Using a $2 million grant from the Department of Agriculture, the schools in San Antonio are installing sophisticated cameras in the cafeteria line and trash area that read food bar codes embedded in the food trays.
Kids are going to become so used to surveillance and monitoring as an every-day fact that they are going to be far better equipped than previous generations to avoid it or game it. It’s like they are being trained to break common security controls at an early age.
“We’re going to snap a picture of the food tray at the cashier and we will know what has been served,” said Dr. Roberto Trevino of the San Antonio-based Social and Health Research Center, which is implementing the pilot program at five schools with high rates of childhood obesity and children living in poverty.
“When the child goes back to the disposal window, we’re going to measure the leftover.”
I hope I am not the first person to point this out but kids swap food at the table, and kids cheat. What they take from the line and what they throw away does not necessarily reflect what they actually eat.
It seems that a test of their body would be a more common sense approach. In the old days we used to joke about toilets that could print out a receipt with your health information when you finished. What happened? Where did our future go?
A camera that watches lunch trays? I have a feeling this system has more to do with regulating the kitchen, the register and the garbage collection than the health of the kids. After all, the monitors are focused on what’s served, what’s purchased and what’s thrown away.
Echon on Wednesday showed reporters a printout of the reading from one student’s tray at W.W. White Elementary School. It listed the size of the serving, and its calorie, fiber, sugar, and protein count.
He said the program can break down the data into total monounsaturated fatty acids, soluble dietary fiber, and more than 100 other specific measures.
Brilliant. That should make lunch-room trading and haggling far more interesting. Kids now can say “I’ll trade you an empty carton that will show 5g soluble dietary fiber at the garbage sensor for that bag of red corn syrup twists”.
Here’s my idea for how to do this and retain some futurist flair — give students a mouse for a computer when they take a test that also assesses their health and nutritional intake. When their hand touches the mouse it first authenticates them and then reads their data. Tiny pin-prick of blood like those new diabetic tests, etc. show that we already have the technology. Just need to put it together.
Privacy is a problem, but for the sake of argument let’s say the data can be made private enough to meet HIPAA/HITECH. Even better would be, instead of a mouse, for kids to order lunch from a touch-screen register. They first authenticate with their full hand and their body outline (via camera). Then it reads their health data. Then it records what they order. They can swap food later but the health data will be matched to their biometric.
Gary Taubes gives an extremely thorough and supportive review in the NYT of Robert Lustig’s argument that sugar should be evaluated as poisonous. It’s a sticky issue (pun intended) as illustrated with feats of acrobatic marketing by the junk food industry.
In the early 1980s, high-fructose corn syrup replaced sugar in sodas and other products in part because refined sugar then had the reputation as a generally noxious nutrient. (“Villain in Disguise?†asked a headline in this paper in 1977, before answering in the affirmative.) High-fructose corn syrup was portrayed by the food industry as a healthful alternative, and that’s how the public perceived it. It was also cheaper than sugar, which didn’t hurt its commercial prospects. Now the tide is rolling the other way, and refined sugar is making a commercial comeback as the supposedly healthful alternative to this noxious corn-syrup stuff. “Industry after industry is replacing their product with sucrose and advertising it as such — ‘No High-Fructose Corn Syrup,’ †Nestle notes.
But marketing aside, the two sweeteners are effectively identical in their biological effects. “High-fructose corn syrup, sugar — no difference,†is how Lustig put it in a lecture that I attended in San Francisco last December. “The point is they’re each bad — equally bad, equally poisonous.â€
As much as I hate both sugar and high-fructose corn syrup, I disagree. Here’s how he tries to drive the point home.
Because each of these sugars ends up as glucose and fructose in our guts, our bodies react the same way to both, and the physiological effects are identical.
I disagree because there is weak evidence that our bodies are the same, let alone that each body will “react the same” to different sugars. This difference in effect is no great secret if you look at the study and evolution of sports nutrition.
A related example is how some are affected differently by the lactose of various milks. Some people digest all forms of milk without noticing any differences. Those more sensitive to lactose, however, typically reject cow milk yet have few issues with camel or goat milk.
Along these lines, since I was a child I have run numerous tests (granted, not always very scientific or blind) that consistently demonstrate to me that high-fructose corn syrup has a very different effect on me than other forms of sugar.
The culmination of my research was in 2000 when I would eat two to three “health bars” during the day. I noticed right away that the days when I ate bars with high-fructose corn syrup I was less productive, less focused in my writing. I then started to isolate the bars by ingredients.
After just three weeks I found that Luna bars, sweetened without any high-fructose corn syrup gave me a boost of energy yet any bar that had high-fructose corn syrup would slow me down and sometimes even prevent me from thinking clearly.
Like removing caffeine or alcohol from a diet, after I had eliminated all high-fructose corn syrup from my diet the effect of it became even more pronounced. Very soon after high-fructose corn syrup now I notice a significant negative effect on mental acuity. Taubes points out a difference in “chronic toxins” and “acute toxins”. With that in mind it seems I treat high-fructose corn syrup as acute and other forms of sugar as chronic.
At the same time, despite all the non-fat marketing and advice, I have not found any link from the fat in nuts, vegetables and meat to obesity. I never accepted skim or low-fat milk as a step to health. It simply does not make sense to me and I have never noticed that effect. This is raised by Taubes as well.
…many of the key observations cited to argue that dietary fat caused heart disease actually support the sugar theory as well. During the Korean War, pathologists doing autopsies on American soldiers killed in battle noticed that many had significant plaques in their arteries, even those who were still teenagers, while the Koreans killed in battle did not. The atherosclerotic plaques in the Americans were attributed to the fact that they ate high-fat diets and the Koreans ate low-fat. But the Americans were also eating high-sugar diets, while the Koreans, like the Japanese, were not.
Strange that is taking so long for nutritionists to move ahead and advance their research and understanding of risks. Apparently there is very little work done in America on clinical trials that would help understand sugar and high-fructose corn syrup. That makes risk management far more difficult for consumers than necessary or safe. It is like being told to run a network without the means to look at the logs for breaches or inspect any traffic for malicious code.
The BBC calls it a use for curry powder, but scientists really are working with turmeric. They have found a way to make thin films of it on transparent plates to look for the presence of explosives.
The idea would be to use an inexpensive light source – the team uses LEDs – shone on to the thin films, detecting the light they then put off. In the presence of explosives, the light would dim.
By using an array of sensors, each sensitive to slightly different colours of light, a range of different materials could be detected, and, crucially, reduce the risk of false alarms.
In tests, the films can currently detect explosive levels down to 80 parts per billion, but Mr Kumar said that for hgh-sensitivity applications like mine detection, they needed to increase the sensitivity further, by adjusting the chemical groups attached to curcumin.
I am reminded of the Red Dwarf episode when a Vindaloo Beast rampages the ship. What if scientists go too far and make a curry detection monster that gets out of control – a mind of its own? “Of course, Lager, the only thing that can kill a vindaloo.”
Provocative title? Although I originally am from Kansas I spent several years working and living in Wisconsin so I know the area fairly well. Remember the book called “What’s the Matter with Kansas” by Thomas Frank? It seems like he might want to publish a new edition that takes a look at the roots of the current crisis in Madison.
…the rules were developed after years of research and public input, including extensive stakeholder input from farmers, municipal water treatment systems, manufacturers, food processors, local governments and environmental groups. Organizations that supported passage of the rules included the Wisconsin Farm Bureau, the Dairy Business Association, the Potato and Vegetable Growers Association, the Wisconsin State Cranberry Growers Association, the Wisconsin Corn Growers Association, the Wisconsin Pork Association, the Wisconsin Cattlemen’s Association, the Municipal Environmental Group (representing local wastewater systems), Clean Wisconsin, Midwest Environmental Associates, the Wisconsin Association of Lakes, the Wisconsin River Alliance, Wisconsin Environment, and the Sierra Club.
[DNR Secretary Matt] Frank added, “We are currently working with all stakeholders on implementation guidelines as well as the design of a pollutant trading system that will lower the cost of compliance even further.”
Wow, that’s a broad-base of industry and organizations who have taken a careful and long-term approach to managing risk. Frank offers this explanation for the popular support.
“Wisconsin’s lakes and rivers are the foundation for our economy, our environment and our quality of life. Stakeholder groups came together to preserve that foundation by addressing phosphorus pollution comprehensively. Under this rule, Wisconsin can look forward to cleaner beaches, more swimmable lakes, improved public health, healthier fisheries and wildlife habitat.
Cleaning up waters polluted by excessive phosphorus is crucial to protecting our $12 billion tourism economy and our $2.75 billion fishing industry. Reducing phosphorus will protect private property values and local tax base, as shown by state and national research linking higher property values with water clarity.
Ok, the quality (safety) of water is essential to the state economy. This is not just based on conjecture and theory. Milwaukee has had a host of water contamination issues from heavy metals to a catastrophic water crisis of 1993.
The massive outbreak of waterborne cryptosporidiosis in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1993 is an example of how contaminated water distributed through a municipal water system can lead to a major public health crisis. As a result of the Cryptosporidium contamination, an estimated 403,000 Milwaukee residents developed diarrhea reflecting an attack rate of 52% of the population with more than 4,000 requiring hospitalization. Cryptosporidiosis was listed as the underlying or contributory cause of death in 54 residents following the outbreak, severely impacting susceptible populations most at risk. An estimated 725,000 productive days were lost as a result of the water contamination event and more than $54 million in lost work time and additional expenses to residents and local government resulted from the waterborne disease outbreak
So Wisconsin has some very real and local data on the harm from a failure to protect their water supplies, which include death and economic disaster. The 2010 Water Quality Report shows warnings for mercury and industrial contaminants for most of the state and shows how regulations have helped document, assess and reduce risk.
It all makes sense so far. Here’s the problem: Republicans in both the House and Senate of Wisconsin recently have tried to kill a bill that regulates phosphorous pollution in their water — a bill wanted by industries to protect and preserve water quality.
Believe it or not, despite the data and analysis I quote above, the Republicans argue that protecting water is too expensive a burden to the economy. They think municipal governments can not afford the security.
But their analysis fails on two very obvious and simple points:
It is far more expensive and disruptive to clean up pollution in the environment than to prevent it.
The state has developed their own localized approach after careful study and time for comment and feedback. A failure to follow-through will set themselves up for hasty and less palatable reaction to a disaster (e.g. 1993). A federal approach may also become necessary. An unwillingness to solve obvious health risks at the state level will not make solutions any easier or less expensive.
Perhaps the real reason they are intent on stopping state regulation is because they do not fear #2. They believe there will not be any federal investigation or regulation to prevent the next water quality crisis because of recent legal decisions, such as Rapanos vs. the United States in 2006, that block the government from testing for contamination in “non-navigable” water.
New York’s Assistant Commissioner for Water Resources James M. Tierney told The New York Times that the court decision creates a big problem. “There are whole watersheds that feed into New York’s drinking water supply that are, as of now, unprotected.” The EPA says that over 100 million Americans are drinking water that comes from unguarded sources.
Gov. Scott Walker has proposed exempting a parcel of Brown County wetlands owned by a Republican campaign donor from water quality standards.
The donor is said to seek the Governor’s assistance with relaxation of state security standards because he intends to fill in 2 acres of wetlands and build…a Bass Pro Shops store to sell fishing supplies. Really.
WTF is wrong with Wisconsin?
The Governor seems to think that ruining the security and economic base of the state by ignoring long-term damage from the contamination and destruction of resources is a good business plan. That’s like lighting your store on fire and then charging admission to watch it burn down. Not the best business strategy. You might end the day with a few more dollars in your pocket, but then what?
Applying just a tiny bit of common sense would make fishing store developers want to preserve and protect natural resources. I mean perhaps the Governor could use the same emphasis he has put into halting wind energy innovation (supposedly based on concern for the purity of the environment) and just apply it to water?
