How Portland, Maine, took a stand against childhood obesity. It spent $3.7 million to rally schools and other sites in the state. More families adopted 5-2-1-0 a day: At least 5 servings of fruits and vegetables, 2 hours or less of screen time, at least 1 hour of exercise, and 0 sugary drinks. After all that, the childhood overweight-and-obesity rate for southern Maine dipped 1.5 percentage points to 31.3%.
Full article on Maine’s resistance against obesity.
[New York City’s] Health Department is going on a diet. No deep-fried foods served at agency lunches. No cookies and cakes at the same time. And no beverages over 25 calories per ounce:
The brochure requires that tap water be on the menu when food or drinks are served and suggests bagels or muffins be cut into halves or quarters to reduce the number of calories employees intake, reports the Daily News. Also, thinly sliced, whole-grain bread is a suggested offering at work events.
Aside from the dietary rules, employees are required to adopt good personal and office hygiene habits, namely by avoiding wearing smelly products, eavesdropping and putting up signs co-workers may deem offensive, according to the new set of guidelines for “Life in the Cubicle Village” obtained by the News.
Full article on New York’s Health Department health-kick.
Arizona’s governor on Thursday proposed levying a $50 fee on some enrollees in the state’s cash-starved Medicaid program, including obese people who don’t follow a doctor-supervised slimming regimen and smokers … “If you want to smoke, go for it,” said Monica Coury, spokeswoman for Arizona’s Medicaid program. “But understand you’re going to have to contribute something for the cost of the care of your smoking.”
Do obese people generate costs for other people? Mainly not, according to a review of the literature:
In employer-provided health insurance pools, being obese causes limited externality harm because obese individuals likely pay the costs of their body weight through reduced wages. In public health insurance, there is an implicit transfer from thin people to obese people, but this transfer is progressive and seems unlikely to induce substantial social loss.
[One] way in which the obese “subsidize” the thin is, presumably, by dying earlier and not claiming as much in Social Security benefits…for 50-year olds, obesity reduces life expectancy by 1.65 years…for 65 year-olds, obesity reduces life expectancy by 1.05 years.
See Robin Hanson as well.
Wouldn’t it be great if foods had a single nutrition score you could rely on? Whole Foods’ ANDI scores are part of Eat Right America, a larger program aimed at optimizing health and weight loss. Market Street’s NuVal scores grew out of a project at Griffin Hospital, a Yale University teaching affiliate.
Still, I have my doubts. Is Kale really 100 (or 10) times better than olive oil?
As part of health care reform, the federal government has plans for a nationwide launch of mandatory nutrition information at the point of purchase for fast-food chains with 20 or more outlets. But will it make any difference? Not if the experience of King County, Washington, which includes Seattle, is any indication:
Researchers found, in the 13 months after the legislation went into effect, food-purchasing behavior at the Taco Time locations in King County was identical to that in Taco Time locations where menu boards remained unchanged. The total number of sales and average calories per transaction were unaffected by the menu labeling.
Full article on mandatory menu labeling. HT to Tyler Cowen.
Concern that patients would be overwhelmed and traumatized by the information prompted New York to ban the direct sale of genetic tests to consumers. Not to worry:
“We saw no evidence of anxiety or distress induced by the tests,” says Dr. Eric Topol, the senior author of a report published last week in The New England Journal of Medicine.
In fact, the researchers were surprised to see how little effect it had. While about a quarter of the people discussed the results with their personal physicians, they generally did not change their diets or their exercise habits even when they’d been told these steps might lower some of their risks.
The proof of Anderson County’s live-hard, die-young culture is in the bread pudding — and the all-you-can-eat fried catfish, the drive-through tobacco barns and the dozens of doughnut shops that dot this East Texas county of about 57,000.
Residents of East Texas, and particularly minorities, often make lifestyle choices, like smoking and eating high-fat diets, that affect their life expectancy. Heavy eating and chain smoking are prevalent in East Texas….
In a community where heavy eating and chain smoking are prevalent, where poverty, hardheadedness and even suspicion hinder access to basic health care, residents die at an average age of 73 — seven years earlier than the healthiest Texans…
Indeed, life expectancy lags across most of East Texas, which lives up to the grim medical nickname the Stroke Belt.
Full article on decreased life expectancy in East Texas.
Worried about an impending public health crisis, government officials are considering offering financial incentives to the pharmaceutical industry, like tax breaks and patent extensions, to spur the development of vitally needed antibiotics… a newly discovered mutation called NDM-1 renders certain germs like E. coli invulnerable to nearly all modern antibiotics….
Antibiotics are typically taken for a week or two and usually cure the patient. While that makes them cost-effective for the health system, it also makes them less lucrative to drug companies than medicines for diseases like cancer or diabetes, which might be taken for months, or even for life, because they do not cure the patient.
Full article on antibiotic research subsidies in The New York Times.
What do you do with delusional patients who all believe they are Jesus Christ? Make them confront each other in an asylum.
Is autism caused by fertility treatments? Probably not.
Should therapists “recover” memories of abuse or trauma? No.
Nicer than needles: Insulin pills for diabetes are moving ahead in clinical trials.
