Born to be Big

Early exposure to common chemicals may be programming kids to be fat.

By Sharon Begley
NEWSWEEK
Published Sep 11, 2009
From the magazine issue dated Sep 21, 2009

It’s easy enough to find culprits in the nation’s epidemic of obesity, starting with tubs of buttered popcorn at the multiplex and McDonald’s 1,220-calorie deluxe breakfasts, and moving on to the couch potatofication of America. Potent as they are, however, these causes cannot explain the ballooning of one particular segment of the population, a segment that doesn’t go to movies, can’t chew, and was never that much into exercise: babies. In 2006 scientists at the Harvard School of Public Health reported that the prevalence of obesity in infants under 6 months had risen 73 percent since 1980. “This epidemic of obese 6-month-olds,” as endocrinologist Robert Lustig of the University of California, San Francisco, calls it, poses a problem for conventional explanations of the fattening of America. “Since they’re eating only formula or breast milk, and never exactly got a lot of exercise, the obvious explanations for obesity don’t work for babies,” he points out. “You have to look beyond the obvious.”

Read the article at http://www.newsweek.com/id/215179

Efficiency or Control?

After reading The Law of Going Long, a New York Times Idea of the Day: "The same natural law of flow toward efficiency governs everything from river basins to National Football League offenses, a professor says.."

My Rumbling:
If we apply this concept to the current public educational system is it really more efficient to focus on outcome based education, behaviorist education and the like rather than critical thinking? Or have we focused on the definition of critical to mean "negative; inclined to find fault or to judge with severity, often too readily" instead of "involving skillful judgment as to truth" so as to be more efficient.

Does the flow of prescription drugs to school age kids ultimately make them easier to control therefore making for greater efficiency?

Something to think about!