Fat Kids Get Bullied No Matter Who They Are
Photo: Walter Siegmund (CC)
Anyone who has ever attended school in America knows this is true — the surprise is that it’s “news,” but on the other hand if it serves as a reminder to parents and schools that serving up processed junk food to children is a very bad thing, then so be it.
For kids, a few extra pounds may invite trouble from the schoolyard bully.
New research suggests that just being overweight increases the risk of being bullied. And factors that usually play a role in the risk of being bullied, such as gender, race and family income levels, don’t seem to matter if you’re overweight — being overweight or obese trumps all those other factors when it comes to aggressive behavior from other children.
The study found that being overweight increased the risk of being the target of bullying by 63 percent.
“One of the reasons…
Too Fat To Fight: Childhood Obesity Endangers National Security
At the beginning of the disinformation® documentary Killer At Large Surgeon General Richard Carmona states 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…” Now a group of ex-military leaders is making another warning about obesity becoming a threat to national security. Here’s the press release from the group, MISSION: READINESS:
More than 9 million young adults – 27 percent of all Americans age 17 to 24 – are too overweight to join the military, according to a new report released by MISSION: READINESS, a non-profit group of more than 130 retired admirals, generals and other senior military leaders.
Declaring that escalating rates of child obesity pose a serious threat to national security, retired military leaders joined Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN) and U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack today in support of new child nutrition legislation to help reduce the obesity epidemic and expand the pool of healthy young adults available for military service…
Double Down by the Numbers:
Unhealthiest Sandwich Ever?
Congratulations Double Down, you are now the sandwich against which all others will be judged. Via fivethirtyeight:
KFC’s Double Down Sandwich, an in-your-face collection of bacon, cheese and something called Colonel’s Sauce betwixt two fried chicken “buns”, is making waves for its unapologetic gluttony, compelling reviews out of everyone from the New York Times’s Sam Sifton to the Onion’s Nathan Rabin.
But is it really the caloric monstrosity that it appears?
Let’s start with the Double Down’s calorie count: 540 calories for the crispy “Original Recipe” version and 460 for a grilled variant. Those seem like big numbers, but by fast food standards, they’re pretty mild: the Burger King Chicken Tendercrisp weighs in at 800 calories, for instance, and Jack-in-the-Box’s Ranch Chicken Club will set you back 700. Calorie counts for burgers are even higher: 1,320 for a Hardee’s Monster Thickburger, and 1,350 for a Wendy’s Triple Baconator. Even the humble Big Mac, a lightweight by modern standards, contains 540 calories, exactly the same number as the Double Down.
Some Serious Thinking About Obesity
The obesity crisis gets the intellectual treatment in this article by Marc Ambinder in the Atlantic:
By 2015, four out of 10 Americans may be obese. Until last year, the author was one of them. The way he lost one-third of his weight isn’t for everyone. But unless America stops cheering The Biggest Loser and starts getting serious about preventing obesity, the country risks being overwhelmed by chronic disease and ballooning health costs. Will first lady Michelle Obama’s new plan to fight childhood obesity work, or is it just another false start in the country’s long and so far unsuccessful war against fat?
In 1948, Congress doled out $5 billion to Europe in the first installment of the Marshall Plan, the World Health Organization was born, a simian astronaut named Albert I was launched into the atmosphere (he died), and doctors…
The KFC Double Down
More like Double Bypass! This thing is both terrifying and captivating, like a harbinger of the apocalypse.
“This product is so meaty, there’s no room for a bun!”
KFC Original Recipe® Double Down
Calories: 540
Fat (g): 32
Sodium (mg): 1380
This one-of-a-kind sandwich features two thick and juicy boneless white meat chicken filets, two pieces of bacon, two melted slices of Monterey Jack and pepper jack cheese and Colonel’s Sauce. This product is so meaty, there’s no room for a bun!
Pepsi Scientists Solve Obesity Crisis With Potato Chips
Now here’s corporate thinking to believe in, gotta please those shareholders. As the author of the article says, eating fewer chips potato chips is not an option. Hamilton Nolan writes on Gawker:
Health food manufacturer and exponentially dimensionalized fulcrum of universal gravity PepsiCo is investing hundreds of millions of dollars in an effort to make America healthier, with things like “designer” salt crystals for Lay’s potato chips. What else could they do?
Because of inherent concern about the health of you, the consumer, PepsiCo spent more than $400 million in product development costs last year, all with an eye towards developing products that will kill Americans more slowly. “What we want to do with our ‘fun for you’ products is to make them the healthiest ‘fun for you’ products,” said PepsiCo chairman Indra Nooyi, emphasizing PepsiCo’s dual commitment to health and to providing a nonstop party in your mouth.
The latest corporate success:…
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…
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 weight, 15% were overweight, 11% were obese and 3.5% were very obese. In the older age groups, the proportion of…
Study Links Soda and Pancreatic Cancer
Many of us know that consumption of sugar (or more likely corn syrup)-laden carbonated drinks is a major cause of the obesity epidemic (see the disinformation® documentary Killer At Large for more on that), but now it seems that they can lead to pancreatic cancer too. Reported by Reuters via RAW Story:
People who drink two or more sweetened soft drinks a week have a much higher risk of pancreatic cancer, an unusual but deadly cancer, researchers reported on Monday.
People who drank mostly fruit juice instead of sodas did not have the same risk, the study of 60,000 people in Singapore found.
Sugar may be to blame but people who drink sweetened sodas regularly often have other poor health habits, said Mark Pereira of the University of Minnesota, who led the study.
“The high levels of sugar in soft drinks may be increasing the level of insulin in the body, which we think contributes to pancreatic cancer cell growth,” Pereira said in a statement.
Insulin, which helps the body metabolize sugar, is made in the pancreas.
Star Wars Teams Up With… Ugh… McDonalds
Great commentary by Killer At Large producer Bryan Young, in the Examiner:
Perhaps I have a different perspective on this than a lot of people, but I’ll explain it and hopefully you’re all with me on this.
Star Wars is doing a Happy Meal promotion with McDonald’s for their Clone Wars series starting Februrary 26th. (More information on that here). The 8 year old in me jumps for joy. The parent in me is filled with disappointment and disgust. My kids aren’t allowed to eat food of such poor quality and now I’m going to have to tell them they can’t have these Star Wars toys because I refuse to buy them junk food.
I understand that this makes sense from a marketing perspective, but the problem is that marketing junk food to kids with beloved characters and properties like Star Wars is morally reprehensible. I spent two years making a documentary about the…
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 lines spread around the room, and other sections of the floor gave way…
[continues in the Telegraph]
…
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 five years among men and for closer to 10 years among women and children — long enough for experts to say…
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 Regal. The company said its medium popcorn has 720 calories.
Click here to find out about other movie snacks.
“Oh, well. What’s…
