In Honor of Fashion Week

Earlier this week, the New York Times ran a piece about (surprise, surprise) the casting of young, super-thin models in favor of older girls with healthier BMIs.

You can read it here.

There was something about it that rubbed me the wrong way. At first I thought it was the model they profiled, then I thought maybe it was just the choppy flow of the article. I realize, though, that it's more likely that I'm just sick of hearing the same thing.

Part me of me wonders, "Why print the same old thing year after year after year?" Has it really gotten any better or worse? If you're going to tell me about the size of fashion models, rather than print one woman's complaints, why not write about a few models who died of anorexia this year or devote an article to shows whose designers insisted on having girls who've gone through puberty on their runway?

Weight Loss Surgery for Teens

In the Science section of today's New York Times, there was an article about getting weight loss surgeries such as lap-band and gastric bypass procedures. The piece told the story of one girl who, now 20, had a gastric bypass when she was 14, going from 404 pounds to 175. She was the first

A 2007 study, which used data from 2000 to 2003, showed that, although rare, bariatric surgery in children and teens was on the rise. It is estimated that it will continue to rise, becoming almost as common in children as in adults.

While I think options are an important thing and that as time goes on, and that it may become easier to address and avoid some of the complications that result from weight loss surgery, I worry that people would come to see it as a quick fix rather than as a major life-changing procedure.

You don't just get up off the operating table and go eat a burger. It takes a long, long time to adjust to being able to eat a much smaller volume of food, and there are also many nutritional anemias and deficiencies that can develop post-op, depending on the type of surgery you've had and how it affects the digestion and absorption process. In children who aren't done growing, there is some concern about longterm effects.

Read the full article here.

Do You Need More Vitamin D?

Every few years, one vitamin or other will shove the reigning champion out of its throne and become the new Big Deal Vitamin. For a while, it was Vitamin E, but more recently, Vitamin D has been in the limelight.

Vitamin D is made in the body from sunlight (supposedly dietary cholesterol plays a role as well), and it also exists in fish and fortified milk. Among its "healing" properties, vitamin D is thought to help build strong bones, strengthen the immune system, and reduce the risks for conditions like diabetes and cancer.

According to a 2008 report in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, about half of adults and kids in our country are deficient.

A lot more doctors have begun to test patients' levels, and in the past year-and-a-half, and people are spending over five times on vitamin D supplements than they were several years ago. Should you join in?

It's still a little early to tell, and many doctors worry that taking too much could do more harm than good. In this New York Times article, Tara Parker-Pope details a few recent studies that show some possible benefit to making sure people get adequate levels of vitamin D. However, it's possible to do things that help you get more vitamin D, such as exercising outdoors or even just taking a walk around the block during the day. You can also drink milk. Remember when people used to drink that instead of soda?

Stretching Leftovers

Hope you've all enjoyed the weekend. Though I did find some time to see friends, go out to dinner, and to a play this weekend, I spent a lot of time doing homework and cleaning. I also have a few upcoming writing gigs I'm prepping for.

It's tempting when I get busy to just eat on autopilot. While it's great—and important—to have healthy go-to's, the same old stuff can get boring. So this week, I experiment by seeing how many ways I could use the whole wheat couscous I made on Tuesday afternoon.

The first night involved a tomato-zucchini-eggplant-chickpea stew. Then the next day for lunch I threw a bunch of leftover veggies in a pot to simmer down and cooked some lentils and added the couscous at the end. Amazing. It also worked really well in a salad as well as in a soup that Chris made.

Something I was reading this afternoon you might find interesting is this post on Marion Nestle's blog, Food Politics, about the proposed New York penny-and-ounce soda tax. Check out the guide she links to. It's very informative. I'm personally in favor of it, though I don't know how well it will go over with people who regularly buy sugary drinks. For example, some believe it may drive more people to drink alcohol, which also has a lot of "empty" calories.

Thoughts?

Chocolate and Bacon, Coming to a Yoga Studio Near You?

My friend Leah is awesome for sending me this article from the New York Times about the increasing inclusion of food in yoga practice.

Could you dig eating a three-course meal on your steamy yoga mat (otherwise known as the live active yoga culture mat)? I don't know about you, but I'm usually one of the first people rolling that thing up, in a hurry to get myself to a shower! But I'll come right out and say it—I am not one of those folks who really gets into the chanting and the om-ing and the moaning on the exhale. I like to get back out into the real world before the endorphins wear off. And anyway, I usually have someplace else to be.

If I had a bunch of friends at my studio it might be different, but it's unlikely I'd even have time to stick around. However, the yogis at Exhale Spa's Friday event, seemed pretty comfy sitting cross-legged on the floor after class for some pasta, wine and chocolate.

This is, perhaps, my favorite part of the whole piece:

“It’s a little weird to sit on a sweaty yoga mat and eat soup,” said one woman, not pausing as she spooned up a smooth, cinnamon-spiked butternut squash purée from a bamboo bowl. “But people are used to doing some weird things in yoga class.”

Joy Pierson, the chef at the nearby Candle Café, a vegan restaurant that supplied the meal, sat cross-legged at the front of the room, encouraging everyone to breathe in slowly. “Ssssmell the squassshhhh waaaafting through the air,” she intoned.

Oh wow.

In addition to exploring the controversy of food in yoga, the article also goes into the "yogier than thou" attitude which often fuels food-based judgments. "In yoga and foodie circles alike," writes author Julia Moskin, "contemplating the awesome significance of every bite taken — its flavors, its implications, its history — often seems to lead to moral judgments about others."

It's a cliche for a reason: a lot of yogies are vegetarians. That's one of the first things many teachers advise. However, many believe that you don't have to be a vegetarian to practice yoga.

So where to draw the line? I feel like it's a decision you have to make for yourself. While I can get on board with the notion of showing compassion towards all beings by abstaining from eating meat, I think it's very easy to take a restrictive diet too far, and that a lot of people do. However, enjoying food can—and should—be just as important as eating what you need to live. If pork is what does it for someone, it it really fair to make them feel alienated?

Still, Moskin begs the question: Can bacon be yoga?

I don't know, but I think the answer lies within one's personal philosophy of what yoga means to them and its function in their life. I can't help but sound like my mother, who is a hypnotherapist, when I say, "To each their own," but I honestly believe that. I guess it's true, what my mom says: "The crystal does not fall far from the family cluster."

American Obesity Rates Hit Plateau

According to data released on Wednesday from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, American obesity rates have remained constant for at least 5 years for men and about 10 years for rates of obese women and children.

That's not to say the numbers aren't high, though. An estimated 34 percent of American adults are obese, which is more than double the percent thirty years ago. Perhaps scarier, during the past thirty years, the percent of obese children tripled to 17 percent.

Though Dr. William H Dietz of CDC calls the data "promising" and credited the plateau to increased awareness of obesity, he is careful to note that we can't congratulate ourselves jut yet. In a New York Times article, he says, "I don't think we have in place the kind of policy or environmental changes needed to reverse the epidemic just yet."

Dr. Ludwig, the director of the Optimal Weight for Life program at Children's Hospital Boston also stresses that a leveling off is not a free pass to drop the ball on working to prevent obesity. "Until we see numbers improving, not just staying the same, we can't have any confidence that our lifestyle has improved." He even goes so far as to suggest we may have reached a "biological limit" for obesity.

Hm...

I just find it amazing that for a country so obsessed with thinness, we have such high rates of overweight and obesity. I wish my program offered more opportunities to study the psychological aspect. I guess that would be a whole separate degree though. Sometimes I think if it weren't for being so interested in clinical nutrition, I'd focus more on public health and/or food studies. Time for everything, I suppose.

New York Aims to Curb Sodium Intake

Salt made the the front page of Monday's New York Times.

Today, Mayor Bloomberg unveiled the National Salt Reduction Initiative, which aims to cut sodium intake by twenty-five per cent over the next five years, potentially preventing thousands of premature deaths.

High salt levels can raise blood pressure levels, which increases the risk of cardiovascular disease and stroke. Americans eat an average of 3,400 milligrams of sodium daily, though the amount recommended by the American Heart Association is 2,300 milligrams. Since a reported 80% of sodium is already in the food when consumers purchase it, food companies are being encouraged to lower the amount of sodium in their products.

I don't personally have a problem with this campaign, though I can understand if someone were to say it makes Bloomberg seem like one of those hovering mothers who tells their kids' friends' parents not to give them junk food at sleepovers (I had a friend growing up whose mom used to brag that her kids had never tasted butter—yikes). While I'd also like to see some kind of health information campaign about what sodium is and why people shouldn't eat too much of it, I'm curious to see how this goes.

Now if only the mayor could do something about neighbors having dance parties on Monday nights...

Many Parents Overestimate Child's Activity

Tara Parker-Pope recently posted on her New York Times blog Well about a British study that showed how often parents may overestimate how physically active their child on.

In the study, 1,892 British school children were equipped with accelerometers that measured their activity throughout the day. A child was seen as inactive if that activity amounted to less than an hour per day. Though the vast majority of parents described their child as physically active, over 39 percent of girls and 18 percent of boys were actually getting less than 60 minutes of physical activity a day.

Interestingly, it was the parents of children with lower fat mass who guessed wrong about the adequacy of their child's activity, as were parents of girls. I find that fascinating. I imagine that says something to the way we perceive overweight individuals in terms of physical activity as well as something girls and self-esteem perhaps? Just a few front-of-the-mind thoughts that may be worth unpacking...

Millions of Americans Drinking Dirty Water

It's not every day that the town you grew up in shows up in a front-page story in the Times. Unfortunately, that's rarely a good thing when it does happen. This morning while reading the paper, I noticed that the town my sister and I went to school in (because our town didn't have a high school), where a lot of our friends are from, was one of the towns cited for their contaminated water.

This particular borough tested high since 2004 for arsenic and dry-cleaning solvent tetrachloroethyline, both carcinogens. The town has not been fined, but it has installed filtration systems to deal with the problem. But still, cheerful stuff we're dealing with here.

And this town is just one in the group that makes up about 20 percent of U.S. water systems that have in some way violated the Safe Drinking Water Act over the past five years.

Even more cheerful, studies show that millions of illnesses can be linked to dirty drinking water every year. In the past five years, a reported 49 million illnesses have been attributed to contamination by substances such as arsenic, radioactive material like uranium, and dangerous bacteria found in sewage. Worse, only some 6 percent of violating systems have been fined or punished by state or federal official.

However, the Environment Protection Agency is expected to propose a new policy today for how it polices our country's 54,700 water systems. While I find these kinds of proclamations encouraging, I can't help but feel like there's the way a policy looks on paper and then the way it is enforced in the real world. I guess we shall see. At least if all my old friends start dying off, I'll know why.

Let Me Down Easy

On Saturday, Chris and I got student rush tickets to see Anna Deavere Smith's Let Me Down Easy at the Second Stage Theatre. If you have the opportunity, go see this! It was not exactly cheerful, but you will come away with a lot to think about. You may be stirred up, but you will not be disappointed.

I'd first encountered Smith while I was doing my undergrad at Emerson, when my honors class studied her play Twilight, and ever since, I'd been hoping I'd have a chance to see her perform live. The way she embodies her incredibly varied interview subjects on stage is mind-blowing to me, especially as someone who has performance in my background.

In this one-woman show, she portrays twenty different individuals she interviewed for the play, ranging from Lauren Hutton to Lance Armstrong to a doctor from Charity Hospital in New Orleans to her aunt.

On the surface, the play is about our country and its health care system, but it is also about life and death, winning and losing and all the disparities in between. This write-up in today's Times is a pretty good summary without giving away too much.

One thing I found myself wondering was if anyone will ever be able to write a successful play about our country's twisted food culture. At first, I was thinking, "Gee, someone should do an eating disorders play," but I really think food in our country is such a broad topic and so many different groups of people have so many different and passionate feelings about it, from consumers all the way up through the government and out into the industry. I don't know how you'd keep it interesting without getting too bogged down in "this bill and that lobbyist," but it could be really fascinating.

In a country where overnutrition and obesity are starting to seem like the norm, it's quite a wake-up call to remember that a billion people in the world still go hungry. It's pretty imbalanced that in the US, we produce more food than we need, yet in many developing countries, people are starving because of a shortage of food.

Here's an article from today's Times about what's being done to address the issue, including the challenges anticipated.

Junk Food Habits—starting early

Last night, I was having a conversation with someone from Sweden about the differences she's noticed in the way people eat in the U.S. versus Sweden, and—surprise, surprise—she told me that whenever she goes home, even if she's still eating favorite treats, she loses weight.

"It's so hard for me to eat healthy here!" she said, griping about how hard unhealthy foods are pushed and how she feels like stores go out of their way to steer you away from the good stuff.

While I've never been to Sweden, I definitely agree that healthy foods are sort of marginalized here and made into these, like, luxury items, even though there are plenty of healthy foods like sweet potatoes and oatmeal and beans and lentils and such that are actually very inexpensive. The thing is, Americans have been programmed in recent years to think that eating healthy costs a lot of money.

This Times article looks at a study that was published in the journal Pediatrics of about 800 low-income Philadelphia school-children ages fourth grade to sixth grade who were able to buy about 400 calories worth of snacks with just the dollar and change in their pocket. Some of the most common snacks were candy (Sour Patch Kids, Peanut Chews) in the morning on the way to school, and chips after school—foods that are high in calories but almost totally lacking in nutritional value.

We start 'em young here, I guess. Maybe I was born an old lady, but my favorite after school snack used to be an apple with peanut butter. Cereal was another go-to. It still is. I guess I did like Fruit Roll-Ups and Fruit-by-the-Foot and Gushers when I was younger because "everybody else" was eating them and they were all over TV. At least those things were fortified with vitamin C, if just barely...

What's it going to take for people to stop equating "healthy" with "boring" and "expensive?" That's not the kind of attitude we should be passing down to our children.

Michael Pollan's Rules

I know that posting about Michael Pollan on a nutrition blog is kind of like posting about jeans on a fashion blog, but the guy is popular for a reason...

This January, he has a new book coming out in which he offers 20 Rules to Eat By. Part of his research included posting a request on Tara Parker-Pope's Well blog on NYTimes.com, asking readers to submit their own rules. Within days he had over 2,500 responses.

"My premise," he says, "is that for all the authority we grant to science in matters of nutrition, culture still has a lot to teach us about how to choose, prepare and eat food, and that this popular wisdom is worth preserving — perhaps today more than ever, in this era of dazzling food science, supersize portions and widespread dietary confusion."

You can read more about these rules here.

Wanna see some of Pollan's favorite rules?

By now you've probably heard that Conde Nast is shutting down their magazines Gourmet and Cookie, along with three Bridal Magazines.

Gourmet has been around since 1941, enthralling readers with its articles about cooking and travel. As the New York Times puts it, "Gourmet poured money into sumptuous photography, test kitchens and exotic travel pieces, resulting in a beautifully produced magazine that lived, and sold, the high life."

In the current economic climate, I guess selling the high life isn't as profitable a business as it used to be. Fewer people can afford to be interested. Bon Appetit, however, which I've heard called the "younger, hipper sister" to Gourmet, has been doing better in both readership and ad sales, largely in part to the fact that it focuses more recipes than it does on the lifestyles of the rich and well-traveled.

I always think it's sad when a magazine folds. Having worked in publishing and seeing how people throw themselves into the creation of a product, I can imagine how sharp the sting must be, especially if you've been working on one of the most esteemed publications in its class.

On the flip side of that, I once had an interview at Cookie just as I was about to graduate from college, and boy, am I glad that didn't work out. Who knows, though? Perhaps even if it had worked out, I might have been laid off by now. I think what's happening in the publishing industry is really sad. The internet is great, but it's hardly a substitute for being able to bring a magazine on the bus to pass the time and relax.

Teaching Schools to Care

Today on her blog, Food Politics, Marion Nestle described a recent tour she took of a few schools in the New York area

Her conclusion: "School food can be really good, even in poor neighborhoods, if everyone involved cares about it. Can we teach schools to care? Of course we can."

She also references an article that ran in the Times on October 2nd about how local schools are banning bake sales as part of a new wellness policy that also limits what can be sold in vending machines.

I think that in some ways, children are the most susceptible to the intense marketing of unhealthy foods. I'm in favor of these restrictions. Doritos and Snickers bars are not going to give students the fuel they need to perform. Plus, eating a real meal makes it easier to stay awake during class. Schools are a really great place to begin reinforcing the importance—and benefits–of making positive choices.

Maybe if people stopped talking so much in terms of enforcing restrictions and instead using language that emphasizes the inclusion of more healthy foods it might foster a more upbeat attitude. Rather than focus on what you're giving up, focus on the good things you're embracing.

When An Unlucky Hamburger Changes Everything

On the front of today's New York Times is an article about a woman who was paralyzed from the waist down in 2007 after eating a hamburger tainted with E. coli. I'm not going to go on an anti-beef rant here, but it is worth taking into consideration that ground beef alone has been responsible for a reported 16 outbreaks in the past three years. And this past summer, according to this article, ground beef had to be recalled from over 3,000 grocery stores in 41 states. Un-f-ing-acceptable.

While vegetables are not immune to contamination (remember the E. coli in spinach incident or the Salmonella outbreak in peanut butter last winter?), stories like this one really do make a good case for limiting the amount of meat you consume. True, a consumer can take steps to prepare food in a safe manner, but if the store is selling you a tainted product, there's really nothing you can do. And yes, if your number is up, your number is up. However, you can potentially turn the odds in your favor by not playing the game as often.

And try to educate yourself because, clearly, the food companies really aren't looking out for you. They just want to sell their product, and sometimes maintaining clean and sanitary facilities is not a priority. Stories like this make me so mad because this young woman should not be in this position.

Ugh, sorry, that is a total rant. I just find this stuff so sad. I can only imagine how this girl's mother feels—she's the one who cooked the aforementioned unlucky hamburger. She was just trying to feed her family, and look what happened. Not fair.

Here's a little more info included with the article about how various companies handle their beef to help prevent outbreak.

The Fine Print on Priobiotics

When it comes to promoting good health and protecting against illness, many people turn to probiotics.

Probiotics are microorganisms that work by restoring the balance of intestinal bacteria and raising resistance to harmful germs. Many food companies often slap a "Contains Probiotics" label on their product without really explaining which strains are present and what said strains supposedly do.

In the Science section of today's Times, Tara Parker Pope delves into the murkiness behind probiotic health claims on food labels.

"When the label tells you the food you are buying 'contains probiotics,'" she says, "are you getting health benefits or just marketing hype? Perhaps a bit of both."

Read more here.

Big Food Vs. Big Insurance

On September 10th, the New York Times ran an Op-Ed by Michael Pollan titled "Big Food Vs. Big Insurance." In the piece, Pollan reflects on the health care debate and suggests that the fact that the U.S. spends twice as much on health care per person as most European countries is because that, on average, we're fatter, according to a recent study.

So many chronic diseases are linked to diet, yet people seem slow to use the power they have to eat better and help prevent the development of these illnesses, such as Type II diabetes (which the U.S. is spending $16 billion to treat).

"That’s why our success in bringing health care costs under control ultimately depends on whether Washington can summon the political will to take on and reform a second, even more powerful industry: the food industry," he says, calling the way American's eat the "elephant in the room" during the healthcare debate.

"To put it more bluntly," says Pollan, "the government is putting itself in the uncomfortable position of subsidizing both the costs of treating Type 2 diabetes and the consumption of high-fructose corn syrup."

He praises the soda tax and the new "are you pouring on the fat?" anti-sugary beverage ad campaign as well as innovations in the approach to tackling childhood obesity.

Personally, I agree with a lot of what he says, but reforming the food industry is going to take a lot of time and energy. I'd love to see a bunch of people get on board for this and make it priority, but the U.S. really isn't so big on preventative medicine. You'd almost think they want you to get as sick as possible so you'll just have to spend more to "fix the problem." That's just my cynical viewpoint on it, though perhaps that "wait until a problem develops and then treat just the acute symptoms thing" is more subconscious, something deeply ingrained in our society and not a conscious attempt at making more money.

The main thing I feel after reading this is that I hope a lot more people wake up to the idea that if you work to maintain a healthy lifestyle during the course of your life, you're more likely to avoid preventable, expensive illnesses. The question is how are you going to wake them up?

Another New York Times Piece

In a July 29th article, former New York Times food critic Frank Bruni explores the awkward, nerve-wracking territory parents encounter when it comes to their children's eating habits. Anyone interested in the communication between parents and children about healthy eating, especially as childhood obesity continues to be a concern, should find this interesting. Of course, how do you promote healthy messages without setting the stage for an eating disorder?

An excerpt:

What’s the best course for today’s parent, in a society where fast-food come-ons drown out Alice Waters, and models no thicker than swizzle sticks still rule fashion magazines?

“We get nutrition advice, but that’s not the same as eating advice,” said Rebecca Saidenberg, a Manhattan mother of a 16-year-old girl, referring to child-rearing tips. She said that as her daughter went through puberty, she worked particularly hard to encourage healthy habits — balanced meals, restrained portions — in the hopes of minimizing the chances of a weight problem that might follow her daughter through life.

At the same time, Ms. Saidenberg wanted to push back against “a trend of treating food like medicine.”

“I don’t like that,” she said. “There are a lot of psychological pleasures that come from sitting at a table and enjoying a meal.” She doesn’t want her daughter deprived of those.

So she didn’t despair when the teenager recently returned from a summer trip to Italy during which, it was clear, the joys of gelato were fully explored. But she did get herself and her daughter a membership at a local gym, where they go together.

In my conversations with Ms. Saidenberg and other parents, I was struck by just how much thought they had given to coaxing their children toward sensible eating and away from extreme indulgence or self-denial. They clearly saw that as a parental responsibility akin to giving a child a first-rate education.

But their prescriptions and beliefs diverged, illustrating the elusiveness of a ready consensus about what’s most effective.

If you haven't had a chance, check out Bruni's piece about his own issues with food and disordered eating here in his piece, "I Was A Baby Bulimic" from July. He also has a memoir called Born Round that sounds pretty interesting.

Nutritious Cooking Tips

Ever wonder whether it's better to broil or microwave that broccoli?

Turns out, microwaving is the better option if your concern is retaining the nutrients in the vegetable.

Read here for more nutritious cooking tips, as featured in the New York Times Well blog today.

Fun stuff. I wish I had the energy to roast garlic and bake potatoes and stuff today, but I am damn tired from running around trying to get all my paperwork in order for a last-minute chemistry course I got into.