"Obesity and Poverty: Linking Food, Health and Incomes"

Steve Scher talks with Dr. Adam Drewnowski about the links between obesity and poverty. Simply put, people with more money can pay for better food. But people with an attitude researchers are calling 'nutritional resilience' manage to put together a good diet at low cost. So, how can those strategies for eating better on less money spread to the rest of the population?


Two-Thirds of Americans are overweight or obese. The NIH has found that "in contrast to international trends, people in America who live in the most poverty-dense counties are those most prone to obesity."  That puts them at greater risk of diabetes and heart disease.  Dr. Adam Drewnowski says that while food choices are based on taste, cost and convenience, there is a growing body of evidence that obesity in America is largely an economic issue.  Policies that address access or behavior alone are inadequate.


Disparities in health follow disparities in income. For example, UW researchers observed higher obesity rates along the I-5 corridor compared with a leaner population living along the waterfront. Shoppers at Whole Foods are likely leaner than shoppers at Safeway. Both stores offer a variety of food choices. What is happening? Given the results, what are the tools citizens can use to create healthier eating patterns?

Adam Drewnowski

Adam Drewnowski

Adam Drewnowski is world renowned for his research into diet and social inequality, food taste and food preference, for studies on genetic food taste markers and the roles of sugar, salt and fat on food preferences and food cravings. His studies on taste, cost and convenience have spanned his almost 30 years in this discipline.

He spoke at the UW's Wellness and Weight Lecture Series April 14, 2015 in the talk, "Obesity and Poverty: Linking Food, Health and Incomes." 

The series is sponsored by the UW Graduate School, the UW Alumni Association, the School of Public Health

 

 

The Obesity Epidemic Around The World.

Steve Scher talks with obesity epidemic scholar Shiriki Kumanyika about giving people the tools to understand the health implications of their personal choices. 

 

There is an obesity epidemic in America and it is spreading around the world, according the World Health Organization. Most of the world population now lives in countries where overweight and obesity kills more people than underweight.  The Centers for Disease Control says about one third of Adult Americans are obese. Those rates are higher in the black community. Half of African-American women are obese. Worldwide, obesity has doubled since 1980, according to World Health Organization and 42 million children under 5 were overweight or obese in 2013.

In America, obesity is more common among black women than white women. That has been true for decades. However, it is now more common among black girls than white girls. What is happening? 

Shiriki Kumanyika is a scholar in the field of nutrition and public health. She is currently president of the American Public Health Association, a non profit focused around the goal of raising health outcomes in America.  Obesity leads to higher risk of heart disease, stroke, diabetes, osteoarthritis and some cancers.  The causes are people eating more foods high in fat, more sedentary lifestyles and physical conditions-bad air, poor urban design, high stress. 

Shiriki Kumanyika

Shiriki Kumanyika


Kumanyika, a name she adopted to reflect her African roots, was born and raised in racially segregated Baltimore, Maryland in the 50's and 60's. After spending some time in social work, she found the tools of nutrition gave her a more concrete way to help. She studied the affect of salt on hypertension and by the 70's was among a number of science researchers arguing for a reduction of salt in  the American diet.  At Johns Hopkins University,  her work as a cardiovascular/nutritional epidemiologist led her to study health disparities in general and the impact of obesity on black women in particular.  Her work on the obesity epidemic is focused on efforts that lead black women towards positive changes in their diet. 


Michael Pollan On Our National Eating Disorder

Michael Pollan talks with Steve Scher about our national eating disorder. 

Michael Pollan has helped move food issues toward the center of American politics. His books and articles have focused on how the foods we eat shape our health, environment and culture. He recently co-authored an article, with Mark Bittman and others, calling for a national food policy that could bring about fairer wages, healthier citizens and a more sustainable environmental future.

April 8th, Michael Pollan is kicking off the UW's Weight and Wellness series with a talk entitled "Our National Eating Disorder." The event is sold out, but there may be stand-by tickets. 

The Weight and Wellness Series is supported by The UW Alumni Association and The UW Graduate School.

As are these podcasts.

Are We Alone In The Universe?

 

Steve Scher talks to former SETI DirectorJill Tarter about the search for life in the universe.

 

Are we alone in the universe?  That question drives SETI, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

Jill Tarter has been on the hunt for decades. She currently holds the Bernard M. Oliver Chair for SETI Research at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California. She is speaking at the University of Washington March 3rd. 

 Humans have been wondering about other life in the universe for millennia. Scientists can actually seek the answer now. New tools have given astronomers, astrophysicists, exo-biologists the opportunity to scan the heavens for a signal from out there. 

 

At Length is supported by the UW Alumni Association

The Power of Story

Steve Scher talks to Christoph Bode about future narratives. 

 

Story creates culture, illuminates morality and explores mortality. Stories have rules that transcend different societies and languages. Christoph Bode is a scholar of the story and a student of the emerging changes in narrative structure.

Christoph Bode  is focused on story. Not necessarily any one story in particular, but rather how stories are created and constructed- by storytellers, by writers, filmmakers, even politicians. Bode is a professor of Modern English Literature at LMU Munich, one of Europe’s leading universities. How important is the study of story?  He recently received a grant from the EU to explore how stories shape social and even political thinking.

Christoph Bode was a guest of the University of Washington where he spoke on the emergence of digital, multi-player and other new approaches to storytelling. 

 

 

 

Chocolate Cities, White Suburbs

What do Disneyland, LA Freeways and Film Noir have in common? According to historian Eric Avila, they all represent aspects of America’s racial divide.

 

Eric Avila is a professor of history at UCLA.  He examines the built environment for clues to American values, prejudice and racial discrimination. His work takes him from Coney Island to the Freeway boom of the 60’s and on to Disneyland.

Avila is in Seattle for a talk at UW titled, “Chocolate Cities and Vanilla Suburbs: Race, Space and American Culture After World War II January 27th at 6:30 at Kane Hall, room 120.

Eric Avila is author of Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight: Fear and Fantasy in Suburban Los Angeles. His latest is The Folklore of the Freeway:Race and Revolt in the Modernist City 

At Length is supported by the UW Alumni Association.

The Legacy of Selma 50 Years Later

50 years ago, American citizens were being killed in the fight for the right to vote. During three marches in March of 1965, civil rights activists seeking the right to register in Alabama were met by tear gas and Billy clubs. Local police and State troopers beat the non-violent protestors on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma.  The televised violence galvanized the nation and Congress. President Johnson pushed through the 1965 voting rights act, one of the most significant pieces of legislation in the countries history.

 

Today, the courts have removed pieces of that legislation and some states are restricting access to the ballot box.  The streets of the nation are filled with protestors challenging the police shootings of young black men.

 

Over the next few weeks, the University of Washington’s Chair of the Communication Department, David Domke, will examine the history and it’s importance today in a series of lectures, Marching to Selma: How MLK, LBJ & The Civil Rights Movement Changed The World.

 

We met to discuss the legacy of Selma at the NE Branch of the Seattle Public Library. (Hence the slightly hushed tones.) 

 

David Domke says his meetings with the still living foot soldiers of those marches have profoundly changed him. He has traveled to the south three times with groups from the northwest. In March, he is taking another group of adults and college students to follow the path from Atlanta, through Memphis and on to Selma.

 

I will be on that journey and sharing stories with you about the legacy of the civil rights era and the emergence of a new activism. 

The Picture That Emerges is Incredibly Creepy- Marc Rotenberg on Civil Liberties in the Information Age

Turns out on-call car service Uber compiles a lot of data about its customers. They can get a pretty good idea of what you are up to just by the way you use their service. Are you surprised?  How much privacy is there in the age of the internet? 

Marc Rotenberg is a lawyer specializing in privacy and civil rights. He is president of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a public interest research group involved in privacy litigation and public policy. He also teaches about these issues at Georgetown University Law School in Washington D.C.

Rotenberg says he doesn't use the word fear when discussing civil liberties in the information age. It is disempowering, he feels. Rather, there are challenges to be met, problems to solve. Rotenberg sat down with Steve Scher in late November, 2014, to discuss those challenges. 

Dolores Huerta, Still Fighting For Human Rights

Dolores Huerta still fights for farmworker families.  Well into her 8th decade, she is training the next generation of leaders to carry the cause forward.  The former teacher and long time community organizer was awarded the Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor awarded in the United States, by another community organizer, President Obama.  

Huerta and Cesar Chavez were co-founders of the United Farm Workers.  Dolores Huerta has pushed and prodded mayors, governors, senators, even presidents for new laws, but her focus remains on the grassroots.  She is re- energized each time she can get new street lights for a neighborhood, more people registered to vote, better representation on schools boards.  

Support for At Length is provided by the University of Washington Alumni Association.

Olympia Snowe is Seeking a Consensus Congress

Former Maine Republican Senator Olympia Snowe says procedural reforms restore respect for elected officials. She has written "Fighting For Common Ground: How We Can Fix The Stalemate In Congress." 

Support for At Length comes from The University of Washington Alumni Association.

Garth Stein

Garth Stein had a runaway hit with "The Art of Racing in the Rain." His new novel is a "A Sudden Light." It is a  character about a young boy, his father and a wooden house in the Northwest that is haunted by the spirits of the forest and the people who cut it down.