Moronic headline of the day

What on earth do they teach in journalism school?

Exhibit

Study: Eating disorders increases risk of death.

I've got some bad news for the nong who wrote this headline and the story which repeats the assertion quantifying the risk to fivefold of that of those without such disorders, your risk of death is neither increased nor decreased by having an eating disorder, it being a certainty that you will die.

What an eating disorder may do is bring forward the date at which this occurs.

Of course we are more often told we are too fat rather than too thin and this to is likely to bring forward the time of our demise. Caught between a rock and a hard place, with nothing certain but death and taxes as old Ben Franklin once wryly observed, building upon an observation of Danial Defoe's.

Now mix this in the sad fact that many in the so called "fashion industry" are in fact gay males who go for models with, shall we say boyish figures¹, rather than fully fleshed feminine ones and you end up with some sad girls who starve themselves with tragic results.

In Britain last week the Ministry of health issued guidelines suggesting children under five should exercise for three hours per day to prevent obesity.

And at last some common sense on display

Lisette Burrows, the associate professor in health and physical education at Otago University, said introducing exercise guidelines with a specific time-frame was "problematic".

"I certainly don't think there's anything wrong with suggesting that it's a nice thing for children to be active, but putting minutes and time around it and linking it explicitly to obesity or weight loss, I think, is not a good idea for the wellbeing of young people," Burrows said.

"I think there's an accumulating body of evidence that would suggest children at younger and younger ages are developing disaffected relationships with, and worrying about, their bodies."

Kudos to the reporter who went and asked a physical education expert when writing her story on these guidelines and built her story around this eminently sensible response.

After all she could have stuck with the Ministry of Health drone, who she also contacted and who broadly agreed with guidelines introduced by the UK government last week suggesting children under five should exercise for three hours per day to prevent obesity.

 

(1) This post is illustrated with an up and coming fashion model Andrej Prejic, who in this gender bending age is a male and who models both male and female attire.