Many health experts agree that childhood obesity is an epidemic in the modern world. In the United States alone, government data suggest that the number of overweight or obese children is nearly triple the number of 1980, and there are no signs that this incidence is decreasing. Information like this cannot be ignored or trivialized because excess weight can prove damaging to general wellness. Indeed, overweight or obese children and youth risk a wide range of medical complications. Extra pounds can also negatively impact their well-being, which can cause long-term mental health problems. In short, if the childhood obesity crisis is left forsaken, an unprecedented generation of youth will have a diminished quality of life. Expanding Waistlines is ideal for child advocates and youth-serving professionals who seek to learn more about childhood obesity. A prominent feature of Expanding Waistlines is that each chapter poses a series of questions relevant to school personnel, such as: • What can I do at my school and in my classroom? • How should I approach my students who are overweight or obese? • What are some key elements I should look for when evaluating a potential program? Specifically, the book explores the factors that contribute to obesity in society and the associated risks of excess weight on children and youth. Subsequent chapters discuss how to promote healthy eating practices and regular physical activity at school and home. The final chapters report on specific resources. Expanding Waistlines also features the latest demographic data, BMI calculations and classifications, recommended guidelines for health, Wellness Policy requirements, and food label information.

An amusing and poignant story of a teacher from South London who, on an overnight impulse, joins her partner in The Mountain Kingdom of Lesotho.

This volume consists of a broad selection of studies on the applied economics of weight and obesity. The chapters cover a wide spectrum of topics, and employ a variety of applied techniques across a range of countries. Some of the issues explored include: the relationship between childhood obesity and food insecurity; adolescent weight gain and social networks; obesity and happiness; the relationship between fast food and obesity; tobacco control; race and gender differences; and consumer health. This book is a compilation of articles originally published in the journals Applied Economics and Applied Economics Letters.

From large-scale cattle farming to water pollution, meat— more than any other food—has had an enormous impact on our environment. Historically, Americans have been among the most avid meat-eaters in the world, but long before that meat was not even considered a key ingredient in most civilizations’ diets. Labor historian Wilson Warren, who has studied the meat industry for more than a decade, provides this global history of meat to help us understand how it entered the daily diet, and at what costs and benefits to society. Spanning from the nineteenth century to current and future trends, Warren walks us through the economic theory of food, the discovery of protein, the Japanese eugenics debate around meat, and the environmental impact of livestock, among other topics. Through his comprehensive, multifaceted research, he provides readers with the political, economic, social, and cultural factors behind meat consumption over the last two centuries. With a special focus on East Asia, Meat Makes People Powerful reveals how national governments regulated and oversaw meat production, helping transform virtually vegetarian cultures into major meat consumers at record speed. As more and more Americans pay attention to the sources of the meat they consume, Warren’s compelling study will help them not only better understand the industry, but also make more informed personal choices. Providing an international perspective that will appeal to scholars and nutritionists alike, this timely examination will forever change the way you see the food on your plate.

Using analytic skills honed to a sharp edge with years of psychotherapy experience, John Berecz explores such contemporary issues as "Was Nixon a wife beater?" "Was Dubya smart enough to be president?" "Is Gore too uptight to lead the free world?" "Did the 2000 election boil down to a choice between personality and competence?" Skillfully, Berecz explores the relationship between character and personality, helping the reader understand how a man with the moral integrity of Jimmy Carter could bungle the presidency and a man like Clinton, with so little character, could manage it so successfully. Drawing on thee decades of teaching and therapy, Berecz burrows beneath the surface of personality and character to reveal the real person working in the Oval Office. With penetrating insight and concise writing, the author acquaints the reader with the real people behind the pageantry of the presidency. This book clearly disentangles the contradictions of Bill Clinton's presidency by examining his split personality. Berecz explains and clinically documents Clinton's dual personalities: a sociopathic personality (Slick Willy) and a codependent personality (Baptist Billy). Resulting from Clinton's two-world childhood, these personalities are only loosely connected an operate serially to control his behavior. Like many adult children of alcoholics (ACA), Clinton seeks-by-turn-to please or to manipulate. Baptist Billy told voters "I feel your pain," and he did, but Slick Willy said he "didn't inhale," and didn't have sex with "that woman." Character in Chief is must reading for anyone interested in politics in general and the presidency in particular. With fairness and compassion Berecz will lead you to a deeper understanding of our great democracy and the people who lead it.

From the bestselling author of Shred The Take-Control Diet aims to make you the expert on your body. Dr. Ian Smith delivers the final word on dieting for the fad-weary reader who wants the truth about permanent weight loss. The Take-Control Diet explains the real science of how your body manages energy, why crash diets and trendy programs sabotage your chances of success, and how you can get off the yo-yo ride forever. Dr. Smith offers a diet and exercise program that allows you to eat without feeling deprived, or adopting an entirely specialized diet, and that helps you use both anaerobic and aerobic exercise for maximum weight loss results. He explains how to calculate your own individual food-and-exercise equation in order to lose the ideal amount of weight per week. The Take-Control Diet equips you with the facts so that you can approach your health and fitness goals psychologically fortified for the task. Understanding common myths about dieting will give you the knowledge you need to resolve your weight issues for good. Did you know that, contrary to the recommendations of many popular diets, eating too much protein could seriously damage your health? That it is impossible to convert fat to muscle? That starving yourself slows your metabolism and causes your body to store energy as fat? That no foods appreciably increase your metabolism? That chronic, yo-yo dieting makes weight loss increasingly difficult? Dr. Smith explains the causes of overweight, the health concerns of dieting, how metabolism and genetics factor in to weight control, and what you can do to work with, rather than against, your body’s processes. Many diets dictate a program that might work—if it works at all—only as long as you can adhere to radical and unnatural habits. The Take-Control Diet, instead, equips you to design your own eating and exercise plan—one that accommodates your preferences, your daily routine, and your particular weight loss hurdles. Losing weight will not only help you look your best but also reduce your risk of heart disease, diabetes, and cancer—in addition to improving your overall energy level and ability to fight illness. Dr. Smith offers a plan, based on extensive research and his personal work with patients, that respects your intelligence and empowers you to win the battle with overweight. The Take-Control Diet is one hundred percent free of unrealistic promises, poor science, and far-fetched gimmicks—and one hundred percent yours for life.

This is the story of a quest I began three decades ago – the search for my Chinese identity. The path I travelled was not linear, and the years brought pain as well as joy. But, while this is a narrative about being Chinese and also a New Zealander, I know that the search for purpose and meaning in life is universal. I hope that others in our culturally diverse society will find their own ways to embark on that same journey. Helene Wong was born in New Zealand in 1949, to parents whose families had emigrated from China one or two generations earlier. Preferring invisibility, she grew up resisting her Chinese identity. But in 1980 she travelled to her father’s home village in southern China and came face to face with her ancestral past. What followed was a journey to come to terms with ‘being Chinese’. Helene Wong writes eloquently about her New Zealand childhood, about student life in the 1960s, and coming of age in Muldoon’s New Zealand. What her Chinese ancestry means to her gradually illuminates the book as it sheds new light on her own life. Drawing on her experience of writing for New Zealand films, she takes the narrative forward through the places of her family’s history – the ancestral village of Sha Tou in Zengcheng county, the rural town of Utiku where the Wongs ran a thriving business, the Lower Hutt suburbs of her childhood, and Avalon and Naenae.

This volume summarizes the findings and insights of obesity-related research from the full range of social sciences including anthropology, economics, government, psychology, and sociology.

This text analyzes diverse food related problems, namely: the continued prevalence of mass under nutrition in the developing world; acute food crises in some places associated with conflict; the emergence of over nutrition in the developing world and the vulnerability of the contemporary global food production system. The most important of these issues are explored with particular reference to their implications for the majority of the world's population who live in what was traditionally categorised as the 'developing world'. The text identifies the major problems and analyzes factors at the international, national and local scales to understand their continued prevalence. Each chapter contains international case studies, discussion questions, suggested further reading and suggested websites.

Arrested as a Freedom Rider in June of 1961, Carol Ruth Silver, a twenty-two-year-old recent college graduate originally from Massachusetts, spent the next forty days in Mississippi jail cells, including the Maximum-Security Unit at the infamous Parchman Prison Farm. She chronicled the events and her experiences on hidden scraps of paper which amazingly she was able to smuggle out. These raw written scraps she fashioned into a manuscript, which has waited, unread for more than fifty years. Freedom Rider Diary is that account. Freedom Riders were civil rights activists who rode interstate buses into the segregated southern United States in 1961 to test the US Supreme Court rulings outlawing segregation in interstate bus and terminal facilities. Brutality and arrests inflicted on the Riders called national attention to the disregard for federal law and the local violence used to enforce segregation. Police arrested Riders for trespassing, unlawful assembly, and violating state and local Jim Crow laws, along with other alleged offenses, but they often allowed white mobs to attack the Riders without arrest or intervention. This book offers a heretofore unavailable detailed diary from a woman Freedom Rider along with an introduction by historian Raymond Arsenault, author of the definitive history of the Freedom Rides. In a personal essay detailing her life before and after the Freedom Rides, Silver explores what led her to join the movement and explains how, galvanized by her actions and those of her compatriots in 1961, she spent her life and career fighting for civil rights. Framing essays and personal and historical photographs make the diary an ideal book for the general public, scholars, and students of the movement that changed America.