McDonalds McTeacher Night

You know, sometimes it feels like we here at Ruth Notes do nothing but complain about McDonalds. It really wasn't something we set out to do; in fact, we feel somewhat bad about it. After all, McDonalds is a good old American business, a world wide success story. Nostalgia plays a part in this negative feeling, too, as does familiarity. Who doesn't get a craving for those fries, those burgers? Even when indulging that craving brings on a firm never again, as you experience the inevitable aftermath of guilt with a side of grease. Even my mother, who frowned on eating out in general and fast-food in particular, had a soft spot for McDonalds. She was a coffee connoisseur, and she assured me that theirs was the absolute best. She loved nothing better than to sit in a plastic chair at a plastic table and sip away at a boiling hot cup a' joe, nibbling on a small order of fries.

Even given all the happiness you gave my mom and many millions of others through the years, I just can't let this new atrocity slide, McDonalds, especially when Mom was a teacher, and proud of it. What am I talking about? Click on the below image to enlarge, and read at your peril.

This comic is by the award-winning, nationally syndicated cartoonist Jen Sorensen, who specializes in political and social commentary. This one is, as many of her cartoons are, spot-on with the machinations our not-so-favorite fast-food giant. It's a great introduction to the issue, which you can read more about by following this link.

Food, Glorious Food

If you're anything like me and my family, chances are you're going to be slumped in front of the TV at some point during this holiday season, watching some version or other of Charles Dickens' classic, "A Christmas Carol." Whether it's the 1970 musical "Scrooge" starring Albert Finney, or the creepy black and white one with Alastair Sim, or any of the dozens that have been made through the years, they all tell the same story: one miser, three ghosts, 'nuff said.

First published in 1843, it, like most of Dickens' work, paints a picture of, we've come to assume, the typical mid-Victorian life, filled with squalor, disease, hunger, and untimely death. Indeed, one of the most recognizable features of the Victorian period (named for Britain's Queen Victoria, who reigned from 1837 until 1901) was the incredible pomp of their burial rites, and seemingly endless appetite for the trappings of grief.

Going in style, courtesy The Victorian Mourning Blog.

So it came as a surprise to me when I read this article. Its authors claim that, based on a study they conducted in 2008 for the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, there was a period in Britain from 1850 and 1872 where even the poor lived as long as we do, and were, overall, healthier than we are, because of their diet.

Really? Oliver and I would like some more information on this, please.

From the article:

Our study … shows that the majority of the Victorian urban poor consumed diets which were limited, but contained extremely high nutrient density. Bread could be expensive but onions, watercress, cabbage, and fruit like apples and cherries were all cheap and did not need to be carefully budgeted for. Beetroot was eaten all year round; Jerusalem artichokes were often home-grown. Fish such as herrings and meat in some form (scraps, chops and even joints) were common too. All in all, a reversion to mid-Victorian nutritional values would significantly improve health expectancy today.

They go on to say that:

Charting public health from the mid-Victorian era, our worldview changes dramatically. Mid-Victorians lived without modern diagnostics, drugs, surgery or contraception. Despite that, and because of the high nutrient density of their diet, their life spans were as good as ours and their health spans significantly longer. The dietary advantages of the mid-Victorian period have been lost to us because of our more sedentary lifestyles and over-consumption of processed and nutrient-depleted foods and beverages.

Earlier in the article, a word is used that I had never read or heard before: dysnutrition. I suspect it won't be the last.

It becomes clear that, with the exception of family planning, the vast edifice of post-1948 healthcare has not so much enabled us to live longer but has merely supplied methods of controlling the symptoms of non-communicable degenerative diseases, which have become prevalent due to our failure to maintain mid-Victorian nutritional standards. Dysnutrition is arguably the largest cause of ill-health today.

I had to do a little bit of Googling, but I was able to find out what "dysnutrition" means: 

For years, we have used "malnutrition" to describe a situation where someone does not receive sufficient vitamins and nutrients. In the past, however, that lack came from a lack of something else: sufficient calories. While a lack of calories still creates malnutrition in many Third World countries, the Western hemisphere and most definitely the United States face another problem.

 Many people now eat foods so devoid of nutritional value and loaded with sugar and processed flour that they can lack sufficient vitamins and minerals despite ingesting enough calories to become overweight. Hence, the need for a new term, dysnutrition.

The prefix "dys-" means bad, impaired, or abnormal, so you can see the logic behind the new word. Dysnutrition occurs because people make poor food choices and because food manufacturers make a conscious decision to "devolve" foods, [a] term for when food manufacturers make foods nutritionally worse to make them look more appealing, last longer, or taste better simply to increase profit margin.

"Increase profit margin"--at the expense of people's health? Big mistake!

Baby Steps: The Childhood Obesity Smackdown

It doesn't take a scientist to tell you that there are a lot of over-weight kids out there. Nor do you need a laundry list of the less-than-desirable outcomes for these kids, both physical and mental, awaiting them in the future, or that they are experiencing right now, if something isn't done. 

As for the causes, there are almost too many boogie men to point the finger at: a prevalence of cheap but unhealthy foods and sugary drinks that all too often target children, lack of access to exercise, and lack of knowledge about health and diet from the adults in their lives, to name a few.

Still part of the problem, McDonalds

But the good news is, there is actually some good news. Although overall obesity rates remain high, and prevalence among 2-19 year olds and adults in the United States has not changed significantly between 2003-2004 and 2011-2012, for very young children, however, data from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) do show a decline in obesity prevalence in the 2 to 5 year old age group from nearly 14 percent in 2003-2004, to just over 12 percent in 2009-2010, to just over 8 percent in 2011-2012.

Below, childhood obesity by state.
2003:

2011:

Good on ya, Oregon, New Mexico, Kentucky, West Virginia, Missouri, Indiana,
New York and New Jersey! Not so good on ya, a lot of other states.

Clearly, though there is still much work to do, these states that have seen their childhood obesity rates among their 2 to 5 year olds fall may have something to offer in terms of how they got those numbers down.

On the national level, a way to help kids have more and better options to healthy food has come through the new mandates set for the National School Lunch Program. It requires every school student to have at least one choice of fruit and one vegetable per school-supplied meal. So, that's a "top down" approach, and laudable as far as it goes. But, much like how leading a horse to water doesn't necessarily mean it will drink, just giving kids access to fruits and veggies doesn't mean they will eat them, as any parent knows. And as frustrating as it can sometimes be trying to get your own kids to eat right, imagine that same difficulty on a national scale! 

This article, however, describes a study conducted in 2011 that lead to a solution to the problem that borders on the zen-like in its simplicity. Want kids to stop throwing away their fruits and veggies and eat them? Reschedule recess.

Emphasis mine.

“Recess is often held after lunch so children hurry to “finish” so that they can go play—this results in wasted fruits and vegetables,” explains co-author David Just, PhD of Cornell University, “However, we found that if recess is held before lunch, students come to lunch with healthy appetites and less urgency and are more likely to eat their fruits and vegetables.” 

... After analyzing a total of 22,939 observations, the researchers concluded that in the schools that switched recess to before lunch children ate 54% more fruits and vegetables. There was also a 45% increase in those eating at least one serving of fruits and vegetables. During the same time period consumption of fruits and vegetables actually decreased in the schools that didn’t switch.

Not only did this switch help the kids, but it saved the school districts money by decreasing food waste, offsetting the higher cost of offering healthier food choices. 

And that helps everybody.

February is Cancer Prevention Month

President's Day and St. Valentine's Day. The shortest month with the worst weather. Being hard to spell. February.

Turns out, February is also Cancer Prevention Month, and February 4th was World Cancer Day. The most common cause of cancer after smoking, the latest research shows, is obesity. A handy info-graphic (which doesn't get real big for some reason) spells it out:

click on the picture to enlarge

The American Institute for Cancer Research has created a page at this link, complete with a video, to learn more about how to loose weight and protect yourself from the Big C.