Information about the Aspen Ideas Festival is here. I am scheduled for a session, The American Wellness Paradox, currently scheduled from 11:00-11:50 a.m., at the East Lawn Tent. This will be a discussion with senior HHS policy advisor, Calley Means. Here’s the blurb on it: “Americans are spending more than ever on healthcare, supplements, wellness trends, and “clean eating,” yet rates of chronic disease and metabolic illness continue to climb. As skepticism fuels the rise of movements like MAHA, debates over what Americans should eat have become deeply cultural, political, and economic. Two influential voices with sharply different perspectives on nutrition and food science explore how food systems, farming practices, consumer culture, and the wellness industry collided to create one of the defining public health debates of our time.”
by Marion Nestle
Jul
26
2007
Friends Make Friends Obese?
So the latest report from the Framingham Heart Study tells us that obesity travels in social networks. You are likely to be overweight if your friends are, and vice versa. Gina Kolata has a great account of the study in today’s New York Times, but the paper itself is worth reading for its gorgeous diagram of this particular social network. It is also noteworthy for its ability to expand your otherwise boring vocabulary. Did you know that homophily is the tendency for people to choose relationships with people who have similar attributes, and alter is a person connected to the ego who may influence the behavior of the ego? Not me. Never mind. Go see what The Onion has to say about this.
