Lose Weight by Osmosis

Today I'm going to talk about a study that I had thought of doing and now clearly don't have to.

It's about something I've termed, "osmotic weight loss"

Simple study - 357 husbands and wives weighed themselves and completed self-reported food and lifestyle inventories at the onset of an intensive lifestyle intervention and 12 months later. They then compared these with the same data from a control group of 357 husband and wife teams at the beginning and end of a diabetic education program. The catch is, only one member of the husband and wife teams was actually enrolled in the weight loss, or diabetes education, programs.

The untreated spouses at 12 months also completed a questionnaire detailing the number of high and low fat foods in the home, the number of snack foods in visible locations and something called the Exercise Environment Questionnaire.

The results?

Untreated spouses in the diabetes program lost 0.19% of their starting body weight while the spouses from the intensive lifestyle intervention weight loss program lost 2.7% of their starting weights. The untreated weight loss spouses also reported decreased availability and access to high-fat and snack foods in their homes. Exercise wise, there was no difference.

So what does this teach us? Lifestyle interventions affect more than simply the program participant. The reason I wanted to do this study was the simple fact that I observe the same phenomenon constantly in my patients' families.

The next study I'd like to see would be a comparison of osmotic weight loss between different weight loss programs and approaches.

My hypothesis would be that less sustainable approaches (all liquid diets, heavy use of supplements, highly restrictive approaches, etc.), would not share a spousal osmotic relationship perhaps due to the non-enjoyable and non-sustainable nature of the participants' interventions.

Remember, unless you actually enjoy your lifestyle as you lose your weight, you're liable to gain it back and here clearly if you in fact do enjoy your lifestyle, others around you might well take notice and learn from your successes.

Osmosis works.

Maybe You Didn't Earn that Latte

Yesterday was another fine day at the Obesity Society conference with so many fascinating abstracts presented.

I'm going to fill you folks in on the work of a very dynamic speaker and clearly talented researcher, Dr. Tim Church.

Tim's gang wanted to explore whether or not exercise led patients to "overcompensate" with food - meaning they wanted to see whether or not we rewarded our exercise with more food than we earned.

It was truly an elegant experiment.

Firstly individuals had to sign an informed consent paper that explicitly stated that the study being conducted was not in fact a weight loss study, but rather a study on the effects of exercise on blood pressure and fitness. The authors simply didn't want people influenced by the thought that they were involved in a weight loss study.

For 6 months, 464 post-menopausal women were randomly assigned to a control group of no supervised exercise, 72 minutes, 136 minutes or 192 minutes per week of exercise. The exercise was kept at moderate intensity and it involved using a treadmill or an exercise bike and all of the exercise was supervised exercise so that they would not have to rely on unreliable self-reported amounts.

Retention for the study was great with 94%, 87% and 93% retention in the treatment arms.

Fitness showed a non-surprising and beautiful dose dependent response with more exercise leading to greater improvement.

Weight however was a different story.

The 72mins per week group lost on average 1.3kg over the 6 months.

The 136mins per week group lost on average 1.9kg over the 6 months.

And the 192mins group, did they lose 2.5kg?

Nope, they only lost 1.3kg.

It gets more interesting.

When they looked at the actual data points what they saw was that weight loss progressed well during the first 10 weeks of the 192mins per week group, but that was during their so-called, "ramping up" period whereby they couldn't have simply started these folks at 192mins per week, so they were ramping them up to 192mins. Almost as soon as they did reach their 192mins mark, weight loss slowed down to a crawl.

Now remember, I mentioned this was an elegant study. The authors, anticipating the skeptics, wanted to eliminate an obvious confounding question. Did the folks who were exercising the most simply do less the rest of the week because they were either too tired from exercise, or felt that they didn't need to worry about day-to-day activity because they were good at getting their pump on? Nope. Tim and his buddies had subjects wear pedometers daily to ensure that the exercise didn't have an effect on non-exercise activity and steps across the board were in fact the same.

So what can we conclude?

It's got to be an intake thing again. Whether the increased exercise led to an actual increase in hunger or whether it simply made folks falsely confident of what they were allowed to eat (the calories they earned through exercise) isn't clear, but what is clear - more exercise led to disproportionate increases in intake.

Maybe you didn't earn that extra Latte.

Don't Blame the Escalator

Today kicks off a week from NAASO (The Obesity Society) as I'm writing from New Orleans where they're having their annual scientific assembly. Every year I come to this conference I'm amazed at the incredible amounts of brains and passion that are being poured into obesity research worldwide. The conference is enormous and boasts over 2,000 attendees from the four corners of the world.

This week I'm going to try to highlight some of what I feel are among the conferences most interesting presentations and studies.

The first takes us to Nigeria - rural Nigeria in fact, where Lara Dugas and her colleagues went to study the effects of the energy expended in daily activity on weight gain. They followed 153 rural Nigerian women (over 20% of them subsistence farmers) and measured their total daily energy expenditures (the total calories they burned all day long), their resting daily energy expenditures (the calories they burn at rest) and then inferred the calories they burned through daily activity.

They then compared the data from rural Nigeria with the same data taken from a group of women from urban Chicago (where over 50% of them were unemployed).

They then followed these women for 3 years.

Some of the results were not surprising.

The Nigerians were much lighter - average weight was 128lbs and BMI of 23.1 vs. those from urban Chicago where average weight was 184lbs and BMI of 31.

Here's the surprising result.

Calories burned through daily activity did not differ between the skinny rural Nigerian subsistence farmers and the obese unemployed urban Chicagoans.

Come again? The subsistence farmers and the unemployed urbanites burned the same number of daily Calories in activity? Haven't we been blaming obesity at least partially on the poison fruits of development? Aren't dish washers, escalators, cars, and elevators stealing our Calories away from us? Shouldn't the skinny Nigerian farmers be burning far more Calories? Isn't that part of why they're so skinny?

I sure would have thought so - and from the reactions in the room, so did most other folks.

Second non-surprising result?

No measure of energy expenditure, not resting, total or that from activity, was associated with weight change in either group over the 3 years and in fact, the rate of change in body weight over the 3 years was virtually identical in Nigeria and Chicago.

Why isn't that surprising? What that result says is that the Calories you burn don't dictate your weight and that instead what dictates your weight are the Calories you consume. The only surprise here is the fact that rate of weight gain is the same in rural Nigeria vs. urban Chicago where one might have thought greater access to high Calorie foods would have led to a dramatically more rapid gain in Chicago (though I should note, the Chicagoans had higher total energy expenditures as a consequence of their higher weights and consequently for them to gain weight at the same rate as the Nigerians does in fact necessitate eating more, just not tons more).

So if you take these results as valid (and it really was a very well designed study), they basically conclude that the environment as it pertains to activity, doesn't matter, that you can't blame the escalators, and shocker of all shockers (there's the sarcasm), energy intake matters far more than energy output in the establishment of obesity.

Colbert 2008

In case you missed the announcement, Stephen Colbert is running in the South Carolina presidential primary.

Today for Funny Friday is his announcement (for those new subscribers, Funny Fridays are my day off frustration).

Have a great weekend!

(Email subscribers may need to visit the blog to see the clip)

Duh!

Yesterday saw the most expensive, "Duh!" moment I've seen in a long time.

Yesterday the UK Government's think tank Foresight published a study that involved over 250 experts that concluded,

"The technological revolution of the 20th century has led to weight gain becoming inevitable for most people, because our bodies and biological make-up are out of step with our surroundings"

Gee, ya think?

You mean people aren't trying to become overweight? It's not just one gigantic social experiment gone awry whereby the entire world, every person in every single country on the planet, has colluded to flummox scientists by willfully trying to gain weight for the past 50 years?

Wanna read the bullet points that summarized the whole of their 2 year long, 250 expert advised, so damn big it crashed my browser trying to download it, work?

Most adults in the UK are already overweight. Modern living ensures every generation is heavier than the last – `Passive Obesity’.

By 2050 60% of men and 40% of women could be clinically obese. Without action, obesity-related diseases will cost an extra £45.5 billion per year.

The obesity epidemic cannot be prevented by individual action alone and demands a societal approach.

Tackling obesity requires far greater change than anything tried so far, and at multiple levels: personal, family, community and national.

Preventing obesity is a societal challenge, similar to climate change. It requires partnership between government, science, business and civil society.

Brilliant! Earth shattering! Ground breaking!

Anyone want to venture a guess how much this report must have cost?

If there are other governments out there thinking about putting together experts and spending gajillions of dollars researching this - I'll do it for half price and it'll be on your desk in the morning.

Calorie Awareness has been Terminated

Boy, I sure wouldn't want to face Big Food in a fight.

So far they've trounced the Province of Ontario (Bill C-283 to put Calories on menus voted down in the house), the State of New York (a judge ruled a State law requiring Calorie information on menus broke Federal laws) and now they reveal that they control the Terminator as yesterday Governor Schwarzenegger vetoed bill SB120 - a bill that would have required posting of Calories on menus in chain restaurants across the State of California.

The quote from Dr. Harold Goldstein, executive director of the California Center for Public Health Advocacy sums it up pretty well,

"By vetoing Senate Bill 120, the governor not only denies Californians of the basic information they need to make healthy decisions when dining out but he completely contradicts his commitment to the health of Californians"

Think it's not important, think having Calories on menus is an overblown issue? Please let me know who you are so I can sell you some stuff without telling you the price - my daughters' college funds need some topping up.

And now I must placate our new ruling overlords.

Big Food, I'm sorry I give you such a hard time on this blog. I love Calories. Everyone should eat tons of them and no one deserves to know how many they're having. Restaurants are part of the solution, not the problem. Your voluntary online programs are more than sufficient and anyone too lazy to remember to visit your websites before they go out, anyone too disorganized to decide where they're eating at the start of every day, doesn't deserve your incredible online caloric help. Oh, and of course it makes complete and total sense that putting the exact same information that's found on your voluntary online websites into your menus and on your menuboards would be impossible because of supply chain variability - the fact that the calories and information on your website doesn't change does not for one moment take any steam out of that argument.

Please don't terminate me....I have two beautiful little girls....I love you!

A Terrible Way to Start your Day

Meet Hardee's new Country Breakfast Burrito.

Here's Brad Haley, one of the marketing geniuses over at Hardee's (not being mean here, actually think they've done a phenomenal job marketing unhealthy, ridiculously high calorie foods) discussing their new breakfast offering,

"It's an entire country breakfast in the palm of your hand. It represents the first time that hungry breakfast customers can get eggs, bacon, ham, hash browns and sausage gravy in a portable form that can easily be eaten on the go. True breakfast fans are really going to enjoy the Country Breakfast Burrito once they get their hands on it."

MMMMmmmm

Wanna know what else your $2.69 buys you?

920 Calories, 60grams of fat and 1,970mg of sodium.

Today I'm adding a new feature to my Frankenfood segments - cost per Calorie.

0.29 cents a Calorie - so a penny buys you 3.45 calories.

And people still hem and haw about how obesity is super complex and we can't figure out how we got to this point?

How's this for a theory? How about because Calories are insanely cheap and every single one of us is genetically hardwired, after hundreds of millions of years of evolution, to really like them?

So remember, Country Breakfast Burrito - enough Calories to feed a country.

[Hat Tip: Angela over from CTV's Healthblog, a place where sometimes my posts visit]

Set your Treadmill Free

For those of us living in the Northern parts of the world, life is starting to get colder and for many of us, that means that the inspiration to exercise is starting to become more difficult as getting yourself out the door for a walk or run in the cold is definitely more challenging.

You see the thing is that people when it comes right down to it, are consumers of time. If we're lucky we might each find, interspersed throughout our days, a few precious blocks of time where we're not working, where we're not at our children's beck and call, where we're not eating, not on the telephone and not sleeping.

Those of us trying to include exercise in our lives then hope that somehow, during those fleeting free moments we can inspire our selves to use them to do intentional exercise.

Recognizing that these free moments vary in time and duration many of us have decided you know what, we might not have the time (or desire) to pack it up during those moments and head out to a gym, so instead we went and brought the gym home by going out and buying treadmills and exercise equipment.

And what did we do with our great intentions and our new equipment? We banished them to our basements - out of sight, in a part of our homes that often is less welcoming, beside the kitty litter and the boxes, atop the cold unfinished concrete floor.

We might have used them for a few weeks after that. You see the money spent on them was fresh in our minds and consequently it raised the value of time spent with the equipment - by using it we didn't feel like we had wasted our money. But as our memory of money spent dwindles, too often so too does our use of the equipment.

If you want to actually use your home exercise equipment, you need to find new ways to increase the value of the time you spend with it and one of the easiest ways is to put it back in your line of sight. Seeing it may remind you you've got it and potentially even of the money and good intentions that brought it into your home. Put it somewhere where you can see it, and ideally somewhere you think might be enjoyable to use it - staring out a window, at a television, whatever.

If you choose to put it in front of a television, consider "conscripting" your favourite shows whereby you create a rule that only allows you to watch them while on the treadmill (never mind the speed, just get on it). Alternatively you could set up a reward system whereby if you log enough time, you get a specific reward.

Bottom line, unless you create an environment that includes some measure of enjoyment in your exercise, an environment that increases rather than decreases the value of the time you spend doing it, well guess what, you're probably not going to be doing much of it for long.

Set your treadmills free!

Tortured Words by John Oliver

If you want to see why the Daily Show's still worth watching, watch today's Funny Friday clip all the way through.

Would love to see a similar clip with the words, "Healthy", "Whole wheat", "fat-free" and "low-carb".

Have a great weekend!

Don't Buy Girl Guides of Canada Cookies

A patient of mine just brought in a box of Girl Guide of Canada cookies that her daughter is selling.

I'm frankly gob-smacked that according to the nutrition facts label there are still 1.5grams of trans-fats in 3 of these teeny weeny cookies.

Girl Guides of Canada are quite aware of this. In fact in their cookie FAQ on their website they state,

"Girl Guides of Canada is aware of health issues surrounding particular processed foods, including cookies, and is committed to maintaining the quality of Girl Guide cookies while keeping these concerns in mind.

Currently, saturated fats are the only viable alternative to trans fats in biscuit-type foods and any reformulation in the trans fat levels of Girl Guide cookies will result in a different taste and texture. GGC is currently investigating reformulation options. All options will be examined to ensure that Girl Guide cookies maintain the taste, texture and freshness consumers expect and enjoy, as well as a nutrition profile that adheres to new regulations."

Did they really just try to sell me on a rationale that states there's simply no way to remove trans-fat from cookies without ruining their taste and texture?

I guess there are no cookies at all in Denmark (where the country is wholly trans-fat free), or at least no cookies that taste good or have good texture.

Makes me wonder too how Voortman's managed to remove trans fat from every single cookie product they make.

Now I'm not knocking cookies. Cookies are one of life's pleasures. I'm not knocking Girl Guides, they do great work. What I'm knocking is Girl Guides clearly irresponsible laziness in not insisting that trans-fats be immediately removed from their cookies.

If this ticks you off at all, feel free to write Girl Guides of Canada, but since we know from their FAQ that they already know about your concerns, I'd suggest that until they're addressed, you simply stop buying Girl Guide Cookies.

Contact information for Girl Guides of Canada:

To send Girl Guides of Canada an email, click here

or you can mail or call them at:

Girl Guides of Canada National Office
50 Merton Street
Toronto, ON M4S 1A3
Phone: 416-487-5281
Fax: 416-487-5570

1-800-507-7564

Big Beverage Fizzes their Pants

Big beverage is going to be all over this one.

This week the British Medical Journal published what the press is referring to as disappointing results for a school-based childhood obesity intervention.

The intervention, commonly referred to as the, "Ditch the Fizz" campaign involved giving 7-11 years olds 4 one hour sessions encouraging them not to drink carbonated beverages.

In the original study, the intervention reduced carbonated beverage consumption in the intervention group by 0.6 glasses per day and that group after one year showed only a 0.1% increase in obesity while a control group showed a 7.5% increase.

Well guess what, three years later and all the differences are gone between the groups.

Now for these results to be disappointing, I would argue they'd have to be surprising.

So are they surprising?

Good lord no.

So basically there was a public health intervention encouraging kids not to drink soda pop. That's it. No talk of calorie awareness, restaurant calorie contribution, juice equivalency to soda in terms of calories, no teaching of hunger prevention skills and somehow there was an expectation that asking kids who are 7 to drink less soda pop would translate into a sustained long-term weight reducing outcome?

Even if you want to accept the researchers null hypothesis that a decrease in soda consumption is in and of itself sufficient to change childhood obesity rates longterm, I have to wonder, do the researchers have kids? Do they know the attention and retention span of 7-11 year olds? 3 years later and they're expecting their 4 hour intervention to ask kids to drink less soda, soda that the kids might well describe as "awesome", soda that's promoted to the kids in commercials starring some of their most beloved sports and entertainment icons, to have had a lasting impact on those children's soda consumptions?

You've got to be kidding.

Good thing for the researchers I wasn't reviewing their grant application.

You can bet Big Beverage is going to run with this one.

The Birth of Body Image

Body image genesis is incredibly complicated.

It has roots in comments from our friends and family, strangers, the media and ourselves.

Dove, the soap company has recently been putting out a series of ads that certainly help to illustrate some of the potential media influence on our body images.

They are beautifully designed ads that have been winning awards and have been showing up on blogs everywhere.

I first saw this advertisement on Parke Wilde's great US Food Policy blog. While it's messaging is clear, as I noted in a comment on Parke's blog, it's also the height of hypocrisy.

Dove's campaign is clearly meant to demonize the messaging that the beauty industry thrusts upon us at every turn. The ads messaging is clear,

"Talk to your daughter before the beauty industry does"

and

"No wonder our perception of beauty is distorted"

An odd thing for a company whose parent company Unilever owns Slimfast, Axe body spray and other products clearly contributing to this phenomenon.

But the ads sure are jawdroppers.

What are your thoughts?

(For email subscribers, to see the ads, you'll have to actually visit the blog.)

Shovel it in

Literally!

I thought we needed something fairly lighthearted for Canadian Thanksgiving.

I saw these on a baby blog I visit from time to time and thought they were fantastic.

Not sure how many eaten meals you'd get out of your toddlers before the novelty ran out, but those first few meals - they'd get eaten all up!

I especially like the food-dozer food pusher.

To get your set, click here.

[via Babygadget]

Welcome to the Heart Attack Grill

So next time you're in Phoenix Arizona, maybe it's worth a visit to the Heart Attack Grill (warning, automatically playing music on this jump).

No health food here. In fact on their doors as you walk in is a sign that says,

"Warning, our food may be hazardous to your health!"

Single, double, triple and quadruple bypass burgers, served by "nurses". The restaurant's trademark slogan?

"Taste worth dying for"

No make believe health claims here, their "Flatliner fries" are proudly promoted as being fried in 100% pure lard and of course they also sell beer and cigarettes. At the end of your meal you can ask your "nurse" to wheel you out to your car in a wheelchair.

Today for Funny Fridays is the 20/20 piece on the Heart Attack Grill. Apparently the local Arizona Board of Nursing had the Arizona attorney general send a scary letter to the grill owner objecting to the use of the term "nurse" as it is a name protected by law for folks who held a valid nursing license.

Boy was that a bad plan. The restaurant's now been featured umpteen times on the news and the owner has reported receiving 80 emails an hour asking him if he'd franchise.

In my mind, the restaurant's certainly irreverent, but really, this is a restaurant where the owner dresses up in a lab coat, calls himself a doctor and describes 3 beers and 3 packs of cigarettes as, "the ultimate dessert", is anyone really going to mistake the folks in the Halloween nursing costumes for real nurses?

Life's too short not to have a sense of humour.

Have a great weekend!

[Hat tip to our office's newest physician, Dr. Erik Howarth]

Stupidest Potato Chips Ever!

It's funny, no less than a week ago I was joking that I should make a potato chip product, call them something like, "Super Health Chips" and splash ridiculous statements all over the bag like, "No added sugar", "HFCS Free", "Zero Trans Fats", "Studies prove eating vegetables decreases cancer risk", "Low Cholesterol", etc. and that they would probably sell like crazy.

Looks like the Golden Flake Potato Chip Company is going to beat me to the punch with their new, "NRG Phoenix Fury chips" which believe it or not are being promoted as chips that will "revitalize" you with their added caffeine, taurine and B-vitamins.

So how much will a bag of NRG revitalize you?

One bag will replenish 560 Calories (about a Big Mac worth), 12 grams of saturated fat, and 1,480mg of sodium.

I feel refreshed and revitalized just thinking about them.

Don't Eat at Wendy's Part III

I suppose this is becoming a series all by itself.

In an article published recently by the American Journal of Public Health, one of my favourite nutritional researchers and authors, Marion Nestle, examined the responses of Burger King, McDonald's and Wendy's to the past 8 years worth of increasing calls to action on obesity in the form of their portion sizes of soda, French fries and hamburgers from 1998 through 2006.

The expectation might be that given the public and medical uproar with regards to growing rates of obesity, and the clear involvement of fast food and fast food portions as factors in that rise, that perhaps we might have expected to see decreases in fast food portions.

To summarize her findings, McDonald's in fact has reduced some of their portion sizes, though they're still in the neighbourhood of 500% larger than those they had when they opened in 1955.

Wendy's on the other hand, ah Wendy's.....let's start with fountain sodas.

In 1998 Wendy's Smalls were 16oz, Mediums 22oz and Biggie's were 32 oz.

In 2006 Wendy's Smalls were 20oz, Mediums 32oz and Large (Biggie's gone) was 42oz.

Next we'll move onto French fries.

In 1998 Wendy's Smalls were 3.2oz, Mediums were 4.6oz, Biggies were 5.6 oz and Great Biggies were 6.7oz.

In 2006 Wendy's Smalls were 5oz, Mediums were 5.6oz and Large were 6.7oz.

Burgers, probably because the base costs are higher for beef than for soda or fries, haven't changed.

Do you remember an advertising campaign that mentioned that their sizes had increased across the board for fries and drinks?

I sure don't.

Yet another reason to add to the growing list of reasons not to give Wendy's your fast food dollars.

For those not familiar with the list, to summarize:

Wendy's seemingly lies to you, apparently thinks you're stupid and continues to increase portion sizes without telling you using descriptive adjectives that might have you believe that in fact you're eating less ("I'm not having their old Biggie, just a Large").

Why I Love my Job

You know, I've got a fantastic job.

Many doctors go into medicine to help people - and they do. They help them manage their illness with the skillful addition and manipulation of medications. They help them navigate their way through the maze we call our health care system. They offer shoulders to cry on and words of support.

That in and of itself can be tremendously rewarding, but working with weight, I get more.

I get to help people come off of medications, help them change their habits, teach them to lead the lives they want their children to live, give them hope and watch them as they cultivate courage, pride and confidence.

Days like this past Sunday really hammer that home.

This past Sunday was the CIBC Run for the Cure - a 5km run/walk to raise money for breast cancer research.

Some of my readers here were kind enough to donate - thank you.

This past Sunday I watched as our 91 team members helped to raise over $30,000 for breast cancer research. I watched some folks run their first 5km race ever. I watched others who up until a few months ago had difficulty walking one block, walk one kilometre. I watched folks who had been having a tough time finding things in themselves to be proud of - beaming with pride. I watched happy family, huge grins and high fives.

It's why I think I've got one of the greatest jobs in the world, and I wouldn't trade it for anything.

Thank you to my patients who trust me with their care - you enrich my life and inspire me more than you'll ever know.

Weight Loss is Personal

Even if you're blogging about it.

So currently I'm working with one of the local newspapers as one of their panel of experts for a lengthy series on nutrition.

The launch was last weekend and included in the launch was an article written by a very young man who's just barely overweight. The article was about his month long experiment of following Canada's Food Guide and he's also keeping a blog about his experiences aiming at reaching a numerical goal weight (the weight needed to give him a body mass index of 25).

Now readers of my blog will certainly know that I'm not a fan of using BMI or "pound" goals because frankly they overlook the bigger picture - reality. Fact is, the best goal is whatever weight you reach when you're living the healthiest life you can enjoy. But put that aside for now. The important question to ask regardless is, "So is he enjoying his life?"

Not according to his newspaper articles and blog entries he isn't.

According to them he's been saving up his calories for supper and in so doing often finding himself starving and battling hunger demons (like the ones that live in Pizza shops). He reports being "desperate" for steak because his Food Guide approach doesn't allow him to eat large ones. He reports being tired and finding it difficult to find 60 minutes a day of exercise. He reports that he fell off his new wagon within one month of embarking on it. He notes that on at least one occasion when he ate more than he planned in the daytime he compensated and went to bed following a dinner consisting solely of a plate of green beans with two slices of toast. He reports that the "red numbers" on the scale motivate him and help him with what he feels his efforts require - "focus, attention and willpower".

In short, he's on a diet.

Given my chosen career and my experience with quite literally thousands of folks trying to lose weight, reading his article and his blog, I decided that there's no way that he's adopted a long term approach here. He's dieting and both anectdotally and in the medical literature, diets fail in the long term over 95% of the time.

So what type of diet behaviours does he admit to? By using the scale as a source of support, he's chosen the proverbial dark side of weight loss, letting the seduction of the numbers inspire him to greater acts of willpower - a problem when the scale stops whispering sweet nothings into his ear. By saving calories until the end of the day and cultivating blindly restrictive food limits, he's cultivating hunger which will lead him to battle hunger - a battle that if fought frequently, eventually just gets too irritating and bitter to fight. By trying to cram 60 minutes of exercise a day into likely a very busy and youthfully all over the place lifestyle, he's liable to get frustrated with the exercise and simply let the whole thing go. He appears to be trying to live the healthiest life he can tolerate - and for me, that's the definition of a diet.

So here's where it gets interesting.

I decided to write to him and in the email I told him that it seemed painfully obvious that he didn't particularly relish his new healthiest-he-could-tolerate lifestyle and that in the long run, if he didn't enjoy his life, he wouldn't continue living that way.

I also offered him our help with no strings attached. I recommended that he see our dietitian and told him that should he come and see her, he need not feel that he would have to mention the visit or our help in his blog or in his articles.

I logged onto his blog the other day and read what sounded to me like a fairly irritated entry from him stating that I had written to him, told him that he was going to fail and that I tried to convince him to join my office's weight loss program.

Now the later part's simply not true, I had offered him a free visit with out dietitian with no strings attached, but I'll chalk that one up to misinterpreted email, but the former part I suppose is true, and frankly, I'm sorry that I emailed him and more sorry that I clearly have upset him.

You'd think of all people, I'd know that weight loss is personal. It's my exclusive area of practice and thinking about weight and weight management probably takes up at least 2/3rd of my total waking hours.

I should have known better than to offer my opinions or even offer to help because the mistake that I made, was assuming he wanted my opinions or my help.

Weight loss is a personal journey. No one should feel comfortable muscling in on someone else's weight loss effort.

My mistake was an honest one. For heaven's sake, having a blog and writing articles about weight management pretty much opens the door to having folks comment on your efforts, but frankly I still should have known better.

Best of luck to him, and should he decide that in fact my opinion and help would be useful to him, he's still welcome to give me a call.

For all of the friends and spouses of folks trying to lose weight out there, here's the only question you should ever ask your weight-conscious friends, "Is there any way that you feel I can help you". If the answer's "No", then just leave it at that, if they want your opinion or help, they'll ask.

Food on Sticks

Not sure if this is funny, scary or just plain odd.

Here for Funny Fridays, in youtube glory, are the 59 foods on sticks sold at the Minnesota State Fair in 2006.

I thought the weirdest one was the loaf of bread with a pound of mustard on a stick.

Have a great weekend!

The Incredible Adventures of the Amazing Food Detective - Review

Yesterday the HMO Kaiser Permanente released an online video game targeting childhood obesity.

It's meant to teach kids more about healthy eating and according to the press release it's aimed at kids between the ages of 9-10.

Here are the main components of the games.

Eats too much - you zap away at portions, with no explanation or instruction as to how to do so without inviting hunger

Not very strong - you add protein sources to an enourmous portion of pasta and 3 large slices of bread.

Too much junk food - you help a kid choose a carrot, a banana juice and water instead of granola bars, fruit roll ups and chocolate bars (yup, that'll happen).

Doesn't exercise enough - you help a kid stop watching TV and go out and play soccer (by himself)

Needs to play more - you help a girl jump rope instead of play with a yoyo (by herself)

Teeth and bones are weak - help a kid to sit down to a glass of juice, a glass of milk, a giant bowl of cereal, a giant hunk of cheese and a yogurt.

Tired all the time - Click a machine that "speeds up" a boy named Matthew's speed doing jumping jacks (in a gym, by himself)

Skips breakfast - Click a stopwatch so the kid stops and eats breakfast (a bowl of cereal or even "just a banana".

This is just more part and parcel of the same old useless messages bundled with little explanation, conflicting portion sizes and non-inspiring depictions (yay, jumping jacks in a gym by myself are fun!).

Do people really think kids don't know that exercise is healthier for them than watching TV? That vegetables are healthier choices than chocolate bars? That breakfast is a healthy start to the day? That doing more exercise is healthier than doing less? That smaller portions lead to smaller waists?

Of course kids know all of these things.

What they need to be taught is not things that they know, but things that they don't know.

Not to beat a dead horse but they need to be taught about caloric intake vs. caloric expenditure, they need to be taught hunger prevention strategies, they need to be taught how to be thoughtful with food rather than blindly and unrealistically restrictive.

If this is cutting edge, the edge is duller than I thought.

You can play the game yourself here and come to your own conclusions.

I give it an F. It doesn't teach kids anything they don't already know and instead gives them a parentally acceptable reason not to turn off the computer.

Do you have scale addiction?

It's certainly not a condition written about in medical textbooks.

I'm talking about scale addiction. An affliction that causes the sufferer, usually someone in the midst of a weight loss effort, to step on the scale multiple times a day whereupon if the scale does not go down or goes up, they suffer mild to severe mental anguish.

I've met many folks who are scale addicts.

They tell me that rationally they understand that getting on the scale multiple times a day won't make a difference, but that they just can't help themselves.

For those folks I usually offer to babysit their scales in my office or I recommend that they turn them over, take out the batteries or put tape on the solar strip.

The thing is scales are truly frustrating devices because they don't simply measure caloric intake vs. caloric expenditure. They measure clothing, water retention, constipation and time of day differences.

Folks who do weigh frequently will know that weight fluctuates both day by day and within a day.

So for scale addicts out there, here are two things you need to know.

Firstly, there's 3,500 calories in a pound, and while bodies are not mathematical instruments whereby if you do or don't eat 3,500 calories you'll see a pound change on the scale, bodies do obey the laws of thermodynamics and if you step on a scale on a Wednesday and it's 3 pounds heavier than Tuesday, unless you consumed at least 10,500 calories more than you burned, the scale is weighing something other than true weight.

Secondly, your weight doesn't matter. What do I mean by that? To put it simply, what moves the number on the scale is not the act of standing on the scale, it's what you're doing and choosing during the times you're not standing on the scale. It's your lifestyle and your choices that change your weight. You need to determine how you're doing by how you're doing. What have your dietary choices been like? How's your fitness? Are you being thoughtful? Are you organized and consistent?

Scales can be helpful to illustrate trends, but weight fluctuation, both inter and intra day fluctuations are normal.

At the end of the day, it's your life that can change the scale, not the other way around.

My recommendations? During a weight loss effort weigh yourself once a week, stark naked Wednesday morning before breakfast. During a weight maintenance effort weigh yourself daily and get to learn your body's weight fluctuations and more importantly, use the scale to nip any weight regain in the bud.

Break the habit, stop the weighing.

(P.S. Those aren't my feet, just a scary picture from the internet)

Alberta's Useless Child Gestures

Last week the Province of Alberta unveiled their new warrior designed to help combat the rising tide of childhood obesity. It's called Create a Movement and for a cost of $2,000,000 your Province can design one too.

In a nutshell it's a series of slick media advertisements and then a slick webpage all of which serve to shuffle Albertans off to pick up their copies of Canada's Food Guide.

The crux of their advertising campaign is fear. The goal of the campaign is to scare Albertan parents and kids into action. Their target,

"Unhealthy weights among our generation is on the fast track to replace smoking as Canada’s #1 killer"

And when I say scare tactics, I mean scare tactics. Here's one of their scary commercials:


So let's say you've just watched the scary commercial and you've decided to look past the fact that the child that the doctor is speaking to clearly has a very healthy body weight and is not at risk for any weight related chronic diseases and in fact makes the entire commercial seem rather ridiculous and fear mongering and you click yourself over to the createamovement.ca webpage. What help will you find there?

Pretty much none.

The entire website reminds kids to, "Eat Smart", "Move More", and of course, "Start a Movement".

There are T-shirt stencils for you to download, certain to make you the coolest kids in your class.

There is wallpaper for your desktop, certain to make you turn your computer off to go and "Eat Smart" and "Move More".

There are copies of all of the scary commercials and there are "Webisodes".

Here's an example of a "Webisode" - a teenage skateboarder with a BMI in the neighbourhood of 20 talks of how he drinks two Cokes a day. The hostess then tells him that the Coke he's drinking leads him to gain 12lbs in a year. She then goes on to talk about the sugar in pop.


Interesting that the "Webisode" that clearly is anti-sugar doesn't mention that juice has as much or more sugar as pop and that chocolate milk has more. Also, do you really think that first skater should be aiming for a 12lb weight loss by stopping his Cola habit, and lastly was picking healthy active teens to focus on - doesn't that miss this website's target audience (the sedentary overweight ones)?

The "Facts" section of the website has the same old stuff - eat less fat, eat more vegetables, get off the couch, and the resource section - of course it points you to Canada's Food Guide (Canada's Food Guide to Unhealthy Eating), My Food Guide (The bad joke that is My Food Guide) and Eattracker (Eattracker - your new weight gain weapon) (click the links for my reviews therein) where juice, chocolate milk, refined flour and red meat are all "healthy" choices.

Clearly there's some care regarding energy because at the bottom right hand corner of every page is a little graphic that illustrates how long you have to run to burn off some common junk food items. But of course the website has completely ignored calories and while they point out it takes 43 minutes to run off a fountain cola, they fail to note that it would take just as long to run off juice and longer to run off chocolate milk.

All in all I can't blame the folks putting together the website - they're just promoting the messages our government has deemed to be helpful.

Quick question - if the eat healthier, move more diet worked, do you really think that close to 70% of Canadians would be overweight or obese?

Another question - Do you think this website is telling kids anything at all that they don't already know?

It's time that governments and health professionals get past the tried and true messages that not only aren't helpful, are frankly unhelpful. Healthy eating does not mean healthy weights. Exercise is not in and of itself sufficient for dramatic weight loss. Calories count.

Kids and adults need to be taught that healthy eating and weight management are two separate healthy endeavors, with healthy eating involving food choices and weight management calorie choices. They need to be taught means to prevent hunger. They need to be taught the sad truths of the Calories burned through exercise.

Basically, they need a new message, because this tired old one, the one we've had for the past 50 years, the eat smarter, move more message, doesn't work.

The site did succeed with me however - its reminder of just how woefully inadequate (nonexistent) our government's guidance on weight management is certainly left me wanting to "create a movement".

[Hat tip: Julie from It Must Have Been Something I Ate]

I Need your Help

Today I'm taking a day off nutrition blogging to ask you for your help.

Next Sunday I'm running in the CIBC Run for the Cure, a charity run supporting breast cancer research.

It's a rare individual who escapes being touched by breast cancer as 1 in 9 women will develop breast cancer in their lifetimes. Obesity is definitely a risk factor and weight loss appears to be protective against recurrence.

My office, the Bariatric Medical Institute, over the course of the past 3 years has raised over $70,000 for Run for the Cure. That picture up above is part of our team last year when for the second time in as many years, we raised more money than any other office based team in Ottawa. This year for some reason, fund raising has been more challenging and with the run next weekend, we're sitting just shy of $20,000.

I put a great deal of time and energy into this blog and while I promise that I will never ask my readers to pay for access, I am hopeful that if you enjoy my work, you will consider donating to my Run for the Cure effort.

To donate click the pink button below which will take you to the CIBC website. You can choose to give anonymously, you can use a credit card and if you donate more than $10, you'll receive a tax receipt.



Thank you and back to normal programming tomorrow.

Sincerely,
Yoni

More Doctors Smoke Camels

Some things never change, but clearly some things do.

Today for Funny Fridays (new subscribers - Friday's my day off anger) is an old commercial for Camel cigarettes.

Have a great weekend!

Sugar is Sugar

In a bit of a flying pig type moment, the Center for Science in the Public Interest has apparently joined hands with Big Food (in the form of the Corn Refiners Association) in chastising the President's Cancer Panel's report that vilifies high fructose corn syrup (HFCS).

HFCS is a sweetener that's made from corn and used widely in sugared soda. It has been demonized by consumers due to the suggestion that it somehow, independently of the laws of thermodynamics, causes those ingesting it to gain more weight than those consuming more "natural" sugars.

In fact, this attitude has become so prevalent that there are now foods that splash the words, "HFCS Free" on their front labels.

CSPI, like me, thinks sugar is sugar, whether it's god sugar or HFCS and in their letter state,

"the 2006-2007 Annual Report of the President's Cancer Panel diverges from accepted science in its unfair effort to identify high fructose corn syrup as a uniquely important contributor to obesity, which is a risk factor for cancer."

"The report's multiple, pejorative references to HFCS are unwarranted and risk mistakenly reinforcing the myth - now effectively disproved by a steadily growing body of research evidence - that HFCS and sugar might affect the body differently"

Bottom line here - CSPI thinks we all eat too much sugar and it doesn't really matter where the sugar comes from, sugar is sugar and there's no sense in perpetuating a myth that one sugar is better than any other (even if God made it).

"You should stop losing weight"

In my practice I get to see a great many people lose a great deal of weight and I've noticed two trends.

Firstly it's usually somewhere between a 15 and 20 pound weight loss when folks start noticing, but it's the second trend I want to talk about, the, "You should stop losing weight" trend whereby if you lose enough weight, folks will start telling you to stop.

In my experience it happens at somewhere around the 15-20% mark (i.e. a 30-40lb weight loss if your starting weight is 200lbs). Now there is a difference in terms of how starting weight affects this phenomenon and the higher the starting weight, the less likely this phenomenon will occur but as an anecdotal rule, if your starting weight is less than 250lbs and you lose more than 20% of your starting weight, somebody will tell you to stop. They'll often even do so despite the fact that you may still want to lose more weight and may still have a significant amount of medical risk associated with your weight.

Sometimes they'll even come right out and say you look bad.

I've got two theories about this. There's the less likely theory - jealousy, but honestly I don't believe that plays a big role for most folks. I think the more likely theory is the fact that consciously or perhaps unconsciously as a function of evolutionary biology, we interpret weight loss as reflective of illness.

The fact is that many major and sometime fatal illnesses have a wasting away component to them and I wonder if we as a species have it hardwired in us to recognize weight loss as a sign of illness. Many of us too have personally watched friends and relatives waste away and seeing a friend or a relative lose weight may trigger memories and emotions that less than pleasant.

For all those obesity researchers who may be reading my blog, I think this phenomenon would be a fascinating study and it's certainly not one I've read about. There'd be two ways to study it. One with a prospective study whereby the folks losing weight keep track of when they first run into someone whose concerned about their weight loss or perhaps an easier study using photographs of folks as they lose weight with captive audiences and well designed questions.

Anybody out there experience this phenomenon?

Canada's Cheese Plan Stinks

Rosie Schwartz, nutritional columnist for the National Post, author and RD has exposed yet another instance where our government is bending over for Canada's dairy industry.

To explain let me take you back to the 80s, when the first low-fat cheeses began to hit the market.

They tasted terrible didn't they?

Nowadays though they don't taste half bad. In fact in some cases, it's almost impossible to distinguish the low-fat version from the regular.

The reason low-fat cheeses taste better nowadays is that over the years the cheese making industry has found ways to improve taste while still keeping the saturated fat levels low. They've been adding milk solids and whey and other foods that affect the "mouthfeel" of cheese.

By lowering fat content, calories are lowered and saturated fat levels are lowered.

Those are good things, right? Lowering calories and saturated fat in our diets is supposed to be healthy, right? Health Canada and our government in general would want that, right?

You'd sure think so. You'd think that the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA), an agency who Rosie points out's mandate is to,

"protect Canadians from preventable health risks"

would want and encourage Canadians to consume less saturated fat and calories and in so doing help protect Canadians from chronic conditions like heart disease and the number one preventable cause of death in Canada, obesity.

You'd sure think so.

But of course you'd be dead wrong.

The CFIA actually wants to limit the amount of whey that cheese makers use to make their cheese, thereby requiring cheese makers to utilize more fluid milk, increasing the saturated fat content of cheese, the calories of cheese, the price of cheese and decreasing the palatability of low-fat cheeses.

So why would they want to do that?

Perhaps because the CFIA doesn't work for Health Canada, the CFIA works directly for the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Agriculture works directly for our farmers. You see, by limiting the whey that cheese makers are "allowed" to use they will require cheese makers to buy more liquid milk from Canada's dairy farmers.

So what does Health Canada have to say on the matter? Health Canada who as I mentioned yesterday quite literally launched the Food Guide while basically holding hands with the Secretary of State for Agriculture?

Rosie managed to contact Renee Bergeron a Happy Corporations spokesperson who had this to say,

"Based on our initial review, Health Canada considers that the proposed changes to cheese standards would not be expected to compromise the nutritional quality of cheeses and cheese products."

I wonder which corporate shill in Health Canada had the honour of signing their name to a paper that stated that raising the saturated fat content and calories in cheeses wouldn't compromise their nutritional quality.

Health Canada and CFIA, please stop cutting the cheese.

I'm moving to Australia

You know that was actually the plan once. Before I finished my residency I had met with some recruiters from Australia and was offered a job doing medicine in rural Australia - then I met my wife.

Today I'm once again itching to move, but today it's simply because Australia is the first country I've come across (there may be more) that has not bowed to Big Food's pressure and has actually gone and done what in Canada and the United States is almost unthinkable.

What have they done?

They've officially recognized fruit juice to be the glass of God sugar that it is.

They've even informed parents that half a glass a day is a maximum!

Contrast that with our god-awful Food Guide that states drinking juice is as good for you as eating fruit.

Here's what Australia's national science agency the CSIRO, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, has to say about juice:

"Fruit juices provide nutrients but almost no fibre so they don’t give the same benefits as eating fresh fruit. Fruit is also more filling than fruit juice. Juices are high in kilojoules and the sugar in fruit juice may play a part in tooth decay. It is recommended that children do not drink more than ½ cup of fruit juice each day."

They've also got some sensible words regarding milk as they are aware that you can actually eat dairy products rather than drink them and have an entire campaign entitled, Give Thirsty Kids Water

Just in case you've forgotten, Happy Corporations....I mean Health Canada includes juice as a serving of fruit (complete with pictorial reference in the Guide) and does not give any maximums on its consumption.

"Make water your beverage of choice. Milk, fortified soy beverages and 100% juice are also healthy options. Make them part of your recommended number of Food Guide Servings per day."

Regarding milk, Health Canada believes it to be a magic food - apparently the only substance on the planet that can provide vitamin D.

"Encourage young children to drink water to quench their thirst and replenish body fluids. Canada 's Food Guide recommends that children and adults choose vegetables and fruit more often than juice. Children also need a total of 500 mL (2 cups) of milk every day to help meet their requirement for vitamin D."

That's right Canadians, your Food Guide, part of how we sell food in Canada, and for those who don't remember, a guide officially co-launched by our Secretary of State for Agriculture.

My plans to move however, may be premature as when my just barely 3 year old daughter heard me mention the "Give thirsty kids water" campaign shouted out with great concern,

"No! We like milk!"

Guess Health Canada got to her.

John Hodgman's System for Success

Welcome new readers from Weight Wise up in Edmonton! Hope you folks are being nice to Arya.

You might not know it yet, but Fridays are different here at Weighty Matters.

Whereas the rest of the week may well involve my proverbial crying about the weighty matters of the world, Fridays are Funny Fridays.

For email subscribers I'm told that to view the Funny Friday videos, you've got to visit the actual blog.

Have a great weekend!

Oh, and here's John Hodgman from the Daily Show with his motivational power system for success.

Quebec's Useless School Gestures

Yesterday Quebec's provincial Health Minister Philippe Couillard reported Quebec is planning to ban sugary soft drinks and junk food from schools.

La Presse newspaper even reported that poutine (french fries smothered with cheese curds and gravy) will be cut from school cafeterias.

Some brief observations:

Soft drinks will be replaced with juice and chocolate milk which in many cases will have more calories and sugar drop per drop than the pop they're replacing.

The fact that poutine was ever on the menu in Quebec public schools is absolutely horrifying.

Putting healthy foods in schools won't stop kids from eating junk.

When I was in high school at lunchtime we would run across the street to the coffee shop for donuts or to the fish and chip place for chips. Was it a coincidence that those shops were there?

Remember, Big Food is anything but stupid.

If only there were a study looking at the proximity of fast food outlets in relation to public schools.

Well guess what, there is one.

Wanna guess what the researchers found?

The study, done in Chicago, found,

"The median distance from any school in Chicago to the nearest fast-food restaurant was 0.52 km, a distance that an adult can walk in little more than 5 minutes, and 78% of schools had at least 1 fast-food restaurant within 800 m. Fast-food restaurants were statistically significantly clustered in areas within a short walking distance from schools, with an estimated 3 to 4 times as many fast-food restaurants within 1.5 km from schools than would be expected if the restaurants were distributed throughout the city in a way unrelated to school locations."

Quebec and anyone else who might be listening, what we need in our schools is sensible education about calories being worked into multiple classes from a very early age (for instance math class where calories burned through exercise can be calculated and represented by potato chips consumed), the only beverages in the vending machines being zero-calorie and calorie-reduced, healthy calorie controlled school food with menu board posting of nutritional information and perhaps, like celebrity chef and school lunch reformer in the UK Jamie Oliver is suggesting, a ban on leaving school premises during lunch.

Oh, and a complete rewrite of Canada's Food Guide of course, this time without the food industry doing the rewriting.

Kiss menu calories goodbye (for now)

Consumers want Calories listed on menus - that's why politicians have been pushing bills through their respective government bodies to have menu board calories become a legislated affair. In the United States there are now 16 States with similar legislation in their dockets.

A few months ago New York city became the first city to enact such a law and Big Food promptly took the city to court.

Unfortunately yesterday Big Food won the first round.

A New York city judge struck down the law stating that it broke a federal law that exempted restaurants from posting calories on menus if they were posted elsewhere (like the internet), though some writers have pointed out that the judge's decision left room for a reworking of the bill to restrict action to restaurants with 10 or more locations.

The Wall Street Journal had a quote from a McDonald's spokesman named William Whitman who of course was thrilled with the court's decision because,

"posting information like this on a menu board really runs the risk of confusing customers"

So just how stupid does McDonald's think you are that posting calories on menus will be confusing? Do you get confused each week when supermarket fliers report new sale prices? Does the half off rack at the clothing store give you seizures? Do you eat glue? Ummm, that 410 number beside the quarter pounder....does that mean it's $410? That sure seems like a lot for a burger.

Good news is, eventually calories will be posted on menus and menu boards. The will of the people, even the incredibly stupid people that McDonald's apparently thinks we all are, will eventually prevail. Reason being that as far as weight goes, eating without knowing calories is about as smart as shopping without knowing prices, and our eating without knowing calories is costing our governments dearly as they bleed weight related health care dollars.

Obesity - maybe your stomach is depressed?

This has to be one of the most ridiculous comments I've read in a long time to describe obesity and it comes from Dr. Nora Volkow the director of the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse.

Dr. Volkow, in an editorial published in May in the American Journal of Psychiatry says that,

"some forms of obesity are driven by an excessive motivational drive for food and should be included as a mental disorder in DSM-V"

She then goes on to compare obesity with drug addiction with food of course being the drug.

Yes, let's add one more stigma to obesity and label it a mental illness and compare the obese to drug addicts. Brilliant! Helpful! Oy!

You know what should be included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual V (the bible of psychiatric disorders) as a mental disorder? Quobesity.

Quobesity occurs when a person, just because they eat, believes that they are experts in all things obesity related. Side-effects include ridiculous editorials and quotations that often manifest as blog entries here.

The comparison of eating behaviours and drug addictions is certainly not a new one, but it does have a fatal flaw - how many folks do you know whose addictions only exist from 4pm onwards?

The vast majority of food addicts (chocoholics, carb-addicts etc) will report that their addictive behaviours and struggles with food only manifest from the mid to late afternoon onwards. It is an exceedingly small proportion of these folks who struggle all day long. The all day long folks, if they meet certain criteria, may indeed have a diagnosable psychiatric condition entitled binge eating disorder, however to reiterate, in my experience, the vast majority of bingers tend to only do so from the afternoon onward.

Those same folks, when taught to eat frequently, not skip meals or snacks and include foods helpful with hunger prevention tend to see their binging disappear, in many cases literally overnight.

If Dr. Volkow is keen to make changes for the up and coming new Diagnostic and Statistical Manual V (the bible of psychiatric disorders), might I suggest an exclusion criteria for binge eating disorder whereby the diagnosis cannot be given to an individual who skips any daytime meals or snacks.

For food addicts or binge eaters who might be reading this post - try this recipe to see if it helps minimize your addictive type behaviours. Worst case scenario you prove me wrong and you may indeed be a truly food addicted binge eater. Best case scenario, you regain control over what is most certainly a very frustrating and potentially demoralizing behaviour:

Breakfast within 30 minutes of waking, at least 350 calories with at least 15grams of protein

Eating every 2.5 hours with between meal snacks of 100-200 calories a piece with at least 8 grams of protein

Lunch of at least 300-400 calories with at least 15 grams of protein

Dinner of at least 400 calories with at least 15 grams of protein

For every hour of sustained exercise add an additional 100-150 calories that are primarily carbohydrate based.

American Heart Association loves sugar and butylated hydroxytoluene

So Cheerios has recently launched a new cereal entitled, "Fruity Cheerios" and smack on the American website is its AHA "Heart Check" endorsement.

So what's a Heart Check? Well it's pretty much the same thing as the Heart and Stroke Foundation's Health Check.

According to the AHA's website,

"We know grocery shopping isn't always easy. With so many food product options, it's hard to spot healthful choices without spending a lot of time. That's why we created our Food Certification Program. We wanted consumers like you to be able to quickly look for a simple symbol that means a food product is heart-healthy.

You can rely on our mark because the American Heart Association is your most trusted source of heart-health information. Before our mark can be displayed, a food must pass nutritional guidelines and reviews as well as meet all appropriate governmental regulations. The distinctive heart-check mark on a package assures you that a food meets criteria for heart-healthy levels of fat, saturated fat and cholesterol for healthy people over age 2."

So what kind of nutritional wonder makes up Fruity Cheerios?

Well each serving has over 2 teaspoons of sugar made up from 4 different sources:

Sugar (2nd ingredient)

Corn Syrup (4th ingredient)

Orange Juice Concentrate (6th ingredient)

Dried Corn Syrup (7th ingredient)

In a cup per cup comparison with Froot Loops, Fruity Cheerios only has 1 gram less sugar and 7 fewer calories.

What else is in Fruity Cheerios? Well like Froot Loops it's also got such yummies as Red 40, Yellow 6, Blue 1 and butylated hydroxytoluene (listed as BHT on the box).

What's BHT?

Well BHT is produced by an alkylation reaction of p-cresol with isobutylene and it's used not only as a food additive, but also in cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, jet fuels, rubber, petroleum products, and embalming fluid (according to Wikipedia). As a food additive BHT has been banned in Japan, Romania, Sweden, England and Australia and the Center for Science in the Public Interest recommends it be avoided whenever possible.

So the American Heart Association basically recommends that you feed your toddlers Froot Loops with a questionable food additive for breakfast?

Fantastic.

I wonder how long before it gets a Heart and Stroke Foundation Health Check?

Only for Star Wars fans

Today's Funny Friday clip's fabulous - if you love Star Wars.

Have a great weekend!

Canada Fails its Children Yet Again

This past Friday our government quietly snuck out their official response to the Healthy Weights, Healthy Kids report that summarized the already politicized "findings" of the Standing Committee on Health.

If you recall, I was kindly asked to testify before that Committee regarding the shortcomings of Canada's new Food Guide.

Previously I had criticized the report itself for being toothless, however if the report was toothless than the official government response lacks even gums.

The original report had recommended:

More research into childhood obesity

More funding for advertising campaigns designed to educate about childhood obesity

A call to implement the findings of the trans-fat task force

Research on the special needs of first nations Canadians in the battle on obesity

Improvement of nutrition labeling

Better data collection for research

The sharing of data with health professionals

The identification of what will become the "lead agency" on childhood obesity in Canada

The finding of means to reduce the costs of "nutritious" foods to the more remote parts of Canada

The tracking of childrens' involvements in sports

Improvement of school health and fitness curricula

New funding for improved infrastructure in schools for healthy fitness and food choices

The evaluation of the efficacy of the ban against advertising to children in Quebec.

The official response?

A 31 page document that tried to highlight all of the great work the government's already doing (so great that obesity rates rise year by year and no real dollars are being spent to do anything about it) but plainly avoided making any true commitments to any firm changes.

Bill Jeffery, national coordinator for Canada's arm of the Center for Science in the Public Interest summarized it well in his press release,

"after studying the report for five months, Minister of Health Tony Clement meekly committed mainly just to further research and consultations, leaving the impression that the government hasn’t done its homework or is stalling to curry favour with key food industry players."

I guess our industry-based, rather than evidence-based Food Guide is here to stay, as are trans-fats in our food supply, fast food commercials targeting children too young to discern the difference between truth and advertising, misleading food labels, poor school nutrition and a lack of calorie information on food menus.

Wonder how much money the government just wasted on the months of testimony, the creation of the report and the official response of self-validated, misguided, inaction?

J. K. Rowling is a big, "fat" hypocrite

So I'm a big Harry Potter fan and have read all of J.K. Rowling's books therein.

I've also recently visited J.K. Rowling's blog where she has posted a rant about fat stereotyping and thinness.

In a nutshell her rant involves how awful it is that society uses the word "fat" as an insult, how society is too focused on weight as a whole and how much she likes Pink's latest single Stupid Girls which according to J.K.,

"satirises the talking toothpicks held up to girls as role models".

She reports that she finds the "fat insult" to be,

"strange and sick."

and then she then goes on to blast skinny folks in general stating in reference to her daughters,

"I've got two daughters who will have to make their way in this skinny-obsessed world, and it worries me, because I don't want them to be empty-headed, self-obsessed, emaciated clones; I'd rather they were independent, interesting, idealistic, kind, opinionated, original, funny – a thousand things, before 'thin'."

So basically J.K.'s rant places her vehemently against the use of the word "fat" as an insult, and clearly demonstrates her willingness to wield the word "thin" as one with "thin" for her denoting empty-headedness, self-obsession, lack of originality and dullness.

Hypocritical behaviour all by itself, for if you are against the notion of using excess weight as an insult it should follow that you'd be against using lack of weight as an insult too.

All the more hypocritical though for the author of the Harry Potter series to complain about fat stereotyping as throughout her series she milked those same "strange and sick" fat insults for all they were worth in her portrayal of Dudley Dursley, Harry's fat cousin and muggle nemesis.

So what fat insults does she cultivate in her books?

That fat people are lazy, stupid, gluttonous, angry, will-less, pigs.

Think I'm exaggerating?

Here are some quotes from her books:

"Dudley looked a lot like Uncle Vernon. He had a large, pink face, not much neck, small watery blue eyes and thick, blond hair that lay smoothly on his thick, fat head....Harry often said that Dudley looked like a pig in a wig."

- Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

"Aunt Petunia obviously scented danger too, because she said quickly, 'And we'll buy you another two presents while we're out today. How's that popkin?' Two more presents. Is that all right?' Dudley thought for a moment. It looked like hard work. Finally he said slowly, 'So I'll have thirty... thirty...' 'Thirty-nine, sweetums,' said Aunt Petunia. 'Oh.' Dudley sat down heavily and grabbed the nearest parcel."

- Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

his piggy little eyes [were] fixed on the [television] screen and his five chins wobbling as he ate continuously”

-Harry Potter and the prisoner of Azkaban

"Dudley looked furious and sulky, and somehow seemed to be taking up even more space than usual."

-Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

"Dudley had reached roughly the size and weight of a young killer whale"

-Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

"Dudley who had already finished his own grapefruit quarter was eyeing Harry's with a very sour look in his piggly little eyes"

-Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

She also had Dudley eating candy dropped on the floor, growing wider than he is tall, and to really hammer home the pig analogy, Hagrid, a wizard grows him a pig's tail,

"Dudley was dancing on the spot with his hands clasped over his fat bottom, howling in pain. When he turned his back on them, Harry saw a curly pig's tail poking through a hole in his trousers....Meant ter turn him into a pig, but I suppose he was so much like a pig anyway there wasn't much left ter do."

- Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

J.K., I love your books, and agree with your rant that society is far too quick to judge on the basis of weight. Such a shame that despite a clearly tremendous imagination and a brilliant gift for words, that you've decided that while "fat" insults are "sick", "thin" insults are acceptable. It's also a shame that given how self-reportedly anti-fat-insults you are, that you utilized classic fat stereotyping to help sell over 400 million copies of your books and in so doing helped to solidify those same fat stereotypes in an entire global generation of children.

J.K., you are a big, "fat" hypocrite.

Health Check blesses God Sugar

My morning paper yesterday was sheathed in an advertisement from Welch's Grape Juice.

There were two parts to the ad.

The first part detailed new Welch's sugar reduced grape juices, while the second extolled the fact that the Heart and Stroke Foundation's Health Check has been applied to their 100% grape juice.

So let me ask you some questions.

Q. Do you think Coca Cola is a healthy beverage?
A. Of course not, it's high in calories and sugar with no nutritional benefits.

Q. How about if I took Coca Cola and added in some vitamins?
A. No, still not healthy - lots of sugar, and lots of other preservative type stuff.

Q. How about then I just take a glass of pure spring water, add to it 10.5 teaspoons of sugar and then a few vitamins - would that be a healthy beverage?
A. 10.5 teaspoons of sugar in water a healthy beverage? You've got to be kidding me. You could put in all of the vitamins in the world, drinking a cup with 10.5 teaspoons of sugar simply isn't healthy.

Q. Then how come the Heart and Stroke Foundation's Health Check program has endorsed Welch's 100% grape juice?
A. Because Health Check doesn't care about calories and apparently doesn't bother to critically appraise or apply sound science to their nutritional criteria.

Welch's 100% red grape juice has 42.5 grams of sugar per glass and contains 170 calories per serving. That's 10.5 teaspoons of sugar per day, is glass per glass almost double the calories and sugar of a glass of Coca Cola, and if you drink a glass daily (or worse yet, give it to your children) that's almost 18lbs worth of grape juice calories per year.

Sounds super healthy to me.

But wait, there's more!

Welch's has come up with a calorie reduced version of its grape juice. It's partially sweetened with Splenda and it has only 70 calories per glass and only 4 teaspoons of sugar.

Sounds a lot better right? Maybe that should get the Health Check rather than the 10.5 teaspoons of sugar and double the calories and sugar of Coca Cola version right?

Nope.

Health Check's criteria require that juices all be 100% juice so the lower calorie light versions do not qualify.

When are the Heart and Stroke Foundation's dietitians (and Health Canada's for that matter) going to recognize calories as a valuable nutritional component, and when are health professionals finally going to admit that a glass of sugar is a glass of sugar, whether god made the sugar or man made the sugar drinking a glass of sugar with vitamins in it is NOT a healthy choice.

(Sorry for the late post, my home internet was down)

Labour Day Video Post

So today's likely going to be a lazy day for most folk.

If anyone's got an hour to spend, here's Charlie Rose's excellent recent round table on obesity.

Stephen Colbert vs. nutrition

It's always nice when Funny Fridays meets nutrition.

Here are two of my heroes - Stephen Colbert "interviewing" the head of the Center for Science in the Public Interest Michael Jacobson.

Can you guess which one of them said,

"Ice cream’s like medicine, it’s not even food.....it’s an antidepressant"

Have a great weekend!