Obesidad (Continuación)

InternacionalSalud Pública,

By Marion Nestle, a professor of food studies and public health at New York University, is the author of “What to Eat.” (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 01/10/06):

THE proposal last week from the New York City Health Department to require restaurants to use cooking oils free of trans fats was a no-brainer. Trans fats — which are not natural in food but a byproduct of the partial hydrogenation of vegetable oils — raise the risk of heart disease, can easily be replaced and should have been out of the food supply a long time ago.

But eliminating trans fats will do nothing to help New Yorkers prevent obesity, which is the greatest food-related threat Americans face.…  Seguir leyendo »

EuropaUnión Europea, , ,

By Justin King, the chief executive of J Sainsbury plc (THE GUARDIAN, 12/09/06):

Last week Jamie Oliver, who fronts Sainsbury's advertising and has done so much to highlight the importance of healthy eating, used colourful language to criticise parents who allow children to eat junk food and become obese. He has a point. By 2010 one million British children are destined to be obese. A generation of overweight and unfit children are the overweight and unfit adults of the future. This will put substantial pressure on public services, notably the NHS.

But while I agree with Jamie's drive to get children eating healthily, his attack is neither correct nor the best way to achieve change.…  Seguir leyendo »

EspañaSanidad y Salud Pública, ,

Por Abel Mariné, catedrático de Nutrición y Bromatología (EL PERIÓDICO, 08/09/06):

Por lo que ha llegado al gran público del Congreso Mundial de Cardiología, no se sabe si lo que más se ha hecho ha sido hablar del corazón o despotricar de la comida basura. Calificar de basura algunos alimentos es mediático, pero no responde a criterios científicos. La legislación y los controles de las administraciones garantizan que no salgan al mercado alimentos nocivos, aunque no se pueden evitar por completo fraudes o accidentes. No hay alimentos buenos y malos, lo que hay es alimentos que hay que ingerir a menudo (hortalizas, frutas) y otros que hay que consumir con moderación (carnes, como las hamburguesas) o solo ocasionalmente (pastelería).…  Seguir leyendo »

EuropaUnión Europea, ,

By Minette Marrin (THE TIMES, 27/08/06):

Fat is not a feminist issue, as Susie Orbach once claimed. Fat is a class issue. Rich, educated people are not fat; you see almost no children in private schools who are overweight. Fatness and obesity are directly related to lower education and lower incomes.

What is sad is that at a time when this country is richer than ever and ought to have better schools than ever, we have far more fat people than ever — a dangerous explosion of flab. Last week the Department of Health issued a report grimly called Forecasting Obesity to 2010 and its findings were grotesque.…  Seguir leyendo »

InternacionalSalud Pública,

By Melanie McDonagh (THE TIMES, 20/08/06):

When Julius Caesar cried, “Let me have men around me that are fat”, he never realised that one day his wishes would come true. According to Barry Popkin, an American nutritionist, there are now more overweight people in the world than hungry ones.

There are a billion fatties worldwide and 800m of the lean and hungry. It’s an extraordinary turnabout in the human condition. Once, the mass of men worked to stave off hunger and famine; now it’s coronary heart disease and type 2 diabetes that they have to worry about.

Mind you, we should be grateful: personally I’d rather die of any obesity-related disease than starve.…  Seguir leyendo »

EspañaSocial, ,

Por Joaquín Leguina, diputado socialista y estadístico (EL PAÍS, 18/08/06):

La película Casablanca (Michael Curtiz), rodada en 1942, creo yo que no se podría realizar hoy. ¿Y por qué? se preguntará el amable lector. Para ilustrar la respuesta tendré que evocar algunas escenas de aquella tan renombrada cinta. Para empezar, Casablanca es una película llena de humo: el que suelta el tren al salir de la estación de París llevándose a un abandonado y humillado Rick (Humphrey Bogart) hacia Marsella, hasta el que aparece en las escenas finales donde, primero, el citado Rick acaba con el nazi Strasser (Conrad Veidt) para, inmediatamente después, ver despegar entre la niebla el avión de Air France que se lleva juntos a Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman) y a Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid) hacia la libertad, y, finalmente, también Rick y Renault (Claude Rains) caminan, codo con codo, perdiéndose entre la humareda en pos de "una nueva amistad" en el último plano de la película.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesSocial, ,

Par François Ascher, professeur à l'université Paris-VIII. Dernier ouvrage paru : le Mangeur hypermoderne. Une figure de l'individu éclectique, Odile Jacob, 2005. (LIBERATION, 19/07/06):

L'obésité est devenue, à en croire l'Organisation mondiale de la santé, une épidémie. Partout dans les pays développés, mais aussi dans des pays moins riches comme la Chine, les pouvoirs publics se mobilisent pour lutter contre ce nouveau fléau : le surpoids. Les campagnes d'information et d'éducation se succèdent, relayées par les médias, dramatisant chaque fois un peu plus la situation : vous n'êtes pas encore obèse ? Attention, vous risquez de le devenir. Vos enfants le sont potentiellement.…  Seguir leyendo »

InternacionalSalud Pública, ,

By Tim Suter, a partner at Ofcom, the independent regulator and competition authority for the UK communications industries. Response to 'Tough on crime, to hell with the causes of crime if they make money' (THE GUARDIAN, 05/05/06):

It is for others to judge whether there is indeed a link between diet and violent behaviour (Tough on crime, to hell with the causes of crime if they make money, May 2). Our job as the broadcasting regulator is to protect viewers and listeners from exploitation and harm, and to ensure that they have available to them a wide range of programmes and services.Ofcom's…  Seguir leyendo »

InternacionalSalud Pública, ,

By George Monbiot (THE GUARDIAN, 02/05/06):

Does television cause crime? The idea that people copy the violence they watch is debated endlessly by criminologists. But this column concerns an odder and perhaps more interesting idea: if crime leaps out of the box, it is not the programmes that are responsible as much as the material in between. It proposes that violence emerges from those blissful images of family life, purged of all darkness, that we see in the advertisements.

Let me begin, in constructing this strange argument, with a paper published in the latest edition of Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.…  Seguir leyendo »