The art of portion size

As I have been participating in diet related research for the past five months, I’m starting to get a grip on the issues that surround this type of research. The department I’m working at mostly focuses on diet in overweight children and adolescents, and one of the problems that comes up most is portion size. ‘Cause how big is one portion supposed to be? And is an adult portion the same as a portion for an adolescent or child? This is particularly important when you try to send out a questionnaire asking how much people actually eat as one portion of chips can be very different from one person to the next.

One other problem is the size of portion throughout time. There are some indications that portion size has increased over the years: people put more food on their plates than they used to. But how can you actually measure this as no one really weighs the amount of food they put on their plate on a daily basis? Well, some researchers in Ithaca published a paper today with a very creative solution: art. As people have always been rather obsessed with food, there are a lot of paintings with food as its main theme. But of course, you want some control over your study; you don’t just want pictures of any food! Standardisation! Randomisation! Well, luckily there’s this one scene that has been painted over and over again over the last thousand years and it also happens to be documented pretty well: The Last Supper.

By looking at the 52 most famous depictions of The Last Supper, all produced over the last 1,000 years, researchers were able to compare portion sizes of a main meal, bread and plate size (as these all happen to be mentioned in the Bible). Over time, the size of a main meal increased with a staggering 69%, while plates became 66% larger. The size of a loaf of bread increased a modest amount with 23%. Several studies have already proven that, when offered more food, people will eat more, regardless of hunger and satiety. Moreover, the speed with which portions increased accelerated over time.

A subtlety that ought to be mentioned here is that this concerns ‘normal’ meals. It is well known that fast food portion have increased over time: take for instance your average McDonalds burger. Since its introduction, it has increased over 500% in size (in the USA of course, in Europe it’s ‘only’ about 300%). And that’s just burgers. As the whole portion size issue seems to be implicated in the surging obesity epidemic of the last few decades, this study seems of particular interest. Maybe we could compare what James Bond has been having for dinner next?

Some lamentations on my Twitter début

As you may have noticed, I've put up a Twitter app somewhere on the right side of this page this week. Though you might have heard me complain about this particular internet service in the past, I finally caved in this week and opened an account. I'm not completely sure how I feel about this just yet, I'm a bit conflicted.

The reason I got Twitter is that you can make it into your own personalised RSS style news feed. I'm now being kept posted on everything that goes on the indie music world, cycling, speed skating and off course some general news. And I must admit: Twitter is an absolute joy in that way. Today for instance, I heard about Wouter Bos resigning from politics before it even appeared on the NOS website (and then witnessed how both 'Wouter Bos' and 'Job Cohen' made it into the London trending topics). The sports stuff is, if possible, even more fun as you can 'follow' individual athletes. Fränk and Andy Schleck are hilarious in that way. Even though they're on the same team and brothers, their communication seems to solely depend on Twitter, where you can, for instance, follow their discussions on how to brake when your hands are so cold you can't squeeze the actual breaks (I think Dave Zabriskie came up with some doubtfully efficient methods in the end). And then there's Twitter guru's as Stephen Fry and Wendy Roby whose 'tweets' are so delightful they make you want to get up in the morning. Or, in Mr Fry's case, put you onto YouTube jems like the trailer below.

But as with everything, Twitter also has its downsides, which for me are my followers. In a dark, twisted sort of way I find this rather exciting, as I feel it gives me some kind of cult-status. Though that is probably 'cult' in the 'Let's all commit suicide together on Doomsday' meaning of the word rather than the aspired Jarvis Cocker/arty/cultural credibility meaning. But aside from that, in the three days I've so far been on Twitter, I've gathered a following of five people of whom I've got absolutely no idea who they are or why they're following me, which is very reminiscent of some not so very cheerful lyrics by Pulp:

I'm being followed home, / I'm being followed home,
I don't know what for, / I don't know by whom.

In a way, I'm doing the same thing: I'm following 67 people by now, all of whom do not know me. But I have got a reason to follow them, be that because I'm love with the music they create (Zola Jesus for instance), because of their whit and inspiring columns (Wendy Roby) or because its just a news feed (the Guardian). By following me, your just following some random person. I'm completely flabbergasted and utterly confused why someone would even want to follow me as, to my knowledge, I'm still not massively famous in any way.

As opposed to other social networking websites, such as Facebook or Last.FM, you do not request to be allowed to follow someone, you just do. So far, I have discovered that some people just start following you hoping that you'll be prompted to start following them as well, which will eventually lead to a large following and a supposed internet popularity. As following someone who is following you would just lead to going round in circles, without ever progressing to something productive, I do not comply with this concept.

I'm just hoping that the anonymity implied by Twitter will stop anyone from actually knocking me out, as happens in the Pulp song, whether in real life or virtually.

We can't go on like this

As you might have heard, Holland isn't the only country facing general elections this year. Here in the UK we're also preparing for some good old electoral fun. Maybe the best part is that no one actually knows for sure when the elections are going to be. That's one of the perks you get when you're the leading party in the government: you get to call the precise date for the elections. All we know is that they're supposed to somewhere between now and May and that Labour will get to decide on the exact date. The benefit of this is supposed to be that you can call the elections at a moment that your party is at its most popular, how that's supposed to benefit a party that's got Gordon Brown as its most important asset beats me (and a whole lot of other people).

Meanwhile, the other parties haves already started campaigning. Well, other parties, mostly the Tories. But that's what its going to be all about anyway: who's going to lead to government for the next five years: Labour or the Conservatives? And will we keep the least popular PM ever? Gordon Brown recently got voted seventh in a poll among middle-aged women from London when asked who they'd like to see as their PM. First on the list was Barack Obama (now that's surprising), closely followed by Tory candidate and multimillionaire David 'I drink Guinness from a can' Cameron. Maybe some short notes on the leading political parties: Labour (you can compare them to PvdA), are the party of the working class and have Gordon Brown as their PM candidate. Apparently, the rest of them are even worse than Gordon. Gosh. You might want to keep in mind that the former PM, Tony Blair, was also a Labour man, and a lot more popular. The Conservatives, or Tories, (a bit like the VVD) are a party for the upper class, and are led by David Cameron (the airbrushed guy on the poster). As you might notice, this leaves the middle class, and those people are thus the aim of the Tory campaigns (though their latest campaign also focussed a bit on the working class who've lost confidence in Brown). For people who don't want to vote for these two parties, there's also some small other parties, such as the Liberal Democrats (Libdem, I'd compare them to D66), led by Nick Clegg, or the British National Party, or BNP, who could be compared to Geert Wilders (does his party have an actual name btw?).

Anyway, why am I trying to explain all this to you? Well, mostly because the Tory campaign has begun to lead a life of its own. I've never seen poster that were easier to mock. And every time they get out some new ones, everyone just starts to gloat when they see the possibilities these offer. So, on to some of my favourites:

(this would work actually)

(Boris Johnson, mayor of London)

As I'm in England now, I'm not the only one with a Doctor Who obsession

Remember Tatcher?

And that's not even as bad as it sounds: in the UK there's this district system, you don't vote for a national candidate, but for local representatives of the national party, who'll then go on to the parliament to represent their district. Scotland doesn't have any Tory candidates.

You can find more of these (and the original posters) on MyDavidCameron. They've actually got a poster with that tombstone. Yup. Now let's see what Balkenende can come up with.

Despite these posters, the Tories are still leading the polls, though Labour is gaining on them. I guess that's mostly because of some seriously stupid mistakes by the Tories. Like claiming that 58% of teenage girls in London gets pregnant. And then realising you've put the decimals wrong and that it's actually 5.8%. Yup, tiny mistake. They've done similar things with figures on crime, which Labour then uses to attack them on. Only to find that stories have leaked about Gordon Brown bullying his employees at Downing Street 10. Very nice all this. I'll just wait till the next set of Tory posters.

Happy New Year!

And as I aspire to be an epidemiologist (and for those of you that didn't know: that's basically what epidemiology is all about, sending annoying questionnaires to a lot of people and then use statistics to work some magic on them), the best way for me to sum up last year is with some statistics.

Last year, I say 173 artists perform, at 76 individual gigs (in the case of festivals, each day was counted as a separate gig), which is 1.46 per week and a 43% increase compared to 2008.

Of those gigs, 43 were in the Netherlands and 31 were in England, which makes averages of 1.05 and 2.81 gigs per week, respectively.

The artists I ran into most often were: We Have Band (4), Patrick Wolf (3) and Handsome Furs (3).

I went to 5 different festivals last year: Motel Mozaïque, London Calling 2009 #1, Diesfestival (it's got the word 'festival' in the name, so I guess it qualifies as a festival in that way), de Affaire and Lowlands.

I bought 27 albums in 2009, which is a 34% decrease compared to 2008.

I managed to review 16% (12) of the gigs I went to, and reviewed 9 albums.

According to Last.FM, I listened to 17,338 songs in 2009, which is 47,5 per day or 333 per week. This is actually and underestimation as it doesn't count songs I listen to on mp3 player or on the radio. My total scrobbled songs at the start of 2010 was 34,123.

So, some NY's resolutions, as that seems to be the thing to do at this time of year:
- Buy more albums. 27 is pathetic.
- Review more gigs/albums. One album a month ought to be reasonable, shouldn't it?