Thank you Cassy Jones-Mcbryde and friends at Venus Diva for this opportunity.
What a lovely surprise this morning to hear that it was published!

Thea Politis: The Woman Behind ElegantPlus.com

Full text at:

http://dailyvenusdiva.com/2011/11/01/thea-politis-the-woman-behind-elegantplus-c\
om/


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Kelly Clarkson, a Pop Star Proud in Her Own Skin

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/30/fashion/kelly-clarkson-the-role-model-next-doo\
r.html

THE other night, Danielle Travali, 25, was listening to Kelly Clarkson’s new
album, “Stronger.” Ms. Travali has fought her brigade of demons and then
some, describing herself as an eating-disorders survivor.

I am not a schmaltzy type,” said Ms. Travali, who edits an online women’s
magazine in Fairfield, Conn., during a phone interview. But as Ms. Clarkson sang
“The War Is Over,” she said, “tears were rolling down my face. As someone
who has struggled with low self-esteem and body image, I have such a strong
appreciation for powerful women who sing their truth. Kelly’s songs are not
just about failed relationships with others, but failed relationships with
ourselves. Boom! I’m learning here: What did I do to hurt me?”

For a decade, Ms. Clarkson has been belting power-pop hits like “I Do Not Hook
Up” and “Since U Been Gone,” and dismissing withering criticism of her
weight. As a result, her fans have built a distinctive relationship with her:
less that of conventional adulation than of identification and admiration.

“You get a sense that she’s one of us,” Ms. Travali said.

That connection has been reinforced by “Stronger,” released last week, which
the singer describes as her own journey of empowerment, addressed directly to
fans. On one song, “You Can’t Win,” Ms. Clarkson, 29, sings, “If
you’re thin/Poor little walking disease/If you’re not/They’re all
screaming obese/If you’re straight/Why aren’t you married yet?/If you’re
gay/Why aren’t you waving a flag?”

The bond was apparent Thursday, at a Manhattan taping of “VH1 Unplugged: Kelly
Clarkson,” which has its premiere Nov. 18. Ms. Clarkson’s appeal reached
across generations of women.

Linda Scott, 52, who traveled with her husband from Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia,
said that her daughter, 24, was also a passionate fan. Celebrating joint
birthdays at the taping were Jolie Rosen, 14, and her mother, Cynthia Kroning
(who gave her age as “old enough to be her mother”) of Norwood, N.J.

“Kelly’s not afraid to discuss anything,” said Mrs. Kroning, a fan by dint
of driving teenage girls around with the car radio blasting. Referring to a cut
on “Stronger,” she added, “ ‘What Doesn’t Kill You (Stronger),’
should be an anthem.”

At the taping, Ms. Clarkson’s genial unflappability came across from the
get-go. Finishing a bluesy cover of Carrie Underwood’s “I Know You
Won’t,” she glanced down at her red body-hugging sheath dress. She laughed
and tugged at the top.

“Oh, my God!” Had she been spilling out of her dress the whole time? she
asked.

That poise has gotten her through years of sometimes-harsh jabs. On the video
for her first single, “Mr. Know It All,” Ms. Clarkson looks skeptically at a
wall papered with news clippings that have sniped at her weight, challenged her
sexuality and ridiculed her rebellion against music-label executives. Then she
tears an opening through her paper wall of shame and jauntily steps into a
sun-soaked landscape.

At the taping, she stepped into a powerful “Mr. Know It All,”
mother-and-daughter fans bobbing and lip-syncing. Afterward, Ms. Clarkson shook
her head, abashed.

“I flubbed the lyrics, damn it,” she said. “And I knew it when I was doing
it, too. So why didn’t I just stop? It’s just like my relationships!”

The makeup people dabbed at her face. As they turned away, Ms. Clarkson wiped
her lips, mouthing to the audience, “Too much!”

In an interview, Courtney E. Martin, author of “Perfect Girls, Starving
Daughters,” said, “There’s so much talk about Taylor Swift being the girl
next door” — the role played by the singer in her video for “You Belong
With Me” — “but she’s tall and blond, the girl that the girl next door
wants to be. But with Kelly, you sense that she really is the girl next door.
She acknowledges more complexity than most stars talk about.

“For any woman to not only own her body size at an average woman’s weight is
amazing, let alone to own weight gain without shaming and stigmatizing it
publicly. It’s a difficult line to walk because Kelly’s private. She
doesn’t want to be known as the fat activist pop star. That’s not her
mantle.”

While waiting for another stage setup, Ms. Clarkson shimmied in her red dress.
“Spanx!” she shouted merrily, pulling back the celebrity Wizard of Oz
curtain. “For all you ladies out there, let me tell you: it sucks it right in.
You feel like a packed sausage. I feel like I have two pairs on.”

No question that the girl next door has great pipes, but for all Ms.
Clarkson’s approachable charm, she wears steely armor. To promote her music,
Ms. Clarkson will chatter amiably to any microphone (though she declined several
interview requests for this article), but she keeps her private life private.

She lives off the paparazzi grid, both in Nashville and on a ranch in Texas,
where her animal-rescue shelter includes 10 horses; innumerable dogs, cats,
donkeys and goats, and a llama. She has said she has 12 tattoos (including one
behind each ear), owns nine guns (and sleeps with a Colt .45), and will drink
Chivas and sing karaoke to Guns N’ Roses songs.

“Female pop stars like Beyoncé, Rihanna, Taylor Swift, Demi Lovato and Selena
Gomez all come out of the relationship factory,” dating other celebrities,
said Ann Powers, a critic for NPR Music. “But Kelly has stood outside of that.
She is not trying to sell herself on the red carpet.”

Her public persona, Ms. Powers added, “has always been the sadder but wiser
girl, which has to do with her voice: a dusky alto that veers toward R&B but has
a rock edge. That has allowed her to develop a persona of defiance,
independence, of seasoned experience. And her actual biography mirrors that.”

Ms. Clarkson has spoken of having grown a thick skin by age 6, when her parents
divorced. Her early years in Burleson, Tex., were hardscrabble. She couldn’t
wait to see small-town Texas in her rearview mirror. After graduating from high
school in 2000, she worked a string of jobs to afford to get to Los Angeles, to
distribute copies of her demo tape.

But after more dead-end jobs in Los Angeles and occasional work as a television
extra, Ms. Clarkson saw her gambit go up in flames, literally, when her
apartment caught fire. She lived in her car and, in 2002, slinked home to Texas.
And that’s where she heard about auditions in Dallas for a new music
contestant television show, “American Idol.”

Since becoming the show’s first winner, Ms. Clarkson has sold more than 20
million copies of her four studio albums and has won two Grammys. As she hits
her promotional whirlwind for “Stronger,” it’s clear that Ms. Clarkson has
learned to respond deftly to interviewers’ under-the-microscope questions.

Last month in Australia, talk show hosts eyed her, repeatedly asking whether she
had lost weight.

She smiled and immediately replied to one, “No, I have not! Nothing!
Everywhere I go, people say that, but nope!”

She refers airily to her small breasts, “I’m sporting a flat now, same as
since seventh grade.” Conversely, she told a Canadian interviewer that, unlike
singers who can dance, like Lady Gaga, Katy Perry and Beyoncé, “I keep my
pants on because let’s face it: we would scare people,” describing her
posterior as “big” and “giant.” She burst out laughing. “That would be
a big moon!”

Ms. Powers, the NPR Music critic, said, “Here is someone who was manufactured
by the music industry, by ‘American Idol,’ and it’s ironic that she has
emerged as one of our most authentic artists.”

Ms. Clarkson is always asked whether she has a boyfriend, with some interviewers
directly inquiring if she is a lesbian. Inevitably, she guffaws. “I have a big
gay following,” she told an Australian interviewer recently. “If I were gay,
I’d probably have more luck.” Women, she added, are far less intimidated by
her than men.

Donnette Noel, an adviser to the Dressing Room Project, a girls’ body-image
campaign, has been following Ms. Clarkson since her “American Idol” debut.
“She was this down-home girl, so sweet and down to earth,” Ms. Noel, 24,
said. “You’d expect her to change. But she hasn’t. Her weight fluctuates,
and she’s O.K. with that. She became a role model without even trying.”

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Is Your Wife Fat? Try Adultery!

http://jezebel.com/5855235/is-your-wife-fat-try-adultery

Adultery website Ashley Madison further classed up its image today with a
post-Halloween campaign implying that a) fat people are scary and b) you should
cheat on them. Want some rationalization? The company's CEO has buckets of it.

The ad (full version below), which appeared in the New York Metro, features a
scantily-clad overweight woman with the caption, "Did your wife scare you last
night?" The message: your wife, though she's clearly gone to some effort to look
sexy and seduce you, is too fat. Solution: adultery.

Now, we wouldn't necessarily expect a thoughtful, sensitive advertisement from a
business designed to help people cheat on their spouses. That said, Ashley
Madison CEO Noel Biderman has made an effort to convince folks he's not just
some skeezeball. He's described his business as a "marriage saver," allowing
people to seek extramarital sex without divorce. He explained to Bloomberg
BusinessWeek,


If I woke up and found my partner wasn't interested in being with me sexually
and I tried to do everything I could but sex was now off her radar...Well, sex
is important in my marriage — it is — but it's not No. 1 and it's not No. 2.
So I would stray before I would just leave, because maybe that would give me
enough of what I need to stay within my marriage to do all the other things that
are critical to me.
The idea that Ashley Madison is for guys whose wives won't have sex with them
anymore is clearly contradicted by the frisky lady in the ad at left, who looks
quite interested in getting busy. In reality, I'm sure the business never cared
why its users signed up, but the fact that it's now advertising its services as
a way of dealing with a spouse you're not attracted to anymore (of course not
— she's fat) represents a departure from its manufactured moral high ground.
Interestingly, Biderman also told BusinessWeek that overweight women would have
a lot of luck on his site: "You can build a profile right now of an unattractive
woman, overweight, whatever, she'll still have a dozen men interested in meeting
her." I wrote the company to ask whether they were concerned that their
overweight users might find the ad offensive, and Biderman himself sent me this
statement:



Much of our advertising attempts to mimic real life situations (see our
Superbowl ad from 2009), this ad, loved or loathed, does exactly that!

Unfortunately for many, they wake up one day to realize their partner is not
recognizable to them anymore (physically, emotionally, personally…) and so
while our service may "offend" some we "satisfy" millions by offering them an
alternative to the monotony of monogamy.

Great advertising is often controversial but one thing we are not at Avid (the
parent company of Ashleymadison.com is in any way discriminatory), in fact we
have an entire website dedicated to big and beautiful women…
thebigandthebeautiful.com.

I guess it's nice that Avid is equal-opportunity. But calling overweight women
"scary" may not be the best way to get them to entrust their dating lives to
you.

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Smoking, Obesity and Stress Cited as Key Drivers of Healthcare Costs

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/thomson-reuters-npr-health-poll-finds-am\
ericans-want-insurance-penalties-for-unhealthful-habits-133189053.html

ANN ARBOR, Mich. and WASHINGTON, Nov. 3, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Nearly one-third
of Americans believe overweight and obese individuals should be penalized for
their unhealthful habits and over half say smokers also should pay more for
their health insurance, according to the Thomson Reuters-NPR Health Poll.

(Logo:  http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20090507/NY12658LOGO)

Thomson Reuters and NPR conduct the monthly poll to gauge attitudes and opinions
on a wide range of health issues.

In the latest survey in the series, 30.7 percent of respondents say overweight
or obese individuals should pay more for health insurance than normal weight
individuals. Respondents who said this most frequently had at least a college
degree (39.7%) and made over $100,000 a year (44.1%).

Similarly, the poll asked if smokers should pay more for health insurance, and
over half of respondents (58.5%) said yes. This view was more prevalent as
respondents' age, income, and level of education increased.

When asked about specific factors driving up healthcare costs, respondents
pegged smoking (28.5%), obesity (27.6%) and stress (25.2%) as the top cost
drivers. These factors beat out alcohol use (11.2%) and workplace safety (7.5%).

When asked if they thought it was acceptable to deny employment to overweight or
obese individuals, 11.3% said yes.

Overwhelmingly, 84.8% believe that individuals with healthful behaviors, which
included exercise, healthy eating, and not using tobacco, should receive a
discount on their health insurance premiums.

"Discounts for good behaviors are always more popular than surcharges for bad
behaviors, but the science of behavioral economics teaches us that loss
avoidance is three times more powerful than receiving a gain," said Raymond
Fabius, M.D., chief medical officer for the healthcare business of Thomson
Reuters. "Before anyone rushes to create behavior-based plans, though, it's
important to look at the data. Our research shows that obesity is a much higher
driver of healthcare costs than smoking."

For a copy of the survey results, visit:
http://healthcare.thomsonreuters.com/npr/assets/NPR_report_UnhealthyBehav.pdf

To date, the Thomson Reuters-NPR Health Poll has explored numerous healthcare
topics, including generic drugs, abortion, vaccines, food allergies, and organic
and genetically modified foods. NPR's reports on the surveys are archived online
at the Shots health blog here:
http://www.npr.org/templates/archives/archive.php?thingId=137038712&ps=sh_sttag

Thomson Reuters maintains a library of poll results:
http://healthcare.thomsonreuters.com/npr/. The Thomson Reuters-NPR Health Poll
is powered by the Thomson Reuters PULSE(SM) Healthcare Survey, an independently
funded, nationally representative telephone poll that collects information about
health-related behaviors and attitudes and healthcare utilization from more than
100,000 US households annually. Survey questions are developed in conjunction
with NPR. The figures in this month's poll are based on 3,012 participants
interviewed from September 1-13, 2011. The margin of error is 1.8 percent.

About Thomson Reuters
Thomson Reuters is the world's leading source of intelligent information for
businesses and professionals.  We combine industry expertise with innovative
technology to deliver critical information to leading decision makers in the
financial, legal, tax and accounting, healthcare and science and media markets,
powered by the world's most trusted news organization.  With headquarters in New
York and major operations in London and Eagan, Minnesota, Thomson Reuters
employs more than 55,000 people and operates in over 100 countries.  For more
information, go to www.thomsonreuters.com.

About NPR
NPR is an award-winning, multimedia news organization and an influential force
in American life. In collaboration with more than 900 independent public radio
stations nationwide, NPR strives to create a more informed public - one
challenged and invigorated by a deeper understanding and appreciation of events,
ideas and cultures.

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Fatty Foods Addictive as Cocaine in Growing Body of Science

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-11-03/fatty-foods-addictive-as-cocaine-in-\
growing-body-of-science.html

Nov. 2 (Bloomberg) -- Cupcakes may be addictive, just like cocaine.

A growing body of medical research at leading universities and government
laboratories suggests that processed foods and sugary drinks made by the likes
of PepsiCo Inc. and Kraft Foods Inc. aren’t simply unhealthy. They can hijack
the brain in ways that resemble addictions to cocaine, nicotine and other drugs.

“The data is so overwhelming the field has to accept it,” said Nora Volkow,
director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse. “We are finding tremendous
overlap between drugs in the brain and food in the brain.”

The idea that food may be addictive was barely on scientists’ radar a decade
ago. Now the field is heating up. Lab studies have found sugary drinks and fatty
foods can produce addictive behavior in animals. Brain scans of obese people and
compulsive eaters, meanwhile, reveal disturbances in brain reward circuits
similar to those experienced by drug abusers.

Twenty-eight scientific studies and papers on food addiction have been published
this year, according to a National Library of Medicine database. As the evidence
expands, the science of addiction could become a game changer for the $1
trillion food and beverage industries.

If fatty foods and snacks and drinks sweetened with sugar and high fructose corn
syrup are proven to be addictive, food companies may face the most drawn-out
consumer safety battle since the anti-smoking movement took on the tobacco
industry a generation ago.

‘Fun-for-You’

“This could change the legal landscape,” said Kelly Brownell, director of
Yale University’s Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity and a proponent of
anti-obesity regulation. “People knew for a long time cigarettes were killing
people, but it was only later they learned about nicotine and the intentional
manipulation of it.”

Food company executives and lobbyists are quick to counter that nothing has been
proven, that nothing is wrong with what PepsiCo Chief Executive Officer Indra
Nooyi calls “fun-for- you” foods, if eaten in moderation. In fact, the
companies say they’re making big strides toward offering consumers a wide
range of healthier snacking options. Nooyi, for one, is as well known for
calling attention to PepsiCo’s progress offering healthier fare as she is for
driving sales.

Coca-Cola Co., PepsiCo, Northfield, Illinois-based Kraft and Kellogg Co. of
Battle Creek, Michigan, declined to grant interviews with their scientists.

No one disputes that obesity is a fast growing global problem. In the U.S., a
third of adults and 17 percent of teens and children are obese, and those
numbers are increasing. Across the globe, from Latin America, to Europe to
Pacific Island nations, obesity rates are also climbing.

Cost to Society

The cost to society is enormous. A 2009 study of 900,000 people, published in
The Lancet, found that moderate obesity reduces life expectancy by two to four
years, while severe obesity shortens life expectancy by as much as 10 years.
Obesity has been shown to boost the risk of heart disease, diabetes, some
cancers, osteoarthritis, sleep apnea and stroke, according to the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention. The costs of treating illness associated with
obesity were estimated at $147 billion in 2008, according to a 2009 study in
Health Affairs.

Sugars and fats, of course, have always been present in the human diet and our
bodies are programmed to crave them. What has changed is modern processing that
creates food with concentrated levels of sugars, unhealthy fats and refined
flour, without redeeming levels of fiber or nutrients, obesity experts said.
Consumption of large quantities of those processed foods may be changing the way
the brain is wired.

A Lot Like Addiction

Those changes look a lot like addiction to some experts. Addiction “is a
loaded term, but there are aspects of the modern diet that can elicit behavior
that resembles addiction,” said David Ludwig, a Harvard researcher and
director of the New Balance Foundation Obesity Prevention Center at Children’s
Hospital Boston. Highly processed foods may cause rapid spikes and declines in
blood sugar, increasing cravings, his research has found.

Education, diets and drugs to treat obesity have proven largely ineffective and
the new science of obesity may explain why, proponents say. Constant stimulation
with tasty, calorie- laden foods may desensitize the brain’s circuitry,
leading people to consume greater quantities of junk food to maintain a constant
state of pleasure.

In one 2010 study, scientists at Scripps Research Institute in Jupiter, Florida,
fed rats an array of fatty and sugary products including Hormel Foods Corp.
bacon, Sara Lee Corp. pound cake, The Cheesecake Factory Inc. cheesecake and
Pillsbury Co. Creamy Supreme cake frosting. The study measured activity in
regions of the brain involved in registering reward and pleasure through
electrodes implanted in the rats.

Binge-Eating Rats

The rats that had access to these foods for one hour a day started binge eating,
even when more nutritious food was available all day long. Other groups of rats
that had access to the sweets and fatty foods for 18 to 23 hours per day became
obese, Paul Kenny, the Scripps scientist heading the study wrote in the journal
Nature Neuroscience. The results produced the same brain pattern that occurs
with escalating intake of cocaine, he wrote.

“To see food do the same thing was mind-boggling,” Kenny later said in an
interview.

Researchers are finding that damage to the brain’s reward centers may occur
when people eat excessive quantities of food.

Sweet Rewards

In one 2010 study conducted by researchers at the University of Texas in Austin
and the Oregon Research Institute, a nonprofit group that studies human
behavior, 26 overweight young women were given magnetic resonance imaging scans
as they got sips of a milkshake made with Haagen-Dazs ice cream and Hershey
Co.’s chocolate syrup.

The same women got repeat MRI scans six months later. Those who had gained
weight showed reduced activity in the striatum, a region of the brain that
registers reward, when they sipped milkshakes the second time, according to the
study results, published last year in the Journal of Neuroscience.

“A career of overeating causes blunted reward receipt, and this is exactly
what you see with chronic drug abuse,” said Eric Stice, a researcher at the
Oregon Research Institute.

Scientists studying food addiction have had to overcome skepticism, even from
their peers. In the late 1990s, NIDA’s Volkow, then a drug addiction
researcher at Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island, applied for a
National Institutes of Health grant to scan obese people to see whether their
brain reward centers were affected. Her grant proposal was turned down.

Finding Evidence

“I couldn’t get it funded,” she said in an interview. “The response was,
there is no evidence that food produces addictive-like behaviors in the
brain.”

Volkow, working with Brookhaven researcher Gene-Jack Wang, cobbled together
funding from another government agency to conduct a study using a brain scanning
device capable of measuring chemical activity inside the body using radioactive
tracers.

Researchers were able to map dopamine receptor levels in the brains of 10 obese
volunteers. Dopamine is a chemical produced in the brain that signals reward.
Natural boosters of dopamine include exercise and sexual activity, but drugs
such as cocaine and heroin also stimulate the chemical in large quantities.

In drug abusers, brain receptors that receive the dopamine signal may become
unresponsive with increased drug usage, causing drug abusers to steadily
increase their dosage in search of the same high. The Brookhaven study found
that the obese people also had lowered levels of dopamine receptors compared
with a lean control group.

Addicted to Sugar

The same year, psychologists at Princeton University began studying whether lab
rats could become addicted to a 10 percent solution of sugar water, about the
same percentage of sugar contained in most soft drinks.

An occasional drink caused no problems for the lab animals. Yet the researchers
found dramatic effects when the rats were allowed to drink sugar-water every
day. Over time they drank “more and more and more” while eating less of
their usual diet, said Nicole Avena, who began the work as a graduate student at
Princeton and is now a neuroscientist at the University of Florida.

The animals also showed withdrawal symptoms, including anxiety, shakes and
tremors, when the effect of the sugar was blocked with a drug. The scientists,
moreover, were able to determine changes in the levels of dopamine in the brain,
similar to those seen in animals on addictive drugs.

Similar Behavior

“We consistently found that the changes we were observing in the rats binging
on sugar were like what we would see if the animals were addicted to drugs,”
said Avena, who for years worked closely with the late Princeton psychologist,
Bartley Hoebel, who died this year.

While the animals didn’t become obese on sugar water alone, they became
overweight when Avena and her colleagues offered them water sweetened with
high-fructose corn syrup.

A 2007 French experiment stunned researchers when it showed that rats prefer
water sweetened with saccharine or sugar to hits of cocaine -- exactly the
opposite of what existing dogma would have suggested.

“It was a big surprise,” said Serge Ahmed, a neuroscientist who led the
research for the French National Research Council at the University of Bordeaux.

Yale’s Brownell helped organize one of the first conferences on food addiction
in 2007. Since then, a protégé, Ashley Gearhardt, devised a 25-question survey
to help researchers spot people with eating habits that resemble addictive
behavior.

Pictures of Milkshakes

She and her colleagues used magnetic resonance imaging to examine brain activity
of women scoring high on the survey. Pictures of milkshakes lit up the same
brain regions that become hyperactive in alcoholics anticipating a drink,
according to results published in the Archives of General Psychiatry in April.

Food addiction research may reinvigorate the search for effective obesity drugs,
said Mark Gold, who chairs the psychiatry department at the University of
Florida in Gainesville. Gold said the treatments he is working on seek to alter
food preferences without suppressing overall appetite.

Developing Treatments

“We are trying to develop treatments that interfere with pathological food
preferences,” he said. “Let’s say you are addicted to ice cream, you might
come up with a treatment that blocked your interest in ice cream, but doesn’t
affect your interest in meat.”

In related work, Shire Plc, a Dublin-based drugmaker, is testing its Vyvanse
hyperactivity drug in patients with binge- eating problems.

Not everyone is convinced. Swansea University psychologist David Benton recently
published a 16-page rebuttal to sugar addiction studies. The paper, partly
funded by the World Sugar Research Organization, which includes Atlanta-based
Coca-Cola, the world’s largest soft-drink maker, argues that food doesn’t
produce the same kind of intense dopamine release seen with drugs and that
blocking certain brain receptors doesn’t produce withdrawal symptoms in
binge-eaters as it does in drug abusers.

Industry Response

What’s still unknown is whether the science of food addition has begun to
change the thinking among food and beverage companies, which are, after all,
primarily in the business of selling the Doritos, Twinkies and other fare people
crave.

About 80 percent of Purchase, New York-based PepsiCo’s marketing budget, for
instance, is directed toward pushing salty snacks and sodas. Although companies
are quick to point to their healthier offerings, their top executives are
constantly called upon to reassure investors those sales of snack foods and
sodas are showing steady growth.

“We want to see profit growth and revenue growth,” said Tim Hoyle, director
of research at Haverford Trust Co. in Radnor, Pennsylvania, an investor in
PepsiCo, the world’s largest snack-food maker. “The health foods are good
for headlines but when it gets down to it, the growth drivers are the comfort
foods, the Tostitos and the Pepsi-Cola.”

Little wonder that the food industry is pushing hard on the idea that the best
way to get a handle on obesity is through voluntary measures and by offering
healthier choices. The same tactic worked for awhile, decades ago, for the
tobacco industry, which deflected attention from the health risks and addictive
nature of cigarettes with “low tar and nicotine” marketing.

Food industry lobbyists don’t buy that argument -- or even the idea that food
addiction may exist. Said Richard Adamson, a pharmacologist and consultant for
the American Beverage Association: “I have never heard of anyone robbing a
bank to get money to buy a candy bar or ice cream or pop.”

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Obese women face more discrimination than men

http://www.walb.com/story/15924038/obese-women-face-more-discrimination-than-men

As American waistlines expand, discrimination against the obese has grown in
health care, and it seems to be skewed toward women.

A 2007 study out of Yale University found doctor prejudice starts when a woman
is as little as 13 pounds overweight. In contrast, similar prejudice doesn't
start for men until they are 75 pounds overweight.

Dr. Peter Sosnow, head of the Medical Society in the capital region, said the
increased risks associated with obesity, coupled with sky high medical
malpractice rates, make a doctor not accepting obese women into their practice
understandable.

"Bad outcomes can become malpractice even though there's no negligence," Sosnow
said.

But patients claim there are more subtle ways that they are stigmatized against.

"A lot of doctor's offices don't have chairs that don't have the handles, so
it's very uncomfortable to sit down or get out of them," said Barbara Galloway,
a woman who attends Take Off Pounds Sensibly or TOPS.

"It wouldn't be the first time I've heard about patients being obese feeling
stigmatized by their doctor," said Dr. Jill Clemence, a psychologist who works
with obese patients at Albany Medical Center.

According to her, research shows that many in healthcare look at such patients
as lazy and not worthy of treatment. The attitude can have a cyclical affect.

"People who are discriminated against, we know, it's a clear fact, that they
tend to gain more weight as a result," Clemence said.

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Luxury Carmaker Plans Vehicle Redesigns For Plus-Size Crowd
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2011/11/04/bmw-plump-my-ride-cars-overweight-obesit\
y_n_1076807.html

In yet another sign (as if we needed one) that people in developed countries are
growing fatter, major car manufacturers are altering vehicle designs to make way
for wider drivers.

The most ambitious effort is being carried out by BMW, which has launched
“Plump My Ride,” a research program designed to understand the driving
experience of plus-sized drivers, and adapt to it.

The Munich-based carmaker has recruited 800 volunteers of all weights and sizes
to participate in a series of tests involving things such as getting in and out
of cars, and driving in reverse.

The point, BMW ergonomics team member Ralf Kaiser told the Sunday Times, is to
design cars that are more adaptable for the plus-sized.

“We want to find out how [weight] limits [drivers’] range of motion and how
our vehicles can adapt to the changing needs of our customers,” he said. "We
know that a lot of overweight and obese people have problems in daily life, and
in the car this starts with getting in and getting out."

Kaiser said BMW aims to design cars that 95 per cent of the population can
drive.

Other car companies are also putting more emphasis on overweight drivers,
reports the Daily Telegraph.

Porsche is adding “electrically-powered steering columns” to their high-end
models that rise when the engine is turned off, allowing larger drivers to exit
more comfortably. Honda has widened its seats by two inches, and plans to design
panels with larger buttons for easier use by “sausage-fingered” drivers.

While there has been much discussion in the United States about the country’s
weight problem, the fact European and Japanese carmakers are focusing on the
issue shows the problem is global in scale.

A recent study found one in five British residents are now obese. In Canada, a
study found one in four adults and one in 11 children are overweight. That
appears to match the U.S.’s obesity rate in the Gallup poll, where the U.S.
ranked first. However, countries define obesity differently and it is often
difficult to compare obesity rates.

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Inequality, Health Disparities, & Obesity
November 5, 2011 by Patrick Clarkin, PhD

http://kevishere.wordpress.com/2011/11/05/inequality-health-disparities-obesity/

An October poll of 1,000 likely voters found that Americans are increasingly
concerned about income inequality. When asked: “How Big a Problem is Income
Inequality in the US?,” the majority (74%) replied that it was either a big
problem or somewhat of a problem. Predictably, there were differences in opinion
by political ideology, but a majority of liberals (94%), moderates (81%), and
conservatives (55%) answered that inequality was at least somewhat problematic.
However, as is true of many polls, it was not specified exactly what people
found unsettling about it. I suppose there are many reasons that people might
find increasing inequality (and climbing rates of poverty) to be troubling, but
I wanted to focus here on inequality and health, particularly on obesity.

…

First, what do we mean by poverty? I remember watching an interview on PBS with
the economist Jeffrey Sachs years ago (transcript here – thank you, Google),
where he distinguished between two types of poverty. The first was an extreme
form, which he called the type of “poverty that kills.” The other type was
more of a poverty of inconvenience or jealousy. I don’t want to over-interpret
Sachs’ meaning. It was a passing phrase in an interview from ten years ago,
and his primary focus was on alleviating the extreme poverty faced by more than
a billion people in the world living on $1 per day (see Sachs 2005). Elsewhere,
Sachs has lamented that the US media has ignored poverty in the United States at
a time when “the U.S. has the greatest income inequality, highest per capita
prison population and worst health conditions of all high-income countries.”
His credentials in fighting poverty are unassailable. But I cite the old
interview here
  because I think his descriptions (‘poverty that kills’ vs. ‘poverty of
jealousy’) might resonate with many people today, and not necessarily in a
good way.

…

The perception that poverty in higher-income countries is a condition of
jealousy or inconvenience is reinforced (wrongly) by many epidemiological
studies showing that obesity rates are highest among the poor, particularly for
women and children (Sobal and Stunkard 1989; Miech et al 2006). This version of
poverty is obviously less urgent than the severe undernutrition, stress, and
infection faced by people living in extreme poverty, but that unfortunately
means that it is often downplayed simply because it doesn’t conform to
someone’s mental image of poverty as abject destitution. It is also
unfortunate because obesity is often seen as a condition of affluence, and
caused by ‘sloth’ or ‘gluttony’ (Prentice and Jebb 1995). Gluttony and
sloth, of course, are not value-neutral terms, and there is a tendency to blame
the victim if their body mass index crosses some rather arbitrary threshold that
demarcates an adult as overweight or obese (25 or
  30 kg/m2, respectively). However, there are many reasons to think that the
causes of obesity lie at least partly outside of individual choices, and are
influenced by larger social forces.

…

If a person is obese, it is far from axiomatic that they are affluent,
gluttonous, or slothful. Yet that is the conclusion, either innocently or
cynically, that people often come to. As Phil Gramm, a former Senator (R-TX),
once said “We’re the only nation in the world where all our poor people are
fat.” Implied in that rather judgmental – and inaccurate – observation is:
“If they’re overweight, then how poor can they really be?”

…

To be blunt, poverty is a political football that people kick in whatever
direction helps validate their worldview. (That’s understandable; we all have
biases. If you think you’re an exception, I humbly suggest that you look
again). To Robert Rector, a Senior Research Fellow at the conservative Heritage
Foundation, the hardships faced by the poor in the U.S. are real,  but they are
grossly exaggerated because of the material possessions they own, and because
“most of the poor do not experience hunger or food shortages.” Besides,
Rector wrote, “the collapse of marriage and erosion of the work ethic are the
principal long-term causes of poverty,” suggesting those in poverty have only
themselves to blame. In agreement with this idea would be Republican
Presidential candidate Herman Cain, who stated “Don’t blame Wall Street.
Don’t blame the big banks. If you don’t have a job and you are not rich,
blame yourself!” On the other side of
  the political spectrum, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) asked “Is poverty a
death sentence in the U.S.?” It is. On the other hand, wealthy people die too.
Life itself is a death sentence (though beautiful nonetheless). I don’t think
we’re going to get very far from listening to pundits and politicians who
point fingers and give overly simplistic opinions masquerading as explanations
for complex phenomena. A better approach is to look at what the data say about
exactly how harmful poverty is in the U.S. How harmful is obesity? What are the
links between the two? How much disparity in health, wealth, and life expectancy
can a society tolerate? And how can it be ameliorated?

…

Right from the start, I think we can immediately refute the notion that poverty
in higher income countries is just about jealousy or materialistic envy.
Epidemiological data from the U.S. and Britain consistently show that compared
to wealthier segments of society, the lowest socioeconomic strata have higher
rates of various illnesses, including diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and lung
disease (Banks et al 2006). Logically, these disparities translate into gaps in
life expectancy such that in the year 2000 the wealthiest Americans could expect
to live an extra 4.5 years from birth than the most deprived (Singh and Siahpush
2006).

In addition, that gap has been widening in recent decades, and when one
incorporates ethnicity and geography into the analysis the gaps widen even
further. Christopher Murray and colleagues (2006) argued that the
epidemiological data show that there are “eight Americas,” with the biggest
gap in life expectancy being an astounding 21 years between the 3.4 million
urban black males and the 5.6 million Asian females in the U.S.1 That’s a lot
of life years. There are fewer things more fundamental than how much time one
gets to spend on the planet, not to mention the quality of those years.

Furthermore, there is good evidence that inequality itself, and not merely gross
national income per person, is harmful to health and social problems (Pickett
and Wilkinson 2007). Therefore, it is grossly misleading to claim that poverty
in developed nations is just about envy. Frankly, if your argument is that all
poor people really lack is “richness of spirit,” then you’ve forfeited
your credibility (if you had any to begin with) and you should lose your seat at
the grown-ups table.

How does obesity fit into this?

…

Rates of obesity are increasing globally, and this is no longer confined to
wealthy countries (Balkau et al 2007), but the association between socioeconomic
status (SES) and weight is complex. Monteiro et al (2004) demonstrated that the
burden of obesity shifted to low SES strata when a country reaches the
“upper-middle income” threshold, defined as a GNP of about $3,000 – 9,000
per capita. For the lowest income countries (GNP of < $735/ capita), obesity
rates are highest among the wealthy; in higher income countries the opposite is
true, and the poor are more likely to be obese.

…

However, this national-level approach is too broad. For example, Drewnowski et
al (2007) found that obesity levels varied by ZIP codes in the greater Seattle
area, and that this had a strong, inverse correlation with median house values
(r2 = 0.46; p < 0.001), where poorer ZIP codes had higher obesity rates. Thus,
neighborhoods and local conditions may provide more information than sweeping
generalizations about entire countries, or even counties or cities. Still, the
pattern is that in higher income countries, obesity rates are higher at lower
levels of SES. Why should this be?

For the U.S. and other high-income countries, various mechanisms and pathways
may link lower SES and obesity, including:

Economic constraints and reduced food choice options preventing acquisition of
more expensive, less energy-dense foods (fruits, vegetables, whole-grain
cereals), and greater reliance on cheaper fatty and sugary foods, including
sweetened drinks (Miech et al., 2006).
‘Food deserts.’ Farther distance from supermarkets with better food variety
and fewer transportation options in poorer neighborhoods (Zenk et al., 2005).
Overall decrease in leisure time and time for recreational exercise for adults
(Monteiro et al., 2004).
Lower levels of education and nutritional knowledge (Oh and Hong, 2003).
Lower neighborhood safety and parental fear for child safety precluding outdoor
exercise (Molnar et al., 2004).
Skipping breakfast, and possible overeating at lunch and dinner (Miech et al.,
2006).
Possible cyclical binge eating when food is available in food insecure
households (Basiotis and Lino, 2003).
…

The above mechanisms are largely social and behavioral, but there may another
underappreciated link between poverty and obesity related to physiological
changes early in life. There is an ever expanding scientific literature
indicating that for a developing embryo or fetus, various stressors experienced
by the mother (malnutrition, psychological stress, possibly oxygen deprivation
from smoking) can have enduring deleterious effects on growth, development, and
health. This falls under what has been called the developmental origins of
health and disease hypothesis (Barker 1998). A few studies have found
correlations between impaired prenatal development and excessive body fat
(adiposity).

« Committee Work and Student LivesInequality, Health Disparities, & Obesity
November 5, 2011 by Patrick Clarkin

An October poll of 1,000 likely voters found that Americans are increasingly
concerned about income inequality. When asked: “How Big a Problem is Income
Inequality in the US?,” the majority (74%) replied that it was either a big
problem or somewhat of a problem. Predictably, there were differences in opinion
by political ideology, but a majority of liberals (94%), moderates (81%), and
conservatives (55%) answered that inequality was at least somewhat problematic.
However, as is true of many polls, it was not specified exactly what people
found unsettling about it. I suppose there are many reasons that people might
find increasing inequality (and climbing rates of poverty) to be troubling, but
I wanted to focus here on inequality and health, particularly on obesity.

…

First, what do we mean by poverty? I remember watching an interview on PBS with
the economist Jeffrey Sachs years ago (transcript here – thank you, Google),
where he distinguished between two types of poverty. The first was an extreme
form, which he called the type of “poverty that kills.” The other type was
more of a poverty of inconvenience or jealousy. I don’t want to over-interpret
Sachs’ meaning. It was a passing phrase in an interview from ten years ago,
and his primary focus was on alleviating the extreme poverty faced by more than
a billion people in the world living on $1 per day (see Sachs 2005). Elsewhere,
Sachs has lamented that the US media has ignored poverty in the United States at
a time when “the U.S. has the greatest income inequality, highest per capita
prison population and worst health conditions of all high-income countries.”
His credentials in fighting poverty are unassailable. But I cite the old
interview here
  because I think his descriptions (‘poverty that kills’ vs. ‘poverty of
jealousy’) might resonate with many people today, and not necessarily in a
good way.

…


Extreme poverty: scavenging at a garbage dump in Phnom Penh (abcnews)
…

The perception that poverty in higher-income countries is a condition of
jealousy or inconvenience is reinforced (wrongly) by many epidemiological
studies showing that obesity rates are highest among the poor, particularly for
women and children (Sobal and Stunkard 1989; Miech et al 2006). This version of
poverty is obviously less urgent than the severe undernutrition, stress, and
infection faced by people living in extreme poverty, but that unfortunately
means that it is often downplayed simply because it doesn’t conform to
someone’s mental image of poverty as abject destitution. It is also
unfortunate because obesity is often seen as a condition of affluence, and
caused by ‘sloth’ or ‘gluttony’ (Prentice and Jebb 1995). Gluttony and
sloth, of course, are not value-neutral terms, and there is a tendency to blame
the victim if their body mass index crosses some rather arbitrary threshold that
demarcates an adult as overweight or obese (25 or
  30 kg/m2, respectively). However, there are many reasons to think that the
causes of obesity lie at least partly outside of individual choices, and are
influenced by larger social forces.

…

If a person is obese, it is far from axiomatic that they are affluent,
gluttonous, or slothful. Yet that is the conclusion, either innocently or
cynically, that people often come to. As Phil Gramm, a former Senator (R-TX),
once said “We’re the only nation in the world where all our poor people are
fat.” Implied in that rather judgmental – and inaccurate – observation is:
“If they’re overweight, then how poor can they really be?”

…

To be blunt, poverty is a political football that people kick in whatever
direction helps validate their worldview. (That’s understandable; we all have
biases. If you think you’re an exception, I humbly suggest that you look
again). To Robert Rector, a Senior Research Fellow at the conservative Heritage
Foundation, the hardships faced by the poor in the U.S. are real,  but they are
grossly exaggerated because of the material possessions they own, and because
“most of the poor do not experience hunger or food shortages.” Besides,
Rector wrote, “the collapse of marriage and erosion of the work ethic are the
principal long-term causes of poverty,” suggesting those in poverty have only
themselves to blame. In agreement with this idea would be Republican
Presidential candidate Herman Cain, who stated “Don’t blame Wall Street.
Don’t blame the big banks. If you don’t have a job and you are not rich,
blame yourself!” On the other side of
  the political spectrum, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) asked “Is poverty a
death sentence in the U.S.?” It is. On the other hand, wealthy people die too.
Life itself is a death sentence (though beautiful nonetheless). I don’t think
we’re going to get very far from listening to pundits and politicians who
point fingers and give overly simplistic opinions masquerading as explanations
for complex phenomena. A better approach is to look at what the data say about
exactly how harmful poverty is in the U.S. How harmful is obesity? What are the
links between the two? How much disparity in health, wealth, and life expectancy
can a society tolerate? And how can it be ameliorated?

…

Right from the start, I think we can immediately refute the notion that poverty
in higher income countries is just about jealousy or materialistic envy.
Epidemiological data from the U.S. and Britain consistently show that compared
to wealthier segments of society, the lowest socioeconomic strata have higher
rates of various illnesses, including diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and lung
disease (Banks et al 2006). Logically, these disparities translate into gaps in
life expectancy such that in the year 2000 the wealthiest Americans could expect
to live an extra 4.5 years from birth than the most deprived (Singh and Siahpush
2006).

…


Differences in disease rates by income (data from Banks et al 2006)
…

…

In addition, that gap has been widening in recent decades, and when one
incorporates ethnicity and geography into the analysis the gaps widen even
further. Christopher Murray and colleagues (2006) argued that the
epidemiological data show that there are “eight Americas,” with the biggest
gap in life expectancy being an astounding 21 years between the 3.4 million
urban black males and the 5.6 million Asian females in the U.S.1 That’s a lot
of life years. There are fewer things more fundamental than how much time one
gets to spend on the planet, not to mention the quality of those years.

…


Life expectancy for white U.S. males, by county (from Murray et al 2006)
Furthermore, there is good evidence that inequality itself, and not merely gross
national income per person, is harmful to health and social problems (Pickett
and Wilkinson 2007). Therefore, it is grossly misleading to claim that poverty
in developed nations is just about envy. Frankly, if your argument is that all
poor people really lack is “richness of spirit,” then you’ve forfeited
your credibility (if you had any to begin with) and you should lose your seat at
the grown-ups table.

…


…

…

How does obesity fit into this?

…

Rates of obesity are increasing globally, and this is no longer confined to
wealthy countries (Balkau et al 2007), but the association between socioeconomic
status (SES) and weight is complex. Monteiro et al (2004) demonstrated that the
burden of obesity shifted to low SES strata when a country reaches the
“upper-middle income” threshold, defined as a GNP of about $3,000 – 9,000
per capita. For the lowest income countries (GNP of < $735/ capita), obesity
rates are highest among the wealthy; in higher income countries the opposite is
true, and the poor are more likely to be obese.

…

However, this national-level approach is too broad. For example, Drewnowski et
al (2007) found that obesity levels varied by ZIP codes in the greater Seattle
area, and that this had a strong, inverse correlation with median house values
(r2 = 0.46; p < 0.001), where poorer ZIP codes had higher obesity rates. Thus,
neighborhoods and local conditions may provide more information than sweeping
generalizations about entire countries, or even counties or cities. Still, the
pattern is that in higher income countries, obesity rates are higher at lower
levels of SES. Why should this be?

…


Scatterplot of obesity rate and median house value by ZIP code in the greater
Seattle area (from Drewnowski et al 2007)
…

For the U.S. and other high-income countries, various mechanisms and pathways
may link lower SES and obesity, including:

Economic constraints and reduced food choice options preventing acquisition of
more expensive, less energy-dense foods (fruits, vegetables, whole-grain
cereals), and greater reliance on cheaper fatty and sugary foods, including
sweetened drinks (Miech et al., 2006).
‘Food deserts.’ Farther distance from supermarkets with better food variety
and fewer transportation options in poorer neighborhoods (Zenk et al., 2005).
Overall decrease in leisure time and time for recreational exercise for adults
(Monteiro et al., 2004).
Lower levels of education and nutritional knowledge (Oh and Hong, 2003).
Lower neighborhood safety and parental fear for child safety precluding outdoor
exercise (Molnar et al., 2004).
Skipping breakfast, and possible overeating at lunch and dinner (Miech et al.,
2006).
Possible cyclical binge eating when food is available in food insecure
households (Basiotis and Lino, 2003).
…

The above mechanisms are largely social and behavioral, but there may another
underappreciated link between poverty and obesity related to physiological
changes early in life. There is an ever expanding scientific literature
indicating that for a developing embryo or fetus, various stressors experienced
by the mother (malnutrition, psychological stress, possibly oxygen deprivation
from smoking) can have enduring deleterious effects on growth, development, and
health. This falls under what has been called the developmental origins of
health and disease hypothesis (Barker 1998). A few studies have found
correlations between impaired prenatal development and excessive body fat
(adiposity).

…

In a study of 18-34 year-old Belgian males from 229 twin pairs (both mono- and
di-zygotic), the twin who was lighter at birth was shorter and lighter as an
adult, but had a higher sum of five skinfolds and waist-to-hip ratio, after
adjusting for adult BMI. This was true in both mono- and di-zygotic twin pairs,
thus controlling for genetic factors, and the trend was more apparent as the
birth weight difference increased between the heavier and lighter twin. The
authors concluded that “an adverse intra-uterine environment, as measured by
birth weight, is associated with more subcutaneous and abdominal fat and less
lean body mass in adulthood.” Similar results have been found in experimental
studies in other mammalian species (rats, guinea pigs, and sheep), where mothers
given suboptimal diets had offspring with elevated adiposity (Budge et al 2005).

…

From an evolutionary perspective, it has been hypothesized that offspring can
‘read’ nutritional or other signals coming from the mother which induce them
to make long-term physiological adjustments such as investing in fat storage to
deal with a shortage of nutrients in the outside world (Bateson et al 2004).
These signals may not be limited to calories alone, but possibly to other more
specific nutrients. Of course, in humans, suboptimal diets are more likely to be
found in lower SES groups. Thus, it is entirely plausible (though not yet fully
established) that at least some of the obesity burden among lower SES groups in
the U.S. could stem from impaired maternal health and suboptimal prenatal
conditions.

…

The bottom line is that the poverty in higher income nations is about more than
just trying to keep up with one’s neighbors. Our outside environments embed
themselves in our biology, with measurable impacts on health and life
expectancy. The relationship between poverty and obesity is vastly more complex
than just personal choices or a matter of ‘gluttony’ or ‘sloth.’ It is
true that we can make choices that affect our health, but poverty constrains
those choices, and this may even begin when we are still in the womb (or even
earlier).

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Obesity affecting wealthy, middle classes more than poor in developing
countries, study says

http://www.news-medical.net/news/20111105/Obesity-affecting-wealthy-middle-class\
es-more-than-poor-in-developing-countries-study-says.aspx

"'First world' health problems such as obesity and heart disease may be gaining
ground in developing nations, but they are mostly afflicting the rich and middle
class while poor people remain undernourished and underweight," according to a
study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Reuters reports.
"Researchers who looked at more than 500,000 women from 37 mid- and low-income
nations in Asia, Africa and South America found that there was a clear divide
between the better-off and the poor," Reuters states, adding, "Across countries,
the wealthier the women were, the higher their average [body mass index (BMI)],
a pattern that held steady over time." The news service notes, "The pattern is
different from that seen in wealthy nations, such as the United States, where
lower incomes and less education often correlate with higher weight" (Norton,
11/3).

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I’m The ‘Scary’ Model In That Awful Ashley Madison Ad

http://jezebel.com/5857045/im-the-scary-model-in-that-awful-ashley-madison-ad

My name is Jacqueline and I am the model seen on the Ashley Madison ad that was
recently published in the New York Metro newspaper.

I am the owner and model of the BBW website www.juicyjackie.com. It is tailored
to the tastes of those that love big women, their curves, rolls and all the
plush softness that comes with being fat.

Years ago, before my modeling career began in earnest, a photographer friend of
mine arranged an informal photo session. I was under the impression at the time
that people purchasing these photos from the photographer would be doing so for
their own personal use. I had no idea that the photographer would endeavor to
sell the photos to corporations and/or stock photo companies, who would then go
on, repeatedly, to use them in rude and mocking ways.

I am mortified that my image and likeness would be used as advertisement for two
things I am so vehemently against: namely cheating and, to an even greater
extent, body shaming.

I find the very idea that there exists a business based solely around the
facilitation of infidelity appalling. The fact that they are now suggesting that
a person's partner not fitting their ideal body size/shape, entitles that person
to ‘shop around' is disgusting.

There is an enormous problem in this world in regards to female body shaming,
and not solely in regard to fat women, but all women. A size 2 woman who sees
this ad sees the message: "If I don't stay small, he will cheat". A size 12
woman might see this ad and think "if I don't lose 30lbs, he will cheat". A size
32 woman could see this ad, and feel "I will never find love". It's horrific.
Not all women are necessarily insecure, but it's no secret that body insecurity
is endemic, regardless of size. This kind of message is extremely damaging to
self worth. Eating disorders may have lost their place in the media spotlight,
but continue to effect people of all ages, especially teens. This sort of
behavior can easily be triggered from the careless cruelty of advertisements
like the one in question.

As has been widely reported, teens are committing suicide in shocking numbers
all over the world as direct result of this sort of shaming ridicule. Be it
directed at race, size, sexual orientation or anything, bullying is a vicious
force in this world. Contributing to this widespread and creeping depression by
suggesting, blatantly and without pretense, that fat people are patently
undeserving of love and loyalty is repulsive. It is incumbent upon advertisers,
and society at large, to act responsibly before foisting something like this
onto the world.

It's bad enough that a business exists that encourages and profits from
cheaters, but, worse still, that they have the gall to blame a woman's body on
the act, rather than the man who is incapable of commitment and loyalty. It
exists in the same school of thought in which a rapist blames a woman's outfit
for his crime.


I am a size 32. I am beautiful. I think women of all sizes are beautiful. Beauty
is not and has never been one-size-fits-all. I do not appreciate my image being
used, without notice or permission, to tell women I have never met otherwise.

Update: After Jacqueline's message went live, Jezebel received this response
from Ashley Madison founder and CEO Noel Biderman:


The best thing that could've happened to this woman is that we used her in our
ad. Despite what she may want you to think, she is reaping the press for her own
pornography website. She took these pictures and signed the release knowing that
they were not just for 'personal use.' However, if she can get great publicity
from this, all the power to her.

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Gender Gap: The Risks Of Heart Disease For Women .

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203707504577009973564980482.html?m\
od=googlenews_wsj


By JONATHAN D. ROCKOFF

For women, the toll from a heart attack can be worse than it is for men,
researchers increasingly are finding.
Among smokers, for example, women who had a heart attack were about two times as
likely as men to suffer a complication such as a blocked artery within six
months, a recent study found. Other data have shown that certain risk factors
for heart disease, such as high blood pressure and cholesterol, aren't as well
controlled in women. And women are more likely than men to die from a serious
heart attack.

Coronary heart disease, which affects 16.3 million Americans, refers to a range
of conditions caused by fat build-up in coronary arteries that can lead to chest
pain, heart attacks and death. It kills more than 405,000 people a year,
including about 189,100 women, according to the National Heart, Lung, and Blood
Institute.

At 40 years of age, men have a 35% greater risk than women of getting heart
disease during their lifetime. But when women do get it, the impact can be
worse. A leading theory is that women's physiology, including the smaller size
of their arteries and the way fat builds up in their blood vessels, makes it
harder to diagnose the disease in a woman and more deadly if she has a heart
attack.

Also, after a heart attack, men have long received better treatment than women,
including medication to prevent a recurrence. One possible reason: Women on
average are about six years older than men when they get a first heart attack
and may have other conditions that preclude using certain medications. Those
disparities have been reduced amid calls from doctors and researchers
highlighting the problem.
And many women aren't on the lookout for the condition. "Women who are in their
30s and 40s don't think of getting heart disease. They think it's later,
post-menopausal. But often it's not," said Michael Howe, a cardiology fellow at
the University of Michigan Health System and lead author of the recent smoking
study.

Jessica Venturi, 35 years old, says she largely ignored her risk factors for
heart disease, including her smoking habit and family history of the condition.
"It's something you usually think about with men," said Ms. Venturi, an
accountant from Westland, Mich. "In my dad's family, it's my dad, my uncles, my
grandfather, not my aunts" who had the condition.

It was only after Ms. Venturi suffered a serious heart attack in March that she
quit smoking, began exercising and changed her diet. "Given the kind of heart
attack I had, odds are I won't survive" another, she said.

Women under 45 who suffer a heart attack are at higher risk of death. Some 26%
of women in this age group die within a year of a heart attack compared with 19%
of men, and 47% of women are dead after five years versus 36% of men, according
to the American Heart Association.

Researchers studying sex differences in heart disease say it's hard to
distinguish, even in large-scale studies, how much of the variations in risk
between men and women may be due to their sex or to other factors. These might
include differences in age, the particular form the disease takes in each
patient and other health conditions patients might have, says Vera Bittner,
section head of preventive cardiology at the University of Alabama at
Birmingham.

Researchers are studying the different ways fat is deposited in the arteries of
men and women. Cholesterol appears to build up more evenly around women's
arteries, rather than in the clumps that are often seen in men's arteries and
that can choke off blood flow, causing chest pain and heart attacks. This
distribution pattern makes it harder for doctors analyzing a common test, called
an angiogram, to detect the disease in women. Doctors suggest women with
symptoms of heart disease, but no positive diagnosis from an angiogram, might
need an ultrasound to detect any plaque buildup.

Women's arteries also aren't as big as men's, even when adjusted for body size,
so lesser amounts of plaque may restrict blood flow. And the artery problems in
women tend to happen in their smaller blood vessels.

"This simple physiology makes the situation a lot worse" for women, said Suzanne
Steinbaum, director of women and heart disease at New York's Lenox Hill
Hospital.

Doctors say women should be especially vigilant for signs of heart disease, not
just for more typical symptoms like crushing chest pain but also for lighter
chest pain, episodes of back discomfort and shortness of breath without pain. If
a woman is at risk for heart attack, she should make sure doctors prescribe all
the medicines that can reduce the risk: a beta blocker and ACE-inhibitor in
addition to aspirin and a cholesterol-lowering statin.

The biological effects of smoking might be especially troublesome for women.
Nicotine constricts arteries, which might be more of a problem for women since
heart disease is more likely to start in their smaller arteries, says Noel
Bairey Merz, director of the Women's Heart Center at Cedars-Sinai Heart
Institute in Los Angeles who is studying sex differences in heart disease. A
2009 study in the journal PLoS Medicine attributed more than 50,000 annual
deaths in women in the U.S. to cigarette smoking.

The recent smoking study, published online in September by the American Journal
of Cardiology, analyzed the medical records of 3,600 heart-attack patients
treated at the University of Michigan Cardiovascular Center from 1999 to 2006.

Within six months, 13.5% of women smokers required either bypass surgery or an
artery-clearing angioplasty procedure to unclog cholesterol-laden arteries. That
compared with 4.4% of men.

"We all knew smoking was bad, but really, having young women not smoke is
particularly important," said Elizabeth Jackson, one of the study's authors and
director of the Women's Heart Program at the University of Michigan.

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Babies on obesity path? New sign may offer answer

http://news.yahoo.com/babies-obesity-path-sign-may-offer-answer-210121265.html

CHICAGO (AP) — Researchers say there's a new way to tell if infants are likely
to become obese later on: Check to see if they've passed two key milestones on
doctors' growth charts by age 2.

Babies who grew that quickly face double the risk of being obese at age 5,
compared with peers who grew more slowly, their study found. Rapid growers were
also more likely to be obese at age 10, and infants whose chart numbers climbed
that much during their first 6 months faced the greatest risks.

That kind of rapid growth should be a red flag to doctors, and a sign to parents
that babies might be overfed or spending too much time in strollers and not
enough crawling around, said pediatrician Dr. Elsie Taveras, the study's lead
author and an obesity researcher at Harvard Medical School.

Contrary to the idea that chubby babies are the picture of health, the study
bolsters evidence that "bigger is not better" in infants, she said.

But skeptics say not so fast. Babies often grow in spurts and flagging the
speediest growers could lead to putting infants on diets — a bad idea that
could backfire in the long run, said Dr. Michelle Lampl, director of Emory
University's Center for the Study of Human Health.

"It reads like a very handy rule and sounds like it would be very useful — and
that's my concern," Lampl said. The guide would be easy to use to justify
feeding infants less and to unfairly label them as fat. It could also prompt
feeding patterns that could lead to obesity later, she said.

Lampl noted that many infants studied crossed at least two key points on growth
charts; yet only 12 percent were obese at age 5 and slightly more at age 10.
Nationally, about 10 percent of preschool-aged children are obese, versus about
19 percent of those aged 6 to 11.

Lampl and Edward Frongillo, an infant growth specialist at the University of
South Carolina, voiced concern in an editorial accompanying the study in the
journal Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, released online Monday.
They argue that more research is needed to confirm whether the study's
recommendation is really a useful way to flag infants for obesity.

"The potential to do more harm than good is actually very high," Frongillo said.

Taveras said the kind of rapid growth noted in the study should be used to raise
awareness about potential risks but is not a reason to put babies on a diet.

The study involved 45,000 infants and children younger than age 11 who had
routine growth measurements during doctor checkups in the Boston area from 1980
through 2008.

Growth charts help pediatricians plot weight, length in babies and height in
older kids in relation to other children their same age and sex. Pediatricians
sometimes combine an infant's measures to calculate weight-for-length — the
equivalent of body-mass index, or BMI, a height-to-weight ratio used in older
children and adults.

The charts are organized into percentiles. For example, infants at the 75th
percentile for weight are heavier than 75 percent of their peers.

The study authors used seven major cutoffs on the charts — the 5th, 10th,
25th, 50th, 75th, 90th and 95th percentiles — to calculate growth pace. An
infant whose weight-for-length jumped from the 19th percentile at 1 month to the
77th at 6 months crossed three major percentiles — the 25th, 50th and 75th —
and would be at risk for obesity later in childhood, the authors said.

Larger infants were most at risk for obesity later on, but even smaller babies
whose growth crossed at least two percentiles were at greater risk than those
who grew more slowly.

About 40 percent of infants crossed at least two percentiles by age 6 months. An
analysis of more than one-third of the study children found that 64 percent grew
that rapidly by age 2.

Dr. Joanna Lewis, a pediatrician at Advocate Lutheran General Hospital in Park
Ridge, Ill., said she supports the idea that infancy is not too young to start
thinking about obesity.

Still, she emphasized that rapid growth in infancy doesn't mean babies are
doomed to become obese. "It's not a life sentence," and there are steps parents
can take to keep their babies at a healthy weight without restrictive diets, she
said.

Lewis said many of her patients are large babies whose parents feed them juice
or solid food despite guidelines recommending nothing but breast milk or formula
in the first six months.

"The study reinforces what we try to tell parents already: Delay starting solids
and don't put juice in a bottle," Lewis said.

Lewis also advises parents that when starting infants on solid food, have the
whole family sit down and eat together. Research has shown that obesity is less
common in children raised in families that have frequent meals together at home.

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Rapper Heavy D Has Died

http://www.npr.org/blogs/therecord/2011/11/08/142150471/rapper-heavy-d-has-died?\
sc=fb&cc=fmp

Dwight Arrington Myers, better known as Heavy D, died today in Los Angeles at
the age of 44. The rapper's death was reported this afternoon on Twitter and
TMZ. The cause of death has not been reported.

The 250-pound rapper made his weight into a theme of his early career,
especially in his early albums with his backing group The Boyz. Their first
album, Living Large, released in 1987, included the singles "The Overweight
Lover's In The House" and "Mr. Big Stuff." The latter is perhaps the best
example of Heavy D's particular brand of witty party rap, a lightweight track
that flips a sample of Jean Knight's dance-funk classic about an egotistical man
into a boast about the virtues of his size.

He had a bigger hit four years later with the song "Now That We Found Love,"
which he described, in a recent interview on the BBC's Radio 1Xtra as "a bit of
an anomaly."

"It was less of a hip-hop record and more of an R&B/pop record. And that was one
of the first times that something like that really took flight and was
accepted," he said.

As his rap career faded in the late 1990s, he turned to acting, with roles in
films like The Cider House Rules and TV shows including Boston Public and Bones.
In recent months a spate of activity had put Heavy D back near the spotlight. In
addition to acting in the Eddie Murphy and Ben Stiller film Tower Heist, he
released a new album, Love Opus, in September. Last month, he closed the BET
Awards with a medley of his hits.

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Gut microbes mix with toxins to make us fat?

http://www.futurity.org/health-medicine/gut-microbes-mix-with-toxins-to-make-us-\
fat/

CORNELL (US) — Pollutants and chemical toxins could increase the chances of
being overweight or having diabetes—but it may depend on the sort of bacteria
churning around in the gut, a new study shows.

After reviewing numerous studies, scientists at Cornell University concluded
“there is mounting evidence that gut microbiota composition affects obesity
and diabetes, as does exposure to environmental chemicals” and that individual
variations in gut microbiota may affect the way those chemicals are metabolized
in the body.

The research is reported online in the journal Environmental Health
Perspectives.

Current estimates suggest that the costs associated with obesity alone exceed
$160 billion annually and account for more than 16 percent of medical care costs
in the United States.

Gut microbes outnumber human cells by a factor of 10, yet little is known about
many of them. The microbes serve a variety of functions, many related to weight
and insulin control, including energy harvesting, regulation of fat storage,
inflammation, and satiety. The most dramatic demonstration of this in people has
come from gastric bypass surgery, which rapidly alters gut ecology and improves
glycemic control in type II diabetics.

More than three dozen environmental chemicals have been found to be
“obesogenic” or “diabetogenic”—affecting pathways leading to obesity
and/or diabetes.

Some researchers believe these chemicals may act during critical windows of
development around puberty to alter pathways involved in obesity.

Suzanne Snedeker, visiting fellow in the department of food science and Anthony
Hay, associate professor of microbiology, have highlighted research, showing,
for example, that pubertal exposure to tributyltin—used in anti-fouling marine
paints as well as in some wallpaper, textiles, and floor coverings—caused
weight gain and higher levels of insulin in the blood of male mice.

Several persistent pollutants like the insecticide DDT, dioxin, and PCBs have
been identified in the human epidemiological literature as likely culprits
affecting type II diabetes risk. Globally, high levels of arsenic in water
supplies also have been associated with increased incidence of type II diabetes.

Snedeker and Hay note a dearth of research on the effects of gut microbes on
environmental chemicals.

Gut microbes, however, can affect the metabolism of such over-the-counter drugs
as acetaminophen and some chemotherapy drugs, making them more toxic. They
conclude that a similar mechanism probably applies to chemicals implicated in
obesity and diabetes and say further studies to determine exactly how are
needed.

The researchers hope that new scientific approaches involving transplantation of
gut microbes from humans into laboratory animals will lead to personalized
treatments for diabetes and obesity and will help stem global epidemics.

The project received support from the David R. Atkinson Center for a Sustainable
Future.

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Body image clouds fat debate

http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/diet-and-fitness/body-image-clouds-fat-debate-20\
111107-1n3ei.html

Denmark's new impost on fatty foods is a great step forward in the battle for
healthy hearts and minds, writes Michelle Bridges.

Something big happened the other week. Something really big. Denmark introduced
what has been dubbed the world's first "fat tax".

No, it's not a tax on fat people - quite the opposite, in fact. It's a tax on
foods that contain more than 2.3 per cent saturated fat. The result is that a
packet of chips will go up by the equivalent of about 12 cents, and a hamburger
by about 40 cents.

But here's the bit that I find really fascinating: the tax hasn't been
introduced to cut obesity rates, but rather to improve life expectancy.
(Denmark's obesity rate - defined as the percentage of the population with a
body mass index over 30 - is relatively low at 13.4 per cent of the population.
By comparison, 25 per cent of Australians are obese.)

The Danish government has recognised the relationship between poor food choices
and the health of its citizens. Naturally, there's a chorus of whingers, mostly
comprised of the manufacturers that make the fatty food, complaining that it's
not fair, will cost jobs, blah blah blah.

But what's got me all fizzy is that for the first time in the healthy-food
debate, a government has had the guts to put its people first by legislating
against those companies whose manufactured, processed foods make people sick.

They don't mess around, those Danes. They effectively banned trans fats some
years ago. Trans fats are the hydrogenated fats that can leave us with heart
disease by messing up our good and bad cholesterol levels.

But what I really like about this "fat tax" is how it shifts the debate from
people being overweight to people living longer. It's not about plus-size
models, body image or eating disorders. It's about quality and quantity of life,
and how a government is prepared to pass laws to protect it.

Here in Australia, we've been so busy being PC about, well, fat that we seem to
have forgotten the most important element - our health. It's time for our health
to take centre stage in this debate. If we draw a comparison between the war on
tobacco and the war on obesity, the glaring similarity is that health is the
principal motivator. The more we get bogged down in discussion about the social
acceptance of obesity, the more difficult it is to make change - profound change
- to our health and quality of life.

Michelle's tip
Tap into your inner activist. Email food manufacturers about unhealthy products
and ask what they are doing to improve them. Don't buy foods that you know are
bad for you, and nag your local MP about unhealthy food issues. The fat issue is
a complex one, with foods high in saturated fat often being rich in other
nutrients. Cheese, nuts, dark chocolate and fish oils all fall into this
category, so if you are concerned about your daily fat intake, it's worth
checking how much, and how often, you are eating healthy foods that may also
have high fat content. Check food labels - and always avoid junk food, pastries,
hot chips, crisps and the like.

Michelle Bridges is an author and a trainer on The Biggest Loser.

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'Biggest Loser' Sends Wrong Message on Weight Loss

http://www.medpagetoday.com/MeetingCoverage/APHA/29413?utm_content&utm_medium=em\
ail&utm_campaign=DailyHeadlines&utm_source=WC&eun=g416429d0r&userid=416429&email\
=radfatty%40...&mu_id

WASHINGTON -- The reality TV show "The Biggest Loser" sends patients an
unhealthy and unrealistic message about weight loss, a researcher said here.

The message that overweight people can and should lose significant amounts of
weight in a short period of time is unhealthy and makes it seem that extreme
dieting, plus hours of daily exercise, are what heavy people should strive for,
Natalie Ingraham, MPH, of the University of California San Francisco, told
attendees at the American Public Health Association meeting.

Ingraham and her colleagues studied the "cultural ideologies about fat, fitness,
and the body" that they believe are addressed on the popular TV show.

"The Biggest Loser" contestants live in relative isolation on a ranch in
California, where they exercise for many hours a day, cut calories, and compete
in challenges to see who can drop the most weight. A contestant who fails in the
challenges runs the risk of being kicked off the show.

While at the ranch, contestants have access to exercise facilities, fitness
trainers, and meals prepared by chefs.

While Ingraham eventually hopes to assess 12 episodes from seven seasons of the
show, her early findings revealed that the show stigmatizes people who are heavy
or overweight and suggests that the contestants seek redemption through drastic
weight loss -- up to 100 lbs in one television season.

But the show rarely depicts contestants eating or focuses much on healthy food
choices. It also rarely follows up with contestants from past seasons, Ingraham
said.

Ingraham told MedPage Today that the show promotes unrealistic expectations
about the weight loss process. For example, most physicians recommend that
overweight patients safely lose one or two pounds per week, but a patient may
tell the doctor "A contestant on 'The Biggest Loser' lost 50 pounds in a few
weeks," she added.

Ingraham's continuing research will include a statistical analysis of weight
loss results and a content analysis of remarks made by trainers and contestants
during the show.

Ingraham is an advocate of the grassroots "Health at Every Size" (HAES)
movement, which focuses on healthy living regardless of a person's size.

She spoke at a presentation on "The Politics of Obesity," sponsored by APHA's
committee on women's rights. All the panelists advocated for the HAES approach
and argued that fat should not be used as a proxy for health. Instead, other
biomarkers, such as cholesterol levels and psychologic well being, should inform
the definition of "health."

"What we think of as obesity has been as much socially constructed as medically
constructed," said panelist Sonya Satinsky, PhD, MPH, of the University of
Kansas in Kansas City.

The panelists also spoke out against:
•The use of terms such as "overweight" and "obese"
•The use of the body mass index (BMI) as a way to label people as "fat"
  •The use of national obesity reduction and prevention programs that vilify
large kids and adults


According to the HAES website, the nation has "lost the war on obesity" because
making fat the number one enemy of health hasn't resulted in a slimmer nation.
However, it has resulted in the "collateral damage" of preoccupation with one's
body, eating disorders, and discrimination, according to HAES.

While the APHA panel drew a huge crowd, many other sessions at the meeting
focused on anti-obesity strategies, such as healthier school lunches and
creating more walkable neighborhoods.

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Religion and Obesity; Report Associates Religious Activity With Weight Gain

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-briggs/does-going-to-church-pack_1_b_1086159\
.html

The nation's churches and synagogues have a weight problem.

The multiple health benefits of an active faith life tend to stop at four-course
Shabbat meals and church supper tables groaning with fried meat, biscuits and
gravy, new research shows.

In one study of some 5,500 women and men ages 45 to 84, participants were more
likely to be obese the more religiously active they were. Each step of the way,
from those never attending worship to those attending weekly, greater religious
activity was associated with significantly higher rates of obesity.

And in a separate study of a predominantly Orthodox Jewish community in Chicago,
more than half of adult respondents were overweight, including 24 percent who
were obese. Even more troubling, 26 percent of the children in the study were
obese, twice the rate found in the general population.

The integral role food plays in many religious rituals and social functions and
a desire not to stigmatize overweight members are among the reasons researchers
offer for this anomaly in findings related to religion and health.

The only sermons that would get less approval than those asking members to cut
back on eating would be those asking for money, said Shanna Granstra, a Baylor
University researcher studying religion and obesity.

"It's a difficult issue to tackle," she said. "Food is almost like sex,
especially considering how obsessed our culture is with food."

Religious activity is generally associated with good physical and mental health.

Six major studies of mortality risks in the last 10 years found frequent worship
attenders were anywhere from 18 percent to 35 percent less likely than
non-attenders to have died during the time period studied, says researcher
George Fitchett of Rush University Medical Center in Chicago.

Rising obesity rates, however, are a notable exception to the generally positive
record, Fitchett said. He presented his findings on religion and obesity at the
recent joint meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion and the
Religious Research Association in Milwaukee.

People who attended services or otherwise participated in organized religion
weekly were 62 percent more like to be obese than those who never participated,
according to data from the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis of adults ages
45 to 84 sponsored by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute.

In a separate study of 2,500 healthy women and men, researchers following up
with participants 18 years later found 32 percent of frequent worship attenders
became obese. In comparison, just 22 percent of non-attenders became obese,
Fitchett reported. The data was taken from the Coronary Artery Risk Development
in Young Adults study funded by the heart and lung institute.

Solving the problem is not going to be easy, researchers say.

A full table, either at a church supper or a Sabbath meal, is symbolic to many
of "God's blessing to us that we can have this bounty," Fitchett says.

The researchers who studied the Jewish community in Chicago found many
participants did not perceive their weight to be a problem. For example, 70
percent of parents of obese children said that their child was about the right
weight or underweight, researchers reported in the Journal of Community Health.

There is also a sense that religious leaders have to pick their battles.

Unhealthy eating is lower on the list of pastoral concerns, researchers say,
than problems like drug and alcohol abuse, which have greater potential for
destroying the lives of individuals, families and other members of the
community.

Granstra says some religious leaders may think: "We've taken away everything
else, it's hard to take away this one acceptable vice."

Perhaps the most difficult challenge in addressing obesity is how to bring up
the subject without offending or stigmatizing overweight people in the pews.

Obese white women already are far less likely than healthy-weight women to
attend religious services, Granstra found in her research using data from the
Portraits of American Life Study.

Maureen Benjamins of the Sinai Urban Health Institute in Chicago, a lead
researcher in the community health survey in Chicago, suggests focusing on "a
positive, pro-social message" that everyone can benefit from physical activity
and healthier eating habits.

"If you keep it at that general level, you don't have to worry about people
being stigmatized," she said in an interview.

Religious groups also may want to consider offering workout classes and
nutrition seminars to all members so no one feels singled out, researchers say,
instead of addressing the topic from the pulpit.
  And it would not hurt to offer more fruits and vegetables as alternatives at
congregational meals, Fitchett says.

Given all the protective health effects of religious participation, and the
social value of community meals, however, don't expect donuts to disappear from
Sunday morning coffee hours or latkes to be left off of Shabbat plates.

There is a time for every indulgence under heaven.

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Fast Food's Biggest Customer: Not the Poor, But the Middle Class

Read more:
http://healthland.time.com/2011/11/07/fast-foods-biggest-customers-not-the-poor-\
but-the-middle-class/#ixzz1djlh3DZR


Contrary to popular wisdom, eating at McDonald's isn't exactly cheap, costing
some $28 for a family of four. Which might help explain the results of a recent
study from the University of California, Davis, which found that people's visits
to fast-food joints increased along with their incomes, and that poor people
were spending fewer dollars on fast food than lower-middle and middle-income
Americans.

The authors said their study suggests that the availability of fast food isn't
the only driver of obesity in poor groups. "There is a correlation between
obesity and lower income, but it cannot be solely attributed to restaurant
choice," said J. Paul Leigh, professor of public health sciences at U.C. Davis
and senior author of the study, in a statement. "Fast-food dining is most
popular among the middle class, who are less likely to be obese."

Leigh and colleague DaeHwan Kim analyzed 1994-96 data from the Continuing Survey
of Food Intakes by Individuals and the accompanying Diet and Health Knowledge
Survey. The data included responses from 5,000 Americans who were asked about
restaurant dining habits, income, race, gender, age and education.

The researchers found that people visited fast-food restaurants more often as
their household income increased — at least up to a point. Fast-food visits
rose along with annual income up to $60,000; beyond that, visits started to drop
back down, replaced by full-service, sit-down dining at slightly higher prices.

Based on the data, the researchers described the typical fast-food consumer as a
lower-middle income head of household, who is budget-conscious and harried and
likes the convenience and low price of fast food, compared with other
restaurants. Poor people, by contrast, can't easily afford fast-food "value
meals," and the poorest, who may rely on the FNS Supplemental Nutrition
Assistance Program, or SNAP, certainly can't use food stamps at McDonald's.

For many years, the connection between poverty and obesity has been linked in
part to the abundance of fast food in low-income areas. While the current study
challenges the notion that poorer people eat more fast food than those who are
better off, it doesn't absolve fast-food restaurants completely.

The study didn't take into consideration what people ate outside of restaurants,
for example, and it's well established that low-income neighborhoods tend to be
"food deserts" — where fresh, whole foods are scarce and where the bulk of
available food is the high-fat, high-sugar stock of convenience stores. That
type of environment is thought to contribute to unhealthy eating and weight
gain.

"It would be a big mistake to look at the results of this report and say the
environments people live in don't matter, because they do," Micah Weinberg, a
senior policy adviser at the Bay Area Council who works on public health issues,
told The Sacramento Bee.

The study's authors agreed that fast food certainly isn't helping the national
waistline. "I'm not a big fan of fast food," Leigh told the Bee. "I'm sure that
fast food in general has a big effect on obesity. This research does not
contradict that."

The study will be published in Population Health Management in December

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Female Child Abuse Victims More Likely to Develop Heart Disease, Stroke

http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/248424/20111113/heart-disease-american-associati\
on-abuse-prevention.htm

Girls beaten or sexually abused are twice as likely to develop heart or other
cardiovascular diseases in adulthood, according to research presented Sunday.

Two thirds of women who reported repeated episodes of forced unwanted sexual
activities in their youth developed cardiovascular disease as adults, according
to researchers, and about half of the women who were physically abused as kids
or teens developed cardiovascular disease.

Janet Rich-Edwards, a public health researcher at Brigham and Women's Hospital
in Boston, presented the research, yet to be peer reviewed, at the annual
meeting of the American Heart Association in Orlando, Fla.

Rich-Edwards and colleagues based their research on the Nurses Health Study II,
a study started in 1989 that followed diet and lifestyle risks in 67,102 women
over several years.

In 2001, study coordinators sent participating women a supplemental
questionnaire that asked about violence. For the cardiovascular study,
Rich-Edward's group examined data the study collected between 1989 and 2007.

"We had a much better picture than we usually get of their early home life,"
Rich-Edwards said. "This is a very well characterized population."

Childhood abuse likely led to weight gain and higher smoking rates, Rich-Edwards
said. The American Heart Association says those are risk factors for heart
disease. Pediatricians who find ways to keep their patients from smoking and
gaining weight may help them avoid early onset heart diseases, Rich-Edwards
said.

Rather than simply ask "Were you abused as a child?" the study questions asked
about specifics, Rich-Edwards said. One question asked if a participant was
repeatedly hit, choked or shoved. Another question asked if an adult ever tried
to make the participant engage in a sexual act, threatening physical punishment
if she didn't.

Rich-Edwards said additional data would have helped. "I think it would have been
good to measure other psychological trauma in the household -- divorce and
mental illness," she said.

"We're beginning to connect the dots from childhood abuse," she said. "We still
have a lot more to do to understand the whole pathway."

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From Wall Street To Big Food, Occupiers Are Hungry For Change

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2011/11/18/142504166/from-wall-street-to-big-fo\
od-occupiers-are-hungry-for-change?sc=fb&cc=fp

Not all the people who have been protesting in New York's Zuccotti Park are
trying to Occupy Wall Street. Some are trying to Occupy Big Food, and are ready
to march. That includes boycotting that Thanksgiving icon, the Butterball
turkey.

So far that group is tiny, with just two women: Kristin Wartman, who's a writer
and nutrition educator, and Erika Lade, a graduate student in New York
University 's Food Studies Program. But OBF has a blog and a Twitter feed and a
goal: "To take our food back and out of the hands of just a few large
corporations."

That goal echoes the aim of the Occupy Wall Street protesters, who want to wrest
control of the financial sector from large corporations.

The business interests of the meat, dairy, and countless other agricultural
industries have shaped our food system, and many activists argue that our
health, environment and local economies have suffered from that influence. As a
headline in Mother Jones put it last month, "Big Food makes Big Finance look
like amateurs." That same article by Tom Philpott listed four reasons why
foodies should head to Zuccotti Park.

Wartman tells The Salt that she and Lade were among the foodies who heeded that
call. They hung around Zuccotti Park until the protesters were evicted this
week, and were inspired by the experienced organizers there. "We've been
learning from them how to get people together," Wartman says. "We feel like
there are a lot of people left out of the discussion in the food movement."

OBF plans to expand that discussion with a rally this Saturday. It will start at
Zuccotti Park and features such speakers as Marion Nestle, a professor of food
studies and nutrition at NYU and the blogger behind Food Politics, and Bill
Granfield, president of UNITEHERE Local 100, which represents 6,000 food service
workers in the New York area.

Like the other Occupy movement, this one finds people bringing their pet issues
to the table. For Granfield, it's a concern about the health of food service
workers who have to eat a lot of "Big Food" on the job, and have developed
diet-related diseases from it.

For Nestle, it's a budding interest in the farm bill. She's been teaching a
class this fall on the topic, and told The Salt in an email that she thinks the
legislation should really be promoting sustainable agriculture, conservation,
and the revitalization of rural America. Instead, she writes, "the subsidies and
most other benefits go to large agribusinesses that work hand-in-glove with
Congress."

It is a bit late in the game for OBF to try to tackle the farm bill; Politico
reported this morning that the legislation may already be in the hands of the
supercommittee. But Nestle notes that another problem with the farm bill is that
it's "profoundly undemocratic because it is so difficult to comprehend."

So we predict this is what she'll be pushing tomorrow at the OBF rally: learn
the farm bill. Then start talking about it. The OBF organizers, meanwhile, want
to talk about Butterball, the biggest producer of turkeys in the U.S. They don't
have much to say about Butterball's specific misdeeds, but they are urging
people to find a reason to Occupy Big Food on Thanksgiving all the same.

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Global Anti-Obesity Drugs Market to Reach US$10.3 Billion by 2017, According to
New Report by Global Industry Analysts, Inc.

Read more:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2011/11/17/prweb8965603.DTL#ixz\
z1e5Q1Bcxa


GIA announces the release of a comprehensive global report on Anti-Obesity Drugs
market. The global market for Anti-Obesity Drugs is projected to reach US$10.3
billion by the year 2017, driven by increasing prevalence of obesity and
introduction of novel drugs, currently in pipeline. Additionally, shift in
perception of obesity as a health disorder or disease rather than lifestyle
condition is slated to accelerate growth momentum over the long term.

San Jose, California (PRWEB) November 17, 2011

Follow us on LinkedIn - The global anti-obesity drugs market is characterized by
the availability of few effective drugs of which only limited drugs have been
approved for long-term use. The rising obesity prevalence offers enhanced
opportunities to drug manufacturing companies to offer new and highly effective
drugs. The indirect and direct costs associated with obesity and its related
conditions are considerably high and the increasing prevalence and socioeconomic
costs of obesity are compelling governments across the world to introduce
anti-obesity initiatives.

Further, drug metabolism is fast emerging as a new subject of concern. Dose of a
drug is evaluated on the basis of its weight, while dosage information found on
labels of OTC drugs is addressed according to the age of a patient. Majority of
the presently available drugs do not meet the requirements for safety profile
and efficacy. Several anti-obesity drugs have been approved for short term usage
owing to the high risk of adverse efforts associated with their usage. The
reported side-effects of various anti-obesity drugs have compelled European and
the US regulatory authorities to withdraw or ban a number of anti-obesity drugs.
Further, drug approval agencies in the US and Europe have been reluctant to
approve new anti-obesity drugs. Since 1930s, sales of several anti-obesity drugs
such as amphetamine, dinitrophenol, amniotes, thyroid hormone,
phenylpropanolamine and fenfluramine were suspended due to side-effects,
particularly on pulmonary and
  cardiovascular systems.

As stated by the new market research report on Anti-Obesity Drugs, the US
continues to remain the largest and the fastest growing regional market. The US
is home to the majority of world's obese population and the number is still on
the rise. Therapies for obesity and associated diseases account for a
substantial chunk of the overall healthcare expenditure in the US. Given the
increasing prevalence of obesity in the US and other parts of the world, and the
lack of any blockbuster drug, the market offers immense potential for effective
anti-obesity drugs with lower side-effect profile. Europe represents one of the
leading markets for anti-obesity drugs. Despite the rise in number of obese
patients, the pace of growth has been relatively slow primarily due to the lack
of reimbursement. Asia-Pacific holds enormous potential for anti-obesity drugs.
Rising consumer affluence, increased consumption of high calorie fast foods, and
sedentary lifestyles are
  contributing to an increase in the obese population, thereby offering
opportunities for drug makers.

Competition in the anti-obesity drugs market is expected to intensify with new
drugs likely to hit the market in near term. The landscape is vast with
contenders including biotech companies such as Arena Pharmaceuticals and
Orexigen Therapeutics to giant pharmaceutical companies gearing up to develop
safer anti-obesity drugs with lower side effects. Although there is no guarantee
that the new drugs would not cause any side effects, introduction of the drugs
in the market would provide more choice to physicians and aid them in
prescribing appropriate medication for obese patients. Xenical is currently the
top selling brand in the global anti-obesity drugs market. Removal of
high-revenue generating drugs from the market intensely affected the
anti-obesity drug market in 2009 and 2010. Acomplia (Rimonabant) from
Sanofi-Aventis was taken off from the European market in 2008 following reports
of psychiatric disorders in patients. The ban on Acomplia led to
  more aggressive competition between Xenical and Reductil, the leading obesity
drugs in 2009. Major players profiled in the report include Arena
Pharmaceuticals, AstraZeneca Plc, Roche, GlaxoSmithKline, Orexigen Therapeutics,
VIVUS, among others.

The research report titled "Anti-Obesity Drugs: A Global Strategic Business
Report" announced by Global Industry Analysts, Inc., provides a comprehensive
review of trends, issues, strategic industry activities, and profiles of major
companies worldwide. The report provides market estimates and projections in US$
Million across geographic markets such as the US, Europe (France, Germany,
Italy, UK, and Rest of Europe), and Rest of World.

For more details about this comprehensive market research report, please visit -
www.strategyr.com/Anti_Obesity_Drugs_Market_Report.asp

About Global Industry Analysts, Inc.
Global Industry Analysts, Inc., (GIA) is a leading publisher of off-the-shelf
market research. Founded in 1987, the company currently employs over 800 people
worldwide. Annually, GIA publishes more than 1300 full-scale research reports
and analyzes 40,000+ market and technology trends while monitoring more than
126,000 Companies worldwide. Serving over 9500 clients in 27 countries, GIA is
recognized today, as one of the world's largest and reputed market research
firms.


Global Industry Analysts, Inc.
Telephone: 408-528-9966
Fax: 408-528-9977
Email: press(at)StrategyR(dot)com
Web Site: www.StrategyR.com/

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Your Fat Baby Is Probably Fine

http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2011/11/09/baby_obesity_study_is_just_link_\
bait.html

Researchers at Harvard University published a study this week showing that
babies whose weight-to-height ratio jumps two percentile groups before the age
of 2 are more likely to be obese later in childhood, according to an AP article
making the rounds.



The results of the study are both strikingly obvious—if your baby gains weight
more quickly than other babies, he is more likely to be fat later on—and
fairly inconclusive. The supposed upshot of the doctors’ research, conducted
by parsing the growth charts of 45,000 Boston-area children over the course of
18 years, is that infants who gain weight rapidly are at a higher risk of
childhood obesity. However, only 12 percent of the infants in the authors’
designated high-risk group were obese by the age of 5, which—considering that
10 percent of all preschool-aged children are obese—means that the authors’
suggested predictive tool isn’t really all that predictive.



So why has the national press enthusiastically picked up on a study that’s
neither surprising nor particularly convincing? Could it just maybe be that
obesity is such a reliably hot-button topic that newspapers and magazines will
publish virtually any ostensibly scientific information on it?



The new study, which was published in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent
Medicine (alongside an editorial criticizing its suggestions), is a link-bait
double whammy, since its conclusions stoke parenting fears just as much as
body-image anxieties. And the AP article lays out the impossible tightrope
parents feel pressured to walk when it comes to their children’s health: If
your baby's gaining weight too quickly, she'll probably be obese later on, but
if you put her on a diet, you'll set her up for a lifetime of unhealthy eating
patterns.

This paradox arises from the assumption—which goes unchallenged in virtually
all mainstream reporting of obesity—that only thin (but not too thin!) people
can be healthy. In reality, healthy bodies come in all shapes and sizes, as do
unhealthy bodies, and no single ideal size applies to everyone (even to all
babies). But researchers would get a lot less funding, science journalists would
get a lot fewer assignments, and the diet industry would make a lot less profit
if people started believing that.

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Sugary drinks hurt even skinny women's hearts

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/45277790/ns/health-heart_health/

Women who drink sugary beverages every day may raising their risk for heart
disease, even if their habit is not packing on the pounds.

Whatever the form — sweet tea, soda, or coffee drinks that look like desserts
— women who drank two or more sweet beverages a day were at an increased risk
for heart disease, even if they did not gain weight over the five-year study,
according to the findings presented Sunday at the American Heart Association's
meeting in Orlando, Fla.

Large studies in the past — including the ongoing Framingham Heart Study, now
in its 63rd year —  have linked drinking sugar-sweetened beverages to heart
disease.

"So we looked at its association with individual risk factors" for heart
disease, said Christina Shay, lead author of the paper and an assistant
professor of epidemiology at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center.
"Is it blood pressure, cholesterol, obesity? What is it specifically?"

Shay and her colleagues followed 4,166 people between the ages of 45 and 84 who
were part of the larger Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis study.

Shay said it was "striking" that women with a sugary drinking habit developed
high levels of triglycerides, which are a type of fat, but men did not.

Women who drank two or more sugary beverages per day were four times more likely
to develop high triglyceride levels than women who drank fewer sugar-sweetened
beverages. Women with the liquid sugar habit were also were more likely to
develop abnormal levels of fasting glucose, a sign they could be developing
diabetes.

"These drinks may be influencing heart disease risk factors even if people don't
gain weight," Shay said.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an estimated 26.8
million Americans have heart disease, which ranks as the nation's number one
killer. Yet Americans love their soda. The California Department of Public
Health reports that the average American drinks 50 gallons of sweetened
beverages a year.

Sugar's connection to heart disease
"There are some calories that come like a nuclear attack," said Dr. Stephanie
Coulter, director for center for women's heart and vascular health Texas Heart
Institute. Eating complex carbohydrates such as oatmeal cause glucose (sugar) to
be released slowly into the blood.

"But have a sugar drink, and all the sugar comes rushing into your system,"
Coulter said. And if the body has lost the ability to use the hormone insulin to
regulate blood sugar (a condition called insulin resistance ), the extra sugar
remains circulating in the blood.

Daily blasts of too-high blood sugar can disrupt metabolism in several ways,
said Dr. Stephen Devries, a cardiologist at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in
Chicago. High sugar levels increase triglycerides, lower good cholesterol and
prompt the body to make an especially damaging, smaller molecule of bad
cholesterol. Too much sugar also raises levels of inflammation, another risk
factor heart disease, Devries said.

"The body is a delicate ecosystem, so if you change one area it will have an
unintended consequence somewhere else," Devries said.

In the new study, many women saw expanding waistlines, even if they did not gain
weight. Cardiologists point out that such "belly fat" may have an especially
negative effect on heart health.

Why waistlines, why women?
"It's even shown that women who are thin, with big waist lines are at greater
risk for heart disease," said Dr. Holly Andersen, of the Perelman Heart
Institute at New York Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center in New
York City.

Unlike the fat right beneath the skin that can be sucked out by liposuction, the
fat around the organs in the center of the body produces hormones "that make us
more likely to get diabetes, higher blood pressure, higher triglycerides,"
Andersen said.

The women in the study were middle aged and older, so post-menopausal hormonal
shifts might have made it more difficult to keep weight off their middles, she
said.

All the more reason why women might want to be careful with a soda habit,
Coulter said. "The message is that women have smaller frames then men, and
therefore need more calorie restriction," she said.

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Obese patients less willing to seek a doctor's advice
http://www.theage.com.au/national/obese-patients-less-willing-to-seek-a-doctors-\
advice-20111121-1nr0w.html


AUSTRALIANS are seeing their doctor more than ever, with consultations for
diabetes alone surging by a whopping 40 per cent in the past decade.

But patients appear less likely to seek advice from the doctor on a health
condition most can influence themselves - obesity.

While patients are much more likely to be obese than 10 years ago, they are less
likely to seek advice from their doctors about nutrition and body weight issues.

An analysis by Sydney University's Family Medicine Research Centre of what has
kept general practitioners busy over the decade shows the proportion of patients
who are obese has shot up from 21.5 per cent to 27 per cent of patients, and
those overweight from 33.5 per cent to 35 per cent.

Despite that growth, the visits at which GPs provided counselling and advice
about nutrition and weight fell from four to three out of every 100 problems
doctors managed.

The lead author of the study, Associate Professor Helena Britt, said Australians
in general were seeing GPs more often with multiple health issues.

Australians now saw a GP on average 5.3 times a year, posing a ''massive
healthcare load but we don't hear much about it'', she said.

It was not uncommon for people to have ''co-morbidities'' - a cocktail of
diseases that might include diabetes, high blood pressure, osteoarthritis and
depression - all requiring close ongoing attention.

GPs were managing more problems on average at each consultation, 153 problems
per 100 consultations last year compared to 143 per 100 in 2001-02.

This was largely as a result of the rise in chronic conditions that accounted
for 13.5 million more contacts with GPs last year than 10 years ago.

Most common medical services were for blood pressure, vaccinations, respiratory
infections, depression, diabetes, arthritis, high cholesterol and general
checkups.

Professor Britt said modern Australia was probably experiencing the first signs
of a medical ''tsunami''.

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Body Image Booster: 10 Ideas To Enjoy Yourself This Thanksgiving

http://blogs.psychcentral.com/weightless/2011/11/body-image-booster-10-ideas-to-\
enjoy-yourself-this-thanksgiving/

When we nit-pick at our bodies, we lose out on the beautiful moments that happen
all the time, all around us — especially during the holidays when we tend to
get together with family and friends we haven’t seen in a while.

When we focus on our supposed flaws, we leave little time and concentration for
anything else.


With Thanksgiving this week here in America (holy crap, where does the time
go!), you may have a tough time focusing away from your figure. Sometimes, the
thoughts just keep swirling and swirling and swirling.

One tool to try is challenging these thoughts. Marsha Hudnall, director and
owner at Green Mountain at Fox Run, shared a valuable exercise with Weightless
readers last year.

She suggested identifying one negative thought that doesn’t seem to go away.
Write it down and ask yourself these questions:

How does this thought affect me?
Where did I learn it?
Is it logical?
Is it true?
Next, “Write down another more encouraging, positive, kinder and true thought
to replace the negative one.” Whenever the old thought pops up, practice using
this positive one, instead.

Here are other ideas for enjoying yourself this week (and at any celebration).

1. Before eating, say aloud what you’re thankful for, whether it’s in front
of your loved ones or by yourself. This can help you get centered and return to
what the holidays are all about.

2. Wear an outfit that makes you happy.

3. Listen to your body’s hunger and satiety cues. If you overeat, remind
yourself that it’s totally OK. Remember that normal eating is flexible.

4. Savor your food bite by bite. Focus on its taste, texture and smell.

5. Have a plan for stress-reducing strategies. Being around loved ones can be
stressful. Trying to find time to complete all your tasks can be stressful. And
when we’re stressed out, we might bash our bodies and feel extra guilty and
self-conscious. Instead, think of several healthy activities that really ease
your tension and anxiety. Make it a priority to practice them this week.

6. When family and friends get together around food, there might be comments
that sound like this: “Oh, I can’t eat that, I’m dieting,” “I just ate
all those cookies, I’m such a pig,” “My thighs have gotten so huge,
don’t you think?” “How many calories is in that pie?” and so on. Here
are some ideas for enjoying a fat-talk-free holiday season.

7. Struggling with an eating disorder or recovering from one can be tough during
the holidays. Here are some ideas for healthy coping.

8. Carry a security blanket with you. For instance, for me that’s my dad’s
gold necklace, which I never take off my neck, and my first-ever gold ring from
my parents. For you that might also be jewelry or a picture in your wallet, a
piece of clothing, a charm or a keychain. Whatever it is, let it bring you
comfort.

9. Get outside. Sometimes, we just need a breather and a reminder of all the
true beauty that surrounds us. Sometimes, just feeling the cool, crisp breeze
against our cheeks can give us what we need.

10. Start new and empowering traditions. This is a great tip from body image
expert Robyn Silverman (from this post):

Some go around the table and say what they’re grateful for while others retell
old family stories. In the spirit of Fat Talk Free Holidays, why not start a
tradition of celebrating our strengths? Ask everyone to say 1-3 things that they
feel are assets they possess.  You can also go back around the table and flip
it—what are 1-3 assets you admire about someone else at the table? This is not
about competition or comparison but rather, about seeing people for their
strengths rather than their deficits.

How will you enjoy yourself this Thanksgiving?

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Thyroid is Trigger for Psychiatric Trouble in Some

http://thyroid.about.com/b/2011/11/23/thyroid-is-trigger-for-psychiatric-trouble\
-in-some.htm

The New York Times has just published an article that discusses how researchers
have found a link between borderline/subclinical thyroid problems and
psychiatric problems in some patients.
According to research conducted by pyschiatrist Russell Joffe, MD, treating
subclinical thyroid issues can alleviate some psychiatric symptoms.

Another doctor quoted, Jennifer Davis, MD, who is an assistant professor of
psychiatry at Brown University. said that the issue is a "chicken-and-egg
question. Is there an underlying thyroid problem that causes psychiatric
symptoms, or is it the other way around?" But she acknowledged that it's common
for people who have thyroid problems to be misdiagnosed with a psychiatric
illness.

The article mentions that endocrinologists tend to agree that a thyroid
stimulating hormone (TSH) level aboe 10 requires treatment for hypothyroidism,
but that levels above 4 are, as the article states, "murkier."

Psychiatrist Dr. Thomas Geracioti of the University of Cincinnati said that for
patients with a mood disorder, even these levels can be significant.
Interestingly, Dr. Geracioti is even using thyroid medication to treat
performers with stage fright and reports that one of his musician patients
completely recovered with use of thyroid medication.

The article also exposes the fact that there is a lack of agreement on the part
of the medical world as to what constitutes "normal" thyroid levels. Dr. James
Hennessey, director of clinical endocrinology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical
Center in Boston, described that a thyroid patient's TSH "set point" is an
important factor in whether or not there would be a response to medication for
such so-called "subclinical" patients.

Note from Mary: It's promising to see this article published in the New York
Times. It is, of course, not "news" to patients, and to many practitioners,
however. Earlier this year, the Shames health team, including Richard Shames,
MD, published Thyroid Mind Power, which talks about the relationship between
thyroid imbalances and depression, anxiety, and other mental health and
pyschiatric issues. We've had research out for almost 10 years that shows that
T3 thyroid hormone can help with major depression treatment and I dedicated an
entire chapter in my book Living Well With Hypothyroidism to the link between
subclinical hypothyroidism and depression. It is promising, however, to see
mainstream medicine start to recognize and acknowledge that even what is
considered subclinical and borderline thyroid dysfunction can have an important
impact on quality of life.

Some thyroid illnesses are also linked to obesity.

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Florida Inmate Drops Pounds in Exchange for Early Release
http://news.yahoo.com/florida-inmate-drops-pounds-exchange-early-release-1539495\
03.html

A 345-pound man jailed for driving with a suspended license was freed nine days
early thanks to a Lake County, Fla., judge's "lose-a-pound, gain-a-day" deal.

George McCovery, 37, dropped 25 pounds in 20 days -- a feat he credited to bland
prison food and the judge's weight-loss challenge.

"She gave me a chance to prove myself, and I didn't want to let her down," he
told the Orlando Sentinel.

Judge Donna Miller, whose courtroom proceedings are replayed in the TV show
"Lake Courts," is famous for her unusual sentence deals. In her 17 years as a
judge, Miller has ordered defendants to start jogging, take a dance class, tutor
math and write Christmas cards, according to the Sentinel.

"I do what I do to try to change the person in front of me," she said,
acknowledging that her self-improvement sentences won't be doled out to
everyone. "If the person needs jail, they get jail."

Miller said she would check McCovery's weight after 20 days. And to her
surprise, he had already shed 25 pounds.

"It's not easy to lose weight," Miller told the Sentinel. "I thought he'd lose
5, maybe, 6 pounds -- not 25."

Carrying extra pounds can raise the risk of chronic, debilitating and even
life-threatening medical conditions such as heart disease, stroke and type 2
diabetes. And if waistlines keep expanding at current rates, experts predict
half of the U.S. population will be obese by 2030.

McCovery, who takes medication for high blood pressure, said he wanted to lose
weight during the trial. But it isn't easy. Obesity treatments, such as
bariatric surgery, are effective, but many people are reluctant to undergo such
an invasive procedure. And a dearth of drugs approved to treat obesity leaves
few options for extreme weight loss short of strict diets and intense exercise
programs.

But the benefits of weight loss are well worth the effort. According to an
August 2011 report, if every obese person decreased his or her body mass index
by just 1 percent (a loss of 2 pounds for a 200-pound adult), as many as 2.4
million diabetes cases, 1.7 million cases of heart disease and stroke and
127,000 cancer cases could be prevented.

Although McCovery lost more than a pound a day, experts say slow and steady
weight loss is the best way to shed the pounds for good.

"There's a lot that goes on between losing that first pound and losing that 100,
50 or even 20 pounds," Lisa Cimperman, a registered dietitian at University
Hospitals Case Medical Center, told ABC News. Aiming to lose 1 to 2 pounds per
week can help you stay on track and power through the inevitable weight loss
lulls.

Along the way, McCovery was encouraged by his detention deputies, the Sentinel
reported.

"Studies have shown that support groups or just having someone else encouraging
you will help make you successful," said Lisa Cimperman.

That encouragement and the promise of making it home in time for Thanksgiving
was enough for McCovery, who earned a note of praise from Judger Miller on his
release order that read, "Good job, Mr. McCovery!"

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New hope for PCOS
http://www.health24.com/dietnfood/Weight_Centre/15-51-2968-2973,71619.asp


New reports suggest that a compound called myo-inositol may have beneficial
effects on Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS), and improve symptoms of insulin
resistance and metabolic syndrome. DietDoc takes a closer look.

Like the many desperate members of the public who ask for advice on how to treat
Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS) and to conceive, or to combat metabolic
syndrome and lose weight,  I also sometimes get despondent that researchers have
as yet not come up with simple solutions to counteract these modern-day scourges
and produce effective weight loss. After all, finding a solution to insulin
resistance and permanent weight loss is one of the top research priorities if we
want to stem the inexorable tides of metabolic derangements and obesity that are
engulfing the world.
New research findings
As mentioned last week, researchers have recently been busy publishing the
results of a variety of studies that have bearing on obesity. Some of these
relate to the finding that myo-inositol with, or without folic acid and
melatonin, seems to help in PCOS, metabolic syndrome and weight loss (Unfer et
al, 2011; Giordano et al, 2011).
Potential benefits of myo-inositol
A number of reports have been published in the scientific press suggesting that
a compound called myo-inositol may have beneficial effects on Polycystic Ovary
Syndrome (PCOS), and improve the symptoms of insulin resistance and the
metabolic syndrome.
A range of studies, mainly conducted in Italy, have shown that myo-inositol
with/without folic acid and/or melatonin increases fertility in women with PCOS,
which affects approximately 7.5% of the female population (Bloomgarden et al,
2001). PCOS is characterised by an inability to conceive due to high
testosterone levels and anovulation, as well as impaired glucose tolerance and
insulin resistance with weight gain and problems with losing weight in up to 40%
of these patients (Papaleo et al, 2007).
Myo-inositol & PCOS
The following results have been obtained with myo-inositol/folic acid/melatonin
treatments in PCOS:
D-chiro-inositol (one form of inositol) has been used successfully as a
so-called ‘insulin-sensitizing agent’ in PCOS patients to improve insulin
sensitivity, promote weight loss, reduce raised testosterone levels and increase
ovulation rates and thus fertility (Bloomgarden et al, 2001).
Another form of inositol, known as myo-inositol, and sold commercially with
folic acid as a product called “Inofolic” produced spontaneous menstrual
cycles in up to 88% of anovulatory patients and maintained normal ovulation in
72% of patients for up to 6 months (Papaleo et al, 2007)
A double-blind trial using myo-inositol plus folic acid treatment compared to
folic acid alone, significantly reduced testosterone levels, blood triglyceride
levels (high triglyceride levels are associated with PCOS and metabolic
syndrome), blood pressure and blood glucose tolerance curve values (indicating
improved insulin sensitivity). In addition ovulation was restored in nearly 70%
of the women receiving the myo-inositol plus folic acid treatment (Costantino et
al, 2009)
Addition of melatonin (a hormone that regulates sleep) to myo-inositol treatment
improved ovarian function and fertility in infertile women (Unfer et al, 2011).
Myo-inositol & the metabolic syndrome
The following studies also produced positive results with the use of
myo-inositol to improve the symptoms of metabolic syndrome in PCOS patients and
overweight post-menopausal women:
  Overweight PCOS patients had improved insulin levels, glucose tolerance curves
and increased insulin sensitivity after 12 weeks of treatment with myo-inositol
and/or folic acid (Genazzani et al, 2008).
  Another study in 80 overweight postmenopausal women suffering from the
metabolic syndrome (characterised by increased BMI, high blood pressure, raised
blood fat levels including LDL-cholesterol, and low HDL-levels, high glucose and
insulin levels indicating insulin resistance), were treated with low-energy
diets and then randomly assigned to receive either 2 g of myo-inositol or
placebo twice a day for a period of 6 months. In comparison to placebo
(low-energy diet only), positive results were obtained with the myo–inositol
treatment for the following parameters:
             Systolic and diastolic (-11%) blood pressure decreased
             The decreases in ‘bad’ LDL-cholesterol and triglyceride (-20%)
levels were highly significant
             ‘Good’ HDL-cholesterol levels increased by 22% (a positive
finding)
             A significant decrease in waist circumference was found
             A decrease of -70% in hyperinsulinaemia was obtained
(Giordano et al, 2011)
Because both the treatment and the placebo groups in the study conducted by
Giordano and his coworkers (2011), used a low-energy diet, the difference in
weight loss between the treatment and the control groups was not significant.
However, if the pronounced improvement in hyperinsulinaemia is taken into
account and the reduction in waist circumference (indicating loss of abdominal
fat), then it is possible that the use of myo-inositol will also aid weight loss
in postmenopausal women as was demonstrated in the PCOS study in younger women
conducted by Bloomgarden and coworkers (2001) mentioned above.
What is myo-inositol?
Inositol is a carbohydrate that was originally classified as one of the B
vitamins, namely vitamin B8. But, because humans are able to synthesise inositol
from glucose, it is currently not regarded as an essential nutrient like the
other members of the B complex. Inositol is found in certain fruits such as
cantaloupe (spanspek) and oranges. Phytate, the indigestible hexaphosphate form
of inositol, is relatively common in many plant foods, including high-bran
cereals, legumes and nuts. Mother’s milk contains inositol and it has been
found that the inositol content of baby formulas used for premature infants
needs to be increased to promote optimum growth.
Up to nine different so-called stereo-isomers of inositol have been identified,
which is why some of the studies have used  D-chiro-inositol (Bloomgarden et al,
2001), while others have used myo-inositol (Unfer et al, 2011).
Inositol appears to play a role in a process called ‘insulin signal
transduction’ (i.e. facilitating insulin signalling to body cells, thus
reducing insulin resistance), improving fertility and lowering ‘bad’
LDL-cholesterol and triglyceride levels in the blood, while increasing
‘good’ HDL-cholesterol concentrations.
Unanswered questions
At this stage, it is important to emphasise that research into the role of
myo-inositol in infertility, metabolic syndrome, insulin resistance and weight
loss, is in the early stages and that there are still many questions that need
to be answered before myo-inositol can be freely prescribed for all these
conditions. For example, we don’t know if high doses of myo-inositol can cause
negative side-effects and how effective the treatment will be in patients who
are overweight without suffering from insulin resistance or PCOS. Giordano and
his coworkers (2011), have also mentioned that some populations have been found
to react favourably to myo-inositol (i.e. Italian and Venezuelan subjects),
whereas other have not (American subjects). This could indicate that the effect
of myo-inositol may be linked to a genetic predisposition.
Although Inofolic (a combination of myo-inositol and folic acid) as used by
Papaleo and his team (2007), is available in South Africa, patients suffering
from infertility, metabolic syndrome, insulin resistance, and obesity associated
with metabolic syndrome and PCOS, should discuss the use of Inofolic with their
medical doctors before using this supplement.
As more research results become available, we will hopefully obtain answers to
the questions listed above and if myo-inositol with/without folic acid proves
safe and effective, then there may at last be a glimmer of light at the end of
the obesity and associated diseases tunnel.
- (Dr IV van Heerden, DietDoc, November 2011)
References
(Bloomgarden ZT et al, 2001. Use of insulin-sensitizing agents in patients with
polycystic ovary syndrome. Endocr Pract, Vol 7(4):279-86; Costantino D et al,
2009. Metabolic and hormonal effects of myo-inositol in women with polycystic
ovary syndrome. Eu Rev Med Pharmacol Sci, Vol 13(2):105-10;  Genazzani AD et al,
2008. Myo-inositol administration positively affects hyperinsulinemia and
hormonal parameters in overweight patients with polycystic ovary syndrome.
Gynecol Endocrinol, Vol 24(3):139-44; Giordano D et al, 2011. Effects of
myo-inositol supplementation in postmenopausal women with metabolic syndrome: A
prospective, randomized, placebo-controlled study. Menopause, Vol18(1):102-104;
Papaleo E et al, 2007. Myo-inositol in patients with polycystic ovary syndrome:
a novel method of ovulation induction. Gynecol Endocrinol, Vol 23(12):700-3; 
Unfer V et al, 2011. Effect of a supplementation with myo-inositol plus
melatonin on oocyte quality in women
  who failed to conceive in previous in vitro fertilization cycles for poor
oocyte quality: a prospective, longitudinal, cohort study. Gynecol Endocrinol,
Vol 27(11):857-61)


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Ohio puts 200-pound third-grader in foster care

http://news.yahoo.com/ohio-puts-200-pound-third-grader-foster-care-191032515.htm\
l

CLEVELAND (AP) — An Ohio third-grader who weighs more than 200 pounds has been
taken from his family and placed into foster care after county social workers
said his mother wasn't doing enough to control his weight.

The Plain Dealer reports (http://bit.ly/t68M7D ) that the Cleveland 8-year-old
is considered severely obese and at risk for such diseases as diabetes and
hypertension.

The case is the first state officials can recall of a child being put in foster
care strictly for a weight-related issue.

Lawyers for the mother say the county overreached when authorities took the boy
last week. They say the medical problems he is at risk for do not yet pose an
imminent danger.

A spokeswoman says the county removed the child because caseworkers saw his
mother's inability to reduce his weight as medical neglect.

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Chicago filmmaker takes on diet industry in new documentary

http://www.suntimes.com/lifestyles/health/9059687-423/chicago-filmmaker-takes-on\
-diet-industry-in-new-documentary.html

Darryl Roberts refuses to say a four-letter word: Diet. The South Side filmmaker
had to face that word when he rolled cameras on his new documentary, “America
the Beautiful 2: The Thin Commandments.”

He was 273 pounds and facing nagging high blood pressure and an arrhythmic
heartbeat.

Sure, he always wanted to drop a few pounds, but he refused to obsess. “I
never felt the need for a diet. I always felt good about myself no matter what
weight I was at in life,” says Roberts.

“I think there is a big difference between the African-American community and
the white community when it comes to what’s acceptable in terms of body
size.”

His new documentary follows his 2008 hit by the same name. The topic this time
is skewering the dieting industry. He discusses how punishing it is to lose
pounds when you’re a model and the consequences of plastic surgery and
anorexia. He also mulls over the body mass index.

Roberts has a bone to pick with the numbers — and not just the ones on the
scale. He thinks that the obesity epidemic has been misunderstood and even
inflated because people misapply the BMI (Body Mass Index).

“If you went by the BMI then even Tom Cruise, Will Smith and Christian Bale
would be considered either overweight or obese,” he marvels.

Roberts is quick to say that people should deal with health issues when it comes
to weight loss.

“We have a health problem in America. There is no denying it,” he says.
“We have diabetes and heart issues. But I think people approach losing weight
in the wrong way. I think people shouldn’t focus on a number on the scale and
should think about what they can do to get healthier.”

Roberts tells us the sad stats in his new film:

† Some 100 million Americans are obese.

† Four out of five women don’t like the way they look.

† On any day almost 50 percent of women are dieting and so are 25 percent of
men.

Digest that the dieting industry rakes in $50 billion even though 95 percent of
diets fail.

Roberts doesn’t pull punches in the film. Yes, he would like to be thinner,
but he isn’t going to give up his KFC or Subway. “It’s all about eating it
in moderation,” the 6-foot-3 Roberts says.

Roberts grew up eating good food on the South Side of Chicago, just a few
streets away from Jennifer Hudson and Bernie Mac. He says that becoming a film
director wasn’t exactly a common dream in his neighborhood, or easy for others
to stomach when he kept talking about it as a kid.

“There was a level of disbelief when I said I wanted to direct movies,” he
says. “You don’t see many directors coming from these streets.”

“I was just a little kid who loved movies and my dream was to make them,” he
says. “My love of movies is also why I didn’t get caught up in what was
happening on the streets in my neighborhood. I just went to the movies.”

Roberts tried living in tofu-and-vegan L.A. for a few years, but found himself
missing his hometown. “I moved to LA and came back three years later. I
couldn’t take it anymore out there,” he says of California. “I was missing
my Chicago.”

Roberts says that he originally was told there would be no audience for his
first “America the Beautiful” film.

“I was told that nobody would go see it because black people supposedly
don’t go see documentaries,” he says. “The head of one of the studios told
me this. He said, ‘Go to any theater to a documentary.’ I did in eight
cities and out of 1,000 people, there were about eight African Americans
total.”

“Then I was told that white people wouldn’t go see a film like mine because
I’m black,” he says. “I said, ‘I think people will go see a good movie.
Let’s test it out.’ ” He screened the first film in Portland, Ore. “It
doesn’t get any whiter,” he says. “Some 400 people came that night and I
got a 97 percent rating that they loved the movie.”

In the end, Roberts says that people should relax a little bit on the whole
weight thing. “People are too crazy about dieting. It consumes them and screws
them up. Just try eating better today and see how you feel,” he advises.

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