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DailyDirt: Creative Ways To Eat Less

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

A pretty concerning statistic for Americans is that 17% of kids in the US are obese. The solutions to reduce that figure range from getting kids to eat better school lunches to eliminating various kinds of advertising aimed at getting kids to equate food with fun. There are a few other crazy ideas to keep people from getting fat, without trying to eat less or exercise more. Here are just a sampling of such suggestions.

• There’s a chance that the bacteria in our intestines have some influence on obesity. From a preliminary study, morbidly obese people were found to have different bacterial communities in their intestines, but it’s not clear if the different flora are a cause (or a result) of obesity. If there is a causal relationship, maybe there will be an effective treatment that involves cultivating different intestinal microbes. [url]
• “The Parasite Diet” isn’t a new idea. At the turn of the 20th century, some people used tapeworms to lose weight (before modern medicine convinced people this was a very bad idea). But genetically modified tapeworms that are benign to people could be a reality someday. [url]
• Freakonomics has yet another podcast on obesity called “100 Ways to Fight Obesity” that covers some interesting proposals to prevent overweight adults and children. Some suggestions, such as smelling a vial of vomit to curb an appetite, are not so pleasant — and not really guaranteed to work that well, either. [url]

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Filed Under: bacteria, diets, eating, flora, food, obesity, tapeworm