Obesity is a national problem in the United States and continues to be a major issue for health care and productivity. Just not too long ago in 1991 no state had an obesity rate above 20 percent. Now the only state that isn’t higher than 20 percent is Colorado. What is worse is the kids in America being raised in this growing epidemic and not knowing the difference. While nearly two-thirds of American adults are overweight or obese there is an estimated 23 million children that are either overweight or obese.

A recent study that was reported by Craig Gundersen, Ph.D., of the University of Illinois and colleagues was published in the September issue of Pediatrics which you can read here. The study focused on the stress of mothers and how it changed obesity rates among young children. The ages that were focused on were between three and ten and found to be overweight the more stressors their moms had in their lives.

The data in the study came from the 1999-2002 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). There were 841 children participants in the study which came from 425 different households with an annual income not exceeding twice the poverty level who were included in the analysis, 37% were overweight or obese.

The study revealed that households with no maternal stress, a food secure household environment and a low-income range had a 33 percent potential of being overweight or obese. Those children in food insecure households had a 34.8 percent potential of being overweight or obese. The food secure or food insecure statement equates to the average availability of food in the home.

When mom was found to be more stressed and reported more stressors in her life, the children in the household had a higher potential of being overweight or obese in food secure households but decreased among the children in food insecure households. The children in the food secure households were found to have a 43.7 percent potential of being overweight or obese when comparing them to the children in the food insecure households.

“We were not able to observe what people are eating in these data. That’s definitely part of future work,” said Steve Garasky, a professor of human development and family studies.

“But at this point we have to conclude that in stressful environments, children in households with adequate food — maybe it is ”comfort food,” or maybe it’s just larger quantities of more traditional food — are possibly acting on the desire to eat more, and maybe even eat differently, than those from food insecure households,” he added.

The statistics of this study didn’t seem significant once children reached the age of 11. It was suspected that young adolescents have bigger social networks and outlets to share the stress at home with thus the outlet in food consumption.

While it’s easy to point the finger and find a problem in the society it may leave the single mom’s struggling just to make it what they are supposed to do. Dr. Gundersen has some ideas, “Not to absolve all personal responsibility, but we have to acknowledge that there are some factors that may be beyond an individual’s ability to control,” Gundersen said. “So with a focus on public policy, there are three important things that can be done. First, we can have a firm social safety net for such households. Second, we can offer financial education to enable people to better understand how to manage their money. And third, we can focus on the importance of making sure everyone has health insurance. So instead of saying here’s what mothers can do to alleviate the stress, we’re saying here’s what we can do as a society.”

If it seems odd that dad’s stress levels aren’t mentioned in this study, that’s up for future research. The researchers have future plans to measure the stress levels of fathers in determining overall household stress. Garasky says they started with mothers because single-parent families make up a high percentage of low-income households, and the vast majority of those single parents are mothers.

“And then it’s the premise that mom is traditionally the primary caregiver,” Garasky said. “So if you want to link one person to circumstances of a child, it’s more natural to link to mom.”

“Unfortunately we did not have access to information about fathers’ stressors and behaviors in this data set,” Brenda Lohman said. “Yet in most modern households, fathers may be doing as much or more of the cooking than in the past. So I agree that future work must address stress levels of fathers too.”

“Inquiring minds wanna know” the saying goes. Last night’s Vice President acceptance speech by Joe Biden at the Democratic National Convention proved inquiring minds wanted to know what a freudian slip was. As America watched the DNC they grabbed their keyboards and started fiercly typing in what they wanted more information on.

The well known phrase, “Just Google It” proved itself to be true as American’s immediately researched what a freudian slip was. The flurry of searching all started with Joe Biden at one point, misspeaking, he started a sentence by referring to George — as in President Bush — and then corrected himself to say John — as in McCain. A Freudian slip, he joked and said multiple times. It seems to be the message that Democrats keep trying to make, that Bush and McCain don’t have too many differences.

As soon as the statement was made you can see the graph spiking for the search on Google for “freudian slip” and another pic showing it’s number nineteenth position.

The search term, “freudian slip” wasn’t the only hot search spawned by those statements of Joe Biden’s. Other search terms that were related to that search were “Joe Biden Freudian Slip”, “Freudian” and “Freudian Slip Obama.”

It wasn’t the first time the Obama campaign has seen a frenzy around the term “Freudian slip.” You can see a clip of the YouTube video below. As reported over at Politico: “Mere minutes after Joe Biden wrapped up his maiden speech as Barack Obama’s running mate, McCain’s camp and the RNC gleefully seized upon what they called a “Freudian slip” in Obama’s introduction.

After almost doing it earlier in his speech, Obama got caught up in his closing crescendo and predicted that it’s Biden who would be “the next president of the United States.”

“Barack Obama sounded as though he turned over the top spot on the ticket today to his new mentor, when he introduced Joe Biden as the next president,” McCain spokesman Ben Porritt quipped in an insta-statement.”

With all the frenzy built up with freudian slips falling left and right, it’s amazing to see how much America is controlled by the boob tube in front of them. Google Trends which can be found at http://www.google.com/trends/hottrends?sa=X often times finds it’s Top 100 trends in America controlled by what is airing on TV. If it’s not what is exactly airing on TV at that moment it is the day’s gossip machine at work of what sex tape was released, who is divorcing or what animal just grew four heads.

When you sit down and use Google and start typing queries into the search engine you would probably be surprised how many people before you have searched the same term. Even more surprising is that the majority of searches end up searching around the same uptrend in time. If you actually type a keyword into the search trends you can view the graphs over time and see how every keyword has a monthly, seasonal and annual trend. We aren’t as unique as we seem to think we are and all mostly lead by TV, media and publications.

Tell us what you think about the freudian slips, Google Trends and America turning to Google for their Encyclopedia Britannica.