OBESITY AND AIR CONDITIONING

The high cost of electricity in Hawaii makes central air conditioning and heating a rarity in Hilo. Fortunately, the temperate climate and frequent trade winds minimize our need to change the temperature. But during weeks, like this past week, with high temperatures combined with high humidity, an AC starts sounding good.

While sweating under the ceiling fan, we are comforting ourselves with a recent study correlating the increase of air conditioning in US homes since the 1970’s with the increase in obesity. Researchers from the National Center for Healthy Housing in Columbia, MD and University of Illinois at Chicago, Ill studied the relationship between housing and the US population’s health over 30 years. The study combined data from serveral surveys of the population and housing of Americans.

Between 1972 and 2002, US households with central air conditioning jumped from 15% to nearly 60%. During that same time period, average BMI’s (Body Mass Index) in the US went from 24.9 to 27.7 (a BMI of 25 and above is considered overweight). The graph below was published in their study.

The researchers believe that the increase in obesity may be linked to the internal housing climate created by central air conditioning and forced heating because the body expends less energy in temperature ranges associated with climate-controlled settings. Improved thermal comfort provides an incentive for people to remain indoors, exercise less, and exert less energy through lower metabolic rates.

We tried out a portable room AC (Commercial Cool) from Walmart which vents out of the window. But using our Kill A Watt Electric Usage Monitor, we determined it cost over $2 an hour to run. The cost usually exceeds the benefit of having a small cooled area in the house.

We keep cool by opening all the windows and doors and using fans to blow directly on us. We notice on days when we swim in the mornings, we are cooler all day long, a strong motivator for us to get to our water aerobics class. Although these hot summer days keep us inside under the ceiling fan and out of the sun, the heat kills our appetite and forces us to drink lots of water, both very beneficial to our weight loss effort.

SEARCH FOR A HEALTHY BIO-FUEL

Last month, while talking to a friend about Hawaii’s energy independence, I heard about the Jatropha tree. The Jatropha curcas tree is famous for its seeds - also called Barbados nut, Jungle Erandi, and Physic nut - which are considered an excellent source of bio-fuel due to their high percentage of oil content. The Jatropha tree is easy to grow, lives a long time, and the oil from its seeds can power diesel engines and aircraft without having to be refined.

The prospect of growing aircraft fuel was very exciting, so I gleefully took the seeds I was given and ran out to buy the supplies needed to plant them. Much to my delight, the seeds grew quickly into plants.

But further investigation about the plant, toned down my excitement. I discovered that the seeds are very toxic as are the leaves, the stems, and the mash left over after crushing the seeds to get the oil. Jatropha contains highly toxic cyanic acid in the seeds and carcinogenic substances in all parts of the plant. The yellow oil is aptly called Hell oil. Three year old plantations in India have shown that the claims about Jatropha being able to grow in poor, arid soil without the need for fertilizer or pesticides are not true. Their yields have been paltry in dry regions as opposed to over 3 times better when irrigated and fertilized like food crops. These poor yields in India mean the cost per gallon of Jatropha bio-fuel is higher than the cost of conventional gasoline and diesel. Worse, Jatropha plantations have caused health problems for the farmers working with the plants and children eating the tasty seeds. Jatropha fields near lakes have killed off fish populations and caused ecological problems in other areas. Eating the seeds causes vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pain, and a burning sensation in the throat. It turns out my little aircraft fuel plants were toxic to my garden and me.

The realization that bio-fuel could create a toxic environment changed my view of plants. What is the point of bio-fuel if growing it damages the ecosphere? Isn’t supporting the environment one of the most important aspects of replacing petroleum production with bio-fuels?

This revelation led me to search for a Healthy bio-fuel and my discovery of the Moringa tree, which is known as “The Miracle Tree”. Moringa oleifera leaves are highly nutritious, said to prevent over 300 diseases, and have high concentrations of protein, vitamin C, vitamin A, potassium, and calcium as well as a host of other vitamins, minerals, and amino acids. Moringa seeds from mature pods can be browned, mashed and placed in boiling water to extract an excellent cooking or lubricating oil that floats to the surface. The oil does not become rancid and was once sold as Ben Oil. The tree is being planted all over the world as a primary food source for people because it is drought hardy and grows quickly.

In the Philipines – where Morianga is called Malungai – they have set up a manufacturing plant to use the oil harvested from the Moringa seeds to produce bio-diesel. Visiting MIT graduate students found the resulting bio-fuel had superior properties including fuel stability, good ignition behavior, and suitability even during winter. In addition to the income potential to farmers growing the plant for bio-fuel every part of the plant has commercial value including the mash leftover from the crushed seeds which makes an excellent feed for livestock.

My brief experience with bio-fuels has taught me that all green things are not necessarily non-toxic and non-destructive to people and the environment. And at the same time, there is the potential for the right bio-fuel plants to be a far greater benefit to the people and environment than just the fuel produced from plants. The right bio-fuel source can provide food, medicine, livestock feed, and great value to a local environment and economy. I am now in search of the Miracle Moringa seeds or starters to start my own garden of curative, healthy, beneficial bio-fuel plants.

A PERSONAL VIEW OF THE GLOBAL CURRENCY CRISIS

Growing up in Asia, we found it hard to understand the “real” value of all the different currencies we had to use when moving from country to country. In some currencies small numbered bills and coins bought a great deal and in other currencies the bills had numbers in the thousands and were worth far less than a dollar. Many Asian currencies were, and still are, illegal to trade outside their country so the exchange rates were “official” rates set by the government. The official rates were far higher than what the currency would have actually purchased, which resulted in an illegal “black market” where residents traded their currency for other currencies at a lower rate.

To understand the comparative values of these different currencies, we used an "ice cream cone equivalency"; the amount of currency it took to buy an ice cream cone became our basic value measure. This equivalency gave us a way to evaluate the cost of things: a taxi fare in New Delhi was 5 cones, a T-shirt in Jakarta was 4 cones, a piece of jewelry in Thailand was 10 cones, and a class trip was 300 cones. This comparison method made the currency values tangible and functional to us.

After we moved back to the US, we continued to convert money into equivalencies, but our comparison evolved from ice cream cones to weeks of vacation in Hawaii. When we considered the purchase of a new couch, for example, we equated it to a week of vacation in Maui which allowed us to understand our spending choices and the real value of our dollars at that time. The value of the dollar has varied wildly over the past thirty years which changed the value of a trip to Maui from one couch made in North Carolina in 1979 to ten couches made in China in 2009.

Since world-wide commodities, such as oil, are priced in US dollars, the US dollar has become the de-facto world currency. Countries such as Saudi Arabia, China, and Qatar control the price of their currency by setting their “official rate” in US dollars. China, Japan, and many other countries have been placing their US dollars, earned from selling manufactured goods and commodities, into US government Treasury Bills and Securities.



The massive US stimulus spending package and US economic downturn have led these nations, notably China and Japan - the two largest holders of US debt, to become very concerned about a huge loss in the value of their assets held in US dollars. These countries are reducing the amount of US dollars they own and converting them to gold and other currencies in order to find alternative ways to hold their assets and maintain the value of their currencies. The international divestiture of the US dollar is causing its rapid devaluation. Some have been calling this an international currency crisis.

As a result, many people are convinced that the US dollar will soon be formally devalued by the US government. But since currency is only valued by comparing it to something, we wonder what the US dollar will be devalued against? The old metric of valuing the dollar with gold was thrown out in 1971 and in its place the value of the dollar has only been its ability to buy basic commodities in the world market like food and energy.

Here in Hilo, Hawaii a devaluation of the dollar would result in higher prices for foreign imported goods, but a great deal of food is grown on our island and diesel and gas can eventually be replaced with bio-fuels. Though for most of the US this devaluation of the US currency will not cause instant change, we believe Hawaii’s proximity and popularity with Asia may result in an immediate and disproportionately large influx of visitors and real estate buyers from Asia. We are pretty sure that we are not the only ones that measure the value of their currency in “weeks of vacation in Hawaii”.