One of our favorite food bloggers, Professor Marion Nestle of NYU, has taken issue with the editors at the New York Times.

An article by health writer Tara Parker-Pope cites the sedentary workplace as the potential cause for obesity’s meteoric rise in the past few decades.

According to a study led by researchers from Louisiana State University:

Over the last 50 years in the U.S. we estimate that daily occupation-related energy expenditure has decreased by more than 100 calories, and this reduction in energy expenditure accounts for a significant portion of the increase in mean U.S. body weights for women and men. read more…

The report shows that in 1960, one out of two Americans had a job that was physically active. Now it is estimated that only one in five Americans achieves a relatively high level of physical activity at work.

“If we’re going to try to get to the root of what’s causing the obesity epidemic, work-related physical activity needs to be in the discussion,” said Dr. Timothy S. Church, a noted exercise researcher at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, La., and the study’s lead author. “There are a lot of people who say it’s all about food. But the work environment has changed so much we have to rethink how we’re going to attack this problem.” read more…

Here’s what Nestle, alongside with Fast Food Nation author Eric Schlosser had to say:

To the editor:

It makes sense that sedentary work is a factor in the current obesity epidemic (May 26). But it cannot be an important cause. The changing American workplace cannot explain why the obesity rate among the nation’s preschoolers has doubled in recent years and that among elementary schoolchildren has tripled.

The rise in obesity worldwide is linked to the embrace of the American diet, not to a decline in manufacturing.

In China, childhood obesity has increased at least five-fold since 1985.

Simplest explanations are usually best. Reversing obesity means eating less and making healthier food choices.

It also means making it easier to do that by setting policies that promote smaller portions, lower prices on fruits and vegetables, restrictions on marketing food to children, and healthier school meals.

Of course, an increase in well-paid manufacturing jobs would help too.

—Marion Nestle and Eric Schlosser

Our take: The junk food and fast food industry will have a field day with this report. It vindicates them. The fact that American kids are consuming 100′s more empty calories today than they did in the 1960′s is not important. It’s the fact that their moms are now working a desk job instead of in a factory that’s making them balloon.

What do you think?

Get Fooducated: iPhone App Android App RSS Subscription or Email Subscription

Follow us on twitter: twitter.com/fooducate on facebook: facebook.com/fooducate

Great writeup in yesterday’ New York Times – Food with Benefits, or So They Say – about all those processed products in the supermarket posing as healthy:

In aisle after aisle, wonders beckon. Foods and drinks to help your heart, lower your cholesterol, trim your tummy, coddle your colon. Toss them into your cart and you might feel better. Heck, you might even live longer.

Or not. Because this, shoppers, is the question: Are all these products really healthy, or are some of them just hyped?

The answer to that question matters to millions of Americans who are wagering their money and their waistlines on hot new products in the grocery aisles called “functional foods.” Read more…

What you need to know:

Nobody says it more succinctly than NYU Nutrition Professor Marion Nestle – Functional foods are more about marketing than they are about health.

We couldn’t agree more.

Take the average American supermarket – 50,000 products give or take a few. Notice how ALL OF THEM are somehow labeled good for you.

If it’s high in fat – it will boast low sugar

If it’s super sugary – it’s low fat

Full of artificial colors and sweeteners? No worries, it’s a perfect low calorie treat

Overly processed? No problem, pump it up with added vitamins and minerals.

etc…

If all these foods are so healthy, how come we are all getting so fat and sick?

Did you know that taxpayers spent $150,000,000,000 paying for health problems related to obesity / food related diseases? Totally preventable.

It’s just that somewhere along the road to the 21st century we forgot to eat real food.

What to do at the supermarket:

IGNORE anything written on the front of a product package. Except for the name. The only information you should relate to when it comes to nutrition is the ingredient list and nutrition facts panel.

Get Fooducated: iPhone App RSS Subscription or Email Subscription

Follow us on twitter: twitter.com/fooducate on facebook: facebook.com/fooducate

A gloomy editorial by Dominique Browning in the New York Times this week touches upon a recent trend :

I’m struck by how many signs on the shelves advertise BPA-free bottles, BPA-free sippy cups. It breaks my heart. Manufacturers might be removing BPA, a chemical used to harden certain plastics, from their products, but they are substituting chemicals that may be just as dangerous, if not more so. Read more…

What you need to know:

Bisphenol-A  is a chemical compound used as a building block of several polymers and polycarbonates that in turn are found in plastic bottles and cans. Which means all of us are exposed to tiny amounts, whether drinking canned juice, milk from a baby-bottle, or any other product sold in a plastic container or a can.

The chemical has been sold since the 1940’s and starting in the 1960’s has been lining the insides of cans in order to extend shelf life. BPA behaves like the hormone estrogen once it enters the body and disturbs the normal working of certain genes. Estrogen mimicking chemicals like BPA are potentially harmful even at very low doses, such as those found in plastic bottles and cans.

Toxicity questions have been around for decades, raising safety issue, especially for babies who ingest a proportionally larger amount due to their small size. Potential problems include hyperactivity, learning disabilities, brain damage, and immune deficiencies.

In recent years, more and more companies are removing BPA from their products. The problem is that some of the alternatives are not necessarily safe:

Consider the thermal paper that comes out of cash registers. Its BPA passes through the skin into the bodies of anyone who works at check-out counters, as well as their customers. Appleton, a specialty paper company, markets a BPA-free thermal paper that uses Bisphenol S [BPS] instead.

In … limited tests conducted outside the United States, BPS shows estrogenic activity — not as strong as BPA, but not a good sign. BPS is now used in the United States to make PES (polyethersulfone) plastic. Some baby bottles marketed as BPA-free use PES plastic.

Just wonderful. The article goes on with another example before hitting the nail on the head – In the US, our regulatory system doesn’t require proof that a chemical is safe for it to be admitted in to products. Only after it has been used on us, human guinea pigs, for several years, and only IF enough people start to get sick, do companies test for toxicity.

Why not have chemical companies prove the safety of their products before our kids get sick?

You know the answer…

Get Fooducated: iPhone App RSS Subscription or Email Subscription

Follow us on twitter: twitter.com/fooducate on facebook: facebook.com/fooducate

photo by JohnMacdonald

Interesting writeup in the New York Times this week about the shrinking package sizes of processed foods. Turns out that the recession, along with rising costs of commodities, have brought about a sneaky habit by many manufacturers. Instead of raising the price of products, brands are selling less of the product per package:

A can of Chicken of the Sea albacore tuna is now packed at 5 ounces, instead of the 6-ounce version still on some shelves, and in some cases, the 5-ounce can costs more than the larger one. Bags of Doritos, Tostitos and Fritos now hold 20 percent fewer chips than in 2009… read more…

When asked about this, most companies turn on their spin machine and describe new eco-friendly packaging. Or some other excuse.

So, isn’t this great news for dieters struggling with portion control issues? After all, less food means less calories…

Of course not. It’s just another example that goes to show you how easily we are manipulated by clever packages and marketing tactics. Buyer beware.

What to do at the supermarket:

Prices are going up, and it’s getting more expensive. But if you lay out a strategy for buying real, unprocessed foods, you can actually reduce your weekly food budget. Start with the beverage aisle. Simply ignore it. Boom – $500 savings annually for a family of 4. Buy produce in season, or buy it frozen. Here are our top ten tips for nutritious shopping in a recession.

Get Fooducated: iPhone App RSS Subscription or Email Subscription

Follow us on twitter: twitter.com/fooducate on facebook: facebook.com/fooducate

In the past few years, sales of vitamin D supplements have soared. More and more people have been tested for vitamin D deficiencies, and many doctors advised their patients to up their intake. But this trend may be coming to an abrupt halt.

Today, the non-profit, non-affiliated, Institute of Medicine is publishing a report relating to vitamin D intake (and calcium too) with some interesting conclusions:

In this report, the IOM proposes new reference values that are based on much more information and higher-quality studies than were available when the values for these nutrients were first set in 1997. The IOM finds that the evidence supports a role for vitamin D and calcium in bone health but not in other health conditions. Further, emerging evidence indicates that too much of these nutrients may be harmful, challenging the concept that “more is better.”

Simply put: for most people, levels of vitamin D in the blood are sufficiently high and do not warrant supplementation. In fact, too much MAY BE HARMFUL!

Of course the “experts” from supplement industry will argue:

Andrew Shao, an executive vice president at the Council for Responsible Nutrition, a trade group, said the panel was being overly cautious, especially in its recommendations about vitamin D. He said there was no convincing evidence that people were being harmed by taking supplements, and he said higher levels of vitamin D, in particular, could be beneficial. Read more from the New York Times…

(Incidentally, “Council for Responsible Nutrition” sounds so official and non jaded,  when in fact it is just a front group representing the interests of multi-billion supplement companies. A more fitting name would be “Buy More Supplements Interest Group”).

What you need to know:

Humans need vitamin D. It works together with calcium to keep our bones strong and healthy. That’s why milk is often fortified with vitamin D.

Our body sources Vitamin D in 2 ways:

• exposure to the sun
• from food / supplements

The top food sources are cod liver oil (as many baby boomers may recall from their childhood), sardines, tuna, eel, beef liver, mushrooms and eggs. Many foods are now being fortified with vitamin D,

The current recommendation for Vitamin D consumption is 400 IU (international units) per day. But many doctors are advising parents to increase their kids intake, especially in colder states where sunlight exposure is not an option for many months during the year.

The IOM will now recommend that the daily dosage increase to 600 IU, and not the mega-doses that some would have parents scrambling to provide their kids (up to 5000IU per pill).

The significance of the IOM report is that we can stop worrying about buying their kids supplements this or that vitamin, and get back to thinking about more important issues, such as eating meals made from real food, not processed junk foods.

What to do at the supermarket:

As we like to remind folks, try to get your vitamins and minerals from real food, not supplements.  The best sources are foods

Get Fooducated: iPhone App RSS Subscription or Email Subscription

Follow us on twitter: twitter.com/fooducate on facebook: facebook.com/fooducate

You know an article is important when you get links to it in multiple emails, tweets and facebook updates. We got numerous links to Saturday’s Fixing a World That Fosters Fat, in the business section of the New York Times. And it truly is an interestin g piece, touching upon a critically important question:

WHY IN THE WORLD ARE WE [collectively] GETTING SO FAT?

Before we even get a chance to respond, the article provides an answer:

[Dieting and exercising] won’t work on their own without seismic societal shifts, health experts say, because eating too much and exercising too little are merely symptoms of a much larger malady. The real problem is a landscape littered with inexpensive fast-food meals; saturation advertising for fatty, sugary products; inner cities that lack supermarkets; and unhealthy, high-stress workplaces.

In other words: it’s the environment, stupid. read more…

We couldn’t agree more. There are too many daily cues that trigger food consumption in this country.

The wonderful efficiencies of scales that made automobiles, TV sets, and computers accessible to the average Jane & Joe, worked fantastically in the food industry too. From a hungry country in the 1930′s, the US became, within less than 100 years, the fattest.

Problem is that government policy is still directed at solving the malnourishment of the 1930′s, for example in the form of silly subsidies for the mother of High Fructose Corn Syrup, Corn.

As a result of a misaligned government policy, the food industry has optimized itself for providing as much food as possible for as low a price as feasible. We call this efficiency. This cost cutting has led to the use of truly ingenious substitutions of real food ingredients with chemicals (artificial colors, for example. Vanillin instead of real vanilla, another example, HFCS instead of sugar). But the price of this efficiency has been a loss of of long term effectiveness: We are no longer effective at nourishing our nation.

The food machine, if you will, has made it cheaper today to eat junk food than it is to eat healthy food. A greaseburger costs less than an apple per calorie. If you’ve got a buck and you’re hungry, what will you choose?

Dr. Adam Drewnowski of the University of Washington has written many times on Nutrient Dense Foods, and recently published a paper on nutrition density of foods per dollar spent. Turns out there is a growing disparity – prices of nutritious foods rose almost twice as fast as those of non-nutritious foods in the years 2004-2008.

With innumerable options daily to reach out for dirt cheap junk food, The question shouldn’t be way are 200 million Americans overweight, rather how come not all 300 million of us are…

Get Fooducated: RSS Subscription or Email Subscription

Follow us on twitter: twitter.com/fooducate

A lengthy piece by Michael Moss of the New York Times this weekend, covers the decades long history of salt wars. The bottom line:

The salt industry is working overtly and behind the scenes to fend off public-health attacks on salt, using a shifting set of tactics that have defeated similar efforts for 30 years. Read more at the NYTimes…

Not surprising. Despite this, many food processors are trying to reduce the sodium content of their products in the past few years. Campbell’s is removing 20-25% of the salt from its canned soups. Frito-Lay is spending millions trying to create a new salt crystal with less sodium.

The biggest fear of the food industry is that salt will become regulated. This would mean warning labels on products high in sodium such as deli meats, soups, prepared meals, and canned foods. By taking preemptive measures, the companies hope to fend off government pressure.

It’s not simple to remove salt, because it has many other functions aside from flavor. It behaves as a preservative and it improves product texture and mouth feel.

What you need to know:

Salt is an essential nutrient for our bodies. However, when consumed in excess, the health benefits give way to detriments. Mounting evidence in the last 30 years has shown a clear connection between increased sodium consumption and hypertension. Cutting salt substantially from the American diet can prevent in 150,000 deaths annually.

Healthy adults should consume no more than 2300 mg of sodium a day, or about 1 tablespoon TEASPOON of salt. Many people need to consume much less, only 1500 mg. So when we hear that the national average is more than twice that, it’s clear we have a problem.

Most salt in the modern diet comes from processed foods. Only 20-25% is from home cooking or the salt shaker. The easiest way to add flavor to a product with cheap basic ingredients is to pump it up with salt. But using more expensive herbs and spices

If you can’t wait for the food industry to get rid of excess salt, start cooking more at home. Add salt only when the dish is almost ready because as it cooks, the liquids are reduced and the flavors become more pronounced. Using herbs and spices, you can still have very flavorful foods.

Salt is an acquired taste and you can calibrate your preference level over the course of a few weeks to months. In fact, many people who re-adjusted their taste buds, find it hard to enjoy canned products or overly salted dished served in restaurants.

What to do at the supermarket:

Don’t forget to look at the sodium count on products’ nutrition facts panel. Values over 600mg per serving are extremely high. In products such as breads, cereals, and cookies, anything over 150-200mg is too high.

Get Fooducated: RSS Subscription or Email Subscription

Follow us on twitter: twitter.com/fooducate

photos: New York Times

A brief note buried inside last week’s NY Times business section did not garner too much attention, but is worth spending a few minutes discussing. According to the article:

No country has embraced the movement toward commercialized, prepackaged food as much as the United States.

Americans eat 31 percent more packaged food than fresh food, and they consume more packaged food per person than their counterparts in nearly all other countries.

A sizable part of the American diet is ready-to-eat meals, like frozen pizzas and microwave dinners, and sweet or salty snack foods. read more…

An enlightening graph may be viewed by clicking here. We buy on average 787 pounds of processed food a year compared to only 602 lbs. of  fresh food (produce, meat cuts, eggs, nuts).

What you need to know:

“US consumers prefer convenience over quality”, says USDA Economic Researcher Mark Gehlhar. We are not the only country to eat processed foods, but in Japan for example, the processing of fish products is usually just cleaning and freezing them, whereas here we add chemicals and preservatives. And in Europe, “staples” such as Pop-tarts have failed miserably.

Why is the US so special in its voracious appetite for sub-par food? We certainly know to appreciate quality products and aesthetics. Just think about the amazing iPad that Apple introduced last week.

And we certainly are aware of the connection between processed foods high in sugar/fat/sodium and our increasing jeans size, clogged arteries, and heart attacks.

Yet we still graze like there’s no tomorrow. Perhaps when you are indoctrinated from age zero to consume soda pop, salty snacks, and happy meals, this is the result.

What to do at the supermarket:

If not for yourself, then at least for your children – you must drastically reduce the proportion of processed foods in your shopping cart. Spend more time in the produce aisle, less time in the snack aisles, and if you can pull it off zero time in the beverage aisle. Yes, more work at home, but with the amount of time we spend watching TV and on Facebook, an added hour or two a week in the kitchen is not going to break anybody.

Get Fooducated: RSS Subscription or Email Subscription

Follow us on twitter: twitter.com/fooducate

The best kept secret in the food industry is its liberal use of the definition of a serving size. You’d think a serving size should reflect what the average person consumes, but it seems that many manufacturers are selling their products to smurfs, not humans. How else can you explain exactly 11 potato chips or half a cup of ice cream counting as a serving?

The FDA, it appears, is calling the bluff, and according to the New York Times,

is now looking at bringing serving sizes for foods like chips, cookies, breakfast cereals and ice cream into line with how Americans really eat. Combined with more prominent labeling, the result could be a greater sense of public caution about unhealthy foods. Read more…

The NY Times article also include four graphic examples of how wrong serving sizes distort people’s perception of the calories they will actually consume.

What you need to know:

The serving size is a regulated term required for presentation on the nutrition facts panel of packaged foods and beverages. The Nutrition Labeling and Education Act (NLEA) of the early 90′s mandated manufacturers to state the serving size of a product in both measurable amount (grams, fluid ounces, etc..) and consumer graspable terms (2 cookie, half a cup, 1 doughnut). The actual quantity of product per serving is based on outdated consumer surveys, before the era of super-sized meals, big-gulp drinks, and a-pint-at-a-sitting ice creams.

Many companies take advantage of this loophole to literally trick consumers into thinking they’ll be consuming less calories than what they actually do. Here’s a fun trick when you want to create a 100 calorie snack out of a 150 calorie serving – reduce the serving size from 3 to 2 cookies. Genius!

Most annoying are the single serving products that end up actually containing more than a single serving. For example – vending machine soft drinks that come in 20 fl oz bottle meant for a single person to consume, but actually composed of two and a half servings! Duane Reade’s potato chips single serve bag state that there are only 100 calories per serving. Careful examination shows a discrepancy where the serving is defined as 1 oz, but the bag is one an one third ounces, adding 34 more calories to the deal.

If the FDA does take action on this issue, it will be a godsend. We recently published a list of Ten fixes the FDA can require for nutrition labels, such as  getting rid of the silly health claims and stating amount of ADDED sugar. Out #1 request was for proper indication of serving sizes.

What to do at the supermarket:

It’s not enough to check the calorie count per serving, you also need to make sure the serving size suggested by the manufacturer is what you really intend to consume. Be on the lookout especially with snacks and soft drinks, where the empty calories can easily double or triple before you even stop for your first breath of air.

Get Fooducated: RSS Subscription or Email Subscription

Follow us on twitter: twitter.com/fooducate

New! Choose a better breakfast with CerealScan™ by Fooducate

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released its latest obesity statistics. The bottom line is that the number of overweight Americans seems to be “leveling off.” This does not mean obesity is over, far from it. It’s just the growth rate of the obesity epidemic seems to have substantially slowed down. And that’s good. Sort of.

Because how can it be “good” when the data is this:

• 34% of American adults age 20 and older are obese
• 68% were considered overweight or obese
• 31.7% of kids are obese or overweight

The numbers are from the National Center for Health Statistics, a unit of CDC.

The highest obesity growth rates occurred throughout the 80′s and 90′s. In the last decade the growth has slowed.

Though the Food industry may rejoice in these findings as proof that their “health foods” are helping consumers, there may be other explanations:

“Until we see rates improving, not just staying the same, we can’t have any confidence that our lifestyle has improved,” said Dr. David Ludwig, director of the Optimal Weight for Life Program at Children’s Hospital Boston.

Dr. Ludwig said the plateau might just suggest that “we’ve reached a biological limit” to how obese people could get. When people eat more, he said, at first they gain weight; then a growing share of the  calories go “into maintaining and moving around that excess tissue,” he continued, so that “a population doesn’t keep getting heavier and heavier indefinitely.”

Furthermore, Dr. Ludwig said, “it could be that most of the people who are genetically susceptible, or susceptible for psychological or behavioral reasons, have already become obese.” read entire New York Times article...

Whatever the reason is, we still have a ginormous task ahead of us. Obesity is a disease that shortens lives, can lead to heart disease, diabetes, and an assortment of other medical conditions. It eats up almost 10% of medical spending in this country – a whopping $147 Billion in 2008!

Get Fooducated: RSS Subscription or Email Subscription

Follow us on twitter: twitter.com/fooducate