Posts Tagged ‘obesity’
“I cook with wine, sometimes I even add it to the food”*…
click here for interactive version
Daily diets very considerably around the world; so, then, do their caloric contents. This interactive graphic from National Geographic breaks it down in a way that makes comparison– country to country, and any country to the world as a whole– easy and clear.
It’s fascinating to observe that the average for the world has risen nearly 30% in the last 50 years, to a level that’s roughly commensurate with the recommended calorie intake for an adult man; as users will see, averages for the U.S. and other developed countries are well above that… Expert opinion on the rise in obesity in the U.S. (and many other nations) is conflicted; still, it’s interesting to note the correlation.
* W.C. Fields
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As we pass on the side of bacon, we might pause to note that, while there’s no clarity as to its origin, there’s wide agreement that today is National Bagel and Lox Day, a celebration of the quintessential Jewish-American “sandwich” once found only in New York delis, but now universally popular. Bagels originated in Poland in the early 17th century. Jewish families often ate bagels on Saturday evenings at the conclusion of the Sabbath, perhaps because the they could be baked very quickly. Lox is an entirely American invention. It became a popular sandwich filling in the mid 1800s when the transcontinental railroad began shipping barrels of brined salmon to the East Coast.
Surely coincidentally, today is also National Toothache Day. Some believe the celebration can be traced to the founding of the Hersey Corporation on February 9, 1894. But others (including your correspondent) reckon that it is related to St. Apollonia, the Patroness of Toothaches, whose feast day is today.
The benefits of rarefied air…
From inner-city food deserts to car-centric suburbs, aspects of the physical environment are frequently cited as a contributing factor to the rise of obesity in the developed world. However, new research, published earlier this year in the International Journal of Obesity and summarised online at the Public Library of Science (PLOS) blog, Obesity Panacea, found a surprising correlation between elevation and obesity in the United States.
As the paper’s lead author, Dr. Jameson Voss of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, points out, mapping obesity prevalence in America reveals distinct, and hitherto unexplained, geographic variations:
Obesity appears most prevalent in the Southeast and Midwest states and less prevalent in the Mountain West. Despite significant research into the environmental determinants of obesity, including the built environment, the explanation for these macrogeographic differences is unclear.
Intriguingly, those areas in which less than a quarter of the population is obese map almost exactly onto the more mountainous regions of the country—the Appalachians, the Rockies, and the Sierra Nevada. And, indeed, after controlling for diet, activity level, smoking, demographics, temperature, and urbanisation, Voss and his colleagues found “a four- to five-fold increase in obesity prevalence at low altitude as compared with the highest altitude category”…
Read the full (and filling) story at Edible Geography.
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As we head for higher ground, we might send playful birthday greetings to Joan Miró i Ferrà; he was born on this date in 1893. A painter, sculptor, and ceramicist, who worked over time as a Fauve, Magic Realist, Surrealist, and Expressionist (and pioneered Color Field painting), Miró had a huge influence on artists in the later Twentieth Century (Frankenthaler, Rothko, Motherwell, and Calder among many others), and on design pioneers like Paul Rand.
“Women and Birds at Sunrise” 1946
Carl Van Vechten’s portrait of Miró
But after all that tryptophan, who feels up to the treadmill?…
From Smooth Fitness, a timely infographic:
to enlarge, click the image above, or here
As we prepare to loosen our belts, we might recall that it was on this date in 1975 that KC and the Sunshine Band hit #1 the Billboard Hot 100 chart with “That’s The Way (I Like It),” the follow-up to their breakthrough single “Get Down Tonight” (also a chart-topper), thus the second of the five times they would reach that peak.
This is the way– uh-huh, uh-huh (source)
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