VIDEO: Michelle's green thumb

By GottaLaff

Video via:



Awww.

I gotta give it to our first lady. She has a green thumb, and I'm all thumbs. How does she do it all so well?

[T]he first lady, along with the children who first helped her plant the garden, harvested 73 pounds of lettuce and 12 pounds of peas. The group then prepared a meal with the harvest in the White House kitchen, and then ate the meal together.

“It’s harvest day,” Michelle Obama proclaimed as she entered the now full White House garden, “Today is the fun part. We get to pick some stuff, clean it and cook it and eat it .” [...]

The first lady then uncharacteristically launched into pretty meaty territory– saying that Congress and the president will start focusing on healthy eating and nutrition soon, and that the statistics of obesity rates, and diabetes among children, and the $120 billion a year Americans spend on health care on diet related issues are “unacceptable.”

“This gorgeous and bountiful garden that you saw over there has given us a chance to not just have some fun, which we‘ve had a lot of it, but to shed some light on the important food and nutrition issues that we’re gonna need to address in this nation.”

Mrs. Obama said the government has a big role to play in this and specifically mentioned the need to make the healthiest meals possible available for kids through the USDA national school lunch program. [...]

The first lady added that for poor and isolated communities healthy eating is often times of reach – as groceries must be bought at drug stores or gas stations – and that needs to be remedied.

She said she was glad that more than one million community gardens have been planted, especially in urban areas, “emulating what they are doing,” for healthy eating.

Excellent.

Five Healthiest/Least Healthy Categories of Americans

Damn, I'm only one in the healthy, 3 in the least healthiest. Better get married...

Healthiest

1. Ages 65+ (71 Healthy Behavior Index)
2. Monthly Income of $7,500+ (63.6 Healthy Behavior Index)
3. Married (63.3 Healthy Behavior Index)
4. Women (62.7 Healthy Behavior Index)
5. U.S. Adult Average (61.2 Healthy Behavior Index)

Least Healthy

1. Single (56.2 Healthy Behavior Index)
2. Monthly Income Under $500 (56.9 Healthy Behavior Index)
3. Ages 18-44 (57.1 Healthy Behavior Index)
4. Divorced (58.1 Healthy Behavior Index)
5. Monthly Income $500-$2,999 (58.2 Healthy Behavior Index)

Caution: Obama may be good for your health

By GottaLaff

Watch Obama speak twice a day and call me in the morning:

Smoking Ban Prevented Heart Attacks; Does Each Obama Speech Do the Same?

"Every time Obama comes on television now, the collective blood pressure in the United States goes down 10 points."

That quote, attributed to Rep. Neil Abercrombie, a Democrat from Hawaii, appeared today in a Washington Post article on Obama's calm manner and how the president-elect's disposition reflects his upbringing in laid-back Hawaii. It suggests that Obama's cool is contagious is a positive way, that it reassures Americans rattled by the nation's state of crisis. [...]

[I]magine for a moment the possibility that Obama's speeches actually do lower listeners' blood pressure. Since high blood pressure contributes to heart attacks and strokes, is it possible that Obama's status as president-elect has prevented some cardiovascular attacks? [...]

Rigorous studies show that changes in the environment around people—for example, reduced smoking in public places—can rapidly and significantly lower heart attack rates.[...]

A change in the identity of the nation's commander-in-chief isn't the same thing as a law that results in cleaner air, but if it lowers people's blood pressure, it could have a similar effect. And if Obama's soothing presence (soothing to some voters, at any rate) on the national stage has led to a drop off in heart attacks, researchers should be able to confirm it the same way the authors of today's smoking study did—by comparing heart attack rates before and after Obama was elected.

An enterprising researcher could also contrast any shift in the heart attack rate in pro-Obama cities or states to any shift in areas that voted against the Democrat. If heart attacks have decreased in blue states since early November and have increased in red states, that would be an intriguing clue. (In parts of the country, heart attack rates naturally fluctuate from month to month, so researchers would have to take that into account, too.)

I'd also be interested in knowing whether the blood pressure of voters tends to change when they hear Obama speak—and whether there's any difference in the biological response his supporters and nonsupporters have.

I wonder if repeated national exposure to P.E. Obama would lower our insurance premiums. Preventive medicine and all, right?

ObamaDiet

By GottaLaff

You are what you eat:

After feeding him for the last 18 months at Washington events, [Anita] Ellis, co-owner of Avalon, a union catering company here, appears to have a pretty clear idea.

“He’s remarkably careful,” she said. “He doesn’t like sweets that much but fish, fish, fish, some chicken and things with spice. He will eat hamburger occasionally. He’s a very, very healthy eater and does like Italian food.”

Ms. Ellis generally took her cues from the Obama advance team when figuring out what to serve. She said they would always ask her to have the spicy chicken pizette -– chicken with fontina cheese, grilled onion and sweet and hot peppers.

The food was usually hors d’oeuvre size since most of it was consumed in the Green Room following a campaign event. So the monkfish, salmon, halibut and scallops came on skewers. The Caesar and Greek salads were served in edible cups made of Parmesan cheese.

There were vegetarian beggars purses filled with wild mushrooms, artichokes and tomato; bits of sausage and artichokes on skewers; bruschetta with goat cheese, tomato and basil; baby paninis or crostini and scooped out wheels of Parmigiano-Reggiano filled with knobs of the cheese on one side and olives that had been marinated in fennel and lemon and orange peels on the other.

While others in the group might be drinking soda, Ms. Ellis said, she is sure the President-elect drank only water.

A man after my own healthy heart.

Great. Now I'm hungry.