"600 words by Esther J. Cepeda"

Healthy living best defense against dreaded Bisphenol A

"600 Words by Esther J. Cepeda"

Medical studies drive me crazy! Rather than using collective medical expertise to enlighten a populace about living healthier, these studies are used as a weapon to induce fear – the kind that makes for great headlines but has little value in changing anyone’s quality of life.

All over the country this morning the big "medical story" is a study reported in this month's Journal of the American Medical Association which links Bisphenol A (BPA) – a chemical found in household items such as plastic baby bottles, hard water bottles, reusable plastic food containers, CDs, DVDs, cardboard pizza boxes, wine, beer, and pop cans – to heart disease and Type-2 diabetes.

A link.

Meaning there is a correlation, but no one – no one – can say it is causal correlation. For instance, the classic example: Sleeping with your shoes on is strongly correlated with waking up with a headache. But that does not mean that sleeping with your shoes on causes that headache – maybe you have no one to take your shoes off after you’ve passed out in an alcoholic stupor.

Let’s determine which came first, the chicken or the egg with today’s BPA scare stories, which document the finding that more than 90 percent of the U.S. population has traces of BPA in their bodies – no laughing matter, for sure.

· Baby bottles: it is well documented that babies who are breast fed – rather than pumped with large quantities of artificially-sweetened formula – stay lighter, are able to exercise better portion control, and stay slimmer throughout their lifetimes. Don’t blame the bottle.

· Hard water bottles: like the plastic used in sippy cups, which are usually provided to unsuspecting children filled with 3 or 4 servings of sugary juice-type substance at a pop. Don’t blame the sippy cup.

What about water bottles? Well, athletes who work out for hours a week generally don’t come down with heart disease and obesity-related diabetes but the majority of people I see with water bottles have "I’m dieting and Dr. Oprah told me to drink 85 gallons of water a day" written all over them.

· CDs? Let’s be frank, only people over 30 even have them in their house. Next.

DVD's Cardboard pizza boxes, wine, beer, and pop cans, which all go nicely together…need I say more?

Here’s a headline you won’t see scrolling in all caps under the market watch numbers on CNN or on the front page of any newspaper over a menacing picture of shiny plastic chemical-ridden bottles: "Moderate exercise and fresh foods in small servings keep people healthy!!!"

Esther J. Cepeda writes the "600 Words" & "Pregunta del Dia" columns, and is also the Chief Marketing and Communications Officer for the Illinois Student Assistance Commission. Her views and reporting do not necessarily reflect those of ISAC. "600 words" is a registered trademark of EeJayCee, Inc., Copyright 2008. May be reprinted with permission, contact eejaycee@600words.com

The Adler Planetarium’s star: Dr. Jose Francisco Salgado

"600 Words by Esther J. Cepeda"

Take a moon-entranced kid who grew up scarfing down Isaac Asimov and tinkering with music and video, give him the boundless resources of Chicago’s Adler Planetarium then add the creative spark that only Chicago’s funkiest band of violins, cellos, flutes, and tubas can bring, and what do you get?

The kind of sensual, visually-arresting cosmic journey usually reserved for Grateful Dead concerts – in the form of sumptuous interstellar images pas de deux-ing with the Chicago Sinfonietta’s elegant wall of sound under a summery dusk.

The kid in question is Dr. Jose Francisco Salgado, an Adler Planetarium Astronomer and Science Visualizer who is quickly making a name for himself around our humble globe as a choreographer of – not to – the stars. His video journeys through the galaxy visit such notable hangouts as the Eagle Nebula and the surface of Mars, and have been such a hit that they’re making their way to stargazers in Spain and Paris.

You don’t have to travel that far, though. After a series of incredible collaborations with the Chicago Sinfonietta – aka America’s most diverse orchestra aka the Joffrey Ballet’s pit crew – the gang is presenting a free encore presentation of Gustav Holst’s "The Planets" on the Jay Pritzker Pavilion stage at Millenium Park Friday August 22nd.

"In 2005 the Sinfonietta came to the Adler looking for a visual backdrop for ‘The Planets’ performances and basically [the Adler] asked me because of all my interests in art, classical music, and graphic arts," Jose told me this week. "I’d been looking for the perfect project and this was it."

I had the pleasure of experiencing his visual choreography during the Chicago Sinfonietta’s May production of Astronomical Pictures at an Exhibition, where Jose choreographed real space pictures and computer generated images from astronomical data to Modest Mussorgsky’s "Pictures."

"The visualizations themselves looked like works of art," Jose said, adding that he gets only the best pictures from his peeps at NASA, the European Space Agency. Some he creates himself with raw data from Adler’s databases. "[Leading the viewer] through the promenade passages, walking through the "gallery," was the perfect way of showing cutting edge images and visualizations. ‘Pictures at an Exhibition’ took about four months, ‘The Planets’ took about six."

If you’re the type who regards the constellations as greatly-jeweled chandeliers that sail through our night sky, a mysterious scattering of eternally circumnavigating planets, their many moons and countless stars continually scanned for their secrets, you’re not alone. For others, the very mention of the term "solar system" causes a reflexive yawn.

"‘The Planets’ is about planting the seed, about inspiring people to learn more about the solar system in general and hopefully grab a book, got to the planetarium or next time they’re switching channels and see a documentary to stop and watch it," said the guy who got interested in astronomy as a third-grade boy when he happened upon a book about the first moon landing his dad owned in their native Puerto Rico.

"Astronomy uses cutting-edge technology and data for scientific purposes but for education and outreach also, it’s a great way to engage audiences who are not science attendant," he said. "My interests are not only in science but in technology, graphic arts, photography – I even compose [music] a bit – I use it all to engage people."

And he does it in two languages! Ever so humble, Jose doesn’t go on and on about how few Latinos there are in the sciences, he just works to change it. As the Adler Planetarium's webmaster, he’s got a web page devoted to Spanish-language astronomy resources and is working to create educational resources, such as a planetarium show in English and Spanish, for nationwide distribution.

"’The Planets’ is a good synthesis of the things we have achieved in solar system exploration. It doesn’t cover absolutely everything but it’s a very, very good summary," he said. "What’s interesting is that many people will come out of the concert learning so much just from looking at the visualizations."

"It’s so exciting, to see the conductor synching the music to the visuals," Jose said, "and to see people coming out of the hall and saying ‘Wow I didn’t know that Jupiter had so many moons!’ It’s so very rewarding."

(full disclosure: I am a Director on the Board of the Chicago Sinfonietta, and as such I personally invite you to join us for this FREE concert, under the actual stars, in Millennium Park on Friday August 22nd. I hope you can make it!)

Esther J. Cepeda writes the "600 Words" & "Pregunta del Dia" columns, and is also the Chief Marketing and Communications Officer for the Illinois Student Assistance Commission. Her views and reporting do not necessarily reflect those of ISAC. "600 words" is a registered trademark of EeJayCee, Inc., Copyright 2008. May be reprinted with permission, contact eejaycee@600words.com

Don’t supply my demand: high gas prices are good!

"600 Words by Esther J. Cepeda"

I love $4-a-gallon gas. Driving by a local station yesterday I saw that it had gone down to $3.85 and I was bummed.

According to recent reports expensive fill-ups have curbed Americans’ insatiable desire for feeding their big gas-guzzling cars. The Energy Information Administration said in its July 31 inventory report that U.S. gasoline supplies fell by 3.5 million barrels last week resulting in an expected (estimated) 400,000 barrels gas supplies increase.

It doesn’t stop there, that same report found U.S. demand for energy is falling across most sectors. For instance the inventories of heating oil and diesel rose by 2.4 million barrels, more than the 1.8 million barrels expected, according to the EIA report.

Have you heard that researchers with the National Safety Council recently reported a 9 percent drop in motor vehicle deaths overall through May 2008 compared with the first five months of 2007? That was just overall; they clocked a drop of 18 percent in March and 14 percent in April, harkening back to rates last seen during the Arab oil embargo in 1974. We all know correlation doesn’t guarantee causation but let’s not kid ourselves, people are driving less – you put two and two together.

Other unintended consequences: higher production costs to farm the food are adding to the global food insecurity problem. It’s gotten so bad in Bolivia that in an unprecedented move, cocaine farmers are actually choosing to cut back on planting coca, and choosing to cultivate rice instead.

Also spotted: slimmer, healthier people. According to the Federal Highway Administration, since November 2007, Americans have driven 40.5 billion fewer miles, compared to the same period a year earlier. We logged 9.6 billion fewer miles in May than in May 2007. And the bicycle stores are feelin’ it; reports from all over the country are saying they can’t keep bikes in stock. I recently ran into an acquaintance I hadn’t seen in over a year. I said "Wow, you look thin – lost some weight?" He replied, "Yeah, I’ve been riding my bike everywhere."

Four-dollar-a-gallon gas is great! I didn’t say it’s not horribly painful to pay for, and I’m not happy prices are crippling people making minimum wage rather than just inconveniencing the affluent, but there’s no denying that high gas prices are destroying demand and people and car manufacturers, who are bustin’ hump to manufacture more energy efficient cars are making changes for the better.

Sadly, superstar investment bank Goldman Sachs speculated that weakness in U.S. energy demand is "transient rather than permanent," because the fundamentals of falling oil production and rising world energy consumption remain intact.

We’re on the verge of probably the greatest innovations in pursuit of scalable solar, wind, sugar and other renewable power sources ever even as politicians who are financed by the just-bought-a-new-Hummer crowd are instead looking to lift the 26-year-old moratorium on offshore drilling so we can comfortably use more U.S., rather than foreign, oil.

Regardless of whatever schemes emerge to feed our need for gas-guzzling speed, we’ve already turned a corner – I don’t think anyone not wearing bellbottoms was seriously worried about the environment back in the seventies – and energy conservation won’t fall off the radar. And – drilling or not – we’re never going to see buck-a-gallon gas again.

Ride the storm out: that $4 dollar a gallon pain in the pump is more blessing than curse.

Esther J. Cepeda writes the "600 Words" & "Pregunta del Dia" columns, and is also the Chief Marketing and Communications Officer for the Illinois Student Assistance Commission. Her views and reporting do not necessarily reflect those of ISAC. "600 words" is a registered trademark of EeJayCee, Inc., Copyright 2008. May be reprinted with permission, contact eejaycee@600words.com

Small potatoes, big dust-up

"600 Words" by Esther J. Cepeda

If I said po-tay-toe, you might say po-tah-toe, or you might say "Irish potato famine." You might say "baked, covered in butter, sour cream and chives, sitting next to a filet mignon" or even say "McDonald's," if you're the sort who'd know they're the single largest purchaser of potatoes in the U.S.

Me, I say South American comfort food – not what immediately springs to mind, I know. I'd never presumed to pinpoint the potato's exact origins but Peru and Chile are doing it for me, trying to lay claim to birth-place bragging rights and J.R. Simplot is no longer around for comment, may he rest in peace. Let me back up.

Picture this: Andean highlands, brightly wrapped, broad-faced peasants cultivating tasty tubers while sikus (pan pipes) play gently in the background. Those are the origins of the potato.

Sunday's New York Times ran a story about Peru and Chile being at odds about who can claim the spud as their's first at this most delicate time: the U.N.-decreed International Year of the Potato. According to the International Potato Center (I didn't know either, but don’t miss clicking on the potato song!), annual production approaches 300 million tons and more than one-third of the global potato output now comes from developing countries.

To top it off, the site says potatoes are the "third most important food crop in the world" because its "a major carbohydrate in the diet of hundreds of millions of people in the developing countries.

That alone is a biggie right now as food manufacturers look to the potato as the price of corn skyrockets – Peru has already started putting potato bread in schools. Which brings me to Mr. J.R. Simplot who passed away May 25 of this year – a mere five days before Peru's National Potato Day – at the ripe old age of 99.

Though I doubt he can be credited with the development of the delicious potato-flour bun which graced the long-defunct Arch Deluxe, Simplot – a Dubuque, Iowa native who died a billionaire – will be remembered as the man who perfected the method of freezing the French-cut potato, forever making them a staple of the fast food industry. The man loved potatoes like no other, and oh how I wish he were around to weigh in on this tater tiff.

My dearest dad – not a potato baron but raised in the more bucolic parts of Ecuador – remembers eating potatoes of many shapes and sizes nearly every day because corn and wheat products were out of his family's financial means. "Every once in a while we'd have some fresh cheese with them," he told me over a rare potato-sparse Sunday-night dinner.

And that's my fondest memory of the humble potato – freshly fished out of a kettle of boiling water, served steaming hot along with a chunk of white cheese and a salt shaker. On special occasions they'd be mashed, colored with the oil of the Achiote seed, studded with pieces of brick or viajero cheese and fried into potato pancakes: my southern comfort food.

But rather than being the beacon of peace and indulgence Simplot considered the spud to be, the tubers are a sore spot. The Associated Press reported that Andres Contreras, a researcher at Chile's Austral University in Valdivia, said archaeological studies have found the first evidence of human potato chomping dating back 14,000 years in southern Chile, long before evidence emerges of spud consumption in Peru. The AP also quoted Juan Risi, the head of Peru's National Institute for Agricultural Innovation, calling Chile's potatoes mere "grandchildren" of Peru's tubers.

A shame that things had to get so ugly – it's not like Chile and Peru don't have more pressing social issues to address – but it is a matter of national pride. Luckily, neither I nor Simplot, "America's Great Potato Baron," have to pick sides. He will, by now, have learned all the potato secrets of the universe he craved during his earthly life, and I will satisfy myself with the knowledge that national borders won't keep me from being proud of my potato ancestry.

Esther J. Cepeda writes the “600 Words” & “Pregunta del Dia” columns, and is also a Director at the Chicago-based United Neighborhood Organization. Her reporting and opinions do not necessarily reflect those of UNO. “600 words” is a registered trademark of EeJayCee, Inc., Copyright 2008. May be reprinted with permission, contact eejaycee@600words.com

John Lennon was no William Shatner

by Esther J. Cepeda

"Pregunta del Dia" translates to Question of the Day and today’s is a rumination from myself (I can do that y’know)

Q. Is Star Trek "God" and is William Shatner "Jesus?"

A. Yes you read that correctly, and no, I did not mean is Captain James T. Kirk "Jesus."

Allow me to set the dots and then I’ll connect them for you.

No, I’m not a heretic, it’s just that coincidences (events that coincide i.e., correspond exactly) this week have led me to wonder.

Not only did William Shatner, hereby referred to only as SHATNER, appear to me in the form of a direct mail piece sprung on me late at night in a tired stupor and as a four-color animatron as I purchased on-line, but so did "Star Trek"(which I hated, hated, hated as a child because it was boring to me and seemed to be always on TV on my lonely Saturday afternoons). This flowed from the mouths of two people I admire greatly within 24-hours of each other.

Thursday morning – at the top of the world – on the 66th floor of the Sears Tower in Chicago, John W. Rowe, 62, chairman and chief executive officer of Exelon Corporation at a meeting of the Executives Club of Chicago, talked about reducing carbon emissions by 2020 and invoked a Star Trek episode in which some-thing-or-other tried to eradicate the carbon-based life forms.

Friday morning Neil Steinberg, Chicago Sun-Times columnist, wrote about ex-Gov. George Ryan mis-quoting Lincoln by actually quoting someone who was playing Abraham Lincoln in an episode of…you guessed it.

The other obvious contender for such mythical status is "Star Wars" and its’ "force," (another pop-culture phenomenon I know nothing about) which is openly practiced as a multi-lingual, multi-cultural religion in some corners of the world, but: 1) Darth Vader doesn’t actually walk among us (James Earl Jones isn’t nearly that tall or intimidating) like SHATNER. And 2) SHATNER is, well…SHATNER!

How a show that accurately predicted the future -- today's realities -- and how Shatner can become one man-character-god, infused into my life in a billion different ways (my freshman AP biology teacher made our final "A nature example of the Prime Directive." I had no idea whatsoever what that even meant. I can’t believe I slid out with a "C.") is beyond comprehension. John Lennon once got himself in hot water for comparing his fame to Jesus. SHATNER has legions doing it for him (Oh yeah, just Google it).

I surrender. I have no answer to whether SHATNER is "the savior" but I’m going to paint him as the Virgin Guadalupe on black velvet just in case.

Esther J. Cepeda writes the “600 Words” & “Pregunta del Dia” columns, and is also a Director at the Chicago-based United Neighborhood Organization. Her reporting and opinions do not necessarily reflect those of UNO. “600 words” is a registered trademark of EeJayCee, Inc., Copyright 2008. May be reprinted with permission, contact eejaycee@600words.com

Not even if you got ‘em

by Esther J. Cepeda

“Pregunta del Dia” translates into Question of the day and today’s comes from a loyal reader who lives out in cyberspace, J.O. who asks:

Q. You’re not a smoker, are you?

A. Let’s put it this way, J.O., I am not addicted to nicotine. And I don’t like the stinky smell. And the only time I buy cigarettes its to give to my friends…who share.

Smoking isn’t good for you but business gets done on a smoke break, and much like you wouldn’t have a business lunch with someone and then refuse to eat, well, let’s just say I don’t mind puffing every now and then.

That said, the pressure to do so has gone down significantly. The no-indoor-smoking laws have made for fewer opportunities to feel pressured to light up.

The Associated Press recently reported that a Massachusetts study has linked the indoor smoking bans to reduced smoking in teens age 12-17. “Youths who lived in towns with strict bans were 40% less likely to become regular smokers than those in communities with no bans or weak ones,” according to an article in May’s issue of the archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.

We can make a few assumptions and take it farther, will the number of pre-teens who never take up the habit skyrocket?  Will the number of smokers who quit and never take up the habit again rise and stay steady? Will the smoking ban craze catch on everywhere? Maybe.

While that may not be good news for smokers who have to brave the fierce elements, but its wonderful news for the cost burden on our health care system and group insurance premiums in the coming decades. A worthy trade, I think!

send your preguntas to questions@pregunta-del-dia.com 

Esther J. Cepeda writes the “600 Words” & “Pregunta del Dia” columns, and is also a Director at the Chicago-based United Neighborhood Organization. Her reporting and opinions do not necessarily reflect those of UNO. “600 words” is a registered trademark of EeJayCee, Inc., Copyright 2008. May be reprinted with permission, contact eejaycee@600words.com