March 25, 2004

• One thing I've never understood - people don't let kids drink coffee, but let them have coke instead. (Not that that has anything to do with obesity, obviously)
• well, this is a step in the right direction. now let's take another: when a lawmaker puts a funding increase for public schools on the ballot, f**king vote for the goddamn thing. don't worry about the $3 extra a month you'll lose from your paycheck, think about the kid that has to sit there learning current events from a book that was printed before he was born*. don't like corporate sponsorship of schools? fine. pay for them yourself then, don't sit there bitching about how the millage increase will hurt you, and at the same time condemn the school district for accepting funding from elsewhere and asking you to buy your kid's school supplies. your choice, put up or shut up. * product of the public schools myself. current events book i had in high school history/social studies stated that nixon was our current president. i graduated in 1992. you do the math. i absolutely can't believe how much we in this country seem to value education, except when we're asked to pay for it.
• One thing I've never understood - people don't let kids drink coffee, but let them have coke instead. I recently walked in on my boss giving his 5 year old one of my diet Cokes out of our office fridge.
• CLF -- It's even worse than that; schools use sponsored educational materials that contain advertisements and in some cases, outright misinformation (such as material on ecology, sponsored by Exxon, explaining how clear-cutting is *good* for the environment). Read more on that here: Captive Kids So kids are not only getting fat, they're becoming consumer drones, and all so that taxpayers can save a few bucks.
• ...but let them have coke instead. Used to be a school milk program way back when I first attended US public schools -- the milk came in little waxed cardboard cartons, the first time I'd ever seen these. The milk cartons sat around a while before being issued to the pupils, and if you wetre lucky the teacher didn't sit it atop a radiator before it got to you. Kids I knew either all carried a lunch from home (often in these), or else walked home to eat. Up to then, milk in my experience came either in glass bottles or from a cow; in England milk was unpasteurized, so parents (hopefully) scalded it on the stove before serving -- and that smelled vile!
• Interesting tie-in with this article at Salon:
  Fructose sweetener linked to obesity rise
  Researchers say they've found more evidence of a link between a rapid rise in obesity and a corn product used to sweeten soft drinks and food since the 1970s. The researchers examined consumption records from the U.S. Department of Agriculture for 1967-2000 and combined it with previous research and their own analyses. The data showed an increase in the use of high-fructose corn sweeteners in the late 1970s and 1980s "coincidental with the epidemic of obesity,"
• Just stumbled over this one [via Slate] about CocaCola/corporate expansion having limits in a global economy.
• High fructose corn syrup is just another name for sugar. More info here.
• ernie - back in the '70s, the theory arose that fructose wouldn't make you fat since it is a levulose (molecules rotate to the left) and, since our own molecules rotate to the right, supposedly we couldn't use levulose in the same way we do glucose (dextrose - rotating to the right.) I think that's what made fructose sweeteners so popular then. I tried a Google search to see what happened to that theory, but the '70s are really ancient history on the internet. It's highly probable that it was disproven. What I read did point out what could be an advantage of fructose for those who need that sweet fix. It's sweeter in taste than dextrose, and so smaller quantities are satisfying. But I'm not sure that fructose or glucose is the culprit, here. Way back when I had to walk 10 miles in the snow to get to school (and, since I grew up in California, the snow was hard to find), sweet stuff was an occasional treat for everyone I knew, not a daily event. I remember being aghast when, in the '70s, I noticed that mothers were filling their baby's bottles with KoolAid to keep them pacified. Now, my nieces and nephew drink soft drinks with every meal. That has more implications than just obesity. There's been a lot of news recently on the effects of lack of calcium and vitamins found in milk for developing kids, for example. And it's the parents who have control over that part of their lives.
• High fructose corn syrup is just another name for sugar. Well. Not exactly. Table sugar is sucrose, from sugar beets and sugar cane. Fructose takes a different metabolic path than sucrose, and there's studies that suggest it behaves more like fat that sugar when in the body. WaPo article. There are also studies done with rats given glucose and fructose, along with a copper deficiency--the glucose rats were unaffected, but the fructose rats had all sorts nasty problems. The males didn't reach adulthood, due to heart disease and developmental problems, and the females couldn't reproduce. There's no conclusive evidence for anything right now though.
• er: there are studies that suggest it behaves more like fat than sugar...
• Daniel - thank you for updating my ancient science knowledge.
• As a sugar junkie from way back, I remember having to work hard to dig up the sweets from my house, but dig them up (sneak) I did. I think another correlation with obesity is that trans-fats are in just about everything now, people drive everywhere now, and don't live physically active lives. I think we should consider reorienting our kids to eating raw insects, instead of sugary snacks. Perhaps cicadas, since they're in season? :)
• I vote for replacing the soda machines with treadmills as a new initiative, "Leave No Fattie Behind" *rimshot*
• Bottom line, education starts at home. Eating healthy starts at home, too. Sooooz, you think that is bad?! I've seen mom's of two year olds giving their kids coke to drink. Whenever I say something, they always have some excuse or say that they don't give it to them very often. Well, frankly, once is far too often! Many times they don't even realize that coke contains a significant amount of caffeine. Not that that would make one bit of difference to them. The art of cooking real meals is rapidly being lost, too. I make my own bread and whenever someone comments about it they always assume they mean that I use a bread machine. NO. I do a considerable amount of cooking and our food budget is extremely low compared to most because of that fact alone. I rarely by prepackaged food. And as far as trans-fats, don't get me started. You can't hardly escape it. I would say this is a definate area where Europe has it better than we do. Better quality of food. Well, accept for Mad Cows. On the other hand, schools desperately need funding wherever they can get it. While I don't like soda pop being so readily available, I believe there are other options. Unfortunately, my long-range vision tells me that we are seeing a small nugget of how things will be in the future as far as how schools will get their funding.
• Mad Cow never stopped us Americans
• Nutrition is relative. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070707/