Dean's letter for Tufts Nutrition

The Friedman School has started publishing a new newsletter from the Dean, Eileen Kennedy, with lots of recent news about the school. Here's a sampling.

Christina Economos and Miriam Nelson had their photos in Time magazine for being named two of the American Diabetes Association’s Women of Valor for 2005. They shared the award with Eileen Naughton, president of Time magazine, for their work in combating the nation’s obesity epidemic.

The Boston Globe reported on Aviva Must’s study on girls and obesity. She found that girls who experience early pubescence tend to be overweight and are more likely than their peers to be overweight or obese when they reach their early 40s.

Ph.D. student Dr. Mario Flores, who is also a researcher at the National Institute of Public Health in Mexico, was quoted in a New York Times article on Mexico’s sudden surge in obesity [available also here and here]. “We’re just recovering from the shock of the statistics,” he said.

Patrick Webb’s op-ed on Niger’s “invisible” emergency appeared in the Globe and Mail online edition. He wrote: “There are many more Nigers lurking within the suffering of children in the poor world. We just don’t see them yet.”

The Chicago Tribune quoted Jeanne Goldberg on advising Kraft Foods Inc. and prodding the company to stop using toddlers in TV ads for Oreo cookies [available also here]. “The notion of using kids to promote these things is very seductive because kids are cute, but I don’t think it’s a good idea,” Goldberg said. She also told BusinessWeek that Kraft’s reformulating of Lunchables to have more fiber and no trans fat was “a step in the right direction.”

Many publications, including The Boston Globe and the International Herald Tribune, have reported on the supplements article in the Journal of the American Medical Association written by Robert Russell and Alice Lichtenstein. Lichtenstein told Northeast Public Radio’s “Health Show” program, “Assuming that we can just isolate one nutrient or multiple nutrients and all our health problems will be solved is probably a very naive perspective.”

Paul Jacques was quoted by the UPI about vitamin E and cataracts and his study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Dr. Ernst Schaefer discussed diets with Forbes magazine.