3rd December 2010
25th November 2010
The Domino's Effect
“Cheap, mass-produced pies from Pizza Hut, Papa John’s, Little Caesars, and Domino’s have infiltrated our planet, making these companies very rich and billions of people too poor to afford a single slice. Is your appetite part of the problem?
(Thanks, Timothy)
24th November 2010
Against Health
“To be against health is to be critical of the myths and lies concerning our health that are circulated by the media and paid for by large industries. It is to demystify their hidden moralizing and their political agenda. It also means expanding the idea of iatric disease to include the moral and physical harm that is done to the public by particular nostrums of public health, especially those that impose constraints and privations “for your own good,” as the saying goes.
17th November 2010
Diseases of Affluence
“Here is our normal: 40 percent of North American adults have metabolic syndrome. The syndrome is caused by being fat, even at levels North Americans would not recognize as abnormal. Obesity prompts the receptors that insulin acts upon to become numb to its effects. As we grow fatter, and insulin resistance proceeds, higher and higher levels of insulin are necessary to get the sugar out of the blood. Eventually, overt diabetes may supervene, as it has for 8 percent of North American adults, a tenfold increase since the turn of the last century. But even prior to the development of diabetes, metabolic syndrome insidiously eats away at the bodies of those it affects.
12th November 2010
Why Making Dinner Is a Good Idea
“It turns out that the Ikea effect also applies to food, at least in mice. The experiment was simple: Mice were trained to push levers to get one of two rewards. If they pressed lever A, they got a delicious drop of sugar water. If they pressed lever B, they got a different tasting drop of sugar water. (This reward was made with polycose, not sucrose.)
11th November 2010
“God Help You. You're on Dialysis.”
“Every year, more than 100,000 Americans start dialysis. One in four of them will die within 12 months—a fatality rate that is one of the worst in the industrialized world. Oh, and dialysis arguably costs more here than anywhere else. Although taxpayers cover most of the bill, the government has kept confidential clinic data that could help patients make better decisions. How did our first foray into near-universal coverage, begun four decades ago with such great hope, turn out this way? And what lessons does it hold for the future of health-care reform?
10th November 2010
How TV Superchef Jamie Oliver's 'Food Revolution' Flunked Out
“The reality behind “Food Revolution” is that after the first two months of the new meals, children were overwhelmingly unhappy with the food, milk consumption plummeted and many students dropped out of the school lunch program, which one school official called “staggering.”
9th November 2010
Preventing Tuberculosis Deaths in India
“Tuberculosis has always been the signature disease of urban poverty, passed easily in poorly ventilated spaces. India has nearly two million new cases each year, and every day a thousand people die of the disease, the highest number in the world. Tuberculosis is also the leading cause of death among people between fifteen and forty-five—the most productive age group in any country and the key to India’s prospects for continued economic growth.
8th November 2010
America's Hidden Diseases
““If these were diseases among middle-class whites in the suburbs, we would not tolerate them. They are among America’s greatest health disparities, and they are largely unknown to the U.S. medical and health communities.”
