nosh nook #28 - wednesday, april 22, 2009

fast food police: caribbean takeaway closed down for opening too close to schools (link)
04.21.09 - the daily mail - by dan newling

a proposal to separate fast food and schools (link)
04.21.09 - the ny times - by cara buckley

europeans are always way ahead of us in everything--fashion, the arts, abolishing slavery, etc. once again, they've beat us to the punch, this time in the u.k., in waltham forest, a borough in east london, where they've passed britain's first law that prohibits takeaways from selling fast food near schools. yesterday, the police moved in & shut down their first shop.

according to dan newling, "bamboo joint," a caribbean takeaway that opened just six weeks ago, was ordered by police to close the place down within three days.  the owner says that her place sells food that's "not even unhealthy. (they) sell jamaican-style rice and peas, and jerk chicken" and the "street is full of takeaways selling fish and chips and burgers," so she's not sure why she was targeted...because the local government's playing nanny...that's why.  sorry bout your livelihood, ma'am.

not to be outdone by our british counterparts, queens councilman eric gioia came up with a plan & this weekend, he put forth a proposal that would prohibit new fast-food restaurants from opening within a tenth of a mile from a school. sound familiar? who knows if gioia is even aware of the recently passed east london law?  either way, it's very coincidental.

as cara buckley reports, one thing he is aware of is a recently released study, "the effect of fast food restaurants on obesity," which linked students' obesity to the proximity of fast food joints to their schools. as such, he's proposing his ban along with "other tactics to fight childhood obesity, like easing access to food stamps, putting greenmarkets in poor neighborhoods and educating children about healthy eating." at least there's that last part in there about educating kids, because last i checked, we live in the u.s.a. & people should be able to open restaurants if they want to. ultimately, the root of the problem is not the existence of the fast-food restaurant. it's the consumer's lack of healthy eating habits & self-restraint. the nanny state stuff is for the birds.

nosh nook #18 - wednesday, april 8, 2009

kids who lack self-control more prone to obesity later (link)
04.07.09 - time magazine - by alice park

it's no secret that we americans aren't exactly known for our self-control.  we love hummer H2s & cocaine addictions & MST3K marathons & ten-digit spending projects.  we love overdoing it, and as a result of our lack of self-control, we now have a hole in the ozone layer & a super-high national debt & a rate of obesity somewhere around 30%.  it turns out that these gluttonous habits develop at an early age.

as time magazine's alice park reports, this week's archives of pediatrics & adolescent medicine contains two papers that show a corollation between self-restraint & obesity.  the first study, done at penn st, followed 1000 kids.  in it, they performed tests where a three-year old was left alone in a room with a totally awesome toy but told not to touch it.  if that kid made it 75 seconds without touching it, they were labeled as having high-self-control.  they performed a similar test on the kids at age five.  they left each one alone in a room with a large pile & a small pile of snacks & told them that they could eat from the small pile at any time, but if they waited until the experimenter returned, they could eat from the big pile.  if a kid could wait long enough & not eat from the small pile, they were again labeled as having high self-control.  by age 12, the ones who scored low on both tests were 30% heavier.  the 2nd study, done at the university of michigan, proved the same corollation with a similar, food-inclusive study--47% of kids scored low & these kids were 30% more likely to be overweight down the road.

based on what's reported in the time magazine article, i've determined that there's another, untapped angle to this study.  kids who have self-restraint mentally or physically beaten into them often snap once they reach adulthood.  these are the amish who don't join the fold post-rumspringa.  they're the people you knew in college who are away from home for the first time & therefore, must get wasted at every opportunity.  they're the people ultimately unconcerned with consequences...in the end, the restraint is often self-imposed & unnatural & it might just be human nature to want pleasurable things & want them right now.  too bad that when that comes to snacks, obesity's the tradeoff.