Healthy Bytes

Your tax dollars – fattening politicians… AND YOU

read time: 214 words, about a minute

Michael Pollan wrote an interesting article in Time about some research done by Adam Drewnowski from University of Washington.

His question – is wealth the most reliable predictor of obesity in America?
Throughout history peasants were always bone thin and the aristocrats a bit more “fluffy”

Off to the supermarket he went with his imaginary dollar.
He discovered he could get more calories for his dollar in the middle aisles as compared to the perimeter… 1,200 calories of potato chips compared to 250 calories of carrots. 875 calories of soda compared to 170 calories of OJ.

Hence, you will notice – and I don’t have the stats – lower income folks have a higher obesity rate than upper income folks.

And here’s something else about those foods in the middle aisles…
There are 5 crops that receive about $25 billion of subsidies a year:
Corn, soy, wheat, rice, cotton.
In addition to the unpronounceable ingredients, what you’ll find in those middle aisle products is a lot of sugar (derived from corn – high fructose corn syrup) and a lot of fat (derived from soy). And of course they generally strip the wheat leaving it nutrient lite.

So, how much would a bunch of carrots cost if they received subsidies?

Your tax dollars… cheapening your food and your health.

Made from sugar?!?

read time: 284 words, about a minute

Merisant, manufacturer of Equal (that would be the blue packet) is suing Splenda (that would be the yellow packet) manufacturer McNeil Nutritionals. They’re suing for $176 million or so.

Charging big decrease in their sales since Splenda entered the market. Ok, technically they’re charging that the Splenda slogan “made from sugar so it taste like sugar” is misleading. They’re only looking out for you

Symantics? Wellllll…
Splenda is sucralose.
They start with a sugar molocule and chlorinate and chemically alter it to produce “fructo-galactose”. Such a thing does not appear in nature and you cannot break it down and digest it.

Since it’s a “food” – well that’s how it’s technically classified, it does not go through that same kind of testing a drug would go through.

Chlorinated molecules are carcinogenic. They aren’t digested but instead accumulate in your fat cells.

There has been a swarm of “symptoms” associated with Splenda. There’s also quite a bit of politics with it.

Now McNeil claims that it does not say it is made WITH sugar so how can ANY consumer (I believe they don’t distinguish between literate or not, PhD in chemistry or not) interpret made FROM sugar so it tastes LIKE sugar as actually being in any way related to sugar.

Corporate jostling aside –
Sugar creates inflammation in your body which leads to nothing good.
Artificial sweeteners completely mess with your satiety brain signals… you’re not “satiated”, you keep eating…

Splenda controls nearly 60% of the sweetener market. Is it beeter or worse than the competitors? They’re all chemical toxins. I don’t see a point in arguing over which toxin is worse. Avoid them all.

Want to know more about Splenda…
Sucralose Toxicity Info Center

Chocolate – a divergent fork

read time: 127 words, under a minute

This seems crazy to me…
The Chocolate Manufacturers Association is petitioning the FDA to allow a couple of changes in chocolate.

They want to replace whole milk powder with whey, and cocoa butter with vegetable fat.
Why?
To reduce costs… by about 2/3rds on each ingredient.

But it WILL taste different (not as good).
For the most part, people are mighty picky about their chocolate.
I don’t think they’ll accept a “taste” difference.
It could be New Coke all over.

Meanwhile, heading in the other direction…
Hershey is adding two new products to its premium/”healthy” chocolate line of flavanol (antioxidant ) rich dark chocolate.

Chocolate – specifically, cocoa beans – have health benefits. It’s the added sugar and milk that wins candy a spot on the list of no-no’s.

Kids eat what they watch

In the largest study of TV ads for kids the Kaiser Family Foundation no ads for good stuff such as veggies and fruits.
40% of the commercials were for candy, snacks and fast food.

The food ads were for:
Candy and snacks – 34%
Cereal – 29%
Fast food – 10%
Beverages – 10%
Dairy – 4%
Prepared food – 4%
Bread, pastries, dine-out restaurant – 9%

Rather like the cigarette industry… get ‘em young.

Where’s the fruit

read time: 119 words, just a minute

Leslie Mikkelsen, Prevention Institute dietitian presented a report sponsored by sponsored by the Strategic Alliance for Health Food and Activity Environments at the 2007 California Childhood Obesity Conference.

The report - “Where’s the Juice? Fruit Content of the Most Highly Advertised Children’s Food and Beverages” – revealed the findings of their study:

Product selection criteria –

• Identified by Kaiser Family Foundation as a top spending advertised food on kid’s TV shows
• Picture of fruit or the word fruit on the packaging
• Commonly available at the grocery store

37 products examined…

-> 19 contained NO fruit ingredients (51%)

-> 6 had 10% or less fruit juice (21%)

-> 2 had 100% fruit juice (6%)

-> 10 had real fruit (27%)

Yep, ya gotta read the label.

$2.6 million of anxiety

read time: 195 words, about a minute

As you likely know, the Super Bowl “event” was this past Sunday in the U.S.
Because ad slots are so expensive during the Super Bowl, advertisers go all out and the ads tend to get quite a bit of attention.

A 30 second slot this year costs $2.6 million. That’s just the air time, not the cost of producing the commercial.

At the UCLA Ahmanson Lovelace Brain Mapping Center, they scanned brains of 10 volunteers as they watched the 33 commercials.

According to neuroscientists Dr. Joshua Freedman who was involved in the study:
“Fewer than 20% of the ads triggered nerve activity in the reward and satisfaction areas of the brain — those areas that are known to be involved in making associations and forming connections with people or things.”

So basically… not too many warm fuzzy feelings, and, folks may remember the commercial – but not the product.

Dr. Freedman continues…
“The majority of this year ’s commercials, on the other hand, predominantly activated anxiety regions of the brain, centered around the amygdala, the hub of our fear and emotional responses.”

Oh yea, last year over 50% of the commercials stimulated the reward and satisfaction area.

Supersize it for 67 cents now and $6.64 later

read time: 369 words, about 2 minutes

There’s an article in The New York Times about the cost of being overweight.

Interesting article that looks both at medical costs and social costs.

Was any of it surprising? Some interesting numbers, but in general not surprising.
At this point, don’t we all know being overweight leads to more medical issues. Perhaps more specifically - eating the kinds of stuff that typically leads to packing on pounds, as well as the weight itself, compromises health and quality of life.

So what does it take to effect change?
We haven’t peaked on the weight gain thing. The percentage of Americans overweight and obese - including children - is still rising. And overweight adults seem to acknowledge the cause and effect relationship. But they’re not successfully changing the cause. Perhaps they don’t try. Perhaps they don’t know how. Perhaps the relationship between cause and effect isn’t immediate or transparent enough to motivate change.

Rachel N. Close and Dale A. Schoeller, nutritional scientists at University of Wisconsin, Madison better quantified the cost of “supersizing” a meal. In their research The Financial Reality of Overeating they calculated the additional medical and food cost burden a person would have in the year following a supersized versus a regular fast-food meal. The premise being it takes more calories (food) to maintain more weight. Ex: eating 2,500 calories a day costs more than 2,000 calories a day. And higher medical costs are associated with the added weight.

Costs and calorie data used was an average of 3 different fast-food meal offerings.

The cost you pay at the counter to supersize is 67 cents. That meal adds an additional 397 calories which becomes 36 grams of fat tissue to the ‘diner’ (for the purpose of the research).

The next year food and medical costs for 36 more grams of fat was calculated as $6.64 for a man and $3.46 for a woman. So for a man, roughly 10 x more in food and medical costs than meal upgrade cost. For a woman, roughly 5 x more.

Would you choose to not supersize that meal if it cost $7.31 or $4.07 more rather than 67 cents more?

Looking at ALL the ingredients

Read time: 238 words, about 2 minutes

How do you decide what to buy at the grocery store?

For quite a few years now health claims have been a focal point of food advertising. When we went on that fat is bad kick, the shelves were adorned with low fat this, low fat that. It even gave rise to an entire product line.

Next came the no/low carb.

Now we’re moving into the no trans-fats.

There’s one thing you need to keep in mind…
Food product manufacturers are in business.
If they don’t make a profit, they’ll go out of business.
Part of the profit equation is sales.
The goal of advertising and marketing is to increase sales.

In food as in life, rarely is all or nothing true.
Thus, a food product can be good in some ways, but not good in other ways.
For example, you could buy some trans-fat free cookies…
but they may be loaded with high fructose corn syrup and sugar.

An east coast grocery chain – Hannaford – has implemented a rating system for food called “Guiding Stars”.

They use an algorithm which “evaluates a 100-calorie serving of each product using only the information that is available on the “nutrition facts” panel and the ingredients list. A product receives credit for vitamins, minerals, dietary fiber and whole grains, but is docked points for trans fat, saturated fat, cholesterol, added salt and added sugar.”

Interesting concept… taking ALL the ingredients into account.