Living Life With Grace

Yesterday was the last day in my architecture history class. The teacher read The Dot and the Line to us, complete with slides.



The sun was shining today for the first day in quite a while, so I took it as a sign from the baby Jesus that I didn't need to go to Nordic mythology. I haven't finished reading Njal's Saga anyway.



Tivoli is open again for Christmas. I've heard it's a lot of fun at night when it's all lit up but I haven't gone yet. I walk by there every day on the way to Central Station and I try my best not to knock over the small Danish children that queue out front.


Left: Swings in Tivoli. Right: Christmas tree and decorations in Central Station.



I came home early around 3:00 and my host parents were already home. In fact, my host mom Anette had a chocolate cake cooling on the counter and two ducks roasting in the oven for my host sister's birthday party tomorrow. I bought a little something for her and wrapped it in Danish flag paper. The Danish flag wrapping paper is everywhere. It seemed kind of strange to me at first -- can you imagine getting a birthday gift wrapped in American flag paper?

---

My recent post about my friend who can't afford to eat got me thinking about cheap eats. It's true that the food (and everything) is expensive here, but there are ways to save money. If you ever find yourself in Copenhagen (or studying abroad somewhere else), here are my tips.

1. Buy groceries. 7-11 is fast but it's not cheap. It's often the only thing open on Sundays, too, so a lot of students end up here when they just need milk or a quick snack and can't buy it somewhere else. One of my favorite snacks is Mini-Meal, a little yogurt cup with granola and a spoon. At 7-11, these cost about 12kr ($2.40). At Netto, the discount grocery store just a short walk away, they're only 6,50kr ($1.25). Buying a cup of coffee and a pastry costs about 25kr ($5) at 7-11 and it's a quick breakfast. Buying a box of granola and yogurt from a grocery store costs about the same and it would feed you for 3-5 days instead of just one.

2. Buy groceries, part II. The cheapest food I've found near school is still expensive. A bagel with cream cheese costs 18kr ($3.50) and a bagel sandwich costs 40kr ($8). (At my home university, I think you'd probably pay $1.25 for a bagel with cream cheese and $5-6 for a sandwich.) Hot dogs from street vendors are 15-25kr ($3-5). The "kebab menu" at my favorite shwarma shop includes a pita stuffed with meat and veggies, french fries and a Coke for 50kr ($10). A nearby Mediterranean/vegetarian buffet is about 60kr ($12) for lunch and 80kr ($14) for dinner. Eating out occasionally is fine and unavoidable, but I don't understand how people can afford to buy lunch every day. It adds up fast. A loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter/jelly costs less than a lunch you could buy at a shwarma place.

3. Like in America, Italian food is the cheapest. Stock up on pasta and sauce. Better yet, buy canned tomatoes and some spices.

4. Avoid brand names. Don't drink Coke when Danish beer is cheaper, duh. Also: don't buy beer when tap water is cheaper, and don't buy the tap water if you have a Nalgene.

5. Buy with cash. Keep track of how much you spend. I've made all of my purchases with cash this semester and it's an easy way to budget. "Can I afford this? Well, let's see. *turns wallet upside down, lint falls out, gentle wooshing noise* I guess that's a no."

Being me, I've also obsessively logged every crown I've spent since I arrived. The only time I gave up on this was when I was traveling and I just didn't have the time. In Denmark, my goal is to spend $100 a week. Usually it's a little more than that, sometimes less. This week I'll go overbudget because I spent $60 at the post office. Oops.

The only reason I've been able to be so thrifty is because I live with a host family. I paid exactly the same amount of money as students living in dorms and shared housing, but I get three meals a day. I'd highly recommend the host family option to anyone studying abroad for cultural exchange reasons, but it helps your wallet, too.

Maybe my friends living in the dorms (i.e., Sarah) will tell me I'm wrong about some of this. Anyone living in the city and cooking for themselves probably knows a lot more about cheap places to buy food, so feel free to disagree with what I've said here.

Labels: day 97: solen skinner

Some important news from today's New York Times by Gina Kolata, author of Rethinking Thin, one of my favorite books of 2007.

Obesity Rates Are Leveling Off
By GINA KOLATA

Obesity rates in American women have leveled off and stayed steady since 1999, a long enough time for researchers to say the plateau appears to be real. And, they say, there are hints that obesity rates may be leveling off for men, too.

The researchers’ report, published on line today by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (www.cdc.gov/nchs), used data from the centers’ periodic national surveys that record actual heights and weights of a representative sample of Americans. Those surveys, according to Cynthia L. Ogden, an epidemiologist at the National Center for Health Statistics and the lead author of the new report, are the only national ones that provide such data.

Dr. Ogden said the trend for women was “great news.” Obesity rates have remained steady at about 35 percent since 1999, a long enough time to persuade her that the tide has changed. “I’m optimistic that it really is leveling off,” she said.

Men’s rates increased until 2003, when they hit 33 percent and stayed there through the 2005-6 survey. Dr. Ogden said she would like to see a few more years of data before declaring that mens’ rates have stopped increasing.

Obesity is defined as having a body mass index of 30 or greater. Body mass index is a measure that takes account of both weight and height; for example, someone five feet six inches tall would be reach the obesity threshold at 186 pounds, but a six-foot person would reach obesity at 221 pounds.

The C.D.C.’s goal is for the national obesity rate to be no more than 15 percent by the year 2010. The last time that rate of obesity was seen was in 1980.

The report found that obesity rates varied with age. The highest rates were in people aged 40 to 59, when 40 percent of men were obese and 41 percent of women.

For women, but not men, the rates also varied with ethnicity. Non-Hispanic black women and Mexican-American women had the highest obesity rates — about half of these women in their 40’s and 50’s were obese. In contrast, 39 percent of non-Hispanic white women were obese at those ages.

As black women got older, their rates increased again. Sixty-one percent of black women aged 60 and older were obese, as compared to 32 percent of white women and 37 percent of Mexican-American women.

Obesity specialists had mixed reactions to the new data.

Dr. Claude Bouchard, an obesity researcher who directs of the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, La., was not convinced that the obesity rates had leveled off for either men or women. The rates in both groups edged up by about 2 percent between the 2003-4 and 2005-6 surveys, he notes. And even though those increases were not statistically significant, they are, he said, a troubling trend.

“I’m worried,” he said. “We are talking about something that is still creeping up.” And regarding obesity rates among black women, he said, “Wow, through the roof.”

But Madelyn Fernstrom, who directs the weight management program at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, was encouraged. She suspects that many Americans are setting more rational weight goals for themselves: even if they cannot lose much weight, she thinks, they are still making an effort to keep from gaining.

The national goal of no more than fifteen percent of Americans being obese is “unrealistic,” Dr. Fernstrom said, and perhaps even counterproductive. And the body mass index range defined as normal — 18 to 25 — may be impossible for many people to maintain.

“When the bar is set too high, people do nothing,” Dr. Fernstrom said, “whether it’s 7 to 10 fruits and veggies a day when people can’t even get to 5, or 75 minutes of physical activity when 20 is hard for most people, or a B.M.I. under 25.”

Now, she added, many people are looking at other measures of health, like blood pressure, cholesterol and blood sugar measurements, to assess their medical risks rather than focusing on body mass alone.

Moreover, she said, people are recognizing the threat of weight creep: “In my clinical practice, people come in and say, ‘I didn’t lose weight this month.’ I say, ‘But you didn’t gain weight.’ The newer message is that not gaining weight is a reasonable goal.”

---

Also in fat news...

Parents in Scotland are being offered 'obesity classes' to combat childhood obesity.

Obesity may distort cancer test -- so more obese men die of cancer, which causes researchers to say, "Aha! Obesity is the cause of cancer, more obese people die of cancer, etc." when in reality, the cancer-detecting tools just aren't designed to detect cancer in obese patients. Whoops.

Someone finally admits that weight loss may involve more than just willpower. Like politics, maybe, or the fact that American food is pumped full of corn and extra calories.

Working mothers can lead to fat teens while working dads apparently have no effect at all. Feminism? What's that? Oh, just some fad in the 60s. Like civil rights and the anti-war movement.

Labels: fat news from Gina Kolata

Today my Nordic mythology class visited the Copenhagen University to see some old Icelandic manuscripts. The most amazing part was the fact that the librarian and preservationist sent the books around to be handled by the students. We all touched the books, handled them, and turned the pages without gloves. The books looked like shit and I couldn't help but think that maybe they would be in better condition if they didn't, you know, let groups of 50 people manhandle them whenever they wanted.

After the field trip, I helped a friend study for our upcoming Danish final. She said she was feeling really sick and nauseous, then she asked me if I wanted a cookie. She took out a package of digestive biscuits. "I love these," she said. "I'm going to buy a bunch to take home. I have a habit of eating them in mass quantities."

I looked at her. "Have you eaten anything else today?" It was 4pm.

"Uh, a banana."

Hmm. "Maybe you're feeling sick because you're overdosing on fiber and you haven't eaten a real meal today."

"Oh, but I woke up late so I haven't been up that long."

"How late?"

"Like, one."

Eventually I persuaded her to go buy a bagel, but she was resistant at first. She told me that she usually only eats once per day because she just doesn't have any money. "I wish I lived with a host family so I could just eat whatever I wanted!" She laughed. She knows I live with a host family.

I sit next to her in Danish. Some mornings she coms in with a coffee and a pastry from 7-11. When she sets her bag down on the desk, I always see at least two packs of cigarettes inside. It's easy to conclude that maybe she doesn't need more money so much as she needs to learn how to budget and shop for herself. Or maybe she really is just broke.

A part of me wanted to stuff a 100-kroner note ($20) in her bag while she was off buying a bagel, but I didn't. I know I get these sorts of urges from my parents. One time when I was about six (I think?), my parents were packing up groceries in our kitchen. I asked them where they were taking our food. They said they found a family living in their car somewhere and that those people needed our food more than us. What a Hallmark moment, right? Still, it stuck with me, 'cause there's a part of me that wants to give money to skinny, pale girls who can't concentrate because they eat once a day and smoke too many cigarettes and can't take care of themselves.

Labels: day 95: old books and tutoring