Tuesday, December 31, 2019

Teachers, Stop Teaching Kids To Reward Anything and Everything With Junk Food And Candy!

As has been my tradition, in December I repost old favourites from years gone by. This year am looking back to 2016.
The past 50 years of so have seen scads of unhealthy societal changes to how we use food, and near the top of that heap lies our now normalized use of junk food to reward, pacify, and entertain our children at every turn.

Take the jelly bean prayer up above. That was sent home with RD Nadine Devine's Junior Kindergartener in honour of Easter.

WWJD? Not that.

Or this needs-to-be-seen-to-be-believed note that was sent home with another friend's 5 year old.

I imagine that the teachers responsible for those two examples don't see either as unwise as why question normal behaviours? If everyone does them, they must be ok.

Yet I'd wager that if those same two Kindergarten teachers reflected on the lesson their use of classroom junk food is teaching their incredibly impressionable, young, students, they would recognize that teaching incredibly young children that it is normal to reward even the smallest of victories or celebrations with junk food is not in their students' best interests.

Teachers, if you're reading this, so far as rewarding kids go, it's not difficult to do so without candy. Extra-recess, dressing your teacher up in funny clothing, being in charge of school announcements, a classroom dance party, have a class outside, hand out "no-homework" passes, stickers, bookmarks, etc...

I know that teachers care deeply about their students, which is why I genuinely believe that putting an end to junk-food classroom rewards is something that society, and teachers, can fix.

[And for some suggestions as to how you might begin to approach this with one your children's teachers, coaches, whatever, here's something I wrote a few years ago about shutting down your children's sugar pushers]

Monday, December 30, 2019

It's More Important To Teach Your Kids to Cook Than to Play Soccer

Photo courtesy of yoshiyasu nishikawa 
As has been my tradition, in December I repost old favourites from years gone by. This year am looking back to 2016.
Yes, I know there will be people whose challenges and circumstances are real and severe enough that they genuinely can't ensure their kids learn how to cook before leaving home. This post isn't for them. This post is for everyone else.

For the first time in history the average American family is spending more money in restaurants than they are in grocery stores.

Kids are leaving home now knowing more about how to play soccer or hockey than they do about how to cook meals from fresh whole ingredients.

That's so incredibly unfortunate, not only for those kids, but for their future families.

Cooking is a life skill and it's a parents job to teach those before they leave home. If you aren't comfortable with cooking yourself, take the opportunity to learn with your kids. Your kids learning how to cook will serve not only to help them in providing themselves and their futures with healthful meals, but will also save them money during their lean years and will likely reduce their risk of developing a myriad of diet-related, chronic, non-communicable diseases.

Whether by way of the ridiculous amount of online recipes and resources, or enrolling in a cooking course or supper club, cooking, like any skill, is obtained by way of practice. It doesn't matter if you're not good at cooking now. Take the time, and there's no doubt you'll get there.

Friday, December 27, 2019

The Food Industry Spends A Cancer Moonshot On Advertising Every 3 Weeks

As has been my tradition, in December I repost old favourites from years gone by. This year am looking back to 2016.
Some perspective.

Did you hear about the "Cancer Moonshot 2020"?

In their words,
"The Cancer MoonShot 2020 Program is one of the most comprehensive cancer collaborative initiatives launched to date, seeking to accelerate the potential of combination immunotherapy as the next generation standard of care in cancer patients."
And so what's the cost of this ambitious program over the course of the next 5 years?

$1 billion.

Sound impressive?

Maybe less so when you consider that according to AdAge, in 2014 alone, the top 25 US food industry brands spent just shy of 15x that amount advertising their products.

That's a moonshot worth every 3 weeks!

Spread that out over the billion dollar moonshot's 5 year duration and suddenly you realize that through 2020 the food industry will spend 75 times more money trying to get you to buy Coca-Cola, KFC, Cheerios, Dunkin, etc., than the government will be spending on their "MoonShot" to cure cancer.

If we want to see population level improvements to diet, no doubt that part of the requirement will be food industry advertising reform. Banning advertising that targets kids altogether, reforming front-of-package claims, cracking down on deceit, and more, because with a cancer moonshot of food industry advertising every three weeks, consumers don't stand a chance if we don't.

[And of course the other issue worth noting is how incredibly irresponsible it is to promote a 5-year, billion dollar investment as a cancer moonshot.]

Wednesday, December 25, 2019

School "Hot Lunches" Are Beyond Awful. How Did We Let Them Happen?

As has been my tradition, in December I repost old favourites from years gone by. This year am looking back to 2016.
A friend on Twitter sent the photo up above to me. It's this week's hot lunch offering for his kid's school's kindergartners through Grade 6ers.

Hot dogs, donuts, and juice.

Really?

And then of course there's pizza days, sub days, and various other awful food days that not only serve kids literal fast food, but in so doing also teach kids that it's a totally normal/alright to have fast food each and every week.

Parents would jump in front of buses for their children, and yet packing them a healthy lunch everyday isn't doable? Clearly it's not a money thing as $5 for a hot dog, a donut and a juice box certainly doesn't make this hot lunch a value proposition.

How did we get here as a society?

More importantly, how do we leave?

Tuesday, December 24, 2019

Why You Should Probably Just Ignore All Breakfast Studies

By Evan-Amos (Own work) [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons
As has been my tradition, in December I repost old favourites from years gone by. This year am looking back to 2016.
Ugh, breakfast stories.

Such a frustrating topic in nutrition as for both health reporters and diet gurus it would seem that there is no middle ground, breakfast is positioned either as essential or pointless.

Well I'll tell you what's pointless - "breakfast" studies.

I'm putting breakfast in quotations because virtually all the is it good for you or not breakfast studies seem to study breakfast as a whole.

Seems to me that regardless of your chosen end point (be it weight, appetite, hunger, adiposity, heart disease, insulin, school performance, whatever) what a person eats for breakfast will matter a great deal, and just studying whether or not a person ate breakfast, will lump together bowls of Froot Loops with almond topped steel cut oats, and Pop Tarts with summer vegetable omelettes.

My experience, born out of a dozen years of working with thousands of patients on weight management, has been that for most, a protein rich breakfast benefits all-day satiety, whereas a bowl of ultra-processed, sugar-fortified carbs, doesn't. And please note, I said most, not all.

Ultimately breakfast matters for some and not for others, and if you're curious whether or not it's important for you, what you choose to eat for breakfast is going to play a big role in your answer.

And for the love of everything holy, please, please, stop reporting on "breakfast" studies, whether you or they are pro or con, as if they're able to make conclusions about the utility of breakfast as a whole.

Monday, December 23, 2019

No Diet Works For Everyone, And Every Diet Works For Someone

As has been my tradition, in December I repost old favourites from years gone by. This year am looking back to 2016
Two weeks ago Kevin Hall and I had our diet commentary published in The Lancet. Not surprisingly, we upset some folks - primarily low-carbers. Some accused us of being low-fat cheerleaders. Others that we fostered an "animus" towards low-carb diets.

While I can't speak for Kevin, I can honestly state that I'm totally fine with low-carb diets. For some people they're a life changer and our office is happy to work with patients on them. I've also got nothing against low fat, Paleo, intermittent fasting, vegan, gluten-free, or any other diet that has a name.

What matters most to me, and what was also the crux of our commentary, is whether or not a person likes their chosen diet enough to sustain it. Food is not simply fuel. Food is comfort, food is celebration, and food serves as the foundation of a huge part of our social lives. Regardless of whether or not one diet vs. another diet affords a person an additional few pounds of loss (or even whether or not it confers specific health benefits) pales in importance to whether or not a person likes that diet's style of eating enough to live with it for good

As noted in our piece, every diet out there has its long term success stories, and so moving forward, if you see anyone out there suggesting their diet is the best (or that your diet is the worst) rest assured they have an agenda. Their agenda might simply reflect an n=1 mentality of, "it worked for me therefore it's what you should do", it might reflect basic post-purchase rationalization, or it might reflect genuine science and studies that infer greater short term losses or potential health benefits. But if they can't wrap their heads around adherence (which on an individual basis is an expression of whether or not you like what you're eating and don't miss what you're not) as any diet's long term's most critical component, their ideology is showing.

Temporary efforts will only yield temporary outcomes no matter how exciting the outcomes might be in the short run.

Saturday, December 21, 2019

Saturday Stories: Statistical Lies, Cell Phone Location Tracking, and Survivors

Stephen Senn, in Error, on lies, damn lies, and statistics (ok, really just on statistical lies) as they pertain to personalized medicine

Stuart A. Thompson and Charlie Warzel, in The New York Times, with what will surely win them a Pulitzer, on how cellphone tracking companies probably know everything about your life. Then read this incredible follow up story on tracking President Trump. And finally this piece on how to protect your own data somewhat.

Avital Chizhik-Goldschmidt, in Forward, interviews and photographs 5 inspiring women survivors of the Holocaust

Thursday, December 19, 2019

Why Every Holiday Season Should be All-You-Can-Eat!

Ok, yes, the headline is very clickbait-y as there's a crucial qualifying word missing.

Thoughtfully

This holiday season should be all-you-can-thoughtfully-eat, where thoughtfully means asking just two questions before each and every indulgence.

1. Is it worth it?
2. How much do I need to be happily satisfied?

As I've said many times before, food isn't just fuel. As a species we use food for comfort and for celebration and no doubt for most of us, the answers to those two prior questions will be different in December than in January.

And here's a promise. If you don't ask those questions every indulgence will be worth it and you'll have far more of each than you need to be happily satisfied.

(this post was first published back in 2014)

Monday, December 09, 2019

#IfYouServeItWeWillEatIt Vegetarian Conference Food Nudge RCT Edition

As I've noted before (usually in the context of soda and junk food) if you serve it, we will eat it, even if the 'we' are a bunch of medical or dietetic professionals.

But what happens if you serve healthier fare? And what happens if you give people a little nudge towards it?

A recent study sought to explore that and prior to 3 conferences, randomized attendees into receiving one of the following two options to consider for their lunch choices
Group 1 (this was the non-vegetarian default ask): At the conference a non-vegetarian buffet will be served for lunch. Please state here if you would like to have a vegetarian dish prepared for you: __________________________________.

Group 2 (this was the vegetarian default ask): At the conference a vegetarian buffet will be served for lunch. Please state here if you would like to have a non-vegetarian dish prepared for you:__________________________________.
You know what happened next.

At all 3 conferences, whatever was highlighted as the default lunch option was chosen by the vast majority for lunch.

At the first conference, the vegetarian choice increased from 2% to 87%. At the second conference it increased from 6% to 86%. And at the third conference it increased from 12.5% to 89%.

You know what would have certainly led to even higher numbers? No non-vegetarian options. And to be clear, I'm not suggesting vegetarian diets are a panacea, there are plenty of unhealthy vegetarian foods, but this simple study illustrates the power afforded to conference organizers in terms of what's being served and how it's being presented to attendees. The same of course would be true of any venue where meals and/or snacks are presented.

Given we eat what we're served, it seems to me to be a straightforward expectation, at least for medical and dietetic conferences, that we're served healthy options.

[Thanks to my friend and colleague David Nunan for sharing this study with me, and you should follow him on Twitter if you don't already]

Saturday, December 07, 2019

Saturday Stories: Chaos, Hatred, And Ethos

Joshua Hammer, in GQ, writing on chaos at the top of the world.

Bari Weiss (and whether you loathe her or not everyone should read this harrowing article), in the New York Times, on how the global surge in Jew hatred should not be written off as isolated incidents of bigotry.

Rachel Laudan, in The Hedgehog Review, on the establishment of a modern culinary ethos.

(photo source)

Monday, December 02, 2019

Dear @OttawaCitizen, Your 83 Word Byline Free Drink Milk "Artice" Isn't Journalism And It Contributes to Scientific Illiteracy

Now to be clear, I'm not a journalist, though I have written my fair share of articles for various publications (including the Ottawa Citizen).

What I would never have submitted, let alone gotten away with, would be an 83 word (truly, that pic above is all there is), byline free, advertorial replete with a large photo promoting milk consumption in the name of Vitamin D and calcium citing a "report" that urged Canadians to drink milk, and mentioning "experts" three times, without actually naming the report or the experts.

Though I'm not sure which report the 83 words is referring to, my friend and PhD/RD Dr. Kevin Klatt (who you should absolutely be following on Twitter) was able to steer me to this study looking at non-dairy milk consumption and vitamin D levels in Canadian children which clearly demonstrates drinking non-cow's milk leads to lower, but still fine, vitamin D status markers.

He noted, as actually cited experts should, that vitamin D's daily recommended intake (DRI) levels were derived from intake studies performed in very high northern latitudes so as to remove the confounding issue of sunlight, and that consequently daily recommended intake levels are far more than are necessary to maintain safe vitamin D levels for everywhere but the far north. He also pointed out,
"there's not very strong evidence to suggest that not consuming milk places one at risk of having Vitamin D status in the range of insufficiency."
And though it may surprise you given the certainty of the 83 words up above, the data on dietary intake and Vitamin D are so limited that anyone who has concerns about their vitamin D status, regardless of whether they drink milk or not, should have their levels checked and not simply assume milk will be magical. Or better yet, not try to drink their way to higher levels of Vitamin D if they're concerned and simply take supplements (with meals if this is your plan as Vitamin D is a fat soluble vitamin)

Given the full court press the Canadian dairy industry has been making since our new Food Guide rightfully relegated dairy to simply a source of protein rather than suggest it is a unique food group, I can't help but wonder if this published seeming advertorial is consequent to their efforts and overtures, and while it might play to at least 50 years of Canadian dairy marketing, the Ottawa Citizen should know better than to simply pass along uncritical food takes suggesting magic benefits to specific foods to a population primed to believe them.

(Thanks to my friend and colleague Andrew Kujavsky for sending the photo of the article my way)