Less Red Meat Reduces Diabetes Risk: Study

Posted on June 18, 2013 by Joel Whitaker

A new study appears to confirm practices of Catholic lay groups, such as the Confraternity of Penitents, that voluntarily accept dietary restrictions that reduce, but do not eliminate, consumption of red meat.

In a follow-up of three studies of about 149,000 U.S. men and women just reported online by JAMA Internal Medicine, researchers found that eating more red meat over time was associated with an increased risk of type-2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) .

Red meat consumption has been consistently related to an increased risk of T2DM, but previous studies measured red meat consumption at a baseline with limited follow-up information. However, a person’s eating behavior changes over time and measurement of consumption at a single point in time does not capture the variability of intake during follow-up, the authors note in the study background.

An Pan, Ph.D., of the National University of Singapore, and colleagues analyzed data from three Harvard group studies and followed up 26,357 men in the Health Professionals Follow-up Study; 48,709 women in the Nurses’ Health Study; and 74,077 women in the Nurses’ Health Study II. Diets were assessed using food frequency questionnaires.

During more than 1.9 million person-years of follow-up, researchers documented 7,540 incident cases of T2DM.

“Increasing red meat intake during a four-year interval was associated with an elevated risk of T2DM during the subsequent four years in each cohort,” according to the study.

The results indicate that compared with a group with no change in red meat intake, increasing red meat intake of more than 0.50 servings per day was associated with a 48 percent elevated risk in the subsequent four-year period. Reducing red meat consumption by more than 0.50 servings per day from baseline to the first four years of follow-up was associated with a 14 percent lower risk during the subsequent entire follow-up.

The authors note the study is observational so causality cannot be inferred.

“Our results confirm the robustness of the association between red meat and T2DM and add further evidence that limiting red meat consumption over time confers benefits for T2DM prevention,” the authors conclude.

Posted in Changing the Culture, Faith, Health | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

‘Spiritual’ Youth More Likely to Commit Crimes that ‘Religious’ Ones: Study

Posted on June 13, 2013 by Joel Whitaker

Young adults who deem themselves “spiritual but not religious” are more likely to commit property crimes — and to a lesser extent, violent ones — than those who identify themselves as either “religious and spiritual” or “religious but not spiritual,” according to Baylor University researchers.

The sociologists’ study, published in the journal Criminology, also showed that those in a fourth category — who say they are neither spiritual nor religious —are less likely to commit property crimes than the “spiritual but not religious” individuals. But no difference was found between the two groups when it came to violent crimes.

“The notion of being spiritual but not associated with any organized religion has become increasingly popular, and our question is how that is different from being religious, whether you call yourself ‘spiritual’ or not,” said Sung Joon Jang, Ph.D., an associate professor of sociology in Baylor’s College of Arts & Sciences. He is lead author of the study, “Is Being ‘Spiritual’ Enough Without Being Religious? A Study of Violent and Property Crimes Among Emerging Adults.”

He noted that until the 20th century, the terms “religious” and “spiritual” were treated as interchangeable.

Lower Levels of Crime and Deviance

Previous research indicated that people who say they are religious show lower levels of crime and deviance, which refers to norm-violating behavior.

The researchers analyzed data from a sample of 14,322 individuals from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. They ranged in age from 18 to 28, with an average age of 21.8.

In the confidential survey, participants were asked how often they had committed crimes in the previous 12 months — including violent crimes such as physical fights or armed robbery — while property crimes included vandalism, theft and burglary.

Past research shows that people who report themselves as spiritual make up about 10 percent of the general population, Jang said.

“Calling oneself ‘spiritual but not religious’ turned out to more of an antisocial characteristic, unlike identifying oneself as religious,” said Baylor researcher Aaron Franzen, a doctoral candidate and study co-author.

In their study, the Baylor researchers hypothesized that those who are spiritual but not religious would be less conventional than the religious group — but could be either more or less conventional than the “neither” group.

“We were thinking that religious people would have an institutional and communal attachment and investment, while the spiritual people would have more of an independent identity,” Franzen said.

Reasons Why

Theories for why religious people are less likely to commit crime are that they fear “supernatural sanctions” as well as criminal punishment and feel shame about deviance; are bonded to conventional society; exercise high self-control in part because of parents who also are likely to be religious; and associate with peers who reinforce their behavior and beliefs.

Significantly, people who are spiritual but not religious tend to have lower self-control than those who are religious. They also are more likely to experience such strains as criminal victimization and such negative emotions as depression and anxiety. They also are more likely to have peers who use and abuse alcohol, Franzen said. Those factors are predictors of criminal behavior.

“It’s a challenge in terms of research to know what that actually means to be spiritual, because they self-identify,” he said. “But they are different in some way, as our study shows.”

In their research, sociologists included four categories based on how the young adults reported themselves. Those categories and percentages were:

• Spiritual but not religious, 11.5%
• Religious but not spiritual, 6.8%
• Both spiritual and religious, 37.9%
• Neither spiritual nor religious, 43.8%

Posted in Changing the Culture, Faith | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Absent Fathers Create More Sexually Risky Daughters: Study

Posted on June 10, 2013 by Joel Whitaker

When Dad is absent — either physically or psychologically — he is setting his daughter up to have  sexual thoughts, sexual permissiveness and negativity toward condom use, researchers at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas, found.  They ran five independent experiments to test the researchers’ hypothesis.

Researchers presented 64 heterosexual female undergraduates with one of two instruction sets: Remember and write about a time that their biological father was absent for an important life event, or write about a time that their father was physically or psychologically present for an important life event.

Following the writing exercise, women completed word stem tasks to assess activation of sexual concepts (i.e. S_X; _AK_D, etc.) The study found that women who were primed to discuss their father’s absence responded to the word stems in a more sexualized way (i.e. SEX and NAKED versus SIX and BAKED).

Why might fathers play such an important role in shaping daughters’ sexual and reproductive development? Father absence or low quality paternal care may signal that long-term male investment in offspring production is unreliable or unnecessary in current ecology.

“There is an abundance of research that shows when a father is absent that their daughters have accelerated sexual development, promiscuity and sexual risk taking,” said Danielle DelPriore, lead researcher at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth.

Similar prompts were used to detect sexual permissiveness and condom use attitudes by asking respondents on a 1 (disagree) to 9 (agree) scale questions such as “sex without love is okay”, “for me, having sex with someone does not necessarily imply that I am committed to that individual,” or “I dislike using condoms due to reduced sexual pleasure.”

“As a society we are quick to point the finger of sexualization of young girls at the media,” said DelPriore. “And although researchers have demonstrated the effects of popular media influence on girls’ tendency to view themselves as sexual objects, an abundance of research also suggest the robust effects that other environmental factors have on girls’ accelerated sexuality.”

The study has been accepted and will be published in a forthcoming issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

Posted in Changing the Culture, Health | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Second Fortnight for Freedom Starts June 21

Posted on June 3, 2013 by Joel Whitaker

The second annual Fortnight for Freedom will take place from June 21 to July 4, and will consist of national and local efforts to educate Americans on challenges to religious liberty both at home and abroad. As with last year’s Fortnight, the event will begin and end with a special Mass.

Archbishop William E. Lori of Baltimore, chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops‘ Ad Hoc Committee for Religious Liberty, will open the 2013 Fortnight for Freedom by celebrating Mass at Baltimore’s historic Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Friday, June 21, at 7 p.m. EDT. Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington will celebrate the closing Mass at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington on July 4 at 12 p.m. EDT.

“The need for prayer, education, and action in defense of religious liberty has never been greater,” explained Archbishop Lori. “The Fortnight for Freedom exists to meet that need. This year’s Fortnight occurs just weeks before August 1, when the administration’s mandate coercing us to violate our deeply-held beliefs will be enforced against most religious non-profits. During the Fortnight the Supreme Court’s decisions on the definition of marriage will likely be handed down as well. Those decisions could have a profound impact on religious freedom for generations to come.”

Not only has the Obama Administration not backed down — despite a couple of “accommodations” that really don’t address concerns of faithful Catholics and others — on the HHS Mandate and religious liberty, but it has now come to light that the Internal Revenue Service has been harassing groups thought to be political opponents of the administration and has sought to impose gift taxes on people who donated to certain groups.  In addition, the Justice Department has acknowledged secretly tapping telephone lines at the Associated Press and Fox News, and has said a leading Fox News reporter may be a “co-conspirator” in violating the espionage laws, simply because he received some confidential information from leakers in the Administration.

So the problem now extends beyond religious liberty to include Americans’ right to peaceably assemble, to associate with others and to be secure from unreasonable searches and seizures.

It’s time to pray and fast, both for the Administration following the traditional American respect for dissent and religious practice and for the Supreme Court making the correct decision on the HHS Mandate cases.

Posted in Changing the Culture, Faith, Leadership | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off

Turns Out It’s Not Just a War on Religious Liberty

Posted on June 2, 2013 by Joel Whitaker

We were just the canary in the coal mine.

Just about a year ago, we were all shocked by the Obama Administration’s HHS Mandate, requiring all employers, including religious organizations, to provide contraceptive and abortion coverage in their health insurance policies.

Many of us thought such a thing simply could not be happening.  After all, freedom of religion is specifically mentioned in the First Amendment.  The government has always accommodated religious practice.  That’s why Quakers didn’t have to serve in the military.

But it’s becoming clear the Obama Administration’s War on the Catholic Church was just the beginning.  It’s now engaged in a frontal assault on the First Amendment.

That’s the only possible conclusion to what else has come to light in recent weeks.  The Internal Revenue Service targeted tea party and other conservative groups.  It even targeted the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, according to the Rev. Franklin Graham.

It targeted five pro-Israel organizations after a campaign by White House-aligned groups to challenge their tax-exempt status. Many of the Jewish groups protested the Obama administration’s policy of opposing Israeli settlement construction over the so-called “Green Line,” which marks the pre-1967 boundary between Israel and the West Bank and West and East Jerusalem.

Aid groups seeking to help people caught in Syria’s civil war are facing unexplained delays in their applications to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) for 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status.

The delays are similar to those that many conservative organizations have complained about when applying for tax exempt status, The Hill reported.

But it’s not just HHS and the IRS.  The Justice Department has targeted reporters, both at the Associated Press and Fox News.

The HHS Mandate is a straight-forward attempt to steamroll opposition to abortion.

IRS targeting of conservative groups such as the Tea Party, as well as the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, pro-life and Jewish groups are all about creating a climate of fear so those who oppose Obama policies will keep their mouths shut.

The Justice Department wiretaps of phones at the Associated Press are all about scaring government officials who might oppose Obama policies from talking with the press.  And the naming of James Rosen, the Fox News reporter, is all about intimidating reporters who obtain information damaging to Obama from sharing it with the American people.

One year ago it was just about religious liberty.  Now it’s clear that Obama seeks not only to make religion irrelevant to how Americans live their lives, but that he’s willing to trample on the entire First Amendment to do so.

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off

‘The Borrower is Slave to the Lender’

Posted on June 1, 2013 by Joel Whitaker

The rich rule over the poor,
    and the borrower is slave to the lender.

That cheerful thought comes straight from Proverbs 22:7, and it tells us almost all we need to know about debt — namely, that we need to get out of it just as quickly as possible.

God’s plan doesn’t include slavery — whether it’s the sort of slavery the ancient Israelites endured, or being a “slave” to a lender.

To be sure, getting out of debt is easier said than done.  We all have regular needs — paying the mortgage, feeding our families, clothing our families, etc.  Still, scripture tells us, “the borrower is slave to the lender.”

For most of us, our debts can be broken down into four types:  mortgage, auto, credit card and student loans.  To get out of debt as fast as possible, we should pay the minimum on everything — except the highest-interest rate we owe.

If you’re paying 27.24% interest on a credit card, why would you want to put every spare dollar to paying off a 4.5% home mortgage?  Obviously you wouldn’t — and shouldn’t.

That highest-rate credit card should be No. 1 on our list of debts to pay off.

Take a look at your credit card statement.  There should be a section that shows your interest rate calculation.  Let’s say it shows a 12.49% cash advance, a 7.9% balance transfer, a 5.49% balance transfer and a 0% balance transfer.

You might think the credit card company would apply your minimum payment to that 12.49% cash advance.

But you’d think wrong.  They will apply every bit of your minimum payment to that 0% balance transfer.  And, from their standpoint, they should.  They are in business to maximum their profit, not to get you out of debt.

But if you pay more than the minimum, your credit card company must by law apply the additional payment to your highest rate balance.

What to do:  Make a list of all your credit cards, the highest interest rate on your statement, and your balance.  Update this list at least quarterly.  And then make extra payments on whatever card has the highest interest rate.

How much extra?  That’s up to you.  But if your goal is to get out of debt, then what you must avoid is putting another charge on your credit card.  That means you must have a cash reserve — something you can dip into almost immediately if your car needs new tires or you have a sudden, unexpected medical bill.

Your credit card statement will tell you how much you have to pay to pay off the card in three years.  For the most part, if you simply double your monthly payment, you’ll have paid off the card in about three years.

Suppose your minimum payment is $263 a month.  If you’re able to pay $412 a month — just $37.25 more a week — you will have paid off a $13,147 credit card balance in about three years.  If you’re also able to also put $25 a week into a savings account, you will have built a cash reserve of more than $3,900.

You’ll be one step closer to freedom from debt — and you’ll have $412 a month that you can use to buy nice things, take that vacation, give to church and the poor, or even use to speed up your freedom from financial slavery.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in Changing the Culture, Faith, Finance | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off

Among the Living Dead

Posted on May 11, 2013 by Joel Whitaker

The media remains transfixed by the horror inflicted upon three women in Cleveland, and even more so upon the fact that a child was born to one of those women.

Think about it:  Three women, captured, tortured, held in a virtual prison for 10 years, and for six of those years, a child was being raised in that environment.  Only in North Korea’s prison camps are children born and raised in such brutal conditions.

Today’s First Reading in the Office of Readings addresses the sort of evil inflicted upon the Cleveland Three — and upon those held in North Korean prison camps:

This is the message you heard from the beginning: we should love one another.
We should not follow the example of Cain who belonged to the evil one and killed his brother.
Why did he kill him?
Because his own deeds were wicked while his brother’s were just.

Why did Arial Castro kidnap, detain and torture the women?  “Because his own deeds were wicked” while the women’s were just.  Why does North Korea maintain brutal prison camps?  Same reason.

The man who does not love is among the living dead, the First Reading continues.  Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that eternal life abides in no murderer’s heart.

After today’s First Reading, I prayed for all those captured, detained and tortured by evil people.  And I prayed that those evil people might repent.

Posted in Changing the Culture | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off

Practical Hints for Fasting — or a Summer Slim Down

Posted on May 10, 2013 by Joel Whitaker

Fasting Catholics face the same challenge someone seeking to lose weight faces.  We have to get enough calories to be able to do our

daily work, while giving up the excess.

To get the needed calories  you need, adopt the same principles as someone on an intense exercise program:  “Incorporate good nutrition habits — eating fruits and vegetables, low-fat dairy products, whole grains and lean protein sources,” says EatRight by University of Alabama at Birmingham Weight Management Services Clinical Dietitian Lindsey Lee R.D.. “If you restrict calories too much, you could start to feel burn out.”

To bolster the burn, Lee suggested:

– Fill up on lower calorie fruits and vegetables
– Choose water over high calorie sodas
– Decrease high calorie, high fat options
– Switch up food preparation; instead of steaming vegetables, grill them
– Toss unique vegetables like skewered okra or fresh asparagus on the grill
“The one important thing to remember is to limit the fat source you use,” Lee said. “Try different herbs and spices to season your veggies instead of heavy amounts of olive oil, canola oil, or butter.”

Restaurant meals can be deceptive and pose a special challenge to healthy eating.

“Even meals you think are healthy in restaurants are loaded with calories because of cooking methods that add a lot of fat and sodium, so ask to have foods prepared as light as possible to avoid extra calories,” Lee said.

She also suggests that people generally underestimate the calories they take in, and they overestimate the calories they burn. The best bet, she said, is to watch the calories consumed daily and get in at least 30 minutes of physical activity five days per week.

In fact, if we’re not exercising, this may be the time to start.

UAB School of Education Associate Professor of Health Education Retta Evans, Ph.D., said to start by adding a walk or bike ride to a daily routine, then mix it up with other activities to keep things interesting.

“Piloxing, which is a combo of Pilates and kickboxing, is fun,” Evans said. “There are also a variety of yoga disciplines to try, as well as barre fitness dance classes. Mixing it up with different activities is a good way to ramp up your program.”

Evans said a personal trainer can take physical activity and weight loss goals to another level.

“They can sit down with you and map out a timeline to meet your goals, and then they can be there as a motivator to keep reaching those,” Evans explained.

If a personal trainer is not in the cards, Evans suggests looking to the internet for free exercise programming instruction. Either way, properly setting expectations is important.

“In a three month period, you can expect to drop up to three percent of your body composition,” Evans said. “Some people will drop more, and some will drop less. But in that time frame, you’ll start to see changes in how your body looks and feels.”

Posted in Catholic Fasting, Faith, Health | Tagged , , , | Comments Off

Three Girls Held Hostage

Posted on May 9, 2013 by Joel Whitaker

Three girls held hostage and, apparently, sexually abused for 10 years in Cleveland . . . mass shootings in schools and on college campuses . . . and even in movie theaters.

It’s enough that even some liberal commentators are beginning to wonder if there isn’t something seriously wrong with the culture of our country.

Those rooted in faith don’t have to wonder.  We know.  But the question is:  What are we, as Catholics, to do?  From the first reading in today’s Liturgy of the Hours Office of Readings:

“You must no longer live as the pagans do—their minds empty, their understanding darkened.”

What happened in Cleveland was very close to what happened with the “goddess cults” of ancient Greece and Rome, where prostitution, abortion and sexual slavery were routine.  It was the renunciation of those practices that led to the persecutions of Christians in the first three centuries.

The mass shootings which have plagued our country in recent years, and the bombings by Islamic factions which plague much of the Muslim world, are far cries from what the Judeo-Christian God proposes.

Why?  Again from the same first reading:

“They are estranged from a life in God because of their ignorance and their resistance; without remorse they have abandoned themselves to lust and the indulgence of every sort of lewd conduct.”

“That is not what you learned when you learned Christ!” St. Paul says, adding:

“I am supposing, of course, that he has been preached and taught to you in accord with the truth that is in Jesus: namely, that you must lay aside your former way of life and the old self which deteriorates through illusion and desire, and acquire a fresh, spiritual way of thinking. You must put on that new man created in God’s image, whose justice and holiness are born of truth.”

So, St. Paul tells us, not only should we pray to be delivered from these evils, but we individually must “acquire a fresh, spiritual way of thinking. You must put on that new man created in God’s image, whose justice and holiness are born of truth.”

And having acquired that “fresh, spiritual way of thinking,” we must recognize that what was hidden 50 years ago — the sort of sexual perversion and mass murder just for the joy of murder — is now out in the open, just as it was in ancient Greece and Rome.

While the purveyors of this pagan behavior hide behind the First Amendment, we need to be clear and forthright in saying that it’s never right.  We need to collectively come together and make sexual perversion, mass murder, abortion and similar sins as socially unacceptable as smoking has become.

Posted in Changing the Culture, Faith | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off

Preaching the Gospel in Today’s Terms

Posted on May 6, 2013 by Joel Whitaker

Years ago as a teenager I responded to a small magazine ad promising to send me a booklet giving me the secrets to “The Mastery of Life.”

I took the bait, and learned a great deal about numerology, Egyptian pyramids and other fascinating things.  But I probably learned more about “The Mastery of Life” by reading Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People” than I did from the Rosicrucians.

And, truth be told, it was only after I started on a journey that led me to become Catholic that I discovered the real pathway to “The Mastery of Life.”

That trip down memory lane was triggered by a new research study from Ohio State University.

The HPV vaccine can prevent both cervical cancer and a nasty sexually transmitted disease in women.  And in trying to sell young women on getting the vaccine, public health marketers have emphasized how it the HPV vaccine can prevent a woman from getting cervical cancer.

Turns out that’s the wrong pitch, at least according to researchers at Ohio State University:  Fewer than 20% of adolescent girls in the United States have received the HPV vaccine.

“Young women don’t respond strongly to the threat of cervical cancer,” says Janice Krieger, lead author of the study and assistant professor of communication at The Ohio State University.  “They seem to be more worried about getting an STD. That’s the way we should try to encourage them to get the HPV vaccine.”

She conducted a study which appears in the journal Health Communication.

In a study involving 188 female college students (average age of 22) and 115 of their mothers (average age of 50), Krieger found a message emphasizing the vaccine’s effectiveness at preventing genital wars was a clear winner with young women.

It seems to me that this carries over to how we present our moral teachings.  The U.S. has a huge problem with out-of-wedlock pregnancies.  The Obama Administration’s solution to this is to promote birth control pills.  The Catholic Church says (1) sex outside of marriage is a sin, and (2) use of artificial birth control is a mortal sin.

This is one of those cases where two negatives don’t make a positive message.

One worries about sin only if one is a believer, so talking about sin isn’t very effective to nonbelievers.  And for a young person, Hell seems a long way off.

After all, what is sin?  It’s doing something God doesn’t want us to do.  And why doesn’t God want us to do that particular thing?  Because God wants us to be happy.

Wouldn’t we be more effective in explaining that (1) sex outside of marriage often leads to unhappiness in the form of STDs and unwanted pregnancies, and the most effective way to avoid STDs and unwanted pregnancies isn’t The Pill but abstention, and (2) birth control pills are a particularly lousy idea because they don’t prevent STDs and their active ingredient has been labeled a Class I carcinogen by the World Health Organization — just like tobacco and asbestos?

 

 

Posted in Changing the Culture, Faith, Health | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off