Italian town to pay residents to shed flab

Overweight residents of an Italian town will be paid to lose weight, the mayor said on Monday. Men living in the northwestern Italian town of Varallo will receive 50 euros ($70) for losing 4 kg (9 pounds) in a month, Mayor Gianluca Buonanno said. Women will get the same amount for shedding 3 kg (7 pounds). If they can keep the weight off for 5 months, they will get another 200 euros ($280), he told Reuters. "Lots of people are saying, 'I really need to lose some weight but it's really tough.' So I thought, why don't we go on a group diet?" said Buonanno, who said he was about 6 kg (13 pounds) overweight. The town of 7,500 people started the campaign on Friday and some residents have already signed up, he said. Around 35 percent of Italians are overweight or obese, according to European Union figures, with waistlines expanding as the country's healthy Mediterranean diet has given way to processed foods rich in fat, sugar and salt.

Mayo margaritas? Japan indulges its creamy passion

When Koji Nakamura mixes up a margarita cocktail, he adds a special ingredient -- mayonnaise.

"Mayogarita", a white drink with a hint of the creamy dressing, is one of several cocktails Nakamura serves in his "Mayonnaise Kitchen" restaurant in suburban Tokyo, which features mayonnaise on everything from toast and spaghetti to fondue.

Despite its Western heritage, mayonnaise has become the condiment of choice for many young Japanese, who add it to everything from sushi, noodles and tempura.

While older Japanese might gag at the thought of mayonnaise on rice or savory pancakes, the young are slathering it on. They even have a name for mayo fanatics: "mayolers".

"People keep discovering various ways to cook food with mayonnaise," Nakamura said. "If you put it on raw tuna fish with red flesh, it tastes like medium-fatty tuna fish. That kind of unpredictability makes it interesting and popular."

In 2006, Japanese consumed 1.65 kg (3.6 lb) of mayonnaise per person, down from a peak of 1.90 kg in 2000, according to the Japan Mayonnaise and Dressing Makers' Association.

Nakamura's tiny restaurant, with fewer than a dozen tables and decorated with cut-outs shaped like mayonnaise bottles, also offers "Mayoty Dog", which tastes like the vodka-based cocktail Salty Dog but is served in a glass with mayonnaise on its rim instead of salt.

Patrons of the seven-year-old restaurant can buy their own bottle of mayonnaise for 300 yen ($2.53) -- similar to bars that keep regular customers' bottles of whisky or sake.

"I know it's rich, but I like the taste," said 22-year-old Mayumi Kameoka. "My friends and I used to put a lot of mayonnaise on bite-sized fried chicken at our school cafeteria."

Japanese mayonnaise, first produced in 1925, is creamier and tangier than its Western counterpart, and includes only egg yolks, not whites, with varying amounts of oil and vinegar to alter the taste.

Manufacturers provide a constant stream of recipes that involve the dressing, helping to make it a staple in most Japanese refrigerators.

"It has a good flavor," said Akira Omori, 32, who likes to put mayonnaise on dried squid and other snacks.

Health-conscious Japanese are, however, starting to eat less of the dressing, prompting manufacturers to introduce low-calorie versions, including one that says it reduces cholesterol levels.

Mayonnaise lovers also got some bad news when No.1 Japanese mayonnaise maker Q.P. Corp's lifted prices in June for the first time in 17 years due to higher vegetable oil prices.

Right now, though, Nakamura of "Mayonnaise Kitchen" is more worried about a summer heat wave seems to be dampening customers' appetites than the future. "I see people going into a soba noodle shop downstairs. I can understand that," he said.

Giant Lego man found in Dutch sea

A giant, smiling Lego man was fished out of the sea in the Dutch resort of Zandvoort on Tuesday. Workers at a drinks stall rescued the 2.5-meter (8-foot) tall model with a yellow head and blue torso. "We saw something bobbing about in the sea and we decided to take it out of the water," said a stall worker. "It was a life-sized Lego toy." A woman nearby added: "I saw the Lego toy floating toward the beach from the direction of England." The toy was later placed in front of the drinks stall.

Crocodile falls 12 floors in escape bid

A crocodile survived a fall from the 12th floor of a Russian apartment block after making an escape bid through a window, emergency services said on Wednesday. Diving out of the window has become a habit for the crocodile, called Khenar, with concerned neighbors saying it was the third time he had used that method to flee, Moskovsky Komsomolets daily reported. The crocodile lost one tooth in the latest fall but was otherwise unscathed, said a spokeswoman for the emergencies ministry in the Nizhny Novgorod region of central Russia. "It seems the owner was not at home when the crocodile came out of the window," she said. Emergency services put the crocodile in a local aquarium to recover from his fall. Within a few hours his concerned owner came to pick him up and the crocodile was last seen lying on the back seat of his owner's car.

Farmer attacks police with muck spreader

A German farmer angry with police for trying to confiscate his tractor wrecked three patrol cars and evaded capture for seven hours before an elite unit managed to arrest him, a police spokesman said Wednesday. The farmer, 53, was pulled over by police for driving his tractor without a license, despite several previous warnings. The officers called in three patrol cars for help before asking the farmer to get out of his vehicle. He refused, and proceeded to ram the cars with his tractor, making full use of its attached muck spreader and hydraulic fork. Officers were only just able to scramble out of harm's way. The farmer then drove into a forest, where he eluded a manhunt involving two helicopters and an armored car for seven hours. He was finally found by an elite police team in a barn on his farm in Lauterbach, in central Germany. "In the countryside we're used to people going at police with muck spreaders, but this was something else," a police spokesman said. The farmer faces charges of assault and resisting police.

Fatter corpses cause hazard for mortuaries

More than two-thirds of Australians living outside major cities are overweight or obese, and extremely obese corpses are creating a safety hazard at mortuaries, according to two studies released Sunday.

 

Nearly three quarters of men and 64 percent of women were overweight in a study of people in rural areas. Just 30 percent of those studied recorded a healthy weight, said research published in the Medical Journal of Australia.

 

"Urgent action is required at the highest level to change unhealthy lifestyle habits by improving diet, increasing physical activity and making our environments supportive of these objectives," wrote the lead researcher, Professor Edward Janus.

 

The figures were much higher than for the general population, where statistics show about 3.2 million of Australia's 21 million people are obese.

 

Meanwhile, pathologists are calling for new "heavy-duty" autopsy facilities to cope with obese corpses that are difficult to move and dangerously heavy for standard-size trolleys and lifting hoists.

 

The bodies presented "major logistical problems" and "significant occupational health and safety issues," according to a separate study, which found the number of obese and morbidly obese bodies had doubled in the past 20 years.

 

Specially designed mortuaries would soon be required if the nation failed to curb its fat epidemic, providing "larger storage and dissection rooms, and more robust equipment," said Professor Roger Byard, a pathologist at the University of Adelaide.

 

"Failure to provide these might compromise the post-mortem evaluation of markedly obese individuals, in addition to potentially jeopardizing the health of mortuary staff."

 

In the past year, there have also been requests for larger crematorium furnaces, bigger grave plots as well as super-sized ambulances, wheelchairs and hospital beds.

 

 

No more crispy duck served at toilets

Food stalls attached to Beijing's public toilets will be removed in good time for next year's Olympics, state media said Saturday. Complaints over toilets with poor sanitation and toilet operators turning them into commercial operations led to the ban, which comes into force in October. "It is not proper to sell soft drinks or snacks right at the toilets," the Beijing News said, citing sources within the Beijing Municipal Administration Commission. "The city authorities also plan to publish a toilet guide, provide toilet information over the telephone and the Internet and erect more road signs to help toilet users." Billboards near toilets will also be banned, Xinhua news agency said. Notoriously polluted Beijing is cleaning up its act before it hosts the Olympics. It has also announced crackdowns on spitting and smelly taxis.