Allergy Talk by Fooducate

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We’re proud to announce our latest iPhone app – Allergy Talk by Fooducate.

As you can probably guess, this app has been designed to address the needs of people with allergies and intolerances. In addition to the regular Fooducate functionality you have come to expect from us, we now indicate the presence of the 8 most common allergens, based on your settings. The allergies we cover are: gluten, peanut, tree nut, fish, shellfish, egg, milk, soy. In the app setting screen, you can specify what allergy you are interested in:

Many apps and websites that indicate the presence of allergens are hard to rely on because they may not have up-to-date information, don’t always identify “maybe” ingredients, and have a limited product database.

When designing this app we took into account those limitations and decided to build a tool that will improve the more you use it. First off, we are working with Fooducate’s gigantic product database, which has the largest unique UPC/Nutrition dataset in the country. Next, we are empowering you, gluten free eaters, peanut allergy moms, lactose intolerants to collaborate and share your individual product allergy discoveries with the community. The more you use the app and share your experience with products, the better the app becomes for everyone.

Here’s how it works:

For every product, Fooducate makes it best assessment regarding the allergen content, based on information in the ingredient list and allergy warnings. However, you are welcome to dispute or discuss our assessment by tapping the “Tap to discuss” button. It leads you to a discussion screen:

You can tap on the buttons to indicate “contains allergen” (red button) “does not contain allergen”(green button)  or “comment”. The app then lets you state why you think the product has or does not have a specific allergen:

You can also take a picture of the product’s allergy label to provide updated “proof” of its current allergy status:

Another cool feature is the ability to directly call the manufacturer from within the app by tapping the “Contact Manufacturer” button. The app shows you the manufacturer name and phone number, and lets you initiate a call with a single tap.

If the contact info is missing and you have it, you are welcome to update it and the entire community benefits!

We hope this app will become a trusted and fun tool to help you navigate the supermarket aisles safely. Please let us know what you think!

IMPORTANT legal information:

Fooducate is not a substitute for advice and service provided by qualified and licensed medical professionals. Any health related information found herein is available as part of a general educational and commercial service.

When looking up product and allergy information on Fooducate, keep in mind that

- Manufacturer formulations can change at any time
- Fooducate’s data may be outdated, incomplete or erroneous
- Content from other users may be erroneous

To verify a product’s fit for your consumption, you should ALWAYS READ THE PRODUCT’S LABELS, check with the manufacturer directly, and consult a qualified and licensed medical professional.

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Whether you have HBO or not, you should watch the 4 part miniseries Weight of the Nation. It is available free online.

The documentary covers many aspects of the obesity situation in the US, and comes out with a clear conclusion: it is the societal pressures put on individuals that contribute heavily in getting us fat and sick. We are no less responsible than the generations before us were. We have no less willpower on average that our parents did.

To all those who think obesity is just a matter of parents educating their kids, or a person exercising self control – think again. To tackle the obesity crisis, we need to unravel vast business and political interests that are almost incomprehensible. Americans are facing impossible odds coming from various industries that profit mightily from the current obesogenic economy:

• Junk food manufacturers (over 100 billion dollars in annual revenues)
• Fast food establishments (over 300 billion dollars)
• Weight Loss (tens of billions of dollars)
• Supplements (tens of billions)
• Healthcare (over 150 billion dollars annually in obesity related treatments)

President Calvin Coolidge once famously said that the “Business of America is business.” It seems that our society has taken this to an extreme without heeding the warning he added:

“Of course the accumulation of wealth cannot be justified as the chief end of existence.

We make no concealment of the fact that we want wealth, but there are many other things that we want very much more. We want peace and honor, and that charity which is so strong an element of all civilization. The chief ideal of the American people is idealism. I cannot repeat too often that America is a nation of idealists. That is the only motive to which they ever give any strong and lasting reaction.”

Seems like we need to get off the money train and back to some of the basics that have made this country so great. Easier said than done.

What do you suggest?

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Whole Foods Market is a good place to spot new food trends. A theme that seems to be picking up in recent years and months is eco-packaging. This could mean using recycled paper or plastic as packaging material, some commitment by the manufacturer to recycle, or even no packaging at all (visit the bulk aisle).

It isn’t surprising then, to find packaging innovation in the cereal section as well. We took a look  Three Sisters brand, who decided to lose the box (see pic above). Sounds like an awesome concept by 3 sisters who got their start in the family kitchen and then got a big break selling into Whole Foods, right?

Nope. Three sisters is a brand owned by MOM Brands (Malt O’ Meal), a relatively smaller player in the cereal space that has been around for close to a century. To the company’s credit, they are innovating. They got rid of the box, and on the resealable plastic bag, they promise that their products are made using renewable wind energy:

“Three Sisters offers all natural cereals that taste good and are environmentally conscious.”

Cool. They also promise that their ingredients are in line with a natural philosophy:

“All natural cinnamon sweetened rice and whole grain wheat cereal. No trans fat, partially hydrogenated oil or phony flavors.”

“All natural sweetened whole grain toasted oat cereal with marshmallows. No phony flavors or colors.”

While this may be an improvement over Lucky Charms and Froot Loops, the fact of the matter is that these are still highly sweetened cereals and not a nutritionally sound choice for breakfast:

• Between 2.5 – 3.5 tsp of sugar per serving. We recommend 1.5 or less.
• Very little fiber – 1 gram. We recommend at least 3.

Please note: The “Natural” designation has absolutely no definition according to the FDA. There are plenty of natural poisons out there…

On the positive side:

• No use of artificial colors
• No partially hydrogenated oils (trans fats)
• No BHT for freshness (they use vitamin E / tocopherol)

What to do at the supermarket:

If you want to treat your kids to an eco conscious snack, Three Sisters may be a better choice than comparable cereal brands. But being earth friendlier than other cereal manufacturers does not make them health food for your kids.

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photo: RealSimple.com

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Happy Mother’s Day!

Somewhere along our transition from childhood to adulthood, many of us discovered one of the simple things we could do to make our mom happy – be good about food. Whether it’s polishing off the dinner plate, eating those pesky veggies, or commending mom on a new dish (even if it wasn’t that good), there were plenty of episodes – good and bad – in everyone’s home around food.

And while food and eating habits have changed over the past generation or two, a mom’s love most definitely hasn’t. If you’re lucky enough to be spending today with your mom, hopefully you will enjoy a tasty and healthy meal together.

If you have a minute, share some important food lessons you’ve learned from mom.

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This is a guest blog post by Jennifer Lee, Ph.D.

Omega-3 essential fatty acids have an important role in the mammalian nervous system.  They seem to be crucial for healthy neuronal structure and function.  And the healthy structure and function in our brains is what allows for healthy behavior.  Plenty of research has been conducted on the role of diets and behavior, particularly in children, with a lot of interest in the ever-controversial role of sugar.  But let’s turn our attention to fats, for a moment.

Essential fatty acids comprise parts of phospholipids and cholesterol esters, which are imperative in the structure and development of synaptic and dendritic cell membrane structures in the brain.  When lacking in essential fatty acids, such as omega-3s, our brain uses non-essential fatty acids to do its job instead.  Or, at least, it attempts to do its job… when we don’t feed our brains well, and the only fats we consume are bad fats, the brain resorts to using what is available.  And this leads to changes in membrane-bound receptors and certain neurotransmitters.  Which leads to psychological and behavioral changes.  Bad fats = bad news.

Researchers have noticed that the tremendous shift in the Western diet away from omega-3 essential fatty acids parallels the large rise in psychiatric disorders, including ADHD and depression.  For this reason, a wide array of studies have found that essential fatty acids might have a significant effect on the neurotransmission of serotonin and associated behavioral disorders.  Here is a cursory review of a few of these findings:

One study found that fatty acid plasma levels were lower in children with ADHD than other children of the same age and sex.  The same thing was found in studies of rats and monkeys with behavioral hyperactivity.  In other studies, children with dyspraxia, dyslexia, and ADHD showed behavioral improvement due to the addition of essential fatty acids in their diets.  Another study looked at violent male subjects with antisocial personality and found low omega-3 plasma concentrations.  This agrees with yet another study that found lower hostility and depression scores in those of hundreds of subjects who consume a diet high in fish.  A study of prison inmates found a significant reduction in aggressive and violent behaviors after supplementation with essential fatty acids.  The same result was found in another study of clinical populations of subjects suffering from various personality disorders.  The list goes on and on.

So how might essential fatty acids affect behavior?  Because they affect our physiology, and the physiology of our brains especially.  Physiological studies of lab animals (rats, pigs, etc.) found that diets deficient in essential fatty acids result in more serotonin receptors in the frontal cortex.  This might sound like a good thing, but actually, more of these types of serotonin receptors means less free-floating serotonin: a condition thought to contribute significantly to depression.  Other studies show that frontal cortex concentrations of serotonin, tryptophan, dopamine, homovanillic acid, and noradrenaline––stuff we want to have at healthy levels in our brains––are nearly doubled in animals supplemented with daily essential fatty acids compared to animals fed substandard diets.

In sum, a number of clinical disorders and behavioral problems have demonstrated an association with decreased levels of omega-3 fats.  Even more, correcting this deficiency by supplementation leads to clinical improvement, probably by way of the transmission of serotonin and other neurotransmitters.  Unfortunately, science is not ready to make a statement that good fats will calm a hyperactive child or make a depressed person happy.  But hey, they can’t hurt!

Information in part from “Essential fatty acids and their role in the treatment of impulsivity disorders,” Prostaglandins, Leukotrienes and Essential Fatty Acids 71 (2004) 211-16.

Jennifer Lee is a behavioral scientist who received her Ph.D. in psychobiology and learning.  She is a psychology instructor, researcher, and writer in studies of human and animal behavior.

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Here’s a thought. Eating high foods that fill up your tummy will keep you satisfied longer. If these foods are calorie sparse, they will actually help you lose weight. This is the idea behind “volumetrics.”

According to the inventor of the system, nutrition professor Barbara Rolls, PhD, “It all comes down to calories per bite”. And there is a big difference between a mouthful of salad, and a mouthful of candy bar.

Rolls, a professor of nutritional sciences at the Pennsylvania State University, has spent 20 years studying the science of satiety — that feeling of fullness at the end of a meal — and how it affects hunger and obesity.

Research shows that the amount of food we eat has a greater effect on how full we feel than the number of calories in the food. If you’re sated after eating, you’re likelier to stick with a diet. read more…

Unsurprisingly, the recommendations in this diet plan (see the book on Amazon.com - The Ultimate Volumetrics Diet) are the usual suspects: fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and low fat proteins. Snacks pumped with air, such as popcorn, also gets honorable mention.

Another interesting idea is to “eat before you eat”. Mostly by drinking soups or having high volume appetizers (salad) before the heavy stuff.

What do you say? Are you thinking volumetrically when it comes to food?

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Hi folks,

This is Hemi, founder of Fooducate. I’ve been invited to speak at Stanford University next week at the Mobile Health 2012 Conference.  The theme of this year’s conference is Baby Steps for Big Change. The underlying assumption, backed by various evidence, is that Big leaps in behavior change often leads to failure. Note that the majority of people who go on diets are back to their original, if not higher weight within a year.

In preparation for my talk, I’d love to tap into some crowd wisdom, and ask you about your experience in improving your personal health. Please take a minute to jot down your thoughts in the comments section below, or email me at blog at fooducate dot com.

Here are the questions:

What specific practical actions have you taken in the last few years to improve your health? Were you able to maintain these actions over more than one year?

Is there a specific food / beverage you took out of your diet? Was it abrupt or over time?

Are there specific foods / beverages you have slowly incorporated into your diet?

Are there food swaps you have made in order to lower sodium/sugar/fat ?

Are you using technology to help you (health websites, calorie counters, mobile apps, etc…)

Have you learned to cook? Cook new foods?

What other small steps have you taken to be healthier?

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Source: LA Times

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The Center for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) projects a thirty percent increase in obesity rates by 2030 to 41% of the US population. The toll on our economy – a whopping half a trillion dollars over the next 2 decades!

That doesn’t seem to bother other branches of the government, such as the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), whose Chairman Jon Leibowitz recently said that “it’s probably time to move on” from attempts to regulate junk food marketing to children. In a letter in The Wall Street Journal he further stressed that “the commission does not support legislation restricting food advertising to children.” (More on AdAge).

Another government agency, the USDA, is acknowledging childhood obesity and has recently allotted another few cents per meal for its school lunch program. But at the same time, the Farm Bill continues to perpetuate obesogenic crops through subsidies for corn (high fructose corn syrup), for example. Why would the same entity charged with increasing sales of farm commodities also be the one responsible for our children’s health?

Then we have Congress. Utterly clueless, our representatives recently voted pizza as a vegetable so it can be served more often school lunches.

On to the White House. While the First Lady has her heart in the right place, her program Let’s Move which originally focused on food and exercise, has mostly shifted attention to the easier of the two – working out. No enemies made when everyone can agree “we need to exercise more”.

Against this backdrop is a well oiled marketing and lobbying machine, representing the interests of mega corporations doing what they do best, maximizing their profit. There are no bad guys here. Everyone wants what’s best for their constituents. And when your shareholders demand more profit, by gosh, you the CEO of JunkFoodCorp, will figure out how to sell more. Never mind the collateral damage.

Many of you comment on this blog that the government has no right interfering with people’s decision of what to buy or eat. You are right. Nobody should tell you what you have to eat right now. But the government should have a say in creating a health conducive food environment for us. This includes a shift in subsidies to fresh fruit and vegetables, limitations on junk food marketing to kids, incentives for healthy food purchases by food stamp recipients, to name a few suggestions.

When will we realize that government regulation in business affairs comes to protect us as consumers, not turn us into a communist regime?  We better demand change, before we’ll collapse under the weight of our own … weight.

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Luna (by Clif Bar), the brand of bars targeted to the “fit female”, has released a new product, apparently for the Ensure generation. The Luna Fiber bar is soft, sweet and pumped up with fiber, vitamins and minerals.

While the nutrition looks good at first glance (28% of DV for fiber and only 110-120 calories), the vitamin and mineral doses are a bit high for such a small percentage of one’s daily calories (7% or less). This results in a concentration that doesn’t go unnoticed by the taste buds, despite 40% of calories coming from palate-distracting sugars (3 tsp).

What you need to know:

Clif Bar was one of the first snack/energy bar companies, back when bars were made of simple/normal ingredients – stuff that provided fuel, satiety (the old fashioned way – with fiber, fat and protein from nuts, soy and whole grains) and a decent, although rarely award-winning, taste.

With the Luna Fiber bar, there seems to be more of a nutritionist-food scientist collaboration going on, with a wave from the chef. The need to  hit all the “right” nutrients in the “right” amounts, in an  engineered way seems to be trumping real ingredients and taste, as with many products today. A discriminating palate can taste the supplementation. It hits in the back of the mouth, leaving a dense, metallic finish.

And maybe the nutritionist wasn’t involved either, because he/she probably wouldn’t have featured iron, calcium and fiber together. Calcium and fiber both inhibit absorption of iron to some extent. It’s not a huge issue for people who aren’t iron deficient (and the vitamin C does offset it a bit), but if the stated benefit is the “Core 4” nutrients (calcium, iron, folic acid and vitamin D) along with a taste you’re supposed to “crave,” the nutrients should at least work well together and not adversely affect taste.

Here is the ingredient list:

Blueberry Filling (Organic Cane Syrup, Inulin, Organic Dried Cane Syrup, Glycerin, Organic Rice Starch, Dehydrated Blueberries [Blueberries, Apple Juice Concentrate, Sunflower Oil], Organic Apple Powder, Organic Blueberries, Water, Organic Brown Rice Syrup, Natural Flavor, Pectin, Citric Acid, Sodium Citrate, Red Cabbage Extract for Color), Organic Oat Fiber, Organic Sunflower Oil, Organic Barley Flour, Organic Rolled Oats, Organic Date Paste, Organic Oat Flour, Organic Brown Rice Syrup, Organic Tapioca Syrup, Organic Cane Syrup, Organic Oat Bran, Organic Inulin (Organic Agave Extract), Organic Dried Cane Syrup, Inulin (Chicory Extract), Natural Flavors, Vegetable Glycerin, Rice Starch, Potato Starch, Sea Salt, Citrus Fiber, Baking Soda. Vitamins & Minerals Calcium Carbonate, Ascorbic Acid (Vit. C), Tocopheryl Acetate (Vit. E), Ferric Orthophosphate (Iron), Beta Carotene (Vit. A), Niacinamide (Vit. B3), Folic Acid (Vit. B9), Vitamin B12, Vitamin D2, Thiamin Mononitrate (Vit. B1), Riboflavin (Vit. B2), Pyridoxine HCl (Vit. B6).

What to do in the supermarket:
If you crave a convenient hit of vitamins, minerals and fiber in a “gumable” sweetened (no lack of sweeteners in these bars) format, this is a good choice.

If you want homemade taste, well, you might consider baking your own and popping a multi-vitamin at the same time (or simply eat some fruit and nuts, followed by milk/yogurt or other calcium source later).

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photo: CookingIssues.com

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Transglutaminase, also known as Meat Glue, is not something you’d expect to find in your steak. But it turns out that this animal derived additive is used, mostly in the dining industry. It allows chefs and cooks to glue cheap meat scraps together into a larger piece of meat that appears to be a prime cut (filet mignon, anyone)?

Besides being deceitful, the bigger issue is food safety. Prime beef is often times served rare or medium rare. This means that the middle portion of your steak is still pink. While there is a chance that some dangerous bacteria may be lurking inside, it is really low. That’s because most bacteria will be found on the outside (exposed) part of a meat cut. Now what happens when these outside parts become inside parts as a result of glue?

Note that transglutaminase itself is a perfectly safe enzyme that creates a strong chemical bond when connecting two proteins together. It has no harmful effects whatsoever and is found naturally in meat.

In a grocery setting, meat glue is usually not an issue. If a meat has been bonded, it will have to labeled “formed” or “reformed”. You will not, however, find the ingredient Transglutaminase in the ingredient list.

What to do at the supermarket:

If you do buy reformed meat at the supermarket, make sure to prepare it so that even the inside part gets cooked at a high enough temperature to kill off all bacteria.

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