Cause and effect in childhood obesity

Does being sedentary make kids fatter? Not much. In an 11-year cohort study, it seems instead that being fat makes kids sedentary. In an effort to find out why attempts to reduce obesity by increasing activity levels averaged having kids lose an ounce a year, they discovered that "Physical activity had no impact on weight change, but weight clearly led to less activity."

The authors attribute obesity partly to "portion size, calorie-rich snacks and sugary drinks," but this just pushes the question back a step. Why do some people eat different foods and bigger portions? The authors say "early feeding errors seem crucial."

I hope this doesn't mean I'm go blame if my kid is fat, because I fed it wrong as a baby. I have enough guilt already. The actual article is behind a pay wall, so all I have is the EurekAlert linked to above, so I guess I'll speculate what it means.

It could mean that what a kid is fed early in life turns some genes on or off. It is not implausible that the amount of fat and calories and acid, and god knows how detailed it might get, might influence the expression of genes that make you crave fat, or salt, or custard-filled chocolate éclairs more than other people. It could be epigenetics in action, to go along with the genetics we know are also involved.

Bored morning

And then some days you wake up and look at the usual science sites, and the news sites, and the political sites, and there are a few mildly interesting research reports but nothing you really have anything to say about. Too much TV and video games reduces kids' attention spans. They found a gene that affects some disease. Healthy food is good for you. And blah, blah, blah. So you go off and graze on the internet until time to get ready for work and blow off the blog for one day.

Food ads aimed at kids

The campaign to reduce ads for crap foods has had some effect. They see fewer ads for sweets and beverages but more for fast food. I guess you couldn't expect to see them replaced with ads for broccoli.

The long-term bad news is

An Institute of Medicine (IOM) report concluded that there was strong evidence that television advertising influences the short-term eating habits of children age 2 to 11, and moderate evidence that advertising influences their usual dietary intake, according to background information in the article.

Kids prefer what they've seen on TV, and they prefer what they're used to. Kids used to Tang don't like orange juice. I guess you just have to be vigilant. And you have to support things like nutrition requirements in Title 22 centers.

Self medicating with chocolate

After the sun rose in the east this morning, I read that people eat half again as much chocolate when they are depressed as when they are not.

"The findings did not appear to be explained by a general increase in caffeine, fat, carbohydrate or energy intake, suggesting that our findings are specific to chocolate," said Golomb. There was also no difference in the consumption of other antioxidant-rich foods, such as fish, coffee, fruits and vegetables between those with depression and those without.

 The researchers don't know if the chocolate helped the depression or made it worse. I think I do. One cool thing about chocolate is that it contains anandamide, which is the brain chemical that locks into the same receptors that THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, does. Just sayin'.

Middle school start time

It's been known for some time that, starting about puberty, kids need to sleep more and later. Well, now it's been partly quantified. In this study, 200 high school kids changed class start time from 8:00 to 8:30. Lots of good stuff followed:

• Kids averaged 45 more minutes of sleep a night
• Many fewer kids got less than 7 hours a night, and many more got over 8.
• Significantly fewer kids said they went to the Health Center for fatigue-related problems
• Kids felt less depressed
• Students and faculty "overwhelmingly" voted to keep the later start time.

The one thing missing from here is either of the two things that will make a school board change: money and test scores. If they could show that starting later saved money by using less lighting, or air conditioning, or heating, or maybe buses use less fuel when traffic is a little lighter, school boards would listen. If the kids who started later got higher scores on standardized tests, school boards would jump on it. But that piece has not, as far as I know, been shown. It seems likely to be true, but I don't think anybody has actually made the link.

So why are school boards unlikely to change just because it's good for kids? After all, don't we always say we always do what's best for kids? Yes, we do say that. No, it's not true.

I spent a lot of time on a lot of committees when my issue flowed through public elementary and middle schools, especially elementary. I skipped the committee part of high school. But I spent a great deal of time with k-8 teachers and administration, some of which involved whether this one middle school could and should start an hour later. It could not by itself, because within a district, schedules are entirely run by the bus dispatcher. Any change you ask for, they say you can't do it because of this or that bus scheduling issue. The entire district could not, because teachers like to get out early. They like leaving in mid-afternoon, so they can run errands and do stuff they wouldn't have time to do if they left the campus at 5. They dance around it, but that's the fundamental reason schools don't start at 9.

On the general idea of "we do what's best for the kids," I was on a committee to decide how to spend Prop 63 mental health money. The local county mental health chieftan decided before we started that the child care piece would be parent education. The child care people went in hoping for mentors to go to sites to help providers learn to deal with kids with disabilities or challenging behaviors, as they're euphemistically called. No, that part was already decided, and we could see what we could salvage. 

Okay, we decide we're going to go into centers, identify kids with challenging behaviors, and do a dual training for parents and providers. Cool. Which centers? The people on the committee who worked for the mental health chieftan suggested Head Start. We said, no, Head Start already has a pretty good referral system. The ones who need it are Title 22 centers. They said, no, it's easier to get one MOU with Head Start than MOUs with all those little Title 22 centers. It's administratively easer.

Then, when the plan was announced, the lady in charge talked about how at every stage we were just concerned about what was best for the children of our county. I wanted shout, "You lie! You were concerned about administrative convenience."

A quarter loaf of SB 797

SB 797 passed the assembly and will go back to the Senate for concurrence in amendments. This is good news, though it would have been better if compromises hadn't had to be made. I've talked about this bill several times before. I haven't cared this much about a piece of legislation in some time.

Bisphenol A is a chemical used in making clear, hard, pretty much shatter-proof bottles to sell food and beverages in. It is also a synthetic hormone that, among other things, affects development of sexual parts in fetuses and behavior in toddlers. Look at this Wikipedia article on it and scroll down to the Previous Studies section for a list, a long list, of bad stuff it does to people.

This bill would ban the use of bisphenol A in food or beverage containers intended for kids 0-3, except for containers of dry or liquid formula. I have no idea why that amendment was put in. Well, I have an idea, my usual guess in these cases, which is that lobbyists for businesses with a financial stake in it made their case successfully to legislators who have only been in office a couple of years and don't know anything, and besides, they're contributors.

I'm not a chemist, and I don't know what manufacturers would have to sacrifice to take it out of all food and beverage bottles. Maybe transparency. Maybe cost. Maybe non-bisphenol A bottles break easier. But the dangers of infants drinking synthetic hormones seems so great that we need to put up with the industrial sacrifice, no matter what it is.

Of course, I'd like to see bisphenol A taken out of all food and beverage containers, but this quarter loaf is better than none.

The attorney general of Connecticut asked manufacturers a couple of years ago to voluntarily stop using it in baby bottles. Six agreed, and they should be noted and commended:

• Gerber 
• Avent America, Inc 
• Evenflo Co. 
• Disney First Years 
• Dr. Brown 
• Playtex Products, Inc.

I'd like to see a list of those that didn't.

Even more, I'd like to see SB 797 pass the state senate, maybe even with formula bottles unexempted.

Friday follies on Saturday

Awwww. Boy cat and girl cat just waking up from an afternoon nap. They got weighed yesterday. He weighs 2.1 pounds, and she weighs 1.9. If she weighs two pounds by next Friday, they will get neutered, and then come home with us for a couple of days to recuperate, and then we'll abandon them to the vagaries of adoption.

Another way poverty hurts people

(W)omen who suffered from childhood hunger were 35 percent more likely to have cognitive impairment at age 65 or older, while men who suffered from childhood hunger had a 29 percent higher chance.

Anybody need another reason for expanding WIC?

And do you want to find the hungry kids? Ask parents if they agree or disagree with two statements:

"Within the past 12 months we worried whether our food would run out before we got money to buy more;"

"Within the past 12 months the food we bought just didn't last and we didn't have money to get more."

More bad stuff about prenatal tobacco

Newborns of non-smoking moms exposed to secondhand smoke during pregnancy have genetic mutations that may affect long-term health.

That's all you need to know. It makes you want to slap young women you see smoking. Some of them will quit when they get pregnant (or when they realize they're pregnant), and some won't. Dads by and large will keep smoking. After all, he's not the one who's pregnant.

I get so depressed when I think about the avoidable crap we do to babies. Oh, we have a developing little person; let's let the mom breathe in some poison, so the baby can enjoy it, too. SB 797 failed again. It's too hard to take bisphenol A out of food containers for kids, so let's let babies drink out of poisoned bottles.

The good and bad about home delivery

Of babies, that is. Home delivery of newspapers goes wrong more often, but the results are less serious.

Mothers in planned home births experienced significantly fewer medical interventions including epidural analgesia, electronic fetal heart rate monitoring, episiotomy, and operative vaginal and cesarean deliveries. Likewise, women intending home deliveries had fewer infections, perineal and vaginal lacerations, hemorrhages, and retained placentas. Data also showed that planned home births are characterized by less frequent premature and low birthweight infants.

However, home birth is also

associated with a tripling of the neonatal mortality rate compared to planned hospital deliveries. Planned home births were characterized by a greater proportion of deaths attributed to respiratory distress and failed resuscitation.

It sounds to me as though if we can train midwives to deal with respiratory distress better, home birth will be better all around. Now that I read the article again, that's what the authors said.

Impulsiveness and dopamine

Researchers have shown that increased levels of dopamine increase impulsiveness and the desire for instant gratification. At the same time, the amygdala, involved in emotions, lit up.

It seems much of life is a conflict between seratonin and dopamine. One wants quiet, and the other wants loud music. One wants rest, and the other wants activity, especially something new. One puts money away in a tax-deferred annuity, and the other takes off to Jamaica for the weekend.

The test was done by giving people L-Dopa, which increases dopamine levels. They also tried using a dopamine suppressor, but it didn't have the effect of reducing impulsiveness.

WIC and cow's milk

I knew human milk was preferred for human babies, but I didn't know the American Association of Pediatrics recommends no cow's milk at all before the first birthday. The article where I read this is about a study of WIC recipients. The earlier they entered the program, the less likely they were to introduce cow's milk too early.

Good for WIC. Dietary education works.

Propositions have been given numbers

The Secretary of State has numbered the propositions for the November ballot. Here's my first run on them:

• Prop 18: Water bond.
  Haven't decided
• Prop 19: Tax and regulate cannabis.
  You bet. I'll  write about this between now and November. 
• Prop 20: Gives Prop 11 redistricting commission authority to draw Congressional districts.
  Bad for Democrats. No.
• Prop 21: Raising the vehicle license fee by $18 to pay for state parks.
  Sure.
• Prop 22: Prohibits state government from taking local government funds.
  I'm inclined to be against anything that restricts the ability of the legislature to make decisions when they need to, but I'm not yet sure about this. 
• Prop 23: Repeals AB 32, the state global warming law.
  No. 
• Prop 24: Closes corporate tax loopholes.
  Yes. I'm a tax and spend liberal, after all. 
• Prop 25: Lets the legislature pass a budget with a majority vote.
  If anything can save California from the Republicans, it is this. Yes.
• Prop 26: Requires a 2/3 majority vote to impose fees.
  No. It would make budgeting even harder than it is now.
• Prop 27: Disbands the Prop 11 redistricting commission entirely.
  Probably yes. I think redistricting should be political. I don't mind gerrymandering.

Light posting

Work is crazy, and I've been staying up too late to get up early enough to get to this before having to get to work by 7, so that's why no posting yesterday or, besides this, today. Maybe nothing until the new fiscal year.

Catch-22

I figured out how to describe a catch-22. It is a situation where a necessary condition for success is also a sufficient condition for failure. You have to ask (necessary condition) not to fly (success), but asking not to fly (sufficient condition ) proves you aren't crazy (failure), so you have to fly.

If you haven't read Catch-22, this probably makes no sense. But you have read Catch-22, haven't you? It's one of the two best novels of the second half of the 20th century, along with Invisible Man.

The brain and behavior, part 1 million

Regular readers know I spend a lot of time talking about how the brain influences behavior. Yesterday's Science Daily had three articles related to that issues.

Where courage is located
They took a bunch of people who were or were not afraid of snakes and had them move a neutral object or a harmless snake toward them or away from them, and they found the part of the brain that lights up when someone who is afraid of a snake overcomes that fear and pulls it toward them. If you care about details, it was the subgenual anterior cingulate cortex. In addition, "a series of temporal lobe structures" decreased activity.

Brain structure and personality
This study looked at the Big Five personality traits (conscientiousness, extraversion, neuroticism, agreeableness, and openness/intellect) and the size of different parts of the brain. "(C)onscientious people tend to have a bigger lateral prefrontal cortex, a region of the brain involved in planning and controlling behavior." Extraverts have  a bigger medial orbitofrontal cortex, which is involved in rewards. Neuroticism and agreeableness each had its big area, though the article didn't say where. Only openness/intellect was not associated with a big area.

One problem with this is that they didn't look at all areas of the brain for each personality trait. After a personality test, they predicted which areas would be bigger than normal and then tested those areas. There may be other areas involved, on the principle that everything is more complicated than you think it is.

It's also not clear which way the causal relation goes. It may be that having a big lateral prefrontal cortex makes you conscientious, or it may be the other way around. I expect we'll find out. In the meantime, it's another strong correlation between brain and behavior.

What you feel affects what you think

• People reading a resume on a heavy clipboard think the person is weightier and better than people reading the same resume on a light clipboard. 
• People negotiating while sitting in harder chairs are less flexible and drive harder bargains. 
• People judged a case-study employee as being more rigid and strict if they had just touched a hard wooden block than if they had just touched a soft blanket.
• People who had been putting together a puzzle with rough pieces described a social interaction as harsher than those who had been handling a puzzle with smooth pieces.

Yup, the brain is god-awful complicated, but a lot of what we think is determined by it. Makes you wonder about free will, doesn't it? More on that some time.

Budget Salvation

An initiative has qualified for the November ballot that would, if passed, allow the legislature to adopt a budget by majority vote. It could save California. Therefore it hasn't a chance.

Kangaroo porn

Birds do it, bees probably don't do it. I've seen whales do it in pairs and trios. It's said to be pretty much universal among mammals. And now we know for sure that kangaroos do it. You see what I start doing when I can't follow a train of thought? I found this at Andrew Sullivan's blog.

XKCD is the best thing on the internet

If you haven't done it before, look over to the left of this blog at the section called Diversions. There are links to three places I go to refresh myself. XKCD is the best nerd humor, and therefore the best thing, on the internet. Be prepared for math and physics jokes. Indexed is right up there. PostSecret is mostly just sad.

Friday follies

But I do feel well enough to post a picture of boy cat lying on a rug-protecting towel in a sunbeam, flecks of killed newspaper and kleenex around him.