Word: boothe
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Though Michael Booth is a scientist, he delivers a speech like an actor. What he's about to say is "pretty frightening stuff," he tells an audience of mostly fellow academics in Sydney. "It should be R rated. It's not for the faint-hearted." And sure enough, Booth's lecture-on the results of a survey that found almost 25% of New South Wales pupils from infant school through Year 10 are overweight or obese, double the figure of 20 years ago-is chilling. After Booth, a researcher on adolescent health at the University of Sydney, reports some statistics...
...enough to make you tremble, but are things really so bad? In the new and burgeoning field of obesity research, there was nothing unusual about Booth's address last month. In Australia and New Zealand, as in many Western countries, to open a newspaper or switch on the T.V. is to be assailed by another dire take on what the World Health Organization calls the "worldwide epidemic" of obesity. Clearly, it isn't just the more sensationalist elements of the media but a host of research centers and health bodies that have categorized the trend toward increasing body mass...
...typical media portrayal of today's child is of a fatso slumped in front of a video game, guzzling soft drink and not faintly inclined to venture outside to kick a ball or climb a tree. But this perception buckles under scrutiny. From the SPANS school survey, Michael Booth reports that while few pupils walk to school any more and cycling there has all but vanished, a huge majority are performing the recommended one hour a day of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity. Moreover, both girls and boys are much more active than their counterparts of 1985 and 1997. Booth...
...What's happened, most doctors would say, is that better treatment, broader use of drugs for prevention, as well as less cigarette smoking, mean that despite rising average weight, fewer people are dying from cardiovascular disease. This is small cause for celebration, says Sydney University's Booth. "People who are overweight are more likely to suffer serious, debilitating, chronic diseases before they actually die. We've become quite good at keeping people alive in the presence of these diseases, but they have a really poor life in the meantime, and that doesn't show up in studies like Flegal...
Historical-museum curators can be a contentious bunch--get between two of them debating whether the Smithsonian exhibit of First Ladies' ball gowns is real history, and you may want to John Wilkes Booth one or both of them. But nearly all curators will agree that they are battling a common enemy: public indifference. If you're in the history business, you're competing for shrinking wallets and tighter leisure time. Schools teach less history, so kids have less of an idea about what happened at your venue or why it matters. And those same kids have perhaps more veto...