Obesity

[Rose]

Nanny bans ice cream vans
"As summer approaches we cast our mind back to the halcyon days of summers past, the sound of leather upon willow (that's cricket folks) and the merry jingle of the ice cream van."
http://nannyknowsbest.blogspot.com/

The PC police trying to drive ice cream vans off our streets
"The jolly jingle of a nearby ice cream van is a sure sign of the approach of summer.
But the familiar sound could soon be a thing of the past if council officials have their way.
They are banning ice cream vendors from parking in residential streets for fear they will cause a nuisance or make children fat.

The crackdown is being spearheaded by Harrow Council in North-West London.
It does not issue street vending licences to ice cream sellers and, in a new step, is encouraging police to enforce the embargo.
Earlier this week, officers moved on Kypros Kimonos five minutes after he parked his van in a Harrow street. His customers were brusquely told to go home.
The 50-year- old from Wembley said: ‘They told me they would arrest me because I did not have a licence to trade.

But I spoke to the council and they told me there is no way I can get one – it does not exist.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... l?ITO=1490

Now I understand why they disarmed the British public,as soon as they got into power, on the basis of a couple of very nasty incidents.
Well, after all those episodes of Robin Hood on TV, I should imagine that all of us have at least a rudimentary idea of how to make the Great British longbow.

Remember Agincourt!
http://www.ukhistorystore.com/product.p ... stseller=Y
Once more into the breach dear friends, once more....


Posted: Thu May 21, 2009 11:02 am

[Rose]

Treat obese like smokers, says expert
“The Government action has been all about soft policies such as education programs and promoting healthy lifestyles, but that is not going to cut the mustard anymore,” Professor Swinburn said."
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,25 ... 77,00.html

Lifestyle, health, and health promotion in Nazi Germany
"Smoking was only one of the health related behaviours that received attention in Nazi Germany. The consumption of alcohol was also strongly campaigned against.

Fruit and vegetable consumption was encouraged, as was the use of wholemeal bread and the avoidance of fat.1 A key figure in Nazi medicine, Erwin Liek, predicted that cancer would come to be seen as a product of diet.2
The consumption of whipped cream seems to have been a particular target of disapproval. The official newspaper of the SS, Das Schwarzes Korps, reported on German tourists in Austrian coffee houses and said that anyone would “think Greater Germany was only created so that this raving Philistine rabble can wolf whipped cream.” A prominent promilitarist slogan read, “Fighting power or whipped cream?”

"Martin Gumpert, considered the lifestyle campaigns to be a cover up for the fact that health in Nazi Germany deteriorated dramatically.4 Gumpert proclaimed that the “abstinent Hitler, who from conviction never takes a drop of alcohol... now drives the people at whose head he stands into fatal alcoholism.”
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articl ... tid=535959

'I served the Fuhrer ... with cakes and cream'
"Salvatore Paolini, 79, says that he was the only Italian member of staff at Hitler’s mountain lair, the “Eagle’s Nest”, at Obersalzberg near Berchtesgaden in the Bavarian Alps. There he served Hitler and his senior officers and discovered that the dictator rarely drank but liked to indulge his fondness for puddings and cream cakes. "

"He supports the contention that Hitler was virtually teetotal and vegetarian. “He did like sausages and ham, but on the whole he never ate meat, preferring potatoes and green vegetables. They were always very highly spiced because he had lost his sense of taste after a mustard gas attack in the First World War.”

What Hitler “really adored were puddings, all kinds of desserts, especially huge cakes covered in whipped cream”. Hitler was “not much of a drinker”, Signor Paolini said. “The wine waiter opened the bottles, always vintage wine, but he scarcely drank anything. We always had to make sure there were plenty of water jugs on the table.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/w ... 140317.ece

The Nazi Diet
"The leaders of the Nazi Party was very conscious of what they ate and drank. Furthermore, they were obsessed with what German citizens were eating and drinking. As Robert Proctor points out in his book, The Nazi War on Cancer, "If the health of the German state rested on the health of the German body, then the self-appointed guardians of the nation's health had to be careful about what was fed that body." (Proctor 124) A slogan featured in a Hitler Youth health manual proclaimed: 'Nutrition is not a private matter!'
Nazis believed that a German citizens body was property of the German state, and therefore property of the Fuhrer. Propaganda posters publicized this claim with such slogans as 'Your body belongs to the Fuhrer"
http://www4.cord.edu/history/arnold/his ... ziDiet.htm


Posted: Sun Jul 12, 2009 10:01 am

[Rose]

Swine Flu Packs Bigger Jolt for Obese as ‘Striking’ Link Found
July 11 (Bloomberg) -- Extremely fat swine flu sufferers may have a tendency to become severely ill, health officials in the U.S. and Europe said, after a report showed a “striking” prevalence of obesity among patients hospitalized in Michigan.

Nine of 10 patients with the pandemic flu strain admitted to an intensive care unit at Ann Arbor from late May to early June, were obese and seven were “extremely obese,” with a body mass index of at least 40, doctors said. Three of the 10 died and seven had no other known health problems.

The study, in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report yesterday, supports a pattern seen by doctors tracking the pandemic in hospital reports from Glasgow to Melbourne and from Santiago to New York. Researchers say the trend is surprising because obesity hasn’t been identified previously as a risk factor for severe complications of seasonal flu.

“Clinicians should be aware that severe illness and fatal outcomes also can occur in patients without known risk factors for complications of seasonal influenza, including persons with extreme obesity,” the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta said in an editorial note accompanying its report.

With the new virus on a collision course with the obesity epidemic, the World Health Organization says it’s gathering statistics to confirm and understand this development.

“Morbid obesity is one of the most common findings turning up in severely ill patients,” said Nikki Shindo, who is leading the investigation of swine flu patients at the WHO in Geneva. “It’s a huge problem.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid= ... Ubdh6sLlb0

[Rose]

Prescriptions for obesity drugs pass a million
Last week the Government launched a major new obesity strategy focussing on prevention of the condition by encouraging a healthy diet and more physical exercise, especially in children.

Betty McBride, Head of Policy and Communications at the British Heart Foundation (BHF), said: "Obesity drugs are clearly part of the solution for a minority of people, however we are in danger of medicalising what is fundamentally a social problem.

"Behaviour change by living a healthier lifestyle is the key to treating and preventing obesity.

Health minister Dawn Primarolo said: "NICE recommends that drugs should not be prescribed for obesity unless the patient has already tried to change the way they live through diet and exercise. These statistics, which show an eightfold increase in the number of prescriptions, back up what we already know - that obesity is rising. And that's why the £372 million obesity strategy we launched last week is so important."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/ ... llion.html

[Rose]

With thanks to GreatScot

Why are fat people abused?
"Another reason for people's intolerance is the "mass-moral outrage" whipped up by the media and the government over the issue of weight, say campaigners"

"The government and the press have created an atmosphere where people think they have a legitimate right to go up to an overweight person and tell them how to live their lives," says Ms Coupe.
"To them we are all the anonymous pictures of fat people they see in the papers and are the cause of all society's ills, as well as a drain on the NHS. We deserve what we get. We're not people with feelings."

Some health professionals agree the handling of the obesity issue has increased negative attitudes towards fat people.
"It's created a huge social stigma," says Dr Ian Campbell, a specialist at the Overweight Clinic at University Hospital in Nottingham and honorary medical director of the charity Weight Concern.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8327753.stm

[Rose]

Campaign against childhood obesity could take lessons from success of the anti-smoking effort

"At some point in recent history, America’s youth got the message that Marlboros were hazardous, but Doritos were hip.
For all of society’s hand-wringing over childhood obesity, the latest studies show the epidemic only getting worse. Since 1980, when potato chips and TV and poverty were just as plentiful, obesity rates among youngsters haven’t just swelled. They’ve tripled.
But smoking has decreased — to the degree that 80 percent of 10th-graders would rather not even date a smoker, up from 68 percent who told that to University of Michigan pollsters in 1997.

So experts wonder: Could the bold strategies of the anti-tobacco campaign be duplicated in a full-bore, in-your-face mission to get more kids on board with healthy eating and exercise?

One TV ad produced by the New York City health department takes off the gloves when it comes to guzzling sugary sodas. A handsome young man pops open a can and pours into a glass some goopy, yellow, chunk-filled sludge, representing fat.
An actor downs the drink, which drips down his chin. The screen reads: “Drinking 1 can of soda a day can make you 10 pounds fatter a year.”

“I don’t think we have a choice but to take on obesity,” said Lloyd Johnston of the Institute for Social Research at Michigan.
But Johnston would advocate a more subtle educational strategy without shaming young people into eating better or getting off the couch."

To do that, many said, would require not just tweaking the attitudes of young Americans but educating their parents, taxing soda and fatty foods to price the youngest buyers out of the market, posting warning labels, regulating advertising, and holding companies accountable for the damage their products can do.

All of those tactics were used in the decades-long campaign to change smoking habits."

"In a culture getting beyond making fun of fat folk (partly because there are so many of us), experts acknowledge the trickiness of attacking diet habits that press against other troubles of children and youth — self-esteem, social acceptance, class, eating disorders."

"The government in Great Britain just selected an advertising firm to beat back obesity there. Again, the idea is not to single out and scold the heaviest among us, but to encourage good health for all.

The target audience? Those who fail to link life-shortening disease to diet — a tactic that experts said ultimately worked in getting teens to lay off cigarettes."
http://www.kansascity.com/2010/03/20/18 ... esity.html?


"But Johnston would advocate a more subtle educational strategy without shaming young people into eating better or getting off the couch"

But whatever he might personally advocate, as before, it is a bullies charter, it will attract the wrong people and over the years will get completely out of hand.

Poor kids.

[Rose]

Hmm, it seems to be just as I suspected ...



How the Food Makers Captured Our Brains

"As head of the Food and Drug Administration, Dr. David A. Kessler served two presidents and battled Congress and Big Tobacco. But the Harvard-educated pediatrician discovered he was helpless against the forces of a chocolate chip cookie.

“Why does that chocolate chip cookie have such power over me?” Dr. Kessler asked in an interview. “Is it the cookie, the representation of the cookie in my brain? I spent seven years trying to figure out the answer.”

The result of Dr. Kessler’s quest is a fascinating new book, “The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite” (Rodale).

During his time at the Food and Drug Administration, Dr. Kessler maintained a high profile, streamlining the agency, pushing for faster approval of drugs and overseeing the creation of the standardized nutrition label on food packaging. But Dr. Kessler is perhaps best known for his efforts to investigate and regulate the tobacco industry, and his accusation that cigarette makers intentionally manipulated nicotine content to make their products more addictive.

In “The End of Overeating,” Dr. Kessler finds some similarities in the food industry, which has combined and created foods in a way that taps into our brain circuitry and stimulates our desire for more."
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/23/health/23well.html



Healthy food obsession sparks rise in new eating disorder

"Fixation with healthy eating can be sign of serious psychological disorder.
Eating disorder charities are reporting a rise in the number of people suffering from a serious psychological condition characterised by an obsession with healthy eating.

The condition, orthorexia nervosa, affects equal numbers of men and women, but sufferers tend to be aged over 30, middle-class and well-educated.

The condition was named by a Californian doctor, Steven Bratman, in 1997, and is described as a "fixation on righteous eating".

"I am definitely seeing significantly more orthorexics than just a few years ago," said Ursula Philpot, chair of the British Dietetic Association's mental health group. "Other eating disorders focus on quantity of food but orthorexics can be overweight or look normal. They are solely concerned with the quality of the food they put in their bodies, refining and restricting their diets according to their personal understanding of which foods are truly 'pure'."

Orthorexics commonly have rigid rules around eating. Refusing to touch sugar, salt, caffeine, alcohol, wheat, gluten, yeast, soya, corn and dairy foods is just the start of their diet restrictions. Any foods that have come into contact with pesticides, herbicides or contain artificial additives are also out.

The obsession about which foods are "good" and which are "bad" means orthorexics can end up malnourished. Their dietary restrictions commonly cause sufferers to feel proud of their "virtuous" behaviour even if it means that eating becomes so stressful their personal relationships can come under pressure and they become socially isolated."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/ ... g-disorder