Tag: food moralizing

fitness

“Skinny” trees, “cheating,” and other words to avoid this Holiday season

amandalynnstubley

You’ll have to pardon me today, I’m having a moment. So too, apparently are “skinny” or “pencil” Christmas trees. I don’t mind developing home fashions for the holidays, but the conversation, I can do without.

screen-shot image of headline rom Washington Post article about "Skinny" Christmas trees,

I’m feeling fed up with the steady stream of judging, guilt-inducing and just bizarre language about the Holiday and Christmas season. This language is certainly not “seasonal” – it’s not restricted to only December. But I seem to have hit my limit with it. My limit? This headline, from yesterday’s Washington Post.

I think, really, it’s the “Treezempic” term – apparently a term developed in social media.

In Western culture, and perhaps especially it seems North American culture, we seem to have a fixation with monitoring our eating. There is even developing consideration of this fixation, sometimes called Orthorexia, in terms of mental health.

The US National Eating Disorders Association describes Orthorexia as “an obsession with proper or ‘healthful’ eating.” Here they describe the risks of orthorexia:

Although being aware of and concerned with the nutritional quality of the food you eat isn’t a problem in and of itself, people with orthorexia become so fixated on so-called ‘healthy eating’ that they actually damage their own well-being and experience health consequences such as malnutrition and/or impairment of psychosocial functioning.

Terms like “indulgent” food, “clean eating,” “pure” food… in my opinion, they all risk putting our mindset toward this kind of thinking.

This week, I was disappointed to hear a radio interview with a dietician who ostensibly was promoting eating well over the Holidays, but seemed instead to focus on ‘indulging,’ but “not too much,” giving yourself permission to “cheat” and generally not chilling out and instead thinking and worrying a lot about food.

Google image search for "fashion Santa" showing thin men in red suits and leather jackets

This whole thing reminds me of “Skinny” or “Fashion” Santa, which apparently goes back to 2015 (but still seems new to me!).

The alternative? Well I think we should all just take a beat. Enjoy a holiday. If you celebrate over the Holidays, enjoy it. If you are not celebrating, perhaps enjoy the slow-down if you get one? (And if instead you are working hard to help those who do celebrate have time off, thank you!) And see if you can have something delicious without the fixation. Do it for me, do it to fight the dang Treezempic. Thanks

fitness · nutrition

#InMice and OJ

Sam B

I finally got to use the hashtag “InMice” on Twitter. What’s it mean?

From It’s just in mice! This scientist is calling out hype in science reporting:

“Mice form the basis of all biomedical research. As the quintessential model organism, they are perfect specimens in which to study all sorts of human conditions. But just because a drug performs well in mice, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’ll have the same result in humans. Science journalists and press releases — as translators of these findings — often fail to clearly demarcate that line.

A new Twitter account hopes to make that line much clearer. Last Friday, tweets from @justsaysinmice started making the rounds on Twitter and they quickly went viral. Every tweet — all 11 of them so far — follows the same pattern: A news story or press release with a sensational headline is tweeted out, with two simple words tacked on top: “IN MICE.””

The story that caught my eye was on orange juice, partly because of a playful ongoing argument with a friend who is quick to remind me and others that OJ is the nutritional equivalent of coke. Not evil, but not exactly health food.

But this story suggested we’d been missing out.

“A new study from London’s Western University suggests drinking two-and-a-half glasses of orange juice a day could help prevent heart disease and diabetes. Researchers have found a molecule, called nobiletin, in sweet oranges and tangerines that significantly reduces obesity and can reverse its negative side-effects.“Obesity and its resulting metabolic syndromes are a huge burden to our health care system, and we have very few interventions that have been shown to work effectively,” said Murray Huff, PhD professor at Western’s Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry in a statement.”

Hmm. But read on and the results were only shown in mice.

So I tweeted.

Medical researcher and occasional guest blogger Dr. Savita weighed in.

Sounds like unless you want 20g of sugar and you just want the health benefits, if the results work out in humans and not just #inmice, there are better ways to get it.

OJ coming at you!
OJ coming at you!