Health is about exercise and green veg. But if you’ve had an eating disorder, it’s not that easy

an article by Megan Nolan published in the New Statesman

A desire to change your body could drag all of that history back.


MARIO TAMA/GETTY IMAGES

The fundamentals of health are simple. Move a lot, eat green, leafy vegetables, consume as few harmful chemicals as possible. It’s not difficult, nutritionists and stringy, gym-lean personal trainers tell us on television.

My doctor says it too, when he forces me to be weighed before he will renew my contraceptive pill. I’m not particularly overweight, he tells me, so why don’t I just follow the rules a little better? It wouldn’t take much. It wouldn’t take much for me to be in the green weight category rather than the orange. Just do what you have to do. I know that if I did those things I would be healthy, and I know that I should want to be healthy. But do I?

Continue reading

---

Behold, firm evidence — at last — that ultra-processed food causes weight gain

a post by Richard Hoffman for the Big Think blog

Junk food causes weight gain, but it's not just about the calories.

We know we should eat less junk food, such as crisps, industrially made pizzas and sugar-sweetened drinks, because of their high calorie content.

These “ultra-processed" foods, as they are now called by nutritionists, are high in sugar and fat, but is that the only reason they cause weight gain? An important new trial from the U.S. National Institute of Health (NIH) shows there's a lot more at work here than calories alone.

Studies have already found an association between junk foods and weight gain, but this link has never been investigated with a randomized controlled trial (RCT), the gold standard of clinical studies.

Continue reading

---

Incredible Edible – social and environmental entrepreneurship in the era of the “Big Society”

John Thompson (The Business School, University of Huddersfield, UK) Social Enterprise Journal Volume 8 Issue 3 (2012)

Abstract

Purpose
The purpose of this case study is to allow the exploration of social entrepreneurship, environmental improvement and volunteering in the context of the UK’s declared Big Society. Recently, there has been increased interest in “environmental” as well as social entrepreneurship. Volunteering is also an area of growing concern in policy circles, particularly with the advent of the “Big Society”, the UK Government’s vision of citizen involvement.
Design/methodology/approach
The case was written with both secondary and primary data and with the co-operation of Incredible Edible. Primary data include street questionnaires and semi-structured interviews with relevant stakeholders.
Findings
Incredible Edible is an environmental initiative started in Todmorden, West Yorkshire. Basically community members – largely volunteers – have looked for opportunities where they could plant and grow fruits and vegetables that others could just help themselves to. Any spare land and space has been seen as suitable. From this the themes of local food growing and self sufficiency have taken over. Over a (short) period of years the initiative has grown and received considerable support from local stakeholders as well as extensive publicity. The initiative has attracted attention elsewhere and not just in the UK. But its real impact has been on the community and its sense of place.
Practical implications
The data have been used (so far) to write a case that traces the journey of the people behind the initiative, their motives and their impact. It explores a number of themes, namely:

• social entrepreneurship in action;
• improving the local environment aesthetically;
• the Big Society and volunteering;
• the local economic and social impacts – a new sense of place;
• improved diets and healthy eating – but also the impact on other local businesses which sell rival food products;
• how local successes can be replicated elsewhere; and
• the sustainability of initiatives such as this.

Originality/value
The case demonstrates five important themes that could be seen as a litmus test for the effectiveness of projects and initiatives in the Big Society – namely the presence and commitment of a visionary who provides the purpose and direction, volunteers, velocity – and emergence, visibility, and value.

---