The 2013 Melbourne Festival of Ideas had a session on obesity with a spirited panel discussion laying out all the arguments from all the protagonists.
Full session: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JiVTHAhKlQ
Radio National First Bite (edited version): http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/rnfirstbite/are-we-eating-ourselves-to-death3f/5076592
Behavior change is difficult, but to date it has dominated by industries, such as the processed food industry, who have mastered the art of mass market behaviour change through a withering combination of product research, development and engineering, marketing, advertising and promotion, all founded on an unstoppable and lucrative business model. At this moment in history, industry is the unopposed, global behaviour change super power. Serious capital investment with serious returns but with the unfortunate side-effect of producing a global epidemic of non-communicable disease.
The institutions charged with protecting the public’s health have been caught flat footed. Rather than trying to neutralise industry’s behaviour change efforts, medically-dominated health systems have instead chosen to layer their own lucrative pharmaceutical and surgical business model on top.
Doctors quite legitimately pay lip service to the “diet and exercise” mantra because they know it doesn’t work. And why doesn’t it work? Because anyone can say eat healthier food and exercise, thus making it difficult to justify their years of training and high fees. It’s much better for doctors to note “diet and exercise”, but then pump the drug and surgery options.
So what needs to happen?
A countervailing super power must be established. Not one founded around a powerful business model, but rather a movement of interested citizens, concerned by the grotesque monentization of the population’s health. In effect, a competing super power in the behaviour change arms race.
Key characteristics:
Funding sources:
Inspirations
I’ve been exploring the idea of becoming a broccoli magnate and what that would take. Michael Moss explored the idea of updating broccoli’s image in the NYTs recently with some interesting results…
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/03/magazine/broccolis-extreme-makeover.html
This extraordinary resource by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation was handsomely funded by the Gates Foundation and features interactive data visualisations across a range of country-based and global data sets. The data has been carefully curated and is very handy for looking at risk factors and causes.
http://www.healthmetricsandevaluation.org/gbd/visualizations/gbd-arrow-diagram
![WP_20131103_010[1]](http://blog.panicola.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/WP_20131103_0101.jpg)
Drewstar introduced me to Kale Chips. Made my first batch last night after noticing kale stocked in the supermarket for the first time. Very simple. Very quick. Very tasty. Very healthy. Where have they been my whole life?
Ingredients:
Directions:
While preparing for my Progressive Australia speech on healthy food yesterday, two factoids caught my attention:
1. The amazing Credit Suisse trashing of the sugar industry notes that calories derived from drinks (i.e. liquids) are not recognised by the body as contributing to our satiety. Hence, the body continues to seek and consume food as if calories from soft drinks, fruit juices etc. had not been consumed:
“Liquid and solid sugar calories are handled differently by the body. The energy that is obtained through beverages is interpreted and processed differently by our body from energy that is obtained through solid foods, even if the overall quantity of calories consumed is the same. Sugar by itself is a poor source of calories as it provides little nutritional value. Not surprisingly, the public debate has centered on soft drinks and the role they have played in this issue.”
2. Michael Moss’ NYT article on addictive junk food refers to Vanishing Caloric Density in Cheetos:
“To get a better feel for their work, I called on Steven Witherly, a food scientist who wrote a fascinating guide for industry insiders titled, “Why Humans Like Junk Food.” I brought him two shopping bags filled with a variety of chips to taste. He zeroed right in on the Cheetos. “This,” Witherly said, “is one of the most marvelously constructed foods on the planet, in terms of pure pleasure.” He ticked off a dozen attributes of the Cheetos that make the brain say more. But the one he focused on most was the puff’s uncanny ability to melt in the mouth. “It’s called vanishing caloric density,” Witherly said. “If something melts down quickly, your brain thinks that there’s no calories in it . . . you can just keep eating it forever.”
Put together with the phenomenal success of lap banding*, this suggests that satiety is mediated by mechanical receptors at the top of the stomach. I’m sure this isn’t rocket science and could be found in any physiology text book, but its unusual that it hasn’t made it into the public discourse.
It explains why fruit, but not fruit juice, is good for you – it is to do with fibre, but only when it persists in a structure, and nothing to do with its ability to magically slow absorption of sugars into the body etc.
It explains why most junk foods are melt in your mouth – so that by the time it hits the stomach, it’s in too much of a liquid form to stimulate the stomach’s mechanical receptors.
Again, unless you’re putting lap bands into people, the only way to profit for this is by recommending people eat solid foods which fill them up.
* Lap Bands must make it easier for any food (including liquids) to trigger the mechanical receptors in the stomach.
Credit Suisse Investment Report on Sugar: Credit Suisse – document-1022457401
Michael Moss’s NYT Article: The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food – NYTimes
A likely game changer. AIRO uses a special embedded spectrometer to track not just your heart rate, but also your sleep patterns, workout intensity and calories consumed. It’s even able to break down the nutritional intake of your food.
Site: http://www.getairo.com/
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/10/28/airo-wristband/
Recent scientific advances suggest that slowing the aging process (senescence) is now a realistic goal. Yet most medical research remains focused on combating individual diseases. Using the Future Elderly Model—a microsimulation of the future health and spending of older Americans—we compared optimistic “disease specific” scenarios with a hypothetical “delayed aging” scenario in terms of the scenarios’ impact on longevity, disability, and major entitlement program costs. Delayed aging could increase life expectancy by an additional 2.2 years, most of which would be spent in good health. The economic value of delayed aging is estimated to be $7.1 trillion over fifty years. In contrast, addressing heart disease and cancer separately would yield diminishing improvements in health and longevity by 2060—mainly due to competing risks. Delayed aging would greatly increase entitlement outlays, especially for Social Security. However, these changes could be offset by increasing the Medicare eligibility age and the normal retirement age for Social Security. Overall, greater investment in research to delay aging appears to be a highly efficient way to forestall disease, extend healthy life, and improve public health.
