According to a University College London study which monitored the boredom levels of civil servants in the late eighties and then checked in on them last year:

Those who reported feeling a great deal of boredom were 37 per cent more likely to have died by the end of the study, the researchers found.

—Asian News International. “Boredom can kill you”. Yahoo! News India, 8 February 2010.

So boredom isn’t just a waste of time, it can be lethal. I’m not sure what advice is appropriate here, other than: find things you’re into and do them!

In 2009 I achieved some significant things that weren’t on my list of goals, although they’re not concrete achievements in the same sense.
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I’m not a doctor, and this isn’t medical advice.

I am, however, currently deficient in Vitamin D, and apparently so might many of you be—particularly those of you living in less-sunny climes.
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Friday’s post about Froot Loops and the “Smart Choices” program reminded me of a portion of the McLibel case, in which McDonald’s brought in an expert witness, Verner Wheelock, to assert that statements claiming that McDonald’s food wasn’t ”nutritious”, or was “junk food”, were false. I can’t find a transcript online—the site that should have them is producing errors instead—but Wheelock defined “nutritious” as “contains nutrients” and “junk food” as “whatever a person doesn’t like”.
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Apparently in response to increased public interest in eating better, the American food manufacturing industry has put together a campaign called Smart Choices. This is essentially a marketing effort masquerading as a health information campaign, as demonstrated quite well by the fact that Froot Loops qualify as a “smart choice”.

To defend this, the president of the Smart Choices board, Eileen T. Kennedy, gave the New York Times one of the most egregious pieces of dodgy rhetoric I’ve seen in quite some time:

“You’re rushing around, you’re trying to think about healthy eating for your kids and you have a choice between a doughnut and a cereal,” Dr. Kennedy said, evoking a hypothetical parent in the supermarket. “So Froot Loops is a better choice.”

—William Neuman. “For Your Health, Froot Loops”. The New York Times, 04 September 2009.

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(Actually, I’m considering a return to a wider variety of omnivorism, but that’s not as cool a title.)

I gave up eating meat about ten years ago. Since then I’ve been an ovo-lacto-pesce-vegetarian. Now, for the first time, I’m seriously considering eating meat again.
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I’ve never paid much attention to things like body mass index, and always had an idea that it might not be completely reliable as an indicator of individual health, but apparently it really shouldn’t be trusted at all.
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There are plenty of reports that the afternoon nap is good for you, and that it increases alertness and clarity of thought.

I’m not a great sleeper generally, and I’ve wondered whether or not sleeping in the afternoon would help. Now that my schedule is more flexible, I’m going to try a 45-minute nap at 15:00 most days and see whether or not that makes any difference. Anyone out there tried similar experiments?

Which is a shame, because I rather like the stuff. Am probably mildly addicted to it, in fact. But this post makes me aware of a bunch of thinsg I’ve been ignoring about it—primarily the true nature of “crystalline fructose”.
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