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Month: September 2007 (Page 3 of 4)

Americans are Getting Shorter

September 8, 2007 / / 0 Comments

Average height of a population is related to health and quality of diet. This has been known for a long time. In colonial times, Americans were the tallest people in the world. When traveling in Europe, Americans were accustomed to towering over the rest of the crowd. This makes sense because the average American had a healthier lifestyle, healthier environment, and better diet than his European counterpart. But that’s all changed over the last 50 years. Americans are becoming shorter (and fatter) and Europeans are becoming taller. The average Dutch male is now 5 cm taller than the average American male and the difference is growing. The difference in women is even greater. The average Dutch woman is 5.9 cm taller than her American counterpart. Despite the fundamental importance of this trend, this gets little or no press coverage in the United States for some reason.

Why is this happening? An article in Social Science Quarterly says “… we can conjecture that there are differences in the diet of U.S. and European children that could affect human growth. For example, U.S. children consume more meals prepared outside the home, more fast food rich in fat, high in energy density, and low in essential micronutrients, than do European children.”

For the moment, Americans are still doing well on average in terms of lifespan but this may be due to the oceans of drugs we consume to treat illness. It’s better not to get sick in the first place so this lead will probably disappear as the current “short and fat generation” ages.

How Bush Gets Away With It

September 6, 2007 / / 1 Comment

“If this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck of a lot easier,
just so long as I’m the dictator.”
-George W. Bush, December 18, 2000

When observing Bush’s actions since 9/11, people wonder how he gets away with blatantly violating laws such as those regarding domestic spying. Have you wondered why Congress does nothing about it, even with democrats in control? Breaking a law is a criminal act and grounds for impeachment, and yet nothing happens, nothing is said. And nothing is ever going to happen either. Bush and his associates will never be prosecuted for any of these crimes. Why? Because the Office of Legal Counsel (probably the most powerful organization in the U.S. that you’ve never heard of) approved all of Bush’s actions. The blessings from the Office of Legal Counsel gave permission for these activities and confers immunity from prosecution on anyone who acts on their recommendations. The Office of Legal Counsel’s decisions carry the same weight as a Supreme Court decision and cannot be challenged in any way.

Last night I listened to a great interview. Terry Gross interviewed Charlie Savage, author of In Pursuit of the Imperial President. Savage gives a complete explanation of what has happened in a clear concise manner, including how Bush managed to co-opt this all-powerful Office of Legal Counsel. There’s a concrete reason that the president can do what he does and get away with it and there’s nothing we can do about it. If you’ve wondered about this mystery, wonder no more. You can listen to the interview here:

http://www.npr.org/templates/rundowns/rundown.php?prgId=13&agg=0&prgDate=09-05-2007&view=storyview

The above link is to NPR’s show called Fresh Air, September 5th, 2007. It will be 39 minutes well spent. When you get there, click on the “Listen” button.

Americans Get Half Their Calories From Sugar!

September 6, 2007 / / 0 Comments

Did you know that today’s average American gets half of his or her calories every day from sugar? It’s true. The average American today consumes 160 pounds of sugar per year. A hundred years ago, this figure was 10 pounds per year. This is great for the sugar companies but must be partly to blame for the explosion in obesity in the U.S.A.

Americans have become sugar addicts. Besides Coke and soda pop that’s loaded with sugar (Coke contains something like 10 teaspoons of sugar per can) read the labels in the fruit juice aisle at the market. Nearly all of them are labeled as “fruit drink” or “fruit cocktail” and are loaded with corn syrup. It’s hard to find a bottle that contains just plain fruit juice. Look at the calories on these fruit “juices”. It’s shocking.

Three years ago I was living in a warm climate and took to drinking lots of “fruit juice”. I thought I was doing myself a favor. After all, it said Vitamin C right on the label. But I noticed that I began to gain weight rapidly. I discussed it with a friend and she asked me to do a complete diet inventory, so I did. I discovered that I was consuming 1,200 to 1,500 calories a day, every day, just in “fruit juice”. I stopped that cold and switched to water. For the next two days, my vision was not quite right. A lifelong diabetic friend explained that this was normal because I stopped the huge constant sugar intake so suddenly. He explained that it would take a couple days for my pancreas to adjust to the new sugar levels. He was right. Since then I have limited my fruit juice intake to only real juices, not spiked with sugar or corn syrup, and about a glass per day. Lots of water and iced tea make up the rest of my fluid intake.

I was a prime example of the statistic I mentioned above. By quitting the “fruit flavored juice” I dropped nearly 20 pounds, back to my normal weight.

Olive Oil that Ain’t

September 5, 2007 / / 3 Comments

A piece on NPR about adulterated Olive Oil was shocking. This prompted me to do some research and reading. Bottom line, I learned that adulteration of olive oil is not something that happens now and then. It’s very common. It’s so common that much of the oil labeled Extra Virgin Olive Oil in your supermarket isn’t what it says it is. It is soybean, or canola, or hazelnut oil with coloring and flavoring added. Some of it is olive oil that is misgraded or diluted with other oils.

Real EVOO is expensive. If the oil is inexpensive there’s a good chance it’s fake.

Apparently there is a lot of fraud and little enforcement in the U.S. Operators will set up in a warehouse, mix up and bottle 10 or 20,000 gallons of oil, and disappear, all in a few days, leaving no trace to track them down.

The Italian flags, quaint Italian names, “Product of Italy”, “Produced in Italy” colorfully printed on the label is bogus. On top of the outright fraudulent olive oils, that aren’t olive oil at all, that are mixed up in an abandoned warehouse in South Philly, there are operators who are actually located in Italy, who import olive oils from all over the world in bulk and bottle it in Italy. So it actually was “produced” in Italy but it is not Italian olive oil.

Europe is much more strict about EVOO than the U.S.A. but even so, Italian growers watch their crops like a hawk, they escort their olives to the pressing mill, they watch their olives pressed and their oil loaded into their trucks and they take it home to bottle it. It never leaves their sight because of potential fraud. They go through that much trouble even in Italy.

All this is a bummer for me because I love olive oil. For me, it doesn’t have to be Italian but it does have to be real olive oil. The fraud problem explains why some bottles of “olive oil” I’ve purchased in the past were odd tasting and didn’t behave like olive oil.

For more about the problem:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12571726

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