Posted on 10/22/2015 12:18:19 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has spent over $1.1 million studying the “freshman 15,” trying to determine whether friends influence their college peers to eat more.
Sen. Rand Paul (R., Ky.) highlighted the project as an example of wasteful spending, calling out the agency for studying a myth invented by Seventeen magazine.
“The ‘freshman 15’ is an old legend around college campuses; the idea that new college students, away from home and confronted with a campus food service smorgasbord tend to put on a few extra pounds,” Paul’s latest edition of “The Waste Report” reads. “Well the National Institutes for Health aims to get to the bottom of this with a $380,000 grant to study how social relationships in college contribute to weight-related problems. Because it’s not the food you eat, it’s the friends you make.”
Arizona State University received a $380,272 grant for the study this year. The project has cost taxpayers $1,143,919 overall since it began in 2013.
The grant for the project argues there is a “lack of research focusing on the role of friends” on eating habits. The study is tracking “how friendships are created” to “better describe the mechanisms by which friends are prospectively associated with weight-related behaviors and outcomes.”
Sen. Paul cited other studies that question whether college weight gain is truly a problem.
“Numerous independent studies spanning decades have agreed that freshman only gain around 2.7 to 3.5lbs over their entire freshman year,” Paul said. “It turns out it was Seventeen magazine that arbitrarily put the number at 15 back in 1989.”
“But even the 2 to 3lbs might not even be a problem,” he continued. “An Ohio State University (OSU) study comparing college freshman to their non-college peers and found only a discrepancy of about half a pound, attributing most of the weight gain at the tail end of growing to adult size. The OSU study concludes, ‘anti-obesity efforts directed specifically at college freshmen will likely have little impact on obesity prevalence among young adults.’”
Paul concluded that the cost of this year’s $380,000 in funding for the study could have paid for 14 students to attend Arizona State University in-state this year. Over the course of the study, 42 students could have attended ASU, which costs $27,000 for in-state tuition.
The federal obsession with obesity continues.
Why can’t they just use Barky and Moochelle as test subjects and analyze why Barky is so thin and Moochelle isn’t?
Nanny State PING!
Being away from home and able to drink beer could be a factor as well. Or was it just for me? :-}
Surely, there's a study that needs doing again that I can get tax dollars to waste.
I’m sure you were in good company.
Everybody gains weight when under stress. It is likely that these l’il darlin’s are under stress for the first time in their precious lives.
The women, in particular, wil likely gain another 10 the first year they are married. Goes with the territory.
It was "Freshman 10" when I went to school.
Inflation I guess...
Lots of beer, pizza, and late night runs to fast food joints do it, based on personal experience, so do I get my check now from the feds for clearing that up?
ya think!
I was hearing that number before 1989.
I can see where we might reduce Federal expenditures, in an effort to balance the budget.
Geez, that’s much better than anything I would have done with the $40,000 I gave to the government this year
Skip ahead to next May, by which time she has a long string of ex-boyfriends, a sob story to go with each one, and the breasts, thighs, and buttocks of a 30-year-old mother of three.
If we're unlucky, she comes back to campus the next September, but changes majors to Women's Studies and spends the rest of her college career writing lousy feminist poetry and incoherent tirades about how evil men are.
If we're really unlucky, she stretches out the rest of her college career so long, she eventually finishes her thesis and gets hired as an assistant or adjunct professor.
A lot of 18 year olds are finishing up puberty and still growing/gaining weight. I grew almost an inch as a freshman. I gained weight with the growth.
I am shocked that taking the rice crispies from the cereal bar and coating them with butter and the marshmallow sauce on the sundae bar would have an adverse effect on someone’s waistline though.
DEFUND N.I.H.
Nope. Most of my early-college weight gain came from a brown bottle - actually a lot of them.
I would also point out, however, that 18-19 is about the age which men tend to fill out and gain the last of their natural muscle mass.
The government is always complaining that they need more money, they need to raise taxes.. then you see things like this.
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