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UK's
National Obesity Forum has a Christmas message to all of you: tell your
loved ones they are overweight this Christmas, and maybe they'll live
to see many more Christmases.
Prof David Haslam, chair of the National Obesity Forum, said: "Suggesting to someone that they should consider losing a few pounds may not be a comfortable conversation to have.
"But if someone close to you has a large waistline then as long as you do it sensitively, discussing it with them now could help them avoid critical health risks later down the line and could even save their life."
May we point out that Santa is fat? Link
Fat
in Denmark? You may want to think twice about drowning your sorrow in
a pint of Chubby Hubby as it's going to get a bit more expensive.
Though less than 10% of Denmark's population is obese, the Danish government ain't takin' the chance that they're becoming like Americans - so they're instituting a "fat tax":
Starting Oct. 1, Danes will see a price increase in products that are high in saturated fats, which researchers at Denmark's Institute of Food and Resource Economics have attributed to the cause of 4% of the country's premature deaths.
Butter, oils, and high-fat dairy products will see the biggest price increases; products with more than 2.3% saturated fat will be taxed 16 kroner per kilogram ($2.90 USD) of saturated fat. Shoppers should be ready to pay up to 30% more for a pack of butter, 8% more for a bag of chips, and a liter of olive oil will cost 7.1% more than usual.
Previously on Neatorama: Hungary's "Fat Tax"
Love
White Castle burgers but hate their too-teeny-tiny booths? What's a steamed
steamed-burger fan to do? (See what I did there?)
Here's what one self-described "not humongous but a big guy" White Castle fan did: he sued 'em under the Americans with Disabilities Act!
A devoted, 290-pound White Castle fan is steaming mad at the fast-food chain, which he says repeatedly broke promises to make the booths in his local eatery bigger.
All stockbroker Martin Kessman wants is a place at the table. But when the 64-year-old walked into the White Castle in Nanuet back in April 2009 for his usual No. 2 combo meal, he got an unpleasant surprise.
“They’re stationary booths,” he told The Post. “I’m not humongous, [but] I’m a big guy. I could not wedge myself in.”
Mortified and in pain from smacking his knee into one of the table’s metal supports, Kessman limped out of the restaurant, and later penned a complaint to corporate headquarters.
And how did White Castle respond?
White Castle replied with three “very condescending letters” -- and an offer that added insult to injury.
“In each letter was a coupon for three free hamburgers -- but the cheese was extra!” according to a lawsuit Kessman filed last week in Manhattan federal court.
Cheese was extra? That alone is worth a lawsuit! Link (yes, with photo of the guy)
(Photo above: Ben Britten/Wikipedia)
With obesity at 18.8% of the population and health care costs, Hungary has just implemented a ten forint (about $.50 tax) on fatty and sugary foods to cover health costs. So what exactly are Hungarians hungry for?
The dobostorta cake, a five-layer vanilla and chocolate buttercream dessert with a caramel-glazed top layer, is probably Hungary’s best-known treat — at least after goulash. The cake can be seen in the vitrines of coffee houses and bakery shops lining the streets of Budapest.
“Hungarians are really into desserts,” said Carolyn Banfalvi, co-founder of Taste Hungary. The tour company operator describes Hungarian food in general as “very fatty,” with traditional cooking ingredients that include pork and goose fat. “What they call bacon here is often pieces of pure lard,” she said.
The Hungarian government argues that this kind of diet is also leading to obesity and increased health problems, and that those who partake in indulgences like sweets should also pay a premium to help offset those costs. Enter the “fat tax.”
Other European nations are considering the same, despite the suggestion that education and/or subsidies for healthy fruits and veggies would be more effective. With about two-thirds of Americans being overweight or obese, should the United States follow suit?
Fat?
Don't worry - you're in good company ... or soon will be.
According to the medical journal The Lancet, half of America will be obese in just two decades:
These trends project 65 million more obese adults in the USA and 11 million more obese adults in the UK by 2030, consequently accruing an additional 6-8.5 million cases of diabetes, 5.7-7.3 million cases of heart disease and stroke, 492,000-669,000 additional cases of cancer, and 26-55 million quality-adjusted life years forgone for USA and UK combined.
What's
the secret to a more satisfying marriage? Thinner wives, actually. Lay
down the pitchforks, people - I'm just reporting the result of a new study:
Marriages are more satisfying for both partners when wives are thinner than their husbands, according to a new study.
The four-year study of 169 newlywed couples found that husbands were more satisfied initially and wives were more satisfied over time when the fairer sex had a lower body mass index -- a common measure of body fat. The study was published in the July issue of Social Psychological and Personality Science.
"There's a lot of pressure on women in our society to achieve an often unreachably small weight," said Andrea Meltzer, a doctoral candidate at the University of Tennessee and lead author of the study. "The great take-home message from our study is that women of any size can be happy in their relationships with the right partner. It's relative weight that matters, not absolute weight. It's not that they have to be small."
The perfect solution seems to present itself: husbands, chubbify yourselves!
We all know that childhood obesity is a serious problem here in the United States. Sure, obese kids are unhealthy but is it child abuse?
Harvard University child obesity expert Dr. David Ludwig thinks so. He goes as far as to suggest that parents should lose custody of their fat children:
"In severe instances of childhood obesity, removal from the home may be justifiable, from a legal standpoint, because of imminent health risks and the parents’ chronic failure to address medical problems," Ludwig co-wrote with Lindsey Murtagh, a lawyer and researcher at Harvard’s School of Public Health.
Do you agree? Should the state intervene and take morbidly obese children away from the parents and put them into foster care, even as a last resort?
Photo: Shutterstock
Researchers from the Northwestern University noticed there’s something strange about religion: it’s making people fatter.
We don’t recall any of the commandments saying "thou shall eat chocolate cake," but an unusual new study has found that people who regularly attend religious activities are 50 percent more likely to battle obesity by middle age.
God only knows why. The scientists sure don’t.
"We don’t know why frequent religious participation is associated with development of obesity," said Matthew Feinstein, the study’s lead investigator and a fourth-year student at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. "It’s possible that getting together once a week and associating good works and happiness with eating unhealthy foods could lead to the development of habits that are associated with greater body weight and obesity."
The study tracked nearly 2,500 men and women over 18 years. They filtered for age, race, sex, education, income and baseline body mass index. The last one’s important, because it shows that the religious were getting fatter, not that fat people were getting religious.
See also: Dear Lord, If You Can’t Make Me Skinny, Please Make My Friends Fat!
Are buses less safe today? Yes, according to the Federal Transit Authority, because of … fat people. So it’s rewriting the rules to ensure bus safety:
The Federal Transit Authority (FTA) proposes raising the assumed average weight per bus passenger from 150 pounds to 175 pounds, which could mean that across the country, fewer people will be allowed on a city transit bus.
The transit authority, which regulates how much weight a bus can carry, also proposes adding an additional quarter of a square foot of floor space per passenger. The changes are being sought "to acknowledge the expanding girth of the average passenger," the agency says.
"This change is really just a bow to reality," says Joseph Schwieterman, who studies bus ridership as director of the Chaddick Institute for Metropolitan Development at DePaul University in Chicago. "With no small number of bus passengers tipping the scale at 200 pounds or more, this is much more realistic."
Larry Copeland of USA Today has the full story on this weighty matter: Link
Boston’s emergency medical services department unveiled a new ambulance designed to help transport obese patients without injuring EMTs:
Boston emergency services debuted a specialized ambulance designed to carry obese patients on Tuesday, and the retrofitted vehicle was promptly needed on two calls, authorities said.
The ambulance is equipped with a special stretcher that can hold 850 pounds and a hydraulic lift with a 1,000 pound capacity, said Captain Jose Archila of Boston’s Emergency Medical Services fleet.
The ambulance is likely to be needed two to four times a week, he said.
“We have seen a huge increase in the last six months,” said Archila about the number of calls by obese patients.[...]
Back injuries among crews are common due to strain from lifting extremely heavy patients, he said. The ambulance makes the patients more comfortable as well.
In appearance, the ambulance looks like any other. The hydraulic lift is folded and stowed underneath the bed, and a gas tank was repositioned to accommodate it, Archila said.
Link via Super Punch | Photo (unrelated) via Flickr user sonyone703 used under Creative Commons license
A lot of people probably think "McDonald’s made me fat," but there’s one guy in Brazil who got the court of law to agree with him. Here’s the bizarre story of a man who sued McD for making him fat … and won!
A former manager of a McDonald’s franchise in Porto Allegre, Brazil, sued the hamburger chain for making him gain 65 pounds while he worked with them for over a dozen years. McDonald’s must pay him $17,500 as recompense for his weight gain, a Brazilian court ruled on Tuesday.
The 32-year-old man, whose identity wasn’t disclosed, complained that the company’s policy of mandatory food sampling caused him to balloon from about 155 lbs. to 231 lbs. while working at their restaurant in southern Brazil. [...]
The man said that he felt forced to taste everything on the menu to ensure the quality of the food because McDonald’s hired undercover customers to randomly visit restaurants and report back on quality.
Also, he blamed the free lunches consisting of burgers, fries and ice cream, which contributed to his excessive weight gain during the course of employment.
Judge Joao Filho agreed with the man, and issued a ruling against the company, ordering them to pay $17500 to the ex-employee.
For the fifth year running, Mississippi clinched yet another unwanted distinction of being the fattest state of 2010. A whopping 70% of Mississippians are overweight, with more than 33% of them being downright obese.
The skinniest state is Colorado, but if you read the statistics closely, the news isn’t so great: more than 55% of Coloradans are overweight, and nearly one in five are obese.
Link | Why are Americans so fat? The reason is obvious.
Pharmaceutical start-up Gelesis has developed a pill that is filled with tiny polymer beads. Swallow the pill, and the beads absorb water in your stomach, swelling over one hundred times in size. The idea is to partially fill up the stomach so that the patient is less hungry:
So when you down a pill with a glass of water, the capsule dissolves in your stomach and the hydrogel beads begin to grow. In a few minutes you’re feeling pretty full, and that second Double Down from KFC is decidedly less attractive.
Of course, now you have a belly full of hydrogel, and this is where the engineers at Gelesis had to be clever. The food is now mixed in with the gel, but you still need to digest that food (the object here is weight loss, not starvation). The hydrogel keeps food in the stomach longer, giving stomach acid more time to break down both the food and the hydrogel, which begins to release its water. Everything then moves to the small intestine where the gel can re-expand to some extent, slowing the absorption of fatty materials and sugars. Finally everything ends up in the lower bowels, and the rest is history.
Link | Image: Gelesis
Obesity experts at Cornell University say that depictions of the Last Supper, such as that of Leonardo da Vinci (above), have shown increasingly larger meal portions for the past thousand years:
They found the main courses, bread and plates put before Jesus and his disciples have progressively grown by up to two-thirds.
This, they say, is art imitating life.
Professor Brian Wansink, who, with his brother Craig, led the research, published in the International Journal of Obesity, said: “The last thousand years have witnessed dramatic increases in the production, availability, safety, abundance and affordability of food.
Link | Image: Art Renewal Center
Why do we gain weight as we age? Don’t just blame all the bad stuff we eat … let’s blame nature, too. Darn those aging muscles:
In large part, that’s because we lose muscle cells as we age. When younger muscle cells get damaged, they’re quickly repaired. That’s not the case with older muscles, according to UCLA researcher and geriatrician Jonathan Wanagat. He says we don’t know why muscles literally shrink as we age. But there are a number of theories.
"I think one of the ones that have become increasingly interesting and popular is the idea that the stem cells in the muscle are not able to respond to damage or to aging the way they did when we were younger," says Wanagat. And if damaged muscle cells aren’t repaired, they sort of whittle away and die, he says. Decreases in growth hormone, testosterone and estrogen levels may also account for the loss of muscle fiber and the inability of tissue to replenish itself.
In addition, the muscle cells we’re left with are sort of worn out, according to Phillips. "If you think of muscles as being the energy powerhouse of our body, that’s where most of our calories are burned. And when we talk about metabolism, what we’re really talking about is how efficiently those powerhouse cells — the muscle cells of our body — burn the energy we bring in."
Energy is delivered to the body in the form of calories. And if you keep your caloric intake exactly the same as you get older, says Phillips, those unburned calories end up as fat.
Its sort of a one-two punch, says Wanagat. The energy powerhouse cells in muscles get damaged with age. That damage accumulates over time and, on top of that, the body’s ability to repair that damage also dwindles with aging.
Patti Neighmond of NPR has more: Link
Psst – wanna lose weight while eating all you want and doing no exercise? No, it’s not a spammy Internet ad – it’s real science! All you have to do is live a while at high altitude:
Overweight, sedentary people who spent a week at an elevation of 8,700 feet lost weight while eating as much as they wanted and doing no exercise. A month after they came back down, they had kept two-thirds of those pounds off. The results appear in the Feb. 4 Obesity. [...]
The scientists ferried 20 overweight, middle-aged men by train and cable car to a research station perched 1,000 feet below the peak of Germany’s highest mountain, Zugspitze. During the week-long stay, the men could eat and drink as much as they liked and were forbidden from any exercise other than leisurely strolls. The team measured the men’s weight, metabolic rate, levels of hunger and satiety hormones before, during, and after their mountain retreat.
After a week up high, the subjects lost an average of 3 pounds. A month later, they were still 2 pounds lighter. The sceintists’ data showed this was likely because they ate about 730 calories less at high altitudes than they did at normal elevations. They may have felt less hungry, in part, because levels of leptin, the satiety hormone, surged during the stay, while grehlin, the hunger hormone, remained unchanged. Their metabolic rate also spiked, meaning they burned more calories than they usually did.
A high-altitude weight loss strategy could be viable, though studies have shown peoples’ appetites bounce back after about six months at high elevation, Leissner said. “If you could do intermittent periods for one week, then go down, and then go back up, this might actually be helpful.”
Link (Photo Stephan A [Flickr])
Are you fat? Be thankful that you’re in the United States. If you were in Japan, you’d be breaking the law:
In Japan, being thin isn’t just the price you pay for fashion or social acceptance. It’s the law. [...]
In Japan, already the slimmest industrialized nation, people are fighting fat to ward off dreaded metabolic syndrome and comply with a government-imposed waistline standard. Metabolic syndrome, known here simply as “metabo,” is a combination of health risks, including stomach flab, high blood pressure and high cholesterol, that can lead to cardiovascular disease and diabetes.
Concerned about rising rates of both in a graying nation, Japanese lawmakers last year set a maximum waistline size for anyone age 40 and older: 85 centimeters (33.5 inches) for men and 90 centimeters (35.4 inches) for women.
A food fight is brewing in the school cafeteria, and this time, it’s promises to be much nastier than the one that got those kids jailed:
The milk industry clearly doesn’t want chocolate milk to go the way of the soda can in schools. Sure, a serving of chocolate milk has 60 more calories, but kids love it, so they’ll drink more milk if it’s an option instead of other sugary drinks, the campaign contends. The National Dairy Council and the Milk Processor Education Program are spending between $500,000 to $1 million to get the message across.
But no amount of money will convince people like Marlene Schwartz, deputy director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University, that chocolate milk needs to be in schools. She told the AP that kids get needed calcium elsewhere and do not need yet another source of sugar additives that contribute to obesity. Ann Cooper, director of nutrition services at the Boulder Valley School District in Colorado, notes in the same story that kids "happily drink white milk" when it’s the only milk available at school. The "renegade lunch lady," as she calls herself, also said that the extra 40 to 60 calories on top of the 110 calories in a typical 8-ounce serving of white milk "could add up to 5 pounds of weight gain over the 180-day school year." Her district does not offer chocolate milk.
So, should schools ban chocolate milk? Will kids revolt if they did? Link
The Framingham Heart Study began in 1948 and followed over 5,000 participants for decades. The volunteers made up 40% of the population of Framingham, Massachusetts.
In 2003, Nicholas Christakis, a social scientist and internist at Harvard, and James Fowler, a political scientist at UC San Diego, began searching through the Framingham data. But they didn’t care about LDL cholesterol or enlarged left ventricles. Rather, they were drawn to a clerical quirk: The original Framingham researchers noted each participant’s close friends, colleagues, and family members.
“They asked for follow-up purposes,” Christakis says. “If someone moved away, the researchers would call their friends and try to track them down.”
Christakis and Fowler used the social data to study changes in the population over time. They constructed networks of the volunteers social connections to see how these connections affected any changes. The findings? Some behaviors are contagious. Social connections with up to three degrees of separation influence whether we quit smoking or become fat. And even happiness is contagious, both online and offline. The social connections of the Framingham volunteers are graphically illustrated at Wired. Link
A new study shows that elderly people who are overweight or obese have significantly less brain tissue than those of normal weight. The difference was 4% for overweight people and 8% for the obese in a study of 94 people in their 70s. The volunteers were followed for five years, and anyone who showed cognitive impairment was excluded from the final sample.
“The brains of obese people looked 16 years older than their healthy counterparts while [those of] overweight people looked 8 years older,” said UCLA neuroscientist Paul Thompson, senior author of a study published online in Human Brain Mapping.
Much of the lost tissue was in the frontal and temporal lobe regions of the brain, the seat of decision-making and memory, among other things.
It is not clear whether weight gain caused a reduction in brain tissue, or if a smaller brain contributes to weight gain, or there are other factors contributing to both. Link -via Lifehacker
(image credit: Flickr user erat)
We’ve posted some creative prison smuggling schemes before on Neatorama, but never one this … beefy:
An obese inmate in Texas has been charged after officials learned he had a gun hidden under flabs of his own flesh. [...] The 500-pound man was searched during his arrest and again at a city jail and the county jail, but officers never found the weapon in his rolls of skin. Vera admitted having the gun during a shower break at the county jail.
Link (Image: Houston Police Department)
A study by Mile End Centre for Sports and Exercise Medicine in the Whitechapel area of London, England asked 11- and 12-year-olds to wear pedometers to measure their activity. Researchers were surprised to find that the more obese children registered the highest activity levels. Then they found out why. The participants were attaching the pedometers to their dogs!
Once adjusted to take into account the help from pets, the study indicated that boys in the borough walk or run 12,620 steps a day, below the recommended level of 15,000 steps.
It also found that girls take 10,150 steps, falling short of the recommended 12,000 steps.
It indicated that more than a third of 11 and 12-year-olds in the borough of Tower Hamlets are overweight or obese – 11% higher than the national average.
(image credit: Flickr user size8jeans)
Most people’s New Year’s resolutions usually involve losing weight, but Australian underwear model and personal trainer Paul "PJ" James’s was the exact opposite: he wanted to become fat to better understand his obese gym clients!
Matt Johnston of the Herald Sun has the story:
PJ, 32, has already gone from 80kg to 100kg since making his New Year resolution to boost his flab.
"I have always found it easy to tell clients what to do to lose weight, but it’s hard to tell where a client is coming from and how they are feeling," he said.
"There are health risks, I won’t shy away from that. But I’m trying to do it as responsibly as possible, with regular blood pressure and health checks."
He said his body had tried to reject the fat at first, but he had worked hard to make sure he stacked on the kilos, and was now starting to notice people looking at him differently.
"Especially when I’m trying to train clients and they are doing sit-ups and I’m standing there with a massive gut," he said.
"My gut is pretty big. That’s where most of the weight seems to be going."
Link (Photo: Rebecca Michael) | More pics at Australia-Bodybuilding Blog
Ever wonder why some people can eat anything they want and never gain weight? UCSF (my alma mater!) researcher Robert Farese and colleagues have found that it may just be the absence of a "fat enzyme":
The enzyme, MGAT2, determines whether dietary fat is used to generate energy or stored under the skin around the waist. The discovery of its role could be the key to preventing obesity, diabetes and heart disease
Scientists found that mice missing the gene for MGAT2 were able to feast on a high fat diet without becoming flabby or overweight.
Mice lacking MGAT2 were also protected against glucose intolerance – a precursor to diabetes – high cholesterol and a build up of fat in liver cells.
Think that because diet sodas have low calories they help prevent weight gain? Think again! David Zinczenko and Matt Goulding of Men’s Health wrote an article on the ugly truth about diet soda:
When confronted with the growing tide of calories from sweetened beverages, the first response is, “Why not just drink diet soda?” Well, for a few reasons:
Just because diet soda is low in calories doesn’t mean it can’t lead to weight gain.
It may have only 5 or fewer calories per serving, but emerging research suggests that consuming sugary-tasting beverages–even if they’re artificially sweetened–may lead to a high preference for sweetness overall. That means sweeter (and more caloric) cereal, bread, dessert–everything.
Link | More on "The Dangers of Diet Soda" at Get Fit Slowly blog
Image: J Fowler and N Christakis/New England Journal of Medicine/BMJ
Research by medical sociologist Nicholas Christakis and colleague at the Harvard Medical School in Boston revealed how oher people’s happiness, depression, and obesity can affect you:
Recent research shows that our moods are far more strongly influenced by those around us than we tend to think. Not only that, we are also beholden to the moods of friends of friends, and of friends of friends of friends – people three degrees of separation away from us who we have never met, but whose disposition can pass through our social network like a virus.
Indeed, it is becoming clear that a whole range of phenomena are transmitted through networks of friends in ways that are not entirely understood: happiness and depression, obesity, drinking and smoking habits, ill-health, the inclination to turn out and vote in elections, a taste for certain music or food, a preference for online privacy, even the tendency to attempt or think about suicide. They ripple through networks "like pebbles thrown into a pond", says Nicholas Christakis, a medical sociologist at Harvard Medical School in Boston, who has pioneered much of the new work.
At first sight, the idea that we can catch the moods, habits and state of health not only of those around us, but also those we do not even know seems alarming. It implies that rather than being in charge of where we are going in life, we are little more than back-seat drivers, since most social influence operates at a subconscious level.
Previously on Neatorama: 14 Habits That Make You Fat (which also noted the study above)
It may be the wrong time of year to think about how fat you are -or maybe it’s the best time of year to change your habits before you put the pounds on! HealthAssist lists 14 habits you want to examine to turn your health around and either lose weight or avoid becoming fat. Some you are familiar with, but others may be news. Who knew the way you dress makes a difference in how active you are? Link -Thanks, Karen!
There is of course a serious message to this animation. According to leading vets, pet obesity is one of the biggest issues affecting pets’ health and one in three of the UK’s dogs and cats are now overweight. Fat pets can develop serious health problems – including diabetes, arthritis and even organ failure.
The RSPCA has more information, and has even created an online community to help people keep their pets slim and healthy. Link -Thanks, Jayne Carverhill!
In America, most of us believe that we shouldn’t discriminate based on characteristics that people can’t control (e.g. race, gender, etc.). However, we also believe that weight is something that people can control, and while that is correct to a certain extent, there are other factors that prevent people from achieving their ideal weight.
A new study from Yale University claims that weight discrimination is more widespread than previously imagined. Some of its findings:
– Men are not at serious risk of discrimination until their BMI reaches 35, while women begin experiencing an increase in discrimination at BMI 27.
- Moderately obese women with a BMI of 30 to 35 are three times more likely than men in the same weight group to experience weight discrimination.
- Compared to other forms of discrimination in the United States, weight discrimination is the third most prevalent cause of perceived discrimination among women (after gender and age) and the fourth most prevalent form of discrimination among all adults (after gender, age and race.)
As for how much control people can exert over their own weight, according to Rebecca Puhl (the study’s author):
We place a lot of emphasis on personal responsibility for body weight. Our billion-dollar diet industry is founded on that premise. Your weight is modifiable. But that does not reflect the current state of science. We know from hundreds of randomized clinically controlled trials that it’s very difficult to sustain weight loss over time with our existing treatment methods. That has compelled a number of expert panels, like the National Institutes of Health, to conclude that we really can’t expect you to lose more than 10 percent of your body weight and be able to keep that off.
