Director of Emergency Services at Bikur Cholim
Dear friends and readers. In my new position as the Director
of Emergency Services at Bikur Cholim hospital — the
oldest (179 years) hospital in Israel, which was started by
Reb Yosef Chaim Sonnefeld — since this hospital serves
downtown Jerusalem including the area of Meah Shearim and
Geula, it is a great privilege as well as a challenge to
provide the best possible care for this important community.
I would like to request from my foreign readers in Europe,
South Africa and Australia, to contact me if they can help
organize groups to help the hospital. I am willing to come
and speak at parlor meetings to help move this forward.
I have often quoted articles from the scientific literature
and I was recently shown an article on fat printed in the Aug
04 edition of National Geographic. I will summarize
the article, with the statistics which are very
interesting.
More than 25 percent of people have a fat problem. This is
true in the USA, South Africa, Russia, Turkey, Egypt,
Bahrain, Thailand, the Pacific Islands (where fat is
considered attractive), and of course Israel. This leads to
sky-high risks of colon cancer, heart disease, arthritis,
high blood pressure, gall stones and diabetes.
More statistics: Ride the elevator, you'll burn 3 calories.
Take the steps — 19. Washing the dishes burns 80. Bike
for 45 minutes at 10 km/hr burns 175.
Surgeries for obesity have risen from 16,200 to 103,000 in
ten years. That is in the USA, but in Israel the statistics
on surgeries should be even worse as the Kupot realize that
dieting strategies are less likely to work.
The article quotes Barbara Rolls from Pennsylvania: We tend
to eat everything that is on the plate put in front of us.
Other experts note that we live in a restaurant society where
food is designed to be good tasting, but unhealthy. Putting
that together with finishing all that is put before us is a
green light to obesity. Advertising geared to children makes
things worse. The array of candy, Shabbos treats and spicy
snacks is a multi-million shekel business. This is the
problem.
There have been many dietary solutions proposed, including
the food pyramid with its low fat recommendations, to the
Atkins diet which avoids carbohydrates at all costs.
Let me remind you that food is made up three components:
proteins, fats and carbohydrates. Proteins can be found in
nuts, beans, meats, dairy products. Fats are in oils, butter,
cheeses, margarine, avocado, nuts. Carbohydrates are sugars,
starches, bread, rice, cereal.
We'll see about these diets next week. Write me in care of
the Yated.
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