The Woman Who Wants To Be World’s Fattest Closes In On 1,000 lb
To counterbalance the articles on this site bemoaning the increasing rates of obesity, here’s one from the Daily Mail (where else?) about Donna Simpson, the New Jersey woman who is already gargantuan and wants to become even fatter to set a new world record:
Donna Simpson already weighs 43st, but she is determined to nearly double her size to become the world’s fattest woman. The 42-year-old from New Jersey, U.S, is set on reaching the 1,000lb mark (71st) in just two years. Remarkably she insists she is healthy, despite now needing a mobility scooter when she goes shopping.
Donna Simpson already weighs 43 stone but is consuming an astonishing 12,000 calories a day in a quest to become the world’s fattest woman. ‘My favourite food is sushi, but unlike others I can sit and…
Modern Food Is Changing Our Minds As Well As Our Bodies
David A. Kessler, a former commisioner at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, says our favorite foods are making us fat, yet we can’t resist, because eating them is changing our minds as well as bodies. It’s something the producers of the disinformation® documentary Killer At Large also discussed, but coming as it does from someone with as much credibility and influence as Mr. Kessler in his book The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite, perhaps we’ll actually start to listen to his advice, dispensed here in the Guardian:
For years I wondered why I was fat. I lost weight, gained it back, and lost it again – over and over and over. I owned suits in every size. As a former commissioner of the FDA (the US Food and Drug Administration), surely I should have the answer to my problems. Yet food held remarkable sway over my behaviour.
The latest science seemed to suggest being overweight was my destiny. I was fat because my body’s “thermostat” was set high. If I lost weight, my body would try to get it back, slowing down my metabolism till I returned to my predetermined set point.
But this theory didn’t explain why so many people, in the US and UK in particular, were getting significantly fatter. For thousands of years, human body weight had stayed remarkably stable. Millions of calories passed through our bodies, yet with rare exceptions our weight neither rose nor fell. A perfect biological system seemed to be at work. Then, in the 80s, something changed…
Mapping The American Burger Wars
The excellent WeatherSealed by Stephen Von Worley graphically illustrates the battle for dominance in the American fast food stakes:
Imagine, if you will, the burger force – a field of energy that radiates from every freshly-cooked patty, earth-penetrating and inverse-squared with distance, compelling the hungry carnivore to seek out and devour the well-done ground beef at the source.
Now, wrap that concept in a Star Wars motif – set in the present day, with the second-tier burger chains as the rebels – each, by themselves, without mutual aid, battling the 12,000-plus restaurant McEmpire. The situation is most dire, for the upstarts control but a few significant islands of territory amid the overwhelming and darkly-rendered influence of the McForce:
Territory controlled by the eight largest U.S. burger chains.
In this and the following graphic, each individual restaurant location has equal power. The…
Weight Watchers Endorses McDonalds
How to destroy your brand fast! As reported in the Guardian:
McDonald’s is hardly an ideal dining location for anyone struggling to stay slim. But the fast food chain scored a PR coup today when Weight Watchers agreed to endorse some of its products in New Zealand – a move met with outrage by nutritionists and obesity experts.
As part of the deal, which the company says is the first of its kind in the world, McDonald’s will use the Weight Watchers logo on its menu boards and Weight Watchers will promote McDonald’s to dieters.
The link-up is the fast-food chain’s latest attempt to improve its reputation by securing endorsements. In January, to the horror of gastronomes, Italy’s agriculture minister, Luca Zaia, helped launch the McItaly range of burgers. For a representative of…
90 Percent of High School Kids Lack Sufficient Intake of Fruits, Veggies
From Natural News:
Less than 10 percent of high school students in the United States meet the federally recommended daily intake of fruits and vegetables, according to a study conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
“A diet high in fruits and vegetables is important for optimal child growth, maintaining a healthy weight, and prevention of chronic diseases such as diabetes, heart disease and some cancers, ” said William H. Dietz, director of the Nutrition, Physical Activity, and Obesity Division of the CDC. “This report will help states determine what is taking place in their communities and schools and come up with ways to encourage people to eat more fruits and vegetables.”
In 2007, the CDC surveyed both adults and high school students on their daily consumption of fruits or…
Childhood Obesity Linked To Heart Disease
One more reason not to let your kids eat junk food, drink soda and so forth (see the disinformation® documentary Killer At Large for more on that), reported by the BBC:
Obese children as young as three years old show signs of future heart disease, say US researchers.
A study of 16,000 children and teenagers showed the most obese had signs of an inflammatory marker which can predict future heart disease.
In all, 40% of obese three-to-five-year olds had raised levels of C-reactive protein compared with 17% of healthy weight children, Pediatrics reported. But more work is needed to prove the link with heart disease in later life. The study, carried out by a team at the University of North Carolina (UNC), looked at children aged one to 17.
Overall, nearly 70% were a healthy…
Michael Pollan on Food Rules: An Eaters Manual on Democracy Now!
Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman: Michael Pollan, the author of The Omnivores Dilemma and In Defense of Food, discusses the link between healthcare and diet, the dangers of processed foods, the power of the meat industry lobby, the nutritional-industrial complex, the impact industrial agriculture has on global warming, and his sixty-four rules for eating. The markets are full of what I call edible food-like substances that you have to avoid, says Michael Pollan. So a lot of the rules are to help you, you know, navigate that now very treacherous landscape of the American supermarket. Today we air an excerpt of the Oscar-nominated documentary Food, Inc. and then spend the rest of the show with Michael Pollan.
Poisonous Sweetener Aspartame Renamed AminoSweet
I can personally attest that aspartame is a poison to be avoided at all costs. I guess that also applies to AminoSweet, as reported in Natural News:
In response to growing awareness about the dangers of artificial sweeteners, what does the manufacturer of one of the world’s most notable artificial sweeteners do? Why, rename it and begin marketing it as natural, of course. This is precisely the strategy of Ajinomoto, maker of aspartame, which hopes to pull the wool over the eyes of the public with its rebranded version of aspartame, called “AminoSweet”.
Over 25 years ago, aspartame was first introduced into the European food supply. Today, it is an everyday component of most diet beverages, sugar-free desserts, and chewing gums in countries worldwide. But the tides have been turning as the…
The Seven Essentials For Longer Life Spans
From the Seattle Times/AP:
Here are the seven secrets to a long life: Stay away from cigarettes. Keep a slender physique. Get some exercise. Eat a healthful diet and keep your cholesterol, blood pressure and blood sugar in check.
Research shows that most 50-year-olds who do that can live an additional 40 years free of stroke and heart disease, two of the most common killers, said Dr. Clyde Yancy, president of the American Heart Association. The heart association published the advice online Wednesday in the journal Circulation.
The group also introduced an online quiz to help people gauge how close they are to the ideal. Tips are offered for those who fall short.
“These seven factors — if you can keep them ideal or control them — end up being the fountain of youth…
Weight Watchers Clinic Floor Collapses Under Massive Weight Of Dieters
One more for the ever expanding list of hazards from over-eating (for more check out the classic doc Killer At Large), as the Telegraph reports that the floor of a Weight Watchers clinic in Sweden has collapsed beneath a group of 20 members of the weight loss program who were gathered for a meeting:
As the dieters queued to see how many pounds they had shed, the floor beneath them in the clinic in Växjö, in south-central Sweden, began to rumble, according to a report in The Local, Sweden’s English-language newspaper.
“We suddenly heard a huge thud; we almost thought it was an earthquake and everything flew up in the air.
“The floor collapsed in one corner of the room and along the walls,” one Weight Watchers participant told the Smålandsposten newspaper.
Soon, the fault…
Obesity Rates Hit Plateau in U.S.
So it is good news or bad news? The spin from the CDC, echoed in this New York Times report, is that it’s good news, but considering that former Surgeon General, Richard Carmona has stated that “obesity is a terror within. It is destroying our society from within and unless we do something about it, the magnitude of the dilemma will dwarf 9/11 or any other terrorist event that you can point out…” (see the knockout disinformation documentary Killer At Large for much more on that), maintaining the status quo has to be bad news, doesn’t it?
Americans, at least as a group, may have reached their peak of obesity, according to data the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released Wednesday.
The numbers indicate that obesity rates have remained constant for at least…
The New Caveman Diet
Is this the latest regurgitation of the Atkins/Southbeach type diet fad? Or are we finally de-volving?
via NY Times
Mr. Durant, 26, who works in online advertising, is part of a small New York subculture whose members seek good health through a selective return to the habits of their Paleolithic ancestors.
Or as he and some of his friends describe themselves, they are cavemen.
The caveman lifestyle, in Mr. Durant’s interpretation, involves eating large quantities of meat and then fasting between meals to approximate the lean times that his distant ancestors faced between hunts. Vegetables and fruit are fine, but he avoids foods like bread that were unavailable before the invention of agriculture. Mr. Durant believes the human body evolved for a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, and his goal is to wean himself off what he sees as many millenniums of bad habits.
These urban cavemen also choose exercise routines focused on sprinting and jumping, to replicate how a prehistoric person might have fled from a mastodon.
New Food Fad: The Jesus Diet
The Daily Mail reports on a hot new way to knock off the pounds: mimicking the diet of Christ. Because the scripture is all about weight loss:
Faith-based diets take the principles of Christianity and apply them to our overwhelming craving for chocolate, chips and cheese.
The trend began in America in the Eighties, but it’s finally taking hold [in Europe], with Christian weight-loss groups springing up, and dramatically increased sales of ’spiritual dieting’ books such as Hallelujah Diet and The God Diet.
What Would Jesus Eat? author Dr. Don Colbert explains: ‘Jesus ate…lots of vegetables, especially beans and lentils. He would have eaten wheat bread, fruit, drunk a lot of water and also red wine. And he would only eat meat on special occasions.’
How Green Are Those Veggies?
By Brendan Borrell for the Washington Post:
I know you can buy local or buy organic, but I’ve heard that some crops are simply more resource-intensive than others, regardless of how or where they are grown. So what’s the key to picking foods that have the smallest environmental footprint?
We’ve been over the environmental benefits of choosing poultry over beef in a previous column. But you’re right to suggest that the same sort of logic can apply to picking vegetarian foodstuffs. Certain crops require loads of phosphate fertilizer, for example, which is mined from the ground and can eventually cause stream-choking algal growth. Other fruits and veggies are grown with heavy doses of pesticides, fungicides and other chemicals that can pollute waterways and cause reproductive problems in animals.
So how do you know…
Horror Show: Movie Popcorn = 3 Burgers + 12 Pats of Butter
Another story in the ‘you only just realized that?!?’ category, from Fox News (for a better look at how we’re killing ourselves with processed foods watch Killer At Large):
The food at movie theaters is scarier than “Nightmare on Elm Street,” a frightening new study reveals.
The double-features of artery-clogging tubs of fatty-fried popcorn and sugary, super-sized drinks — not to mention high-calorie candy — is nothing short of a health hazard, according to the Center for Science in the Public Interest.
It sent food from three national theater chains to a lab and found they may have to soon start installing extra-wide seats.
The worst offender, the study found, was Regal Cinemas, where a medium popcorn contains 1,200 calories oozing with coconut oil and saturated fat.
The lab calorie counts were higher than claimed by…
Eight Ways In-Vitro Meat Changes Our Lives
This fascinating article describes eight ways in-vitro meat will change the world, including the ability to taste endangered animals and even extinct species like dinosaurs!
“Future flesh” could also eliminate 51% of all human-caused greenhouse gas emissions (and 90% of choking victims), and “test tube steak” is also cheaper, healthier, and greener. (A quarter of the earth’s land is currently used to grow meat, along with 8% of the world’s water.) It could reduce animal-to-human diseases while eliminating artery-clogging saturated fats from our diets, replacing them with heart-healthy Omega-3 while eliminating hormones and mercury (as well as e. coli and salmonella).
And someone will finally claim PETA’s $1 million prize for anyone who can market a competitive in-vitro meat by 2012.
High-Carb Diets Lower Weight and Raise Mood Levels
By Jeannine Stein in the LA TImes:
Which is better for weight loss — a high-protein diet or a high-carb diet? That endless debate got a new twist Monday.
In a yearlong study, Australian researchers found that both diets worked equally well when it came to shedding pounds but those on the low-carb diet were in considerably worse moods.
The report, published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, assigned 106 overweight and obese men and women to either a low-carb diet high in fat and protein or a high-carb diet low in fat and protein.
The participants’ weight was noted at weeks eight, 24, 40 and 52, and their emotional state was evaluated via three standard questionnaires measuring aspects of mood, including anxiety, depression and anger.
Both groups lost an average of 30 pounds, slightly…
The Gut Response To What We Eat
Nell Greenfield Boyce reports for NPR:
A high-fat, high-sugar diet can quickly and dramatically change the population of microbes living in the digestive tract, according to a new study of human gut bugs transplanted into mice.
Trillions of microbes live inside the human gut, and one of their functions is to process parts of foods that we can’t digest on our own. Recent studies have suggested that certain populations of microbes may be associated with obesity.
“The energetic and nutrient value of food may not be an absolute term, but one that is modified in part by the microbes that live in our gut — who’s there in this community, how they operate, and how they operate in relationship to what we are eating,” says Jeffrey Gordon of Washington University School of Medicine in…
High Protein Diets ‘Could Cause Alzheimer’s Disease’
Richard Alleyne writes in the Telegraph
Researchers found that mice fed meals similar to those of the original Atkin’s Diet had brains five per cent lighter than all the others.
They also found that the hippocampus part of the brain, which is responsible for memory, were less developed in those rodents on the high protein diet. Scientists say the findings, published in the journal Molecular Neurodegeneration, suggest the ravages of dementia “might be slowed or avoided through healthy eating”.
Previous research has discovered Mediterranean-style low-calorie, low-fat diets rich in vegetables, fruits, and fish may delay the onset or slow the progression of Alzheimer’s disease. Researchers used mice specially bred to develop Alzheimer’s.
The animals were fed either a regular diet, a high fat-low carbohydrate diet, a high protein-low carb version or a high carb-low…
