The Brave Women Of The World Be United
Posted by Michelle Moquin on August 10th, 2010
Below is the cover of TIME magazine. It is a shocking photo of a young girl with a mutilated face, thanks to the Taliban and the help of her husband and in-laws. The story inside tells of Aisha’s attempt to flight and fight for her life, resulting in the cutting off of her nose and both her ears. There is no word to describe this atrocity. “Devastating” just doesn’t cover it.
When I try to get into the minds of the kind of men who commit this kind of devastation, and try to understand how they can be so unmoved, so unfeeling, I of course, can not. It is crazy to think that I could grasp one bit of understanding, when there is no reason for this atrocity to happen – There is no reasoning with men like this. They are something that I am not. Evil, pure evil.
Who could be so cruel to torture and maim a woman? Evil.
The Taliban pounded on the door just before midnight, demanding that Aisha, 18, be punished for running away from her husband’s house. Her in-laws treated her like a slave, Aisha pleaded. They beat her. If she hadn’t run away, she would have died. Her judge, a local Taliban commander, was unmoved. Aisha’s brother-in-law held her down while her husband pulled out a knife. First he sliced off her ears. Then he started on her nose.
This didn’t happen 10 years ago, when the Taliban ruled Afghanistan. It happened last year. Now hidden in a secret women’s shelter in Kabul, Aisha listens obsessively to the news. Talk that the Afghan government is considering some kind of political accommodation with the Taliban frightens her. “They are the people that did this to me,” she says, touching her damaged face. “How can we reconcile with them?”
(See pictures of Afghan women and the return of the Taliban.)
In June, Afghan President Hamid Karzai established a peace council tasked with exploring negotiations with the Taliban. A month later, Tom Malinowski from Human Rights Watch met Karzai. During their conversation, Karzai mused on the cost of the conflict in human lives and wondered aloud if he had any right to talk about human rights when so many were dying. “He essentially asked me,” says Malinowski, “What is more important, protecting the right of a girl to go to school or saving her life?” How Karzai and his international allies answer that question will have far-reaching consequences, not only for Afghanistan’s women, but the country as a whole.
(Watch TIME’s video on photographing Aisha for the cover.)
As the war in Afghanistan enters its ninth year, the need for an exit strategy weighs on the minds of U.S. policymakers. Such an outcome, it is assumed, would involve reconciliation with the Taliban. But Afghan women fear that in the quest for a quick peace, their progress may be sidelined. “Women’s rights must not be the sacrifice by which peace is achieved,” says parliamentarian Fawzia Koofi.
Yet that may be where negotiations are heading. The Taliban will be advocating a version of an Afghan state in line with their own conservative views, particularly on the issue of women’s rights. Already there is a growing acceptance that some concessions to the Taliban are inevitable if there is to be genuine reconciliation. “You have to be realistic,” says a diplomat in Kabul. “We are not going to be sending troops and spending money forever. There will have to be a compromise, and sacrifices will have to be made.”
For Afghanistan’s women, an early withdrawal of international forces could be disastrous. An Afghan refugee who grew up in Canada, Mozhdah Jamalzadah recently returned home to launch an Oprah-style talk show in which she has been able to subtly introduce questions of women’s rights without provoking the ire of religious conservatives. On a recent episode, a male guest told a joke about a foreign human-rights team in Afghanistan. In the cities, the team noticed that women walked six paces behind their husbands. But in rural Helmand, where the Taliban is strongest, they saw a woman six steps ahead. The foreigners rushed to congratulate the husband on his enlightenment – only to be told that he stuck his wife in front because they were walking through a minefield. As the audience roared with laughter, Jamalzadah reflected that it may take about 10 to 15 years before Afghan women can truly walk alongside men. But once they do, she believes, all Afghans will benefit. “When we talk about women’s rights,” Jamalzadah says, “we are talking about things that are important to men as well – men who want to see Afghanistan move forward. If you sacrifice women to make peace, you are also sacrificing the men who support them and abandoning the country to the fundamentalists that caused all the problems in the first place.”
(See picture s Muslim women leading a soft revolution.)
TIME Magazine Cover Explains What Happens To Afghan Women If ‘We Leave Afghanistan,’ But That Tragedy Is Already Occurring
- Huff Po.
Time Magazine is out with a new cover story that attempts to explain “What Happens If We Leave Afghanistan.” The piece is accompanied by a powerful portrait of Aisha, an Afghan woman who had her nose and ears cut off by Taliban decree after attempting to escape abusive family members. The intense image sets the scene for the crux of the article’s argument — that the rights of Afghan women would be destroyed by a potential settlement between the U.S. and the Taliban.
As Time’s Aryn Baker writes, the U.S looks potentially poised to negotiate with the Taliban in what she calls the “quest for a quick peace.” Though this trade-off could provide some semblance of stability in Afghanistan, a condition would presumably set the table for an eventual drawdown of U.S. troops, Baker argues that it would come at a devastating price for the nation’s women.
Though such a conclusion does raise a number of concerns about the terms of an American withdrawal, it also seems to overlook a variety of tragic conditions that Afghan women currently face, even with the heavy U.S. military and diplomatic influence in the country.
Despite promising rhetoric for women’s rights in the 2004 version of Afghanistan’s Constitution and subsequent legislation, the country has largely resisted implementing any meaningful progress in the treatment of women. In fact, in 2009, amid international protest, Afghan President Hamid Karzai signed a bill that was seen by many as the legalization of rape against women.
Though President George W. Bush repeatedly spoke loftily about the “freeing” of Afghan women following the invasion of the country in 2001, reports and numbers show that success stories more often stand as statistical outliers rather than narrative descriptions of a bettering situation for women.
If the treatment of Afghan women has not improved — and may have even deteriorated — since the American invasion, the question of what happens if we stay in Afghanistan may be just as important a question as what happens if we leave.
In the video below, Brave New Films argues that the idea of Afghan women being free after the toppling of the Taliban is a “false perception,” and that “war won’t liberate Afghan women.” People interviewed in the video maintain that the advancement of women’s rights has been “cosmetic,” and that the actual quality of life for women has not improved since the occupation. In some cases, they argue, the treatment of women has worsened due to an extremely fundamentalist judiciary and the radicalization of a population currently engaged in what risks becoming a state of perpetual war.
Readers: The term “shocking” has hardly a meaning anymore when the “shocking” photo or story has become an everyday experience in this world. And it has. Things can’t get any more “shocking” than they already are. Men can’t get any more evil than they already are.
As you know I write about subjects like this all of the time. What has changed? I HOPE that the world is getting to a better place, that we are making strides, but the evil keeps growing and at times surpassing all of the good that is happening. It feels as if we are sometimes in a race to save the women of the world, before the evil destroys them.
Comments? Rants? Words of HOPE? Blog me.
Herbert: Again, thanks for the update. It would be cool when you do get your x-rays to fill us in so those of us that didn’t get to see this once-in-a-lifetime line-up can enjoy it too, through you.
Debra: You’re welcome. I didn’t include all of the photos from the article as you obviously noticed. I decided to post only one of the men and one of the women. I noticed too that the only other photo was of the women resting. That perturbed me a bit. I am also sure that you do plenty that requires a much needed rest. It would’ve been nice if the story highlighted that part as well.
Joyse: Thanks for the compliment. I can never get enough on this blog because if it weren’t for the positive feedback and the positive outcome from whatever I post and whatever is said, it would be tough for me to continue doing this daily. I want to know that something is working, and my readership tells me that it is.
Carla: Please tell the Columbian drug dealer to stand in line. Somehow, I bet he doesn’t take kindly to waiting. And as far as a machismo experience bringing out the real me…Ha! Tell him this BABE, latin or not, has a voluptuous set of flapping lips, and a bod to match, that should he ever have the pleasure of experiencing the real me, would set him on fire beyond his wildest hottest dreams. Unfortunately right now, tell him to keep dreamin’ – cause that’s all he’s got. :)
So back to you…Good luck with the movie thing. I HOPE that it plays out the way you want it to. Oh and by the way Carla, if you’re selling, I’m buying :)
Hi Rita and Conchita!
Paul: Happy to hear that you were pleased with the outcome. No, I was not there. I would have loved to join all of you but the timing was not good.
Zen Lill: Ah..Yes a cameo role – that’s the ticket. I like that much better :) And although I am a voyeur at heart…love listening and watching others have live sex, no unfortunately I was not there filming. But invite me, and I just may take you up on it. :)
Ruth: I so agree with you.
Lastly, greed over a great story is surfacing from my ‘loyal’(?) readers. With all this back and forth about who owns what, that appears on my blog, let me reiterate that all material posted on my blog becomes the sole property of my blog. If you want to reserve any proprietary rights don’t post it to my blog. I will prominently display this caveat on my blog from now on to remind those who may have forgotten this notice.
Gratefully your blog host,
michelle
Aka BABE: We all know what this means by now :)
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August 10th, 2010 at 10:16 am
I know that I am often the voice of bad news, but I feel that somebody has to tell what’s happening to our children and the rest of us.
Recently a national health study revealed that our daughters are reaching puberty much earlier than they should because of the chemicals being put into the the things they eat and the utensils they use to eat and drink from.
Again the Chinese are poisoning our children. They could care less and do not have to worry about legal repercussions. Here is the latest.
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Puberty Hits Girls As Young As 7
Huffington Post | Sara Yin ?First Posted: 08- 9-10 04:27 PM | Updated: 08- 9-10 05:27 PM
More girls are reaching puberty at a younger age, often as early as 7 or 8, according to a new study.
Published today in Pediatrics, the study links the alarming trend to rising levels of obesity and environmental chemicals found in everyday items– like water bottles and makeup– that mimic estrogen.
Dr. Frank Biro, lead author of the study and director of adolescent medicine at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, told the New York Times: “It’s certainly throwing up a warning flag… I think we need to think about the stuff we’re exposing our bodies to and the bodies of our kids.”
Obesity is cited as a major factor, because body fat produces estrogen, which in turn triggers breast development and menstruation. But he also suggests the role of endocrine-disrupting chemicals like Bisphenol-A (BPA), which is used to make the plastics in water bottles and baby bottles. In January 2010, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration raised concerns over the widespread use of BPA’s in consumer products, but so far little has been done to regulate its usage.
The study measures puberty as the start of breast development, the most ostensible sign of puberty in girls. Biro’s team took breast measurements of 1,239 girls aged 6 to 9 living in San Francisco Bay area, greater Cincinnati and East Harlem in New York. Each age group was made up of 30% each whites, blacks and Hispanics, and 5% Asians.
According to the study’s abstract, at 7 years old, 10.4% of whites, 23.4% of blacks and 14.9% of Hispanic girls were developing breasts. At 8 years, the figures increased to 18.3%, 42.9% and 30.9%, respectively.
Interestingly, these proportions increased the most among whites when compared to 10 years ago, the study says. A Time magazine article questions exactly how young puberty can start — and why this matters.
The fact that the onset of puberty has not shifted earlier among African-American girls over the last decade, says Biro, may simply reflect the fact that they have reached the minimum biological age at which sexual development can occur. “How young can you go? Maybe white populations have not arrived at that biologic minimum,” he says.
There are other far-reaching consequences of early puberty: increased risk of breast cancer (linked to an overexposure of estrogen), depression, youth violence.
But perhaps most alarming of all are the quieter emotional repercussions, as the Times article notes:
Socially and emotionally, life can be difficult for a girl who has a child’s mind in a woman’s body and is not ready to deal with sexual advances from men and boys, or cope with her own hormone-spiked emotions and sexual impulses.
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When are we going to stop buying anything made in China? Walmart’s should be boycotted. Shop there and poison your family. They will eventually get some form of cancer.
Walmart is just in it for the money. They figure that in 20 years when the cancer sets in no one will be able to prove cause and effect. So they skate.
Ruth
August 10th, 2010 at 10:22 am
Islam is but a cult that allows men to practice pedophilia and own women as if they were cattle.
Arab men who practice islam like to claim that they do not condone such behavior. But the man they force women to accept as a saint, muhammad is a pedophile who made his pedophiliac act legitimate in their eyes because he married the 6 year old and Oh yes didn’t have sex with her until she was 9.
Arab men are disgusting. We are forced to be part of their lives because the rest of the civilized world wants their oil.
Men are sick.
Qal’eh-ye Now
August 10th, 2010 at 10:25 am
There will be no justice for women who are forced to practice islam until oil is no longer a necessary energy source.
Men do not care what happens to us as long as they can purchase oil from the men who do it.
Gardez
August 10th, 2010 at 10:27 am
Arab men who practice islam are the most disgusting animals on the planet. They ought to eliminated like the vermin they are.
They whine at every imagined slight while subjecting their female population to horror unimaginable to civilized people.
I hope the Jews nuke the lot of them as long as they remove us women first.
Kheyrabad
August 10th, 2010 at 10:32 am
I hope whatever moment that is against a mosque going up in Manhattan succeeds. I realize the white bigots are not doing it for the plight of women, but as far as I a woman who is suffering under these despicable men however they are prevented from practicing their abomination I am for it.
If every arab male in America who practice islam was dragged off and shot it would be too good for them. They justify the treatment us by quoting the koran. The book I would like to quote is the one titled. “BURN IN HELL YOU SICK BASTARDS.”
Herat
August 10th, 2010 at 2:55 pm
Herat, you took the words out of my mouth, they are sick bastards. I am sick myself right now…to my stomach, this shit has got to stop. Off with their heads is too good for this kind of brutality, they need a slow death. I am swearing like a truck driver in my head right now. What to do?? Misch, I sent you an email re: male assistance for human trafficking, the same principles may apply here as well, no? Males need to stop these barbaric males. – ZL
August 10th, 2010 at 4:21 pm
I, too, am very sickened by this seemingly endless plight of women in this male dominated religious society. The United States occupation of Afghanistan, which is said by some to have been begun by the CIA due to their need to restart the opium industry, as the Taliban had basically shut it down for so long. Since the war on drugs is a necessary ongoing war, due to the financial gain to the US industrial war complex and the US military, ironically the opium industry has increased most dramatically since the invasion in 2001. But, perhaps this is a whole other story.
My point is that this country, or any other for that matter is not doing anything about this issue from a political basis and seem to sweep it under the rug. Much like Rwanda, Ghana, Tibet and so many other areas where people are being slaughtered. The financial gain and industrial interests just aren’t there for our political machine to seem to care…
I wish I had an answer, but am unable to come up with one at this time.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/09/taliban-execute-pregnant_n_676203.html
August 10th, 2010 at 5:17 pm
Doug, nice link… Notice the man who got her pregnant was nowhere to be found though ‘he’d planned to marry her’ hmmm, the men in Afghanistan apparently have cocks but no cajones. A sickening group of specimens…
Mischa, forgot to response to your comment – the idea of people watching me have my hot monkey lovin’ does turn me on, I’ve got a balcony all ready for you ; ) I don’t have a female type but if were busily watching myself and companion on my new giant mirrors and caught a glimpse of you or anyone else our there I could just find myself in the middle if a luvfest, one never knows till the opportunity arrives. Oh baby…!
August 10th, 2010 at 5:38 pm
forgot: I’m with you, Ruth, boycott WalMart and made in China products…and I’ve got one of those young and hormonal little girls on my hands now, wish me luck with that : ) – ZL
August 10th, 2010 at 7:25 pm
Zen Lill
You have my best wishes always. I have a few growing up of my own.
Ruth
August 10th, 2010 at 7:44 pm
This article was sent to you by someone who found it on SFGate.
The original article can be found on SFGate.com here:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/g/a/2010/08/09/moneytales080910.DTL
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Monday, August 9, 2010 (SF Gate)
What makes a bank — or a customer — give up the fight over a fee?
Rob Baedeker, Special to SF Gate
Sarcasm won’t get you very far with a bank’s customer service rep.
I learned this firsthand recently while trying to get my credit card company, Chase, to remove a $39 late fee from my account. (Granted, my payment arrived a couple of days late, but $39?! Come on!) The rep rejected my repeated requests to waive the fee, even though I worded my plea a little differently each time, and experimented with a range of
tones.
She said the amount of the fee was based on my balance, which was about $1,600 at the time (hold your fire, readers! I did it for the airline miles!).
It was then that I lost my cool.
“OK, well why not just charge me more than $39!” I asked.
“Why would we do that?” she responded, seeming genuinely puzzled.
“So you can make even more money!” I said, unquietly.
This neither amused her nor changed her mind about waving the fee. (It also turns out that Chase couldn’t have charged me more — $39 is the upper limit, set by the Federal Reserve, although that will change to $25 (with some caveats) come Aug. 22).
I was about to give up and pay the fee, but then I asked to speak to the rep’s manager. As I was transferred, I recomposed myself and then made the same request to the next agent, who promptly and politely said she would remove the fee! Just like that.
So, why did the bank give in? And why didn’t I give up at the first rep’s repeated rejections?
Let’s start with the bank. When I later asked Chase for an explanation of how it decides whether or not to waive a late fee upon a customer’s request, a company spokesperson was less than forthcoming.
“Each circumstance is handled on an individual basis,” Gail Hurdis, from Chase Card Services’ communication and public affairs department, wrote to me in an e-mail.
The only elaboration she offered on Chase’s policy was its “tiered” late fee structure: “$15 on balances up to $99.99; $29 on balances from $100 to $249.99; $39 on balances from $250 and higher.
And as of August 22nd we will be in compliance with the new regulations related to late fees,” she wrote. (Note: Unlike my request for an explanation of Chase’s late-fee waiver policy, my initial, successful request for a fee waiver did not invoke my role as a writer for this or any other publication).
Josh Frank, senior researcher with the Center for Responsible Lending, offered some more in-depth insights into how a bank might decide whether to remove a late charge when a customer asks.
“Most banks don’t have a set policy for waiving fees,” he says. “They do a kind of balancing act. They think of fee income as an important revenue source, but at the same time, they want to keep customers who are profitable to them.” In other words, if I’m upset at what I think is an unfair fee, I may cancel my card if the bank doesn’t agree to adjust or remove it.
The two Chase customer service reps I spoke with, Frank explains, would have been looking at a screen displaying my “risk score” (probably, for a big bank like Chase, an internally calculated score — i.e., a number that might be different from my FICO rating — that measures my likelihood of defaulting on repayments).
Part of the way a bank calculates a customer’s risk rating may include not just the amount of the purchases, but the specific items, Frank says. Some banks may judge more negatively “purchases from, say, bars, thrift stores or marriage counselors,” he says.
(Thank goodness I’ve been paying cash for my Côtes du Rhône!)
But some credit-card issuers also take into account a “profitability score” when deciding whether to waive a fee — and that score doesn’t just correlate with risk, but with how much a bank expects to make from this customer. And a reliably paying (i.e., low-risk) customer is not necessarily a profitable one.
“Some people might assume that if they have a great risk score, they’re the customer that banks want,” Frank says. “But people who make payments on time are often not where the banks make their money.”
So, when I got to that second Chase rep — the one who waived my fee — she may have calculated that I was either a low-risk customer or a high-potential-profit customer, and wanted to keep me happy. And even if I haven’t been a profitable customer so far, Frank points out, there’s always the chance that I might make them money in the future.
We may never know for sure why Chase gave in, but why did I stick with the fight? I’ve certainly paid plenty of other fees — from banks, parking departments and other penalty-levying institutions — even ones when I wasn’t late or otherwise at fault, because it didn’t seem worth the hassle.
“A lot of people, when they hear that first ‘no,’ won’t want to pursue it further,” says Frank. “People tend not to try hard enough.”
Or sometimes they may rationalize (or rather, irrationalize) a fee away, depending upon the amount in question.
“Let’s say someone has a $5,000 balance,” he says. “A $39 fee, in relation to that, might not look like that big of a deal. But if you were overcharged $39 on your grocery bill, you’d probably be willing to spend a lot of time getting it cleared up.
” So what kept me pushing to get this particular late fee removed, to press past that first customer rep’s rejection? I think that, beyond the goal of saving $39, I was driven by a feeling (some might say a bias) that bank and credit card fees are generally egregious and often exploitative.
Let’s not forget that my payment was late — I was technically at fault. But if Chase’s late fee had been, say, $5 or $10, I might have figured that was fair enough — and not even bothered to call. But the $39 fee seemed so galling that I was spurred on by a powerful sense of injustice.
David Kamon, a reader from Fraser, Mich., had a similar experience.
When his inactive checking account with Minnesota-based TCF Bank started incurring mysterious fees, Kamon set out to right the wrong.
In June, he says, he received a letter from his bank, TCF, stating that his account was overdrawn by $28.85.
“The account had a $1 balance,” says Kamon, “and I hadn’t used it since November of 2009.”
It turns out that his formerly free checking account had, for the previous
three months, been incurring a $9.95-per-month maintenance fee. (The bank
had changed its fees and notified customers via a message in their online
account pages, which Kamon says he never checked). His negative balance
reflected three months of the newly imposed fees.
Kamon’s debt was now overdue 71 days, the bank said, and at day 75 the
credit bureaus would be notified.
He decided to visit a local branch of the bank to see if he could resolve
the situation.
“The manager, although seemingly quite sympathetic, stated the best course
of action would be to pay the outstanding balance and close the account to
avoid the next $9.95 charge coming around soon,” Kamon recalls.
Jason Korstange, a representative from TCF, refused to comment on the
specific case, except to say that Kamon “would have received a letter,”
and not just an online notice, alerting him of the initial
checking-account fee change.
In general, Korstange said, fee waiver decisions are made on a
case-by-case basis, with the “history of the account” being the most
important factor. He says a customer’s credit score or risk rating would
not be taken into account in the waiver of fees.
“Any normal person would have given in and paid,” Kamon says of the branch
manager’s advice.
But Kamon, an unemployed food service worker, says, “I feel like I had the
time on my hands to do it. And I really don’t like getting screwed over.”
Early the next morning he was on the phone again talking to customer
service representatives. “By 3 p.m. and after climbing five levels of the
corporate hierarchy, I finally received confirmation that although my
lowly dollar was forever lost, the fees totaling $28.85 would be removed,”
he says.
In the meantime, Kamon had filed a complaint with the Comptroller of the
Currency regarding the incident.
“To my surprise, a letter came last week from TCF in response to my
complaint,” he says. “It was a formal apology for the phone fiasco –
roughly 10 hours — I endured and an official bank check for $1.”
If there are any lessons to be gleaned from such battles over bank fees,
it may be that persistence pays off.
But how much of one’s time is it worth to recoup $30 or $40?
In my case, I spent about 10 minutes on the phone, and if I had been met
with another “no” from the second customer service rep I reached, I
probably would have thrown in the towel and paid the fee.
Kamon says he was near his breaking point, too. “I probably would have
given up after that day (of dealing with reps on the phone), if I didn’t
get results,” he says. “I would have paid the $30.”
But the calculation about whether a fee fight is worth the trouble
involves more than just a simple time-money equation. Even when you’re 10
hours deep into a dispute with a bank — when the costs of your labor
(even at minimum wage) would exceed the amount you’re fighting for –
there is the harder-to-quantify value of achieving victory against a
Goliath.
To borrow a credit card company’s ad campaign, this feeling can be
“priceless.”
Kamon says receiving that $1 check was a “great feeling” of vindication.
“You would have thought they’d written me a check for a million dollars.”
He still has the check, which has become a kind war badge in his Battle of
the Bank Fees. “I don’t plan on cashing it,” he says.
Rob Baedeker is a writer living in Oakland. He is the co-author, with the
Kasper Hauser comedy group, of “SkyMaul,” Weddings of the Times,” and
“Obama’s Blackberry.”
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Copyright 2010 SF Gate
August 10th, 2010 at 7:55 pm
Michelle
It is horrible what we women have to endure at the hands of some men. They just go about their business doing whatever is the most profitable to them at the time.
When it comes to their mothers, sisters, daughter, nieces, friends, associates or any female, she is just another calculation. How much can they get away with before the balance sheet turns against them.
Here is a case where the women of Guam are concerned.
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Women’s group addresses concerns in Guam impact statement
Print Email
Updated August 10, 2010 07:48:49
A women’s group on Guam has launched a campaign to address issues related to the military buildup and how it affects women and children.
The group, Fuetsan Famalao’an, is also focusing on services for disabled addressed in Guam’s environmental impact statement on the buildup.
Meanwhile, Guam army reservists have been honored before they leave for Iraq. And two of Guam’s representatives to the international Miss Cinderella pageant have arrived home with special awards after competing in Texas last month.
Presenter: Rob Sharp
Speaker: Shawn Gumataotao, Guam governor’s spokesman
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Keep up the awareness is all we can do as women at the moment. Men have the control for now.
Hafa Adai
Anna
August 10th, 2010 at 8:45 pm
EAT FAT FOR BREAKFAST!
Forget about black coffee and dry toast if you’re trying to lose weight and get healthier — the best way to begin your day is with a hearty breakfast, one that includes fats.
Yes, fats! If you choose healthy fats, a high-fat breakfast actually serves to jump-start your metabolism so that you can more efficiently process food from dawn to dusk, say researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
Their findings suggest that loading some fats onto your morning plate can help prevent metabolic syndrome — a dangerous mixture of belly fat, insulin resistance, elevated triglycerides and other risk factors for heart disease and type 2 diabetes.
HIGH-FAT TRUMPS HIGH-CARB
In the UAB study, researchers fed mice either a high-fat (45% fat) or high-carbohydrate breakfast (10% fat). Mice given the high-fat breakfast subsequently had a high-carbohydrate dinner, while the ones that consumed a high-carbohydrate breakfast had a high-fat dinner.
(The mice were not given lunch.) In this way, all received the same number of calories from fat and carbohydrates respectively (as well as total calories) over the course of the day.
Investigators found that…
A high-fat breakfast activated fat metabolism. Mice that ate most of their fat at breakfast had better metabolic markers — including body weight, glucose tolerance and blood insulin and triglyceride levels — compared with mice that ate most of their fat at dinner.
A high-carbohydrate breakfast switched off fat metabolism. Mice that ate heavy carbohydrates in the morning and heavy fat at dinner experienced weight gain, increased body fat, glucose intolerance and other signs of metabolic syndrome.
“The first meal seemed to ‘program’ their metabolisms very effectively for the rest of the day,” said senior study author Martin E. Young, PhD, associate professor of medicine in the UAB Division of Cardiovascular Disease.
In other words, it prepared their bodies to efficiently break down fats and other foods. In contrast, a carb-rich breakfast seemed to prime the mice’s bodies to break down primarily carbs, leaving fats to build up — something we humans definitely don’t want.
These results were published in the March 30, 2010, issue of the International Journal of Obesity. Other evidence, previously published, suggests these findings may apply to people as well — and studies are ongoing to improve our understanding of time-of-day consumption of fats and carbohydrates in humans, says Dr. Young.
DON’T SKIP BREAKFAST
In the meantime, remember that not all fats are created equal. The high-fat breakfast study does not suggest that we should wolf down bacon, sausage and cheese blintzes every morning.
Much more healthful fats include nut butters (almond butter on whole-grain bread is delicious)… whole-milk yogurt (sprinkle ground flaxseeds on top for their healthful omega-3 essential fatty acids)… or even a Japanese-style breakfast with broiled salmon.
Source(s):
Martin E. Young, PhD, associate professor of medicine, UAB Division of Cardiovascular Disease, University of Alabama at Birmingham.
August 10th, 2010 at 9:17 pm
CREATION
??A man said to his wife one day,
‘I don’t know how you can be?? so stupid and so beautiful all at the same time.
??’The wife responded,
‘Allow me to explain.??God made me beautiful so you would be attracted to me;??
God made me stupid so I would be attracted to you!
August 10th, 2010 at 9:19 pm
Onile
Well what’s up? Your mother called I could not help just yet.
Will try to do so tomorrow.
Joyse
August 13th, 2010 at 9:09 am
[...] posted an article the other day that I hope everyone reads. It was in regards to cancer causing utensils that are [...]