Vouchers for healthier living?
By Wei Seng
I'll need a discount on that
It strikes me as amazing that a Conservative government (albeit a coalition one with the Liberal Democrats) in the UK is actually introducing vouchers to encourage people to eat healthily and exercise. The report in The Independent claims that it is all part of a "government-backed healthy living" initiative called Change4Life, by launching a "Great Swapathon" that allows people to redeem £50 worth of vouchers for healthier food and activities by taking part in a survey on the Great Swapathon website.
It looks to me like a subsidy on healthier food, and I am surprised that the Tory government would actually consider such seemingly market-distorting policies considering their pro-market stance. But such a scheme is actually more pro-market than an actual subsidy on the price of healthier food and activities as this scheme involves the food industry and retailers and allows them quite a bit of influence in the campaign. Which then leads to people complaining that actually allowing firms in the food industry the ability to influence public helath campaigns is not quite a good idea because the firms would be more concerned with profits and their bottom line rather than what is truly good for the consumer or populace.
Either way, it is a good step forward for a country that is facing an "obesity time bomb". As the Health Secretary says, "the healthier option isnt always the cheaper option", so the poor should at least be allowed some access to more wholesome though more expensive foods rather than cheap junk food.
The Story of Cosmetics
By Wei Seng
What really goes into my shampoo?
From the same producers of The Story of Stuff (as well as subsequent videos The Story of Cap & Trade and The Story of Bottled Water comes The Story of Cosmetics. I reviewed The Story of Cap & Trade in May and The Story of Stuff in February, and found both videos to be quite enlightening and entertaining, despite being a little one-sided and not as detailed as desirable. The Story of Cosmetics is a peek into another industry that we have contact with in our daily lives but have little idea as to how the essentials we use from this industry affect our lives. It attempts to highlight to us the amount of toxins in their products and how / why such practices can continue in today's world with heightened environmental and health consciousness.
For those who have never thought about what goes into your shampoo or lipstick, this is the introductory video for you to get yourself enlightened. This might not provide as much information as one would expect, but it would be enough to get one thinking (twice) about what one uses / puts on oneself, which would have achieved part of the goal of producing this video. If you get to lobbying and spreading the word about the atrocities, the other half of the goal would have been met.
Reaching puberty earlier?
By Wei Seng
What is happening to me?
I stumbled upon The Economist's Intelligent Life magazine, a quarterly magazine published by The Economist covering aspects of lifestyle and culture and devoid of politics. Then, after a few curious clicks, I ended up on an article that details the emerging trend of falling puberty ages. Apparently young boys and girls are reaching puberty at an earlier age than ever, with some doing so at the young age of 6.
In an article that describes the trends of puberty ages, there are plenty of interviews from scientists and doctors who have studied this trend as well as anecdotes and first-hand experiences. The article also proposes some factors that might have caused puberty ages to be brought forward for more and more children: mostly chemicals found in our daily lives that become more commonplace over the decades, all referred to as Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals (EDCs) that meddle with the hormonal balance in our bodies and hence have an influence on the age where boys and girls reach puberty. Some of these EDCs include phthalates (found in food packaging), bisphenol A (found in polycarbonate water bottles) and parabens (found in shampoo). Can anyone actually avoid contact with all these materials that have become interwoven in our daily lives? It is no wonder that environmentalists often campaign against the use of plastic and man-made chemicals, because of the threat to our health exposure to these chemicals can cause in the long term.
Studies are still ongoing, but this is one example of how our health can be affected by materials we are exposed to in our daily lives. It's not time to go back to living in the Stone Age, but I would think it is good to exercise caution in everyday life to reduce contact with chemicals and materials that might not be good for your body, just to be safe.
The Feast
By Kevin
Burger Stuffing?
The Economist Lexington reports on The Fat Plateau, highlighting that Americans are no longer getting fatter. This is the point of time when American Healthcare is a core concern of the Americans' lives and obese might penalize the healthier individuals in a system that pools all their risks together. Either the number of people who can't quite control their diet has reached the peak of their obesity potential, or that all the complex forces that pushes weight up and down for the general populace has finally reached a point where both forces cancel each other out - at least temporarily.
On food and eating, Mark Vanhoenacker compares the French Laundry, a 3-Stars Michelin Guide restaurant with McDonald's on moreIntelligentLife. He harps on the interesting similarities between them and points out the curious fact that no one seems to bother about nutritional values of gourmet cuisine:
The mere mention of nutrition in any discussion of haute gastronomie is a cheerless business. Still, I’m certain that my waistline and arteries were affected more by our French Laundry feast (did I mention that the foie gras had chocolate on it?) than the day I had a Bacon, Egg & Cheese Biscuit for breakfast ($4.49 with hash brown and coffee), the Angus Burger meal for lunch ($6.19) and a Chicken Selects dinner ($7.39).
Of course, it's probably because we don't have foie gras with chocolate for breakfast as often as we have a Sausage Muffin with Egg. And comparing French Laundry with McDonald's simply shows how universal our preferences might be whether it's for expensive gourmet cuisine or plain junk food.
Work Less, Live Healthy
By Kevin
Get Unemployed!
When the economy gets into recession, people become anxious about their jobs, worried about not being able to get employed or having not enough money to finance their spending, so they get sick more easily. Right? Wrong! Fortune magazine ran a story that tells otherwise; in fact, it even surfaced the inverse relationship between death rates and unemployment rates!
Interestingly, people are actually working too much in most developed world today. Reducing work would make them healthier and perhaps allow them to live better lives though it might not satisfy all their wants. In any case, no amount of work would be able to satisfy all their wants in the first place. The implication of this is that there is actually an optimal income level for each person involved in a particular job. In a sense, an economy at any one time has an optimal national income so that the population is healthy (optimal health-productivity balance, long life expectancy and lower mortality).