I watched Part I of the HBO documentary, “The Weight of the Nation” online, last night. I hope to catch Part 2 later tonight.

For the most part, I liked what I saw. The producers did a good job of conveying the complexity of obesity, and the roles that poverty, genetics, food culture and the built environment play (in addition to the usual ”personal responsibility” issues of diet and exercise). The people struggling with obesity and/or diabetes were treated with dignity; and the medical experts that were interviewed did a good job of explaining themselves. The show was blunt, and even graphic at times (the comparison of post-mortem normal vs. diseased hearts made me wince), but not gratuitously so.

In other words, “The Weight of the Nation” is as serious as a stroke.

Nonetheless, I don’t think Part I did a very good job of…

1. …drawing a line between overweight and obese. While “obesity” was stressed, the impression I was left with is that all excess body fat is… well, “death fat.” It was almost as if the writers felt that “overweight” was just a brief, transitional stage between “healthy” and “obese.”
2. …conveying the nature of risk. Obesity is a risk factor for cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes. But increased risk does not imply inevitability - a distinction that was constantly blurred. In truth, some 25% – 30% of clinically obese folks are metabolically healthy. Conversely, having a “healthy” BMI is no guarantee of metabolic health – thin “fat” people are very much at risk for CVD and diabetes, too.
3. …making a distinction between the effects of eating too many calories… and eating too many calories from high fat/sugar, low nutrient-density foods. Yes, the two often overlap, but I think it’s still possible to tease them – and their effects - apart. For example, one part of the show focused on a woman enrolled in a study, where the goal was to have the (already overweight) subjects gain an additional 5% of their starting weights. She was instructed to add 1000 calories/day to her diet – all from fast food. Not surprisingly, various markers of risk increased along with her weight. This was attributed (at least on screen) to her weight gain… but was it solely due to that? IMHO, pounding down excess, unbalanced, fatty, high-sodium poor-quality food could have had something to do with it, too.

Of course, these points may be covered in the following episodes, so it may be that the above criticisms are premature. We’ll see.

At any rate, Part I was certainly thought-provoking. Definitely worth watching.

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I don’t have HBO (actually, I don’t have TV service of any kind, lol), but it’s also available online.

Just starting Part I, so I have nothing major to say about it yet, but the reviews I’ve seen so far (SF Chronicle, LA Times) are promising.

Pass the (unbuttered) popcorn…

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Just kidding, of course… but it sorta feels like it.

Sorry for dropping off the face of the earth for the last few days… I got caught up in getting a grip on our back yard. As y’all know, we recently moved to new digs in Spokane. It’s beautiful here: lush and green. The homes in our neighborhood are surrounded by a ton of natural vegetation: tall pines, grasses and wildflowers. This is awesome when it comes to taking walks… but not-so-awesome when it comes to lawn maintenance. Thanks to recent, prolonged rainy weather (which made it impossible to mow), our ”lawn” morphed into a dense, tall stretch of tough, thick grasses and dandelions. And more dandelions.

Now I’m not really a devotee of pristine lawns… in fact, I think they look unnatural. Nor do I enjoy wasting the precious hours of my life on landscaping – sculpting hedges and fussing over flower beds definitely ain’t my thing. But I don’t want to be the one responsible for infesting everyone else’s lawns with dandelions, either. Despite the objections of my kids (who thought the dandelions were pretty cool), they really, really had to go.

Thus, large chunks of time (and manual labor) were devoted to executing dandelions getting the back (and front) yard under control, as well as digging out an overgrown raised bed (the future home of some tomato seedlings currently basking on the balcony).

This was NOT fun… and we’re still not 100% done, either, but at least the yards are nominally under control. So, back to regular blogging tomorrow!

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According to Nutraingredients USA, the recent set of warning letters sent by the FDA to 10 sports nutrition companies has set off a wave of consumer lawsuits. Evidently every one of the companies in the FDA’s crosshairs has now been hit, as in addition to as-yet-unnamed companies not included in the agency’s crackdown.

The suits named in the article are:

Govinda Hogan and Catherine Giasone vs. USP Labs (filed in February)
Anthony Velasco vs. SEI Pharmaceuticals
Derick Barkum vs. Isatori Global Technologies, Inc
Jason McKenna vs. Nutrex Research, Inc.
Andrew Velasco vs. Gaspari Nutrition, Inc.
John Calvin Anthony Baker vs. Musclemeds Performance Technologies
Herbert Reyes vs. SNI
Jose de la Rosa vs. Exclusive Supplements
Alejandro Reyes vs. Fahrenheit Group
Alexander Urban vs. Muscle Warfare

And guess what? Every one of them was filed by the same lawfirm (Kirtland and Packard, LLP). Why am I not surprised?

Update: the unamed companies mentioned above are Labrada Nutrition (Stim-Force); Vital Pharmaceuticals (Anarchy Covalex), S.A.N. Nutrition Corp (Launch), Dorian Yates Nutrition (Noxpump), Allmax Nutrition (Razor8Blast Powder), BPI Sports (Roxylean and 1.M.R.) and DynaPep Corporation (DynaPep Energy).

Yup… same law firm.

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Admittedly, I don’t care for sushi. I don’t explicitly hate it, either, but for me, there’s just no “there,” there. The only time I ever eat it, is when I happen to be dining out with a sushi-lover, who’s just dying to take me to his/her favorite restaurant. While I’d much rather eat Italian, Mexican, Thai, Vietnamese, Indian etc., I inwardly shrug and go along with it. I usually end up having a good time anyway, despite my indifference to the food - good company and a few warm sakes make up for the blaah meal.

This means my sushi consumption has been confined to higher-end, specialty restaurants – I’ve never, never been tempted by the displays of pre-made sushi at the supermarket. And according to this post about “tuna scrape” by Dr. Marion Nestle – that’s probably a good thing.

On April 13, the Food and Drug Administration said Moon Marine USA, an importing company based in Cupertino, was voluntarily recalling 30 tons of frozen raw ground yellowfin tuna, packaged as Nakaochi scrape.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention investigations linked consumption of Nakaochi scrape sushi to about 250 diagnosed cases and an estimated 6,000 or so undiagnosed cases of illness caused by two rare strains of salmonella. Among the victims who were interviewed, more than 80 percent said they ate spicy tuna sushi rolls purchased in grocery stores or restaurants.

Tuna scrape is used in supermarket-grade sushi, not the fancy stuff. Sushi used to be – and still is, in places – an art form requiring exceptional skills…

But in America, sushi has gone mainstream. You can find prepackaged sushi rolls at practically any supermarket or convenience store, at a cost equivalent to hamburger.

Cheap sushi is made with cheap ingredients – hence, Nakaochi scrape – by chefs with far less training. A typical certification program for sushi chefs in this country can be completed in two or three months. Some offer certification online.

Dr. Nestle’s warning seems intuitive to me – even if I were a sushi-lover, I’d think twice before eating cheap sushi w/raw tuna prepared by unknown hands (even if it wasn’t scraped off the bones). But given the prevalence of supermarket sushi, it’s obviously not so intuitive to others (the stuff is ubiquitous in the stores I frequent - someone must be buying it). So word to the wise: unless the standards tighten up, supermarket sushi should probably be avoided, unless you’re very sure about the source.

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Tomorrow is “Bloomsday” here in Spokane. No… it’s not the literary version (celebrated on June 16th in honor of James Joyce’s “Ulysses”), rather it’s something to do with lilacs (Spokane is nicknamed “Lilac City,” so I’ve read). At any rate, “Bloomsday” features a 12K run that attracts approx. 50,000 runners.

That’s too many for me – I’m passing (I hate crowds… sue me).

But according to this MSNBC report on a recent Danish study, those runners are doing more than just having a good time.

Going for jog regularly may help you live longer, a new study from Denmark suggests.

The findings show that women who regularly jogged lived 5.6 years longer than women who didn’t, and men who jogged lived 6.2 years longer than those who didn’t.

Jogging for one to 2.5 hours per week at a slow or average pace seemed to deliver the greatest benefit, said study researcher Peter Schnohr, chief cardiologist of the Copenhagen City Heart Study.

“We can say with certainty that regular jogging increases longevity. The good news is that you don’t actually need to do that much to reap the benefits,” Schnohr said in a statement.

That works out to 2 – 5 half-hour sessions per week – a pretty small investment of time for such a big payoff.

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Here’s ABC News’ report:

No surprises here… as I noted last year:

When I was asked about Nutella on the “Bodybuilding Revealed” forum some years ago, I referred to it as “greasy sugar spread,” which is basically what it is. The primary ingredients are sugar and palm oil… the “nut” part runs a very distant third. The Nutella web site claims there are “over 50 hazelnuts per 13 oz. jar.” According to NutritionData.com, there are 21 hazelnuts to one ounce; so 50 hazelnuts works out to 2.4 oz.

That’s 18%… but to be generous (and to account for the “over 50?), we’ll call it 20% (although other estimates put it at a measley 13%). By contrast, your typical commercial peanut butter, like Peter Pan or Skippy, is over 90% peanuts.

Like I said: greasy sugar spread. I’ve never eaten the stuff for that reason: I can’t look at it without “seeing” chocolate-and-nut flavored Crisco.

In other words, it’s junk. Tasty junk, I guess (I still haven’t tried it), but still junk. Kudos to the plaintiffs for holding Fererro accountable and making them drop their “healthy” claims.

Full stories here and here.

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Another Reuters article – this one’s on the economic impact of obesity and unhealthy living. Some of the costs discussed in the article are obvious (medical). Others, not so much…

(Reuters) – U.S. hospitals are ripping out wall-mounted toilets and replacing them with floor models to better support obese patients. The Federal Transit Administration wants buses to be tested for the impact of heavier riders on steering and braking. Cars are burning nearly a billion gallons of gasoline more a year than if passengers weighed what they did in 1960.

The nation’s rising rate of obesity has been well-chronicled. But businesses, governments and individuals are only now coming to grips with the costs of those extra pounds, many of which are even greater than believed only a few years ago: The additional medical spending due to obesity is double previous estimates and exceeds even those of smoking, a new study shows.

TBH, I never really thought much about changes to the built environment, such as widening doors and seats, and creating new performance standards for buses. And I’m staggered by the extra amount of gas being burned.

At any rate, it’s an interesting – if somewhat worrisome – read. Check it out.

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According to this special report from Reuters, it’s “[t]he side with the fattest wallets.”

It’s the food industry side, natch. This one small paragraph speaks volumes about industry clout:

At every level of government, the food and beverage industries won fight after fight during the last decade. They have never lost a significant political battle in the United States despite mounting scientific evidence of the role of unhealthy food and children’s marketing in obesity.

It’s a long article, but worth a read, as it reveals the extent to which the ”Big Food” has fought back against even voluntary guidelines. As far as the industry is concerned, it’s full speed ahead!

Read it and weep.

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Straight from the horse’s mouth:

FDA challenges marketing of DMAA products for lack of safety evidence

Agency cites ten companies in warning letters

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today issued warning letters to ten manufacturers and distributors of dietary supplements containing dimethylamylamine, more popularly known as DMAA, for marketing products for which evidence of the safety of the product had not been submitted to FDA.

Also referred to as 1,3-dimethylamylamine, methylhexanamine, or geranium extract, the ingredient is in dietary supplements and is often touted as a “natural” stimulant.

…The FDA letters noted that DMAA is known to narrow the blood vessels and arteries, which can elevate blood pressure and may lead to cardiovascular events ranging from shortness of breath and tightening in the chest to heart attack. The agency has received 42 adverse event reports on products containing DMAA. While the complaints do not establish that DMAA was the cause of the incidents, some of the reports have included cardiac disorders, nervous system disorders, psychiatric disorders, and death.

The agency additionally warned the companies that synthetically-produced DMAA is not a “dietary ingredient” and, therefore, is not eligible to be used as an active ingredient in a dietary supplement. DSHEA defines a dietary ingredient as a vitamin, mineral, amino acid, herb or other botanical, a dietary substance for use by man to supplement the diet, or a concentrate, metabolite, constituent, extract, or combination of these substances.

The companies have 15 business days to respond to the FDA with the specific steps they will take to address the issues in the warning letters.

The companies that received warning letters are: Exclusive Supplements, Fahrenheit Nutrition, Gaspari Nutrition, iSatori Technologies, Inc., Muscle Warfare, Inc., Muscle Meds Performance Technologies, Nutrex Research, SEI Pharmaceuticals, SNI LLC and USP Labs, LLC.

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Dr. Yoni Freedhoff reports on a new study…

In an article published yesterday ahead of print, Darcy Johannsen and friends studied the impact 7 months of Biggest Loser weight loss had on the resting and total energy expenditures of 16 participants.  They used all the latest gadgets to do so including indirect calorimetry and doubly labeled water.  So what happened?  By week 6 participants had lost 13% of their body weight and by week 30, 39%.  More importantly by week 6 participants metabolisms had slowed by 244 more calories per day than would have been expected simply as a function of their weight loss and by week 30, by 504 more.

…Here’s how I’d spell it out. While some contestants of the Biggest Loser will translate their new lifestyles into careers as product spokespeople or fitness trainers and hence have new external motivators to maintain their extreme behaviours, those who don’t are doomed by the show itself to regain their weight, as the lifestyles promoted by the reality television show The Biggest Loser are only “realistic” to those whose livelihoods and/or fame depend on them.

The whole post is worth a read. Go for it.

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CBS News reports:

(CBS News) Another patron of the Heart Attack Grill has reportedly fallen ill during a meal at the hospital-themed Las Vegas restaurant.

CBS affiliate KLAS-TV Las Vegas reports that a woman is recovering after collapsing unconscious and suffering a possible heart attack at the restaurant that serves up fatty fare.

Restaurant owner “Dr. Jon” Basso told KLAS-TV the woman was “doing everything society tells you not to do” Saturday night at the restaurant, including eating high-calorie foods, drinking alcohol and smoking cigarettes.  Her current condition or cause of the medical episode was not immediately known but Basso said the woman is expected to recover.

Correction: she was doing everything that “Dr. Jon” Basso encourages his customers to do (in addition to gross, greasy food, the Heart Attack Grill also sells wine/beer/cocktails and unfiltered cigarettes)… because lifestyle-induced heart-attacks are just sooo fun-fun-funnee… right “Dr Jon”?

Of course, I don’t think the victim is laughing, now, and no wonder…the pain, suffering and often exorbitant expense of a cardiac intervention is now hers (and her family’s) to live with.

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When this “Dateline” episode on supplement testing was aired (March 18th), I was too busy packing boxes to pay attention. But now that Chez Lowe has been successfully relocated, it’s worth visiting.

The episode – like most mass media treatments – raised the alarm about supplement safety. Although the narrator admitted early on that most manufacturers are “responsible,” this caveat was quickly buried in menacing spin and imagery. What made the Dateline narrative different, however, is that the producers and writers didn’t rely solely on conjecture – they had a genuine supplement scandal to discuss (Total Body Formula, which contained toxic amounts of selenium), and uncovered another one – the potential falsification of test data by 3rd party laboratories (“dry labbing”) in the process.

The vid is divided into 3 parts:

Part I:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Part II:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Part III:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Not surprisingly, the show elicited the usual industry denials (see here and here, for example) and my sense is that they’re mostly correct – the problem of “dry labbing” probably isn’t widespread. What I found dismaying about these responses, however, is that the industry poohbahs protesting the show didn’t seem to have any solutions. Dry labbing may not be a major problem, but it’s still an issue. This raises the obvious question: what can the industry do to weed out unreliable labs? The only concrete suggestion I’ve seen so far places the onus on manufacturers/retailers to “throw them [the testing facilities] a false sample once in a while and see if they catch it.”

Great. Even if the problem isn’t a huge one, when it comes to cases like Total Body Formula, it can be serious… deadly serious. “Throwing them a false sample once in a while” doesn’t cut it.

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What some people do to themselves is unbelievable. According to the Agence France-Presse:

A woman’s 10-litre (2.2 gallon) a day Cola-Cola habit may have contributed to her death, a New Zealand inquest has been told.

…Pathologist Dan Mornin told the inquest that he believed Harris died from cardiac arrhythmia and was also suffering from low potassium levels and caffeine toxicity.

Mornin testified her excessive soft drink consumption probably contributed to her medical condition, along with poor nutrition, Fairfax Media reported.

Harris’ partner Christopher Hodgkinson said she was addicted to Coke and the dead woman’s mother-in-law Vivien Hodgkinson had called for soft drinks to carry health warnings, Radio New Zealand reported.

“The first thing she would do in the morning was to have a drink of Coke beside her bed and the last thing she would do at night was to have a drink of Coke… she was addicted to Coke,” Christopher Hodgkinson said.

Vivien Hodgkinson said her daughter in law would “go crazy if she ran out… she would get shakes, withdrawal symptoms, be angry, on edge and snappy”.

According to an Associated Press report, Harris also smoked 30 cigarettes a day and “ate little.”

It’s a tragedy when someone dies a completely preventable death. How brainless do you have to be, however, to fail to realize that you can’t live off Coke and ciggies?

(h/t Jezebel)

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Sigh…

In March, Jessica Schnaider, 41, of Surfside, Fla., was preparing to shop for a wedding gown by spending eight days on a feeding tube. The diet, under a doctor’s supervision, offered 800 calories a day while she went about her business, with a tube in her nose.

…Something medical is indeed happening in the newest diet to reach the United States. Dr. Oliver R. Di Pietro has been offering what he calls a K-E diet at his modest clinic in Bay Harbor Islands, Fla., since last July.

“I get a lot of brides,” Dr. Di Pietro said. “Nervous eating.”

It uses a nasogastric tube (a tube that goes through the nose and down the esophagus into the stomach) to provide all nourishment, with no carbohydrates, for 10 days. Dr. Di Pietro said body weight is lost quickly through ketosis, the state in which the body burns fat rather than sugar. Patients at his office are monitored during the 10-day period for things like constipation, bad breath and dizziness.

“Any extreme low-calorie diet is associated with side effects, kidney stones, dehydration, headaches,” Dr. Aronne said, “and if you lose muscle mass and water, what’s the point of that?”

I have never, ever understood why some women long for a “perfect” wedding; let alone why a crash diet should be considered a necessary prerequisite for one. After all, their husbands-to-be fell in love and proposed to them at their existing weights. Beyond that, the right dress, hairstyle and makeup can make any size woman look her best.

Obviously, I have nothing against people who want to lose surplus pounds and look their best for a special occasion (and hopefully, beyond). But this isn’t a good way to go about it. If I were a man, I’d seriously question the judgment of my wife-to-be, if she went on an extreme pre-wedding diet like this. A wedding is supposed to be a celebration of love, not a high-stress, mega-expensive beauty pageant.

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The short and sweet answer to the question posed in this article is “no.”

Yes, McDonald’s serves a handful of healthier options than the usual burgers-fries-sodas, but for the most part, the chain serves the kind of fatty, high-sodium, sugary food that put some patients in the hospital in the first place. We’re talking about hospitals, for crying out loud – it goes without saying (but I’ll say it, anyway), that the food served should be healthy.

Problem is, however, that hospital food is often abysmal – as bad (or worse) than airline food. Knock on wood: the only times I’ve been hospitalized was for the birth of my (2) kids… but I still vividly recall the food! For example, after Ryan was born, I was fed a meager meal consisting of a rubbery scrambled egg, 2 slices of limp toast, lukewarm decaf coffee, a carton of skim milk and 4 oz. of OJ.

Ugh.

But I was STARVING (after 14 hours of fasted labor and delivery), so I ate it… but believe me, I’d have happily devoured a Big Mac (along with a large order of fries) if I’d had the option, lol. It would have been an improvement.

So, I sympathize with what Corporate Accountability International is trying to do. But simply ousting McD’s (assuming this is even possible) isn’t enough. Advocacy groups like this should be lobbying to make GOOD hospital food available to patients, staff and visitors - otherwise, it’s a pointless exercise.

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And no, the post title is NOT referring to the United States. Rather, the nation in question is Qatar. Due to its new-found affluence, Qataris lead lives of ease and abundance  (including the fast food kind). Unfortunately, many Qataris are also genetically-prone to developing type 2 diabetes, which means the country is hurtling towards a public-health disaster.

According to this article in the Atlantic:

…In September, Qatar officially became the richest nation in the world, as measured by per capita gross domestic product. It also recently became the world’s biggest exporter of natural gas, and earned the title of fastest growing economy in the world. By international development standards, all this growth has happened virtually overnight, making Qataris’ lifestyles much more unhealthy, and at the same time leading many to hang on resolutely to what’s left of their fleeting tribal traditions — practices that include inter-marriage between close family members and cousins.

“They’re concentrating the gene pool, and at the same time, they’re facing rapid affluence,” said Sharoud Al-Jundi Matthis, the program manager at the Qatar Diabetes Association, a government funded health center in Doha, the capital. As a result of these factors, Qataris are becoming obese, passing on genetic disorders at an alarming rate, and getting diabetes much more often than others around the world. They’re also getting diabetes a decade younger than the average age of onset, which is pushing up rates of related illnesses and complications, like hypertension, blindness, partial paralysis, heart disease, and loss of productivity. “It’s a very, very serious problem facing the future of Qatar,” Matthis said.

…”Everybody in Qatar knows about diabetes, but the problem is, it’s talking only. No one is taking care of it,” said Adel Al-Sharshani, 39, who was diagnosed with diabetes several years ago. His father and several of his friends also have diabetes. “I ignored all the advice until it was too late, and that is what other people are doing too. It’s dangerous.” Because like many Qataris he got diabetes as a young man, Al-Sharshani knows he faces higher risk of complications, like blindness and paralysis. “I am afraid of losing my eyes, my foot. I am afraid of losing my life,” he said.

The government is trying to turn things around, via a number of public programs to encourage physical activity, but its fighting the culture and the (often blazing hot) weather. If Adel Al-Sharshani’s assessment is accurate, Qatar’s prognosis is grim.

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This morning – after returning from a walk in my new neighborhood – I stumbled on a series published in Slate: “America’s Pedestrian Problem.” It’s subdivided into 4 articles: “The Crisis in American Walking,” “Sidewalk Science,” “What’s Your Walk Score” and “Learning to Walk.”

The author, Tom Vanderbilt nails the issue in the first article:

…Having taken all this information in, we would gingerly step into the marked crosswalk, that declaration of rights in paint, and try to gauge whether approaching vehicles would yield. They typically did not. Even in one of America’s most “pedestrian-friendly” cities—a seemingly innocent phrase that itself suddenly seemed strange to me—one was always in danger of being relegated to a footnote.

Which is what walking in America has become: An act dwelling in the margins, an almost hidden narrative running beneath the main vehicular text. Indeed, the semantics of the term pedestrian would be a mere curiosity, but for one fact: America is a country that has forgotten how to walk.

…And since our uncommon commitment to the car is at least in part to blame for the new American inability to put one foot in front of the other, the transportation engineering profession’s historical disdain for the pedestrian is all that much more pernicious. In modern traffic engineering the word has become institutionalized, by engineers who shorten pedestrian to the somehow even more condescending “peds”; who for years have peppered their literature with phrases like “pedestrian impedance” (meaning people getting in the way of vehicle flow). In early versions of traffic modeling software, pedestrians were not included as a default, and even today, as one report notes, modeling software tends to treat them not as actual actors, but as a mere “statistical distribution”, or as implicit “vehicular delay.” At traffic conferences like the one in Savannah, meanwhile, people doing “ped projects” tend to be a small and insular, if well meaning, clique.

Do tell. Back when we lived in the Tri-Cities, we used to walk to nearby stores and businesses: Safeway, Walgreens, Gold’s, Rite-Aid, Starbucks and a number of restaurants were just a 15 – 20 minute stroll from our house. Nonetheless, we were among the very few who made the attempt. Most of the above businesses were either on Hwy 395 or Clearwater Ave… and you could look for a loooonng way down both roads without seeing anyone else on foot (other than the random person waiting at a bus stop).

Whyfor? Well, I’m sure part of the reason was that it wasn’t a particularly pleasant walk. Although there were sidewalks, traffic went roaring past (at least once we reached 395). It was noisy as hell and you had to be extra careful when crossing various parking lot entrances (Panda Express’ was the worst). Ditto crossing at the corner of 395 and Clearwater – drivers turning right rarely bothered to check for pedestrians, “walk” signal be damned. The streets and businesses were designed for cars… you could walk, but it was clear that you did it at your own risk.

I’m glad to be living where I am now: our immediate neighborhood is quiet, hilly, green and quite scenic… it’s inviting to take a stroll. And the downtown area (which we frequent almost daily) is quite pedestrian-friendly – right down to the network of enclosed “overpasses” that connect the central buildings (on Friday, for example, I walked from the bus plaza to Riverpark Square, where my car was parked, without touching the ground once, lol). Not surprisingly, I see lots of walkers in both areas – when you don’t have to compete with cars, it makes it easier – and waaay more inviting – to get around on foot.

At any rate, the series is wordy, but worth a read. Check it out.

And then go for a walk!

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Kathrine Switzer was the first woman to officially enter and run the Boston Marathon in 1967.*

Now personally, I couldn’t care less about marathoning. And that goes double for the Boston event being run on Monday. I like running for cardio – I’ve been doing it for most of my adult life, in fact. But frankly, about 5 – 6 miles is my upper limit – past that point, boredom kicks in. And since I have nada to prove to myself, running a marathon ranks about minus 37 on my top 100 List of Things to Do.

So why say “thanks” to someone who accomplished something I’m indifferent to?

The reason can be found in Switzer’s story. Today, it’s no big deal for a woman to run a marathon if she wants to. But in 1967, things were very, very different. ESPN has a good overview:

Switzer, at the time a 19-year-old journalism major at Syracuse University, simply loved running. She had trained for months, even completing a 30-miler, to be sure she could finish. She and her coach, Arnie Briggs, had checked to see whether there were any rules prohibiting women from entering. There weren’t; in those days, the idea of women running the 26.2-mile distance was so foreign, the rulebook made no mention of them. So she entered the race using her initials, K.V. Switzer, as was her habit, and was issued No. 261.

“I thought K.V. Switzer was a very cool signature,” she said. “Like J.D. Salinger.”

Switzer, her boyfriend, Tom Miller, and Briggs were two miles into the marathon when officials tried to evict her from the course. Their tactics were terrifying. In a rage, race director Jock Semple came lunging at her. He got his hands on her shoulders and screamed “Give me those numbers and get the hell out of my race!” The wild look in his eyes still haunts Switzer. “Seeing that face scared the s— out of me,” she said.

Before Semple could rip off Switzer’s numbers, Miller, a 235-pound athlete (he was a football player and hammer thrower), laid a cross-body block on Semple, sending him to the side of the road in a heap. The entire sequence was captured on film by the press corps bus, riding just ahead of Switzer’s group.

Switzer kept running. Over the next 20 miles, she felt humiliated, then angry, then brushed it off. Semple was a product of his time, she thought. It was inconceivable to most men that women could run long distances without doing harm to themselves, their reproductive systems (a woman’s uterus might fall out, the thinking went) or their fragile psyches.

Basically, Switzer helped to blaze a trail for women to participate in athletic activities that were deemed exclusive to men… and not back in my grandparents’ time either. This happened within MY lifetime (I was a very-aware 10 year old when Switzer ran Boston). When I was born (1957), serious people actually thought women were so fragile and dim that they couldn’t even be allowed to choose to participate in strenuous activities that would surely harm them (or rather, their reproductive potentials, the raison d’être for a woman, doncha know). They were so convinced of this, that they were prepared, like Semple, to use coercion, if necessary, to keep women in their “place.”

So that’s why I’m grateful to Kathy Switzer, and the women (and their male allies) who came after her. While marathoning ain’t my “thing,” lifting weights surely is. And – if anything – lifting weights was/is branded “male” even more strongly than marathoning. The welcoming vibe I experience in the gym is a testament to women like Switzer (such as powerlifter Jan Todd) who bucked the system, and changed hearts and minds in the process. We’re all the better for it.

*Roberta Gibb also unofficially ran Boston in 1966 and again in 1967 (she finished well ahead of Switzer, too). Gibb, however, never actually entered the race or was given a number.

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NPR has an interesting story about Dutch research on protein. Specifically, bug protein.

Ph.D. student Dennis Oonincx is checking out his mealworms living in the cricket lab, and says his research into how the worms metabolize a waste product shows how superior insects are as a protein source — better than cattle or sheep.

“You can produce more food for people with less input,” he says. “It’s good food and it’s better for the environment.”

Arnold van Huis, head of Wageningen’s entomology department, is one of the world’s premier experts in entomophagy, or eating insects. He believes the rising price of meat will help change diets.

“If your Big Mac is going to cost about $100 and your Bug Mac is going to cost only $4, people will change to a Bug Mac,” van Huis says.

Van Huis says the challenge is to make it delicious. That’s where Marian Peters comes in. For years, as secretary of the Dutch insect breeders association Venik, she’s been active in bringing edible insects to consumers’ tables. And Peters says the first commercially available bug sandwich will be out soon — a wrap filled with insects and peas.

In the abstract, I think it sounds great – I imagine certain bugs (like mealworms) would be a great source of cheap, nutritious and (hopefully) decent-tasting protein. Not sure about a “Bug Mac,” though – personally, I think I’d opt for a Gardenburger or falafel first, lol.

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