Contraband candy has allure

Last week I wrote about a UCLA study reporting that the proximity to fast food retailers yield increased rates of obesity and diabetes regardless of income. This week the BBC breaks another study finding that the elimination of junk food in schools, yields an increase in consumption of fresh fruit, especially when combined with peer pressure.

Children who attended fruit tuck shops where fruit was the only food allowed in school ate 0.37 more portions of fruit per day than those at schools without a fruit tuck shop.

Pupils at schools which banned all types of food ate 0.14 more portions of fruit per day, the research found.

Where there were no restrictions on food being brought into school, fruit consumption was lower than at other schools, even if the school had a fruit tuck shop.

Professor Laurence Moore, from the Cardiff Institute, said: “Our results suggest that children are more willing to use fruit tuck shops and eat fruit as a snack at school if they and their friends are not allow to take in unhealthy snacks.

“This highlights the importance of friends’ behaviour and of peer modelling, and of the need for schools to put policies in place to back up health interventions.”

Of course, for every rule put in place, wily kids find ways to break them. While cupcake and other confection bans at elementary schools are valiant attempts to slow the growing wave of obesity, whatever foods get banned become highly sought after contraband on the junk food black market.

In a new trend, school districts throughout the country have worked to forcefully banish junk food. They’ve replaced soda with bottled water and candy with yogurt and nuts. In doing so, they’ve created a black market of candy sales that takes place in parking lots, locker rooms, hallways and playgrounds. Entrepreneurial students buy loads of cheap candy and snacks at Sam’s Club and Costco, mark up the price tenfold or more, and sell it for enormous profit. Vending machines that sell health food go largely ignored. Meanwhile, bands, drama clubs and other organizations that were funded by the above-board junk food sales are struggling financially while the black market thrives. Few win, many lose.

Haven’t public officials yet learned that banning anything only puts a bright shiny bow that says take me on it. Underage drinking, narcotics. . .

You Are What You Eat

Last week I wrote about a new study that finds an individual’s proximity to fast food retailers increases the incidence of diabetes and obesity. NYC recently passed a law requiring retailers with 15+ locations operating under the same name to post the calorie counts of each menu item. If setting your eyes on those numbers isn’t enough, check out the video below.

As I’ve written before, Michael Pollan recommends that you “don’t eat any food that’s incapable of rotting. If the food can’t rot eventually, there’s something wrong. . .”

Bill Clinton: hard at work supporting the SNL hypothesis

When I posted the SNL clip of an ethic-challenged Clinton opening the show on Saturday night, I didn’t have much to add after reading what other bloggers had written.

This evening I caught up with ABC’s coverage of Bill Clinton campaigning for his wife in West Virginia.

Per ABC News’ Sarah Amos, this is what the 42nd president of the United States said Friday in Ripley, W.Va.:

“Hillary is in this race because of people like you and places like this and no matter what they say,” Clinton said. “And no matter how much fun they make of your support of her and the fact that working people all over America have stuck with her, she thinks you’re as smart as they are. She thinks you’ve got as much right to have your say as anybody else. And, you know, they make a lot of fun of me because I like to campaign in places like this, they say I have been exiled to rural America, as if that was a problem. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather be here than listening to that stuff I have to hear on television, I’d rather be with you. There is a simple reason: You need a president a lot more than those people telling you not to vote for her.”

Is he completely off his rocker? Who’s making fun of rural America? From what I saw of Obama’s campaigning in rural Pennsylvania, he did his damnedest to relate to their everyday experience. I hope it’s not to much to ask that the rural W. Virginians realize they’re being patronized by a man who thinks they’re dumb enough to fall for that sort of rhetoric.

In Madison, W.Va.:

“It is very interesting, from the very beginning of this race there has been a sharp divide in the vote — the people who need a president, who need to turn the economy around, who need to restore the middle class, who need to give poor people a chance to work their way into the middle class, who need to give our children a better future, who need to restore our standing in the world and the war in Iraq, but do it in a way that rebuilds our military and stands up for America’s security and standing around the world — they have been for her from the get-go.”

I wish ABC had reported what was on the other half of that divide. Bill is giving new life to the claims that the Clinton campaign wants to destroy the Democratic Party’s chances in 2008,so she can run again in 2012. It’s increasingly looking like she’ll not only throw her party “under the bus,” but the rest of the country too.

In listening to Clinton snippets like the above, SNL is also on point saying Hilary is a sore loser who would only half-heartedly campaign for Obama. How do you turn around a message like the above? There is zero possibility of either Clinton sounding remotely sincere when it’s time to rally the Democratic Party behind Obama.

With the ongoing Clinton shenanigans, I’m starting to think that when it’s over, they’ll be over. They’ll be excommunicated from their party, left behind as artifacts of the 1990s. If they shatter what should be a cake walk for the Democratic Party this November, it wouldn’t surprise me if the shunning commenced because they don’t deserve to earn another dime off the backs of hardworking Americans of all races.

SNL eviscerates Clinton: time to fold

Multimedia representation of online dating

Jonathan Harris and Sep Kamvar, present their “I Want You To Want Me” project on online dating.

Not so surprising: study confirms men marry their mothers

Did the statement “men marry their mothers” start out as one of those old wives’ tales? Or was it evidence based from the start? A new study out of the University of Iowa shows

that nearly 80 percent of high-achieving men who were sons of mothers with college degrees married women with a similar education.

And 62 percent of men whose mothers had graduate degrees tied the knot with a graduate degree holder.

So meeting his mother, will likely show you just what he thinks of your intellect. . .

On a positive note, since young women are increasingly more degreed than men, the generation of men they raise could be setting the bar that much higher for their own marriage matches. With each progressive generation, smart women will stress less about finding an equal partner because men will increasingly want a brainy babe versus one looking for her M.R.S. (not that there’s anything wrong with pursuing an M.R.S. if you’re so inclined).

Pro-lifers: With the evidence against them, they return to their roots

Years ago, I read parts of Susan Faludi’s Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women for a paper I wrote in a high school history class. The roots of the pro-life movement are rooted not just in religion, but in a feminist backlash. Several leading pro-life groups in the 80s had great disdain for pro-choice sentiment because it implied that women have a right to make to reproductive decisions without consulting their boyfriends or husbands. A pro-choice sentiment gives women more control over their lives as autonomous sexual beings, than a pro-life one that demands that a woman’s freedoms are secondary to the fetus that has taken hold inside her.

Throughout the 90s, abortion clinic attacks became the focus of the most extreme pro-lifers. Accordingly, the pro-life movement defined itself as a cause meant to prevent baby murder.

Seems as though PREVENTING unwanted pregnancy would be a great way to bridge the gap between the pro-choice and pro-life crowd. If both sides worked to ensure women had access to adequate birth control, there would be fewer abortions. The Pro-choice side wants women to have control over their own family planning, and since abortion is that last stop on the unwanted baby train, it would seem access to birth control would be a logical point of cooperation.

But the American Life League is upping the ante this summer and on June 7th, it would like you join them in protesting the birth control pill because it kills babies. Yes, making it more difficult for a sperm and egg to collide, as well as preventing a zygote from attaching to the uterine wall, is now also deemed murder. Preventing a pregnancy that could end in abortion is now equally wrong. My favorite parts of their talking points (I italize points of interests for my own emphasis):

Q: How does the pill work?
A: The birth control pill and similar birth control products work in a woman’s body in one of three ways: It can prevent ovulation and it can obstruct sperm from reaching the egg (prevent fertilization) by thickening the cervical mucus. However, if both of these methods fail and a new human person is created, the pill and other contraceptives can stop a tiny child’s implantation in his/her mother’s womb because the pill irritates the lining of the uterus so that the tiny baby boy or baby girl cannot attach to the lining of the uterus and the newly formed human person is aborted and dies.

Here’s what that “tiny person” looks like. It’s actually zygote, not remotely like a fetus, which would grow to resemble a “tiny person.”

But the real mission of this new campaign is left bare.

Q: Isn’t it better to be on the pill when you
are sexually active?
A: Better for whom? The pill does not prevent you from getting a sexually transmitted disease . . . Moreover, sexual activity outside of marriage is seriously wrong.

Q: I’m for reducing the number of abortions, but isn’t using the birth control pill the only way to do that?
A: . . .If you’re single, abstinence is always your best choice. It isn’t always easy, but it always works. By abstaining from sex, you eliminate the possibility of pregnancy and catching a sexually transmitted disease.

At least the ALL is being honest about judging women for having active sex lives, even if it is completely unrealistic. Though a late 1990s survey showing that 1 in 3 thinks sex should be confined to marriage, about 95% of Americans have/had premarital sex, including those born all the way back in the 1940s. Another study found that 93 percent of men and 79 percent of women report having premarital sex.

Women are consistently demonized in the media for so-called immoral behavior. Despite women’s lib and 5 years of Samantha Jones getting laid like a man on Sex & the City, women are not on equal societal footing when it comes to embracing their sexuality. For some reason, a segment of American cannot accept a woman as a sentient, sexual being.

Case in point. Consider the trial of Deborah Jeane Palfrey, the DC Madam who committed suicide to avoid her prison sentence. Of the 15000 clients she had amassed in her prostitution ring, just three men were outed. On the other hand, 15 of Palrey’s 100+ sex workers were put on the stand and asked to describe in painstaking detail what acts they engaged in with their unnamed johns. The prosecutor is adamant that the names of all 132 women involved be released.

From the audience, it appears that prosecutors have presented a solid case that the alleged Madam, Deborah Jeane Palfrey, did indeed run a prostitution ring. A better question, however, is why they bothered. Prosecutors say the prostitution ring generated all of $2 million over 13 years — small potatoes for a federal racketeering and money-laundering case that could ruin the lives of 132 women.

It’s a question that evidently has occurred to the judge. Yesterday, prosecutors unpacked eight binders full of money-order receipts that reveal the identity of most, if not all, of the Madam’s escorts. “You want to make public the names of all the employees?” Robertson asked prosecutor Catherine Connelly. “Is there no limit to the collateral damage?”

Evidently not. Connelly said the names had to be released. “Unfortunately.”

(Note to whoever has custody of that little black book: wikileaks.org would be a prime place to upload a pdf copy of Palfrey’s client list, especially in an election year).

15,000 men and none face legal consequences for their repetitive, illegal actions, while the women are targets of what Vanessa at Feministing dubbed a “slut-shaming witch hunt“.

The American Life League is going to continue encouraging the sexual witch hunt this summer. Because unless you’re ready to birth babies, sex shouldn’t be an optional activity.

Pissed off? Me too. NARAL Pro-Choice America is taking donations.

PS. I do acknowledge that for some, religious and ethical boundaries are the reason for their pro-life stance. I respect an individual’s religious choices, though I disagree with those that expect the government to extend one’s religious beliefs to an entire nation regardless of every other citizen’s personal religious and ethical proclivities.

PPS. While we’re talking about the sexuality police, let’s also consider those die-hard, abstinence-only education supporters. Study after study is showing that abstinence-only education is ineffective and pales in comparison to comprehensive sex education. This week author Cristina Page took the time to cross reference teen pregnancy and sexual activity rates with the type sex education available in each state. Her findings?

Turns out pro-life states, those that are prone to tell kids that abstinence is the only proven contraception, and discourage use of actual contraception, then wag their finger at the less “morally superior” states, are where high schoolers are:

· more sexually active

· more likely to have had sex before the age of 13

· more likely to have four or more sexual partners.

Turns out that to be “pro-life” is to be pro-your-young-teen-having-a-risky-sex-life. In addition, the states that are witnessing the most dramatic drop in teen pregnancies are the most solidly pro-choice ones (CA, VT, HI, AK) while the ones where teen pregnancy rates are declining most slowly are anti-choice (NE, MS, WY, OK).

Duh! Direct correlation between fast food availability and health issues

One of my first impressions of Los Angeles was my shock that there was donut shop on every block. In the Valley there’s a strip mall with a retailer featuring donuts and fried chicken. . . I’ve often wondered what donuts from that shop taste like. . . I would hope they use a different vat for the chicken. . . This herd of donut stores surprised me because I thought California to be land of the granola-eating tree hugger; rather that stereotype is relegated to Northern California, while starvation diets and cosmetic surgery are all the rage in SoCal, to balance out the donut shops and cupcake bakeries.

A new UCLA study links poor health outcomes with one’s proximity to fast and junk food retailers. The LATimes reports

Higher rates of diabetes and obesity occur in neighborhoods — regardless of the residents’ income, race or ethnicity — where fast-food restaurants and convenience stores greatly outnumber grocery stores and produce vendors, according to a statewide study released today.

It makes sense. . . when you’re hungry and have money to burn, you’re not going out of your way for a meal. You stick within walking distance at lunch or stay relatively local for dinner with friends. Thus, your options are limited by the restaurants and stores in your local vicinity. While you ultimately decide where you go, your options are limited by your geography.

Of the top 10 franchises of 2008 (per Entrepreneur.com’s 29th Annual Franchise ranking), should you be looking to invest:

#1 7-Eleven (30,642 franchises)

#2 Subway (29,929 franchises

#3 Dunkin’ Donuts (7376 franchises)

#4 Pizza Hut (9881 franchises)

#5 McDonalds (20,099 franchises)

#6 Sonic Drive In (2656 franchises)

#7 KFC (11,071 franchises)

#9 Domino’s (2073 franchises)

Eight of the top 10 recommended franchises are fast food restaurants. Think about YOUR neighborhood, can you go a block through a city and not find deep friend or foil-bagged options? It’s an incredible rarity.

In California, the researchers found that

Obesity rates were 20% higher in neighborhoods with five or more times as many fast-food outlets as produce vendors, compared with those with three or fewer, the study found.

While it is an individual’s responsibility to to decide what’s for breakfast, lunch, and dinner; it’s a community’s responsibility to maximize the availability of healthy options when approving new business licenses and developing new strip malls and local attractions.

What Pattern is Your Brain

Your Brain’s Pattern

Your brain is always looking for the connections in life. You always amaze your friends by figuring out things first. You’re also good at connecting people - and often play match maker. You see the world in fluid, flexible terms. Nothing is black or white.

What Pattern Is Your Brain?

The above makes sense. I’m great at finding synergies between people and their work.

I’m the ultimate relativist; I think everything must be considered in its context, and  no one culture can take a position of dominance in a conversation. Rather, we should seek to align differing belief systems by what they have in common.

Not a funny (house) bunny

Went to the movies this weekend to see yet another lame, formulaic chick flick. Typically, trailers are the best part of my movie going experience, but I couldn’t help but be aggravated by this one.

Let’s recap:

Destitute, former Playboy bunny winds up taking over as house mother at a sorority for brainiac, outcast college women. Shelly is hired for the job because “Guys like her, and since guys don’t like us, I figured Shelly here could teach us how. “

Natalie asks, “How can we be so smart, but everyone kind of thinks we’re losers.”

Shelly agrees to help turn Zeta Alpha Theta around, by making them over in her Bunny likeness with short skirts, high heels, make up, and lingerie. Post makeover, Natalie notes, “Now we can be the best version of ourselves.”

But of course, Shelly falls for a smart boy and the ZAT girls give her a make-under, to make her look like the smart girls he digs, including thick glasses.

Yes, we need ANOTHER movie that says girls need to look like sex kittens to land a man. The misfits of ZAT are unique and beautiful in their own way, but they fall in line with a waxed, plucked, and underdressed ideal that the media photoshops into existence on magazine covers month after month.

And why does every chick flick, Made of Honor included, have to be about landing a man? It’s as if landing an engagement ring is the only true judge of a female character’s success. Personal and professional goal posts don’t matter; Girl X needs to land a man.

In the real world, women are increasingly pushing back marriage and kids to get ahead in their careers and develop a sense of self before settling down, isn’t it about time that Hollywood followed suit and generated more strong female characters?

Update: Another random thought, tying in the make under. What is it with the perpetuation of women serving as a fantasy to get her man, versus the men being attracted to the authenticity of the character when being herself?