Guest posted by Kate Harding
Item: School childhood obesity programs are failing, experts say
Any person looking at the published literature about these programs would have to conclude that they are generally not working, said Tom Baranowski, a pediatrics professor at Houston’s Baylor College of Medicine. He studies behavioral nutrition.
If you’re not too busy fanning yourself and going goggle-eyed in disbelief, read on.
Item: Dieting makes you fatter. (Please also read Jess’s guest post at The Rotund for an excellent critique of this article — but the study it talks about is interesting.)
What to make of all this? Mann’s analysis casts serious doubt on the value of dieting for weight control. In my pediatric practice, I’ve become increasingly reluctant to push dieting on children, even very heavy ones. Though it’s contrary to my own years-long cultivation of sloth, I am coming to believe ever more strongly in the value of pleasurable exercise for weight control and for independent health benefits, as demonstrated in innumerable medical studies.
She added: “I went to the gym and trained constantly. I wasn’t eating properly. I wanted to get as perfect as I could, knowing perfection is impossible, and that got me very sick.”
Item: The same people who brought you Kit Kats and Quik also bring you I.V. food and diet products.
Nestle was required to divest nutrition units in France and Spain to comply with antitrust demands by the European Commission, which was worried about the company’s new dominance of the market for liquid food for intravenous feeding. The deal, which gives the Swiss company control of brands such as the Boost and Resource nutritional supplements and Optifast dieting products, has 2,000 Novartis employees joining Nestle.
Item: Obesity link to high blood pressure has weakened
“If confirmed, a decreasing association between BMI and blood pressure over time could imply that the impact of the overweight epidemic on cardiovascular disease might be less important than predicted,” the investigators conclude.
“This decreased relationship could also help to explain the current favorable trends in cardiovascular disease (declining incidence) observed in many countries despite the increasing prevalence of obesity,” they point out.
In the same journal (July issue of International Journal of Obesity), a separate pediatric review article reinforces the lack of a cause and effect relationship, stating, current evidence seems insufficient to demonstrate undoubtedly that programming of obesity occurs during infancy in humans or to support recommendations for obesity prevention starting in infancy. However, as breastfeeding has demonstrated benefits other than obesity prevention, breastfeeding promotion has been recommended as part of the strategy to prevent obesity, despite the lack of experimental evidence.
Emphasis mine.
I’d share more, but I have to get my fat ass to yoga, and I assume you’re all in a dead faint from this much shocking, unthinkable news anyway.
Well I’m sure the people who buy the hamburgers with 2 Krispy Kreme donuts for a bun aren’t that healthy.
(a place down the street from me is advertising this like it’s the best thing on earth. maybe I should stop calling it the heart attack in a paper wrapper, but still it makes me shudder.)
And I forgot in my last post the Hallelujah! about people (obviously not thinking people) for figuring out that dieting’s not good for you. Maybe they’ll decide to tell the public, but then it wouldn’t sell as many books and “food” items and we can’t have that. Capitalism prevails.
OMG. I thought you were joking about the two donuts as hamburger buns. That is wrong in so many ways. I eat far too much junk food, but even I draw the line at donuts as hamburger buns.
There is *plenty* of evidence that breastfeeding has a preventative effect against obesity in later life -
see here and here and here and oh, here as well.
You take one article – which contradicts the majority of studies – and come to the conclusion that breastfeeding doesn’t protect against obesity? Seems to me you’re cherry-picking “evidence”.
Rebekka, since you said exactly the same thing here as on my blog, I’ll cut and paste my response to you there:
Rebekka, my point in quoting that article was to point out the contradiction in terms: “Breastfeeding doesn’t prevent obesity, but we recommend it as a strategy for preventing obesity.”
I’m a fan of breastfeeding. I’ve said so on this thread. You don’t have to prove it prevents obesity to prove it’s worth doing. And I don’t really give a rat’s ass if it prevents obesity, since I don’t believe obesity is a terrible thing. What I care about is when people say flat out, “We have no evidence, but we’re going to keep saying it’s true.” That happens WAY too much with obesity research.