkers that could be used in humans.”

Beyond that, we’re still in the early stages of determining how chemical interactivity has additional side effects.

‘Videophilia’ — the new social disease and its impact on global warming

It’s the ‘disease’ of people watching ever-more TV, plus playing ever-more video and computer games, plus being on the Internet ever more. (I plead a partial “guilty” to the last one.) The consequences are twofold. First, as the explosion in Type II diabetes show, we have more unhealthy, even fat, and ultimately self-destructive children; of course, many of them are now in adolescence or even early adulthood.

Second, we have these social issues, according to Oliver Pergams of the University of Illinois at Chicago:

“Videophilia has been shown to be a cause of obesity, lack of socialization, attention disorders and poor academic performance.”

How serious? This serious:

The biologists examined figures on backpacking, fishing, hiking, hunting, visits to national and state parks and forests. They found comparable statistics from Japan and, to a lesser extent, Spain. They found that from 1981 to 1991, per-capita nature recreation declined at rates from 1 percent to 1.3 percent per year, depending on the activity studied. The typical drop in nature use since then has been 18-25 percent, they said.

Third, because of this, we have less and less appreciation for nature, which authors of the study say may lead to increased environmental destruction:

“We don’t see how this can be good for conservation,” Pergams said. “We don’t see how future generations, with less exploration of nature, will be as interested in conservation as past generations.”

Beyond calling this “horrible,” I’d go beyond the study’s state of concern.

I’d say this is why an increasingly air-conditioning incubated generation of younger Americans is not likely to give too much of a damn about global warming as long as they can chill out with the A/C, zone out and stare out with the TV, computer or game set, and pig out with junk food.

Now, if Peak Oil (and Peak Natural Gas) will only do their work, and we get pricey enough electricity …

People willing to swap four years of life for being obese, libertarian author alleges

And 2.5 y ears for “just” being overweight, says the author of a book who says we’re making too much a to-do about the obesity crisis.

Finkelstein ignores both the costs of health care for obesity and takes a medically unsupported, libertarian, “obesity is pure choice” tack, also. True, we shouldn’t diminish the choice factor involved in obesity; people do make choices as to how much they eat, what they eat and how little they exercise. But, we shouldn’t do this to the extent of ignoring or dismissing either genetic or uncontrollable prenatal environmental factors.