British Medical Journal says Santa is a bad influence

Lifeguards For Life

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Santa Claus is a well known and loved character, but Nathan Grills and Brendan Halyday question whether he is a healthy role model:unsure:

Was this serioulsy published in the british medical journal? apparently so....

HE’S grossly overweight, drinks far too much and drives at breakneck speed without a seatbelt, yet children the world over adore him.

But, according to a public health expert, with his portly belly and a fondness for a drink-fuelled spin on the sleigh, Santa is a bad influence on parents and children, encouraging everything from obesity to drink driving.

Dr Nathan Grills has done a study of the famous man and suggests Santa slim down by ditching the mince pies, snacking instead on his reindeers’ carrots and celery sticks. He also should trade in the sleigh for a bike or throw his sack over his shoulder and deliver his presents on foot.

"To create a supportive environment for Santa’s dieting we should cease the tradition of leaving him mince pies, and brandy, whiskey or stout. This is bad not only for Santa’s waistline but for parental obesity," says Dr Grills, who is based at Monash University in Victoria, Australia.

"Santa might also be encouraged to adopt a more active method to deliver toys – swapping his reindeer for a bike or walking or jogging."

Dr Grills also warned that Santa’s habit of consuming brandy, whiskey or a bottle of stout at every home indicates a drink problem – and the more disturbing possibility of him drink-driving his sleigh.
Dr Grills said Santa Claus’s contemporary image arose through a series of Coca Cola advertisements that began in the 1930s. His image was subsequently used in tobacco advertising and, while most countries had moved to ban this, it was common to still see Santa pictured on Christmas cards with a pipe in hand.

A study found Santa Claus was second only to Ronald McDonald for characters recognised by American children.

"If Ronald McDonald can be so effective at selling burgers to children, we might expect Santa to be equally effective at selling other goods," Dr Grills said.

"Public health needs to be aware of what giant multinational capitalists realised long ago, that Santa sells and sometimes he sells harmful products."

Santa’s "rotund sedentary image" also had the effect of making "obesity synonymous with cheerfulness and joviality" around the world, he said.

Given the jolly giant’s popularity Dr Grills argues that "Santa only needs to affect health by 0.1% to damage millions of lives".

Amid a global swine flu pandemic, Dr Grills says that most people who stood in as Santa impersonators were not required to undergo a health check – and they get "kissed and hugged" by a succession of "snotty-nosed kids".

If he sneezes or coughs around 10 times a day, all the children who sit on his lap may end up with swine flu, Dr Grills who denies he is a "public health scrooge".



Read more: http://www.irishexaminer.com/irelan...driving-and-obesity-108097.html#ixzz0aSJyzPci

Here is a link to the analysis at BMJ, though i can not post the full text.
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/extr...FIRSTINDEX=0&sortspec=date&resourcetype=HWCIT
 
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Shishkabob

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How does Santa encourage drunk driving? He drinks milk for Gods sakes! I never once heard of him drinking "brandy or whiskey", let alone eggnog.



If anything, he encourages healthy bones...
 
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Burlyskink

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He does have a point with him being over weight and stuff, however at the same time he is a good influence by supporting giving things to people.
 
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Lifeguards For Life

Lifeguards For Life

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How does Santa encourage drunk driving? He drinks milk for Gods sakes!



If anything, he encourages healthy bones...

The christmas stories i was told as a child, had a Santa who drank milk and cookies...

Though i did like the bit about Santa as a vector for swine flu
 

Burlyskink

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The christmas stories i was told as a child, had a Santa who drank milk and cookies...

Though i did like the bit about Santa as a vector for swine flu

Yea likewise, though this makes me think... Why did they publish this? What about halloween? I think this guy is just a scrooge
 
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Lifeguards For Life

Lifeguards For Life

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Yea likewise, though this makes me think... Why did they publish this? What about halloween? I think this guy is just a scrooge

Agreed, i thought this was a hoax.

I can not believe this was published in a medical journal.

The British Medical Journal is a legitimate journal right?
 

MrBrown

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Yes the BMJ is legitimate, it's a high end journal up there with NEJM, JAMA and the Lancet.
 

nicolel3440

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check this santa info out

this was read at church last year and thought it was interesting

Santa Claus:An Engineers Perspective
I. There are approximately two billion children (persons under 18) in the world. However, since Santa does not visit children of Muslim, Hindu, Jewish or Buddhist religions, this reduces the workload for Christmas night to 15% of the total, or 378 million (according to the Population Reference Bureau).
At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per house hold, that comes to 108 million homes, presuming that there is at least one good child in each.

II. Santa has about 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west (which seems logical). This works out to 967.7 visits per second. This is to say that for each Christian household with a good child, Santa has around 1/1000th of a second to park the sleigh, hop out, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left for him, get back up the chimney, jump into the sleigh and get on to the next house.

Assuming that each of these 108 million stops is evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false, but will accept for the purposes of our calculations), we are now talking about 0.78 miles per household; a total trip of 75.5 million miles, not counting bathroom stops or breaks. This means Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second --- 3,000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second, and a conventional reindeer can run (at best) 15 miles per hour.

III. The payload of the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium sized Lego set (two pounds), the sleigh is carrying over 500 thousand tons, not counting Santa himself. On land, a conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that the "flying" reindeer could pull ten times the normal amount, the job can't be done with eight or even nine of them--- Santa would need 360,000 of them. This increases the payload, not counting the weight of the sleigh, another 54,000 tons, or roughly seven times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth (the ship, not the monarch).

IV. 600,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance --- this would heat up the reindeer in the same fashion as a spacecraft re-entering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer would absorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy per second each. In short, they would burst into flames almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them and creating deafening sonic booms in their wake.

The entire reindeer team would be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second, or right about the time Santa reached the fifth house on his trip.

Not that it matters, however, since Santa, as a result of accellerating from a dead stop to 650 m.p.s. in .001 seconds, would be subjected to centrifugal forces of 17,500 g's. A 250 pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of the sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force, instantly crushing his bones and organs and reducing him to a quivering blob of pink goo.

Therefore, if Santa did exist, he's dead now.
 
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Burlyskink

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this was read at church last year and thought it was interesting

Santa Claus:An Engineers Perspective
I. There are approximately two billion children (persons under 18) in the world. However, since Santa does not visit children of Muslim, Hindu, Jewish or Buddhist religions, this reduces the workload for Christmas night to 15% of the total, or 378 million (according to the Population Reference Bureau).
At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per house hold, that comes to 108 million homes, presuming that there is at least one good child in each.

II. Santa has about 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west (which seems logical). This works out to 967.7 visits per second. This is to say that for each Christian household with a good child, Santa has around 1/1000th of a second to park the sleigh, hop out, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left for him, get back up the chimney, jump into the sleigh and get on to the next house.

Assuming that each of these 108 million stops is evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false, but will accept for the purposes of our calculations), we are now talking about 0.78 miles per household; a total trip of 75.5 million miles, not counting bathroom stops or breaks. This means Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second --- 3,000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second, and a conventional reindeer can run (at best) 15 miles per hour.

III. The payload of the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium sized Lego set (two pounds), the sleigh is carrying over 500 thousand tons, not counting Santa himself. On land, a conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that the "flying" reindeer could pull ten times the normal amount, the job can't be done with eight or even nine of them--- Santa would need 360,000 of them. This increases the payload, not counting the weight of the sleigh, another 54,000 tons, or roughly seven times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth (the ship, not the monarch).

IV. 600,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance --- this would heat up the reindeer in the same fashion as a spacecraft re-entering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer would absorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy per second each. In short, they would burst into flames almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them and creating deafening sonic booms in their wake.

The entire reindeer team would be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second, or right about the time Santa reached the fifth house on his trip.

Not that it matters, however, since Santa, as a result of accellerating from a dead stop to 650 m.p.s. in .001 seconds, would be subjected to centrifugal forces of 17,500 g's. A 250 pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of the sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force, instantly crushing his bones and organs and reducing him to a quivering blob of pink goo.

Therefore, if Santa did exist, he's dead now.

He is magic.. :p

lol, that was fun to read though
 

daedalus

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What a crock of shiit. I cannot even believe someone put this in a medical journal.

Milk grows strong bones.
 

thegreypilgrim

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Sounds like Grills and Halyday had issues when they found out Santa Claus doesn't exist.

Must have been a slow week for BMJ.
 

Sasha

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It's santa for god sakes. Of course he's overweight, he lives at the north pole and needs the fat for insulation!

I have NEVER heard a kid go "Santa is fat so it's ok if I'm fat too!"

Skinny santa would not be as cool.
 

Medic

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But maybe crazy huge and ripped santa.

it's a little hard to change the publics eye on their perspective on SANTA.

What are they going to make santa thin and clean shaven and instead of delivering presents all around the world he can deliver some very good health products & suppliments along with an exercise routine & eating plan.

WHAT A JOKE
 

lightsandsirens5

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Someone needs a rock in their stocking...

Or a red hot cinder....:p

And when did Santa start drinking alcohol? I mean, like others have said, he drinks milk and you see him on the occasional Coca Cola ad for crying out loud!


And they expect hime to "walk or jog" around the world and visit every house on christmas eve? I'd say no wonder he drives at "a break neck speed." I can see the headlines: Thousands of childern mourn. ~~~ Christmas postponed by 1000 days. ~~~ Santa last seen walking through Siberia delivering presents on foot, what gives? ~~~ Unconfirmed reports hold that the British government confiscated Santas sleigh to protect children.

Either it is some kind of joke, or someone is just being a killjoy.
 
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LondonMedic

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Don't suppose it's worth pointing out that Vol 339, Issue 7735 is a Christmas edition full of light-hearted, humorous and spoof articles? Which is not entirely unknown at this time of year.

coverpic7735.gif


And in the UK santa generally likes a drink. ;)
 
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Scout

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Santa has to pass through Ireland. Thats enough to push anyone over the limit. I remember one fine christmas eve he stopped in for a pint of the black stuff. Its a tough life.
 

EMSLaw

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Personally, I think Frosty the Snowman is a worse influence. He is also fat, and goes without a coat in the dead of winter. He smokes a corncob pipe, and his eyes are made out of coal, skewing his carbon footprint. ;)
 
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