Killing ourselves with an unhealthy lifestyle_Part Three

According to Paul Berton, the editor-in-chief of The London Free Press, "We're killing ourselves with an unhealthy lifestyle."

Paul sees the problem as stuff like snow blowers, food processors, prepared foods and professional sports (we watch 'em, we don't play 'em.) Sounds good except that the obesity epidemic is often growing faster in developing countries. There are not a lot of snow blowers and food processors in those countries. But they do have prepared foods and each year they have more and more of them.

Maybe we should be putting more attention on prepared foods. If we consume more calories than burn, we gain weight. It is that simple. Today's prepared foods make it far easier to consume more calories than are needed. Packed with fats and sugars, many prepared foods propel your calorie consumption into the stratosphere long before you feel full.

Now, this is where it gets interesting. Paul Berton asks: "What can be done? . . . We need to do something about this ourselves. And we need to do it soon. We can't afford --- physically, economically or socially --- to ignore it any longer," he says.

And what does Paul suggest? One of the answers he apparently likes is: ". . . make cities more walkable . . . " (This is actually weirder than it sounds on first reading. If we make our cities more walkable, we put the stores, etc., closer to the homes. Walking to the store becomes attractive because it doesn't entail much of a walk. I live in the suburb of Byron in London Ontario and I have no problem walking. Remarkably, my legs work just as well here as they did when I lived downtown.)

Let me suggest another approach: I believe many Canadians, if given clear, healthy choices, will choose health. But the marketplace, when it come to food, is anything but clear. Often food labels are downright misleading.

For instance, Campbell's Healthy Request Chicken Noodle Soup contains 480mg of sodium which they list as 20% of your daily allowance. But Health Canada says 1500mg is about right for an adult. My math says a cup of this soup contains 32 percent of your daily salt allowance. This is not healthy.

I could go on and on about this. I could list lots of food products with healthy sounding names but containing massive amounts of fat. Or others with healthy sounding names but packed with a variety of sugars.

I try and stay away from those prepared foods. Do you know what helps me accomplish this? Let me surprise you: food processors, bread machines and massive stand mixers. For me, these are all part of the answer and not, as Paul argues, part of the problem. It is the year 2010 and we live busy lives. It is not 1910 anymore.

But, thanks to my bread machine, I still have the time to bake my own bread. I control the fat --- French bread has none --- and I control the sugar, too. The flour for this loaf came from the Arva Flour Mills and the flavour of my bread, forgive me, but it came from heaven.

My next and last installment will look at the excellent recommendations of the Heart and Stroke Foundation and how these dovetail nicely with solutions being suggested right around the world.

Cheers,
I'm going for a walk,
Rockinon

Great New York Times link

If you are interested in math but always found it daunting, follow the new series starting today in the New York Times. It sounds like a great introduction to math. Check it out. If it delivers on its promise, it will be well worth your time. It might even be a good read for young students in grade seven or eight. Click the link.

From Fish to Infinity --- NYT

I've always had a certain love for numbers. I can still vividly recall getting scolded in grade one for not memorizing all my multiplication tables. I was asked, "What is five times ten?" I thought for a moment and said, "50." I took a bit too long to answer and so was asked another question from the five times table. This time I took even longer as I answered the question, "What is five times nine?" "45."

The teacher quizzed me, a little boy in grade one, and discovered that I knew how to multiply by ten, just add a zero to the number. I also understood division by two. And I could subtract ones.

To multiply an even number by five I was dividing by two and adding a zero. To multiply an odd number by five I was subtracting one, dividing by two, and finally adding a five as one added a zero when working with ten. Why I thought this was a better approach than simply memorizing the five times multiplication table I'm not sure.

Maybe I thought I had enough math tools. I didn't need anymore. I was just showing an early conservationist bent.
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Tomorrow, I am running Part Three: Killing ourselves with an unhealthy lifestyle.

Killing ourselves with an unhealthy lifestyle_Part Two

Paul Berton, editor-in-chief of The London Free Press, wrote in the pointofview (sic) column: "Many of us smoke too much, eat too much, eat too many of the wrong things, and not nearly enough of us get adequate exercise, whether we're teenagers or aging baby boomers."

He's right, of course. There are folk to be found doing all the above. But in some areas things are looking up. Take smoking. The number of young people smoking regularly or occasionally has dropped over the past decade. (At least by figures going up to 2008.)

As people typically start smoking in their teens, this drop indicates future smoking rates will be lower than today's. At 19.8 percent, you may be interested to know, the smoking rate in Ontario is below the national average.

As good as things look on the smoking front, they look quite the opposite when it comes to the battle of the bulge. And the problem is not confined to Canada. Obesity is a global epidemic affecting about a billion people worldwide. According to the World Health Organization: "Contrary to conventional wisdom, the obesity epidemic is not restricted to industrialized societies . . ."

"Increased consumption of more energy-dense, nutrient-poor foods with high levels of sugar and saturated fats, combined with reduced physical activity . . . ," these are fueling the global obesity epidemic. (More on this in the next post.)

In Canada 37% of adults are overweight and 24% are obese. Do the math --- 61% of adult Canadians are fat. The situation with children and teens is even more alarming. Among teen boys age 15 to 19, the proportion classified as overweight or obese rose from 14% to 31% between 1981 and 2009. Among teen girls, it increased from 14% to 25%.

I think it is rather simplistic to just damn the lazy Canadians who would "rather buy food prepared (and salty) than make it . . . " In many ways Canadians are trying to eat well. The question is: Why are they so often failing?

Take tea: Per capita consumption of tea has increased to 79.4 litres. Wow! This increase may be partially explained by the widely reported antioxidant properties of some teas. This looks like evidence that Canadians are trying; They do care.

According to Statistics Canada we have more fruit in our diets, more yogurts but less milk, we've increased our chicken while cutting back on our red meat. Oils and fats are on a downward trend, but vegetable consumption is also down and refined sugar use is up.

And where do all these food trends lead? Well, the total daily intake of calories per person has fallen to 2,382 calories, a decline of 131 calories since peaking in 2001. It does appear that if we give Canadian healthy choices, they will take them.

But making healthy choices is not always easy. Tomorrow we'll take a look at how food producers make it difficult to make healthy food choices.

And we'll be taking a look at the key priorities of the Heart and Stroke Foundation. I must tell you that as much as I disliked The London Free Press editorial, the news report on the Heart and Stroke Report Card was excellent, even going so far as to touch on the foundation's recommendations.
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Are you a fatty? Try the BMI (body mass index) calculator.

BMI For Adults Widget

   
   

I like the following site as it discusses the strengths and weaknesses of the BMI calculations. Nothing is black and white in my world; This is the BMI site for those who live in Rockinon's world.

BMI calculator background information.Lastly, be aware that some people believe BMI can potentially missclassify people as fat, even though their percentage of body fat is not excessive.

Killing ourselves with an unhealthy lifestyle

Miss Baby will enjoy good homemade food.

First, I'm not going to spend much time on this as Miss Baby is stopping by; I have a small child with whom to discuss art. She may be only five-months-old but she communicates better than some adults. Marcel Marceau has nothing on her.

Plus, she has a pretty positive outlook. I've always thought nothing improves a woman's looks more than a smile. Miss Baby knows how to look beautiful. I think it's in Miss Baby's genes as her grandmother knows a thing or two about dressing up the face with a smile.

Killing ourselves with an unhealthy lifestyle

Paul Berton, editor-in-chief of The London Free Press, wrote about our unhealthy lifestyle in the Saturday paper pointofview column. (And yes it is spelled pointofview in the paper. Cute, eh?)

My wife making her own pasta.

Paul writes, "we're killing ourselves with an unhealthy lifestyle." He's right but he quickly goes way off track. The tone seems to be --- It's us. Foolish us. --- "We'd rather use a food processor than a knife," Paul writes.

Stay out of my kitchen, Paul, because you'd confuse apples and oranges. Food processors are not knives. My wife uses both a food processor and a large stand mixer. They help her to quickly make good food from good ingredients.

The other night she made pasta using durum semolina flour bought at Arva Flour Mills. The pasta was quick to make and (she'll hate me for revealing this) her arthritic hands did not ache afterwards, thanks to the pasta maker attachment driven by her stand mixer.

The soup for salt addicts.

Ross Feldman, a researcher at the Robarts Research Institute, was right on target when he told you, Paul, governments can do more to regulate the amount of sodium in our foods.

This "Hearty Favourites" has 700 mg of sodium (salt) in 125 ml of the condensed soup or 1590 mg of sodium for the entire can. The U.S. Dietary Guidelines recommend an upper limit of no more than 1,500 milligrams for the middle-aged and older. That's the upper limit!

Paul tells us, "We need to do something about this ourselves. . . We can't afford . . . to ignore it any longer."

It is interesting to note that Paul is just being gracious when he says "we." Paul must be in his fifties, but he is a young fifty something. He is tall and not obviously overweight. In the past, he rode a bike to work and not a fancy and efficient multi-speed lighweight; Paul rode a good, sturdy somewhat heavy old-fashioned two-wheeler.

Admittedly there is a lot to be done in improving our North American lifestyle which is quickly becoming a global lifestyle. But all is not lost, trust me, Paul. All the attempts to make us aware of our shortcomings have not "clearly been a failure." Just check the mirror. You're living proof.

Now, back to that Campbell's soup. Why 125 ml of condensed soup should have such an incredible amount of salt is simply beyond me. It is time to vote for better food, less salt and no transfats --- in fact, less fat of all kinds --- by voting with our pocketbooks and not buying the obviously questionable products and by voting with our feet by walking to the store, if possible, and by making our own soup with using our food processors.

I'm lucky; I live in a suburban home surrounded by grocery stores and all within walking distance and come spring there will be asparagus and strawberries and other good, fresh stuff available from a stand just a short walk away.
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This post corrects the spelling of Robarts Research Institute. The institute was named in honour of John Robarts, a former premier of Ontario.

More Boomer Bunkum

According to Quebecor Media Inc. (QMI), ". . . boomers, frustrated with Detroit's poor quality, fell in love with Toyotas because they rarely broke down . . . Now that trust is in danger."

Don't you read stuff like this and think, "How do they know?"

According to CNW Marketing Research, a darling of the American car industry after their release of the report entitled "Dust to Dust" in which they trashed the green image of the Prius while praising the Hummer H2, the average age of new-vehicle buyers at the end of 2007 was the fine boomer age of 48. These folk, born in '59, were boomers by anyone's definition.

CNW claims the average age of shoppers choosing a domestic vehicle was 49.4 years old in 2007 — older than the average 42.5-year-old buyer of Asian cars but younger than the 50.6-year-olds choosing European nameplates. (It is interesting to note that all the ages given are boomer ages. But the Asian buyers are just barely boomers as they were born mid-way through 1964, the last year of the baby boom according to BabyBoomers.)

The oldest average shoppers were looking at the Ford brands, at 54.3 years. GM shoppers averaged 48-years-old, while Chrysler shoppers came in at 44.

The average age of Toyota shoppers was 46.6-years-old. Toyota buyers were younger than GM's and a lot younger than the shoppers for Ford brands.

It is thought that when times are tough, and they've been tough for the young and the middle class for a good decade in the States, and when the choice is between making a mortgage payment or a car payment, the house wins out. Many of the young are simply not in the market for a new car.

There does not seem to be any reason to claim that boomers were enamoured with Toyota, anymore than they were attracted to GM or Ford.

Now, I admit that these numbers are suspect as the source, CNW, is suspect but where does QMI get the figures to support its claims?
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I just must do a post on this whole boomer foolishness. It is all so downright silly. Boomer talk reveals an erroneous way of looking at the world, divided and categorized and mythologized.

Rides stationary train according to Sun Media

This is one of those quotes without comment posts.

When I read the news report from QMI, Quebecor Media Inc., I was startled at first and then I smiled. It concerned a fellow who had hopped a train which, instead of slowing down, sped up as it left town. The fellow was forced to cling to the cold steel grab rails at the end of the freight car and pray he wouldn't freeze in the cold Prairie night. He wasn't dressed for the train ride. QMI reported:

" . . . he noticed a stationary train and decided to jump on, believing it would slow down . . . "

Huh? A train can't go much slower than stopped. Man, you must be really drunk to hop a stationary train and hope to get anywhere. Then  again, maybe the world was already spinning fast enough for our novice train hopper as he spontaneously decided to ride the rails. (In the end he used his cell phone to call for help; The train was stopped and he was taken from the train to the hospital suffering from hypothermia.)

CBC reported:

"I was going to back where we started originally, and I seen the train slowly going by and I thought I could save myself five blocks … "

A check of other news reports all had the fellow hopping a slowly moving train with the intention of hopping off after a few blocks. As I said, the train sped up and derailed his plans.

So, what was our QMI writer drinking? (Maybe QMI could use an editor. There are lots available in Canada. And with years of experience, too.)
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More laughs --- this time at my expense.

I, too, could use an editor. The morning after posting this I noticed that I had, in my haste, spelled stationary wrong in my title. Stationery refers to writing paper or writing materials; Stationary, with the 'a', means stopped. I also hang my head over pray. To pray is to make devout supplication; Prey, with the 'e', refers to hunted animals.

If this blog proves anything, it is that many of us need editors. (. . . and that my mind doesn't work perfectly at the best of times, let alone at one in the morning.)

Cheers,
Rockinon

Tommy Smothers more impressive

Recently I reminisced about the yo-yo man who would stop twice a year at my public school in Canada. This was decades ago and I must admit that I thought the yo-yo was essentially dead.

Nope! It has gone hi-tech, or sure looks it from this video from England. This chap may be trying to set a world record but Tommy Smothers has it all over this dude. See my original post.



Cheers,
Rockinon