02 | January | 2014 | Peter "Just Loves Flying"

Thinking on obesity is overly simplistic – Education News | Primary, Secondary & Third Level | The Irish Time – Thu, Dec 19, 2013

January 2, 2014

Peter Singhatey Health Ireland, obesity, People & Society, peter singhateh Leave a comment

Thinking on obesity is overly simplistic – Education News | Primary, Secondary & Third Level | The Irish Time – Thu, Dec 19, 2013.

The simple thermodynamic conclusion that weight gain, leading to obesity, results from consistently ingesting more food calories than are burned off in various activities, hides the complex roots of the epidemic.

Prof Mike Gibney, director of the Institute of Food and Health, UCD, explains these roots in his book Something to Chew On: Challenging Controversies in Food and Health (UCD Press, 2012). Gibney argues persuasively that the two main popular explanations of the current epidemic of obesity, namely that the epidemic is caused by socio-economic and food-chain factors, are simplistic…

An Epidemic of Attention Deficit Disorder – NYTimes.com

January 2, 2014

Peter Singhatey Research ADHD, Development, Education, Gambia, Health, People & Society, peter singhateh Leave a comment

An Epidemic of Attention Deficit Disorder – NYTimes.com.

There is no doubt that a small percentage of children, perhaps 5 percent, have the disorder and that medication can alleviate the symptoms, such as inability to concentrate, that can impede success in school or in life. Some studies have shown that medications helped elementary schoolchildren who had been carefully evaluated for A.D.H.D. improve their concentration and their scores on reading and math tests.

Recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed that 15 percent of high-school-age children had been diagnosed with the disorder and that the number of children taking medication for it had soared to 3.5 million, up from 600,000 in 1990. Many of these children, it appears, had been diagnosed by unskilled doctors based on dubious symptoms…