Wanna Lose Weight? Reduce Calories (Duh!)

I've often wondered why people insist on trying to lose weight via low-carb (eg. Atkins) or low-fat diets. A study in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine this week found that what you eat matters less than the number of calories you take in:

..participants were assigned to and taught about diets that emphasized different contents of carbohydrates, fat, and protein and were given reinforcement for 2 years through group and individual sessions. The principal finding is that the diets were equally successful in promoting clinically meaningful weight loss and the maintenance of weight loss over the course of 2 years. 

..diets that are successful in causing weight loss can emphasize a range of fat, protein, and carbohydrate compositions that have beneficial effects on risk factors for cardiovascular disease and diabetes. Such diets can also be tailored to individual patients on the basis of their personal and cultural preferences and may therefore have the best chance for long-term success.

In other words, it makes little sense to suffer by trying to avoid bread, pasta, or fats. As the old adage goes: everything in moderation.

Obama Outlines Bold Plan for America

In his first address (technically it was not a 'State of the Union' address since he's only been in office for 5 weeks) to a joint session of Congress, President Obama sought to convince anxious Americans that the current economic crisis should not stop us from dealing with our biggest problems. Specifically, he argued that education, health care and energy were a vital part of the long-term sustainability of the economy and laid out ambitious plans to attack all three:

Now is the time to act boldly and wisely – to not only revive this economy, but to build a new foundation for lasting prosperity. Now is the time to jumpstart job creation, re-start lending, and invest in areas like energy, health care, and education that will grow our economy, even as we make hard choices to bring our deficit down.  

Some of the highlights of his speech:

Energy independence? Education reform (ie. better teachers, more pay)? Healthcare for all Americans? These are things most people can get behind. Most important of all, he gave the country a vision of itself in this new era. We've been coasting on our reputation for far too long. He said it better than I ever could:

..we have lived through an era where too often, short-term gains were prized over long-term prosperity, where we failed to look beyond the next payment, the next quarter, or the next election. A surplus became an excuse to transfer wealth to the wealthy instead of an opportunity to invest in our future. Regulations were gutted for the sake of a quick profit at the expense of a healthy market. People bought homes they knew they couldn't afford from banks and lenders who pushed those bad loans anyway. And all the while, critical debates and difficult decisions were put off for some other time on some other day.

The full speech can be seen here.

Alan Keyes: Stop Obama or US Will Cease to Exist

If one were to Google "right-wing nutjob" this hilariously funny video really should come up first:

Obama supports the killing of babies that were supposed to be aborted? LOL.

52,000 Greedy A-Holes

After hearing this news, there have got to be a lot of nervous millionaires out there:

The UBS memo was blunt: the “Swiss solution” could help affluent Americans. That message, sent to the bank’s executives in July 2004, referred to a UBS plan to help rich customers evade taxes by hiding money in offshore havens like the Bahamas.

The memo, along with dozens of e-mail messages like it, were disclosed on Thursday in a blistering court document filed by the Justice Department, which sought to compel UBS, based in Switzerland, to divulge the identities of 52,000 Americans whom the authorities suspect of using secret offshore accounts at the bank to dodge taxes.

In the criminal investigation that led to this week’s settlement, the Justice Department had zeroed in on about 19,000 wealthy Americans. Those UBS customers had a combined $20 billion in assets at the bank, and may have evaded $300 million a year in federal taxes through UBS’s undeclared offshore private banking services.

Extreme Makeover, GOP Edition

After the drubbing the Republicans took in November, particularly by black and Latino voters, it's obvious they need to do something to increase the diversity of their party (did you see the monochromatic RNC convention?), but I didn't expect it to be this funny:

Newly elected Republican National Committee Chairman Michael S. Steele plans an “off the hook” public relations offensive to attract younger voters, especially blacks and Hispanics, by applying the party's principles to “urban-suburban hip-hop settings.”

Does this mean that we can expect to see GOP leaders like John McCain and Jim Boehner pumping Lil' Wayne in their tricked out golf carts? I sure hope so.

Recovery Package Invests Heavily in Clean Energy

As Obama mentioned repeatedly during the presidential campaign, we must make it a national priority to become energy independent (we're sending more $700B to the Middle East for oil). Not to mention, it's about time that we started doing something about climate change. He's following through on those promises:

* A large sum for energy efficiency, including $5 billion for low-income weatherization programs; over $6 billion in grants for state and local governments; and several billion to modernize federal buildings, with a particular emphasis on energy efficiency.

* $11 billion for “smart grid” investments.

* $3.4 billion for carbon capture and sequestration demonstration projects (otherwise known as “clean coal”).

* $2 billion for research into batteries for electric cars.

* $500 million to help workers train for “green jobs.”

* A three-year extension of the “production tax credit” for wind energy (as well as a tax credit extension for biomass, geothermal, landfill gas and some hydropower projects).

"It’s an investment that will double the amount of renewable energy produced over the next three years,” said Mr. Obama, who also promised that the bill would help “transform the way we use energy.”

Obama Signs $787B Recovery Package into Law

During a week when GM announced that it plans to cut 47,000 jobs and asked the government for an additional $14 billion in aid, President Obama signed the recovery bill that will help many of the struggling masses. However, he did note that the recovery package alone would not magically fix all our economic problems:

Today does not mark the end of our economic troubles. Nor does it constitute all of what we must do to turn our economy around. But it does mark the beginning of the end – the beginning of what we need to do to create jobs for Americans scrambling in the wake of layoffs; to provide relief for families worried they won’t be able to pay next month’s bills; and to set our economy on a firmer foundation, paving the way to long-term growth and prosperity.

So the big question on everyone's mind is: what's in it for me? Here are some of the larger provisions in the bill:

1) In 2009 and 2010, there is a tax credit of up to $400 for individuals and $800 for married couples filing their taxes jointly.

2) In 2009, you won’t have to pay taxes on the first $2,400 in federal unemployment benefits you receive.

3) If you lost your job, the government will subsidize 65% of your COBRA health insurance premium for up to 9 months.

4) In 2009 a number of retirees and disabled people, including Social Security recipients, will receive a $250 refundable tax credit.

5) For the rest of 2009, you’ll be able to deduct the state and local sales and excise taxes you pay on the purchase of a new (not used) car, light truck, recreational vehicle or motorcycle.

6) The maximum Pell Grant will increase by $500, to $5,350 in 2009 and $5,550 in 2010.

7) First-time home buyers are eligible for a refundable tax credit equal to 10 percent of the purchase price of their home, up to $8,000.

Why We Drink

A "scientific" explanation:

Don't Bother

I don't know what multivitamins cost these days, but save your money:

In the past few years, several high-quality studies have failed to show that extra vitamins, at least in pill form, help prevent chronic disease or prolong life.

The latest news came last week after researchers in the Women’s Health Initiative study tracked eight years of multivitamin use among more than 161,000 older women. Despite earlier findings suggesting that multivitamins might lower the risk for heart disease and certain cancers, the study, published in The Archives of Internal Medicine, found no such benefit.

“I’m puzzled why the public in general ignores the results of well-done trials,” said Dr. Eric Klein, national study coordinator for the prostate cancer trial and chairman of the Cleveland Clinic’s Glickman Urological and Kidney Institute. “The public’s belief in the benefits of vitamins and nutrients is not supported by the available scientific data.”

Everyone needs vitamins, which are essential nutrients that the body can’t produce on its own. Inadequate vitamin C leads to scurvy, for instance, and a lack of vitamin D can cause rickets. But a balanced diet typically provides an adequate level of these nutrients, and today many popular foods are fortified with extra vitamins and minerals. As a result, diseases caused by nutrient deficiency are rare in the United States.

A Cure For the Common Cold on the Horizon?

Another example of how taxpayer-backed scientific research benefits everyone:

Researchers said Thursday that they had decoded the genomes of the 99 strains of common cold virus and developed a catalog of its vulnerabilities.

“We are now quite certain that we see the Achilles’ heel, and that a very effective treatment for the common cold is at hand,” said Stephen B. Liggett, an asthma expert at the University of Maryland and co-author of the finding.

Industry hurdles aside, perhaps the biggest reason the common cold has long defied treatment is that the rhinovirus has so many strains and presents a moving target for any drug or vaccine.

By comparing the 99 genomes with one another, the researchers were able to arrange them in a family tree based on similarities in their genomes. That family tree shows that some regions of the rhinovirus genome are changing all the time but that others never change.

..The fact that the unchanging regions are so conserved over the course of evolutionary time means that they perform vital roles and that the virus cannot let them change without perishing. They are therefore ideal targets for drugs because, in principle, any of the 99 strains would succumb to the same drug.

While I'm on the subject, don't waste your money on Airborne if you get a cold. You're best bet:

Frequent hand-washing is the best preventive, Dr. Miller said. Once a cold has started, she recommended washing out the nasal passages, warm drinks and rest.

Also: 

Blowing your nose to alleviate stuffiness may be second nature, but..it does no good, reversing the flow of mucus into the sinuses and slowing the drainage. The proper method is to blow one nostril at a time and to take decongestants, said Dr. Anil Kumar Lalwani, chairman of the department of otolaryngology at the NYU Langone Medical Center. This prevents a buildup of excess pressure.

You Probably Shouldn't Read This Over Lunch..

I mistakenly assumed this was somewhat of an urban legend:

The F.D.A. actually condones a certain percentage of “natural contaminants” in our food supply — meaning, among other things, bugs, mold, rodent hairs and maggots.

Tomato juice, for example, may average “10 or more fly eggs per 100 grams [the equivalent of a small juice glass] or five or more fly eggs and one or more maggots.” Tomato paste and other pizza sauces are allowed a denser infestation — 30 or more fly eggs per 100 grams or 15 or more fly eggs and one or more maggots per 100 grams.

Canned mushrooms may have “over 20 or more maggots of any size per 100 grams of drained mushrooms and proportionate liquid” or “five or more maggots two millimeters or longer per 100 grams of drained mushrooms and proportionate liquid” or an “average of 75 mites” before provoking action by the F.D.A.

In case you’re curious: you’re probably ingesting one to two pounds of flies, maggots and mites each year without knowing it, a quantity of insects that clearly does not cut the mustard, even as insects may well be in the mustard.

The F.D.A. considers the significance of these defects to be “aesthetic” or “offensive to the senses,” which is to say, merely icky as opposed to the “mouth/tooth injury” one risks with, for example, insufficiently pitted prunes. This policy is justified on economic grounds, stating that it is “impractical to grow, harvest or process raw products that are totally free of non-hazardous, naturally occurring, unavoidable defects.”

Bon Appétit!

By the way:

Just about everyone has heard about the recent recall of peanut products, but many Americans don’t realize that cakes, snack bars, brownies, cookies and ice cream may also be contaminated with salmonella, a Harvard University survey has found.

Happy Birthday, Darwin!

This week marks the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin, a man who in my opinion, holds a rightful place alongside Galileo, Copernicus, Newton and Einstein. Darwin's theory of evolution is one of the great intellectual revolutions of human history, drastically changing our perception of the world and of our place in it. 

Given its importance, it's hard to believe how little most  science teachers spend on evolution (I have a PhD in biology and I can tell you that most of my teachers/professors skimmed over it), I thought Darwin's birthday would be a good occasion for a brief lesson.

Darwin's theory of evolution has four main parts:

1. Organisms have changed over time, and the ones living today are different from those that lived in the past. The world is not constant, but changing. The fossil and genomic record provide ample evidence for this.
2. All organisms are derived from common ancestors by a process of branching. Over time, populations split into different species, which are related because they are descended from a common ancestor. Thus, if one goes far enough back in time, any pair of organisms has a common ancestor. This explained the similarities of organisms that were classified together -- they were similar because of shared traits inherited from their common ancestor. It also explained why similar species tended to occur in the same geographic region.
3. Change is gradual and slow, taking place over billions of years. 
4. The mechanism of evolutionary change was natural selection. This was the most important and revolutionary part of Darwin's theory.

Don't remember what natural selection is? Let me briefly explain:

Natural selection is the process by which favorable heritable traits become more common in successive generations of a population of reproducing organisms, and unfavorable heritable traits become less common, due to differential reproduction of individuals in a population. 

Let's take giraffes as an example. Today's giraffes have longer necks (a heritable trait) than their ancestors (see pic above) because over the millenia the giraffes with longer necks (in a population of giraffes with necks of slightly different lengths--not unlike the variation in height in humans) were more successful than shorter neck giraffes in getting food (leaves from high branches). These longer necked giraffes would therefore be less likely to starve and more likely to reproduce, passing their long neck genes to their offspring. Over time, the average neck length of giraffes increased.

There are many, many other examples and the fossil and DNA evidence supporting evolution is simply overwhelming. Of course, you wouldn't know this if you asked the American public. According to Gallup poll this week, only 39% of Americans say they "believe in the theory of evolution," while a quarter say they do not believe in the theory, and another 36% don't have an opinion either way. Way sad, especially when one considers how beautiful this idea is. Think about it: We humans evolved from lower apes, which evolved from lower mammals, which evolved from reptiles, which evolved from fish, who evolved from lower multicellular organisms, which evolved from bacteria. 

As another great biologist Theodosius Dobzhansky famously, and correctly, said, "Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution." Indeed.

By the way, if you want to learn more about evolution, check this out.

Gallup Poll: Obama’s Approval Rating on the Recovery Plan is More Than Twice That of Republicans

We've lost 3.6 million jobs. Looks to me like Americans want Congressional Republicans to stop playing politics:

Obama Makes Strong Case For Recovery Plan

In his first first prime-time news conference Obama explained what's happened to our economy and stressed the importance of the recovery plan:

Most economists almost unanimously recognize that, even if philosophically you're — you're wary of government intervening in the economy, when you have the kind of problem we have right now — what started on Wall Street, goes to Main Street, suddenly businesses can't get credit, they start paring back their investment, they start laying off workers, workers start pulling back in terms of spending — that, when you have that situation, that government is an important element of introducing some additional demand into the economy.

We stand to lose about $1 trillion worth of demand this year and another trillion next year. And what that means is you've got this gaping hole in the economy.

That's why the figure that we initially came up with of approximately $800 billion was put forward. That wasn't just some random number that I plucked out of — out of a hat. That was Republican and Democratic, conservative and liberal economists that I spoke to who indicated that, given the magnitude of the crisis and the fact that it's happening worldwide, it's important for us to have a bill of sufficient size and scope that we can save or create 4 million jobs.

He went on to explain that the kind of jobs he's looking to create would not only put people to work but would also benefit the country:

..jobs rebuilding our crumbling roads and bridges, repairing our dangerously deficient dams and levees so that we don't face another Katrina.

They'll be jobs building the wind turbines and solar panels and fuel-efficient cars that will lower our dependence on foreign oil and modernizing our costly health care system that will save us billions of dollars and countless lives.

They'll be jobs creating the 21st-century classrooms, libraries, and labs for millions of children across America. And they'll be the jobs of firefighters and teachers and police officers that would otherwise be eliminated if we do not provide states with some relief.

He also brushed away Republican criticisms that the plan was simply wasteful government spending:

It's a little hard for me to take criticism from folks, about this recovery package, after they presided over a doubling of the national debt. I'm not sure they have a lot of credibility when it comes to fiscal responsibility.

If you missed it last night, it's well worth the time:

A Sad State of Affairs for the GOP

When I mentioned that the Republicans were fresh out of ideas regarding the economic crisis, I couldn't have imagined they were this desperate:

Fresh off his stint as a war correspondent in Gaza, Joe the Plumber is now doing political strategy with Republicans.

When GOP congressional aides gather Tuesday morning for a meeting of the Conservative Working Group, Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher – more commonly known as Joe the Plumber — will be their featured guest. This group is an organization of conservative Capitol Hill staffers who meet regularly to chart GOP strategy for the week.

Wurzelbacher, who became a household name during the presidential election, will be focusing his talk on the proposed stimulus package. He's apparently not a fan of the economic rescue package, according to members of the group.

Let's recap. First they elect Bush, then they nominate Palin for VP, and now they're having this guy (who is neither a plumber or named Joe) give a presentation about economics?  What's next..will they nominate Judge Judy to the Supreme Court?

Poll: Broad Support for Rebuilding Infrastructure

Republican pollster Frank Luntz learned something fairly shocking in his latest poll:

A near unanimous 94% of Americans are concerned about our nation's infrastructure. And this concern cuts across all regions of the country and across urban, suburban and rural communities.

Fully 84% of the public wants more money spent by the federal government -- and 83% wants more spent by state governments -- to improve America's infrastructure. And here's the kicker: 81% of Americans are personally prepared to pay 1% more in taxes for the cause. It's not uncommon for people to say they'd pay more to get more, but when you ask them to respond to a specific amount, support evaporates. (That 74% of normally stingy Republicans are on board for the tax increase is, to me, the most significant finding in the survey.)

Republicans want a tax increase? I had to re-read this article to be sure I wasn't hallucinating. 

You Got a Better Idea?

Frank Rich, as usual, is on point:

The crisis is at least as grave as the one that confronted us — and, for a time, united us — after 9/11. Which is why the antics among Republicans on Capitol Hill seem so surreal. These are the same politicians who only yesterday smeared the patriotism of any dissenters from Bush’s “war on terror.” Where is their own patriotism now that economic terror is inflicting far more harm on their constituents than Saddam Hussein’s nonexistent W.M.D.?

The problem is not that House Republicans gave the stimulus bill zero votes last week. That’s transitory political symbolism, and it had no effect on the outcome. Some of the naysayers will vote for the revised final bill anyway (and claim, Kerry-style, that they were against it before they were for it). The more disturbing problem is that the party has zero leaders and zero ideas. It is as AWOL in this disaster as the Bush administration was during Katrina.

The House minority leader, John Boehner, from the economic wasteland of Ohio, declared on “Meet the Press” last Sunday that the G.O.P. didn’t want to be “the party of ‘No’ ” but “the party of better ideas, better solutions.” And what are those ideas, exactly? He said he’ll get back to us “over the coming months.”

Two million jobs lost in the past year, including another 100K just last week and this guy is talking about providing some ideas "over the coming months"? Take your sweet time, Republicans. Many of your supporters are still getting taxpayer-backed bonuses, so what's the hurry, right?