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Have you ever found yourself supporting a cause you really believed in, but then getting turned off when someone else took it, well, a little too far? Because that’s where I am with breastmilk-flavored lollipops. The good news is that the confections include no actual human milk. (Can we all agree that this is indeed good news?) “But,” I hear you asking, “how do they know they got the taste right?”
According to interviews with Jason Darling (his real name), the Austin-based founder of Lollyphile, a handful of breastfeeding mothers, “kept sharing their breast milk with our flavor specialists until we were able to candify it.” Which means that, yes, somewhere in Texas, there is at least one food chemist sporting a very special milk mustache. He is also enjoying temporary protection from ear infections.
New faithful
Whenever I cover a report on parental vaccine resistance, naturally, my first question is, “How can I make this subject even more controversial?” Fortunately, Dr. Aamer Imdad of the State University of New York Upstate Medical University in Syracuse answered that question in this month’s Pediatrics: Add religion. Dr. Imdad and his team tracked the startling growth in religious exemptions to vaccines in the state of New York from 2000 to 2011, and all I can say is, “Holy whooping cough!”
The researchers examined rates of religious vaccine exemptions granted by schools in each county. The rates nearly doubled from 0.23% in 2000 to 0.45% in 2011. This trend begs a question: Since the major Western faiths all support immunization, what religion is so successfully recruiting converts in New York State? Is Breaking Amish just that big a hit? Or is there a flowering of new antivaccine congregations? Our Lady of Perpetual Pertussis? Temple Beth Tetanus? The Al-Influenza Center?
This is not just a question about how many angels can fit upon the tip of a needle without getting vaccinated. The authors go on to demonstrate that in counties in which the vaccine exemption rate exceeded 1%, whooping cough rates increased dramatically, among both unvaccinated and vaccinated children. These data further confirm that high immunization rates protect not just the herd, but also the flock.
Drinking problem
Does it seem to you like sugar-sweetened beverages are the new tobacco? I can totally envision a day in the future when my grandchildren ask, “Grandpa, is it true that people used to drink sodas...on purpose? Didn’t you know how dangerous they were? And why is the turn signal in our hover-car still on?”
It’s grown increasingly clear that sugared beverages are among the main contributors to the obesity epidemic, but last week, the Australians published a study demonstrating that sodas also worsen teens’ cardiac risk factors, even when those kids are not overweight. Further analysis linked soda consumption to global warming, nuclear arms proliferation, and the mysterious disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa in 1975.
Why, then, do we continue to give our children this poisonous-yet-oh-so-refreshing swill? A study from Sweden lays the blame on television. I have to say, I don’t imagine Swedish kids spending hours huddled on their starkly modernist sofas staring at their flat-screens, but I don’t know what else I think they’re doing, crafting inexpensive yet gorgeously designed flat-packed bookshelves? At any rate, for every hour of television that 1,733 Swedish 2- to 9-year-old children watched, they increased their sugared beverage consumption by 50%, even when their parents claimed to discourage it. This is proof of what I’ve always said: To combat heart disease worldwide, we must stop Nordic children from watching television. If only we’d known in 1975.
Prone to error
I’m wrong all the time. I know, because I live with teenagers. But it seems every time I open a medical journal, I’m finding something new I’ve messed up. Since when did peer-reviewed journals start talking to my kids? Most recently two physical therapists at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, looked to see if we need to revise our 4-month motor milestones since, as everyone knows, the shift from prone to supine infant sleep position 20 years ago has led to a delay in the average age at which infants learn to roll from front to back. Spoiler alert: We don’t. Because it hasn’t.
Modern infants, put to sleep safely on their backs, start rolling about the same time as their peers born before 1992, with the advantage that they’re less likely to suffer sudden infant death syndrome. Progress is a beautiful thing, at least until it results in a questionably flavored lollipop.
David L. Hill, M.D., FAAP is the author of Dad to Dad: Parenting Like a Pro (AAP Publishing, 2012). He is also vice president of Cape Fear Pediatrics in Wilmington, N.C., and adjunct assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He serves as Program Director for the AAP Council on Communications and Media and as an executive committee member of the North Carolina Pediatric Society. He has recorded commentaries for NPR's All Things Considered and provided content for various print, television and Internet outlets.
Have you ever found yourself supporting a cause you really believed in, but then getting turned off when someone else took it, well, a little too far? Because that’s where I am with breastmilk-flavored lollipops. The good news is that the confections include no actual human milk. (Can we all agree that this is indeed good news?) “But,” I hear you asking, “how do they know they got the taste right?”
According to interviews with Jason Darling (his real name), the Austin-based founder of Lollyphile, a handful of breastfeeding mothers, “kept sharing their breast milk with our flavor specialists until we were able to candify it.” Which means that, yes, somewhere in Texas, there is at least one food chemist sporting a very special milk mustache. He is also enjoying temporary protection from ear infections.
New faithful
Whenever I cover a report on parental vaccine resistance, naturally, my first question is, “How can I make this subject even more controversial?” Fortunately, Dr. Aamer Imdad of the State University of New York Upstate Medical University in Syracuse answered that question in this month’s Pediatrics: Add religion. Dr. Imdad and his team tracked the startling growth in religious exemptions to vaccines in the state of New York from 2000 to 2011, and all I can say is, “Holy whooping cough!”
The researchers examined rates of religious vaccine exemptions granted by schools in each county. The rates nearly doubled from 0.23% in 2000 to 0.45% in 2011. This trend begs a question: Since the major Western faiths all support immunization, what religion is so successfully recruiting converts in New York State? Is Breaking Amish just that big a hit? Or is there a flowering of new antivaccine congregations? Our Lady of Perpetual Pertussis? Temple Beth Tetanus? The Al-Influenza Center?
This is not just a question about how many angels can fit upon the tip of a needle without getting vaccinated. The authors go on to demonstrate that in counties in which the vaccine exemption rate exceeded 1%, whooping cough rates increased dramatically, among both unvaccinated and vaccinated children. These data further confirm that high immunization rates protect not just the herd, but also the flock.
Drinking problem
Does it seem to you like sugar-sweetened beverages are the new tobacco? I can totally envision a day in the future when my grandchildren ask, “Grandpa, is it true that people used to drink sodas...on purpose? Didn’t you know how dangerous they were? And why is the turn signal in our hover-car still on?”
It’s grown increasingly clear that sugared beverages are among the main contributors to the obesity epidemic, but last week, the Australians published a study demonstrating that sodas also worsen teens’ cardiac risk factors, even when those kids are not overweight. Further analysis linked soda consumption to global warming, nuclear arms proliferation, and the mysterious disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa in 1975.
Why, then, do we continue to give our children this poisonous-yet-oh-so-refreshing swill? A study from Sweden lays the blame on television. I have to say, I don’t imagine Swedish kids spending hours huddled on their starkly modernist sofas staring at their flat-screens, but I don’t know what else I think they’re doing, crafting inexpensive yet gorgeously designed flat-packed bookshelves? At any rate, for every hour of television that 1,733 Swedish 2- to 9-year-old children watched, they increased their sugared beverage consumption by 50%, even when their parents claimed to discourage it. This is proof of what I’ve always said: To combat heart disease worldwide, we must stop Nordic children from watching television. If only we’d known in 1975.
Prone to error
I’m wrong all the time. I know, because I live with teenagers. But it seems every time I open a medical journal, I’m finding something new I’ve messed up. Since when did peer-reviewed journals start talking to my kids? Most recently two physical therapists at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, looked to see if we need to revise our 4-month motor milestones since, as everyone knows, the shift from prone to supine infant sleep position 20 years ago has led to a delay in the average age at which infants learn to roll from front to back. Spoiler alert: We don’t. Because it hasn’t.
Modern infants, put to sleep safely on their backs, start rolling about the same time as their peers born before 1992, with the advantage that they’re less likely to suffer sudden infant death syndrome. Progress is a beautiful thing, at least until it results in a questionably flavored lollipop.
David L. Hill, M.D., FAAP is the author of Dad to Dad: Parenting Like a Pro (AAP Publishing, 2012). He is also vice president of Cape Fear Pediatrics in Wilmington, N.C., and adjunct assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He serves as Program Director for the AAP Council on Communications and Media and as an executive committee member of the North Carolina Pediatric Society. He has recorded commentaries for NPR's All Things Considered and provided content for various print, television and Internet outlets.
Have you ever found yourself supporting a cause you really believed in, but then getting turned off when someone else took it, well, a little too far? Because that’s where I am with breastmilk-flavored lollipops. The good news is that the confections include no actual human milk. (Can we all agree that this is indeed good news?) “But,” I hear you asking, “how do they know they got the taste right?”
According to interviews with Jason Darling (his real name), the Austin-based founder of Lollyphile, a handful of breastfeeding mothers, “kept sharing their breast milk with our flavor specialists until we were able to candify it.” Which means that, yes, somewhere in Texas, there is at least one food chemist sporting a very special milk mustache. He is also enjoying temporary protection from ear infections.
New faithful
Whenever I cover a report on parental vaccine resistance, naturally, my first question is, “How can I make this subject even more controversial?” Fortunately, Dr. Aamer Imdad of the State University of New York Upstate Medical University in Syracuse answered that question in this month’s Pediatrics: Add religion. Dr. Imdad and his team tracked the startling growth in religious exemptions to vaccines in the state of New York from 2000 to 2011, and all I can say is, “Holy whooping cough!”
The researchers examined rates of religious vaccine exemptions granted by schools in each county. The rates nearly doubled from 0.23% in 2000 to 0.45% in 2011. This trend begs a question: Since the major Western faiths all support immunization, what religion is so successfully recruiting converts in New York State? Is Breaking Amish just that big a hit? Or is there a flowering of new antivaccine congregations? Our Lady of Perpetual Pertussis? Temple Beth Tetanus? The Al-Influenza Center?
This is not just a question about how many angels can fit upon the tip of a needle without getting vaccinated. The authors go on to demonstrate that in counties in which the vaccine exemption rate exceeded 1%, whooping cough rates increased dramatically, among both unvaccinated and vaccinated children. These data further confirm that high immunization rates protect not just the herd, but also the flock.
Drinking problem
Does it seem to you like sugar-sweetened beverages are the new tobacco? I can totally envision a day in the future when my grandchildren ask, “Grandpa, is it true that people used to drink sodas...on purpose? Didn’t you know how dangerous they were? And why is the turn signal in our hover-car still on?”
It’s grown increasingly clear that sugared beverages are among the main contributors to the obesity epidemic, but last week, the Australians published a study demonstrating that sodas also worsen teens’ cardiac risk factors, even when those kids are not overweight. Further analysis linked soda consumption to global warming, nuclear arms proliferation, and the mysterious disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa in 1975.
Why, then, do we continue to give our children this poisonous-yet-oh-so-refreshing swill? A study from Sweden lays the blame on television. I have to say, I don’t imagine Swedish kids spending hours huddled on their starkly modernist sofas staring at their flat-screens, but I don’t know what else I think they’re doing, crafting inexpensive yet gorgeously designed flat-packed bookshelves? At any rate, for every hour of television that 1,733 Swedish 2- to 9-year-old children watched, they increased their sugared beverage consumption by 50%, even when their parents claimed to discourage it. This is proof of what I’ve always said: To combat heart disease worldwide, we must stop Nordic children from watching television. If only we’d known in 1975.
Prone to error
I’m wrong all the time. I know, because I live with teenagers. But it seems every time I open a medical journal, I’m finding something new I’ve messed up. Since when did peer-reviewed journals start talking to my kids? Most recently two physical therapists at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, looked to see if we need to revise our 4-month motor milestones since, as everyone knows, the shift from prone to supine infant sleep position 20 years ago has led to a delay in the average age at which infants learn to roll from front to back. Spoiler alert: We don’t. Because it hasn’t.
Modern infants, put to sleep safely on their backs, start rolling about the same time as their peers born before 1992, with the advantage that they’re less likely to suffer sudden infant death syndrome. Progress is a beautiful thing, at least until it results in a questionably flavored lollipop.
David L. Hill, M.D., FAAP is the author of Dad to Dad: Parenting Like a Pro (AAP Publishing, 2012). He is also vice president of Cape Fear Pediatrics in Wilmington, N.C., and adjunct assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He serves as Program Director for the AAP Council on Communications and Media and as an executive committee member of the North Carolina Pediatric Society. He has recorded commentaries for NPR's All Things Considered and provided content for various print, television and Internet outlets.