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UNDERNEWS

Undernews is the online report of the Progressive Review, edited by Sam Smith, who covered Washington during all or part of ten of America's presidencies and who has edited alternative journals since 1964. The Review, which has been on the web since 1995, is now published from Freeport, Maine. We get over 5 million article visits a year. See prorev.com for full contents of our site

December 2, 2009

STUPID HEALTH COMMISSION TRICKS

Boston Public Health Commission - The next time you're ready to download that song from iTunes, you may want to check out how healthy it is for you. Just as a nutritional label allows you to count the calories in a fast food hamburger, the Boston Public Health Commission's Start Strong Initiative has made it easier to measure what's in the songs you listen to. Today, the Initiative announced the Sound Relationships Nutritional Label, a new tool to help music lovers evaluate how healthy - or unhealthy - songs are.

"Music, like food, can feed our brains and give us energy," said Casey Corcoran, director of the Commission's Start Strong Initiative. "But songs can affect our health and the health of our relationships."

The tool, patterned after common food nutritional labels, invites consumers to become song lyric nutritionists by helping them identify relationship ingredients that make up a song. Using printed song lyrics as a guide, users can tally the number of healthy relationship themes, such as respect, equality, and trust, which are present in the song. And, like fattening calories, unhealthy relationship themes - possession, disrespect, and manipulation - are also counted. The number of times these themes are mentioned also factor into to the song's total nutritional value. Corcoran recommends consuming lots of 'healthy relationship' ingredients for a balanced media diet.

The model was developed by 14 peer leaders in the Commission's Start Strong Initiative. The teens, who range in age from 15 to 19 years old, attended a seven-week "Healthy Relationship Institute" where they were trained in teen dating violence prevention and healthy relationship promotion. They also learned to look at media critically, breaking it down to better understand the healthy or unhealthy relationship messages it may contain, such as power, control, equality, and gender roles. . .

The new tool is being unveiled as the Recording Academy is poised to announce its annual Grammy nominations later this week. Using the Sound Relationships label, peer leaders released their own musical nods - top ten lists of songs with unhealthy and healthy relationship themes. The teens analyzed songs from the Billboard "Hot 100" chart, a record of the top 100 songs purchased, played on the radio, streamed online across all music genres. Topping the list of unhealthy songs is Break Up, featuring Gucci Mane and Sean Garrett. Lady Gaga, one of the biggest breakout artists of 2009, had two songs on the unhealthy list: Paparazzi and Bad Romance.

"We aren't telling people what they should or should not be listening to," said Dr. Barbara Ferrer, the Commission's executive director. "We are giving them a tool that will help them make an informed choice about what they put in their bodies."

Top dangerous songs to listen to

1. Break Up Mario 45
2. Blame It (feat. T‐Pain) Jamie Foxx 32
3. Paparazzi Lady Gaga 27
4. You’re a Jerk New Boyz 26
5. Baby By Me 50 Cent 25
6. Best I Ever Drake 24
7. One More Drink (feat. T‐Pain) Ludacris 23
8. Be On You (feat. Ne‐yo) Flo Rida 22
9. Hotel Room Service Pitbull 21.5
10. Bad Romance Lady Gaga 20

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1 Comments:

Anonymous Tom Petty said...

There goes your freedom of choice; there goes the last human voice.

December 2, 2009 5:23 PM  

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