I have harangued before about deceptive advertising (here and here), but this instance truly takes the cake. I was in Stop & Shop today, and my husband innocently brought my attention to a display of chocolate and caramel-covered apples which boasted: "Healthy never tasted this good!" I took a closer look at the apples, which appeared to be more candy than fruit, and was appalled- to say the least- by what I found.
Although the display called these apples "healthy" and also claimed that they contained "natural antioxidents and fiber PLUS benefits of dark chocolate," the nutrition label told a different story. The apple did contain about 9 grams of fiber, but at over 800 calories, it's hardly worth it. But what I really take issue with are the claims that the product is "healthy" and provides the benefits of dark chocolate.
First of all, more than half of the fat in the apple is saturated fat. In fact, it provides 35% of the daily maximum recommended level of saturated fat that the average adult should consume in an entire day per serving. And mind you, one serving is less than ONE-FOURTH of the apple- thanks to Joyce Faraj for pointing that out. I almost missed it myself! This means that the whole apple actually contains 27 grams of saturated fat alone (over 150% of the recommended daily limit).
Furthermore, partially hydrogenated oil is listed twice on the ingredient list (in the caramel and chocolate coatings), suggesting that despite the "0g trans fat" listed on the label, the product does in fact contain some trans fat. It also contains a substantial amount of added sugar. Given these facts, I am amazed that this company (Tastee) has the gall to use the word "healthy" in the same sentence as these death snacks.
But the lies don't stop there. Tastee also implies that if you eat their products, you can reap the benefits of dark chocolate. How much dark chocolate do you get from these apples? Beats the hell out of me! The only thing close to chocolate listed on the label is cocoa, the fourth ingredient in the chocolate coating- after sugar, partially hydrogenated oil, and milk powder. The coating itself is only the 6th ingredient. I can't imagine that the amount of cocoa in the trans fat/sugar concoction that covers the apples is anywhere near enough to cause any kind of beneficial effects remotely resembling those associated with real dark chocolate consumption. Even if there was, any positive effects would be more than outweighed by the negative effects of the sugar, saturated fat, and trans fat.
You better believe I will be contacting this company to complain about their ethical standards, and I will also be contacting the FDA regarding the lawfulness of their claims, which I believe may be in violation of current labeling regulations. In the meantime, I made my own small effort to protect my fellow shoppers from Tastee's deceitful advertising (look closely):
You've probably seen the ads, put out by the Corn Refiners Association, poking fun at concerned moms and other folks who are wary of high-fructose corn syrup for.. well, no apparent reason.
Like many people, you may be wondering whether the CRA is trying to pull the wool over your eyes, or if they're right and everyone else is just paranoid. I think it's long past time I address this controversy.
Let's start with the argument against HFCS. In one of the CRA ads, one mom chides another for serving fruit punch made with HFCS at a kids' party. When asked why she's worried about it, she replies, "you know what they say about it." When the other mom asks her to give examples, she is unable to come up with any. So, what exactly do "they" say about HFCS? There are two main arguments that I am aware of:
1. As the amount of HFCS in our food supply has increase, so have obesity rates, suggesting that HFCS may be one of the causes for the epidemic.
2. HFCS contains more fructose, which has a "lipogenic" (fat-generating) effect. Fructose is metabolized differently than sugar and leads to higher levels of triglycerides and LDL in the blood, insulin resistance, and more visceral fat storage. All of these are risk factors for diabetes and heart disease.
However, there are some very big problems with these arguments. In regards to argument #1, a correlation between HFCS and obesity is simply not enough to suggest a causal relationship. I could just as easily point to any other change that happened to occur in the last 50 years or so and blame it for the rise in obesity. I could blame the increases we've seen in college graduation rates, the number of women in the work force, or public interest in vampire romance novels. But this would, of course, be ridiculous.
The second argument lends some scientific credibility to the hypothesis that HFCS could cause some metabolic problems, and it is based on research. The problem is that much of this research is in mice, which are not always good models of human metabolism (and in fact, human studies have not consistently had the same results). But more importantly, the animal studies frequently compared the effects of diets very high in pure fructose or pure glucose-- sweeteners we rarely see in foods or beverages. Instead, our choices are usually HFCS or sucrose (sugar). And we don't typically consume the quantities of either sweetener that are tested in research.
The molecular makeup of these two substances is not remarkably different. A molecule of sucrose is comprised of 1 molecule of glucose and 1 molecule of fructose. Thus, sucrose is 50% fructose and 50% glucose. High-fructose corn syrup, belying its name, ranges from 42-55% fructose and the rest glucose. Therefore, studies comparing the metabolic effects of pure fructose and pure glucose are largely irrelevant to the question of whether HFCS is more harmful than sugar. Finally, studies that have been done on humans comparing HFCS and sucrose have not found any differential effects on metabolism or appetite.
Finally, if fructose is the "bad guy" in HFCS, then why isn't anyone attacking the natural and organic food manufacturers adding fruit juices (60%+ fructose) and agave nectar (84% fructose) to their products and touting it as healthier than the convential stuff? Chew on that one for a bit.
The bottom line is, the evidence doesn't support choosing sugar over HFCS, or choosing products with more natural sweeteners instead of products with HFCS. BUT, evidence certainly does support avoiding BOTH high-fructose corn syrup AND sugar. My goal here is not to vindicate HFCS and encourage people to not feel guilty about buying soda. Quite the opposite. My intent is to emphasize that ALL added sugars of any kind are equally horrible.
References
Melanson et al. High-fructose corn syrup, energy intake, and appetite regulation. Am J Clin Nutr. 2008; 88(6):1738S-1744S.
Schaefer EJ et al. Dietary fructose and glucose differentially affect lipid and glucose homeostasis. J Nutr. 2009;139:1257S-1262S.
One of my biggest pet peeves is the sensationalized reporting of nutrition research by the media. I happened to come across a great example of this today: an article on msn.com titled "Big breakfast may make you fat after all, study finds." The article explains the results of a study in which 380 individuals- some normal weight, some obese- wrote down everything they ate for 10-14 days, and researchers used this information to assess whether individuals ate less over the course of a day when they ate a large breakfast. What they found was that, contrary to popular belief, eating more in the morning did not seem to prevent overeating later in the day.
This probably sounds pretty straightforward to anyone unfamiliar with the principles of research methodology in general or nutrition research in particular, which is most people. And most people who read this article probably see nothing wrong with it. In fact, in the 3 hours that this article has been available, it has been tweeted 169 times and "recommended" on facebook 156 times. Who knows how many times it will be re-tweeted and re-posted.
I see a number of problems with the way these study results were presented. For ease of reading, I will outline them:
1. The article suggests that this study has identified a cause and effect relationship. Reading this article, you would think that eating more in the morning causes not only eating more over the course of a day but also that it directly leads to weight gain. The title of the article as well as the statement: "a new study suggests that the only thing a big breakfast does is lard on more pounds" certainly give that impression.
However, because this study was cross-sectional and did not actually test an intervention, any relationships between a behavior (eating a big breakfast) and an outcome (total calorie intake for the day) are purely speculative. We cannot know whether the behavior caused the outcome. For example, perhaps on the days that the study participants happened to eat a big breakfast, they were just hungrier for some reason, and would have eaten more throughout the day regardless of what their breakfast was. Or maybe people tend to eat bigger breakfasts on weekends or holidays or other times when calorie intake is higher.
This may be a bit easier to understand if I use a different example. Let's imagine that I did a study looking at people's clothing choices and activity levels. I might find that people who report wearing sneakers on a given day are more likely to exercise that same day. Would this mean that wearing sneakers causes people to exercise? If I decide to start wearing sneakers every day, will I suddenly start exercising more? Maybe I will a little, because it's easier to be physically active in sneakers than in heels, but probably no one would think that wearing sneakers is a good weight loss strategy. Wearing sneakers and exercising just go together. It doesn't mean that one causes the other.
2. The article suggests that the results of this study negate findings of earlier research. I see this a lot in the news. "We've always been told to do X, but it turns out X may not work at all! Instead, we should be doing Y." But no single study can ever prove or disprove anything. We need to look at the accumulation of evidence on a topic before we jump to conclusions.
3. Speaking of jumping to conclusions, this article goes beyond making inappropriate inferences about cause-and-effect relationships and actually uses these flawed assumptions to give the readers nutritional advice: "If you want to lose weight, cut back on the calories you consume in the morning," the tag line reads. Given the questionable validity of this one study and the complete lack of consideration of any other studies, this advice is unsubstantiated.
Now that I've pointed out the gross misinterpretations presented in the MSN article, I suppose it's only fair to give you my interpretation of the study. After reading the original research article, here is my take.
My first observation is that this is a shoddy piece of writing and I am amazed that it was published anywhere. I guess I ought to start submitting my papers to this journal because apparently they'll take anything. Secondly, there was another interesting finding that was not discussed in the MSN article: although people who ate high-calorie breakfasts ended up eating more calories over the entire day, people who ate a greater proportion of their total calories at breakfast actually ate fewer calories over the entire day.
I realize this may sound confusing. Let me try to explain it a different way. In this study, obese people who ate 35% of their total daily calories at breakfast ate 100 fewer calories per day than obese people who ate only 7% of their calories at breakfast. For normal weight people, it was a 200 calorie difference. To put this into perspective, for someone eating 1800 calories per day, a breakfast providing 7% of total daily calories would be 126 calories, whereas a breakfast providing 35% of daily calories would be 630.
To sum up, this study found that, eating a bigger breakfast increases total calorie intake; but, eating a bigger breakfast relative to other meals decreases total calorie intake. So which result is more relevant? I would contend that the latter is more useful for the average person. I would be willing to bet that most nutritionists don't recommend that people eat larger breakfasts period. Rather, they (and I) recommend that people eat larger breakfasts AND smaller dinners and/or lunches. I often say that we, as a society, have our eating patterns backwards. We should be eating more calories at the beginning of the day and less at the end. This advice is fully supported by this recent study, despite what the popular media article implies.
A final comment: although it was alluded to in the article, I want to stress that a big breakfast of junk is a far, far cry from a big nutritious breakfast. Even if the former leads to higher calorie intake, it says nothing about the latter.
On an unrelated note, why are my blog posts always so long?! I never, ever intend for them to look like this, but try as I might to be concise, I never seem to succed. Who is actually reading all of this? If you made it to the end, I applaud you.
In this country, nutrition issues often become political ones. Although most people seem to agree that eating healthy foods is generally a good idea, there is a lot of disagreement about what role the government should play in promoting healthier food choices. I discussed one example of this kind of controversy a while back, in a post about regulating Happy Meal toys. Another example can be found in Sarah Palin's remarks about Michelle Obama's anti-childhood obesity campaign, "Let's Move."
Back in November, Palin made the following comments on Laura Ingraham's radio show, attacking Michelle Obama's efforts to reduce childhood obesity:
"Take her anti-obesity thing that she is on. She is on this kick, right. What she is telling us is she cannot trust parents to make decisions for their own children, for their own families in what we should eat. And I know I'm going to be again criticized for bringing this up, but instead of a government thinking that they need to take over and make decisions for us according to some politician or politician's wife priorities, just leave us alone, get off our back, and allow us as individuals to exercise our own God-given rights to make our own decisions and then our country gets back on the right track."
The first time I heard this, it really ruffled my feathers, but I tried to ignore it because I knew that if I tried to express my disagreement in a counter-argument, I would end up stressing myself out trying to figure out where to even start to address the many flaws in Palin's logic. But, as time went on, I kept hearing about Sarah Palin's opinion about childhood obesity, and finally decided that I couldn't keep quiet anymore. So here I am, frustrated and seething, blogging about it in hopes that someone reads and understands my point of view so I can feel some sense of relief.
There are 2 major problems with Palin's argument. First, and most important, the assertion that the government shouldn't try to improve children's diets because parents should decide what kids eat is utterly ridiculous and makes no sense. Here's why: the government already does make some decisions about what American children eat. The National School Lunch Program (NSLP) provides cash reimbursement and commodity foods to participating public and private schools, with the requirement that those schools offer free and reduced-price lunches to eligible students. The NSLP also develops certain guidelines about what foods can be served to constitute a "reimbursable" lunch. Sarah Palin doesn't seem to be suggesting that we do away with the NSLP (I'd love to see her try), which implies that she accepts this level of interference from the government in children's diets. However, what she does have a problem with is any effort to improve the standards by which the NSLP and other nutrition programs function. In other words, the government can decide what kids eat at school, as long as it doesn't make them eat anything healthy. If Sarah Palin wants to take a stand against government involvement in childhood nutrition, then she should call for the abolishment of the NSLP altogether, not oppose changes in the program that will ultimately benefit the health of American children.
The fact that the government has an established role in influencing what kids eat renders Palin's points moot. But for argument's sake, let's pretend that the NSLP did not exist and all kids had to bring lunch to school and eat only what their parents gave them. This sounds like exactly the kind of scenario that would restore individual freedoms and get the country "back on the right track," in Palin's view. Responsibility for children's food choices would be placed squarely on parents, where it belongs. This brings me to the second problem.
That Sarah Palin thinks that parents should be the only entities entrusted with ensuring that children grow up nourished and healthy is strong evidence of her detachment from large groups of Americans and the problems they face. For one thing, many, many parents simply do not have the means to provide their children with the quantity and quality of food they need to thrive. They may care a lot about their kids and know how to make good choices for them, but they may be unable to because they can't afford healthy food or can't access it because of where they live; or more likely, both. Then there are parents who can afford to fill their kitchen cabinets with healthy foods but are truly not educated enough to do so. Either they don't know how important nutrition is for their children's immediate and long-term well-being, or they don't know what constitutes good nutrition.
Finally, there are parents who, regardless of whether or not they have the means and know-how to feed their kids nutritious food, just don't care enough to do it. Let's be honest, anyone can be a parent. You don't need any special characteristics or qualifications, and the sad truth is that not all parents are good parents. Just think about how many parents abuse or neglect their children. They're in the news all the time. And these are the people that Sarah Palin thinks should be given sole responsibility for ensuring that the next generation of Americans grows up to become healthy, contributing members of society. Michelle Obama's "Let's Move" campaign states on its website: "We believe every kid has the right to a healthy childhood." Apparently, Sarah Palin believes that a healthy childhood is not a right, but a privilege reserved for those who have loving parents with ample education and financial resources.
I can't imagine a topic more blog-worthy than this one. If you haven't heard, San Francisco has banned restaurants (like McDonald's) from offering a free toy in a kids' meal unless it meets a set of relatively low nutritional standards. Meals that include toys must contain no more than 600 calories and 35% of calories from fat. Full story on LAtimes.com. A meal with 600 calories may provide anywhere from 25%-60% of a child's total daily calorie needs, depending on age, gender, and activity level. Because the ordinance does not actually require meals with toys to contain any beneficial nutrients such as vitamins, minerals, or fiber, I would hardly consider it to be draconian.
Nevertheless, many object to the new regulation on the grounds that government is once again reaching into private lives and meddling where it shouldn't. It is an understandable objection, but on this issue, I side with the San Francisco government. In a column published today, physician and preventive medicine researcher David Katz does a great job of presenting an argument for regulating toys in kids' meals.
When I first read about the move, my first thought was not that the government was manipulating consumers by regulating businesses, but that it was preventing the manipulation of consumers by businesses. Dr. Katz's column expresses this point better than I could:
"Let's assume that you see the removal of the toy from the Happy Meal as a case of Big Brother telling you what to do. How, then, did you view the placement of the toy in the Happy Meal in the first place?
McDonald's did not consult you to find out if you wanted a toy encouraging your child to prefer a meal of lamentable nutritional quality. They did not consult any parent. They may have done consumer testing showing that kids- and thus their parents- are apt to choose such meals, but that's to find out what's best for them, not for you."
He also makes the important point that the government must be accountable to voters, whereas McDonald's is only accountable to its shareholders. The implication here, as I interpret it, is that the decisions made by the government in this instance are much likelier to be in our best interests than those made by McDonald's.
Finally, as if reading my mind, he says, "We are all prone, whether or not we care to admit it, to manipulation by multinational corporations with fortunes to spend and the best thinnking Madison Avenue can provide. Thinking designed to figure out what it takes to get us to buy what they're selling. Being manipulated into a lunch choice my McDonald's and Dreamworks [which supplies many of the toys] is not exactly the epitome of personal liberty."
I think this last point, the one that I mentioned at the beginning of this post, is perhaps more important. If people were as vigilant of manipulation by business as they are of manipulation by government, maybe they would view this issue, and others like it, differently.
It seems like every time I turn around, there's some food company saying something that makes me say, for lack of a more fitting phrase, "WTF?!" Wendy's is the latest to grind my gears. Lately, I've been seeing commercials like this one, which repeat a new tag line "You know when it's real."
I guess Wendy's doesn't think it's customers will know when it's bullshit. I think the ingredients lists for their products, taken from their website, speak for themselves:
I see chicken sausage and turkey sausage everywhere these days. Great, right?! Well, maybe not as great as you'd think. It seems like sausage made from poultry would be an obviously healthier choice than beef or pork sausage, but unfortunately, the benefits of choosing these kinds of products are overblown more often than not. Case in point: my shopping experience this afternoon.
I was at my local Stop and Shop, picking up some ingredients for an Italian pasta dinner tomorrow night and, keeping with tradition, I planned to make sauce with meatballs and sausage. Looking at the options for sausage, I thought for a moment about getting chicken sausage. Although I don't like to sacrifice too much of the authenticity of a meal for a better nutrient profile, I also don't mind making subtle changes where I can. I picked up a package of chicken sausage and a package of pork sausage from the same company, flipped them over and compared the nutrition labels. What do you know? The calorie content was almost exactly the same (110 vs. 100 calories per 2 oz. serving) as was the fat content. That sure made my decision easier. I took the pork sausage and put the imitation healthy sausage back.
It's true that the chicken sausage did not bear any claims about healthfulness or fat content, but it's my suspicion that most shoppers would assume, without any such explicit claims, that the chicken sausage would just have to be better than the pork sausage. And I doubt everyone would take the time to make the label comparison that I did. The point of this rant is to provide a warning. Just because a product is made with chicken, turkey, or some other meat with a healthful aura, does not automatically mean it is any lower in fat or calories than the original version. If you are trying to choose leaner meats (good for you!), please make sure you read the package labels and make sure you are getting the benefits you think you are.
P.S. I'm sure there are some legitimately more-healthful varieties of sausage out there, so don't discount them entirely. And if you've seen some, please share your find with the rest of us!
It seems like there is never a shortage of questionable food marketing tactics, especially when kids' foods are involved. The latest example: a new commercial from Kellogg's touting its cereals' new and improved fiber content. Although I could not find a video of the commercial, here is a link to a page on the Kellogg's website which explains the importance of fiber and portrays Froot Loops, Apple Jacks, and Pops as nutritious by virtue of the added fiber they now contain.
It's true that fiber is an important part of a healthy diet and most kids don't get enough. However, Kellogg's narrow focus on a single nutrient is nothing more than a clever marketing ploy designed with the hope that consumers will miss the forest for the trees and buy what they're selling- both literally and figuratively.
The new ad campaign comes at a time when nutrition experts and public health professionals are calling for a shift in focus from nutrients (e.g. fat, carbohydrates, fiber, vitamins, etc.) to foods. In agreement with many others in my field, it is my belief that we should be giving the public recommendations about nutrition that are simple, based on scientific evidence, and easy to understand and put into practice. Rather than providing acceptable ranges of saturated fat and fiber (do you know what to do with that information???), we should instead encourage consumption of whole, minimally processed foods (think rolled oats and fresh apples) and advise limiting intake of foods whose component parts are no longer recognizable and contain substantial amounts of added sugars, salt, and other unwholesome ingredients (think Apple Jacks).
The so-called "reductionist" approach to nutrition smacks of hubris that has gotten out of control. To believe that we can take a food in its natural state and process it to the point that it looks and tastes completely different and then simply add back the nutrients we deem to be important is to assume that we know everything there is to know about the nutrients humans need. This is very far from the truth. Most vitamins have only been discovered within the last century and for many of them (vitamin D included), we only have a general idea of how much we need to avoid illness. We don't necessarily know how much we need for optimal health. Furthermore, research on non-vitamin bioactive food components (like antioxidant polyphenols) is still relatively new. So far, it suggests that these substances are very important, too, but we don't know enough about them to use them in food fortification.
My point is- we can only add back what we know we took out. I think it is extremely arrogant to think that we can manipulate foods to our liking and not suffer any health consequences. Whether or not fiber-fortified sugary cereals are leading to deficiencies in flavonoids or other important compounds, they are almost certainly leading to excess calories and excess weight relative to foods that naturally contain the nutrients that Kellogg's sprays their Froot Loops with.
The truth is, we don't know all that much about the health effects of specific nutrients. Just look at the baffling results of studies on Atkins-like diets. Despite being high in saturated fat, a nutrient that has been demonized for decades, people who follow the diet for a long period of time actually have better improvements in their cholesterol levels than those on a low-fat diet. Some Eskimo populations have diets that are 80% meat and very high in total fat, yet they have lower rates of chronic disease than Americans do. What we do know more about is the dietary patterns that are associated with better health. And they are almost universally based on whole foods close to their natural state.
This post has turned a little rambly, but the point I'm trying to get across is: when you see food ads and commercials like the one Kellogg's is airing, be skeptical. Trust your common sense. Food manufacturers want you to believe that they can "fix" any nutritional shortcoming, but don't fall for it. They can't. Not now, probably not ever, and certainly not in your lifetime.
Normally, I try to make my posts educational and/or helpful in some way. But today, I'd like to take a moment to complain about something that's been bothering me for quite some time. In the media, it seems that people often talk about women being "skinny" or "curvy," as if these two are mutually exclusive categories that women neatly fall into. I have to disagree. Skinny refers to the amount of body fat a woman has, whereas curvy refers to the distribution of body fat. One can be skinny and curve-less, skinny and curvy, thick and curve-less or thick and curvy.
The reason this bugs me so much is that I, admittedly, fall into the skinny category. However, even at my heaviest I have never been curvy, and I can say with certainty that I will never, without the help of substantial plastic surgery, be curvy. So when I hear people suggest that skinny girls would look better if they gained weight because then they'd be curvy, I cringe. I WISH that I could just gain a few pounds and look like Marilyn Monroe, but that's never going to happen. If I on the heavier side, I wouldn't look healthy or voluptuous. I would look like a big bean bag sitting on top of a couple of sticks.
On the flip side, it is perfectly possible for a woman to be skinny AND curvy. (curse those lucky SOBs..) If you don't believe me, let's look at some examples, shall we?
First, in the skinny/curvy category, my arch nemesis: Megan Fox
Megan's waist is impossibly small and she probably wears a size 0 or maybe a 2, so the "skinny" label definitely applies. However, her overall shape is obviously the classic hourglass. So, you can just as easily call her curvy. If there was ever a doubt about life being unfair, women like Megan Fox serve as incontrovertible proof.
Next up: Skinny/curve-less. This is where I fit in. If I ever took any full-body pictures of myself wearing something that shows my shapelessness, I would post one. But I don't, so here is another celebrity- Cameron Diaz.
Cameron is not any skinnier than Megan Fox, but her weight is distributed differently, giving her a more straight boyish shape.
In the thick and curvy category, you find women like Scarlett Johansson, Kim Kardashian, Kate Winslet, Beyonce, and Christina Hendricks. I think this group is pretty self-explanatory.
Finally, the thick/curve-less category. Interestingly, there aren't many celebrities in this category it seems. The only person I can think of off-hand is Sherri Shepherd. Although she is "curvy" on top, she has more of a V-shape and narrow hips.
So, you see, it is not really accurate to say that a woman is either skinny OR curvy, because they describe totally different things. Body size can be changed with diet and exercise, but body shape is almost entirely determined by genes.
There's a new commercial I keep seeing for Nutella that is really pissing me off (View it at Nutella's website here). Now, I have to admit, I love me some Nutella. I might not eat it very often, but it's seriously good stuff. But my affection for the product does not mitigate my disgust with the company's marketing practices.
The commercial, for those of you who can't be bothered to click the link, features a mom talking about all of the reasons why she likes to give her kids Nutella. She says Nutella is "a delicious hazelnut spread I use to get my kids to eat healthy foods. I spread a little on all kinds of healthy things, like multigrain toast. Every jar has wholesome, quality ingredients like hazelnuts, skim milk, and a hint of delicious cocoa. And Nutella has no artificial colors or preservatives." Sounds pretty good, right? Let's look at each of these claims separately shall we?
1. Nutella can get kids to eat healthy foods. Notice, she doesn't say that Nutella IS a healthy food. That's your first clue. If the best thing that can be said about the product is that it helps kids eat OTHER foods that are healthy, chances are the product itself is not.
2. It contains wholesome ingredients. What the hell does that even mean??? Does anyone know? Let me give you a tip: "wholesome" is the word food manufacturers use to describe foods that have no nutritional benefits worth mentioning. The dictionary definition of wholesome is "promoting health," but the professor of my food science class defined it differently. He said "wholesome" refers to foods that contain everything you would expect them to contain and nothing else. In other words, they have not been contaminated by substances you wouldn't want in your food (like chemicals, insects, etc.) "Wholesome" CAN refer to healthy foods such as fruits and vegetables, but it can just as easily be used to describe butter, bacon, and french fries. When you hear this word, just ignore it.
3. Nutella contains hazelnuts, skim milk, and a "touch" of cocoa. Maybe so. They're probably not making this up, but let's look at what else is in it. According to the label, the first ingredient is not hazelnuts, skim milk, or cocoa. It's sugar; 21 grams of it per serving to be exact. Why don't they mention that in the commercial? Oh and there's also some modified palm oil, a saturated fat (i.e. artery-clogging fat). And the skim milk? It's down at the bottom of the list. You can't tell how much skim milk you'd actually get in one serving, but judging by the 4% daily value of calcium each serving contains, you can bet it's not much. An 8 ounce glass of skim milk provides 30% of the daily value for calcium, so if you do the math, that's about 2 tablespoons, or .13 servings of dairy.
4. Nutella has no artificial colors or preservatives. My short answer to this is: so what?! There is no convincing evidence that either of these things has any negative effect on health. But there is plenty of evidence that sugar, saturated fat, and excess calories contribute to all kinds of health problems.
This kind of advertising (and I've seen it done many many times before) makes me think that we really need more regulation of food advertising. If a product has an overall poor nutritional profile and is likely to promote disease rather than health, a company should not be allowed to suggest that it is nutritious. It is deceptive and unethical. These companies are exploiting the public's lack of nutrition knowledge and profiting while their customers suffer the consequences.
I'm not sure how, but in the minds of most people, salads have become synonymous with health food. Determined dieters proudly resist the tempting burgers and fries on restaurant menus and order the guilt-free salad instead. They often bring homemade salads to work with them for lunch, or order a salad from the office cafeteria, assured that they are making the best possible choice from a nutritional standpoint.
Sadly, the salad is just as likely to be the dieter's downfall as it is to be her road to success. With the wide array of high-calorie toppings that are likely to adorn otherwise innocent salad greens and the globs of dressing that smother them, it is not surprising that salads can often put even the heartiest of meals to shame when it comes to calorie and fat content.
Of course most people know by now that the chicken caesar salad and taco salad aren't as healthful as once thought. But even the truly healthy-sounding salads can pack a caloric punch. A perfect example of this is a salad featured in the Food section of the New Haven Register today: the Signature Salad at Eli's on Whitney in Hamden, CT.
The menu describes the salad's components: "Mesclun greens, candied walnuts, craisins, gorgonzola cheese and Granny Smith apples with a balsamic vinaigrette." Sounds harmless enough. But an analysis of the recipe outlined in the Register's article reveals that this salad, most likely ordered as an appetizer or part of a larger meal, contains 1130 calories, 99 grams of fat, 21 grams of saturated fat, and 45 grams of sugar. For the record, that's more than half the calories most people need to eat in a whole day and more than 100% of the daily recommendation for saturated fat. This salad also has as much sugar as 15 Starburst candies! It has twice as many calories and more than 2 1/2 times the amount of saturated fat as a Big Mac.
The main culprit here and in most salads is the dressing. The recipe calls for 1/2 cup per serving. HALF A CUP! The serving size for most salad dressings is 2 tablespoons. And most dressings, even the seemingly "light" vinaigrettes, have 70-100calories per tablespoon. But even without the dressing, this salad is still higher in calories than most fast food burgers. This is because Eli's uses large portions of three high-calorie toppings: blue cheese, candied walnuts, and dried cranberries.
My advice to anyone watching their weight: unless you really know what's in it, skip the salad and get something more satisfying instead. It will likely be better for you, too.
So PepsiCo is launching a new line of sodas that are made with sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS). Should we celebrate the company's newfound health consciousness? Hardly! The new sodas are still full of empty calories from sugar. Sugar is not health food, natural or not. Lard is natural, too, but I don't see people extolling its virtues and buying it in bulk.
People have gotten the idea that HFCS is worse than sugar, because it is allegedly metabolized differently by the body and leads to weight gain. HFCS has been partially blamed for the obesity epidemic, and rightly so, but it is not because it is inherently different from sugar, but because of the way it changed the food supply when it came on the market. HFCS is much less expensive than sugar. When HFCS became available, it enabled food manufacturers to sell sugary foods and drinks at much lower prices than they used to. This likely led people to start consuming a lot more calories from HFCS-sweetened products. As nutrition expert Dr. David Katz has explained, its cost-effectiveness also led to its widespread use in processed foods, even those that are not supposed to be sweet. The result is that we end up consuming more sugar overall. So, HFCS may have played a role in the rising prevalence of obesity and diabetes in the U.S., but sugar could have had the same effect if it were used in the same way ("Sweet and Corny").
There is no empirical evidence that HFCS is any worse than sugar or that it has any different effects on appetite, weight, or other metabolic factors. The abstract from a review of studies on HFCS published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition had this to say:
"High-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) has been implicated in excess weight gain through mechanisms seen in some acute feeding studies and by virtue of its abundance in the food supply during years of increasing obesity. Compared with pure glucose, fructose is thought to be associated with insufficient secretion of insulin and leptin and suppression of ghrelin. However, when HFCS is compared with sucrose, the more commonly consumed sweetener, such differences are not apparent, and appetite and energy intake do not differ in the short-term. Longer-term studies on connections between HFCS, potential mechanisms, and body weight have not been conducted. The main objective of this review was to examine collective data on associations between consumption of HFCS and energy balance, with particular focus on energy intake and its regulation" (Melanson et al., 2008).
Bottom line: Stick to diet soda or no soda at all! What? Afraid of artificial sweeteners? See the post below.
Among the many misconceptions that people seem to have about nutrition and food safety is the notion that artificial sweeteners are essentially poison and must be avoided in order to be healthy. This one really gets my goat because despite the fact that it is not backed up by any credible science, a large proportion of the population readily believes it. This behavior strikes me as incredibly hypocritical, given how arbitrarily Americans seem to decide which products they are going to be wary of and demand the highest level of proof of safety and which they will accept and use regardless of the harm they are likely to cause.
For example, we have an abundance of evidence about the dangers of the typical American diet: one that is high in calories, saturated fat, sodium, and refined carbohydrates and low in fiber. Yet, this is not enough to convince anyone to abandon their typical American eating habits, save for the first week of January. On the other hand, a few unsubstantiated rumors about artificial sweeteners show up on some conspiracy-theory websites and everyone immediately swears them off!
All of the artificial sweeteners currently on the market have been approved by the FDA. Obtaining this approval is a long and rigorous process, entailing the meticulous conduct of numerous safety studies. But this is apparently not enough to convince the American public, who believes that the research demanded by the FDA is not sufficient. On the other hand, diet pills, vitamin and mineral supplements, and herbs, including the natural sweetener Stevia, are happily embraced despite the fact that they have not received FDA approval and are largely unregulated. (A product containing Stevia has recently received FDA approval, but it has been used by many for decades prior to this).
Another thing I think many people don't realize is that artificial sweeteners have been approved for use by adults, children, and pregnant women. If you use artificial sweeteners normally, there is no need to stop using them when you become pregnant or to prohibit your children from having any foods or drinks containing them. There is simply no scientific reason to ban them from your diet ever.
Even the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a well-known "whistle-blowing" organization often referred to as the "nutrition police" because of their rigid approach to consumer safety standards, has given sucralose (Splenda) its seal of approval, describing it as "safe." CSPI is not so kind to other sweeteners, but it does call aspartame and acesulfame potassium, two of the most commonly used sweeteners, "probably safe." Read their assessment of all sweeteners here.
Some studies have suggested that drinking diet beverages may actually lead to weight gain. I believe this to be a gross misinterpretation of research findings. The studies that have found an association between overweight and diet drink consumption were cross-sectional, non-experimental designs. In other words, they just looked at one group of people and compared those who drink diet beverages to those who don't. One can never determine causation with this type of study design. There are too many other factors at work. Researchers have theorized that artificial sweeteners may increase one's desire for sweets, leading to excess consumption of sugar later. It has also been postulated that the perception of sweetness actually triggers a hormonal response similar to what would occur if actual sugar were consumed.
I have read a number of experimental studies on artificial sweeteners (the ones that never make it to mainstream media because their results are not controversial enough), and these have found no difference in weight or in hormonal response (e.g. glucose and insulin levels, among others) when people were given a sugar-sweetened beverage compared to an artificially-sweetened beverage. Therefore, I have different theories about why people who drink diet beverages seem to be more likely to be overweight:
1. People who are overweight are simply more likely to drink diet beverages. Think about it, if you've never been overweight, it might not occur to you to buy diet anything. Whereas, if you are overweight, switching from regular to diet soda might be the first thing you do.
2. When people drink diet beverages, they feel free to eat more food. Be honest, how many times have you justified eating a larger portion of something or indulging in something high in calories because you a.) had a light lunch, b.) skipped breakfast, c.) ate really healthy yesterday, etc. ? When you eliminate calories you might otherwise be drinking, it's easy to think you can "afford" calories from something else (like that extra scoop of ice cream or the larger sized order of fries).
The easy way to avoid gaining weight when using artificial sweeteners is to make sure that your total calorie intake is within the range it should be for weight loss. If you write down what you eat and don't exceed your daily allotment, you will not have trouble losing weight even if you drink a gallon of diet soda daily. If any doubt remains in your mind, I use anywhere from 25-40 packets of Splenda a day (no, I'm not exaggerating) and I drink at least one 12-oz. can of diet soda, and I am underweight. If artificial sweeteners truly caused weight gain, this would not be possible.
The bottom line is that artificial sweeteners are probably going to do much less damage, if any, to your health than regular sugar would, especially if you are prone to drinking a lot of sweetened beverages or eating a lot of desserts.
My poor husband has become so accustomed to my playing food police that his response to this question as we drive home from Thanksgiving dinner with a car full of leftovers is, "No, of course not!"
I was referring to the tupperware containers full of turkey and sweet potatoes that my mother-in-law (MIL) gave us to take home. Why wouldn't I allow my husband to eat any of it?? Because I want him to live to see Christmas! I've come to realize that I may be the only person in the world who knows how to properly handle, cook, and store food that is safe to consume. Or at least I'm the only person in the Doughty family who does. My MIL thinks it's perfectly okay to cook a meal, then leave the food out on the counter, on top of the stove, on the table- basically wherever the temperature is conducive to bacterial growth- for the duration of the day and/or night so that it is readily accessible for whoever is daring (and foolish) enough to eat it.
This particular Thanksgiving meal was served sometime before 5pm (this is when we arrived and the food was already out). It was not packed up until we left around 9:00. And even then, it wasn't put in the fridge, but on the front porch, where presumably temperatures are fridge-like. There are two problems with this approach: #1, food should only be kept at room temperature for 2 hours and certainly no longer than 4 hours. After 4 hours, it should be discarded. #2, the temperature on the front porch was not necessarily below 40 degrees, the temperature at which bacterial growth is sufficiently slowed. Even if it was below 40 at 9pm that night, it definitely wasn't the next day when the sun came up and heated the many-windowed porch like a greenhouse. But that didn't stop anyone from eating leftovers for the next 3 days!
You can imagine my reaction when we went back there Sunday night and MIL asked, "You guys want leftovers?!!" Oh, and cooked poultry should only be kept for 1-2 days, so that's STRIKE THREE!
While I target my MIL, I know that she is far from alone in her risky food storage practices. I don't know how many times I've heard someone say, "If it smells fine, go ahead and eat it." Or, "you'd know if it was bad." This is, quite simply, ridiculous! You would absolutely NOT know if a food was bad just by looking at it or smelling it. In fact, the bacteria that make food smell and taste bad typically would not make you sick. It's the bacteria that don't have an effect on the food's physical qualities that you need to worry about.
So for those of you who are similarly uninformed, here are some great resources to help you stay safe and healthy this holiday season:
But after reading this article on MSN, I was reminded about a controversial topic that has become highly relevant in recent years, as more women are getting college educations and starting careers before settling down, getting married, and starting a family.
The article discussed a new study which found that a lot of women aren't aware of the risks of delaying motherhood. I have always found the science behind procreation fascinating. I love learning about the many ways that a child's health can be affected by the decisions his or her parents make from before conception through the gestational period and early infancy. So this is of some interest to me.
One finding of this study that was eye-opening to me was this:
"'Only 53 percent of women with fertility problems knew that the chances of conceiving via IVF decline between the ages of 30 and 40. What's more, 85 percent of them thought that fertility treatment can "overcome the effect of age.'
In reality, the researchers note, only 25 percent to 30 percent of women in their 20s and 30s give birth after IVF treatment. Among women older than 40, the success rate is closer to 10 percent."
While I never thought the availability of IVF should be a reason to put off having kids, I admit I did think it was more effective than that.
Other risks that women in the study didn't always know about: the risk of gestational diabetes increases with maternal age, as does the chance of twins, and the need for a cesarean section.
This isn't the first time I've heard that the outcomes aren't optimal for mother or child when pregnancy happens later in life (age 35+). Incidence of Down's syndrome increases with maternal age, as does the risk of placenta previa, miscarriage, pre-term delivery, and stillbirth. Another recent study found that babies born to young mothers lived longer than babies born to older mothers. The evidence seems to be stacked against delaying pregnancy much past age 30.
What the MSN article emphasizes is that women need to be informed of these risks. But I think I know why doctors may be reluctant to bring it up. I've noticed that a lot of women get really upset when people start talking about these risks. They take it personally. They undoubtedly are thinking "How dare you pressure me into having kids before I'm ready? How dare you tell me what to do with my body? I shouldn't be looked down upon for trying to better myself by going to school and having a career and being self-sufficient. This is the 21st century! Women shouldn't be forced into traditional wife and mother roles. We don't have to choose between a fulfilling career and raising a family! We can have both! If that means waiting until our late 30s or early 40s to have children, then so be it. You have no right to judge."
I certainly understand this sentiment. I myself am pursuing post-baccalaureate degrees and plan on doing meaningful work in my field of employment. I do believe women should do whatever it is they want to do with their lives and not feel constrained by traditional views of what a woman's role is. But I also believe that we need to be realistic. We may be able to reverse millenia of discrimination against women, but we can't change biology. Not yet, anyway. Now I'm not saying that if you don't get pregnant before age 35, you should just forget about ever having kids. But, if you are in a position where the decision is yours to start now or wait... I think that the scientific evidence and advice of the medical community should at least be seriously considered.
