Marathon training or child abuse?

Childhood obesity is a growing epidemic throughout the country as showcased by American media and the health care industry, among others. It is not a uniquely American problem but stems in part from a culture of excess and mass production which, while also not uniquely American, goes a healthy distance toward characterizing the country's insatiability for......well, for 'more.'

Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, the opposite extreme. A father leads his daughter on a consecutive series of marathons over the course of two months. But is this about fitness or health? Probably not. It probably is also not about how much this girl likes to run, as her father claims. Likely it is more about wealth and notoriety in a communist country.

I am a firm believer that most people are not biologically designed to enjoy more good than harm from running marathons. I think the design can be and has been developed safely and healthfully through the centuries, through the lifetimes of some lucky recipients of genetic jackpots and through technological and surgical advances, but by and large I think the recent spike in popularity of marathons is born not of a natural predisposition, but of the same culture of excess that has illuminated the obesity problem. Specifically, America's obsessions with health, longevity, physical perfection, workoholism, and competition, paired with whatever drives a given individual to participate in charitable causes be it guilt or concern or both.

While I am only lukewarm about the wisdom of running marathons, one thing I will come out in staunch opposition to is what's going on in this story. As unhealthy as marathoning is for many (and perhaps most) adult humans despite their having reached maturity and the prime of their physical compositions, it certainly cannot be healthy or even humane to allow (much less encourage or force) a girl of 8 to endure the regimen prescribed (and hereunder defended) by her father, Mr. Zhang.

A Chinese girl has arrived in Beijing after running more than 3,550km (2,200 miles) from the southern province of Hainan in less than two months. [For sake of comparison, an individual who runs 4 miles a day, 7 days a week for two whole months would cover only 240 miles.]

Zhang Huimin, eight, rose each day at 0230 and ran about 1.5 marathons (64km, 40 miles), Xinhua news agency said. Her father accompanied her on a bicycle.

He said the feat was aimed at drawing attention to her Olympic potential ahead of the Beijing games next year.

He denied forcing her to run, but some experts have said it amounted to abuse.

"She loves to run. Many people don't understand us," he said.

Zhang and his wife have separated, mainly because she opposed his way of training their daughter, the newspaper reported.

"Whether people oppose it or not, we will soldier on," Mr Zhang said.

Greek Fires

Greek officials suspect arson, though this has not been confirmed. They have announced a reward of 1 million euros and are holding 32 suspects.

A top Greek prosecutor has ordered an inquiry into whether arson attacks can be considered terrorism, and prosecuted under Greece's anti-terror laws.

Treating arson as a potential act of terrorism would give authorities broader powers of investigation and arrest.

I don't think this is too extreme a position to be taken by the prosecutor; the areas burning in Greece are many and rife with historical and cultural value, the fires have caused the deaths of at least 39 people and has resulted in the destruction of many livelihoods in an already fragile economy. That said, I should admit that at first this struck me as a somewhat draconian prosecutorial approach given that no one as yet is sure of arson and that the country has far more pressing needs, currently, than deciding what to do with the perpetrator. Such as containing the fires. But a look at the scope and disparate geographical origins of the fires and the international aid rendered leaves little doubt that the blazes sprang not from natural or accidental sources and that 'terrorism' is not too strong a word for what is happening. And that the world's finest fire response program would likely be no match for the catastrophe.

MORE:

At least 11 countries - including France, Italy and Spain - are helping Greece fight the fires with planes, helicopters and specialist firefighters.

The European Commission's Barbara Helfferich told the BBC the firefighting effort revealed "a tremendous solidarity" between EU member states.

Treating arson as a potential act of terrorism would give authorities broader powers of investigation and arrest.

Meanwhile, police are patrolling suburban areas on the lookout for fire-starters.

The fires have gutted hundreds of homes, forcing thousands of villagers to flee and blackening hillsides.

Many people are still reported to be trapped by the fires.

Emergency crews scrambled to Frixa in western Peloponnese to rescue stricken villagers on Monday, the Associated Press reported.

A fire department spokesman told AP that 11 people were also believed to be trapped in woodland in Aigialia, in northern Peloponnese.

Charred remains of buildings, trees and once thriving agricultural communities mar the roadside for mile upon mile throughout the Peloponnese.

Ancient Olympia, the birthplace of the Olympic Games and one of the country's most revered archaeological sites, was narrowly saved from destruction by firefighters on Sunday.

Cute Picture of the Week

What is more compelling than couple-week-old orphaned hedgehogs?



We've heard of inter-species adoption, but how about these tiny and still slightly blind things adopting a sweeper bristle brush as a mother.

Something good happening in China

Four pandas were born in captivity in China on the same day, the state media have reported.

Xinhua News Agency said Eryatou just gave birth to two female cubs at the Chengdu giant panda breeding centre in Sichuan province.

Earlier Jiaozi gave birth to a male and a female at the same facility.

Chinese panda breeding centres, which use artificial insemination techniques, have produced 14 cubs so far this year.

Last year 34 pandas were born in captivity, 30 of which survived.

The panda is one of the world's rarest animals, with an estimated 1,590 living in the wild while another 210 have been successfully bred in captivity.

"Free Range vs. Cage Free" or "What ever happened to truth in advertising?"

Turns out though that the (all too typical American marketing) term of art is "Cage Free." I guess. I mean there aren't any cages in there. Though I can't really imagine a less humane way to contain animals.

This photo appeared front and center of NYT's homepage two days ago. The article is called Suddenly the Hunt is On for Cage Free Eggs. The picture is dramatic and seems to cry out for some commentary on whether eggs from this particular hen-house can seriously qualify as "cage-free," and while we're at it, whether the distinction between "cage free" and "free range" can honestly be expected (by policy-makers and industry giants) to be made by the average consumer. It seems just one more example of diabolical marketing genius designed to mislead without being untrue in the literal sense. Which is typical and often accepted in the political and commercial contexts - but when the health and comfort of living things is in the balance, this genius seems misplaced and cruel.

The first half of the article leaves the animal-rights inclined reader feeling cold as it addresses the wisdom of cage-free operations from a financial standpoint and the frustration of various Cage Free consumers at not being able to find enough product to fill demand. The futility of such complaints glares at the frustrated reader throughout.

The Vermont ice cream maker Ben and Jerry’s got plenty of attention last September when it became the first major food manufacturer to announce it would use only cage-free eggs that have been certified humane by an inspecting organization. But the company says it will need four years to complete the switch.

“It’s not easy to find all the eggs you’re looking for,” said Rob Michalak, a spokesman for Ben and Jerry’s. “The marketplace is one where the supply needs to increase with the demand.”

At Whole Foods, shoppers have no trouble finding cage-free eggs, which are the company’s minimum standard. But there are not always enough for the Whole Foods bakeries and kitchens, which have used only cage-free eggs since 2005, said Perry Abbenante, the company’s national grocery coordinator. Whole Foods sometimes has to scale back the amount of prepared food and baked goods it makes.

“There is a lot of talk about cage-free, but are people actually buying them?” said Gene Gregory, president of the United Egg Producers. “I think the consumer walking into the grocery store sees cage-free and they cost two or three times more, and they don’t buy them.”

It takes about six months to build a cage-free operation from the ground up, including raising the chicks, said John Brunnquell, who owns Egg Innovations, based in Port Washington, Wis. The cost for a well-designed facility is about $30 a bird. Building a conventional operation with the stacks of cages known as batteries costs about $8 a bird, he said.

Converting to a cage-free operation can cost less than building anew, but it can still mean the loss of several months’ income and the complexities that come with new methods.

The second half gets more to the points I mentioned above, though still with the inevitable undertones of economics.

The eggs can cost an extra 60 cents a dozen on the wholesale market. But most chicken farmers are not ripping out cages and retrofitting their barns. They question whether the birds are really better off, saying that keeping thousands of hens in tight quarters on the floor of a building can lead to hunger, disease and cannibalism. They also say that converting requires time, money and faith that the spike in demand is not just a fad.

Officials at Notre Dame turned down a request by a campus animal rights group to switch to cage-free eggs after investigating the issue for six months.

The university, which serves 16,000 meals a day in its dining halls, visited both cage and cage-free operations, examining animal welfare, food safety, environmental impact, taste and other issues. Both operations they toured appeared to take equally good care of their chickens, said Jocie Antonelli, nutrition and safety manager.

The university decided that its current source of eggs, which uses a cage system, had the edge in food safety.

Eggs labeled organic and free-range come from chickens with access to the outdoors. But most cage-free chickens never peck in a barnyard during their lives, which last from 12 to 18 months. The term “cage free” is lightly regulated. Companies get approval to use it on their labels through the Food Safety Inspection Service of the Agriculture Department, which does not actually inspect laying operations.

“There are pros and cons to each system,” Ms. Antonelli said. “Either way, these are not free-roaming chickens living out in a pasture.”

Emphasis added in the bolded paragraph to note that in the animal industry, meat is a byproduct of such operations as egg and dairy production and that vegetarianism, though I am loathe to admit it, does not do all the work that one would hope. In the extreme example that meat is outlawed, the animals will still be raised and subjected to inhumane conditions, perhaps for longer periods of time.

Some insist that progress has been made:

“While cage-free certainly does not mean cruelty-free, it’s a significant step in the right direction,” said Paul Shapiro of the Humane Society.

I think this is true to the extent that anytime consumer protests can make enough noise to change offensive business practices, it is a step in the right direction, businesses and consumers take notice and apathy and inertia are abated. However, if you're a hen, it's hard to see that any real change has taken place.

Skepticism aside, I like this article because it exposes an important point - the incidence of companies like Whole Foods and Burger King switching to "Cage-Free" eggs and publicly complaining that supply is not meeting demand does not, in itself, mark a meaningful shift in corporate responsibility but rather the achievement of suckering consumers and paying deceptive lip service to animal rights groups. It is not what we asked for, "Cage-Free" is a trick of the trade and this article demonstrates the importance of consumer education. That in itself is a step in the right direction.

In Silicon Valley, Millionaires Who Don't Feel Rich

Goes the headline yesterday in the New York Times.

This article is irritating and embarrassing (as one who is about to commence daily appearances in this neighborhood), imho, for a couple reasons.

First, the unsubstantiated complaint of 'not feeling rich' without a definition (or even an attempt at one) of what it is to feel rich. I'm not even asking that the interviewees stop to account for things like health, successful marriages, or happy children - let alone such obvious luxuries as running water, electricity, and health care. Even if we restrict the notion of 'feeling rich' to monetary wealth, as we must in order to be faithful to the article's premise, the effectiveness of the piece would be aided by some perspective.

I have been a member of an upper/middle class northern California family for my whole life, an undeniably fortunate position by virtually any standard. But still, through my naivete and skewed sense of need, wealth, and the state of "being rich" even I can see that these millionaires perhaps do 'feel rich' without knowing it. I would suggest that 'feeling rich' means not having to worry about one of the 2-3 family cars breaking down, knowing that such an event will not threaten one's employment or send one into bankruptcy. Having a paid-off house should count as 'feeling rich,' even having a back yard in this day and age and in this particular bay area community. Not having to worry about being able to afford the kids' education or a medical emergency. How can these things, particularly when taken together (after all, they come admittedly as a package deal for these not-rich-millionaires) not qualify as 'feeling rich?'

Not being able to keep up with the Joneses, history dictates, is a horribly misguided way to determine one's success or failure in life. It is a symptom of that ancient malady, greed, the perpetuation of which we have somehow still not learned to control. How it rose to the "Top 10 most emailed" list is beyond me, the only news harbored in the article for me is just how materialistic America's most wealthy communities have become and how blind to the struggles and prohibitive disadvantages suffered by those in our country and in others who truly are not rich in the monetary sense.

This is not to argue that those caught up in the Silicon Valley rat race fail to recognize just how fortunate they are. But rather that it is surprising that a publication like the New York Times would devote energy and space to such a frivolous and misguided topic. If it's meant to be serious, it's a sad commentary on the community. If it's meant to poke fun and sarcasm at the wealthy and shock the world at the selfishness of Silicon Valley executives, it is too narrow to be fair.

The second point of interest and disappointment for me came with the obvious and yet unmentioned gender divide the situation evokes. For once, the divide has nothing to do with income, but rather has to do with differing responses of men and women to SV-sized paychecks. Men tend to respond by pledging to increase their 60 hour work week to an 80 hour week in order to maintain a respectable place in the pecking order. Women, on the other hand, seem to engage in a back and forth between wondering whether they deserve such excess and worrying that their lives are passing them by and considering the possibility that perhaps a reduction in hours is called for.

Note the difference between this:

“Everyone around here looks at the people above them,” said Gary Kremen, the 43-year-old founder of Match.com, a popular online dating service. “It’s just like Wall Street, where there are all these financial guys worth $7 million wondering what’s so special about them when there are all these guys worth in the hundreds of millions of dollars.”

Mr. Kremen estimated his net worth at $10 million. That puts him firmly in the top half of 1 percent among Americans, according to wealth data from the Federal Reserve, but barely in the top echelons in affluent towns like Palo Alto, Menlo Park and Atherton. So he logs 60- to 80-hour workweeks because, he said, he does not think he has nearly enough money to ease up.

“You’re nobody here at $10 million,” Mr. Kremen said earnestly over a glass of pinot noir at an upscale wine bar here.

And this:

Celeste Baranski, a 49-year-old engineer with a net worth of around $5 million who lives with her husband in Menlo Park, no longer frets about tucking enough money away for college for their two children. Long ago she stopped bothering to balance her checkbook. When too many 18-hour days running an engineering department of 1,200 left her feeling burned out and empty, she left and gave herself 12 months off.

Yet like other working-class millionaires of Silicon Valley, she harbors anxieties about her financial future. Ms. Baranski — who was briefly worth as much as $200 million in 2000 but cashed out only $1 million before the collapse of the tech bubble — returned to work in March.

Along with two partners, she founded a software company, Vitamin D, and already she is resigned to the sleepless nights and other stresses that await her. “I ask myself all the time,” Ms. Baranski confessed, “why I do this.”

That today she is worth around $5 million, said Ms. Baranski, who helped to put herself through school cleaning houses, “was unimaginable in my 20s.”

“I always ask myself, ‘Do I deserve it?’ ” she said. “It never feels like you do, because that’s a lot of money.”

The author chalks this up to 'some people feel differently' but this is a cop out. Much remains to be said about why, while men respond with renewed aggression towards achieving that elusive income level at which he will finally be equal or superior to his contemporaries, women muse that they never expected such wealth and are not sure they deserve it or, in some cases, even want it. Men respond with jealousy, women with a different source of dissatisfaction: worry and self-doubt. Neither of which are healthy or get to the heart of any important issues.

Clearly the distinction that I have drawn may be illusory and the result of a statistically insignificant sample size. Also admittedly, hashing out the science and social implications of this dichotomy would require a measure of surveys, research, and scientific, economic, social and psychological analysis far beyond the resources of this author. However it does a disservice to readers to incorrectly dismiss the issue as a difference of opinion between purportedly identically situated individuals.