The New York Times, Childhood Obesity and Critical Thinking

Looking past the Allan Gardens Greenhouse, 2023

Same view, 2013. 

I discovered podcasts back in the days when I was still working, but really cranked my consumption in 2020 when I was out on pandemic walks. I don't pace the neighbourhood for 90 minutes a day like I used to, but I still listen, a lot, to podcasts.

Among them is The Daily from the New York Times. I keep my critical faculties set to "max" when listening, because, well, it's the New York Times. 

Most of the time, though, the reporting is good, the topics interesting, and it's my only source for American political news that's not a late night comedy show. 

A couple of days ago, I listened with growing incredulity to an episode where Gina Kolata, a medical reporter for the NYT, asserted that new guidelines from the American Paediatric Association said the best solutions for overweight kids were drugs and surgery. For children as young as two years old. Other interventions, she said, just don't work.

Her cheese-cloth "reasoning" supporting this incredible conclusion is too much to get into here (you can find the episode here), but even a casual listener could detect the incoherence and false opposites she relied on to support the notion that, for example, a 12-year-old should have their internal organs mutilated so as to avoid being laughed at in gym class.

The interview bothered me so much I went back to the show website to see if I could get more information. There I found more than 80 comments, all of them negative. Some suggested that Kolata had the contents of the guidelines wrong. 

So, I read the guidelines. 

I'm not a medical expert but I sure wouldn't say, as did Kolata, that the APA guidelines point to drugs and surgery as best solutions to a complex problem influenced by genetics, location, socio-economic status, race, parental behaviours, activity levels, junk food and soft drink consumption, etc., etc., etc. Rather, they were offered as third- and fourth-resort approaches after less intrusive, shown-to-be-effective approaches had failed to achieve results.

What really surprised me in the guidelines was the information that children as young as two are already being medicated for obesity and children as young as twelve are already having gastric bands inserted into their still-growing bodies. 

Good grief.

Kolata has a long and distinguished career as a journalist specializing in science and medicine. It's hard to believe she decided all on her own, without some other incentive, to promote a distorted and misleading version of the emphasis of the new guidelines. I'm not going to speculate as to what that incentive might have been (though at least one comment invoked the spectre of Big Pharma).

I guess the good news is at least 87 people (88 if you count me), didn't buy it. 

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen

Perceived Threats

Maybe She does; maybe She doesn't.

That time I got stung by a scorpion, I sat on the bed in our hotel room, where Bruce snoozed peacefully, and considered my options.

We were far enough away from any likely medical rescue that, if the venom were lethal, I was basically out of luck. If so, I thought, I should probably wake Bruce up.

This past week, looking out our third floor window on a low-ceilinged, rainy afternoon, I saw a strange light in the sky that pierced the dense cloud cover. 

The light might have been something harmless; it might also have been an ICBM, what with the war in Ukraine and all. Bruce was in the basement, 42 steps below. I thought I should get him and ask him to join in the quandary, just in case.

At the corner of College and Bathurst, on my way to yoga, I noticed that a tiny old woman next to me was saying something. I leaned over and lifted my hat off my ear so I could hear her better. She'd seen a man all dressed in black. He was carrying a gun, she said. Should we be worried.

I'd seen him too. A scowling, skinny young guy with an antisocial air about him.

I smiled at her and said he was a security guard. 

That light in the sky? A construction crane. 

And the scorpion sting? Harmless. 

But, in the moment, you never know, so it's good to talk to someone if you can.

Thanks for reading!

Karen

Learn How To Fall - Part II

Chocolate promotes bone density... doesn't it?
Photo by Kim Clark 

By the time you realize you're about to fall, you're on the ground. Gravity works faster than you can comprehend.

I was walking west on College Street, crossing at the corner of Grace Street. It was cold. I had my hands in my pockets and my mind on ...

Shit! I tripped! 

I landed on my knees (oh god, not again), and then my hands (that's not good), and then (good lord, not my chin) my chin. I'd gone down on the pavement like a grey-haired, sixty-five-year-old sack of potatoes.

Some readers of this blog know I fall a lot. It's a skill I've acquired to stand right back up, shaken but unscathed, when I gracelessly lose the fight with gravity. 

But the clock's running on my luck. Each time I fall (last time was in Pittsburgh) I wonder if this will be the time when the stranger who stops to help me has to call 911.

The stranger this time was a young man walking east at the same intersection.

"Are you all right?" he asked me as I curled from a prone to a fetal position in the middle of the road. 

I wasn't sure of the answer, so said nothing.

"Are you all right?!?" he asked again. 

Still taking stock, I managed a small whimper.

"ARE YOU ALL RIGHT?!??" 

I wanted him to stop interrogating me. I needed every available brain cell to figure out if I was going to be able to walk away from this one. 

"I just need a moment," I said. "You're very kind to help."

He stayed with me while I gathered myself, so as to fend off careless motorists, and to get my literal on the street opinion of the state of my own health.

I did feel injured - my knees, my right hand - but not so badly that I couldn't take it from there on my own.

I sat up and gave him my arm so he could help me stand. 

That's when I looked him in the eyes. They were a clear, pale blue. A mask covered the rest of his face. I said "Thank you." 

I still went to the yoga class where I was headed when gravity turned against me. But rather than walking, I rode the street car home.

72 hours after the fall, my right hand's a colourful array of bruised flesh and my knees are a little sore.  

Right as rain, then, until the next time.

Thanks for reading!

Karen

An extravaganza from Canadian chocolatiers:
Purdy's and SOMA. Nuts and dried fruit by Bulk Barn.

  

As For Emma

Emma's 2018 Hallowe'en costume: she's a Spice Girl (get it?)

I don't tell tales of what it's like to be a bureaucrat these days, mostly because I'm no longer one. But I was recently reminded of a story involving Emma Heffernan, a colleague at the Ministry of Energy.

I used to spend a lot of time pushing back on Cabinet Office efforts to get the Ministry of Energy to de-regulate. This was not because I loved Ministry of Energy regulations. It was because you could take away every last one and no member of the general public would even notice. There would be no political win for the government.

Cabinet Office persisted. That's what they do. They gave all ministries a regulatory burden reduction target to meet, no ifs, ands or buts.

Knowing I was beaten, I acquiesced, and sought to delegate. I shared Cabinet's plan with the other directors in the ministry, and immediately became the least popular person in the room. But, I had a secret weapon. Emma.

Cheerful, competent, and well-liked, Emma charmed reluctant ministry branches to find the necessary sacrificial regulatory deadwood. Thanks to her, we hit our target. Twice over.

We sent our package of propitiatory offerings to Cabinet Office. They complained there were no political wins.

Emma deftly stick handled Cabinet Office until the Premier finally grew weary of his stupid idea that wasn't going to get him what he wanted anyway, and we all moved on.

Through it all, Emma was steadfastly positive, determinedly optimistic. She was fun to work with; clever, proactive, always ready to give and receive feedback. I never asked her age, but I would guess she was in her early thirties.

I am reminded of this story about Emma because I heard she died this past week.

My condolences to her family. This is a shocking loss.

Thanks for reading.

Karen