The Government is Making Me Eat Healthily!

 Email This Post

All those who don’t follow the guidelines for good eating and no smoking are just going to have fewer choices available to them.  Free will to be self-destructive is about to managed by the government.

The Los Angeles City Council approved a one-year moratorium on new fast-food restaurants in a 32 square-mile area of South Los Angeles, an area plagued by above-average rates of obesity:  30% of adults, as compared with about 21% in the rest of LA.  Nationally, 25.6% of adults are obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

When you look at the realities, an intact family with a homemaker mom or dad (versus a two-career, busy, busy, busy set of parents) generally results in everyone eating less fast food, and more nutritious at-home meals.  But promoting marriage and a division of responsibilities is politically incorrect, isn’t it?

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a bill into law ordering that, as of 2010, no California restaurant will be able to serve foods containing a harmful form of fats called trans fats.  Baked goods containing trans fats will be banned in California as of 2011.  If a product’s list of ingredients contains the words “partially hydrogenated,” the product contains trans fat, which is used to harden vegetable oils into shortening and margarine to help extend product shelf life.  Trans fats lower “good” cholesterol (HDL) and contribute to other health problems.

According to the New England Journal of Medicine, eliminating artificial trans fats from the food supply “could” prevent between 6 and 19 per cent of heart attacks and related deaths each year. 

Do you think there’ll be an underground market for trans fat products?

San Francisco is ready to become the first city in the nation to ban sales of tobacco products at pharmacies, which last year accounted for almost 20% of U.S. tobacco sales.  The logic is that pharmacies are places people go to get healthy, so cigarettes ought not to be on the shelves as they are a known health hazard. 

Since trans fats are going to be off the supermarket shelves because they’re unhealthy, shouldn’t supermarkets stop selling cigarettes too?

I am all for healthy habits.  I work hard at eating as healthily as possible, generally ordering fish without sauces in restaurants and salad without dressing.  As sauces, gravies, and dressing are very high in calories, perhaps they should be banned from restaurant recipes, or ordered only under a physician’s approval…assuming you already have a very high HDL level.

Lastly, restaurants around the country will soon have to post on menus the exact calorie count of a meal.  It will blow your mind to see what you thought was healthy is actually loaded with hidden calories.  There’s a terrific book, called “Eat This, Not That” which will make your head explode when you find out where calories are hidden in some of your favorite meals.

Kids and Cholesterol Drugs

 Email This Post

The American Academy of Pediatrics estimates that under the current guidelines, thirty per cent of the nation’s children are overweight or obese.  Many doctors fear that a rash of early heart attacks and diabetes will strike these children as they grow older.

The nation’s pediatricians are therefore recommending wider cholesterol screening for children - starting at age two - and more aggressive use of cholesterol-lowering drugs starting as early as eight years of age in hopes of preventing adult heart problems.

Because statins (cholesterol drugs) have been around since only the mid-1980s, there really is no evidence to show whether giving statins to children will, indeed, lower the risk for heart attack in middle age.

The main problem is that we live in a culture which is largely hooked into electronic entertainment and spend too much time feeding one end and not moving the other.

If You’re a “Metabo,” You’ll Be Fined

 Email This Post

Japan has instituted one of the most serious campaigns in the world to get its citizens to be fit.  This action is motivated by the rapidly aging society’s ballooning health care costs, as most Japanese are covered under public health care or through their employment.

The term “metabo,” comes from the medical concept of “metabolic syndrome,” i.e., the factors that heighten the risk of developing vascular disease and diabetes.  They are:  obesity, high blood pressure, high glucose, and high cholesterol.  The term “metabo” has become the nation’s nickname for “overweight.”

Under a two month-old national law, companies and local governments must measure the waistlines of people between the ages of 40 and 74 as part of annual checkups.  That amounts to 44% of the population of Japan.

The International Diabetes Federation’s (www.idf.org) guidelines for Japan of no more than 33.5 inches for men’s waistlines and 35.4 inches for women is being used as the standard.  When folks are over those measurements and have a weight-related ailment, they will be given dieting guidance and education.

The government will impose financial penalties on companies and local governments that fail to meet these targets.  NEC, a Japanese personal computer production company, said to the New York Times (6/13/08) that if it failed to meet its targets, it could incur almost 20 million in penalties.

A survey by the National Center for Health Statistics in the U.S.A. found that the average waist size for Caucasian American men was 39 inches, a full inch smaller than the 40 inch maximum established by the International Diabetes Federation.

Ladies didn’t do as well:  the average waist size of Caucasian American women was 36.5 inches, about two inches above our threshold.  (The differences in thresholds between Japanese and Americans and men and women have to do with height and body type).

New Global Warming Threat

 Email This Post

“Obese and overweight people require more fuel to transport them and the food they eat, and the problem will worsen as the population literally swells in size,” a team at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine says.  This adds to food shortages and higher energy prices, say the School’s researchers, Phil Edwards and Ian Roberts, who wrote about this subject in the most recent issue of the medical journal Lancet.

At least 400 million adults worldwide are obese.  The World Health Organization (WHO) projects that by the year 2015, 2.3 billion adults will be overweight and more than 700 million will be obese.  The researchers calculate that these fat and obese people require 18% more energy than someone with a stable Body Mass Index (BMI).

Is the next step giving tax breaks to those who are thin and fit?

Fit, Not Fat

 Email This Post

A study by Harvard-affiliated researchers published in the Archives of Internal Medicine challenges the notion that you can be fat and fit.  They found that being active can lower, but not eliminate heart risks faced by women who are fat or obese.

This new study involved nearly 39,000 women, average age of 54, who filled out a questionnaire at the beginning of the study detailing their height, weight and amount of weekly physical activity in the past year, including walking, jogging, bicycling, and swimming.  They were then tracked for approximately 11 years.

Women were considered “active” if they followed government-recommended guidelines, and got at least 30 minutes of moderate activity most days of the week.  Women who got less exercise than that were considered “inactive.” Weight was evaluated by body mass index (BMI):  a BMI between 25 and 29 is considered overweight, and 30 or higher is considered obese.

Compared with normal-weight active women, the risk for developing heart disease was 54% higher in overweight active women, and 87% higher in obese active women.  By contrast, the risk for developing heart disease was 88% higher in overweight inactive women and 2 1/2 times greater in obese inactive women.

About two in five American women at age 50 will eventually develop heart attacks or other cardiovascular problems according to the Associated Press report (4/29/08).  Excess weight can raise those odds in numerous ways, such as increasing blood pressure and increasing the risks for diabetes, as well as increasing “bad” (LDL) cholesterol.  Exercise counteracts all three.

If there’s one place in the world where there is no excuse for being inactive, it’s southern California.  Between the glorious weather, the hiking trails in the mountains, marked bicycle lanes and more, it’s almost impossible to excuse or explain being out of shape.

How About Putting a “Sin Tax” on Fast Food?

 Email This Post

We already have taxes levied on cigarettes, purportedly to pay for education to stop smoking.  So, what’s so wrong with a tax on fast food to subsidize education about “eating less and moving more,” considering that two-thirds of the American population is fat or obese?

Lawmakers in New Jersey are considering such a tax, and planning to use the revenue from it to fund struggling hospitals.  Obviously, the old hat argument comes out that condemns such a tax as specifically aiming at the poor. When you want to budget money for eating, why not consider eating at home and brown-bagging it for lunch?  Everyone knows that this is a cheaper and more nutritious alternative.

As one taxpayer pointed out, “It costs $12.86 for fries and this little chicken wrap….” This taxpayer was complaining about adding a tax.  Yipes.  This taxpayer should have been complaining about how much money he’s wasting on such a menu.  He did also comment that “if they raise it [i.e., the price with a tax], I’ll stop buying it.”    Brilliant!  If it’s unhealthy, he’ll eat it.  If it has a “sin tax,” he’ll stop.  I think that’s a good enough reason for the tax.