More odds and sods

Something I’ve always found frustrating: why is healthier food more expensive than unhealthy food? Tonight, I gave in and bought a medium pizza from Pizza Pizza, which set me back only $6. A healthy dinner would have cost more than that (given that I’m too lazy to cook). Argh.

Just finished watching the Raptors beat the Lakers. Toronto’s basketball team is a lot of fun to watch – especially Bosh, Bargnani and Calderon. They’re worth checking out.

According to the Globe, the percentage of the Canadian working-age population currently employed has hit an all-time high: 63.4 percent. But, according to this interactive graphic from the Globe, Newfoundland’s unemployment rate is still 15.4 percent. Toronto’s is 6.6 percent, Calgary’s is 3.8 percent (up from 2.6 in December), and Vancouver’s is 3.2 percent. Saskatoon’s is even lower, at 2.6 percent.

Metafilter has a link to a collection of short videos of suburban landscapes called, wonderfully enough, Blandlands. (Aging suburban landscapes have a place in my heart because I grew up in what is now an aging suburban landscape.)

Weren’t they predicting a very mild winter this year, because of El Nino and/or climate change? Toronto is currently at -7C; according to the Weather Network map of Canada, it is by far the warmest spot in the non-British Columbia part of Canada. (Winnipeg is at -25. Poor Winnipeg.) And we’re due for only a couple of days of normal winter temperatures before it’s back into the deep freeze again. Sigh, brrr, etc.

A weighty problem

Recently, Discover magazine posted an article entitled 20 Things You Didn’t Know About Obesity. Here’s a couple of the most startling ones:

• In 2000, airlines spent $275 million on 350 million additional gallons of fuel to compensate for the weight of the passengers they were flying. (And it’s not like people have gotten thinner in the meantime.)
• The average weight of Americans increased by 8.5 pounds in the 1990s.
• In 2004, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration increased its estimate of the weight of the average American male from 170 pounds to 184.
• Hardee’s, a food chain in the eastern U.S., offers a Monster Thickburger, which is 1420 calories and contains 107 grams of fat. (According to their nutrition guide, their ordinary Thickburger is a mere 850 calories, with 57 grams of fat.)

The conventional definition of whether you are overweight or not is the Body Mass Index (BMI) measurement. And I’ve got to say that it’s a tough taskmaster. I’m a little over 6′2″ and weigh about 200 pounds; I don’t look fat or even close to it. (Of course, you have to not pay attention to my Middle-Aged Waistline.) But, according to the BMI, I’m overweight – I would have to slim down to 194 pounds to make it into their “normal weight” range. If I list myself as 6′3″ – only a slight exaggeration – I’m allowed to bulk up to 199 pounds.

According to a daily calorie requirement calculator I found on the net, someone my size who is exercising lightly should consume 2519.4 calories a day. Being a big person means that it’s easier for me to maintain my weight than it is for a smaller person – according to this, I could consume roughly 1.7 Monster Thickburgers without gaining weight. Of course, I would consume enough fat to stop up my arteries and eventually my heart, but I wouldn’t be a fat corpse.

One thing I’ve noticed as I’ve grown older is that my metabolism has slowed down. Until I was about 27, I could eat whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted. When I was in university, and on a meal plan that allowed me to eat as much as I wanted, I once had something like 11 grilled cheese sandwiches in one sitting. (Now, my alma mater doesn’t offer unlimited food, possibly for precisely that reason.) And I used to order spaghetti and lasagna for dinner. Now, I have to be much more careful than that.

Which is why it scares me when I see a younger person carrying extra weight. If someone is overweight when they’re 17 or 22, they’re likely to be even heavier as they get older. If obesity is becoming a problem, it might become even more of a problem a few years from now.