Green Options

Due to the great popularity of “Can Diet Coke Kill You?” combined with a lot of controversy over it, I have decided to write this follow-up post.

Most of the controversy over the last article was around the fact that the documentary I referenced cited data from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) but that organization itself claims there is no proven link between aspartame and cancer.

What was presented previously was a short explanation of why aspartame is expected to cause cancer and other health problems and a summary of some information presented in Sweet Misery, including findings from analyzing NCI and other data. This article, however, cites other scientific findings and discusses the economic-political history of this topic a little bit as well.

The climate change finger-pointing hit a new level of insanity when a paper was published recently that links overweight people to increased greenhouse gas emissions.

Obese children have a 26 percent higher chance of allergies, especially to food, than their slender counterparts. The food allergy rate was 59 percent higher for this risk group.

Researchers aren’t sure yet whether the heaviness is the cause of allergies. But further study is clearly needed, as the asthma and allergy rates for kids is higher than in the past.

Altogether, 4,000 kids were surveyed through the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS). Said director Dr. Darryl Zeldin,

While the results from this study are interesting, they do not prove that obesity causes allergies. More research is needed to further investigate this potential link.

So what defines “obese”? And what can we do for these kiddos?

A study of about 3000 children in 32 schools in Germany found that installing water fountains, giving the children refillable water bottles, and using teaching lessons promoting the health benefits of water consumption reduced the risk of being overweight by 31%.