MIT published a report on childhood obesity and their recommendation as how to handle it. The report states:
"These weight problems do not simply stem from a lack of willpower, according to Dr. Tenley Albright, director of MIT’s Collaborative Initiatives program, which uses systems analysis to study broad social issues. Albright is a Harvard-educated surgeon who, two years ago, helped organize an interdisciplinary group of about 10 researchers, from MIT and Columbia University, specifically to analyze the causes of child obesity. Aided by a grant from the United Health Foundation, the team scoured medical and economic data, and consulted with medical researchers, economists and policy-makers, before releasing an initial October 2008 report.
The group’s conclusion: Obesity is widespread due to our national-scale system of food production and distribution, which surrounds children — especially lower-income children — with high-calorie products. “The problem lies not just in a child, but the whole environment around a child,” says Albright. “To end obesity, we need to produce healthier, more accessible, more affordable food.” As Albright notes, 90 percent of American food is processed — according to the United States Department of Agriculture — meaning it has been mixed with ingredients, often acting as preservatives, that can make food fattening."
Now one of my favorite equations learned early on at MIT was:
Input-Output=Net Accumulation
Hey folks, it means just not stuffing that extra Milky Way in your mouth, not eating that second Whopper, and not having the super fries! And not having the Taco appetizer! It is not surrounding them with high calorie products it is the fact that they are consuming them! Yikes team, speak to the engineering departments, mass balances are useful at times!
Then this team of researchers suggests:
"Now, in another report finished this October after meetings with food-industry leaders, the MIT and Columbia researchers propose a solution: America should increase its regional food consumption. Each metropolitan area, the researchers say, should obtain most of its nutrition from its own “foodshed,” a term akin to “watershed” meaning the area that naturally supplies its kitchens. Moreover, in a novel suggestion, the MIT and Columbia team says these local efforts should form a larger “Integrated Regional Foodshed” system, intended to lower the price and caloric content of food by lowering distances food must travel, from the farm to the dinner table."
Yes, regional food consumption is a great idea for reducing calories. I have a home in norther New Hampshire and by early March there is still 4' of snow cover and the deer eat tree bark. Perhaps I can add that to my root cellar. The solution is to stop eating so much! Many of us have been there. Halloween is always a bad time, left over candy and they like, so just get rid of it, do not eat it! Just stop! Creating some crazy local food bank will not solve the problem. We have a great food system, national and international. Did these folks ever try to grow anything in Massachusetts, I did, there are rocks everywhere! Why in God's good name do you think they all left for the mid west two hundred years ago, better land, efficiency and the like.
The article ends with:
"As Albright sees it, the effort to produce healthier foods “fits right in with the health-care reform effort right now because chronic diseases are so costly for the nation.” America currently spends $14 billion annually treating childhood obesity, and $147 billion treating all forms of obesity. Pollan, for his part, contends in the same Times piece that expanding health-care coverage would lead insurers to realize they “have a powerful interest in reducing rates of obesity and chronic diseases linked to weight.”
The MIT researchers recognize it will take a long-term effort to change the way America eats. For now, they say, it is important to show that alternatives exist. “People haven’t focused on our food system yet because it’s big, it’s political, and it’s complex,” says Carlough. “But it is a critical issue that needs to be addressed.” "
No, it is not the food system which is the problem, it is the consumption, the law of mass balance. To think that someone actually funded this effort!
"These weight problems do not simply stem from a lack of willpower, according to Dr. Tenley Albright, director of MIT’s Collaborative Initiatives program, which uses systems analysis to study broad social issues. Albright is a Harvard-educated surgeon who, two years ago, helped organize an interdisciplinary group of about 10 researchers, from MIT and Columbia University, specifically to analyze the causes of child obesity. Aided by a grant from the United Health Foundation, the team scoured medical and economic data, and consulted with medical researchers, economists and policy-makers, before releasing an initial October 2008 report.
The group’s conclusion: Obesity is widespread due to our national-scale system of food production and distribution, which surrounds children — especially lower-income children — with high-calorie products. “The problem lies not just in a child, but the whole environment around a child,” says Albright. “To end obesity, we need to produce healthier, more accessible, more affordable food.” As Albright notes, 90 percent of American food is processed — according to the United States Department of Agriculture — meaning it has been mixed with ingredients, often acting as preservatives, that can make food fattening."
Now one of my favorite equations learned early on at MIT was:
Input-Output=Net Accumulation
Hey folks, it means just not stuffing that extra Milky Way in your mouth, not eating that second Whopper, and not having the super fries! And not having the Taco appetizer! It is not surrounding them with high calorie products it is the fact that they are consuming them! Yikes team, speak to the engineering departments, mass balances are useful at times!
Then this team of researchers suggests:
"Now, in another report finished this October after meetings with food-industry leaders, the MIT and Columbia researchers propose a solution: America should increase its regional food consumption. Each metropolitan area, the researchers say, should obtain most of its nutrition from its own “foodshed,” a term akin to “watershed” meaning the area that naturally supplies its kitchens. Moreover, in a novel suggestion, the MIT and Columbia team says these local efforts should form a larger “Integrated Regional Foodshed” system, intended to lower the price and caloric content of food by lowering distances food must travel, from the farm to the dinner table."
Yes, regional food consumption is a great idea for reducing calories. I have a home in norther New Hampshire and by early March there is still 4' of snow cover and the deer eat tree bark. Perhaps I can add that to my root cellar. The solution is to stop eating so much! Many of us have been there. Halloween is always a bad time, left over candy and they like, so just get rid of it, do not eat it! Just stop! Creating some crazy local food bank will not solve the problem. We have a great food system, national and international. Did these folks ever try to grow anything in Massachusetts, I did, there are rocks everywhere! Why in God's good name do you think they all left for the mid west two hundred years ago, better land, efficiency and the like.
The article ends with:
"As Albright sees it, the effort to produce healthier foods “fits right in with the health-care reform effort right now because chronic diseases are so costly for the nation.” America currently spends $14 billion annually treating childhood obesity, and $147 billion treating all forms of obesity. Pollan, for his part, contends in the same Times piece that expanding health-care coverage would lead insurers to realize they “have a powerful interest in reducing rates of obesity and chronic diseases linked to weight.”
The MIT researchers recognize it will take a long-term effort to change the way America eats. For now, they say, it is important to show that alternatives exist. “People haven’t focused on our food system yet because it’s big, it’s political, and it’s complex,” says Carlough. “But it is a critical issue that needs to be addressed.” "
No, it is not the food system which is the problem, it is the consumption, the law of mass balance. To think that someone actually funded this effort!
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