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Educating children on matters of food

Educating children on matters of food

As evidenced by recent declarations by the Children’s Secretary (see here and here),
the British government is determined to fight childhood obesity and to initiate
nothing less than a “lifestyle revolution”, resulting in more children leading
a healthy and active life. With this aim in view, a free cookbook was recently distributed to 11
year-olds by the Department for Children, Schools and Families. In
addition to that, from 2011
cookery lessons will be compulsory in England's secondary schools for children
aged 11 to 14, and £3.3 million will be invested in order to
recruit and train people capable of teaching cooking skills to children.
Parents are also urged to teach their children how to prepare meals from
scratch.

These are certainly sensible steps to take. With nine out of 10 British adults
and two-thirds of children expected to be overweight or obese by the year 2050
unless action is taken (http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/jul/30/obesity),
we are clearly dealing with an important public health issue. And given the
significance of the link between excess weight and an unhealthy diet (lack of
exercise being another major contributing factor), it seems clear that we should
teach children what a healthy diet consists in and equip them not to be dependent on
the local fast-food chain when the time of the next meal comes. We can hope
that the government’s scheme will help to achieve this, and that parents will
follow the lead – though it is also necessary that the meals provided in school
canteens be in keeping with those aims. However, I would like to suggest that
these steps should form part of a wider project meant to educate children on
matters of food. We want our children to be healthy, but we should also want
them to become autonomous and ethically responsible eaters (and, more
generally, consumers).

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Achievement and the welfare of children

A report commissioned by the Children’s Society claims that the aggressive pursuit of individual achievement is damaging the interests of children in the UK: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7861762.stm The principal author is Lord Richard Layard, whose book *Happiness: Lessons from a New Science* (Allen Lane, 2005) is the best account of the last few decades of research on… Read More »Achievement and the welfare of children

Which issues are moral issues? The Case of Egg Freezing

The link in the Guardian reads "Fertility experts warn about morality of egg freezing". In the Telegraph the word "moral" doesn't appear in the headline, but does appear in the lede (the first sentence of the story, which is supposed to summarize the essential facts): The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and the British Fertility Society… Read More »Which issues are moral issues? The Case of Egg Freezing

EightFourteen is enough

As the Guardian reports, what started out as the more usual happy, wonder-of-modern medicine story of octuplets born in California has turned a little bit sour. It turns out that the 33 year old single mother of the eight newborns who lives with her parents, has six children already, the eldest of whom is seven. That’s 14 children below the age of eight. The story gets more difficult. Apparently, the mother is a self described ‘professional student’ who lives on “education grants and her parents’ money” and plans on becoming a “television childcare expert.” Further, the woman’s parents have recently filed for bankruptcy and her mother has previously consulted a psychologist about her daughter’s obsession with children.

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Lies, libel and layered voice analysis

Two Swedish scientists have been threatened with legal action after publishing a scientific article sharply criticizing what they consider "charlatanry" in detecting deception. Nemesysco, a company named in the article wrote to the researchers that they may be sued for libel if they continue to write on this subject in the future. As a response to another legal threat the publisher has removed the online version of the article. Trying to remove information from the net is often counterproductive ("the Streisand effect"), and now copies of the article circulate online. Nemesysco has inadvertently drawn attention to the issue of the article, likely to their own detriment.

But can a scientific publication be libel? Does libel law serve a moral purpose?

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Why We Need a War on Aging

Based on presentation given at 2009 World Economic Forum in the Live Long and Prosper session, January 28, 2009 by Professor Julian Savulescu.

  1. There is no normal human life span, or if there is, it was very short.

Life-expectancy for the ancient Romans was circa 23 years; today the average life-expectancy in the world is circa 64 years.

For the past 150 years, best-performance life-expectancy (i.e. life-expectancy in the country where it is highest) has increased at a very steady rate of 3 months per year.

  1. Aging is the biggest cause of death and misery in humanity.

100 000 people die per day from age-related causes.  150 000 people die per day in total. Cardiovascular disease (strongly age-related) is emerging as the biggest cause of death in the developing world.

  1. Progress is possible

The goal should be to extend the HEALTHY, PRODUCTIVE lifespan, not to just keep people alive longer on respirators or in old people's homes. This is embodied in the concept not of life span but “health span”.  The easiest way to do this is to prolong healthy life not attempt to compress morbidity

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Allen Buchanan: Leverhulme Lectures 2009′ Ethics in Political Reality’

We are pleased to announce Professor Allen Buchanan’s Leverhulme Lecture Series ‘Ethics in Political Reality’. Allen Buchanan is James B. Duke Professor Philosophy at Duke University. His research is in political philosophy, with a focus on international issues, and bioethics, with a focus on the ethics of genetic interventions with human beings. He is visiting Oxford as  Leverhulme Visiting Professor for four months, and will be giving the 2009 Uehiro Lectures.

The lectures are open to all including the public and there is no need to book. For further information, please email ethics@philosophy.ox.ac.uk

 

Please see full post for the details on each lecture

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Sid Vicious, Julieraptor, and the Ownership of Fossils

There is a thriving market in fossils, much of which can be found on-line. Extinctions, Inc (www.extinctions.com) claim to have the ‘… largest, most complete, and most detailed fossil websites on the internet’ and claim to have been selling fossils for over thirty years. A visitor to their extensive website can purchase the fossil of the week (this week it is a mosasaurus anceps tooth and a shark tooth preserved in the same rock) for US$ 99-. The visitor can also purchase the ‘DinoStore item of the week’ (this week it is a dinosaur tooth from Morocco), also for US$99-. Fossils Direct (www.fossilsdirect.co.uk) advertise themselves as the ‘Premier supplier of high quality British fossils for sale.’ They advertise an impressive range of fossils at prices starting from under £10-. Two Guys Fossils (http://www.twoguysfossils.com/dino_jurassicbones.htm) claim to be the ‘world’s largest dealer of Jurassic age dinosaur bones’. They currently advertise an impressive range of dinosaur bones at prices up to US$1000- for a 19 inch long camptosaurus femur.
 

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Tennis and Sex

Once a week I thrash around haplessly on the tennis court.   This week, I’m also a tennis spectator.  While the global economy implodes, at least one event appears to be untouched – the 2009 Australian Tennis Open.    Andrew Murray’s defeat yesterday means he can’t now net the eye-watering AUD$2 million first prize for the men’s single title.   The women’s champion will earn….well, exactly the same, AUD $2million.

After a long running campaign by various groups, all the Grand Slams tennis tournaments now offer   equal prize money to both sexes:  Wimbledon fell into line in 2007.  The argument was that just as no distinction should be made between women and men in the office, so there should be no distinction drawn on the court.


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