Poverty Causes Obesity? Can We Blame The Teachers?

For a long time, fast food has taken the blame for obesity in our country.  Now a new study has shown that the real culprit is poverty.

Image from Science Daily

The study, titled "The association of fast food consumption with poor dietary outcomes and obesity among children: is it the fast food or the remainder of diet?," was produced by researchers at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Gillings School of Global Public Health and published in the latest issue of The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.  According to the study, "children who rely on fast foods may tend to have parents who do not have the means, desire or time to purchase or prepare healthy foods at home.  This is really what is driving children's obesity and what needs to be addressed in any solution."

The study backs up results from other studies, such as one by James Levine at the Endocrine Research Unit, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota:  “It has been suggested that individuals who live in impoverished regions have poor access to fresh food. Poverty-dense areas are oftentimes called “food deserts,” implying diminished access to fresh food. However, 43% of households with incomes below the poverty line ($21,756) are food insecure (uncertain of having, or unable to acquire, sufficient food) .Thus, in many poverty-dense regions, people are in hunger and unable to access affordable healthy food, even when funds avail.”

 

So it seems like the health gap, just like the educational achievement gap, is a result of the 46.5 million Americans now living in poverty.   No. doubt they are still waiting for President Reagan's 'trickle down' economics to reach them.

 

Let’s see how politicians connect the dots and blame teachers for obesity also.

On This Date In 1901

Spindletop

On this date in 1901, a drilling derrick at Spindletop Hill near Beaumont, Texas, produced a gusher of crude oil, coating the landscape for hundreds of feet and signaling the advent of the American oil industry. The geyser flowed at an initial rate of approximately 100,000 barrels a day and took nine days to cap. 

One hundred and 14 years later, American oil fields are producing about 7,500,000 barrels every day. 

Since 1901, the average surface temperature across the contiguous 48 states has risen at an average rate of 0.14°F per decade (1.4°F per century) largely because of the combustion of petroleum and coal.

At a time when the Republicans have saved the U.S. approximately $5.4 billion by suspending unemployment benefits for 1.3 million unemployed “slackers’, credible estimates of annual fossil fuel subsidies range from $14 billion to $52 billion annually.  Exactly how much is hard to discover, since this oil industry welfare is hidden in many ways.  The idea of subsidizing petroleum production dates back 100 years to 1913, when there was a real need on the part of the government to increase oil production. 

So, if we were to cut the welfare payments to the highly profitable petroleum industry and spend that money on producing jobs and making sure that the minimum wage can support life as we know it, while spending some more of that money on non-polluting sources of energy….

Will Eating GMO Foods Hurt You? Probably Not.

Unless it actually poisons you, your body doesn't care if a few genes have been altered.  Your intestines break it down into amino acids anyway.

But growing GMO foods could be a disaster.

Not an endorsement of their website.

A disaster for the farmers.  GMO varieties of plants are patented.  The lawyers say that the age-old practice of saving seed from one crop to plant the next is a violation of the patents.  Farmers must buy expensive new seed every year.  

Since corn is pollinated by the wind, a farmer's non-GMO crops could be contaminated by a neighbor's GMO corn.  That means that a farmer who never intended to grow GMO crops will be sued by the seed companies for violating the patent.  Not good for farmers.

A disaster for the plants - and the people who depend on them for food.  Genetic mutations occur all the time = evolution.  Then nature decides if the mutation is beneficial, harmless, or harmful.  If harmful, nature removes those plants from the gene pool.  If we insert or change genes, those changes are not tested by nature, and could cause a build-up of interconnected changes that could wipe out that food source.

A disaster for all of the interwoven life-forms that are the environment.  One of the first modifications made was a resistance to herbicides.  If the corn can't be killed by Round-Up, then huge areas can be sprayed to kill unwanted plants.  Those unwanted plants include food plants for beneficial insects, butterflies, and honeybees.  When the honeybees are gone, all of our fruit trees and many other food sources are gone.  And of course the 'weeds' are already developing a resistance to the pesticides.

Eating GMO foods, no problem.  It is how they are grown that is the problem.

We Didn't Evolve In Cities

Elizabeth Park in Hartford and West Hartford

Using data from over 1,000 participants, a research team at the University of Exeter Medical School focused on two groups of people: those who moved to greener urban areas, and those who relocated to less green urban areas.

They found that, on average, movers to greener areas experienced an immediate improvement in mental health that was sustained for at least 3 years after they moved. The study also showed that people relocating to a more built up area suffered a drop in mental health.

More information is on Science News.

I Am Just Passing On This Article To You People Who Think Rejecting Modern Medicine Is 'Healthier'.

"As healthy as my lifestyle seemed, I contracted measles, mumps, rubella, a type of viral

meningitis, scarlatina, whooping cough, yearly tonsillitis, and chickenpox, some of which are vaccine preventable. In my twenties I got precancerous HPV."

"My two vaccinated children, on the other hand, have rarely been ill, have had antibiotics maybe twice in their lives, if that (not like me who got so many illnesses which needed treatment with antibiotics that I developed a resistance to them, which led me to be hospitalized with penicillin-resistant quinsy at 21–you know that old fashioned disease that killed Queen Elizabeth I and which was almost wiped out through use of antibiotics)."

I Am The 70s Child Of A Health Nut.  And I Wasn't Vaccinated.

Next School Alert - Monday Night and Tuesday Morning

Students in central Connecticut, be prepared for a full day of class on Tuesday, but listen for that text from your school in case of a late opening.

Teachers, have alternate plans in case of a late opening.

A warm front is advancing northward right now, and today's freezing temperatures will disappear tomorrow.

Of course, when warm air floats up over denser colder air, it cools and we will get rain.  Could be a lot of rain Sunday night and Monday.  This will have no affect on school openings, as the temperature will be close to 50 degrees F.

But then, Monday night, another cold front will push through, tossing the warm air up to cool and drop the rest of the water, possibly in the form of snow flurries.

And then, the temperatures will DROP.  From Monday afternoon to Tuesday morning, the temperature will drop about 30 to 40 degrees!  Low Monday when you wake up will be around 10 degrees F.  All of that wet snow, and all of those puddles in the road, will become frozen solid.

Roads may be slippery Tuesday morning, which is why some towns will have a late school opening.

Happy Perihelion Day!!

Welcome Sun!   Right now it is -1F on my back porch, but that doesn't matter, because it is Perihelion Day!

That's right - today is the day (at 7am EST) that the Earth is closer to the Sun than at any other time during the year!  We are 5 million kilometers closer than we are in July.

The Sun even looks larger (don't look at the Sun).

So for all those who think that the seasons are caused by how close we are to the Sun, neener, neener, neener!



It is the tilt of the Earth's axis that causes the seasons.