The Digest: F-words in the news

23rd January 2009

The Digest: F-words in the news

posted in Arts & Culture, Arts and Music, Body Image, Body-Affirming, Diets, Eating Disorders, Fat Bias, Food History, Food News, Health, Nutrition & Fitness, Mental Health, New Research, Non-profits, Pop Culture, Recipes, Recovery |

Here’s a sampling of F-words related headlines making the news. Many have been taken from the-F-word’s Twitter feed, which if you haven’t noticed in the new sidebar to the right, lists links and articles that don’t make the blog.

By the Numbers

In a truly horrifying story coming from Las Vegas, a father chained his 15-year-old daughter to her bed to stop her from eating and beat her all because he felt that she was overweight. He’s since been arrested and the girl is undergoing hospital care.

More evidence has surfaced supporting the overall ineffectiveness of dieting in healthy weight management. A two-year study of 225 overweight women conducted by a New Zealand university found that people who had followed a program of yoga and meditation lost more weight and kept it off more successfully than did people who followed a program of diet and exercise.

Most diet plans are ineffective in general, but Newsweek takes a look at the six worst diet scams and fads to hit the market this year.

We all seem to know one — someone who can frustratingly eat whatever and how much they want and never seem to gain weight. Inspired by a 1967 study of prison inmates, a group of researchers from the UK set to find out the degree to which fatness is genetically-determined. Their results may surprise you or at the very least, challenge some of your thinking about how our bodies metabolize and store fat.

Body Acceptance

The Florida Marlins are looking again for plus-sized male cheerleaders to join its Marlins Manatees squad. Is this fat-positive or just exploitive? You decide.

PsychCentral takes a look at magazines for teen girls and finds dangerously mixed messages about weight and body image. Read and be outraged and then subscribe to New Moon magazine instead.

British mom Julie Lou Weston overcame her struggles with bulimia and negative body image and says she now embraces her (British) size 22 curves. Last year, she started her own company, Goddess Photography, aimed at giving women more confidence about their bodies, regardless of their size and shape. She’s also set up an organization called Curvaceous to help women love their figures. Read Julie’s story and watch a video with her here.

Eating Disorders

New research shows that medication and psychotherapy might be beneficial for people with body dysmorphic disorder. The study, published in the Cochrane Review, found both approaches to have positive results, but says that more research is needed given the dearth of research on this condition.

Do foodies have a form of an eating disorder? Some Swiss doctors insist “gourmand syndrome” to be very real indeed.

Cutting goes hand-in-hand with an eating disorder for many sufferers, but despite accounts of self-harm appearing centuries ago, not much is known about this baffling condition. Newsweek takes a look at the history of self-harm and shares new medical research into the condition.

Arts & Culture

Among many of the things lost to Hurricane Katrina are treasured regional and family recipes. Judy Walker, the food editor of The Times-Picayune, set to collecting those recipes again and has now released them in “Cooking Up a Storm.” Another Louisiana native, Dale Curry, has also released a cookbook called “New Orleans Home Cooking,” with recipes she’d gathered during her more than 20 years of editing the same section before Walker — read more about each here. Both cookbooks reveal a heartwarming look at how food very much reflects our culture and identities.

Time magazine reviews Gilbert Cruz’s new book “America: Eight Addicts in Search of a Life” and finds it a skim read, but they also laud his attempts to expand the definition of addiction and change how we think about them.

Discuss any of the above in the comments below or share other headlines in the news.

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This entry was posted on Friday, January 23rd, 2009 at 12:23 pm and is filed under Arts & Culture, Arts and Music, Body Image, Body-Affirming, Diets, Eating Disorders, Fat Bias, Food History, Food News, Health, Nutrition & Fitness, Mental Health, New Research, Non-profits, Pop Culture, Recipes, Recovery. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

1 On January 23rd, 2009, Bree said:

Gotta love the comment underneath Newsweek’s Diet Scams report that he doesn’t care if you’re 34, 64, 84, you need to move your behind. I’d really love this Einstein to say that in person to a group of senior citizens at a nursing home in wheelchairs or walkers. Or at a fibromyalgia support group. Concern trolls need to take the blinders off, get some common sense, and realize not everyone can be constantly active 24/7 and there are very real medical excuses for why people can’t exercise like they think they should.

posted on January 23rd, 2009 at 3:44 pm

2 On January 23rd, 2009, meerkat said:

I read the BBC article about how hard it is for naturally thin people to gain weight. It’s great that this sort of study is getting some publicity. But I notice they included a statement that my being fat is 50% due to my genes (hmm, I read it was 70% heritable somewhere else) but that doesn’t mean I have to be fat! Because I could… what? Diet? That has certainly been shown to be very effective and beneficial. (Anger!)

posted on January 23rd, 2009 at 11:32 pm

3 On January 24th, 2009, DaniFae said:

Meerkat, don’t you know, there are no naturally fat people, only naturally thin ones?

Okay in all seriousness, I’m glad the article’s out there at all, because that means they’re looking at the real causes of weight, and it’s getting some publicity, I don’t think that in today’s culture an article saying “Guess what? Fat is genetic, we were wrong!” wouldn’t be well recieved by the public, if the advertisers didn’t try to keep it from running at all.

I was going to totally write of Gourmand Syndrome as a new hype, psudeoscience, thing, like video game addiction. But it seems like it may have a physiological basis. It leads me to wonder if it effects how you taste food, just because for me, low quality food is totally repulsive. Seriously I can’t stand fast food, off brand peanut butter, cheap icecream, about 90% of frozen food (frozen veggies, and some of the higher end prepared stuff is about it) anything that comes in a can (soup, veggies, pasta) sliced bread…and that’s the short list. I even tend to get the health food versions of junk food, just because they use slightly better ingredients and it tastes better.

posted on January 24th, 2009 at 8:40 am

4 On January 25th, 2009, Stephanie said:

Huh. So, the women who did yoga lost five and a half pounds more than the women who did (presumably) aerobics? It’s like the weight-loss supplements that promise an extra 3-lb weight loss over just diet and exercise alone — I mean, okay, sure, but, uh, I can gain or lose 3 lbs over the course of one day. And aren’t we talking about this diet-and-exercise stuff for women who are more than 5 lbs ‘overweight’?

Yoga’s weird. Some of it is all about the love-your-body and work-with-what-you-have-now stuff, and yet I’ve seen yoga videos and heard yoga teachers say things like, “If you do this, you’ll get thin!” So while I’m sure in the study they were all doing slow hatha yoga stretches and raja yoga mental stuff, there’s certainly a lot of yoga in the world for people who want it to be an aerobic and fat-burning exercise.

posted on January 25th, 2009 at 4:28 pm

5 On January 26th, 2009, Richard Mullen said:

50-75% of being fat is due to genetics? No. I hear this BS and there isn’t any shred of commonsense to back it up. For example, I am -certain ethnicity- yet look at that land or area native to those people outside the U.S and magically those people are much thinner.

On the Yoga note I think those that have anxiety issues and eat out of nervousness probably get the most out of it and from what I see it looks pretty challenging. Not exactly a magic bullet to weight loss but it can’t hurt.

posted on January 26th, 2009 at 3:05 pm

6 On January 26th, 2009, Rachel said:

Scientists have identified 250 genetic markers related to body weight, Richard. There is convincing medical evidence — as any doctor or researcher will tell you — but it’s often not broadcast on the news or in the media. Your hair, eye and skin color are all genetically determined — it makes sense that to a degree, so too is your body.

posted on January 26th, 2009 at 3:15 pm

7 On January 26th, 2009, Richard Mullen said:

To a degree it does but nowhere near the extent most claims. I see people all day long and trends are hard to ignore. In our break room those that happen to be thinner tend to eat certain healthier foods in proportion and those that are heavier do the opposite. This is day after day and when I have to wait for my train in DC I see this same dynamic in the food court. This applicable to all ages, ethnicities, and gender.

posted on January 26th, 2009 at 3:32 pm

8 On February 6th, 2009, StrongandFit said:

The diet scams make millions, including those mentioned in the Newsweek article.

I’m all for encouraging people to have healthy bodies–but there are too many unethical businesses that make money off of stuff that just doesn’t work.

posted on February 6th, 2009 at 1:40 am