Gendered Calories

Researchers at American University, Cornell University, and the University of Chicago recently conducted a study in which childhood obesity is linked to working mothers.

According to the study, a child's weight increases by about one pound for each 5.3 months the mother works. Researchers aren't sure why. According to canada.com on Feb.7, 2011:

The researchers were unable to clearly explain the findings but theorized that because working mothers have little time to shop for healthy food and prepare meals, they and their children eat more fast- and packaged foods, which tend to be high in fat and calories.

Perhaps one reason why the researchers cannot clearly explain the findings is that they have incorporated a huge bias into the very foundation of their study - gender. They looked for a correlation between absent mothers and fat children and found it, thereby focussing the problem on women exclusively.

(A disclaimer here - I can find only the media reports of the study, which are often skewed. Also, I would really like to know who funded this study.)

Reuters (June 2010) reported on an earlier study done in the UK and published in the American Journal of Epidemiology in which researchers looked at working mothers as one contributing factor amongst several which affect childhood obesity:

So the trend in mothers' employment over the past few decades may be one of the variables contributing to a general erosion in children's diets; the explosion in sugary junk foods on the market, food advertising aimed at kids, and the increasing availability of high- fat, high-sugar fare in schools are among the other factors that have been blamed.

The researchers also considered socioeconomic factors.

I am not disputing the accuracy of the American study, nor am I making a comment on the possible advantages or disadvantages of working mothers.

The point is that a child's weight is influenced by several things, and the composition, quantity, and quality of a child's food, together with level of exercise, is not gendered.

Put another way - it's not the absence of the mother that makes a child fat; it's the absence of proper diet and exercise that makes a child fat. And while mothers traditionally provide those things, it is not only mothers who can do so.

North American kids have a weight problem. And there are many aspects to the problem: availability of junk food, advertising of junk food, lack of education about nutrition, absent parents, irresponsible parents, obese parents, tax subsidies to certain food producers, coercive advertising, not enough exercise...

Sure, working mothers have an effect, but how much easier it is to blame them than to fix the problem and possibly cut into somebody's profit margin, or spend the money really trying to educate people, or putting pressure on governments and companies to ensure the availability of good food, or trying to eradicate poverty.

Romancing the Diet

Quitting smoking was not easy, but in retrospect, it was far easier than losing a measly 15 pounds and keeping it off. To stop smoking (seven years ago), I had to change my thinking and my desires.

It turns out, though, that I had help I wasn't aware of. And I now believe that made all the difference, a difference that doesn't exist for the process of weight loss.

From two different perspectives, the article "Beating Obesity" by Marc Ambinder in the May 2010 issue of The Atlantic, and the book Savor, by Thich Nhat Hanh and Dr. Lillian Leung discuss the issue. Both discuss the interconnectedness of everything. Because of this interconnectedness, we are fat. Only together with everything, can we become healthy and less fat.

First, the bad news -  according to Ambinder, the forces of society, technology, industry, government policy, culture, genes, and demographics work in concert to make and keep us fat.

Technology changes work, changes behaviour, changes patterns and amount of movement; Industry constructs food - food molecules actually - that some suspect create virtual "neurochemical addiction...change our brain chemistry in ways that make us overeat;" non-food industries expose us to chemicals that correlate with obesity.

Society's demands create stress which leads to obesity; society's expectations affect sleep patterns which can help make us fat; society's planning and design of towns and cities affect our level of exercise; business production and distribution models make fast food not only the most calorically dense, but the cheapest and most widely available.

"Agricultural production and subsidies"  - corn fed beef, high fructose corn syrup, for example - increase our waistlines. Advertising with its images of food and the normalization of food as entertainment and acceptance help make us fat. Cultural norms regarding portion sizes have increased dramatically.

It's a wonder that anyone can lose weight and keep it off with all of this, and more, ranged against the individual. According to Ambinder, "America has erected two lines of defense: name-calling, and hectoring about diet and exercise."

Both of these defenses put the entire responsibility for health and weight loss on the individual - rather silly when you think about it. Even with Olympic-class will power, the individual fights a losing battle.

This is the point at which the Thich Nhat Hanh/Leung book Savor enters the picture. Drawing on Buddhist practices of mindfulness and meditation, the authors stress how we are not alone, how weight loss, like anything else, is together with everything. We cannot lose weight in isolation; people have to work together to create an environment that is healthful for all. We have to be mindful of eating - and of living.

That unseen help I had to stop smoking came from society - policy, regulation, advertising, education, technology, culture - many of the things ranged against the individual when it comes to weight loss. Society is against cigarettes in ways that it is not against cheap food, fast food, hypertasty food, large portions of food, junk food, processed food.

Right now we expect each single, tiny will to stand up to the whole of society. Many will say that the game isn't rigged, that each person can make a rational decision about what's beneficial. It doesn't work.

Only collective will power can get this done. And it's so easy to discuss it over a nice bowl of something and a supersized drink!

Minding Manipulation

It usually comes as a suprise to students to learn that in television, we, the viewers, are the product. That's right, us! Not the programs, not the products that are advertised, but the audience.

Television producers and executives make shows they hope will deliver enough product (audience) to make advertisers spend as much of their money as possible pitching their wares to us.

And selling our presence without being transparent and forthcoming about it isn't bad enough. We are subjected to manipulation, read that as marketing, through the creation of desires which, of course, product X will fulfill, and/or we are subtly (and sometimes not so subtly) shown how we just don't measure up to the make- believe world the advertisers create.

Magazines are the same.

It's everywhere - on television, radio, buses, blogs, websites, movies, taxis, billboards, magazines, and more. The basic methods may differ, but the goal is the same.

I am sick of advertising. No one ever asked me, or any of us, if all days, times, places could be filled up with advertising, if every time and space could be commercialized.

I've had enough. I am on a mission to endure as little advertising as possible.

It's not always possible - probably not best to close one's eyes while driving to avoid signage in various places!!! But there is a mute button on the remote or the option to not watch television at all (or to watch selectively), and there are computer programs that will block sidebar ads and pop-ups. I just won't buy some magazines, as I refuse to pay for all the ads.

I believe that many ads, images, and narratives affect us in negative ways; they certainly are manipulative, working around reason and critical thinking. One of my professors had research to show that we who think we are resisting ads are often the most susceptible.

Not all ads are bad. Some are funny, provocative, artistic, informative, enjoyable. I like those and will choose to watch.

But I am on a mission - I will no longer be a passive endurer of other people's manipulative attempts to sell me something.

To end on a lighter note, here is a Wendy's ad from the eighties, with Clara Peller - one of the famous "Where's the Beef?" ads. The slogan has become part of the culture.

Mirror, Mirror

One of the most interesting, exciting, and totally inexpensive medical cures in recent times is the mirror cure for pain that often occurs in missing limbs. It's called phantom pain and is quite excruciating.

The cure involves placing a mirror along the length of the intact leg in such a way that, from the patient's view, there appears to be a limb where there is actually none. The amputee moves the limb, wiggles toes, and bends the knee and, of course, it appears that the missing leg is doing the same.

Something about the amputee seeing the missing limb "move" tricks the brain, and the phantom pain stops or lessens.

Scientific American had an interesting article, "The Mirror Cure for Phantom Pain," by Lorimer Mosley in April 2008. Mosley discusses the research to date and what the scientific community thinks of it. The most dramatic part of the article is about an amputee Mosley met in Australia:

his remarkable method of gaining relief from an excruciating pain in his missing foot: he would put his prosthetic leg in the exact location he felt his own leg to be, and then drive a screwdriver into the painful spot. As long as he could see it, driving the screwdriver into the exact site of his pain turned it off just like a switch-he called it his 'magic button'.

SEEING is the "magical" sense in the case of both the Australian amputee and patients using the mirror cure. When the brain sees the image of the missing limb (or something being done to it), it believes the limb to be present.

As exciting as this cure is for the terrible pain amputees experience, the process is also exciting for what it shows about the brain and the mind. The mind knows that there is no leg there. The brain is fooled by an image. The brain is completely literal. The brain and the mind aren't the same thing. How can they be if one knows no leg exists and  the other sends out (or fails to send) signals as if it does?

The questions and possibilities raised by this simple and inexpensive cure are huge philosophically, psychologically, even ethically.

Does visualization also fool the brain? Are the images of advertising perhaps tricking the brain in some way that compels us to consume? What else can trick the brain? Does the process have an analogue with the other senses? Might it be true, after all, that violent imagery does have a negative effect on us all?

We live in an age in which the brain is worshipped.  Brain-based everything is everywhere.The mind, in some quarters, is pooh-poohed as a comforting construct. The mirror cure suggests otherwise; at least it's not a closed case.

Mirror, mirror on the wall, indeed!


(Photo credit )

Unpalatable Reasoning

I once facilitated a marketing course for a group of bankers and was amazed, no, stunned by the lack of analysis and criticism in the 600plus-page textbook. Marketing was value-free and rational, finding only what consumers want and giving it to them.

Never was any consideration given to the idea that the whole marketing enterprise could so easily involve manipulation. In this textbook world, corporations large and small want only what is best for their customers, all of whom respond to marketing initiatives and advertising with decisions based on pure reason. Phooey!

The whole experience sensitized me to any rationalist argument when- and wherever I encounter it. And encounter it I did, recently in reason.com: free minds and free markets  (November 2009) in Jacob Sullum's article "The Perils of Palatability."

Sullum reviews David A. Kessler's book The End of Overeating:Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite. (The review incorrectly titles the book The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Diet.)

Sullum first takes Kessler to task for dumpster-diving outside of Chili's restaurants in California, looking for nutrional analysis on boxes, instead of asking a restaurant employee or going to the company's website.

Or simply by assuming that food promoted as a mouth-watering yet affordable indulgence probably has a lot of fat, salt, and sugar in it. But as The End of Overeating more than amply demonstrates, Kessler is the sort of crusader who spares no effort to uncover the obvious.

The point here is not about Chili's restaurants. The point here is that some corporations lie (gasp!) and that Kessler wants to find out for himself. Also, in most research, even of the dumpster-diving variety, assuming is not the best course of action. The ad hominem fillip at the end about Kessler as researcher is just gratuitous sarcasm.

In Sullum's estimation, Kessler is in his own world of problems with food and cannot reason his way out of a bag of chips: "He combines banal observations, dressed up as scientific insights and revelations of corporate misdeeds, with presumptuous advice that overgeneralizes from his own troubled relationship with food. " Kessler even wants to regulate "Big Food" in the way he wanted to regulate "Big Tobacco" when he was head of the FDA.

What a terrible guy this Kessler must be. Imagine wanting to regulate corporations which sell us these unhealthful products.

Kessler urges readers to eschew pasta, French fries, bacon cheeseburgers, candy, and other “hyperpalatable” foods...He exhorts its victims to resist the machinations of the food industry, “the manipulator of the consumers’ minds and desires” (in the words of a “high-level food industry executive”).

Sullum makes it sound as if Kessler is a lone voice in the widerness wanting his readers to eschew food that is bad for them, instead of being only one of many, many voices, medical voices, advising the same thing.

I also have a vision of Sullum rolling his eyes at the idea that Big Food would manipulate "the consumers' minds and desires."  Imagine someone saying such things about big corporations!


Sullum sees contradiction where there is none:

the contradiction between his description of how the food industry goes to great lengths to give consumers exactly what they want and his claim that it arbitrarily decides what products it wants to sell, then uses marketing magic to create a demand for them.

Industries decide what they want to sell us; then use marketing and advertising to create a demand. When consumers do indeed demand because they were manipulated to do so, industries give them what they "want."  Only someone who believes that people are always reasonable, rational creatures, with no illogical drives, could see a contradiction here.

Sullum simply dismisses Kessler's scientific analyses of why the high palatability of food, coupled with promoting it as such, triggers overeating in a significant percentage of the population. If Sullum's argument is correct - that all experience leaves a mark in the brain, so there is nothing here to explain overeating - then we can also dismiss the science that helps us understand alcoholism and drug addiction.

Additionally, if we extrapolate from Sullum's criticism, we can also dismiss alcohol and drug addiction because some people can drink or experience a drug and not become addicted.

Finally, according to Sullum, we should all go ahead and eat whatever we want in whatever quantities we want because chef Anthony Bourdain does so on his show No Reservations, and because we should want pleasure, obviously, at any cost.

This review, in addition to being snarky and overly sarcastic about David Kessler, is based on the familiar assumption that we humans are entirely and purely logical creatures -  the "free mind" with no drives, urges, triggers or overwhelming neuro-transmitters, nothing that reason can't handle.

The idea is sheer cop-out; it legitimates consumer manipulation, which uses those very drives; then argues that the consumer can use reason against them.

My "phooey" antenna is thrumming.

I would like to invite David Kessler-  former chief of the FDA and professor of the San Francisco Medical School of the University of California - to my soiree. Jacob Sullum, not so much.

(Squirrel Photo)