Odds and Ends

Wow - I have been a busy little student this week - but it was also fall break so I had a few extra moments :)

Subsidizing Fat: In my research this week I came across three references, three different sources, to the practice of subsidizing (price control, direct payments, land grants, etc) certain crops, fuels or livestock in the USA and how some of that inadvertently or directly leads to overconsumption of high caloric foods. For example, dairy, red meat and corn syrup. Thus, the government might not be ready to suggest we limit some of those things in our diet.

Disabled or Fit: I heard, in passing, that a European country was instituting a policy that required a fit test for people who were submitting disability claims based on physical inability, weakness or disease. My reaction? "Oh please let us do that here."

IU/HCC: Well that is the note I wrote for myself days ago that I now have to decipher. Indiana University and a Healthy Community Collaborative - no Healthy Cities - oh bother - the point is - these two partnered on a project and their main goal was to "Make the Healthy Choice the Easy Choice." Which I love. It sounds a little like my drive to make healthy choices socially possible not just socially acceptable.

Helmets: I wear a helmet when I ride my bicycle. It is to prevent injury. In NC and in some form or another in several other states, children under the age of 16 are required by law to wear a helmets for cycling. On Saturday, I passed a lot of cyclists on my run. At one point, a group of maybe ten people entered the Greenway as I was leaving. They appeared to be between the ages of six and fifty, with teenagers included. The "parents" or adults in the group were NOT wearing helmets. It made me think - the law covers those under age 16 as we might expect that until that age common sense is lacking - apparently people over age 16 also lack sense. And really, parents?!? If you can't do it why do you expect your kids to? The only thing geeky about helmets is not wearing them.

Too THIN: People say the darndest things to people who are of low weight - and that is a relative concept in the context of a 30% prevalence of normal weight people in the USA (around 3% of kids and under 2% of adults are actually underweight according to BMI). Are you doing the math? Over 66% of adults in the USA are OW or Obese. Anyway - the other afternoon I was walking near my apartment which is near a beautiful arboretum - when a man maybe five to ten years older than I, walked by. To be clear, I was strolling and he was walking for exercise. He came by and looked back over his shoulder to say, "You're too thin to be walking." SO - Oh SO. My friend who I told this story to later is stunned that I didn't give him one of the responses I am famous for - but you know, I just wasn't in a "teachable moment" mood that day. I smiled and said, "I am just taking a break from my studies and going for a little stroll." AAAAGH - Things I could have said, "I don't expect I am thin because I don't take walks." or "Better than sitting on my ass eating bon bons." or "Guess that 8.5 mile run this morning wasn't a good idea either." or "Well you certainly aren't! (too thin to be walking)" But you know, what he said adds to the evidence that people really believe physical activity is the be all end all for weight control - when what it really does is prevent disease.

Kids say the Darndest Things Too: In the undergraduate epidemiology class with which I assist, we discussed ecological studies this week. Those are studies that look at groups of people to suggest correlations amongst them that might relate a disease to an exposure. They do not show causes of disease - they are not experiments. The class looked at a scatter plot that showed percent of fat consumption per capita. In other words, countries were plotted out by the amount of fat consumed and the amount of breast cancer cases. From the chart it appeared that countries who consumed more fat had more cases of breast cancer. The chart does NOT tell you if the women who had breast cancer were the people in the country eating all the fat. As it turns out, obesity is related to cancer, but that has been determined elsewhere. Our class is broken into groups and at one table I overheard at least two disturbing comments. One young lady - 19 or 20- commented that if she didn't have the breast cancer gene it didn't matter what she did or didn't do. Another, a young man, offered that he didn't see what being overweight had to do with breast cancer. For those of you who also wonder, fat cells cause the release of estrogen and in some cases, estrogen promotes breast cancer.

BTW - I have some extra school things on the agenda this week and may not be able to post every day - sorry :(