Dieta giovanile

Su Plos One, escono tentativi di spiegare perché i ragazzini si rimpinzano di schifezze e vogliono andare da McDonald’s. Il primo (che ho letto) è degli olandesi Kirsten Bevelander et al., “The Role of Explicit and Implicit Self-Esteem in Peer Modeling of Palatable Food Intake: A Study on Social Media Interaction among Youngsters”:

Methods
Participants (N = 118; 38.1% boys; M age 11.14±.79) were asked to play a computer game while they believed to interact online with a same-sex normal-weight remote confederate (i.e., instructed peer) who ate either nothing, a small or large amount of candy.
Results
Participants modeled the candy intake of peers via a social media interaction, but this was qualified by their self-esteem. Participants with higher ISE adjusted their candy intake to that of a peer more closely than those with lower ISE when the confederate ate nothing compared to when eating a modest (? = .26, p = .05) or considerable amount of candy (kcal) (? = .32, p = .001). In contrast, participants with lower BE modeled peer intake more than those with higher BE when eating nothing compared to a considerable amount of candy (kcal) (? = .21, p = .02); ESE did not moderate social modeling behavior. In addition, participants with higher discrepant or “damaged” self-esteem (i.e., high ISE and low ESE) modeled peer intake more when the peer ate nothing or a modest amount compared to a substantial amount of candy (kcal) (? = ?.24, p = .004; ? = ?.26, p<.0001, respectively).
Conclusion
Youngsters conform to the amount of palatable food eaten by peers through social media interaction. Those with lower body esteem or damaged self-esteem may be more at risk to peer influences on food intake.

Mmm… Più a rischio se i genitori non si accorgono della loro infelicità, forse.

*

“How Television Fast Food Marketing Aimed at Children Compares with Adult Advertisements” degli americani Amy Bernhardt et al., è un paragone tra la persuasione occulta esercitata sugli adulti e sui bambini, dalle principali catene di fast-food (QSR):
Methods
All nationally televised advertisements for the top 25 US QSR restaurants from July 1, 2009 to June 30, 2010 were obtained and viewed to identify those advertising meals for children and these advertisements were compared with adult advertisements from the same companies. Content coding included visual and audio assessment of branding, toy premiums, movie tie-ins, and depictions of food. For image size comparisons, the diagonal length of the advertisement was compared with the diagonal length of salient food and drink images.
Results
Almost all of the 92 QSR children’s meal advertisements that aired during the study period were attributable to McDonald’s (70%) or Burger King (29%); 79% of 25,000 television placements aired on just four channels (Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon, Disney XD, and Nicktoons). Visual branding was more common in children’s advertisements vs. adult advertisements, with food packaging present in 88% vs. 23%, and street view of the QSR restaurant present in 41% vs. 12%. Toy premiums or giveaways were present in 69% vs. 1%, and movie tie-ins present in 55% vs. 14% of children’s vs. adult advertisements. Median food image diagonal length was 20% of the advertisement diagonal for children’s and 45% for adult advertisements. The audio script for children’s advertisements emphasized giveaways and movie tie-ins whereas adult advertisements emphasized food taste, price and portion size.
Conclusions
Children’s QSR advertisements emphasized toy giveaways and movie tie-ins rather than food products. Self-regulatory pledges to focus on actual food products instead of toy premiums were not supported by this analysis.
L’autoregolamentazione non funziona, che sorpresa.

*

Zoonosi
Su mBio, i virologi di PREDICT/EcoHealth Alliance identificano 55-58 nuovi virus solo nel pipistrello Pteropus giganteus (aiuto, Ilaria torna in laboratorio!) e fanno un po’ di calcoli:
We used a simple extrapolation to estimate that there are a minimum of 320,000 mammalian viruses awaiting discovery within these nine families, assuming all species harbor a similar number of viruses, with minimal turnover between host species. We estimate the cost of discovering these viruses to be ~$6.3 billion (or ~$1.4 billion for 85% of the total diversity), which if annualized over a 10-year study time frame would represent a small fraction of the cost of many pandemic zoonoses.

*

Quarto regno
Mi fa venire in mente che i virus non sono considerati microrganismi, essendo forme di vita non indipendenti, ma dopo la scoperta del Mimivirus se ne son trovati di ancora più grandi – parecchio di più del batterio medio e anche con più DNA, come il magnifico Pandora in copertina un mese e mezzo fa.

Pas grandeur nature, quand-même!

Sono una specialità dell’univ. Aix-Marseille, da qui innumerevoli battute perché i marsigliesi hanno la fama di esagerare. Questi sono giganti veri e da 10 anni Didier Raoult et al. stanno lottando per dare loro un nuovo regno del vivente.
Allez, l’OA.M., allez l’A.M…