It doesn't take much in these dark times for folk to find cause to celebrate. Todays 'hell, it could be worse' story is about childhood obesity. Word is that the number of obese US kids has remained constant since 1999.

To quote from the New York Times article:

“It may be that we’ve reached some sort of saturation in terms of the proportion of the population who are genetically susceptible to obesity in this environment,” Dr. Ogden said. “A more optimistic view is that some things are working. We don’t really know.” ... read more »

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Posted on 29 May, 2008 - 06:21

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A reporter at Bloomberg dropped a line with this story about diet pills in India. What with Indians ballooning (as we all are) there's something of a demand for weight-loss remedies.

The remedies that make sense (eat less, be a little more physically active, don't eat processed food, enjoy fresh food more) aren't terribly popular. Generating far more interest are the solutions that let you carry on eating unhealthily, but where you don't have to bother trying too hard. The chemical companies have been lining up to provide something like this, a magic regulator of free will that can help take the edge off our food cravings.

Through the cunning use of cannabis, specifically the discovery of how to switch off that part of the brain that makes you crave Mars bars when you're high, the drug giant Sanofi-Aventis has hit on a billion dollar weight-loss drug: Acompli. ... read more »

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Posted on 5 April, 2008 - 09:58

With every serving containing 2,900 calories, with 182g of fat and 240g carbs, this tub of sludge is, according to Men's Health magazine, the worst food in America. ... read more »

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Posted on 14 January, 2008 - 18:22

This came in via a number of readers today. It's a posting from the Food News wire concerning the soaring diabetes rates in India. What's perhaps more depressing than the diabetes data (and its mischaracterisation as a 'lifestyle disease') is the fact that the article's authors can only see a solution to diet-induced disease through private healthcare. Government intervention in the marketing of food to children, for instance, isn't on the cards. With a vision as tunnelled as this, the authors would undoubtedly find a comfortable and lucrative (if brief) tenure in the current US administration. ... read more »

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Posted on 5 October, 2007 - 04:38

Unusually, this clipping comes from Newsweek, which has a particularly good article on food and place and, although it doesn't actually mention the idea by name, class too.

Fat Zones: Does where you live influence what you eat? A new study says ZIP codes are surprisingly accurate predictors of obesity.
By Karen Springen
Newsweek
Updated: 6:19 a.m. PT Aug 30, 2007

Aug. 29, 2007 - ZIP codes are more than just a way to deliver mail, they can say a lot about their residents—and not just the ones living in California’s famed 90210. In a study published in the September issue of the journal Social Science & Medicine, University of Washington researchers found that adults living in ZIP codes with the highest property values were the slimmest, and those living in ZIP codes with the lowest property values were the fattest. The findings show that there is significant geographic variation in the obesity problem, and that this variation is very much tied to socioeconomic status and diet. Is this yet another reason for Americans to feel bad about not living on McMansion row? Would people lose weight if they moved to a tonier town? NEWSWEEK’s Karen Springen talked to the study’s lead author, Adam Drewnowski, director of the Center for Public Health Nutrition and professor of epidemiology and medicine at the University of Washington in Seattle. Excerpts: ... read more »

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Posted on 11 September, 2007 - 00:08

I'm dead pleased that the Guardian's Comment is Free section has run this short piece, on obesity and moral panic in Britain, a theme familiar to regulars here at Stuffed and Starved. Article follows, with a different title to the one they chose...

Beggars Can't Be Choosers

Obesity should not be tackled by pharmaceutical means but by looking at the social basis of diet

Raj Patel
Friday August 17, 2007
The Guardian

The head of the British Medical Association caused something of a ruckus this month when he shared his thoughts about how the nation might best tackle rising levels of obesity. Hamish Meldrum's observations came in two parts. First, he made an argument that obesity has fallen hostage to surgeons and pharmaceutical firms. Bariatrics, the medical branch concerned with obesity, is so new that it has yet to find its way into the OED. Its first surgical procedure was only carried out in 1954; today it's a multibillion-dollar industry. At the same time, drug companies are extending their grip on our food through nutraceuticals and unguents designed to stifle appetite. These products are the equivalent of proposing improved gunshot surgery to fix gang violence. ... read more »

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Posted on 17 August, 2007 - 09:40

Kerrin Hands, the man who designed the splendid banner above, spotted this on the BBC's website. It's a radio documentary about obesity in South Africa. Although it doesn't quite go into the deeper explanations for obesity, linked to the structure of urban work, the architecture of the modern city, and the availability of certain kinds of high-sugar snacks for working people, it's not half bad for a BBC effort. And the title, 'Globesity', is none too shabby either. More ... read more »

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Posted on 19 July, 2007 - 04:40

The British Food Standards Agency (FSA) have come out with some useful research on the nation’s health, and food poverty. The message from the media seems to be this: ‘the poor don’t have it as bad as we thought’.

To some extent this is a welcome message – it goes some way to countering the national sport, as British as cricket, of heaping contempt on poor people (though I suspect that it’ll take a little more than this report to make the practice disappear completely).

... read more »

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Posted on 17 July, 2007 - 18:39

The Guardian carries a story on the attempts by the British telecommunications regulator, Ofcom, to ban the advertising of junk food to children. How do they administer the ban?

if the proportion of the audience under 16 is more than 20% higher than the proportion of under-16s in the UK population as a whole, the programme is defined as one which attracts a significantly higher than average proportion of viewers in that age group.

And for such programmes, the advertising of foods high in fat, sugar, and salt (HFSS) is prohibited. It's a smart move. For every $1 spent on promoting healthy food, $500 is spent on junk food - and the desirability of junk food explains, in no small part, the increasing rates of childhood obesity, as Marion Nestle has argued in the New England Journal of Medicine. ... read more »

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Posted on 28 November, 2006 - 05:52