In the same way, you know that if you raise the price of a product the odds are good that sales will go down (not always though – some wineries have found that by jacking up the cost of some of their high end wines they sell out faster, there’s a snob element involved you see).

But our friends the research scientists can’t leave anything to chance so now there are two new studies out that show that if you raise the price of fast food, then people will eat less of it. Not exactly rocket science, but it does have a couple of other findings that make it more than just another example of  “no duh” research.

The two studies, published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, found that as the cost of pizza and soda rose, so the level of consumption fell. Like I said, no big surprise. But what was interesting about these studies is that the first one found that as consumption of pizza and soda fell, so did the individual’s weight. In other words, they weren’t simply switching to some other junky diet and packing on the same amount of pounds just by consuming other crappy foods.

The second study found that as the price rose and consumption fell, so did the individual’s weight and their risk for diabetes. Again not a huge surprise, but nonetheless a delightful finding.

The increase in cost wasn’t huge either, just about 10 percent, but it was enough to get people to cut back consumption by up to 11.5 percent.

In short, this means that raising the cost of crappy foods could help get people to change their eating habits, and that they won’t necessarily just switch from their old favorites to new fast foods. That’s encouraging news for a nation that needs to raise some cash in a hurry to pay off its debts, and for a nation struggling to cope with rising obesity levels and the health care costs and consequences of a diet too heavy in fat and sugar and salt.

Little Children Lotta Calories

The problem with so many weight loss programs is that they don’t really start until the problem has been building up for years. Bad habits that began in childhood are so much harder to break, and the weight they helped pack on so much harder to lose, if you wait until you are an adult to try.

A new study shows that for the last few decades our children have been developing some awfully bad habits indeed.

The study, by researchers at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and published in the journal Health Affairs, tracked the eating habits of 31,337 children between the ages of two to 18, from 1977 to 2006. They found that the number of kids who snacked between meals rose from 74 percent in 1977 to 98 percent in 2006.

They also found that by 2006, the average kid was snacking three times a day, consuming an extra 600 calories on top of what they got from their regular meals. That meant they were getting, on average, an extra 168 calories a day just from snacks, compared to 1977.

Now you might think that 168 calories isn’t a lot. And by itself it isn’t. But if you have 168 calories on Monday, then again Tuesday, then again every other day of the week, every other week of the month, every other month of the year, year after year. It adds up. Let’s do the math. There are 3500 calories in a pound, so if you are eating an extra 168 calories a day then in just 21 days you’ll have added an extra pound. 21 days, three weeks. Not long is it!

The end result is a person who is carrying 20, 30, 40 or more pounds than they might otherwise be hauling around with them, if they hadn’t snacked as much when they were younger.

So parents, take note. A sweet treat today is fine. But when it becomes a daily routine, several times a day, then it’s no longer a treat, it’s a threat. That extra ‘h’ makes all the difference to the future health of your child.

Many corporations also responded with generosity, donating money to relief funds. Sadly that spirit of kindness did not infect all American businesses. Take airlines for instance.

I work for California Pacific Medical Center, a major hospital in San Francisco. CPMC is an affiliate of Sutter Health, a network of hospitals and health care providers spread throughout Northern California. After the quake in Haiti, Sutter Health donated $1.5 million in funds and supplies to help with relief work. Within days of the quake Sutter also put together a team of doctors and nurses who flew out to Port au Prince to work with injured survivors. The team were flown there on a private jet, donated by someone who wanted to help, and spent a week, working 20 hour days, performing surgery and healing the wounded.

A few weeks later it was decided to send a second team. This time, because the crisis had fallen out of the headlines there was no donated jet to take them to Haiti. Instead they had to fly commercial. No big whoop you might think. But because the expedition was put together on relatively short notice – hey, it’s an emergency, by its very nature you don’t get much warning – they had to pay whatever the airline felt like charging.

And the airline felt like charging a lot.

Nowadays many airlines have a sliding fee for seats. Book it way ahead and you get one price, but as the plane fills up and the takeoff day approaches the cost of buying one of the remaining seats rises. Our Haiti team (17 doctors and nurses) wasn’t finalised until a few days before they left so that meant every time they confirmed a team member and booked a seat for them, the price for the remaining seats rose.

In the morning they were able to buy a round trip ticket from San Francisco to Port au Prince for $700. By the end of the day when they confirmed the last member, the price was $2,000.

The airline didn’t offer any discounts for relief missions. They didn’t take into account that every member of the team was taking time off from work – in some cases unpaid time – to bring much needed medical care, supplies and compassion to victims of the quake. Want sympathy? That’ll be $20 extra please.

Not only that, but they also limited how much luggage the team could bring. Two bags, no more than 50 lbs each. Any extra luggage and it was $100 per bag. Who cares that they were bringing in as much medication, bandages, lotions and supplies as they could possibly carry and scrounge together in the time available to them.

I know the airlines are in financial distress. Times are hard for a lot of businesses right now. But gouging a team heading to a disaster zone to help the victims of a devastating earthquake is not going to improve their bottom line or their reputation. I understand the need to charge for coffee or sandwiches, I understand the need for headphones and movies. But to charge for mercy!

Think of the image they could have projected to the public if they had told the team they could fly for free... priceless!

“The thing that impresses me most about America is the way parents obey their children.”  Edward, Duke of Windsor – former King of England

“America is a large, friendly dog in a very small room. Every time it wags its tail, it knocks over a chair.”  Arnold Toynbee, British historian

“In America the young are always ready to give to those who are older than themselves the full benefit of their inexperience.”   Oscar Wilde, Irish writer

“America is the only nation in history which miraculously has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilization.”  Georges Clemenceau, French politician and statesman.

“What the United States does best is understand itself. What it does worst is understand others.”  Carlos Fuentes, Mexican novelist.

“Every time Europe looks across the Atlantic to see the Americans, it observes only the rear end of an ostrich.”  H.G. Wells, British author

“One comes to the United States – always, no matter how often – to see the future. It’s what life in one’s own country will be like five, 10, 20 years from now. “  Ehud Yonay, Israeli writer.

“In America, through pressure of conformity, there is freedom of choice, but nothing to choose from.”  Peter Ustinov, British actor/writer

VAT is simple; essentially it’s a national sales tax. It’s also popular, used in some 130 countries around the globe. You slap an extra few percent on the cost of every good sold - from 5 percent in Japan to 25 percent in some Scandinavian countries – and pretty soon you are raking in some serious money.

How serious? According to Ezekiel Emanuel, brother of White House Chief of Staff Rahm, and the author of ‘Health Care, Guaranteed‘,a 10 percent VAT in the U.S. would allow every American not entitled to Medicare or Medicaid, to enroll in a health plan with no deductible and very low co-payments.

However, one of the problems with something like VAT is that it’s a regressive tax in that it hurts the poor the most. Think about it. If you have little money and spend most of it on basics like food, then if the cost of that food goes up 5 or 10 or 20 percent, you are screwed. If you are rich, it’s an inconvenience. If you are poor. It’s a tragedy.

So, if you are going to introduce something like VAT you need to balance it out by cutting, slashing really, income taxes on folks earning less than, say $70,000 a year.

But when I was reading about this it gave me an idea on how we can cut the deficit, not screw poor people, but also help fight obesity and poor health habits at the same time. It’s pretty simple stuff really. Slap VAT on most goods, but not on fresh produce. So, that means fruits, veg, meat, fish all still remain the same price, but all the other stuff that so many people buy, canned and frozen foods, heavily processed and packed foods, frozen pizza and Hungry Hombre TV dinners – they all get hit hard.

By doing that you not only raise money, you also encourage people to switch away from all the stuff that is bad for them and has no nutritional value, and towards food that is healthy and rich in nutrients.

The hope would be that doing that would encourage people to eat better foods by providing a financial incentive. And as you do that you also add a hefty financial incentive for all of us not to buy stuff we really don’t need. And we also raise enough money to start cutting down that deficit.

Tempting proposition eh. There’s just one problem. No politician is likely to go for the idea. If you thought the Tea Baggers were crazy beforehand, just wait and see how mad they get when you slap an extra ten percent on the cost of their tea bags.

And as if that wasn’t bad enough. VAT was dreamed up by the Germans and perfected by the French. How screwed up is that?

Still, a chap can dream can’t he!

you hear something that has us shaking our heads saying, “you know mate, you should just have stayed in bed.” That’s how I felt when I read about the man who apparently electrocuted himself after urinating on a power line he had just knocked down.

You read that correctly. Authorities in Montesano, Washington State,  say that 50 year Roy Messenger crashed his car into a power pole, knocking it down, and sending his car into the ditch. Roy was reportedly not seriously hurt in the accident and he got out of the car and called a relative to help pull his vehicle out of the ditch. That’s when he decided to take a leak while waiting. Police think that Roy didn’t see the live wire from the downed pole in the ditch and when he peed on it the urine stream apparently served as a conductor, allowing the electricity to reach his body. Bang.

Not a very dignified way to go.

Now the blogosphere is rife with questions about whether urine is a solid enough stream to actually allow electricity to flow up it. Frankly, I don’t know Roy or his urinating prowess well enough to judge, all I know is that he took a leak without taking a look and now he’s dead. Regardless of whether it happened the way authorities think or through some other fluke of nature and science, Roy is still gone. And that’s never a good way to end your day.

A quick check of the National Safety Council’s Odds of Dying statistics shows that accidental electrocution is the ninth least likely way to die (behind hornet, wasp or bee sting – lifetime odds of 1 in 56,789; lightning – lifetime odds of 1 in 79,746; and the least likely of all, fireworks at 1 in 340,7333) but that’s not likely to be much consolation to Roy and his family.

I’m thinking that most forms of accidental electrocution are more commonplace, work or home accidents. Not too many peeing on live wires that you just brought down yourself. Roy must have really needed to go. Because he went. And now he’s gone.

There have been stranger deaths in history. For instance the Greek playwright Aeschylus is reported to have died after an eagle dropped a tortoise on his bald head. It’s thought the bird mistook the shiny pate for a stone and was hoping to use it to break open the tortoise’s shell. For a man of the theatre it was oddly appropriate. One minute you are in the wings, the next you are wearing them!

Then there is the case of poor old Sigurd I of Orkney, a fierce Scottish warrior of the 9th century who defeated and then decapitated his enemy Maelbrigte. To show off his war trophy, Sigurd stuck Maelbrigte’s head on his saddle. But as he rode off Maelbrigte’s decapitated dentures kept rubbing against Sigurd’s leg, eventually causing a small wound which became infected and a few days later Sigurd died. He obviously hadn’t taken into account his enemy’s infectious smile!

But, getting back to Roy. Reading about his untimely and unfortunate demise it is a reminder  that eating the right food and exercising regularly and taking care of yourself will do wonders for you, but they’ll only take you so far. The rest is up to you, the fates, your bladder, and the occasional flying tortoise or an enemy’s bite!

Now they’ve come up with a cell phone application that helps you keep track of all the cans of Guinness you drink! Whatever next.

The ‘app’ is courtesy of the United Kingdom’s National Health Service. Now, I grew up using the NHS and believe me after waiting in line at some of their facilities I can understand why people would turn to drink and need to keep track of their alcohol consumption.

The ‘app’ is called the ”Drinks Tracker” and it does just that. You download the app, for free, and it allows you to keep track of  what you are drinking (beer or wine etc) how much you are drinking and what its alcohol content is.

The program can then plot all this information and help you break it down in all manner of ways. Now, you might think there’s nothing particularly revolutionary about this. After all Bridget Jones kept track of her consumption in her Diary. As in:

January: An Exceptionally Bad Start Sunday 1 January
129 lbs. (but post-Christmas), alcohol units 14 (but effectively covers 2 days as 4 hours of party was on New Year’s Day), cigarettes 22, calories 5424.

But Bridget’s tally was just numbers, the Drinks Tracker allows you to keep score and then plot it all on a graph so you can see a pie chart showing how you got pie eyed!!

All joking aside, the intent is serious. It’s to help people get a clearer idea of how much they are drinking, and by showing you your intake against the “daily recommended” amount it will hopefully help people who might be drinking a tad too much to start thinking about ways of cutting back.

The bigger question of course is how many people are going to whip out their iPhone or smart phone and enter each drink into it as they go. Because if you are drinking that much the odds are that you won’t remember to do it later or even if you do, you probably won’t remember exactly what you drank. And while using phones in bars is certainly nothing new it might worry your friend, or your date, if every time you sip a Cosmo you whip out your cell to punch in new data.

Of course, knowing how competitive some people are this could inspire a new drinking game, with people competing against each other to see how quickly they can cross the line from being a regular to excessive drinker.

At the very least when you wake up in the morning feeling like crud, you’ll be able to pinpoint exactly where things went wrong.

Then again, when you get past sober and still trying to keep track, it might sound like this: “Ahhhh…lemme see a little teeny nother..one..uhm…where’s the buttonnnn.”?

I’ve listened to a lot of interview shows in my time, heck, I produced a daily TV talk show for years so I know what I am talking        about when I say, “William Hurt is truly an actor who creates his characters with a great deal of thought and ethics.  In this interview he describes his method for creating a character – and believe it or not, William Hurt can teach you everything you need to know about how to have a successful life”.  No Kidding!

Here’s a short transcript of the conversation from Fresh Air so you can judge for yourself :

GROSS: So we’ve been talking about your approach to acting. Has it changed over the years? Do you approach roles differently now than you used to when you, like say, in the “Body Heat” era?

Mr. HURT: To me, I mean, there’s a standard and the standard was something I arrived an understanding about after I had been looking for it for 15 years of study. The standard is six weeks of rehearsal, 42 days, to hatch a character the way, you know, nine months to hatch a kid. I don’t know why it’s true. I don’t know why we need nine months, but it is true for me and anything less results in a premature character. That means, of course, that I’m guilty of launching a lot of premature characters out there the way we live in a post-adolescent society. But I always have that image of what a proper rehearsal would be where we would go in everyday, eight hours a day, five days a week and prove that we were friendly to each other, not competing with each other. Where we would check our ego, guns, at that the door, go in, inspire each other, communicate with each other, research with each other and bring about the best possible life that can be breathed into that play.

Stanislavski said, when he was asked a question by a young actor, once, what is it that I do? I don’t create anything. I don’t write the words. I don’t write the themes. I don’t write the (unintelligible). Am I an artist? Do I create? He says, of course, you create. You breathe the ethic into the play. And he said, that’s essential.  A lot of people don’t understand the ethic of ensemble at all. They offer awards for ensemble when I can guarantee you that the only thing that those people had in common was that they maybe all met the director but they never worked together. They never sat in rooms, you know, before shooting, before judgment, before the, you know, the array of critiques and opinions and… They never got past auditioning for the next job. They never had the job, you know, what I’m saying?

GROSS: Yeah.

Mr. HURT: They never felt secure. And I believe in being secure. And I believe in proving my trustworthiness to another actor – that I’m not just there to gun him down. I’m not there to beat him. I’m not there to win. When people turned the role in “A History of Violence” into ‘the shortest Academy Award nomination in history’, I was chagrined by that. That’s not what we did. It was a role. It’s a guy. All the roles could be that great. Everybody can be that great. Everybody can be that vivid. You know, if you do the work right, everybody’s vivid. Every life is vivid. That’s what we’re trying to say, right?

You know, if your life, if some people you know, I’ve met eight-year olds that have more wisdom than 80-year olds. So my mom died young and she had a great life. So, you know, you can’t measure things in terms of time – or at least the quality. So so-called main characters, what’s that? We’re all main characters. We’re all main characters in our life.

******

Isn’t that what it’s all about?  We all want to be secure in our lives.  We’re all striving to have a good, full, successful, healthy, life.  And to do that is to stop comparisons, go beyond judgment of yourself and others, become a true friend, inspire and be inspired, leave our guns/egos at the door and open up to the knowledge that we can create our own life.  We can change what doesn’t work for us anymore, we are the main character in this life, and we have the power to create the life we want. All it takes is a serious, honest, attitude and the understanding that we are in charge of this one little life, you don’t have to be on stage to create your own roll.  How do you want to live? Are you the main character in your life?

So that’s all I wanted to tell you about William Hurt and what I learned about life from him.

Now, you may not be too familiar with the last rule but as someone who has spent many many hours at the gym, it’s true. It doesn’t matter how big the locker room,  how many lockers there are, or even how few people are at the gym at any given moment. If you are there, you will not only find yourself next to someone else’s locker, that person will also be there right at the time you are changing.

It’s an odd phenomenon but a universal one. For instance, here’s a comment posted on an MSN article about gym etiquette: Share the space!  The locker room is huge, but it always happens.  I return to my locker after a work out or after a shower and of the 1,000’s lockers available there is someone using the locker next to me.  Not a problem, but if you see me trying to unlock my locker please share the bench and space around “our” lockers.  Please move your sweaty sticky stinky jock strap over, I don’t want to see it, let alone touch it.”

So what should you do about it? Nothing, weren’t you paying attention! It’s a universal rule. There is nothing you can do about it. You just have to learn how to handle it. Either avoid eye contact and turn away from each other – dancing cheek to cheek as it were – or just observe how amazing it is that you are the only people in the locker room and here you are, next to each other. In the words of Humphrey Bogart at the end of Casablanca “This could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

Or not.

That can be a good thing in that you can never forget they are here. But it can also be bad in that the daily experience hardens you, you stop seeing them as people and start considering them obstacles to be avoided, or maneuvered around on your way to work or Starbucks. And the longer you live in the City the easier it is to get used to them, and get used to avoiding making eye contact or thinking about what you can do to help them.

Project Homeless Connect (PHC) helps you change that, helps change the way you see them, helps change the way you think about them. More importantly, it helps change you. Once you have volunteered at PHC you can never see people who are homeless the same way, ever again.

PHC is such a simple idea. Instead of having people who are homeless go to several different buildings dotted across town and battle different bureaucracies to get the services they need, simply house everything in one building so they can get everything in one day. Simple in theory, amazingly complex in reality. But Project Homeless Connect does it all the time.  I won’t go into the details, you can find them at the PHC website… but what I can tell you about is what it’s like to volunteer.

Or rather, not me, but Marco Roberts. I don’t know Marco -- though his wife and I work at the same hospital -- but he volunteers for PHC every year and says while he knows his work helps the homeless, he thinks he gets far more out of it than they do. He finds it inspirational, uplifting, and completely rewarding. That’s why he keeps coming back

That’s why everyone who is part of it keeps coming back. As another regular volunteer told me, she said when people first come here they are a little apprehensive, even scared, they’ve never really met or talked to homeless people before and don’t know what to expect. But when they leave they have that “PHC goofy grin” because they know that at least for one day, for a few people, they have made a difference.

I am fortunate. I’ve been working with PHC for three years now. I love feeling that goofy grin. And it’s true. Once you have felt the power of helping a person less fortunate than you, you can never look at someone who is homeless the same way ever again.

Even so, she was a little taken aback when she got the diagnosis.

Fortunately the disease was caught early, before any real damage had been done, and she was given some reading materials on how to take better care of herself. She was also given a session with a nutritionist who gave her advice on her diet, the kinds of food she could eat and the kind she should try and avoid.

There were no absolutes – no “you can never eat chocolate again” rules – just general guidelines.

Six months later she admits she is doing a poor job of making those lifestyle changes, of doing the things she needs to do to avoid having to take medications like insulin or, more seriously, of having complications such as damage to her kidneys or eyes.

When I asked her why she hadn’t made the changes she simply said “I just don’t have any will power.”

Now, most of us struggle from time to time, or maybe even all the time, with will power. For some the source of their temptation is chocolate or candy, for others it’s alcohol or drugs. None of us is immune to the problem and sooner or later we all give in to the temptation, albeit usually temporarily. But in my friends case it wasn’t that she was struggling with the temptation, she had given up even trying to fight it.

By telling herself she had no will power she was saying to herself she couldn’t control her urges or desires. In essence she was giving herself permission to fail.

There’s an old saying that comes to mind; “We are not what we think we are, but what we think, we are”

In other words the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves become our reality. If we tell ourselves we can’t do something we don’t do it. If we tell ourselves we have no will power we will have no will power.

The only problem is when  you try telling yourself you don’t have diabetes. Your brain may hear but your body has a mind of its own.