Obesity Epidemic Grows: [CNN.com] "Two-thirds of all adults and about a third of all children and teenagers in the United States are overweight or obese according to a report release Thursday by the Trust for America's Health (TFAH) and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF).
According to
"F as in Fat: How Obesity Threatens America's Future 2011,"[PDF] adult obesity increased in 16 states during the past year and rates soared to 30% or more in these 12 states: Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and West Virginia. Four years ago, only one state - Mississippi - had an adult obesity rate of more than 30%. No state showed a decrease in it obesity rate in Thursday's report."
posted by Fizz
on Jul 7, 2011 -
231 comments
Why Wal-Mart Is Making Our Health Its Problem - "So what's behind
the [healthier-eating] initiative? In a word: scale. In
a recent article in HBR, Chris Meyer and I argued that we'll see companies taking more and more ownership of externalities they could ignore because of changing sensibilities and better sensors (meaning detection and reporting of impacts by third parties). But we also identified a third driver: the scale of modern business. Whereas in the past, a single grocer could not have much impact on society, in today's highly consolidated market, Wal-Mart touches a significant percentage of the nation's food intake. Once you reach a scale where your decisions have ramifications for millions, it is hard to pretend that the impacts, even as distant ripples, are not your problem."
posted by kliuless
on Jan 24, 2011 -
75 comments
USDA releases new food pyramid(s). Instead of one cogent nutritional guideline for all Americans, the USDA has
released a dozen because "one size doesn't fit all." Dietitians have advocated
revision for a while now but change has been slow. According to author
Marion Nestle, the nutritional guidelines have become
highly politized by industry lobbyists: "My first day on the job, I was given the rules: No matter what the research indicated, the report could not recommend 'eat less meat' as a way to reduce intake of saturated fat." Newspeak for sweets appears to be
discretionary calories; are we doing any better?
posted by fatllama
on Apr 19, 2005 -
29 comments
Supersized in the NFL Analyzing data from the 2003-2004 season, researchers say "more than a quarter of NFL players had a body mass index that qualified them as
class 2 obesity" -- equivalent to a 6-foot man weighing between 260 and 300 pounds.
Even those players weren't the biggest ones:
the study counted more than 60 players -- 3 percent -- with body mass indexes placing them into
class 3 obesity, with individual weights approaching 400 pounds.
"I don't know what's going on in the minds of coaches", said lead researcher Dr.
Joyce Harp, an assistant professor of nutrition and medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Players' growing girth "is a major concern," said
Dr. Arthur Roberts, a former NFL quarterback and retired
heart surgeon (.pdf file) whose
Living Heart Foundation works with the players' union to evaluate heart-related health risks faced by current and retired players. More inside.
posted by matteo
on Mar 1, 2005 -
42 comments
The vegan diet can be a killer, at least that's what the State of New York thinks. Was a "strict vegan diet" the cause of a 15-month-old's demise or did New York health officials have a hand in the death?
posted by Bag Man
on Mar 30, 2003 -
51 comments
Keys of Nutrition You may not be familiar with Ancel Keys, but his discoveries about nutrition and health are behind much of the dietary advice people now receive. Have you ever wondered who proved that the amount of cholesterol in food did not influence the amount of cholesterol in the blood? Do you know what causes high cholesterol? Do you like olive oil but need a good rationalization to keep using it? (hint: there is one) What dietary advice has most fascinated you, or helped you the most?
posted by Tystnaden
on Oct 22, 2002 -
17 comments
"We think of an orange as a constant, but in reality it's not." Canadian study finds that fruits and vegetables have lost much of their nutritional value in the last decades--potatoes, for example, have lost 100% of their Vitamin A. The reason, it appears, is mass production and a market that values appearance over substance. Is this symptomatic of deeper problems within a system where produce travels so far before reaching the consumer? Here in B.C., for example, the stores are full of California produce, despite the fact that we grow much the same fruits and vegetables locally.
posted by jokeefe
on Jul 6, 2002 -
17 comments
