Disease Proof

• Want your pet mouse to live longer? Put it in the freezer—just kidding! Although scientists have discovered that mice with genetically engineered lowered body temperatures have longer lives. I wonder if this means anything for human longevity. Jia-Rui Chong of The Houston Chronicle reports: Thanks for the tip Elijah!

Scientists engineered mice to have body temperatures 0.5 to 0.9 degrees lower than normal mice. Female experimental mice lived a median of 662 days — about 112 days longer than normal female mice. Male mice survived a median of 805 days — 89 days longer than their normal counterparts.

• China, lots of people—lots of fat people. According to the Associated Press 60 million Chinese are now obese. What’s to blame?
  

"An increasing number of Chinese are eating more fat and junk food but less grains and vegetables, leading to a high number of cases of high blood pressure and diabetes," Pan was quoted as telling a conference on food consumption and health in Beijing.

• Does where you live increase your chance of being fat? Probably, if you live above a pastry shop, but new research shows people who live in sparse/sprawling neighborhoods are more likely to be overweight. Ben Harder of The Los Angeles Times explains:

Matthew Turner, author of a new and controversial study on the topic, acknowledges that in the last three years, roughly a dozen studies have taken statistical snapshots of where people live and how heavy they are — most reporting that people who live in sprawling neighborhoods tend, on average, to be fatter.

• Okay, they found it! Tomatoes served in restaurants were the source of the short-lived Salmonella outbreak from last week. Amanda Gardner of HealthDay News has more:

"We've done standard interviews with people who've become ill with this organism and with well people in the same communities, and we've identified tomatoes eaten in restaurants as the cause of this outbreak," Dr. Christopher Braden, chief of outbreak response and surveillance in the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Foodborne Branch, said during a teleconference.

• David B. Caruso of The Washington Post reports New York City wants restaurants to provide calorie content of food on their menus. Naturally many of the fast-food companies have a problem with it. After all, the menus will be too cluttered—feel free to roll your eyes:

John Whipple, president of the National Council of Chain Restaurants, called the proposal costly and unconstitutional. He also said it would penalize eateries for providing nutritional information voluntarily.

"Restaurants should be encouraged in their health education efforts, not dissuaded from such effort by misplaced regulatory policies," Whipple said in written testimony to the New York City Board of Health.

• This really says a lot about the state of health in this country. According to Reuters more and more teenagers have fat bellies. Researchers discovered that belly fat in teenagers has increased 65 percent since the 1990s. Not good, because tummy fat is bad news:

Belly fat is more dangerous than general weight gain, because abdominal and visceral fat — found surrounding the internal organs — is more clearly and strongly linked with disease than general body fat.