Minerva

Between December 1944 and April 1945 the official daily food ration for adults in Amsterdam dropped to less than 3350 kJ (800 calories). There is already a clutch of papers reporting the health implications for adults born around the time of the famine, and there are two more papers this week. One found that babies who were exposed to the famine in early gestation were more likely than others to have coronary heart disease in middle age (Heart 2000;84:595-8). The explanation, inexplicably reported in a different journal (American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 2000;72:1101-6), is that these babies developed more atherogenic lipid profiles.

It costs at least £106 a week for a single man between 18 and 30 to live a healthy lifestyle in the United Kingdom, say researchers from London (Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health 2000;54:885-9). They estimate that it costs about £3.00 a week to keep and use a bicycle, or a pair of trainers for jogging. Food costs include the price of two portions of oily fish each week and five portions of fresh fruit or vegetables a day. The national minimum wage just about covers the cost of a healthy lifestyle; social security payments for unemployed men do not.

A gram of snooker chalk contains over 7000 µg of lead—not enough to hurt …