A Sign of the Times

Every now and then, I venture out to go shopping at mainstream chain clothing stores.  Although I find it onerous, there are certain things I can't get at thrift stores.  For example, I can never find nice jeans.

The last time I set foot in these stores was about two years ago.  It was tough to find pants my size at that time-- many stores simply didn't sell pants with a 30 inch waist.  This year, it was even harder, since some of the stores that formerly carried 30W pants no longer did.  I managed to find my usual 30W 30L size in two stores, but I had a bizarre experience in both cases.   I put them on, and they were falling off my waist.  Since my waist size hasn't changed in two years, and my old 30W 30L pants of the same brand still fit the same as they did when I bought them two years ago, I have to conclude that both stores have changed their definition of "30 inches".  My new size is 28W 30L, which is tough to find these days.
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60 Minutes Report on the Flavorist Industry

A reader sent me a link to a recent CBS documentary titled "Tweaking Tastes and Creating Cravings", reported by Morley Safer.

Safer describes the "flavorist" industry, entirely dedicated to crafting irresistible odors for the purpose of selling processed and restaurant food.  They focused on the company Givaudin.  Dr. David Kessler, author of The End of Overeating, makes an appearance near the end.

Here are a few notable quotes:

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Palliative Care Report: ‘Travelling alongside’ Patients’, Carers’ and Health Care Professionals’ Experiences of the Calvary Health Care Bethlehem Model of Specialist Palliative Care

Researchers from the Menzies Centre for Health Policy have recently published a report on the Calvary Health Care Bethlehem Model of Specialist Palliative Care. The Menzies Centre for Health Policy was commissioned by Calvary Health Care Bethlehem (CHCB), Caulfield, Melbourne to describe their specialist palliative care service, with emphasis on the experiences of patients, carers and health care professionals (HCPs). CHCB, a service of Little Company of Mary Health Care (LCMHC), is a public, level 3 specialist provider of inpatient and community-based palliative care services for people residing in the Inner South East area of Melbourne, covering five Local Government Areas.

The study is a prospective, mixed-method study that describes the CHCB model of specialist palliative care from four perspectives – that of the patient, their nominated carer, nominated health care professional (HCP) and the team at CHCB. This multi perspective approach is new in the Australian context. The descriptive analysis details a model of specialist palliative care and highlights several key features of the model, which provides flexible, integrated care to maintain and enhance the quality of life of patients and their carers and families.

Click here for a copy of the report

New Review Papers on Food Reward

As research on the role of reward/palatability in obesity continues to accelerate, interesting new papers are appearing weekly.  Here is a roundup of review papers I've encountered in the last three months.  These range from somewhat technical to very technical, but I think they should be mostly accessible to people with a background in the biological sciences. 

Food and Drug Reward: Overlapping Circuits in Human Obesity and Addiction
Written by Dr. Nora D. Volkow and colleagues.  This paper describes the similarities between the mechanisms of obesity and addiction, with a focus on human brain imaging studies.  Most researchers don't think obesity is an addiction per se, but the mechanisms (e.g., brain areas important for reward) do seem to overlap considerably.  This paper is well composed and got a lot of media attention.  Dr. Volkow is the director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, a branch of the National Institutes of Health.  The NIH is the main source of biomedical research funding in the US, and also conducts its own research.

Here's a quote from the paper:

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