Archives for the 'obesity' tag
Quick Bites
Joel Salatin says “when the government gets between my mouth and my stomach, that’s a pretty intrusive government” and a bunch of other awesome things. [Portland Mercury]
LA cracks down on Mexican raw-milk cheese in restaurants. Pulitzer-owning LA food critic responds that crackdown is unhelpful, since “[l]ife is filled with risks.” [LAT]
Jim Breuer (perhaps best known for playing a stoned goat on SNL) either a) flips out while filming a Pizza Hut commercial or b) acts according to script so as to create middling viral footage. [OzarksUnbound]
Starbucks turning the corner? [NRN]
Frank Bruni returns to the NYT, mentions Alice Waters in a good light but still manages to pen a not-half-bad column on childhood obesity. [NYT]
Prepare yourselves. Michael Pollan’s Food Rules: An Eater’s Manifesto drops December 29th. [Amazon]
Or you could just buy bottles in the first place. [YouTube]
The oink is back in a 350-year old painting by a Dutch master. [Telegraph via Rachel Laudan]
The Solution to Childhood Obesity
My piece on last month’s SoBe Wine & Food panel on getting kids to eat healthy, which featured Rachael Ray, Tom Colicchio, and the superb Brian Wansink, is up at Reason.com. A sample.
On its face, a panel featuring a daytime talk-show host, high-end restaurateur and head judge on Bravo’s hit Top Chef, diet-book author, uber-rich foodie mom, and New York Times writer wouldn’t appear to pose any danger to the restaurants-make-us-fat myth. (This year’s panel at least had better myth-busting potential than last year’s, which featured celebrity chefs—and torrid food nannies—Jamie Oliver and Alice Waters.)
But the overwhelming message of the panel was that parents—not the government or restaurants—are ultimately responsible for what their kids eat.
Whole thing here.
Study Finds: Fat People Eat More at Buffets
In the proud tradition of using the scientific method to prove incredibly obvious points, researchers from Cornell “sent trained observers to watch 213 randomly-selected patrons of 11 all-you-can-eat Chinese buffets across the United States.” Their findings? Fat people are more likely to:
- Sit at a table vs. a booth.
- Face the buffet while eating, rather than have their side or back to it.
- Begin serving themselves immediately instead of surveying the buffet.
- Pick up a larger plate vs. a smaller one.
- Use a fork instead of chopsticks.
- Leave less food leftover on their plate
- Chew fewer times per bite.
And my personal favorite:
- Put their napkin on the table or tucked into their shirt vs. on their lap.
“For heavier people to sit close enough to a table to eat comfortably, their stomachs usually touch the table, [Brian Wansink, director of Cornell University's Food and Brand Lab] said, “so putting your napkin in your lap, it doesn’t really work.”
Incisive analysis from a top tier university, brought to you by Crispy. You’re welcome.
Pizza Via TiVo
I squealed with joy when I read this (I really did. Ask the guys at reason’s DC HQ if you don’t believe me): You can now order pizza from your TiVo.
From the press release:
TiVo Inc. (NASDAQ: TIVO), the creator of and a leader in television services for digital video recorders (DVRs), and Domino’s Pizza, Inc. (NYSE: DPZ), the recognized world leader in pizza delivery, have teamed up to give broadband connected TiVo subscribers the ability to order pizza for delivery or pick-up, and track delivery timing, right from their TV sets using the TiVo® service.
Tell me that this quote from Rob Weisberg, vice president of precision and print marketing at Domino’s Pizza, Inc., doesn’t make your heart overflow with joy at the wonders of the modern world:
“This is the first time in history that the ‘on-demand’ generation will be able to fully experience couch commerce by ordering pizza directly through their television set. You’ll see a television ad for Domino’s and you’ll click ‘I want it’ through your remote. In about 30 minutes, your pizza will show up at your door.”
Just in case you missed it, you can track your pizza from your couch.
Via Lifehacker
We Who Are About to Eat Salute You
The latest Archaeology has a story sure to horrify the WHO, CDC, MeMe Roth, and food nannies everywhere. Roman gladiators, it turns out, were not the lean, mean Djimon Hounsous of cinema but rather tubby tubby two-by-fours:
Gladiators, it seems, were fat. Consuming a lot of simple carbohydrates, such as barley, and legumes, like beans, was designed for survival in the arena. Packing in the carbs also packed on the pounds. “Gladiators needed subcutaneous fat,” Grossschmidt explains. “A fat cushion protects you from cut wounds and shields nerves and blood vessels in a fight.”
Grossschmidt and Kanz’s isotopic analysis underscores what archaeologists and classicists have suspected for a while: spectacle and theatricality in the arena were emphasized over martial prowess. Gladiators’ carb-loading and minimal animal-protein intake suggests they lived to fight another day through bulk and endurance over technical strength and speed. Audiences, according to contemporary reports, would turn angry if fights ended too quickly, and attempts to recruit gladiators into the military were disastrous because of their incompetence in actual battles.
I recently wrote an article for Dig on the gladiators’ graveyard at Ephesus and how the various head wounds suffered by its residents correlate to historical records.
Halloween: A Teachable Moment?
Some (read: me) might argue that Halloween is the greatest of all holidays. No pressure, no big meal to prepare, no presents to shop for, no insane extended family—just pure fun. Booze for grownups, candy for kids, everybody wins.
Every year, news outlets run a few mask-suffocation and razors-in-apples stories in the name of “service journalism.” (Now there’s a scary costume: service journalist.) Now there’s a new addition to the genre: The Don’t Feed the Fat Kids story.
Three weeks out, the AP is on the case, with a perfect example of the form. The lede:
It wasn’t the gruesome costumes or gory masks turning up at Lisa Bruno’s front door that spooked her on Halloween. It was the pudge lurking beneath the costumes.
“The kids were just so huge,” Bruno says.
I’m sure you could write the rest of the story in your sleep. Helpful hints: Give toys instead of candy, trick your kids into giving their hoard to you, etc. But this was the line that broke my heart:
Experts do suggest turning the night into a teaching moment about portion size and limits, lessons can that can be reinforced all year.
For Satan’s sake, feed ‘em broccoli every other day of the year, but leave the kids’ mini-Snickers alone! For just one night, consider the fat a creative opportunity. At least you’re saving money on the fat suit for that would otherwise be necessary to complete little Timmy’s picture perfect William Howard Taft costume.
Breakfast à la carte
–Aspiring chef dies after consuming too-hot chilis on dare, the Times of London reports.
–If fat woman had been skinny woman, she wouldn’t be alive right now. “Being big saved my life.” More here from the Herald-Sun (Australia).
–Colts fan* breaks into home, hangs out in attic with pilfered beer and bologna for hours until he’s eventually caught, reports The Indy Channel.
*Presumably.
CSPI Nuts Would Prefer Kids Fast Than Eat Fast Food
Michael Jacobson, blowhard founder of blowhard nutrition group CSPI, appeared on Good Morning America earlier today (under a pseudonym, apparently) to tout a new study by the group. (Video here.)
His target this time? Just another helping of the same: blah blah fast-food restaurants and blah blah blah kids’ meals.
Jacobson’s language today, though, was particularly incendiary. Literally.
“A restaurant meal is a mine field,” Mike Jacobs of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, or CSPI, told “Good Morning America.” “It’s junk everywhere and the explosions are going to be in your stomach, your heart.”
[...]
[Even though every fast-food restaurant offers healthy] options, Jacob believes that children will still suffer.
“Overweight, then obesity, diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, strokes,” he said. “That’s what’s coming down the road.”
And exploding kids’ hearts! Don’t forget their exploding little hearts!
Jacobson failed to mention in between nonsensical imagery of spontaneously combusting children that what will ultimately be coming down the road are more ridiculous CSPI lawsuits against fast-food companies.
NYT Creates ‘Fat Pack’ Phenomenon
Some people like to eat. Some of those people like to eat well. Some of those people are fat. Where I see, at best, a Venn diagram, the NYT sees a story.
If 1960s Las Vegas had its Rat Pack and 1980s cinema its Brat Pack, early 21st century food has its Fat Pack. [eGullet co-founder Jason] Perlow was a charter member. Now, like some of his fellow travelers, he is learning what happens when the Fat Pack’s philosophy of excess meets the body’s limits of endurance.
The journalists, bloggers, chefs and others who make up the Fat Pack combine an epicure’s appreciation for skillful cooking with a glutton’s bottomless-pit approach. Cramming more than three meals into a day, once the last resort of a food critic on deadline, has become a way of life. If the meals center on meat, so much the better.
Even to those who have been in the game long enough to have seen more than a few cycles of food and diet fads, the Fat Pack culture is a shock.
“Most of us who are in this profession are here as an excuse to eat,” said Mimi Sheraton, the food writer and former New York Times restaurant critic who has chronicled her own battle with weight loss. Still, she said, “I’ve never seen such an outward, in-your-face celebration of eating fat.”
Mr. Perlow, who has embarked on an aggressive diet and fitness overhaul, believes that his online colleagues will soon realize that the time has come for healthier eating.
“I do find it irresponsible that they have done nothing to address health issues,” he said of eGullet, which he left in 2006 after a dispute with another of the site’s founders, Steven Shaw.
“The whole foodie lifestyle and diet I used to participate in — I’m not going to say it is unhealthy, but it is excessive,” he said. “I think you can still keep the food very interesting, but do it in moderation. That’s what the food community of the future is going to have to be.”
To which many members of the Fat Pack say: Shut up and pass the pork butt.
While one blogger at Serious Eats claims to be part of the phenomenon, I’m going to rain on the whole damn parade.
There is no phenomenon. People who consume more calories than they burn off through exercise become fat. I could stand to lose some weight, and I know I can easily do so by consuming fewer calories and exercising more — not by claiming membership in some fictitious “Fat Pack”.
Why Does the Whopper Hate our Freedom?
Abominable fat-suit king John Banzhaf has some serious competition, in the form of Lawrence Gostin, who teaches law just up the road from where Banzhaf does the same. Gostin says we worry way too much, and so gives us… another thing to worry about.
“Ever since September 11, we’ve been lurching from one crisis to the next, which has really frightened the public,” Gostin told AFP later.
“While we’ve been focusing so much attention on that, we’ve had this silent epidemic of obesity that’s killing millions of people around the world, and we’re devoting very little attention to it and a negligible amount of money.”
The excellent Center for Consumer Freedom takes Gostin to task. And in spite of his Osama bin Whopper headline, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel columnist Patrick McIlheran gets it, too.
If you generally eat healthy but make only an occasional trip to fast-food joints, the only junk-food related dangers you’ll face will happen when your friend gashes you with a samurai sword at BK.
