Thank You Thursday: Tara Parker-Pope 4 March 2010 8:15 am
Posted by Tracy in : diet stress is a health hazard,eating,good news,health,health at every size,media,news,nutrition,thank you Thursday , 2 commentsSeriously, youse guys, I haven’t been following Tara Parker-Pope’s Well blog for the New York Times super-closely or anything, but on several occasions now it’s been hard for me to ignore the fact that her reporting keeps taking a remarkably reasonable view of health and weight, most recently in a post that’s, well, downright critical of the all-too-popular misconception that weight changes are a simple function of calories consumed and burned—especially for a mainstream publication like the Times (albeit only on one of the paper’s blogs, not in its printed pages, but still). Here’s my favorite part, with boldface emphasis from me on the ideas that were SO EXCITING to see:
“I’m not saying throw up your hands and forget about it,” Dr. Friedman [Jeffrey Friedman, head of Rockefeller University’s molecular genetics lab] said. “Instead of focusing on weight or appearance, focus on people’s health. There are things people can do to improve their health significantly that don’t require normalizing your weight.”
What, you mean there might be more to health than body weight? (more…)
Random old news of awesomeness. 2 February 2010 5:50 pm
Posted by Tracy in : diet stress is a health hazard,eating,geekery,Harold McGee,health,health at every size,nutrition,pictures,random,reading,science,weird,whoops , add a commentSometimes it’s especially good to celebrate good things, and today’s post is dedicated to just that. I am supposed to be reading about the role of women in the invention of food science during MIT’s early years, which makes thinking good thoughts all the more important. Sample bit o’grumpy-making:
In his autobiography… Ellen [Henrietta Swallow Richards]‘s husband, Robert H. Richards, stated that “Ellen Swallow wanted a Doctor’s Degree, but although she worked hard for two years, she had to give up the idea. This was probably one of her greatest disappointments in life. It seems to me possible that some of the difficulties may have arisen from the fact that the heads of the department did not wish a woman to receive the first D.S. in chemistry.”
—Richards, R.S., His Mark, cited in Goldblith, S.A., Of Microbes and Molecules: Food Technology, Nutrition, and Applied Biology at M.I.T., 1873-1988, pp. 20-1
Graaaar! (Also, way to write about your partner like she’s a stranger, dude.) As far as I can tell, Ellen H. Swallow Richards was a stupendous badass and entirely too awesome for the jerks at MIT who wouldn’t admit her to the faculty (she was the Institute’s first female student—a Special Student category seems to have been made up entirely for her—and the first female member of its Instructing Staff), let alone let her complete a Ph.D. Also, if I read one more “Ms. X married Prof. Y, so he was probably her thesis advisor,” I may have to go into hysterics or something. Sigh. Hence my need to write about some good news!
Most of the stuff in this post isn’t particularly new, because I’ve been behind on all kinds of news for basically a year now, but if you’re like me, and have trouble keeping up with stuff, or just want to read about stuff that’s happy once in a while, then you’re in luck. Geekery ahoy! (more…)
Thank you Thursday: geeking out on government data 19 November 2009 2:13 pm
Posted by Tracy in : diet stress is a health hazard,fun,geekery,health,health at every size,media,meta,random,reading,silly,work,writing , add a commentSo today I ran across a survey on the CDC website while I was doing some research for my food policy final project (on how maybe health at every size is a better goal than weight loss, or obesity prevention, weight control, “healthy eating” or any other euphemism for making ourselves miserable about being irresponsible, fat, unhealthy failures at life, despite the fact that life, y’know, is not always easy, and there’s plenty of reasons we might be unwell besides the stuff we can try to control if we have the means, which not everybody does). I had a surprising amount of fun with that survey, and I copied some of the questions and my answers to prove it (there were questions about whether I might blog about what I was finding on the websites, and then I knew for sure I would have to go all meta). But before I get to that, today’s Thank You:
Dear CDC and USDA Economic Research Service and other awesome organizations doing public policy research and putting it online where I can geek out over it,
Thank you. Keep up the good work, and please give me a job someday.
Love,
-Tracy
And now, on to the survey silliness. (more…)
