Study: Santa, You Need to Lose Weight

Yes, Virginia, there really is a Santa Claus. And he's a public health menace.

Public health expert Nathan Grills of Monash University in Australia says the beloved Christmas icon should ditch his sleigh and start biking or walking to lose his jelly belly.

Grills' light-hearted research was published online Thursday in the annual Christmas issue of the British medical journal BMJ.

After conducting a literature review, Grills identified a "very high Santa awareness" among children. He determined that Santa made a reckless role model, noting his frequent cookie snacks, occasional cigars and refusal to don a helmet during "extreme sports such as roof surfing and chimney jumping."

"Santa is a late adopter of evidence-based behavior change and continues to sport a rotund, sedentary image," Grills wrote.

He also found a correlation between countries that celebrate Santa and large numbers of fat children.

"Santa promotes a message that obesity is synonymous with cheerfulness and joviality," Grills wrote. He suggested that jolly old Saint Nick should swap his traditional snacks of cookies and milk in favor of sharing carrots with Rudolph.

More disturbingly, Grills said Santa's close-up contact with sniffling, coughing kids made him a one-man outbreak waiting to happen, with swine flu the biggest seasonal concern.

"Unsuspecting little Johnny gets to sit on Santa's lap, but as well as his present, he gets H1N1 influenza," Grills warned.

Grills said he donned a Santa suit himself - and deemed the experience a public health nightmare. "I was kissed and hugged by snotty-nosed kids at each performance and was never offered alcohol swabs to wipe my rosy cheeks between clients," he wrote.

[weilert]

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[tracy_tracyc]

thanks for an awesome post.
i have had many stuggles with weight loss and losing fat for a long time. I manage to lose up to a dress size in a week by doing just a 12 minutes routine thats just body weight? and still be able to eat my confort foods. I am also able to eat ice cream every day and drink smoothies and eat chocolate.
The main difference for me was changing into a diet that allowed me to eat the foods i loved and it worked well for me.

i belive that cutting your calories to much can be a bad thing too? and that eating the foods you love is still important not just for your body? but for your sanity too

i had stuggled big time before i figuered my body and how to do it correctly? now i dont have to starve or eat ?rabbit food? all the time.
I made big changes when i realised that a calorie is not always the same and that eating is what controls when and how you lose fat.
i eat raw chocolate ever day? and ive lost heaps of weight!

even though i hated working out, i found that doing the most bang for your buck exersises like squats and pull ups made the biggest differences. I hated doing crunches and using ab gadgets for weight loss? it can be fun and simple? but may not be easy if you do not know how to do it right.

I also believe in doing interval training (short bursts of intensity) rather then doing long steady paced cardio. Lots of research show that it can make you fat. There is a way to lose fat all day long ;)

thanks again

melt10pounds.blogspot.com/

[connmac]

I totally agree with everyone else. What is wrong with America? Get a LIFE!!!!!!!! You always have to nitpick everything that has been America forever!!!! Just start living, instead of worrying about everything that means nothing. Life is to short!!!

[Dimmulore]

Please, for the love of god..tell me you are not serious about this story. santa being a bad role model? just because he is over weight? in this common world where parents abandon their kids, or beat them, or get drunk or drugged up, where every TV show you see has something to do about sex, every child star out there is slowly becoming a junoir *****, and your telling me that the only icon to happiness that has stuck around all this time is a bad role model because he is fat.

[EN2USN]

for real. this country has nothing else to do but tell santa clause he needs to lose weight what has this country come to? little kids can not have a role model now that does not meet with the goverments approal. santa has been around longer that this no good goverment that does not follow the constitution any more. leave him and the kids alone. remember my people in goverment WE THE PEOPLE PUT YOU THERE WE CAN TAKE YOU OUT

[crzallset]

This article just confirms what is fundamentally wrong :-( Think about it!!!

[jujubee3]

I am 13 years old. When i first read this article i laughed out loud becuase i did not think it was serious. I think the idea of 'Santa Clause' being a significant cause of child obesity is just downright appalling. I am sad to see that some people in the generation that are supposed to be role modles for my generation are setting this kind of example; trying to take away one of the few things that dosn't have to be politically correct in my world.

Of all the obese peers i have known, as far as I know none of their heath decisions were based on the role model of Santa Clause. Like felixdrake said, child obesity is more likley to come from negitive self images.

Please, stop the madness!

[girlmiami]

PLEASE LEAVE SANTA ALONE. THIS IS SO WRONG.

[felixdrake]

It's this kind of voodoo pseudo-science that casts doubt on real findings regarding pressing problems with obtainable solutions.

As was previously mentioned the obesity trend does NOT date back as far as the Santa legend. As such, blaming Santa is not only miserly, but utterly baseless. I have yet to meet a SINGLE person of any age that felt they wanted to gain weight to be more like Santa.

As for the traditions of candy, again, no causality. The gingerbread man is not overweight, but is still the cause for much candy eating. Perhaps he could take a lesson from Santa.

One of the main causes for obesity is as a coping mechanism for a negative self image. If we glorify anorexia (which our society DOES) and censure any overweight public figure, people in this category will be MORE likely to be obese when their healthy weight figure feels not good enough. Those that are already obese have little chance of feeling good enough about themselves to break the cycle.

Obesity levels have gone up since cookie monster went off his all cookies diet too. It seems the last round of semi random role model panic didn't do much either.

[pamsappys]

OMG....what will they try next. Everytime they try putting the blame on an Icon as such we end up losing it. Just like "God", they forbid us to use that in our schools now.

Stop it now.

[voxpopulus]

Maybe Santa's fat because he's a couch potato 364 days of the year, and only gets off his butt for one night.