In a 'tough world,' there's still food and fashion

Egyptian anti-Muslim film protester dodges tear gas, Voice of America photo

Today's Friday, the day of prayer for Muslims, as well as their riots against America. The disgusting YouTube video by a low-life criminal in Cerritos, California isn't the real impetus for the frightening and dangerous manifestations in Tunisia, Sudan, Indonesia, India, Pakistan, Lebanon, Malaysia and even Germany. Deeper hatred fuels the anger that would eradicate every power and faith that isn't Muslim. (And as the world has seen, branches of Islam can be equally violent against those in differing sects.)

President Obama won't need to launch an "October surprise" to boost his leadership profile; he's placed in that position presently and so far has yet to impress.  We hope and pray that the coming days will bring strong denunciation of the violence rather than placating apologies for offense. Ours is a land with freedom to speak, even if the content insults another. The world stage is not so generous.

Meanwhile, my daughter who lives in New York City can no longer purchase a 16-ounce soft drink, lest her petite frame become obese. Mayor Bloomberg proudly touted his city's restriction on large-sized sugary drinks as "“the single biggest step any city has ever taken to curb obesity,” adding, "we believe that it will help save lives.”

I'm all for saving lives, and if Mayor Bloomberg can show that unlimited refills in smaller-sized cups, enforced by a cadre of health inspectors, will either reduce obesity or keep citizens going, I'm willing to toast him with my, um, Venti Frappuccino (373 calories). I don't get many of them, but when I do, it's because I'm really thirsty and probably didn't have breakfast. The Starbucks frappuccino, by the way, is in controversy since drinks with more than 50% milk are exempt from the ban. If the ice-to-milk ratio is dropped, my venti could be safe. Sound silly to you?

If not, perhaps this news item will. A New York Times "Front Row" column in the Style section a week ago discussed the virtues of Michelle Obama's sparkly dress as a prop with a message for her address to the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte. Eric Wilson approved of the Tracy Reese design, noting that Ms. Reese "who happens to be black," designed a creation that "from a distance...had a shimmering effect...but in closeups, viewers could practically study the pattern of the gold brocade."

The message of the dress: A boost to the middle class. Why? "Ms. Reese's prices are also in the middle ground...which fits perfectly with the Democratic pitch for the middle class." Middle ground, ie, middle class dress prices for pieces by Ms. Reese run $200-500. The zinger at the end of the article was the single sentence, "Mrs. Romney's dress cost $1,990."

OK, Mrs. Romney wore a readily-available Oscar de la Renta red taffeta belted dress for her boffo speech to Republican conventioners (from the pre-fall collection). Ms. Obama's dress, one-of-a-kind and designed specifically for the first lady, is not available. Of course, it's being rushed into production, and according to reports will sell for "less than $500."

Now, no middle class woman I know--and certainly not I--would pay $500 for a dress. Nor $400. Nor $300, or $200 or, I will admit, in my own case even $100.  Middle class women shop at Nordstrom Rack or Target, and like bargains more than labels.  At least that's true for everyone in my sphere. If they do wear a label--maybe on a pair of good denim jeans--they want to get it on sale. I often wear hand-me-ups from my daughters from Forever 21.

I sometimes wonder: who are the women who buy from designer shops? There must be enough of them to support the fashion industry, but if they're not the wealthiest 1%, they're definitely in the richest 5%. You don't need to buy a $500 replica of Michelle Obama's dress to announce you're in the middle class.  And you don't need to diss Ann Romney for her (expensive) choice.

My take-away message: Democrats want to demonize success. Rather than cheering those who achieve, and making way for more to follow, the tack is to channel last year's Occupiers and chastise the Romneys for making it to the top.

The suggestion that wearing a custom-made dress from a mid-priced designer shows some fidelity to the middle class is here just another rap from the very biased press.

The Very Fattening Drink Kids Guzzled Before the "Obesity Epidemic"

All the outcry about sugary drinks' caloric damage--blaming them, really, for the so-called "obesity epidemic"--got me wondering what people drank before 1980, which is when obesity rates started rising.

I went on a trip down memory lane and realized that as a Baby Boomer kid, my cohort, svelte as we were, operated under a wildly different set of "healthy diet" rules. There was indeed one non-soda liquid that we drank in immense quantities. Not water. Not even lemonade or iced tea. No, what we drank, every day, was--whole milk.

Dietary recommendations for children and teens emphasized that we each needed to consume a quart of milk every day. At 146 calories per cup, mothers were governmentally advised to feed their children 584 calories of bovine secretion every 24 hours. How do I know? I inherited my mother's Parents' Magazine Family Cookbook by Blanche M. Stover, copyright 1953.

Whole milk, by the way, has far more calories than regular Coca Cola, which (according to the company website) provides 88 calories per cup, and thus a "mere" 352 calories per quart.  My mom's cookbook quoted the US Department of Agriculture's calculations of "soda, cola type" in 1949 at 105 calories per cup, while "milk, whole" boasted 165. Guess milk was richer, and cola weaker then.

In pre-obesity epidemic days, skim milk was considered far less healthful for children than whole (which, by the way, has 3.25% fat). Nowadays, the USDA is calling 2% milk "not low fat" and "a poor choice." In school, every cafeteria meal came with a pint of milk; it was expected that kids who brown-bagged their lunches would bring "milk money" to purchase it fresh to accompany their sandwiches.

It's true that milk provides nutrients and protein, so it's more valuable than carbonated drinks.  But when the cholesterol scare occurred, milk and eggs' disappeared from favor. And once schools phased out milk sales, those cute little juice boxes became the go-to drink for moms packing lunches--convenient with no worries about spoilage or leaks.  Those were the days when we thought 100% fruit juice was the healthy option, offering the vitamins of fruit without the "added" sugar.

Now, we're told--at least by the recent HBO series "The Weight of the Nation"--that fruit juices are just as sugary and useless as pop. Even though Mayor Bloomberg isn't restricting big cups of juice the way he's banning servings over 16 ounces of soda, the word's out that every day should be "a day without sunshine." That's a reference to the catchy marketing line of the Florida orange juice producers, singled out for disdain in the HBO series.

It's enough to make you wish environmentalists hadn't made those little bottles of water taboo.

Actually, some sources insist kids need the fat in milk, saying it's essential for brain development. Breast milk, after all, is fattier than whole milk--often 5% fat. And it's sweet--some would even call it "sugary." Lucky for New Yorkers it doesn't come in a container larger than 16 oz.

It's unlikely we'll return to the days when children received their lunch trays sporting a full-fat pint with a cheery, "drink your milk!" But how are concerned parents to wean their kids from Snapple, Capri Sun and Dr. Pepper? To what? "Enjoy your skim!" just doesn't have the same ring.

Health educators are missing a great opportunity: they should teach children the distinction between hunger and thirst.  Thirst is your body needing hydration--water. Hunger is when you need energy--real food. Kids need to learn the difference, and not blow their chance for real nutrition by getting full on a Frappuccino. Or worse, imbibing the 700-calorie Starbucks drink and then dinner, too, without even considering if they're hungry.

I find amusing the tack taken by soft-drink makers defending their products. Coca-Cola's Katie Bayne, in an interview responding to Mayor Bloomberg's proposed big-cup ban, said, "What our drinks offer is hydration. That's essential to the human body. We offer great taste and benefits whether it's an uplift or carbohydrates or energy. We don't believe in empty calories. We believe in hydration."

People who drink tap water believe in hydration, too.

I don't think that drink-makers or the mayor are "bad guys," by the way--I just think all the "experts" ought to step back and allow people to reclaim sensitivity to their bodies' own signals. Not likely to happen.

The dietitians who touted whole milk to a generation of (slimmer) children sincerely wanted those kids to live a long, disease-free life, and of course that's the goal of Mayor Bloomberg and all the authorities who are floundering to find an obesity preventative and cure. Unfortunately, neither are available yet, since more needs to be known about the real causes of the BMI leap between 1980 and 2000. Until the facts arrive, New York's mayor and the rest of us need to relax a bit, listen to our internal cues, and raise our water glasses in a hopeful toast to our health.

NY Big-Soda Ban: Symptom of "The Do-Something Disease"

Mayor Bloomberg announces large-soda ban, May 30 (NYTimes photo)

Everybody's got an opinion about New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's proposed ban (in restaurants, movie theaters, stadiums, arenas and mobile food carts) on sweetened drinks larger than 16 oz.  The American Beverage Association quickly responded with full-page ads in the New York Times, claiming that "beverage calories and added sugars have decreased for more than a decade, while the CDC reports obesity rates continue to climb."

Actually, obesity rates have leveled off since 2000, remaining about the same overall for the past 12 years. However, between 1980 and 2000, adult obesity rates skyrocketed, from about 13% up to 32%, after staying comparatively flat since 1960, when data was first collected. In the same period, the percentage of obese children aged 6-11 swelled from 7% to 20%; teens aged 11-19 from 5% to 18%.

What happened between 1980 and 2000 to cause ballooning obesity? And what happened after 2000 to halt its rise? And why is everyone so upset about it now? 

Could it have something to do with last year's "hate-the-1%" reaction to the recession? Corporations have again become the enemy, the latest in an "us-versus-them" feeling of victimhood as unemployment and a real estate slump drags on, and President Obama laughably insists "the private sector is fine."

In this climate, there's a new receptiveness to explanations of our corpulence that point fat fingers to entities we consider "the powerful." The loudest pundits posit that an explosion of cheap junk food, especially high-fructose corn syrup-sweetened drinks, fattened a gluttonous public victimized by the advertising of greedy corporations marketing their high-profit foodstuffs. Dual-income parents, with no time or energy to cook, but with need for quick and easy dinners, grabbed super-sized buckets and carry-out bags from ubiquitous drive-throughs. They did this for twenty years, scarfing down more and more--enough to push girth figures higher every year for two decades, and keep rates at a distended level for twelve years since.

Warnings about our nation's burgeoning bulk are nothing new; they've proliferated since the late 1970s, when a National Institutes of Health report recommended 23 pages of policies to address obesity, including "that any national health insurance program...recognize obesity as a disease and include within its benefits coverage for the treatment of it." In 1980, the Department of Health and Human Services proposed objectives: Within ten years, no more than 10% of men and 17% of women should be obese, half of America's overweight should start a "weight-loss regimen," and 90% of the populace should understand that reducing requires fewer calories consumed and/or increased physical activity.

 
With obesity rates leaping, in 1999 Surgeon General David Sacher launched "Toward a National Action Plan on Overweight and Obesity: The Surgeon General's Initiative," and in 2001 Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson declared, "Overweight and obesity are among the most pressing new health challenges we face today." As a result, the 2001 "Surgeon General's Call to Action to Prevent and Decrease Overweight and Obesity" urged a wide range of measures, including mandatory p.e., healthy school meals, obesity education, and campaigning against sedentary activities like watching TV--similar to remedies put forward today. More goals were set in the "Healthy People 2010" effort, including a population of 60% healthy weight BMI, with fewer than 15% of adults, and 5% of children and adolescents obese.

But instead of heeding health leaders, the citizenry remained fat--with a third of adults and 15% of youngsters obese, and another third overweight. If chubbies can't help themselves, our benevolent legislators must save them--and so "The Do-Something Disease" becomes contagious. First Lady Michelle Obama adopted childhood obesity as her pet cause, and her "Let's Move!" campaign, with its tax-funded programs, sent tentacles of government urgency into communities. (Now a new study shows that "black girls are less sensitive to the effects of physical activity" than white girls, casting a peculiar twist on the plan.)

Mayor Bloomberg has succumbed to "The Do-Something Disease" with his limit on sweetened-drink cup size in New York. Conservatives cry "nanny state," and the public nixed the size-cap 64-36% in a Reuters/Ipsos poll. But many, including mayoral daughter Georgina Bloomberg, suggest other government-imposed means to shrink the national waistline, such as "lowering the cost of healthy food," or taxing a wider array of junk foods by at least 10%.
Recently, Disney pledged to healthify its theme-park foods, and spurn advertising from sweet and junky products on its kid-centric TV channels. At a news conference, Disney's CEO was flanked by the First Lady herself, who called the corporation's new nutritional guidelines "a game-changer for the health of our children."

Just a few thoughts: There were fast-foods, working moms, ubiquitous Coke promotion, and sedentary TV before the obesity rate escalation began in 1980. And health officials wrung their hands about overly-solid citizens before the obesity increase ceased in 2000. Given that medical experts can't even say for sure what fueled the BMI boom, where's the evidence well-meaning interventions will work?

Unless we're willing to ban all convenience or fast foods (throwing millions out of jobs, by the way), individual choice reigns. If tasty, cheap baked goods sit cheek-and-jowl on the grocery shelf with produce, well, have you ever seen anyone actually buy one of the bananas sitting in the little basket recently placed at your supermarket check-out? You can lead a shopper to apples, but you can't make him eat.

A New York Times article describing residents' pessimism about the Bloomberg soda plan interviewed people imbibing soft drinks; the ones sipping sizes larger than 16 ounces were all sharing.  It's presently cheaper to buy a bigger cup of soda than two smaller ones; so the new ban could bring some a financial penalty.

Even the foremost expert on the psychological effect of portion sizes has his fears. Brian Wansink of Cornell University, author of Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More than we Think, says “I’m really afraid it will be an epic failure,” so that “people won’t have any faith that anything else will work.” Not that they should have any faith that anything else will work, because many researchers believe the rise in obesity is caused by factors outside of human control.

Sudies support that obesity could be caused by (pick your favorite) the evolving FTO gene, environmental influences on the hormones ghrelin and leptin, an Adeno 36 virus, lack of brown adipose tissue related to the COX-2 enzyme, metabolic sensitivity, or environmental chemicals like bisphenol A, pesticides and ptalates--none of them resulting from simple overeating or low physical activity. Realistically, it's highly unlikely that smaller soda cups in some venues will have an impact.

But it's the message that counts, isn't it? "The Do-Something Disease" is about making laws to protect soda-slurpers from both corporate greed (soda is a high-margin item) and themselves.

Fans of 7-Eleven stores can still get their Gulps, which, the chain claims, "are genetically engineered to quench even the most diabolical thirst." Convenience stores are excluded from the cup-size ban, so help yourself to the 20-oz. Gulp, 30-oz. Big Gulp, 40-oz. Super Big Gulp and 50-oz. (down from 60 for ease of carrying) Double Gulp, all of which cost less than $1.85. You can even mix their flavors to your carbonated delight.

Of course, under the Bloomberg restrictions, fruit juices, which confer as many calories as soft drinks, may continue to be sold in any cup size. Also, you can order as many 16-oz. fountain drinks or refills as you like. So the disease to cure first might be the "Do-Something," because the "obesity epidemic" isn't understood, and may not even be a matter of choice.

"The reason we have government in the first place," intones a talking head early in the HBO four-part TV series The Weight of the Nation, which aired last week, "is to solve collectively problems we can't solve individually." In this case, for government to absolve the rest of us of weakness by tackling the conglomerates who stack our comestibles with extra calories and lure us to spend sedentary hours in front of our computers and TVs. We're fat individually, but government will "collectively" fix it.

The series offers the usual suggestions for individuals to modify their diets and activity levels in order to reduce. But as Cindy, of Bogalusa, Louisiana says in the first episode, "It's not easy to take weight off! And that's been liposuction, patches, peels, fad diets, countin' carbs, countin' calories--I've tried it all." Which would mean she failed even when following what the show offers in its very conventional list of resources. After all these years of media advice, at least one of the 1980 obesity-fighting goals has been reached: 90% of adults are well aware--incessantly informed-- that calories and exercise affect their size.

It's tough to await the research necessary to really address the causes of the twenty-year swell in America's girth, but effective cures for obesity require it. In the meantime, silly laws like restricting soft drink cup sizes won't make much difference, except to assuage lawmakers' cravings to do something--anything--about the fat of the land.