Thursday, April 28, 2016

Eating in the news

It's seems it's either too much or too little:

*  The BBC reports about some amazing changes in obesity rates in China:
Researchers found 17% of boys and 9% of girls under the age of 19 were obese in 2014, up from 1% for each in 1985.
The 29-year study, published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology, involved nearly 28,000 students in Shandong province.
The study used a stricter cut-off of the Body Mass Index (BMI) than the World Health Organization standard.
"It is the worst explosion of childhood and adolescent obesity that I have ever seen," Joep Perk from the European Society of Cardiology told AFP news agency.
The study said China's rapid socioeconomic and nutritional transition had led to an increase in energy intake and a decrease in physical activity.
*  In Japan, in the meantime, they apparently don't so well at dealing with anorexia and eating disorders.  Culturally, I'm not sure they generally handle mental health issues all that well, but I think they are improving.  Slowly.

*  In other eating disorder news, I was surprised to read about the search for the genetic role in anorexia nervosa.  (I just hadn't really thought of genes playing much of a role in it.) 

Given that the disease (often/always?) involves people developing a persistent ill founded reaction to their own body image (merely imagining that they are overweight), and transexualism can involve a not dissimilar distress at the look of their body, I wonder if anyone has looked for a genetic component to that?

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