The Hallucinatory Halo of Health, and Other Cautionary Tales

A round-up of news from all over...

The famously shrinking Jared lost tons of weight by eating all his meals at Subway. So everything they have at Subway must be healthy, right? Wrong!

Cornell University found that people who eat at Subway, billed as the healthy, lowfat alternative to typical fast food, tend to consume more calories than McDonald’s diners. They gave students coupons for either a Big Mac (800 calories) or a 12-inch Italian sub with cheese (900 calories) plus any free extras they wanted. Subway eaters were more likely to add chips, a cookie and a non-diet drink because, researchers concluded, Subway has a “health halo” that makes people assume everything is low-calorie. Subway eaters were also more likely to snack later in the day because they think they ‘deserve it” for eating so healthily.

Also because, as everyone knows, free food has no calories.

Their snack of choice? I’m betting it was a Big Mac.

Does anyone really think Jared lost all that weight by eating 12-inch meatball subs with cheese? I’m thinking that most of the people in this study were college students with fast metabolisms, who got the extra cookie because it was free and Subway has really good cookies. The ones who did have weight issues probably just thought, “Well, this is free; I’ll diet tomorrow.” And maybe it’s not that Subway has a “health halo” but that McDonald’s has the opposite: an especially bad rep as unhealthy fast food that makes people choose more carefully. This study may have some merit, but I’ve noticed that researchers, after painstakingly accumulating and analyzing their data, often interpret the facts in an incredibly subjective way. On the bright side, if deluded people keep chowing down on Subway meatball subs, Jared has plenty of big old pants he’d be happy to sell them.


BIG SOUTH AMERICAN BREASTS

I didn’t know this, but it’s become a tradition in Venezuela, a truly beauty-obsessed nation, to give one’s daughter breast implants for her 15th birthday. There’s more plastic surgery taking place in Venezuela than anywhere else on earth – is it any wonder that it produces the most beauty queens? -- and the 15th birthday implants are so popular, they’re advertised on TV. Breast augmentation has become a rite of passage, like nose jobs in Beverly Hills.

Proving the old adage that even a broken clock is right twice a day, socialist president and aspiring revolutionary Hugo Chavez has come out against the ridiculous fad, calling it “horrible” and “the ultimate degradation.” He also wants his country rid of “Western icons”such as Barbie dolls. He lectured the country about this on a recent Saturday TV appearance that ran eight hours.

I hear that people actually watched the whole thing, transfixed. Maybe because it was illustrated.

Obviously, Chavez hasn’t thought this thing through. If he wants a socialist revolution, what could be more helpful than a country full of giant boobs? Also, his stand against fake breasts could be the final straw that makes Venezuelans rise up and overthrow him. He’s said some crazy things before, but this time he’s gone too far!


MORE ON BOOBS

Scientist Patrick Mallucci presented a breakthrough report in London this week. He thoroughly researched photos of hundreds of female celebrities with fake boobs to help plastic surgeons create perfect-looking breasts for clients. (Millions of guys do this job on the Internet, and he’s apparently the only one who gets paid for it.) Speaking to the Breast Enlargement Conference (yes!), he said he’d found the ideal breast job is a “45-55 percent proportion,” with the nipple at least 45 percent from the top and not at the halfway mark or lower.

He also declared British model Caprice to have the best fake boobs in showbiz (they’re absolutely capricious), while the worst are Victoria Beckham’s, which are “unnaturally round.” I tend to agree. Of course, they look that way because in honor of her husband, she had two soccer balls installed.

Also, her nipples are in the bottom 10 percent.

This researcher had wanted to study female celebrities with real breasts, but, unfortunately, he couldn’t find any.


THE RULES OF ATTRACTION: HIGHS AND LOWS

McMaster University in Canada studied the Hadza tribe of Tanzania and found that men with deeper voices had more children than men with higher-pitched voices. Researchers said previous studies found that women find males with deeper voices to be more attractive, judging them to be older, healthier and more dominant and masculine. Also, men perceive women with higher voices as more attractive, subordinate (!), feminine, healthier and younger.

Okay, then, I want to know why Jessica Rabbit, the most seductive cartoon character ever, was voiced by Kathleen Turner, not Jennifer Tilly or the woman who voices Minnie Mouse. And why have men traditionally been attracted to sultry-voiced women like Lauren Bacall and Susan Hayward?

Conversely, why did women like the Bee Gees in the ‘70s? Sting sounds as though he’s on helium, yet he’s perceived to be all the things on the above laundry list. And look at Mick Jagger and Robert Plant: they don’t have deep voices, and I’ll bet they’ve got more children than anybody. Some they don’t even know about.

I personally tend to like lower voices, for both men and women. My husband has worked in radio and doesn’t have the basso profundo “voice of God” announcer’s voice, but it’s still pretty low. It makes him more attractive to me than he’d be with a high voice. On the other hand, he doesn’t have kids. I think this may be another one of those studies in which subjective conclusions have been drawn. Or maybe those conclusions are just particularly true in Tanzania.


STUPID MAN COMPARES OLD WIFE TO NEW

A 43-year-old man in Johor state, Malaysia, was in bed with his 48-year-old wife when he began unfavorably comparing her sex skills with those of his new, younger, second wife. Bad idea!

Wife #1 became enranged, grabbed a kitchen knife and nearly deprived him of his manliness. He managed to get to the hospital and have it sewn securely back in place.

Though the wife could get up to three years in jail, she’s not worried. All she needs is one woman on the jury. Then it’s “justifiable penicide.”

Men, listen up. Never, I repeat, NEVER, compare your older first wife to your younger second wife. Especially when you are naked, and there’s a kitchen knife within reach.


STILL TOO FAT FOR THE RUNWAY

Have you seen the billboards that show anorexic French actress Isabelle Caro nude? The shocking pictures of this emaciated woman are captioned with the slogan, “NO TO ANOREXIA.” There’s a magazine ad, too, and Caro has been featured on Entertainment Tonight and other TV shows. Critics say girls might look at Caro as a role model because she’s getting to be a celebrity, and they have a point. But photographer Oliviero Toscani said that girls with anorexia who look at it would say to themselves that they have to stop dieting, not that they have to look like Isabelle Caro.

My thought is that girls with anorexia will say to themselves that Isabelle Caro looks fat.

Or maybe they’ll look at the pictures and say, “Hey, I’m not that thin... I’d like to be…”

I’ve seen what she looks like, and it’s a skeleton with some skin stretched over it. I don’t know how this woman is still alive. In fact, my theory is that she’s not actually alive. I think there’s been some taxidermy involved. She’s been stuffed and mounted.

Well, mounted.


THE BRITISH ARE PHYSICAL WRECKS

A study by the gym chain L.A. Fitness has found that the fitness of Britons has reached a new low: 53 percent can’t touch their toes, 68 percent can’t do 20 sit-ups, 60 percent can’t carry their weekly shopping home from the supermarket, and a quarter of British women are too fat to fasten their own bras. It has occurred to me that these are the very women who really need to wear bras! I suppose many of them just give up and wear tube tops.

The Brits seriously need to start getting in shape. Here’s one suggestion: If they’re having trouble carrying home their groceries, maybe they should stop buying so much food.

Next: In October’s Allure magazine: Plastic surgery obsession from the doctor’s point of view.