Jim Prevor from Perishable Pundit looked at the available data and found that 18 years of campaigning for fruits and vegetables has not been effective at all. While in the same period “added fats’ and flour and cereal products rose.
Archive for category Nutrition and obesity
Food Inc opens this Friday
Jun 10
The documentary “Food, Inc.” opens in the United States on Friday and portrays these purported dangers and changes in the U.S. food industry, asserting harmful effects on public health, the environment, and worker and animal rights.
Big corporations such as biotech food producer Monsanto Co., U.S. meat companies Tyson Food Inc. and Smithfield Foods, and poultry producer Perdue Farms all declined to be interviewed for the film.
But the industry has not stood silent. Trade associations across the $142-billion-a-year U.S. meat industry have banded together to counter the claims. Led by the American Meat Institute, they have created a number of websites, including one called SafeFoodInc.org saying ‘We are proud of our safe, affordable and abundant products and we aren’t afraid to stand up and say so’.
Montesano stated on their dedicated site:
- Demonizes American farmers and the agriculture system responsible for feeding over 300 million people in the United States.
- Presents an unrealistic view of how to feed a growing nation while ignoring the practical demands of the American consumer and the fundamental needs of consumers around the world.
- Disregards the fact that multiple agriculture systems should – and do – coexist.
Succesful Salt Advocacy
Jun 9
CSPI in May published a report on the salt content in popular resturant chain meals. It led to quite a lot of press coverage. Just take a look:
Drinking several liters of cola-containing soft drinks per day can cause a chronic depletion of potassium in the body, leading to muscle weakness and even paralysis
The British Retail Consortium (BRC) just published a substantial catalogue of evidence from its major food retailing members. It shows they are responding to customer demand in the UK’s highly competitive grocery market and delivering healthier choices, food information and actual change in what customers buy – more comprehensively than legislation ever could.
From reducing salt, fat and sugar to portion size options, promotions and on-pack labelling, BRC members are enabling healthier choices which are being taken up by customers.
What we’re seeing is responsible retailers enthusiastically putting their resources and reputations firmly behind making their contribution to healthier diets.
The report covers a string of current food-retailing issues including: Labelling, Reformulation and Portion sizes.
Increasing consumption of healthy foods is really happening. One step that has made a real difference has been running price promotions on fruit and vegetables and the introduction of ranges of highly nutritious but lower cosmetic quality produce.
The popular belief that healthy eating starts at home and that parents’ dietary choices help children establish their nutritional beliefs and behaviors may need rethinking, according to a new study from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. An examination of dietary intakes and patterns among U.S. families found that the resemblance between children’s and their parents’ eating habits is weak. The results are published in the May 25, 2009, issue of Social Science and Medicine.
The media may influence virtually every health concern that parents and pediatricians have about children and adolescents — aggressive behavior, drug use, early sexual activity, obesity, eating disorders, school achievement, language development, suicide.
Considerable research has been done in the past 50 years that documents the media’s ability to teach children and adolescents attitudes and beliefs that may influence their behavior. Media can also be powerfully pro-social.
Clinicians need to understand the potential of media to influence young people and ask 2 key questions at health visits: How much entertainment screen time does the child or teen spend per day? Is there a TV set or Internet connection in the child’s or teen’s bedroom? Public policy suggestions for mediating harmful effects of media are also presente
Read more See also Health Scout.
America’s chain restaurants are making Americans fatter and sicker say consumer watchdog Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) who have just awarded their Xtreme eating awards 2009 to chains like the Cheesecake Factory, Olive Garden, and Applebee for offering appetisers, entrées, and desserts that give you a whole day’s worth of calories in one dish.
See also Medical News Today
Nutrition professor Marion Nestlé made new comments on Functional foods like adding fibers to Kellogg Froot Loops as a public service to improve kids’ nutrition. And Unilevers calcium-enriched ice cream.
Soda is the next tobacco
Jun 4
“I believe soda is the next tobacco,” said Barry Popkin, director of the University of North Carolina’s Interdisciplinary Obesity Center and author of The World is Fat, published this year. Soda drinkers haven’t achieved pariah status like smokers before them, but proposed sugar taxes and social pressure to be healthy can put a damper on drinking softdrinks — and even some in the growing ranks of diet pop drinkers are feeling soda shame.
According to Popkin, Americans are consuming up to 300 more calories per day now than they were 25 to 30 years ago, and two-thirds of that increase is from caloric beverages like soft drinks, sports drinks, energy drinks, fruit juice and milk. While milk has important vitamins and minerals, the sugary beverages “have no health benefits,” Popkin said. And studies show people who drink caloric beverages don’t compensate by cutting out other food, so the calories add up, he said.