Kspitz’s Weblog

An article from the NY Times describes the recent explosion of the number of blogs written by overweight people who are advocating for “fat acceptance” and calling for an end to the “hysteria” over America’s “perceived” obesity epidemic. In general, many of these bloggers claim that the health risks of being overweight are exaggerated, that Americans are not really any heavier than they used to be, and that the weight loss strategy of  “eat less and exercise more” does not work for the majority of people and is simply a myth.  

Hmm… I had to pause and think about these claims for a moment; some of them I agree with and some I don’t.

First of all, I definitely agree with the idea of body acceptance. I believe that one of the main reasons we have such a high number of overweight people is because for decades we have been sold the idea that there is a “perfect” body and that “thin” is it. This image spawned the development of thousands of “low-fat” food products, which, in reality, are nothing more than fake foods loaded with sugar.  In my nutrition classes we spend a good deal of time discussing eating disorders and their root causes – which really have little to do with food and more to do with body image and self esteem. So yes, I wholeheartedly agree that we should toss out the fashion magazines and the idea that thin equals success and beauty, for of course, it doesn’t.

Yes, there is quite a bit of hype over the level of obesity in our country and it is true that being moderately overweight does not necessarily translate into a higher incidence of disease. However, we must define word “moderate” here. Being 10, 20 or even 30 pounds overweight is not automatically dangerous, especially if you are active and eating a healthful diet and do not have huge amounts of stress in your life. But, when people are 50, 70, and 100 pounds overweight, then health issues do come into play, and the number of people in this category has been steadily increasing in the past 3 decades, especially the past 2 decades.

Are Americans bigger than they used to be?  Yes, absolutely, without a doubt, they are.  I have seen evidence of this in several different aspects of my own career – everything from clothing to car seats (even ballet/pointe shoes) are made in bigger sizes than they were just 20 years ago. Why do we have to build stadiums and movie theaters with larger seats? Could it be linked to the bigger SUV’s with the ever-expanding cup holders?

In response to the “myth” that eating less and exercising more will help you lose weight…I partially agree. It’s true that sometimes even when people are eating healthfully and exercising regularly they do not lose weight, or rather, they do not become “fashion-model thin”.  This goes back to that whole “thin” ideal, which, as we have already established, is false anyway. Genetics plays a significant role in determining body shape and there will always be some rounder bodies and some slimmer bodies within a population, but to imply that exercise – in relation to weight control – is futile is, as far as I’m concerned, just another excuse (and I have heard many) to avoid moving around.  

The human body was designed for movement. It is far more stressful to the spine to sit than to stand, the joints will stiffen and the muscles will atrophy if not used regularly, and the lymph system, which is crucial to detoxification and dietary fat digestion, does not function properly without adequate body movements. Exercise has many, many more benefits than simply weight control.

So, to the “Fatosphere” I say kudos on the self-esteem aspect, ditto for taking the time to speak out, but instead of simply spouting off, why not put that energy to better use? Why not advocate for healthier food in our nation’s schools, cafeterias, restaurants and grocery stores? How about voting for the inclusion of more sidewalks, biking paths, gardens and green spaces within our cities? If these types of things were developed, we would quickly find out if the obesity epidemic is a “myth” or if it is the result of a food system full of overly processed, low quality foods, and a society that encourages less movement instead of a normal, human amount .  

just thinking about chickens starts brining in the stories…. this is a link to another story about raising chickens in the city.  Apparently both Seattle and Portland also allow residents to raise up to 3 chickens in backyard coops.   cluck, cluck!

http://thechronicleherald.ca/Columnists/1034445.html

Well, I didn’t think I would admit this but…I am LOVING the bloglines feed thing!! I have subscribed to the NY Times for articles on Nutrition and Environment and Small Business and so far, I have received several articles of interest.  I found several interesting blogs, although I’m sure there are hundreds more.  One I have found helpful is “Eating Liberally” .  They blog about a lot of food-politics issues and they have a running dialogue with Dr. Marion Nestle who is the author of “Food Politics” and “What to Eat”.  

http://eatingliverally.org/

Another site I have enjoyed reading is from Dr. Susan Rubin.  She is a former dentist and now nutritionist who is one of the ”Two Angry Moms” who recently released a documentary about the dismal condition of school lunches. She has loads of good advice for moms who are trying to wean their kids off junk food and sugar. Being a mom herself (three daughters) she understands firsthand the challenges of trying to feed a family these days. You can check our her website at:

http://www.drsusanrubin.com/ 

Happy reading,

-Gail 

I think a good story has to involve your emotions in some way. Some stories make you laugh - like the stories of Lake Wobegon from Garrison Keillor, or a story may cause you to feel angry or sad – like the stories by George Orwell that we read for this week. I don’t particularly “like” stories of shooting elephants or hanging prisoners, but that doesn’t make them “bad” stories. If anything, stories like these force us to examine our own human-ness and to question why we do the things we do. Having this emotional component is important, I think, because even when the audience has no particular connection to the characters of a story they can still “relate” to the emotion that the story evokes.   

Well, so far I find it rather helpful to recieve news articles automatically although  I can see how it might get a little overwhelming if not managed correctly.  I’m not sure how to delete the articles that I don’t need…still practicing.

From Google News:  

So far, the articles I have received on community gardening are mostly local news and event calendars – helpful, maybe, but not exactly the kind of info I seek.  

I received an article from the Des Moines Register - an interview with the new Iowa Secretary of Agriculture. He mentioned some of the efforts that Des Moines is making to curb soil erosion within the urban areas and to deal with the issue of lawn herbacides polluting storm water runoff.

I also have a feed from the New York Times sending articles dealing with nutrition and the environment. So far I have recieved an article about a mother’s battle with her child’s food allergies – a problem that is becoming very common these days.

I look forward to recieving more news… …

Part of our assignment this week is to blog about the topic that we have chosen to write and speak about this semester. Anyone who has spent any time with me knows that I have a passion for nutrition – espeically local food issues, and I also love discussing other aspects of health, exercise, yoga, dance, and gardening (and my three cats). Why do I have such a passion for these issues?  Well, I’ll narrow it down to the issue I will be chatting most about….local food and urban gardening.

My reasons for caring about this issue are many, but two come quickly to mind. The first is that I have been teaching in the fitness/health field for over 20 years now. I started teaching aerobics in 1986 – back when we built our own steps and learned how to do “Step-Aerobics”.  For some unknown reason dancing around in front of a large group of people and shouting out instructions seemed to come naturally to me. I’ve always been an active person – not hyperactive, just active and moving around alot. Teaching Aerobics soon led to other fitness endeavors; Dance, Personal training, Pilates, Yoga, and of course, Nutrition was always a part of this package.

For the most part I have loved this career although it has also been frustrating. I’ve never made much money at it. Our society, in general, seems to think a good fitness instructor doesn’t really “do” anything outside of the actual class time, therefore $25-35 per hour should cover it, right? (Never mind that it costs thousands of dollars to become certified in any one of these chosen specialties).

The other, perhaps more important, thing that has frustrated me over the past 20 years is that despite all the excellent health clubs and opportunities we have for staying healthy, our population has become more sedentary and far less healthy than ever before. Our young people, especially, are in worse shape now than in past generations. This has got to change!

This brings me to the other reason I am passionate about nutrition and health issues – my childhood. I grew up in a small town in Iowa, not on a farm, but I had very strong farm connections. My aunt and uncle owned a small dairy farm seven miles outside of town. This was my mother’s older sister and her family. As a kid, I spend a lot of time on their farm and in many ways I feel like a “farm kid”.  Aunt Pauline had a huge vegetable garden and probably 90% of the food she fed her husband and five kids came from their farm. This little farm (150 acres) also supplied our family of six with some vegetables along with chickens, eggs, ducks, geese, pork and beef.

In town, we also had gardens – not just one, but three! We grew lots of potatoes, green beans, onions, spinach,  and my favorite…strawberries!   

I have many memories of working in the gardens and eating fresh foods  - some are good memories and some are not so good!  Kids, after all, don’t always tend to their chores happily.

Anyway, I’ve gone on too long already!   To be continued… …

 -Gail (k) 

This past Saturday, I attended a public forum/discussion pertaining to “Green Eating.” It was held at the main branch of the public library. The flyer stated that we would be discussing ideas on how to be more environmentally conscious in our eating habits.  When I signed up on Thursday I was the only name on the list, so I wasn’t sure if the event would actually happen, but I decided that even a small group of people concerned about this issues would be better than none, so on Saturday I donned my heavy scarf and headed for the Dickenson room in the basement of the main library.

The room was packed! Extra chairs were brought in and one set of conference tables taken down to accomodate the approximately 50 people who all seemed especially eager to talk about food!  There was also a nice selection of healthful snacks set up on the counter along one of the side walls. By the time the little crowd was settled, it was 11:25.  The flyer had stated that the forum was to run from 11:00 to 12:00.

LESSON #1 – start on time or as CLOSE to it as possible. If people are late, that’s their own fault.

The first speaker seemed to be quite nervous, perhaps she did not anticipate such a large audience. She paced back and forth as she presented statistics and information about her chosen subject – global warming and methane gas. Now, I know that global warming is a huge issue right now, but I came to talk about FOOD, especially LOCAL FOOD.  Global warming could be a subject for an entirely separate forum.

A few questions and discussion followed…by now it is 12:15. 

The second speaker was an M.D. who specialized in nutrition.  She seemed much more relaxed and had some interesting things to say, but she also had another appointment coming up soon and had to leave, so after a quick 10 minutes, she sat down.

Lesson #2 – allocate your speakers’ time and save the questions and discussion for the end of the session.

Speaker #3 was a doctor of Chinese medicine – something I am quite interested in, but…what about FOOD?  This woman started off by stating that speaker #1 had her population statistics wrong and that China actually has about 60% more people than the official census leads us to believe…ok… She then rattled off her credentials and stated that she had spent the last 20 years traveling the world and living in China  - was she trying to convince us that what she was about to say was important?  I’ll decide that for myself, thank you…

She started off by telling the group that homogenized milk was basically killing us.  This, for the most part, I already knew, but I could see the shocked look on the faces of some of the attendees. She touted the benefits of vegetarianism – as did the 2 previous speakers – even though she is not a vegetarian due to health reasons and has to “choke” down meat in order to avoid developing anemia.

I have no doubts that this woman is highly intelligent, knows her field well, and could give all of us some excellent health advice…but what about LOCAL FOOD?   The most annoying thing about this speaker was that she kept asking questions that seemed designed to expose our wasteful American ways. Questions like, how many of you turned your heat up this morning? How many of you drive your car to work when you could actually walk? How many of you knew you could run your diesel engine on peanut oil ?  

OK, we know we are wasteful and we want to improve….we came to learn HOW!   HOW?

By this time it was 12:30 – 30 minutes past the scheduled ending time of the forum and the last speaker had not yet been given the floor. I knew THAT speaker, the owner of a local organic farm,  would talk about LOCAL FOOD, but I had to leave in order to work on another pressing project at home.    

Now, I don’t want to be overly critical. I applaud the efforts made by organizers of this fourm. It was very  obvious, by the number in attendance, that people want to talk about this issue, they want to know more about how they can reduce their carbon footprints and support LOCAL FOOD systems. But it is my fear that many of the people who attended this particular forum left feeling more confused than when they arrived.

Lesson #3 – have an AGENDA and stick to it!  (as closely as possible, anyway)

Lesson #4 – you cannot talk about more than one big issue in any one forum…global warming, Chinese medicine, nutrition, and organic farming – whew!  Each one of these could have had its own forum!

so…I went home and worked on my project – a grant application for our Community Garden at Potawatomi Greenhouse.  I cannot personally do anything about China’s exploding population, I cannot personally stop the CAFO from emitting more methane into our atmosphere, and, at this point in my life, I do not wish to travel the world and study the medicines of other cultures. But I CAN grow my own organic vegetables and work to teach others in my neighborhood how to do the same. 

I sincerely hope that we continue to hold public forums on this subject and many others…but perhaps we could take a lesson from our gardens - you have to organize your space and pull the weeds if you want to maximize your yields.

 -Gail     

January 15, 2008

What is a “public intellectual”?

                There is certainly no shortage of information on public intellectuals. One of the first sites to catch my eye was the PIPRA site. This stands for Public Intellectual Property Resources for Agriculture. Given my passion for gardening and all issues related to food sustainability, I thought, hmmmm, what is this?  A listing of farmland for sale?  A guide to the latest agricultural research? Well, sort of.

                After a bit of reading I surmised that PIPRA is an organization that helps connect public institutions like universities with private companies that own the patent rights to certain types of plant and/or animal genes. When a research team at a university (or even a private laboratory) wants to develop a better strain of corn or rice or perhaps even a healthier pig, the research is often halted due to the fact that the particular gene needed to continue is owned by company X and thus, you must get their permission (in other words pay a fee) before using the gene.

                        Well, this is not exactly the kind of public intellectual we are interested in for this class, so I will leave it at that. Besides, this website brings up the whole debate of whether or not life should even be patentable, which I strongly oppose, so we’ll move on. If you’re interested, here’s the link:

                www.pipra.org

                I also came across the blog of M. Frederick Voorhees, a guy who writes about education, patriotism, equality, politics, etc, etc.  Maybe I shouldn’t admit this, but I quickly lost interest in his site. He probably has some really interesting things to say, perhaps I just wasn’t in the mood. Here’s the link in case you are:

           http://publicintellectual.wordpress.com/

                I also came across the Australian Public Intellectual Network.   They seem to be a very busy group: The API Network was established in 1997 and for eight years to the end of 2004 was a scholarly imprint through the University of Queensland Press. Between 2001 and 2004 the operations were progressively transferred to Perth where the API Network through its imprint Network Books was established as a not-for-profit publisher of scholarly titles on Australia.            

http://www.api-network.com/main/index.php 

I then took the encyclopedia approach and simply used Wikipedia.  And, actually, it provided a very several different ways to interpret the term.  It also gave some history of how the term has come about. While Cynthia Ozick had referenced the older term of “thinker” to describe a public intellectual, Wikipedia uses “man of letters”. I personally kind of like the idea of becoming a “woman of letters” – simultaneously knowing my letters and how to use them to effectively communicate with others. I especially appreciated this description of a public intellectual from the Wikipedia entry: Public intellectuals are primarily concerned with ideas and knowledge. Their social role means that they must be responsive and reactive to societal issues and problems, providing a voice for others who may not have the skills, time or opportunity to do so. They should be prepared to listen to a multitude of differing opinions and beliefs, and to construct their own conclusions taking these into account. Intellectuals also involve themselves with issues not specifically related to their area of expertise. Thus, Bauman (1987: 2) states that intellectuals ‘rise above the partial preoccupation of one’s own profession [...] and engage with the global issues of truth, judgment and taste of the time’ (Furedi, 2004: 32). The ability to work within many different forms of media such as an Internet blog, a lecture or forum, radio, printed media i.e. newspapers and journals also widens their mass appeal and coverage so that they appeal to the most people possible.                                                       For me, this description fills the bill rather nicely, especially the part about providing a voice for others who may not have the skills or opportunity; engagement with global issues; and working within many different forms of media. For me this paints the picture of someone who is more than just smart. She/he   strives to be fair and non-judgmental while also showing concern for the larger community.    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual 

January 14, 2008

Blogging and the New Citizenship – Tim Dunlop

                I experienced a feeling of déjà-vu as I read Tim Dunlop’s article. It seemed familiar…ah yes, we read this article as a part of Dr. Keen’s Intro class in the fall of 2006. At that time, I didn’t really think too deeply about the material for I had no intention of becoming a “blogger”. Well – it seems that now I am one!

                Dunlop is obviously a fan of blogging, touting it as a way to “rekindle the lost art of argument”, to “redefine the public intellectual” and to “provide a means of dissolving the division between intellectual and citizen”. But he also recognizes some of the weaknesses of the “blogosphere”. He states that too often, “bloggers are quick to pounce upon the perceived weakness of another blogger’s argument or stated position”.    

                My overall response to Dunlop’s article is mixed. Yes, I agree that blogging can provide a public forum in which many, many people can take part. It can be a place where the average citizen can voice his/her opinion – provided that the citizen has access to a computer and knows how to use it, that is.  And yes, it can, at times, act as a check and balance system for the mainstream media channels.

I agree with the idea that blogging could become one way for the democratic process to proceed, but I also remain a fan of the old-fashioned habit of communicating on a face-to-face basis with our fellow human beings – especially with the people that live in close proximity to you. While blogging may become the publishing method of choice for the x-generation and younger, I suspect that the majority of the baby boomers will still be reading the newspaper and tuning in to the evening news for at least another decade or so. 

As a teacher of health, exercise and nutrition, yes, I also have to mention that if the blogosphere encourages people to spend more and more time sitting in front of their computer this, of course, translates into less time spent engaging in more active endeavors. We already have an unprecedented level of obesity and diabetes among our young people – will the blogosphere encourage kids (and their parents) to turn off the computer and go outside and play?

As with many other aspects of our modern lives, time spent blogging must be balanced with other activities or it will simply become yet another source of stress, another act of busy-ness in an already too busy and stressed out world.