100 Fat Activists #10: Mama Cass Elliot
Cass Elliot was a singer, a scenester and an icon of 1960s sunshine pop. She was a Jewish woman, born Ellen Naomi Cohen. She was also fat in a time and place, not to mention industry, where this was a no-no. For all the rhetoric of the Summer of Love, Elliot suffered from fatphobic discrimination throughout her career, and in her personal life. She responded to this in a variety of ways: by performing songs that celebrated individuality and difference, through crash dieting and substance abuse. She died in London in 1974 at 32, but had collapsed three months before then, and endured a string of humiliations in the meantime.A post-mortem examination found that she had died of a heart attack. One can speculate that her …
Fat Activism, Class and The Left
When I talk about class I mean the stratification of human beings based on money, background, work, access to power and certain types of cultural knowledge. This stratification favours some at the cost of others. Fat and class go together because many fat people are also of low socio-economic status. But this information is usually used to rationalise a cure for fatness, not as a call for political action, or to understand the interrelationships between fat and class, perhaps as a source of identity, pride, or even as a resource for self-knowledge.On 4 May 2016 I delivered a talk at Housmans book shop in London. Housmans is one of London’s few remaining radical booksellers and I took the opportunity to talk about fat, class and how …
Could Accurate Front-of-Package Food Photos Help People Eat Less?
Yesterday there was an interesting study published in Public Health Nutrition. The study, “Frosting on the cake: pictures on food packaging bias serving size” explored four questions. 1. Do the calories of the foods pictured on fronts of packages exceed the calories stated on the package’s per serving nutrition label? Using cake mixes as an example the authors demonstrated that as pictured, with frosting, the slices of cake on the fronts of packages contained 134{7920e18cf5186565893a18d1f69fa52bf2806dc683a7bfcea51d671d2f7d8125} more calories than the serving size calories published on the packages’ nutritional facts panels. 2. Do people take extra ingredient calories into account when determining serving size? Cornell undergrads were provided with two types of cake mix boxes and asked to estimate the “appropriate” number of calories per serving of cake. One group of …
How Is This Not An Actual Show?
I would definitely watch full length editions of today’s Funny Friday video featuring Snoop Dog.Have a great weekend! ; ; ; ; ; ; ;
Saturday Stories: A Lebanese Woman, Two Boxers, and a Nazi
Carol Jahshan in The Times of Israel with her reflections of a Lebanese woman in Israel. Dan Barry in The New York Times with an amazingly told tale of two first time boxers, one fight, and tragedy. Dan Raviv and Yossi Melman In Forward with the incredible story of the decorated Nazi SS special forces lieutenant colonel who became an Israeli Mossad assassin. ; ; ; ; ; ; ;
Amazing Circle With Disney Gives Parents Internet Peace Of Mind
Do you worry about your kids’ online safety and/or fight with them about the time they’re connected? I know my wife and I did. At least a bit, and it was getting worse. Our 11 year old had saved up her own money to buy herself a laptop and suddenly she was online all the time. She loves exploring YouTube videos, playing online games, and just plain surfing, and to us it seemed to be getting a bit out of hand. Concerned, I started looking around for solutions. I bought a new router that supposedly had parental controls, but they were rudimentary, difficult to set up, and glitchy. I explored OpenDNS, which admittedly looks fantastic and powerful but also complicated and confusing. Then I came across Circle …
Avocado Pit Eating Is Nutritional, Feel-Good, Magic Foodism.
Photo Credit Flickr’s arsheffieldLet me be extremely clear. There are no studies demonstrating actual health benefits to the consumption of avocado pits. None. Yet that hasn’t stopped breathless articles like this one that I saw on Monday from exclaiming, “Current research suggests that avocado pits “may improve hypercholesterolemia, and be useful in the treatment of hypertension, inflammatory conditions and diabetes. Seeds have also been found to possess insecticidal, fungicidal, and anti-microbial activities.”Or this piece that reported, “Dieticians [sic] say that consuming small quantities of that teeny-tiny seed can also help protect against sun damage, boost the health of your hair and nails and fight “bad” bacteria and inflammation in your gut”So where are we on avocado pit research? Well according to the same paper …
A Visit To Dr. WebMD (It’s Fantastic!)
Thanks to Danielle Robertson for sending this fabulous video my way – I don’t know how I’ve missed it!Today’s Funny Friday is what would happen if WebMD was an actual MD.Have a great weekend! ; ; ; ; ; ; ;
Saturday Stories: Curing Cancer with Vodka, Rationalizing Terror, and Fentanyl Addiction
Elizabeth DeVita-Raeburn recounts tale of Dr. Vincent T. DeVita who explores the story of whether vodka and a particular Russian root cure cancer Nick Cohen on his own blog on how terrorism is not something that can be rationalized. Karen Howlett, Justin Giovannetti, Nathan Vanderklippe, and Les Perraux with one heckuva piece of journalism in the Globe and Mail that explores how Canadians became addicted to fentanyl. ; ; ; ; ; ; ;
Chips Ahoy Cookies Are The Official Snacks of Canada Soccer #NotTheOnion
Well to be fair, Canada Soccer’s official snacks also include Belvita breakfast cookies and Ritz crackers. Other Canada Soccer “proud partners” include Coca-Cola, Nutella, and Powerade Again, I wonder how many more years it’ll be before the junkification and partnership of sport by and with the food industry is no longer considered acceptable? My bet is within the next 20. ; ; ; ; ; ; Related StoriesHas Public Health Ever Affected A Population Based Increase in Activity?If You Want Your Kids To Play Outside, Play With Them!Welch’s Study Finds Grape Juice Makes You Smarter #NotTheOnion ;
The Best $100 You Could Ever Spend On Your Health Or Weight
A second freezer. Available on your local buy and sell, a spare freezer is an incredible asset to health and weight. Buy one and suddenly you’ll have a place to stock up on sale priced foods (and you might use an app like Flipp to find them), and more importantly, a place to store your own homemade convenience meals. Simply put, every time you cook, double or triple the recipe and save yourself the need to order in takeout or head out for a meal because you’re too tired to make it yourself. You’ll save boatloads of calories and shaker-fulls of salt. The price is right too. I’ve even seen some advertised as first come first served free. And if buying one allows you to avoid …
Punctuation Matters – Even When Reading The News
Today’s Funny Friday might as well be a lesson in grammar.And only 7 seconds long!Have a great weekend! ; ; ; ; ; ; Related StoriesDoes Your Mom Even Text?If The Weather’s Nice, Julia Roberts Enjoys Wearing Pink Fuzzy HandcuffsRube Goldberg’s Passover Seder ;