For a World of Woes, We Blame Cookie Monsters

Ron Barrett

FIRST we said they were ruining their health with their bad habit, and they should just quit.

Then we said they were repulsive and we didn’t want to be around them. Then we said they were costing us loads of money — maybe they should pay extra taxes. Other Americans, after all, do not share their dissolute ways.

Cigarette smokers? No, the obese.

Last week the list of ills attributable to obesity grew: fat people cause global warming.

This latest contribution to the obesity debate comes in an article by Sheldon H. Jacobson of the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana and his doctoral student, Laura McLay. Their paper, published in the current issue of The Engineering Economist, calculates how much extra gasoline is used to transport Americans now that they have grown fatter. The answer, they said, is a billion gallons a year.

Their conclusion is in the same vein as a letter published last year in The American Journal of Public Health. Its authors, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, did a sort of back-of-the-envelope calculation of how much extra fuel airlines spend hauling around fatter Americans. The answer, they wrote, based on the extra 10 pounds the average American gained in the 1990’s, is 350 million gallons, which means an extra 3.8 million tons of carbon dioxide.

“People are out scouring the landscape for things that make obese people look bad,” said Kelly Brownell, director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale.

And is that a bad thing? Dr. Jacobson doesn’t think so. “We felt that beyond public health, being overweight has many other socioeconomic implications,” he said, which was why he was drawn to calculating the gasoline costs of added weight.

The idea of using economic incentives to help people shed pounds comes up in the periodic calls for taxes on junk food. Martin B. Schmidt, an economist at the College of William and Mary, suggests a tax on food bought at drive-through windows. Describing his theory in a recent Op-Ed article in The New York Times, Dr. Schmidt said people would expend more calories if they had to get out of their cars to pick up their food.

“We tax cigarettes in part because of their health cost,” he wrote. “Similarly, the individual’s decision to lead a sedentary lifestyle will end up costing taxpayers.”

Eric Oliver, a political scientist at the University of Chicago, said his first instinct was to laugh at the gas and drive-through arguments. But such claims often get wide attention, he says, and take on a life of their own.

“This is like, let’s find another reason to scapegoat fat people,” Dr. Oliver says.

At an annual meeting of the Obesity Society, one talk correlated obesity with deaths in car accidents, and another correlated obesity with suicides. Dr. Oliver, who attended, said no one in the crowd of at least 200 questioned whether the correlations were really cause and effect. “The funny thing was that everyone took it seriously,” he said.

Katherine Flegal of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also wryly cautions against being quick to link cause and effect. “Yes, obesity is to blame for all the evils of modern life, except somehow, weirdly, it is not killing people enough,” she said. “In fact that’s why there are all these fat people around. They just won’t die.”

The message in the blame-obesity approach, said James Marone, a political science professor at Brown University, is that it is so important to persuade fat people to lose weight that common sense disappears.

“Anything we can say to persuade you, we will say,” Dr. Marone added.

So is it working?

It doesn’t seem to be. Fat people are more reviled than ever, researchers find, even as more people become fat. When smokers and heavy drinkers turned pariah, rates of smoking and drinking went down. Won’t fat people, in time, follow suit?

Research suggests that the stigma of being fat leads to more eating, not less. And if reducing the stigma suggests a solution, that’s not working either.

“One hypothesis about getting rid of stigma is having more contact with the stigmatized group,” Dr. Brownell says. But with obesity, the stigma seems to be growing along with the national girth.

He cites a famous study in the 1960’s in which children were shown drawings of children with and without disabilities, as well as a drawing of a fat child. Who, they were asked, would you want for your friend? The fat child was picked last.

Now, three researchers have repeated the study, this time with college students. Once again, almost no one, not even fat people, liked the fat person. “Obesity was highly stigmatized,” wrote the researchers, Janet D. Latner of the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, Albert J. Stunkard of the University of PennsylvaniaRutgers University, in the July 2005 issue of Obesity Research. and C. Terence Wilson of

One problem with blaming people for being fat, obesity researchers say, is that getting thin is not like quitting smoking. People struggle to stop smoking, but many, in the end, succeed. Obesity is different. It’s not that the obese don’t care. Instead, as science has shown over and over, they have limited personal control over their weight. Genes play a significant role, the science says.

That is not a popular message, Dr. Brownell says. And the notion that anyone can be thin with a little effort has consequences. “Once weight is due to a personal failing, a lot of things follow,” he said. There’s the attitude that if you are fat, you deserve to be stigmatized. Maybe it will motivate you to lose weight. The opposite happens.

In a paper published Oct. 10 in Obesity, Dr. Brownell and his colleagues studied more than 3,000 fat people, asking them about their experiences of stigmatization and discrimination and how they responded.

Almost everyone said they ate more.

// posted by Joe Paris @ Sunday, October 29, 2006 0 comments

Will Play for Food

Ridgewood, N.J.

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Chip Wass

ENOUGH with the organized snacks.

When did this start anyway? I’m at my 7-year-old’s soccer game. The game ends and this week’s designated “snack parent” produces a ginormous variety pack of over-processed chips and an equally gargantuan crate-cum-cooler. Our children swarm like something out of the climactic scene in “The Day of the Locust.”

Do our kids need yet another bag of Doritos and a juice box with enough sugar to coat a Honda Odyssey? Can’t they just finish playing and have some water?

Call me a spoilsport, but I don’t want to bring a team snack. I hate that first day, when the coach’s spouse passes around the sign-up sheet so we can schedule what parent brings the communal snack on what day. It’s too much pressure. Suppose I’m away? Suppose we want to visit relatives and miss that week? Now we have to find “snack coverage.” And heaven forbid you forget altogether and then the little darlings look longingly for the expected goody and you’re the social pariah who didn’t come through and that one mom, the one who always has the perfect after-school arts ’n’ crafts project, gives you the disapproving eye and head shake.

The scheduled snack is yet another way we cater to our child’s every whim. Guess what? Precious can go an hour — maybe more! — without eating. And if your child can’t make it that long, bring your own snack. Feed your kid’s need, not mine.

Are none of us reading about the obesity of our young people? Do you think it helps their well-being that after every sporting event our children gorge themselves Fall-of-Roman-Empire style on extra calories, extra sugar, extra hydrogenated fat? I recently sat down with Annette O’Neill, a registered dietitian and bona fide nutritionist, and asked her, “Do you think it’s a good idea for our kids to have Cheetos and Kool-Aid after a sporting event?” Her response: “Uh, no.”

And please don’t get on me about bringing so-called alternative or healthy snacks. I barely remember to put on my son’s shin guards and cleats, not to mention those long socks and that black soccer eye makeup — I don’t have time to slice up 50 orange wedges that the kids will never eat because last week’s cool parent brought Ho Hos and Hawaiian Punch.

This isn’t about ruining anyone’s fun or being the food police, but does the fun always have to revolve around food? Do you know what should be fun when your kid plays soccer? Playing soccer.

While we are on the subject, when your child celebrates a birthday during the school day, maybe we can try for a small cookie or cracker and a rousing, even multicultural, rendition of “Happy Birthday.” Stop with the cupcakes the size of softballs. Have you ever seen the leftovers brought into the school’s main office? By two in the afternoon, the place looks like the San Gennaro festival.

Where did this organized snacking start anyway? Is it a holdover from the toddler years, those half-hour library story times when we trot out Goldfish and those cute Cheerios containers and use the small foods as calming pellets? Is it the Old World philosophy of food-equals-love? Or are we just trying to keep them quiet for our own sake?

I don’t know. I don’t care. But I want you to join me in banning these organized parental sports snacks. Let’s do something for the youths of this country right now and end the American Snack Tyranny.

I will start by asking my friends at the Ridgewood Soccer Association to stop the snacks. Furthermore, I am asking all sport associations in my hometown to follow suit. I encourage the rest of you around the country to contact your league officials and join the fight.

Instead of spending those last few athletic minutes forcing down a fruit roll-up (what mentally malnourished monster, by the way, invented those?), why not have your child gather with his coach, have him or her explain some of the fundamentals (like how being active is healthy!), talk about teamwork or the important life lessons of sports? Maybe even try listening — instead of trying to sneak an extra Chips Ahoy for his younger sibling?

And hey, enjoy your water.

Harlan Coben is the author, most recently, of “Promise Me.”

// posted by Joe Paris @ Saturday, October 28, 2006 0 comments

"Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons." --Popular Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march of science, 1949

"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." --Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943

"I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won't last out the year." --The editor in charge of business books for Prentice Hall, 1957

"But what ... is it good for?" --Engineer at the Advanced Computing Systems Division of IBM, 1968, commenting on the microchip.

"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home." --Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977

"This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us." --Western Union internal memo, 1876.

"The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?" --David Sarnoff's associates in response to his urgings for investment in the radio in the 1920s.

"The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a 'C,' the idea must be feasible." --A Yale University management professor in response to Fred Smith's paper proposing reliable overnight delivery service. (Smith went on to found Federal Express Corp.)

"Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?" --H.M. Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927.

"I'm just glad it'll be Clark Gable who's falling on his face and not Gary Cooper." --Gary Cooper on his decision not to take the leading role in "Gone With The Wind."

"A cookie store is a bad idea. Besides, the market research reports say America likes crispy cookies, not soft and chewy cookies like you make." --Response to Debbi Fields' idea of starting Mrs. Fields' Cookies.

"We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out." --Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962.

"Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible." --Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, 1895.

"If I had thought about it, I wouldn't have done the experiment. The literature was full of examples that said you can't do this." --Spencer Silver on the work that led to the unique adhesives for 3-M "Post-It" Notepads.

"So we went to Atari and said, 'Hey, we've got this amazing thing, even built with some of your parts, and what do you think about funding us? Or we' ll give it to you. We just want to do it. Pay our salary, we'll come work for you.' And they said, 'No.' So then we went to Hewlett-Packard, and they said, 'Hey, we don't need you. You haven't got through college yet.'" --Apple Computer Inc. founder Steve Jobs on attempts to get Atari and H-P interested in his and Steve Wozniak's personal computer.

"Professor Goddard does not know the relation between action and reaction and the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react. He seems to lack the basic knowledge ladled out daily in high schools." --1921 New York Times editorial about Robert Goddard's revolutionary rocket work.

"You want to have consistent and uniform muscle development across all of your muscles? It can't be done. It's just a fact of life. You just have to accept inconsistent muscle development as an unalterable condition of weight training." --Response to Arthur Jones, who solved the "unsolvable" problem by inventing Nautilus.

"Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil? You're crazy." --Drillers who Edwin L. Drake tried to enlist to his project to drill for oil in 1859.

"Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau." --Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics, Yale University, 1929.

"Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value." --Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre.

"Everything that can be invented has been invented." --Charles H. Duel

"Louis Pasteur's theory of germs is ridiculous fiction". --Pierre Pachet, Professor of Physiology at Toulouse, 1872

"The abdomen, the chest, and the brain will forever be shut from the intrusion of the wise and humane surgeon". --Sir John Eric Ericksen, British surgeon, appointed Surgeon-Extraordinary to Queen Victoria 1873.

(And of course, the most famous one...)

"640K ought to be enough for anybody." -- Bill Gates, 1981

// posted by Joe Paris @ Wednesday, October 11, 2006 0 comments

Miss Congeniality Wants the Oscars to Be Fun

Michael Rozman for The New York Times

Ellen DeGeneres, the feel-good brand: boxer briefs, DVD’s, friendly chitchat and a positive attitude about being the Oscar ceremony host.

Correction Appended

BURBANK, Calif., Sept. 29 — With her famously straight hair ensnared in a curling iron just before a taping of her talk show on a recent afternoon, Ellen DeGeneres was peering into the future and describing how she plans to approach her gig as host of the 79th annual Academy Awards early next year.

Hollywood, she suggested, could already breathe easy, safe in the assurance that she did not intend to follow the templates laid out by the most combative of her predecessors. These include Chris Rock, who insulted the Oscar audience from the get-go two years ago by suggesting that only four actors could consider themselves legitimate stars, and even Jon Stewart, who, while shelving his most politically sharp material at this year’s ceremony, still drew an onstage rebuke from George Clooney by daring to suggest that show business might be “out of touch” with America.

“I want to be respectful,” Ms. DeGeneres said from her dressing room here on a studio lot that includes the sets of “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno” and “Access Hollywood.” “I know what the job is. It’s to honor movies and to honor people who worked hard. Those people take it seriously. I’m there to make them feel good and take their minds off it a little bit and make it a fun night.”

She might have been describing her syndicated talk show, called “Ellen” by most, which, as it embarks on its fourth season, has won the allegiance of a critical mass of viewers, to say nothing of A-list stars and television critics, by offering itself up as a safe harbor in a craggy television landscape.

In the process Ms. DeGeneres may not have reinvented herself — as a sitcom star in the 1990’s, and as a stand-up comedian before that, she was generally regarded as quick-witted and nice — but she has managed to play down the most explosive entry on her résumé (her decision in 1997 to out herself and her television character as gay) while playing up a talk-show persona that is positive, exuberant and encouraging.

The feel-good environment she has created on her show — when combined with her soothing turns as host of the Emmy Awards ceremonies after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and Hurricane Katrina — made her an ideal candidate to host the Oscars. She could prove the perfect tonic for an entertainment industry generally despondent over the year’s box-office returns, as well as the state of affairs in Washington and abroad. “She’s got the best laugh in show business,” Robin Williams, a periodic guest on Ms. DeGeneres’s show and an Academy Award-winner himself (for “Good Will Hunting”), said in a telephone interview. “I think she’s genuinely having a good time. If it felt fake, or put on, I think people would pick up on it.”

“She picks stuff that’s silly and fun,” he added, citing appearances on her show in which she had him ride a bike onstage. “You feel like you’re with a really brilliant 12-year-old.”

In that vein, on this season of “Ellen” (officially “The Ellen DeGeneres Show”), Ms. DeGeneres, 48, has been goading celebrity guests and audience members alike to write “life lists,” compilations of all those things they have always wanted to accomplish, but never have. In a running bit, she has been crossing off the entries on her own ledger, like learning Spanish, which she did — on camera and to comedic effect of course — at a nearby middle school.

“I have a certain philosophy,” she said in an interview, this time sitting cross-legged on a comfy, olive couch in a bright office down the hall from her studio, “that if it feels good, that if I feel good doing it, then it will just feel good to watch.”

At the least she has demonstrated that her show’s stock-in-trade routines — whether it’s dancing through the audience with the abandon of someone in her kitchen with the blinds drawn or showing slow-motion replays of her inadvertent falls — have fueled a mini cottage industry.

During the last year or so, her representatives said, she has sold more than 10,000 pairs of boxer briefs with the name Ellen emblazoned on the waistband ($24.95) mostly through the show’s Web site, ellen.warnerbros.com. And, since being released in early September, the DVD of highlights from her first three seasons (titled “DVD-licious” and priced at $24.98) has been a top-seller at Target, where it is available exclusively through November.

So far this season “Ellen” has drawn an average daily audience of about 2.4 million viewers, according to Nielsen Media Research. During the last 12 months the show ranked among the top 15 daytime talk and game shows, below “The View,” but above “Martha.” While up by an average of nearly 350,000 viewers a day when compared with her first season, Ms. DeGeneres’s audience has fallen a bit since last season, at least partly because NBC stations in New York and Los Angeles are pitting her, for the first time, against the top-ranked “Oprah Winfrey Show.”

Since NBC announced in 2004 that Conan O’Brien would succeed Jay Leno as host of “The Tonight Show” in 2009, Ms. DeGeneres’s name has occasionally been floated by industry executives as someone ABC might hire to develop her own late-night show.

When asked about that possibility, Ms. DeGeneres, whose contract with Warner Brothers and Telepictures, which produces her daytime show, does not expire until 2010, did not rule out relocating to nighttime.

“I’ll see what I feel like in three years and what the show is doing in three years,” she said.

A moment later, though, she said: “There’s no reason for me to move to late night. It’s not like I would do anything differently than during the day. Most people think you could do more at night, get away with more, but I don’t really do that.”

Perhaps the most obvious contrast to how Ms. DeGeneres conducts her daytime talk show can be found on ABC, where Rosie O’Donnell — a fellow stand-up comic whose Warner Brothers show preceded Ms. DeGeneres’s — has taken up residence this season on “The View.” On that show Ms. O’Donnell has been overtly political (her views are decidedly liberal), provocative and open about her relationship with her longtime partner, Kelli Carpenter O’Donnell.

By contrast Ms. DeGeneres almost never discusses politics. “It’s not because I have these strong opinions that I hold back talking about,” she said. “I’m just not a political person.” She added, “I really am aware that no matter how strongly I feel about something, there’s someone else who feels just as strongly about the exact opposite.”

Unlike Ms. O’Donnell, Ms. DeGeneres makes only rare references to her romantic life on her show — she shares a home with the actress Portia de Rossi — mindful that the way she came out as a lesbian (with a Time magazine cover featuring the headline “Yep, I’m Gay”) drew much criticism in some circles and concerned some station managers who now carry her show..

“Maybe because I was penalized in a way when I came out, there are certain areas that I am aware would get me in trouble,” she said. “I talk about my life and I talk about Portia and it’s not a big deal if it comes up. But it really doesn’t come up.”

In recent weeks, for example, Ms. DeGeneres omitted any reference to Ms. de Rossi from two stories she told during her monologue, one about a car accident (she was driving and Ms. de Rossi was a passenger) and another in which their French bulldog, Pig, who is prone to flatulence, devoured a bowl of Parmesan cheese. (Ms. de Rossi had been cooking pasta and inadvertently left the bowl within Pig’s reach.) That Ms. DeGeneres may be holding back a few details from her daily life does not seem to bother her show’s core audience, particularly those who began lining up as early as 5:30 a.m. with hopes of getting a good seat (and perhaps the chance to dance on camera with the host) on a recent day.

“She’s like us, real people,” said Esther Perez, 47, a school cafeteria worker from San Diego whose husband left home at 3:45 a.m. to hold a spot in line for her. “And she’s very clean with her jokes.”

“It’s that positivity,” said Nan Einarson, a life coach who had traveled to the show from Toronto as a 58th birthday present from her daughter. “Ellen’s always upbeat.”

Correction: Oct. 7, 2006

An article in The Arts on Thursday about the talk show host Ellen DeGeneres included an erroneous description of a routine involving an apparently unwitting Robin Williams in April. Before his appearance on the show, Ms. DeGeneres told the audience that she would ensure that he donated money to a charity of his choice for each instance in which he stood up ($100) or used a funny accent ($50). He was not assessed for using a particular word.

// posted by Joe Paris @ Sunday, October 08, 2006 0 comments

Seize the Weight

I SURVIVED the freshman 15.

Technically, the extra pounds arrived the summer before my freshman year, when I went to Paris on one of those exchange programs where you’re supposed to submerge yourself in a captivating new culture but end up hanging out exclusively with other loud, gauche Americans, going to clubs, smoking cigarettes and barely learning to order coffee in the native tongue.

And, fine, the 15 were more along the lines of seven. But they were there. The once-roomy Oxford shirt I’d worn throughout high school began to yawn rudely between buttons. Every night after dinner, I felt a strange, overpowering urge to unfasten the top button of my jeans.

When I made it home at the end of the summer, my mom studied the photos from my trip, but instead of commenting on the muffin top bulging over my belt loops, she said I’d never looked happier. Shocked, I scrutinized my beaming face, pink and puffy as a macaroon.

And then it dawned on me: A little weight gain when you’ve been downing croissants and crepes and dancing all night in discos with male models who spoke brittle English wasn’t so bad. No, that mysterious, feared affliction known as the freshman 15 was entirely misunderstood — menacing in reputation, but in reality? Marvelous.

Sadly, few have gotten the memo. This back-to-school season, there’s been an outbreak of diet books aimed at avoiding the freshman 15.

Written by dieticians and nutritionists, a few by college students themselves, these books detail the ways in which any diligent undergrad can negotiate — along with heavy course loads, freaky roommates and dorm rooms no bigger than outhouses — portion size, fat intake and triweekly exercise programs, not to mention midnight cravings for pizza, pasta, Twinkies and Tab.

As helpful as such guides are meant to be, they’re nothing but buzz kill, a chafe, strictly for the birds. Forget the most obvious problem with collegiate calorie counting, that studying Kierkegaard or Conrad after a dinner of seitan and soy chips would render even robust stomachs seasick, sometimes outright ill. And I won’t harp on the clear link between vigorous salad consumption and sulkiness.

No, it’s that step-by-step, nitpicky dieting — any kind of strangling self-denial — goes against the very essence of the university experience.

College is a time for excess, for experimentation. It is four fleeting years of free-spirited indulgence in the form of metaphysics classes, a cappella ensembles, Gaelic Women’s Poetry or Intro to Interpretive Dance. Maybe you were a geek in high school — in college, you have carte blanche to go Goth. Always thought you were a jock who could never speak a foreign language? Meet a French girl at a frat party; soon you’re specializing in Sartre.

Time — she stops for no one. A student has eight semesters to fight not for gangplank abs or the loss of a dress size, but for a life experience that defies manuals, handbooks and how-to’s. Be baffled, heart-broken, a fool, fall flat, find out you (and, amazingly, your parents) never really had a clue.

This could very well lead you to Nietzsche, pizza and the Lipinski twins at 4 a.m. A rowdy incident involving cookie dough, snow angels, five townies and Lynyrd Skynyrd is also not out of the question. Neither are doughnuts and “Lonesome Dove.”

If you gain a little gut while studying Goethe, it will be fine. Post-graduation, there’ll be plenty of time for self-restraint and discipline, piling up on steamed spinach, ignoring starch. Corporate America, with its cubicles, wan lighting and the je ne sais quoi of a poultry farm, demands responsibility, conscientiousness and sober adherence to rules and tasks.

After a grueling year number-crunching for a boss who knows mortgage-backed securities but has never heard of Montmartre, the spontaneous all-night study session you once held in your dorm room sophomore year (beer, Byron and buffalo wings) will seem like a far-off, childhood dream.

Don’t waste it. Use that finite period to live on your own terms, let go. Take Emily Dickinson’s words to heart: “To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else.” (This means you’ll have few occasions for weighing yourself or whaling on your pecs.) Go for a bike ride. Ask out a cute guy. Try a tutorial on black holes. Or tai chi.

My freshman 15 are long gone. I lost half of them pounding the pavement as an entry-level consultant, moonlighting as an actress in shoestring musicals about the World Wrestling Federation and Hasidic Jews. The rest vanished after I bought a pair of crystal-encrusted Manolos and had to subsist on Melba toast and sardines for a few months in order to pay my rent. Those extra pounds were like unsightly but astounding lovers; I didn’t quite realize how great I had it — not until they were gone.

So trust me, you won’t have the cushioning of college forever. Until it’s all over — and you’re living with your parents, facing $20,000 in student loans — eat cake.

Marisha Pessl is the author of “Special Topics in Calamity Physics.”

15 Pounds: Part of Freshman Meal Plan?

AT Terra Ve, a vegetarian cafeteria at Purchase College in Westchester County, N.Y., the bacon pizza is vegan, the Asian rice is low fat, and a big poster next to the French fry station extols the virtues of zero trans fat soy oil.

Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times

Daphne Oz, a Princeton student, suggests making healthier food choices than strictly pizza and pasta.

“It was kind of healthy and surprisingly good,” said Daniel Abillama, 19, a freshman from Southampton, N.Y., of the stuffed broccoli pizza he had for lunch last Monday. “Luckily, we are too poor for dessert.”

Justin Hoffman of Manorville, N.Y., who was also only three days into his college career at Purchase College, part of the State University of New York, was also thinking about the inches that college dining might add to his waistline.

“I am worried because 15 pounds would show on me,” said Mr. Hoffman, 17. “That’s why I haven’t eaten much in the last couple of days.”

At this time of year, as students move into dorm rooms laden with comforters from Target, stacking shelves from Ikea, iPods and PowerBooks, they also take with them a host of worries about making friends, getting good grades and living on their own. But, for many, a foremost concern is what they will eat and whether they will experience the dreaded double-digit weight gain known as the “freshman 15.”

One of the earliest references to this affliction appeared in The Chicago Tribune in 1985, and it has since become a standard part of college lore, especially among young women. What is college, after all, but unlimited access to all-you-can-eat buffet-style dining halls with prepaid meal cards, late-night partying or studying fueled by high-fat snacks, and gossip sessions with roommates served up with a side of ice cream?

But the freshman 15 may turn out to be the Loch Ness monster of campus life — a much-reported phenomenon with little documentation behind it.

College weight fluctuation is a relatively new field of study. And because most of the published research on the topic involves only small groups of students on individual campuses, researchers do not know what percentage of the college population experiences weight changes, or even whether such changes are temporary or lead to long-term health consequences, said Daniel J. Hoffman, an assistant professor of nutritional sciences at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J..

“The ‘freshman 15’ is a catchy phrase,” Dr. Hoffman said. “Nobody would pay attention to the ‘freshman 5,’ and the ‘freshman 50’ is unrealistic.” But in a study of weight and body fat changes among 67 Rutgers freshmen, published last month in The Journal of American College Health, Dr. Hoffman found that 18 students lost weight, while 49 students gained an average of 7 pounds each. “Nobody gained 15 pounds.”

This has not stopped students from thinking about it.

“I guess some people go overboard with junk food,” said Nina Marie, 17, a Purchase freshman from Pelham, N.Y., who plans to work out six days a week as a member of the tennis team. “But I already know you shouldn’t eat in your dorm, you don’t snack, and you can’t eat burgers and fries every day,” she added, even as she downed a cheeseburger and fries.

But Ms. Marie had the right idea, some experts said. College should be about making wise choices and developing healthy eating habits. And that is where Daphne Oz, a junior at Princeton from Cliffside Park, N.J., comes in.

To help her peers navigate the Circean lures of college dining halls and late-night study breaks, Ms. Oz has written a book, “The Dorm Room Diet” (Newmarket Press), to be released on Sept. 6. The easy-to-read guide has a simple philosophy behind it: If students know nutrition basics, they will make healthier food choices.

Ms. Oz, 20, is the first to admit that she has no credentials in health or nutrition; her major is Near Eastern studies.

Her qualifications include the fact that her father is Dr. Mehmet C. Oz, a cardiac surgeon at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center, who has taken her into his operating room to show her the fat-clogged arteries of his patients. And at the Dwight-Englewood School in Englewood, N.J., she wrote a high school research paper on teenage nutrition and lobbied for healthier cafeteria food, she said.

But what Ms. Oz lacks in credentials, she makes up for with a transformational story of a self-described former chubby girl made cute by laying off the cookie dough and laying on the cardio. While some of her classmates pigged out, she lost 10 pounds during her freshman year, she said. She did it by relying on vegetarian entrees and salads at her dining hall, snacking on grapes, nuts, baby carrots and semisweet chocolate bits, and eating high-fat foods and sweets only occasionally.

Ms. Oz’s own metamorphosis — from an unconscious consumer of white bread, bagels and “huge plates of pasta” to an alert eater who views food purely as fuel — forms the backbone of the book.

“If I give you the right information, and if I tell you my story as important, then anyone can make the transformation,” Ms. Oz said.

Her tips include avoiding sugar cereals and fried food; stocking dorm refrigerators with bite-size goodies like strawberries and baby carrots instead of Diet Coke and ice cream; filling up on fruit and water before attending parties; and preparing for study sessions by brown-bagging snacks like pears and soy crisps so that the midnight munchies won’t propel you to a vending machine.

“If I can get to you now, I can help you create healthy habits that will last the rest of your life,” Ms. Oz said.

For all its well-intentioned talk of good eating habits, however, the book does occasionally equate fat not only with unhealthiness but also with unattractiveness. The introduction, for example, starts off with a fable about a hypothetical student at “Fat U.,” whose chronic reliance on junk food results in a face full of dark circles, puffy eyes, zits and a belly “hanging over the pants that used to be your ‘fat jeans.’ ” Meanwhile a student at an imaginary “Fit U.,” who forgoes pizza and candy bars, has wide eyes, “not a blemish in sight,” and no trouble getting dressed in the morning because every outfit looks great.

“Sometimes with young people you have to play on their vanity,” said Ms. Oz, who described “The Dorm Room Diet” as a healthy eating plan and not an ode to thinness.

But Melody A. Graham, a professor of psychology at Mount Mercy College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, said that encouraging dieting could compound student anxiety. In a study of 44 freshmen on her campus, Dr. Graham found that those who started the year concerned about gaining weight were more likely to have negative body images and to overestimate their weight gain at the end of the year.

According to her study, “Freshman 15: Valid Theory or Harmful Myth?” published in 2002 in The Journal of American College Health, 26 of the students gained an average of 4.6 pounds, 16 students lost weight, and 2 students maintained their weight.

“There is a high correlation between concern over the mythical freshman 15 and poor body image at the end of the year,” Dr. Graham said.

Still, even if 15 is a mythical number, college weight gain could present a significant health issue, said Dr. Hoffman of Rutgers. All it took for the freshmen in his study to gain seven pounds over two semesters was about 112 extra calories a day, he said.

“That’s one commercial soda or half of a commercial cookie a day, or 10 minutes less of exercise,” Dr. Hoffman said.

And a few students do gain more than 15 pounds. Zoe Hall, Ms. Oz’s best friend from childhood, gained 20 pounds during her first year at Vanderbilt University in Nashville because her class schedule conflicted with the opening hours of the university dining hall and she subsisted mostly on candy, frosted animal crackers, bagels and also late-night pizza delivered to her dorm room, she said.

“It’s a gradual weight gain that you only realize when your clothes don’t fit any more,” said Ms. Hall, 19, from Englewood Cliffs, N.J. Since she transferred last year to New York University where she eats at make-your-own-salad places, she has lost weight, she said.

Many campuses are already attuned to the idea that college eating can be habit forming. Purchase College, for example, where 35 percent of students identified themselves in a survey as vegetarians, has vegetarian options at each of its three cafeterias.

Chartwells Dining Services, which provides the food services at 230 college campuses, including Purchase, also maintains a Web site (dineoncampus.com/purchase/index.cfm, for example) that lists the calorie and fat content of hundreds of foods, including McDonald’s hamburgers and Good Seasons Italian salad dressing. The site also helps students calculate their body mass index and the number of calories they naturally burn each day (dineoncampus.com/purchase/?cmd=Wellness).

Andrew Parker, a junior from Massapequa, N.Y., said he lost 20 pounds since coming to Purchase. In high school, he ate Pop-Tarts for breakfast, Chinese food or pizza for lunch, and ice cream after dinner, he said. Last Monday, Mr. Parker, a music performance major who plays the oboe, was lunching on a chicken sandwich and fruit salad.

“I have seen a lot of people coming home from freshman year who looked like they had gained more than 15 pounds,” Mr. Parker said. “I am eating a lot healthier.”###

// posted by Joe Paris @ Saturday, October 07, 2006 0 comments

The Energy Diet

I’VE tried to be responsible.

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Elwood Smith

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What would you be willing -- or not willing -- to give up in order to lessen your household's impact on the environment?

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The Green Web (October 5, 2006)

Elwood Smith

I’ve thought pro-green thoughts and occasionally even done pro-green things. I’ve run the dishwasher and washer-dryer only with full loads. I’ve recycled, as ordered, though like every New Yorker I’ve ever met, I suspect the system does more good for our feelings than for the environment. I’ve shaved while showering, although I can’t remember anymore whether that’s a good or a bad thing.

I’ve been too busy to do much more, though, and too confused and overwhelmed by all the eco hype out there, and too inflexible to seriously change my lifestyle. No way am I hanging clothes out to dry on a clothesline. I won’t drive more slowly — as President Bush, like past presidents, has urged Americans to do to save gas — and neither will you, and neither will anyone. And I recently bought a flat-screen high-def 37-inch TV, an energy-Hoover you’ll have to pry from my cold, dead hands; if you haven’t seen an N.F.L. game on something like that, my friend, you might as well watch curling.

But the morning after I saw Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth,” I was spurred to action. I bought 50 compact fluorescent light bulbs — 50 — intent on replacing every incandescent one in my home. The new bulbs were supposed to be 67 percent more efficient and last up to 15 times longer. Unfortunately, the ones I bought also cast a considerably colder light, so I aborted my plan after just two bulbs when I realized the quality of light they emitted reminded me of a bus station bathroom.

In the weeks since, I dispatched the six cartons of unused C.F.L.’s to the basement, and my guilt grew alarmingly. As the father of three very young children, I had to do something — but something I would actually follow through with, something that would take minimal effort. Then, two weeks ago, while eating a doughnut and watching the scintillatingly clear images of Mets and Yankees scampering across my TV screen, I saw what I needed to do.

Flipping channels, I came across the news that Bill Clinton’s Global Initiative had just ended with Richard Branson, the British mogul, pledging $3 billion to fight climate change over the next decade. On another channel, Mayor Bloomberg stood at a podium in California and announced, to my pride and delight, his sweeping eco-initiative for New York: the city’s carbon emissions would be measured, an Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability would be created. Meanwhile, the man standing next to him, Governor Schwarzenegger, was set to sign legislation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions for his state — the world’s 12th largest contributor of such gases — at a level the federal government had continually rejected. Everyone was chipping in, even Arnold, the first civilian ever to drive a Hummer. I took another bite of doughnut.

And that’s when it came to me. I should go on a diet.

A half-ton diet.

I knew, having taken the “Calculate Your Impact” survey on climatecrisis.net, the companion Web site for the Gore movie, that our household produced some 19,100 pounds of CO2 last year, 4,100 pounds more than the national average. (The concept of a “pound” of gas is a nebulous one — depending on the pressure and temperature, it can fill a thimble or a stadium — so maybe it’s best portrayed this way: one pound of CO2 is what’s released per each mile driven, or each mile flown per person; it’s what’s produced to heat five gallons of water.)

For easier math, I rounded my number to 20,000 pounds, or 10 tons. As a family, as a household, couldn’t we drop a half-ton, a mere 5 percent of our weight? That’s 10 pounds for a 200-pounder to lose, 6 for a 120-pounder.

Absolutely. It was a goal, one I could stick to. Ambitious as it sounded, it was, amazingly, not excessive. I could keep living generally the way I wanted. I gave myself eight hours, no more, to lose the weight. In a world where texting passes for conversation and hooking up for a relationship, perhaps I’d just defined the new activism. Very little pain, not insignificant gain.

Mindy Pennybacker, the editor of The Green Guide and thegreenguide.com, was also enthusiastic about my plan. “Americans have too much weight in many ways, so it’s a metaphor that makes sense,” she said when I called her. “If it motivates you because it’s familiar and part of your everyday life, that’s terrific.”

“It’s all about attitude,” said Laurie David, the founder of the Stop Global Warming Web site (stopglobalwarming.org) and a board member of the National Resources Defense Council. “Change one or two things, you end up changing four or five things. You can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube. Before you know it, you start influencing people around you.”

Like most dieters, I cut deals with myself. If you’re trying to lose real weight, you vow, say, to give up beer and ice cream but retain your pizza rights. Since I was trying to emit less CO2, I vowed to lower the thermostat at night by one degree — not two, as often recommended by tree-huggers — a tweak I expected none of us would notice. (That saved 79 pounds; each degree equals approximately 315 pounds of CO2; turning it down only at night, for the six colder months, or ¼ times 315). In return? No more guilt over TV size.

Friends I called for suggestions understood my deal-making. Judy said she never used electrical kitchen appliances — “Opening a can is something I’m able to do” — but was still not ready to swap Vaseline for non-petroleum eye-makeup remover. Victoria said she saw a young mother with her baby in some sort of recycled paper diaper that did not look at all absorbent. “My baby is wearing Pampers, probably one of the most wasteful things I do,” she said. Then again, as much as she loves S.U.V.’s — the way they feel and handle — she and her husband realized that if they bought one they would be ostracized by half their circle. They bought a station wagon that gets three times the mileage.

I vowed to quit my profligate morning habit of turning on the shower and leaving the bathroom, not returning until several minutes after the water was hot. On the flip side, once I stepped into the shower I was not going to turn the experience into a 60-second spasm of sudsing and rinsing. Two minutes shower going unnecessarily times 2.5 gallons per minute times 365 morning showers times three ounces of CO2 produced per gallon of hot water equals 342 pounds. (My calculations, here and elsewhere, were made with the help of experts at the National Resources Defense Council and The Green Guide, several credible Web sites and a few smart relatives who grew up to be physicists and engineers.)

When washing white loads, I’d switch from the warm/warm cycle to warm/cold, comfortable that neither I nor my wife would notice the difference. (We didn’t.) Sixty-two pounds saved.

Four hundred and eighty-three total pounds, 30 seconds of effort to reprogram the thermostat, two no-brainer decisions. Maybe my diet was riddled with compromises, but it was working.

I found further validation for my lack of rigor. “When people equate efficiency with discomfort and sacrifice — like when Jimmy Carter put on a sweater and encouraged Americans to lower the thermostat — they shy away from it,” said Bill Prindle, the deputy director of the nonprofit American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy. “A month later they’re back to their old ways. We need to ask people to act from their values” — meaning fundamentals like “physical security, clothing, food and shelter, including thermal comfort.”

I felt certain I could unearth more savings in what Danny Seo, an eco-expert with a TV show, a Sirius radio show and a series of books all titled “Simply Green,” described to me as “bad habits we don’t even realize are bad habits.” For example, was it really energy-wiser, as I’d often heard, to leave a light or computer on for the few minutes you’re out of the room, rather turning it off and then on again?

“Total myth,” Mr. Prindle said. “Actually, I think that’s a projection. Because it takes me more work to shut it off, people think, then it must generally require more energy. It’s like the better-to-leave-the-car-idling theory.”

There were other bad habits that were just as easy to break. A friend suggested this quickie: Call retailers to get them to stop sending the print catalogs to which our house had become addicted. I chose 10 — L. L. Bean, Crate & Barrel, J. Crew, Eddie Bauer, Garnet Hill, Design Within Reach, Lands’ End, Restoration Hardware, Hammacher Schlemmer and the Company Store. (Originally I’d included Williams-Sonoma, but my wife vetoed that idea.) It took me 22 minutes total to cancel them — eight phone calls and two e-mails. Ninety (the average number of pages) times 12 (number of issues per year we seem to get) times 10 (retailers) equals 10,800 pages. Since my research shows that one tree produces about 25,000 pages of the coated, lower-end virgin paper used in most catalogs, I’d just saved 43 percent of one tree. One tree produces 260 pounds of oxygen, 43 percent of that is 112 pounds, which converts to 154 pounds of CO2 saved.

Everyone but me seemed to know about “vampires” — those energy suckers plugged into the wall when not in use (toasters, coffeemakers, hair dryers, cellphone chargers), consuming energy in standby mode. The easiest solution? Pull out individual plugs or, particularly for areas near computers and home entertainment equipment with lots of components, plug everything into a power strip (with surge protector) and, when done for the night or weekend, flip off the illuminated switch. Doing that would save me about 115 pounds annually on the computer, about 200 pounds on the TV, DVD and VCR. (Cable and satellite boxes draw huge amounts of energy, but turning them off may result in considerable reboot delays. I’m not going to turn mine off every night, but I might when I go on vacation.)

My boys and I drove to Lowe’s for surge protectors as well as a thermal insulating blanket for our 75-gallon hot-water heater; wrapping it, every expert I spoke with told me, significantly reduces the massive heat loss, especially in winter. (Newer water heaters tend to have higher levels of insulation built in.) The largest blanket they carried, though, was for a 60-gallon tank, and a check of their Web site (and, later, of Home Depot’s site) showed no blanket for a tank our size. Forget it, then; this was the lazy man’s diet: minimum effort.

On our way to the cashier, we passed an aisle with motion sensors, and I remembered my brother had them in his bathrooms, where they shut off the lights soon after people left. They seemed an easy enough item to buy and install. I called my brother, Marc. “Be honest,” I said. “Will there be re-wiring?” My brother, an astrophysicist, said no, there wouldn’t be; then something to the effect that, unless I was too stupid to remove a light switch plate and put another one on, I was fully capable.

“Wait,” I said. “Why does anyone need a motion sensor in their bathroom? Don’t people turn the light on when they go in and turn it off when they leave?”

“Ah,” he said. “You don’t have teenagers yet.”

Scratch the motion sensors, at least for six more years.

I was now up to 952 pounds, more than 90 percent of the way to my goal. Okay; I was ready to turn back to the C.F.L.’s. I decided I could tolerate the cool white ones in two places only: our outside vestibule (60 watts replaced with 13 watts, with the same number of lumens, or brightness), and one overhead fixture in my office (75 watts replaced with 19), where its effect was neutralized by incandescent track lighting. They were lights that were on much more often than most. Together, they would save me, annually, about 300 pounds in 20 minutes, including shopping time.

Three hundred pounds. No typo. Two bulbs.

I wasn’t done, though — soon but not yet. I learned from Laurie David of Stop Global Warming that it makes almost no sense to rinse dishes in very hot water when they’re going into a dishwasher to be rinsed in even hotter water. I would hereby skip that step, plus I’d also hand-wash dirty dishes created after 10 o’clock (no real chore since I find it relaxing). Should buy us two loads weekly, down to four instead of six — or 200 pounds saved for the year.

And I would have to give up my screensaver habit, much as I loved images of my children floating across my line of sight while I thought up sentences. In screensaver mode, my computer still draws a lot of power, according to David Goldstein, the energy program director for the Natural Resources Defense Council. He advised that by changing my settings so that the computer and display both go to sleep when inactive for 10 minutes (as opposed to my original setting of three hours), I would save about 250 pounds annually. It took me 30 seconds to click on the Apple icon, then “System Preferences,” then “Energy Saver.”

Seventeen hundred pounds dropped in 68 minutes — a little more than one of the eight hours I’d allowed for. All that would be required of me in the future was 10 seconds nightly to shut off two power strip switches and five to 10 minutes, every now and then, of pleasant dishwashing.

I ought to be done with it now — even if my numbers were a bit off, I’d blown past my goal, a dangerous thing to do early in a diet. But maybe Ms. David is right: make one change, soon you’re ready to make three. Maybe one day soon I’ll be ready to change a whole floor’s worth of light bulbs; I learned after buying my 50 bulbs that it’s possible to find C.F.L.’s that cast a warm glow, and the Green Guide’s helpful light bulb product report suggests that C.F.L.’s have been improving. Danny Seo says that Ikea carries lighting fixtures that handsomely mask the shortcomings of C.F.L.’s, with tinted glass or a strip of wood veneer. Maybe we’ll replace a roll or six of virgin toilet paper with post-consumer waste napkins — maybe. This is all I’m willing to do right now. Don’t look for me to carpool at elevators.

Then again, I can’t help but wonder how much I might accomplish if I actually put in more effort than a garden slug. I’m intrigued by what a friend, an architect, told me: That if just one teensy change were made to New York City — if all black roofs were painted white or silver, a simple, surprisingly inexpensive fix — the financial and energy savings would be jaw-dropping, not to mention that it would severely reduce the possibility of blackouts and brownouts. Relatively meager effort, monster bang for the buck.

So, like, I don’t know, maybe some weekend soon we all just get brushes and roof paint, fan out across the city, and just do it and get it over with? And afterward everyone comes by my place to watch the World Series on my big old flat-screen?

// posted by Joe Paris @ Thursday, October 05, 2006 0 comments