Who’s a Fatty?
Mark McGwire. Shaquille O’Neal. Barry Sanders. A trio of fatties, if you judge them by the latest obesity guidelines announced recently by the National Institutes of Health. The American Council on Exercise contends the NIH guidelines, which are based on the Body Mass Index, are only a rough indicator of body composition. If you’re well-conditioned and muscular, you might have a poor BMI rating. But in real health terms, you’re much better off than a person with an acceptable BMI rating who has little lean muscle, according to the council.
More Bad News for Fast-Food Fans
Think about this the next time you bite into a Big Mac or a Whopper. The “oxidized” cholesterol commonly found in these kinds of fast foods may speed the clogging of arteries and increase the risk of heart disease, according to researchers at the San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center and UC San Francisco. A study of rabbits showed that a diet containing oxidized cholesterol--which is easily found on fast-food menus--may add to the amount of fatty deposits on blood vessel walls. If you still want to eat your junk food, you might be able to hang on to this mcnugget also included in the study: The researchers are not sure whether the results with the rabbits are applicable to humans.
Adolescent See, Adolescent Do
There’s another reason to act like civilized people around adolescents: Exposure to violence and trauma explains more than 50% of teenage violence, according to a study published by the American Medical Assn.’s Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine. The researchers studied 3,735 questionnaires filled out by teens 14 to 19 in six public high schools. The study also revealed that anger is “the most important trauma symptom in predicting violent behavior.” That’s a real shocker.
Smile
As if they didn’t already have enough awards and accolades in their lives, Meg Ryan and Tiger Woods now are the proud owners of another. Both were voted to have the “perfect smile” in Nite White’s 1998 Random Bites Awards. The 150 dentists who were surveyed for the prestigious awards said Ryan was the “hands-down winner in the Sweet Tooth category,” while Woods “walked away with the Great Grin” honors. Not even mentioned on the list was that International Man of Mystery, Austin Powers.
