I've been gathering inspiration for these daily WHM posts by typing the word "women" into Google News . As I've observed before, their front page rarely offers pictures of women - today it's Courtney Love in the Entertainment Section and some pregnant woman doing yoga in the Health section (accompanying an article assuring readers that "Male babies whose mothers used the allergy drug Claritin while pregnant are not more likely to have a particular genital birth defect" so even there the subject focuses on the Y chromosome) - so it's almost always necessary to do a search. Today's results are big on what one paper calls "indulging" and "destructive behavior" such as drinking and smoking heavily. I find it hard to believe that excessive consumption is limited to women, so I resented the alarmist tone with which the information is presented, but it basically comes down to the finding that young folks between 16 and 24 drink a lot. Here's the official press release (PDF file) of Living in Britain from the Office of National Statistics. Interestingly, the ONS notes "Young people drink less frequently than older people." So my conclusion, without having read the report itself of course, is that the reportage on it is fluffy and dubious. As usual.
As for smoking, the British Medical Journal will have an article on its site sometime today, according to this article, featuring "new research [that] has found that the effectiveness of nicotine patches seems to be related to the genetic make-up (genotype) in women, but not in men." Essentially, if you're a woman trying to quit smoking and you have a CC genotype, good luck to you; if you've got a CT or TT, you stand a better chance.
As for other indulgences like oil addiction, rampant consumerism and soul-numbing reality shows, goodness knows when we'll see any studies denouncing them.
Related sites which may be of interest (it's hard to find ones that aren't punitive!):
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