Karen Kaplan, - L.A. Times
Stephan: One of the things that strikes me as I travel around the U.S. is that in some areas morbid obesity is the norm. The health implications are deadly, but it is making billions in profit for the fat industry, a conglomeration of pharmaceutical companies, weight loss spas, diet "food" manufacturers, and others who live off America's poor eating habits.
Obese Americans now outnumber overweight Americans, according to a survey of adults ages 25 and above.
Credit: Mark Lennihan / Associated Press
Americans have reached a weighty milestone: Adults who are obese now outnumber those who are merely overweight, according to a new report in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine.
A tally by researchers from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis estimated that 67.6 million Americans over the age of 25 were obese as of 2012, and an additional 65.2 million were overweight. Their count was based on data collected between 2007 and 2012 as part of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, an ongoing study conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (emphasis added)
The NHANES data included information on height and weight, which are used to calculate a person’s body mass index. A BMI between 18.5 and 24.9 is considered normal. Someone with a BMI in the 25-to-29.9 […]
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Philip Pullella, - Thomson Reuters Foundation
Stephan: This statement by Pope Francis did not get much coverage, but I think it will resonate with increasing impact over time.
Pope Francis
TURIN, ITALY — People who manufacture weapons or invest in weapons industries are hypocrites if they call themselves Christian, Pope Francis said on Sunday.
Francis issued his toughest condemnation to date of the weapons industry at a rally of thousands of young people at the end of the first day of his trip to the Italian city of Turin.
“If you trust only men you have lost,” he told the young people in a long, rambling talk about war, trust and politics after putting aside his prepared address.
“It makes me think of … people, managers, businessmen who call themselves Christian and they manufacture weapons. That leads to a bit a distrust, doesn’t it?” he said to applause.
He also criticised those who invest in weapons industries, saying “duplicity is the currency of today … they say one thing and do another.”
Francis also built on comments he has made in the past about events during the first and second world wars.
He spoke of the “tragedy of the Shoah,” using the Hebrew term for the Holocaust.
“The great powers had the pictures of the railway lines that […]
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Laura Clawson, - Daily Kos
Stephan: I find it fascinating that the Republican Party puts Paul Ryan forward as their leading economist in the Congress. I find his budget and policies naive, incompetent, and heartless. Partly as a result of thinking such as his American children by the millions are in poverty. Here are the facts.
House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) Reuters/Kevin Lamarque
The United States ranks 34 out of 35 on a UNICEF measure of relative child poverty in developed nations. To be clear, that’s 34 out of 35 in the bad way—second highest level, doing better than only Romania with more than 20 percent of children living in a household with an income below half the median.
But the picture looks even worse when you examine just how far below the relative poverty line these children tend to fall. The UNICEF report looks at something it calls the “child poverty gap,” which measures how far the average poor child falls below the relative poverty line. It does this by measuring the gap between the relative poverty line and the average income of poor families.Alarmingly, the United States also scores second-to-last on this measurement, with the average poor child living in a home that makes 36 percent less than the relative poverty line.
This is the context before the start of sequestration, as Bryce Covert points out. […]
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Warren Strobel, - Reader Supported News
Stephan: Our foreign policy concerning Islam has been so utterly incompetent for so many years that it may not be possible at this point to straighten it out. Here is the evidence that we are on the wrong path. One thing ought to be clear though: The only people benefiting are the war industries that are making billions.
The aftermath of a IED explosion in Beirut.
Credit: Reuters
Terrorist attacks worldwide surged by more than a third and fatalities soared by 81 percent in 2014, a year that also saw Islamic State eclipse al Qaeda as the leading jihadist militant group, the U.S. State Department said on Friday.
In its annual report on terrorism, the department also charts an unprecedented flow of foreign fighters to Syria, often lured by Islamic State’s use of social media and drawn from diverse social backgrounds.
Taken together, the trends point to a sobering challenge from militant groups worldwide to the United States and its allies despite severe blows inflicted on al Qaeda, author of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in Washington and New York.
Al Qaeda’s leaders “appeared to lose momentum as the self-styled leader of a global movement in the face of ISIL’s rapid expansion and proclamation of a Caliphate,” the report said, using an alternate acronym for Islamic State.
Last June, Islamic State attacked from its […]
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Stephan: Menstruation is a taboo subject in much of the world, and is a critical aspect of the subjugation of women by religions of all faiths. Here is an excellent essay on the subject. We are not going to become a healthy society until we can deal with human sexuality in a healthy way
Credit: Vice
“You’re going to be hungry if that’s all you eat,” one of my younger brothers tells me at sahoor, the pre-dawn meal Muslims eat before abstaining from food and drink from sunrise to sunset as required by the faith in the month of Ramadan.
“I’ll be fine,” I lie, forcing down one last bite of oatmeal. A few spoonfuls are all I can stomach of the farce. My mother won’t let me break it to my brothers, but Muslim women are prohibited from fasting while menstruating.
Fasting isn’t the only one of Islam’s main tenets that’s off limits to women during that time of the month; the five daily prayers are similarly banned, as well as reading from a copy of the Quran and stepping into a mosque, depending on who you ask.
Any sort of bleeding defiles the state of “purity” required for these acts of worship, even if its from a cut. The same is true for urinating, defecating, vomiting, or passing gas. But while a […]
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