Junk Food entices our children to destroy their health

Human Stupidity at its finest: We crate our children to be unhealty fat and sedentary. We actively entice children to become unhealty!

In the study, which is published this week in the journal Pediatrics, Roberto and her colleagues presented 40 children ages 4 to 6 with paired samples of graham crackers, gummy fruit snacks, and baby carrots. Each pair of sample foods was identical down to the clear packaging, except that one of the packages had a sticker of Shrek, Dora the Explorer, or Scooby Doo on it.

Between 50 percent and 55 percent of the children said that the food with the sticker on it tasted better than the same food in the plain package. (The percentage varied with each food.) And between 73 percent and 85 percent selected the food in the character packaging as the one they’d prefer to eat as a snack.

Study: Cartoon characters attract kids to junk food (cnn)
Study supports motion to pull plug on food porn: Cartoon-adorned packaging catalyzes America’s journey to obesity

Probably everyone knew this already. The interesting thing is that the cause of premature death of about 30% of our population is not reason for concern and for emergency action and emergency legislation.

“Parents may not set out to buy unhealthy products,” says the lead author of the study, Christina Roberto, M.S., a doctoral student at Yale University’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity, in New Haven, Connecticut. “But kids can be really, really persuasive. They see them and they want them, and it gets difficult to have that battle in the grocery store.”

Facts about Childhood Obesity (CDC)

Childhood obesity has more than tripled in the past 30 years. The prevalence of obesity among children aged 6 to 11 years increased from 6.5% in 1980 to 19.6% in 2008. The prevalence of obesity among adolescents aged 12 to 19 years increased from 5.0% to 18.1%.^1,2

Obesity is the result of caloric imbalance (too few calories expended for the amount of calories consumed) and is mediated by genetic, behavioral, and environmental factors.^3,4 Childhood obesity has both immediate and long-term health impacts:

• Obese youth are more likely to have risk factors for cardiovascular disease, such as high cholesterol or high blood pressure. In a population-based sample of 5- to 17-year-olds, 70% of obese youth had at least one risk factor for cardiovascular disease.⁵
• Children and adolescents who are obese are at greater risk for bone and joint problems, sleep apnea, and social and psychological problems such as stigmatization and poor self-esteem.^3,6
• Obese youth are more likely than youth of normal weight to become overweight or obese adults, and therefore more at risk for associated adult health problems, including heart disease, type 2 diabetes, stroke, several types of cancer, and osteoarthritis.⁶

http://www.cdc.gov/HealthyYouth/obesity/

Childhood Obesity

	ON THIS PAGE Data & Statistics Science-based Strategies Policy Guidance National, State, and Local Programs References SEE ALSO Nutrition Publications and Links Physical Activity Publications and Links SPOTLIGHT Federal campaign launched against childhood obesity Connect With Kids: The Biggest Generation

Childhood obesity has more than tripled in the past 30 years. The prevalence of obesity among children aged 6 to 11 years increased from 6.5% in 1980 to 19.6% in 2008. The prevalence of obesity among adolescents aged 12 to 19 years increased from 5.0% to 18.1%.^1,2

Obesity is the result of caloric imbalance (too few calories expended for the amount of calories consumed) and is mediated by genetic, behavioral, and environmental factors.^3,4 Childhood obesity has both immediate and long-term health impacts:

• Obese youth are more likely to have risk factors for cardiovascular disease, such as high cholesterol or high blood pressure. In a population-based sample of 5- to 17-year-olds, 70% of obese youth had at least one risk factor for cardiovascular disease.⁵
• Children and adolescents who are obese are at greater risk for bone and joint problems, sleep apnea, and social and psychological problems such as stigmatization and poor self-esteem.^3,6
• Obese youth are more likely than youth of normal weight to become overweight or obese adults, and therefore more at risk for associated adult health problems, including heart disease, type 2 diabetes, stroke, several types of cancer, and osteoarthritis.⁶

Read this, everything you need to know about scientific research about racial differences: RACE, EVOLUTION, and BEHAVIOR: A Life History Perspective, by J.P. Rushton

In school I heard disparaging remarks about Artur Jensen and other “unscientific” “dishonest” “cheating” scientists doing faulty research about race differences.

The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray actually looked fairly convincing to me, but if even President Bill Clinton denounced it, there must be something wrong about it.

There always was some complex theory to explain away the IQ differences:

• different culture
• parental expectation
• mother’s malnourishment
• IQ measurements are racially and culturally biased

Adopted Children's IQ by Race

My opinion changed when I read about trans-racial adoption studies. That was the last drop that really disproved all these desperate attempts to explain away racial differences in intelligence.

“The best evidence for the genetic basis of race-IQ differences comes from trans-racial adoption studies of Oriental children, Black children, and Mixed-Race children. All these children have been adopted by White parents at an early age and have grown up in middle-class White homes.”

Chart 9 summarizes the results for Oriental children adopted into White middle-class homes.
Korean and Vietnamese babies from poor backgrounds, many of whom were malnourished, were adopted by White American and Belgian families. When they grew up, they excelled in school. The IQs of the adopted Oriental children were 10 or more points higher than the national average for the country they grew up in. Trans-racial adoption does not increase or decrease IQ. The three-way pattern of race differences in IQ remains.”

In plain English: adopted Asian babies grew up to be very bright, adopted black babies grew up to have low intelligence.

One more desperate argument that was posed to save the “racial equality” dogma:

They claimed “expectancy effects,” not genes, explained the pattern. They argued that the Black and White children were not treated the same. Even if parents took good care of their children, the schools, classmates, and society as a whole discriminated against Black children and this hurt their IQs. Because we expected Black children to do poorly in school, they lived up to our low expectations.”

Even that argument got promptly destroyed.  Rushton:

A special analysis of the Scarr study compared parents who believed that they had adopted a Black baby but, really, had adopted a Mixed-Race (Black-White) child. The average IQ for these Mixed-Race children was just about the same as for other Mixed-Race children and above that for adopted Black children. This was true even though the parents who adopted these Mixed-Race children thought their babies really had two Black parents.

Quotes and chart from RACE, EVOLUTION, and BEHAVIOR: A Life History Perspective, by J.P. Rushton

That did it for me. It destroyed my ingrained indoctrinated beliefs that all races must be equal. It opened up my mind to the possibility that there could be racial differences.

Before we go on, may I stress a few more points

• I have no axe to grind against blacks. I am not interested in proving that blacks are stupid or inferior. I am not a white supremacist
• I have an axe to grind against dogmatism, blindness, stupidity. I have an axe to grind against the catholic church for repressing Galileo’s truth about the moving and revolving earth. And I have an axe to grind about political correctness repressing the truth, repressing research.
• This site is about human stupidity versus truth and consciousness
• Rushton, though much maligned, is not some crazy cook but one of the most prestigious research scientists to date: Rushton holds two doctorates from the University of London (Ph.D. and D.Sc) and is a Fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American, British, and Canadian Psychological Associations. He is also a member of the Behavior Genetics Association, the Human Behavior and Evolution Society, and the Society for Neuroscience. Rushton has published six books and nearly 200 articles. In 1992 the Institute for Scientific Information ranked him the 22nd most published psychologist and the 11th most cited. Professor Rushton is listed in Who.  Some of Rushtons scientific publications can be found on his University page: http://psychology.uwo.ca/faculty/rushton_pubs.htm

Summary of Racial differences

Racial differences summarized (J.P. Rushton): Why does history show Africa trailing behind Asia and Europe? Why do Whites average between Orientals and Blacks in so many areas? Why do the groups with larger brains have lower rates of two-egg twinning? To know the answer you must look at all of the traits taken together (see Chart 1). The traits in Chart 1 form a pattern. No known environmental factor can explain all of them taken together. There is, however, a gene based explanation. The patterns make up what is called a “lifehistory.” They evolved together to meet the trials of life -- survival, growth, and reproduction.

Then of course, the non-scientific “evidence”, the hearsay, the anecdotal evidence, our daily experience, suddenly made sense:

The Whites who explored China were just as racist as those who explored Africa, but their descriptions were different from what they and the Arabs had written about Africans. In 1275 Marco Polo arrived in China from his native Italy to open trade with the Mongol Empire. He found that the Chinese had well built roads, bridges, cities connected by canals, census takers, markets, standardized weights and measures, and not only coins, but paper money as well. Even a postal system was in existence. All of these made him marvel when he compared the Chinese to what he saw in Europe and the Middle East.
Even though he was an Italian, proud of his people and well aware of the greatness of Ancient Rome, Marco Polo wrote: “Surely there is no more intelligent race on earth than the Chinese.”

In amazing ways, Rushton forms a coherent picture to make sense of all the racial differences shown in reasearch.  Some differences are biological and can not be talked away by simple psychobabble or sociology-babble.

In a few cases medical treatment and medication showed racial differences. which proves a real quagmire for race equality dogmatist. Should they talk away and hide the differences as racist and cause medical malpractice and suffering for black patients? Or should they accept the scientific facts and actively promote racial analysis of medical studies and see their beloved pet dogma undermined?

Rushton’s book sums up the relevant research. Please forgive me for always quoting Rushton, incessantly. Nobody can say it better, nobody summed up the entire field in a more concise and coherent manner then Rushton.

Many statistics in Chart 1 come from the United States, where Orientals are a “model minority.”
They have fewer divorces, fewer out-of-wedlock births, and fewer reports of child abuse than Whites.
More Orientals graduate from college and fewer go to prison.
On the other hand Blacks are 12% of the American population and make up 50% of the prison population. In the U.S., one out of every three Black men is either in jail, on probation, or awaiting trial. That is much more than the number who graduate from college.
Chapter 2 shows how this racial pattern in crime is found worldwide. INTERPOL Yearbooks show the rate of violent crime (murder, rape, and serious assault) is four times lower in Asian and Pacific Rim countries than in African and Caribbean countries. Whites in the United States and in European countries are intermediate. The 1996 INTERPOL violent crime rates clearly show this pattern: Asian countries, 35 violent crimes per 100,000 people; European countries, 42; and African countries, 149.
Chapter 2 also finds that Oriental children are slower to mature than White children while Black children are faster to mature. This is true for the rate of bone and tooth development and the age at which a child first sits, crawls, walks, and puts on clothing. Oriental children do not begin to walk until about 13 months, White children at 12 months, and Black children at 11 months.
Chapter 3 looks at racial differences in sexual activity. Orientals are the least sexually active, whether measured by age of first intercourse, intercourse frequency, or number of sexual partners. Blacks are the most active on all of these. Once again Whites are in between. These contrasts in sexual activity lead to differences in the rate of diseases like syphilis, gonorrhea, herpes, and chlamydia. There are high levels of AIDS in Africa, Black America, and the Caribbean and low levels in China and Japan. European countries again fall in between.
The races differ in rate of ovulation (Chapter 3). Not all women produce one egg during the menstrual cycle. When two or more eggs are produced at the same time, a pregnancy is more likely. So is the likelihood of producing fraternal twins (i.e., two-egg twins). The number of twins born is 16 out of every 1,000 births for Blacks, 8 out of every 1,000 births for Whites, and 4 or less for Orientals. Triplets and other multiple births are rarest in Orientals and highest in Blacks, with Whites in between.
Chapter 4 is about race and intelligence. Hundreds of studies on millions of people show a threeway pattern. IQ tests are often made to have an average score of 100, with a “normal” range from 85 to 115. Whites average from 100 to 103. Orientals in Asia and the U.S. tend to have higher scores, about 106, even though IQ tests were made for use in the Euro-American culture. Blacks in the U.S., the Caribbean, Britain, Canada, and in Africa average lower IQs — about 85. The lowest average IQs are found for sub-Saharan Africans — from 70 to 75.
Chapter 4 also looks at brain size. Bigger brains have more brain cells and this leads to higher IQs. The races vary in brain size. The Collaborative Perinatal Project followed more than 35,000 children from birth to seven years. Orientals had larger brains than Whites at birth, four months, one year, and seven years. Whites had larger brains than Blacks at all ages (see Chart 2). The data on adults in Chart 2 come from a sample of 6,325 U.S. Army personnel.
Chapter 5 asks whether differences in our brain size, our bodies and our behavior are because of genes, environment, or both. It also asks whether individual differences can tell us anything about race differences.

Chapter 6 discusses the gene based “life-history theory” I have proposed to explain the racial pattern in brain size, intelligence, and other traits. Evolutionary biologists call it the r-K scale of reproductive strategies. At one end of this scale are r-strategies that rely on high reproductive rates. At the other end are K-strategies that rely on high levels of parental care. This scale is generally used to compare the life histories of different species of animals. I have used it to explain the smaller but real differences between the human races.

On this scale, Orientals are more K-selected than Whites, while Whites are more K-selected than Blacks. Highly K-selected women produce fewer eggs (and have bigger brains) than r-selected women. Highly K-selected men invest time and energy in their children rather than the pursuit of sexual thrills. They are “dads” rather than “cads.”

Chapter 7 shows that the race differences in reproductive strategies make sense in terms of human evolution. Modern humans evolved in Africa about 200,000 years ago. Africans and non-Africans then split about 100,000 years ago. Orientals and Whites split about 40,000 years ago.

The more north the people went “Out of Africa,” the harder it was to get food, gain shelter, make clothes, and raise children. So the groups that evolved into today’s Whites and Orientals needed larger brains, more family stability, and a longer life. But building a bigger brain takes time and energy during a person’s development. So, these changes were balanced by slower rates of growth, lower levels of sex hormones, less aggression, and less sexual activity.

Why? Because Africa, Europe, and Asia had very different climates and geographies that called for different skills, resource usage, and lifestyles. Blacks evolved in a tropical climate which contrasted with the cooler one of Europe in which Whites evolved and even more so with the cold Arctic lands where Orientals evolved.

Because intelligence increased the chances of survival in harsh winter environments, the groups that left Africa had to evolve greater intelligence and family stability. This called for larger brains, slower growth rates, lower hormone levels, less sexual potency, less aggression, and less impulsivity. Advanced planning, self-control, rule-following, and longevity all increased in the non-Africans.

I realize that these topics are controversial and that readers will have many questions. Chapter 8 lists the questions I am most asked about Race, Evolution, and Behavior, and my answers to them.

Conclusion

Race is more than “just skin deep.” The pattern of Oriental-White-Black differences is found across history, geographic boundaries, and political-economic systems. It proves the biological reality of race. Theories based only on culture cannot explain all the data shown in Chart 1. The next three chapters describe the scientific findings on race differences (summarized in Chart 1) in greater detail. Later chapters explain why these differences follow such a pattern.

Quotes and chart from RACE, EVOLUTION, and BEHAVIOR: A Life History Perspective, by J.P. Rushton

You can download the abridged version, in various languages, here: RACE, EVOLUTION, and BEHAVIOR: A Life History Perspective, by J.P. Rushton

If you really are interested, then, of course, you will read the unabridged version. Unfortunately, I could not find it at Amazon

The illegal cocaine alkaloid – one of 10 found in coca and representing only 0.8% of the plant’s chemical make-up – is chemically removed before use, as mandated by international anti-narcotics agencies.

“There is no scientific basis for this ban on Red Bull Cola because the levels of cocaine found are so small,” Fritz Soergel, the head of the Institute for Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Research in Nuremberg, Bavaria, told Time magazine.

“And it’s not even cocaine itself. According to the tests we carried out, it’s a non-active degradation product with no effect on the body. If you start examining lots of other drinks and food so carefully, you’d find a lot of surprising things.”

cited from http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8067970.stm

They should prohibit Colas for other health hazards. Another human stupidity is false nutrition, obesity, eating cancerigenous substances, … But nobody prohibits junk foods because of that.

While the article does not give clear good answers, nevertheless it gives some funny and interesting suggestions.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8019357.stm

By David Spiegelhalter
Professor of risk understanding, University of Cambridge

[...]

The threat from bacon sandwiches gave the opportunity for The Sun to produce the classic headline “Careless pork costs lives”, while the Daily Telegraph was true to form and frothed on about the nanny-state denying us our bacon birthright.

But all these health warnings tend to have little influence on behaviour, just as scientific derision for homeopathy appears to have no effect on many people’s enthusiasm.

So who is being unreasonable – the epidemiologists who give us health advice, or the public that duly ignores it?

Bacon sarnies

The curious fact is that both might be right.

[...]

‘Nudging’

These issues are tricky, and reflect a basic tension between individuals and society’s points of view.

If everyone improved their lifestyle just a bit, then the benefits to the overall health of the nation would be large but each individual would not notice the difference.

An inspired epidemiologist, Geoffrey Rose, called this the Prevention Paradox and we see it being played out again and again.

That is why it is understandable that attempts to create these shifts in behaviour by exhorting people to change tend to fail – and make them anxious and guilty.

There is a lot more to say:

• evolutionary explanations why we love sugar and fat (when our mind was formed, sugar and fat were scarce and hard to find,not available in a supermarket without limits. One had to hunt lean wild animals and collect fruits or risk one’s life to get honey away from the bees)

and psychological issues like:

• why should we believe in cold impersonal statistics? how do we know they are true? Did evolution prepare us to respect scientific research we cannot personally verify?
• do we really care about getting cancer in 35 years? We follow our instincts now and eat plenty to prepare for the day we don’t succeed to hunt down and eat another pig.
• now if we had a religion that tells us not to eat pork, that would be a different issue.  Then we would respect, and no science is needed for that. Just faith!
• of course, in evolutionary time, 100 000 years ago we probably would not live enough to get bowel cancer
• and if we did get bowel cancer, we would not slowly die in a hospital with all kind of artificial life support.  There would be no problem about “right to die” issues. Starvation, infection, or wild animals would help us to end our suffering quickly.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8022861.stm

‘Teen fantasy’

Professor Kevin Browne, who has been researching the maltreatment of children for 30 years, says between 5% and 10% of abuse against pre-pubescent children in the UK is committed by females, but only about 5% is thought to involve a woman acting alone.

[..]

Female offences against teenagers are more of a mystery, he says, because victims don’t come forward, partly because in a patriarchal society boys are even expected to enjoy that kind of abuse, and not admit how scared they are by it.

[...]

Like male paedophiles, many female offenders convince themselves they are not harming children, says psychologist Sharon Lambert who this month presented her research on the subject to the British Psychological Society’s annual conference.

[...]

Disclaimer: The issue here is not so much my personal opinion as to how laws should be. Rather the issue is that eminent scientist become “stupid” and irrational when facing issues where society has a strong preconceived dogmatic notion.  Instead of true academic research, they just reinforce the stereotypes.

Explosives and grenade launchers were discovered on the mother ship when Portuguese special forces boarded “with no exchange of fire”, Lt Cmdr Alexandre Santos Fernandes said.

“It was almost a kilogramme of high explosives. If used correctly it can open a hole in the hull of a ship and sink her,” Lt Cmdr Fernandes said.

“It is the first time we have spotted high explosives on board a pirate ship, normally they just stick to AK-47s and RPGs (grenades).”

The 19 pirate suspects were released because they had not attacked Portuguese property or citizens.

I really wonder if that is furthering human happiness, or if it contributes to more suffering, encouraging further piracy by the same criminals and by others encouraged by their impunity.

The changes became known as the “Golden Globes Rule,” for singer Bono’s 2003 acceptance speech at the awards show on NBC, where he uttered the phrase “really, really, f—ing brilliant.”

All quotes  from http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/04/28/supreme.court.indecent.speech/

This not an example of profound human stupidity. It is even understandable that some want to protect their kids from foul language.

Nevertheless, the “Golden Globe Rule” seems to be going overboard.
This is just an amusing example of exaggerated dogmatic conservativism. It must be quite expensive to have all live television programs delayed a few seconds, so that professional who dedicates his live to beeper-button-pressing can bleep out any indecent word that could possibly be spoken.

In dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens said “customs of speech” and context made the Federal Communications Commission’s position unworkable.

“As any golfer who has watched his partner shank a short approach knows, it would be absurd to accept the suggestion that the resultant four-letter word uttered on the golf course describes sex or excrement and is therefore indecent,” he wrote. “But that is the absurdity the FCC has embraced in its new approach to indecency.”

And Stevens wondered why the agency was going after words that he said had a “tenuous relationship” to sex and bodily functions, while at the same time prime-time commercials “frequently ask viewers whether they, too, are battling erectile dysfunction or are having trouble going to the bathroom.”

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg made clear how she viewed the broader free speech questions the high court may be forced to confront in coming years. “There is no way to hide the long shadow the First Amendment casts over what the commission has done,” she wrote.

The Supreme Court first ventured into the broadcast speech debate in 1978, when it ruled as indecent a monologue by comedian George Carlin on society’s taboo surrounding “seven dirty words.” The bit had received some radio airplay. Stevens, 89, was the author of that opinion.