The American Heart Association's Alliance For A Healthier Generation Labels Diet Coke and Pop-Tarts (And More) As "Smart Snacks" For Kids

In case you're not familiar with it, the Alliance For A Healthier Generation is the name given to the partnership program founded by the American Heart Association, The Clinton Foundation, and The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation with what at first glance looks like pretty much every food industry corporation on earth.

The Alliance's stated mission is,

"to create healthy changes that build upon one another and create a system, a nation, that makes the healthy choice the easy choice"

So what are some healthy choices according to the Alliance's Amazon based,

"One Stop Shop for Healthier Generation vetted Smart Snacks and products for students in and out of school"?

Here are some select choices:

How is it possible that the American Heart Association, The Clinton Foundation, and The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation would describe a child washing down a bag of Doritos or a Pop-Tart with a can of Diet Coke as them consuming a Smart Snack?

Anyone?

(My answer of course is because the Alliance For A Healthier Generation is a partnership with the food industry whose job is to promote sales, not to protect health, but as to why these particular products were deemed Smart, and the larger question of why partnering with the food industry was considered a thoughtful plan, there you've got me)

Saturday Stories: Anthony Bourdain, Jamie Oliver, and Salt

By Anthony_Bourdain_on_WNYC.jpg: WNYC New York Public Radio. Cropped and edited by Daniel Casederivative work: Adriankwok (talk) - Anthony_Bourdain_on_WNYC.jpg, CC BY 2.0, Link

Anthony Bourdain, in The New Yorker, with his debut piece in 1999 Don't Eat Before Reading This (I, like everyone else, adored his work and will miss it/him greatly).

Laura Thomas, Sarah Dempster, Helen West and Rosie Saunt's open letter to Jamie Oliver asking him to stop (indirectly) fat shaming children.

Sarah Zhang, in The Atlantic, on the prison study that may provide more insight into how bad salt is or isn't for our health.

You'll Never Guess Why My 11 Year Old Daughter And Her Friend Are Excited For Their School's Track And Field Day

It's not for the track and field.

It's for the junk food.

In my daughter and her friend's case, they're specifically excited about the sport drinks the school sells the kids at the event (they also sell them Freezies, chips and popcorn).

You see neither have ever tried one.

Honestly, it's not because my wife and I are dietary ogres who deny our kids any taste of sugar sweetened beverages, but clearly we don't have sport drinks at our house because if we're going to give our kids candy, we're going to give them candy way better than sport drinks, and without sport drinks' undeserved health halo.

And it's a health halo that my daughter's elementary school is helping to solidify given that according to my her, last year's track and field day saw the school bringing all sorts of different brands and flavours of sport drinks to the meet.

A meet where by the way, if you ran every single event you'll have run a grand total of 3km, done a long jump, and thrown a shot put.

Not a single kid on that field would benefit from or need a sport drink, yet plenty will further internalize the notion that exercise requires or deserves them.

Schools shouldn't be in the business of peddling junk food to children, and instead should be taking advantage of events like Track and Field Day to teach them that sport drinks are just liquid candy, bad candy at that.

Saturday Stories: Hyper-personalized Food, Medical A.I., and Blood Spatter

Nadia Berenstein, in The New Food Economy, asks whether or not A.I. is set to usher in an era of hyper-personalized food?

Abraham Verghese, in The New York Times, on the potential future impact of machine learning and electronic records on physicians' clinical judgement and well being.

Pamela Colloff, in Propublica, with her story of forensics, blood spatter, and murder.

"Everything In Moderation" Does Not Apply To Giving Candy To Other People's Kids

I heard it most recently from a teacher explaining why it's no big deal that she gave her 8 and 12 year old students Smarties (Canadian M&Ms), Lucky Charms Bars, Smart Food, Goldfish Crackers and Freezies for various reasons including most recently, writing a standardized test.

It's just a variant of the, "but it's just one" cop out.

Both suggest that the indulgence is small, therefore the questionable offering is no biggie.

And for individuals, it's true. I don't think that there should be any forbidden foods. We should all be consuming the smallest amount of indulgences that we need to like our lives (my four food kryptonites are Sour Patch Kids, Ruffles, dark chocolate Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, and scotch).

But it's not true when referring to teachers choosing to give Smarties to 8 year olds because they were writing a standardized test.

Because firstly, it's not just one, and consequently it's not a moderate amount, because as anyone with children today knows, it's "just one" for other people giving kids junk food virtually every day, and some times multiple times a day.

And yes, while I have zero issue with children eating Smarties (mine just came back from Manhattan where one of their favourite stores was the M&Ms store), teachers teaching their 8 year old students that there's no occasion or effort too small to not warrant candy or junk food does not fit into my definition of a message that's healthy even in moderation.

With very rare exceptions (like another kid's birthday party, or Halloween), parents, and parents alone, should be the arbiters of how much candy or junk food their 8 year olds are offered, not teachers, who instead could/should serve as role models as to how to reward and inspire without messages like the one that same teacher who wanted me to know it was ok because "everything in moderation" posted to Twitter,

"Nothing says #inspirationaltreat like @Nestle #Smarties!"

Really?

Not an end of test dance party? An extra period of recess? Painting a celebratory class mural?

Though it's harsher than might be fair, and clearly written in exasperation, there was a comment left on my Facebook page by Robin Nelson VanDyke that I have a difficult time disagreeing with,

Honestly, and as I've been saying over and over again, it's not that teachers don't care, they do, it's that junk food for everything is so entrenched and normalized that when challenged people get defensive rather than reflective.

[If you're a teacher looking for non-junk food ideas, here's a great list and backgrounder to peek at]

A School Principal Blocked Me On Twitter Because I Suggested That 8 Year Olds Need Not Be Rewarded With Oreos For Writing A Test

In Grade 3 in Canada, many students write a standardized test for the Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO).

At one school, the kids' Principal tweeted out her note of encouragement, along with a photo of the test packages that the school had prepared for the 8 year olds. Included with each was a package of Oreo cookies.

My response was to point this out as a great example of how there is no longer any occasion too small to not use junk food to reward, pacify, or entertain children.

She blocked me.

Next the chief psychologist of a school board weighed in to state,

"I’m missing the reason for concern. I hope it isn’t unusual for children to be celebrated in schools for all sorts of achievements, activities, or just building a positive school culture."

Call me a dreamer, but I don't think positive school culture needs to be built out of Oreos.

That a principal, and the chief psychologist of a school board, both of who I have zero doubt care tremendously about their students, see no problem with schools teaching 8 year olds that junk food rewards effort and/or relieves stress really speaks to just how entrenched and normalized our unhealthy relationship with junk food has become.

How about an extra 15 minutes of recess in between test blocks if stress is a concern? Or stickers for a job well done, or a come in your PJs to write day if reward is the issue?

And taking a step even further back, should we really be teaching 8 year olds that the simple expectation of their writing tests in life is an event worthy of anything other than being proud that they did their best in writing and/or studying for it?

Saturday Stories: American Anti-Semitism, Forgotten Palestinians, And On Being Smaller

Edward Joffe and Leon Kanner, murdered by Rasmea Odeh in her bombing of a supermarket in 1969

Karen Bekker, in The Forward, wonders why American anti-Semitism is no longer publicly disqualifying.

Terry Glavin, in Macleans, discusses how the Palestinians in Syria have all but been forgotten.

Colin Gillis, in Avidly, on being smaller.

Kudos (Maybe) To Calgary Police For Handing Out Recreation Passes For Kids' Good Behaviour Rather than Sugar (Like Here In Ontario)

So here's the story.

Recently I saw a tweet highlighting a new Calgary Positive Ticket campaign whereby Angie Thiessen's daughter received a coupon redeemable for free access to a Calgary recreation facility because she was "caught" learning to ride her bicycle with a bike helmet.

When the @CalgaryPolice pull over and write a ticket while you're taking the kids for a bike ride. 😁 Such a great idea - Liv was thrilled! And it had the neighbours calling... #yyc pic.twitter.com/ECQSIRl2yf

— Angie Thiessen (@angie_thiessen) April 26, 2018

Fantastic, right? Here's a longer piece discussing the program.

But then I saw this story about Calgary's positive ticketing program having handed out 2,350 coupons redeemable for a Macs Milk hot chocolate or Frosty over the course of the past 18 months.

So if the program's changed (and zero doubt that it should) from targeting kids with free advertising and emotional brand washing for sugar sweetened beverages, then kudos to Calgary.

Here's hoping!

Metabolically Healthy With Obesity, But For How Long? And Does It Matter?

Image Courtesy of the Canadian Obesity Network

I faced the first question a few weeks ago when I was speaking with a group of medical residents. The latter I'm asking here.

I had presented the EOSS related data that showed the risk of dying with an EOSS score of zero (meaning a person had a BMI greater than 30, but had no physical, metabolic or quality of life related signs or symptoms related to obesity) over the course of 6 years, was no higher than a person without obesity.

The residents wanted to know what percentage of patients with an EOSS score of zero remained at an EOSS score of zero, and moreover wouldn't there be benefits to trying to work on weight as a means to prevent progression even with an EOSS score of 0?

I pointed out that "working on weight" is fairly meaningless goal, but rather it would be exploring a patient's lifestyle related to food and fitness and then providing them with guidance on how to improve both that clinicians ought to be doing. More importantly I pointed out that this exploration should be undertaken with each and every patient regardless of their weights.

But it's a fair question, and there are a few studies looking at this including this one which was recently published in the Journal of The American College of Cardiology.

In it, the authors quantified what percentage of patients with metabolically healthy obesity (MHO) went on to develop metabolic syndrome over the course of the next dozen years.

The answer was of the 1,051 patients with MHO at the start of the study, 48% developed metabolic syndrome by the study's end. Those who did develop metabolic syndrome, unsurprisingly, were shown to have a heightened risk of cardiovascular disease (but not of all cause mortality by the way).

All this to say, there's little doubt that obesity increases the risks of developing various medical conditions, but in my opinion, and as I expressed to the medical residents, weight shouldn't dictate whether or not a physician explores a particular patient's lifestyle. Whether a person has an EOSS score of zero, or whether their weight is "normal", shouldn't preclude considering nutrition and fitness as important determinants of health.

Saturday Stories: Non-Partisan Facts On Gaza, Fake News, and Vaginal Microbes

Yair Rosenberg, in Tablet, with a must read on the Gaza protests - especially if you see the issue as having one narrative being clearly in the right.

Franklin Foer, in The Atlantic, on fake news and the end of reality.

Olga Khazan, in The Atlantic, on sugar daddies, vaginal microbes, and HIV

How Many Calories Your Meal Has May Depend On Which Tracker You're Using

First, let me get this out of the way.

The currency of weight is calories. True, not all calories have the same impact on health or satiety, and also true, people aren't walking math formulas, but that doesn't change the fact that you need a surplus of calories to gain and a deficit to lose, and that the false dichotomy suggesting it's only worth caring about either quality or quantity of calories is just plain dumb.

But the story here isn't about that. The story here stems from the fact that my office is currently in the development stage of a mobile app which in turn will include a food diary.

Right now we're trying to figure out which calorie and food database to licence, and as part of that process one of our office's terrific RDs, Lauren Lejasisaks, chose 4 online recipes and crunched numbers using myfitnesspal, calorieking, and another third party database that we're considering licensing.

Turns out, they're all different. And not by small margins! The very same ingredients entered into those 3 different databases yielded results that differed by as much as 40%.

As to which is right?

I have no idea.

And it probably doesn't matter as much as you might think.

Though there's certainly value in having an inkling of where you might be at calorie wise (or carb wise if you're tracking that instead), probably the bigger value of record keeping is in the context of its service as a conscious reminder of the behaviours that you're trying to change. And if you're keeping a food diary regularly, you'll be reminding yourself multiple times per day, and so long as you don't use your food diary as a negative, blunt, tool of judgement, those reminders will help you to make more informed and thoughtful dietary decisions.

The Ontario Science Centre Just Hosted Cheetos' 3-Day, Immersive, Kid-Targeted, Advertisement

From the WTF files comes Ontario's Science Centre's hosting of the Cheetos Museum this past Mother's Day weekend.

What's a Cheetos museum?

It's a mobile, immersive, advertising experience for Cheetos.

Was there any science you ask?

Nope.

The "promotional activity" (that's what it was called by the Ontario Science Centre in a now no longer hosted webpage online) involved hunting for Cheetos with identifiable shapes, swinging on a Cheetos branded swing, and taking pictures with Cheetos' mascot Chester.

Checking out the Cheetos Museum at the Ontario Science Centre in Toronto. I found a parrot in my bag. Hilarious times! - #CheetosMuseum @OntScienceCtr pic.twitter.com/Q73dSQVbIf

— Toronto Guardian (@TORGuardian) May 11, 2018

So why would the Ontario Science Centre have hosted it?

Money?

I mean it's difficult to imagine it was there for any other reason given there's zero scientific content. The timing also seems to suggest money as the likelihood is that Mother's Day weekend is one of the Science Centre's busiest of the year - and that would command higher dollars.

All this to say, a live exhibit demonstrating the science of marketing junk foods to kids, by marketing junk food to kids, probably isn't one I'd have recommended to the Ontario Science Centre.

(And I don't think the Ontario Science Centre is all that proud of it either given there's not a tweet or a Facebook post from them to be had about this particular promotional activity.)

[Thanks to Michelle Bernardo for sending my way]

Saturday Stories: Blue Blood, Obesity, and "Silencing"

© Hans Hillewaert / 

Sarah Zhang, in The Atlantic, on the last days of the blue blood harvest.

Harmony Cox, in Narratively, on her life as a public health crisis.

Nathan Robinson, in Current Affairs, on being loud despite being "silenced".

Pro-Tip: Copying Food Industry Press Releases Is Neither Helpful, Nor Journalism

So I saw this story published by Global News. It's about grain consumption in Canada and the headline sure is strong,

"University of Saskatchewan study shows importance of grain to Canada’s diet".

When I clicked through I read about researchers who by way of a cluster analysis of Canadians' grain consumption patterns, concluded that 80% of Canadians aren't eating enough grains and that as a consequence, they're apparently at risk of deficiencies in folic acid, some B vitamins and iron.

Oh, I also learned that

"there's less research supporting the benefits of enriched grain foods, sometimes referred to as refined grains"

and that refined grains are,

"important food sources for delivering key nutrients in the Canadian diet".

And that

"research suggests eliminating grain foods from diets is not associated with the body mass index (BMI)."

That the story reads like a press release is not a coincidence, because the same day the story ran, so too did this press release from the Healthy Grain Institute.

When I compared the two, it turns out that the Global News story was 49.5% identical to the Healthy Grains Institute press release.

Personally, I don't think the information in the press release warranted any news coverage, but if you're going to actually cover it, at the very least it'd be useful (and I think expected) to see:

• That there actually isn't a published study, but rather just a presentation at a conference that was being hyped by a press release. 
• Anything at all about what confounders were considered (or not considered) in the cluster analysis.
• The proven and significant limitations of food recall based analyses.
• The risks associated with increased intakes of refined grains. 
• The funding of the "study" (not suggesting the research isn't useful, but rather that there isn't yet a published study to evaluate) by the Saskatchewan Wheat Development Commission (SWDC), the Alberta Wheat Commission (AWC), the Grain Farmers of Ontario and Mitacs, a Canadian not-for-profit funding agency supporting industry-academia collaborations
• That Nutritional Strategies Inc. (the quoted co-researcher's employer (he's the VP)) provides food, nutrition and regulatory affairs consulting services for numerous food and beverage companies and food-related associations

Small wonder why people are confused about nutrition if food industry press releases about unpublished studies are copied and repackaged as news.

Why Do We Report on Diet Studies As If Patients Adhered To Their Prescribed Diets?

It happens all the time.

Researchers recruit participants for a diet study and randomize them to particular diets.

The participants don't adhere to said diets particularly well (and this is putting aside the known and glaring inaccuracy of dietary recall), and the macronutrient breakdowns of what they report eating are nearly always different from the macronutrient breakdowns of what they were instructed to eat.

And yet the researchers write up their studies as if their prescribed diets were followed, and consequently so too do journalists.

So here are my two asks.

1. Unless you're writing or reporting on diet studies conducted in metabolic wards, please treat their results with tempered enthusiasm.

2. And if the difference between two dietary outcome arms isn't likely to be clinically meaningful (like say the difference between weight losses of 3.3 kg, 4.6 kg, and 5.5 kg at two years (and bonus points if you get this reference right out of the gate)), maybe hold off on declaring one diet to be the world's best?

Saturday Stories: Stolen Torahs, Yonah Krakowsky, and Cudjo Lewis

Erik Overbey Collection, The Doy Leale McCall Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of South Alabama. Colorization by Gluekit

Daniel Estrin, in NPR, with an incredible whodunnit covering good (and bad) Samaritans, ancient torahs, and theft (replete with just gorgeous photos)

Yonah Krakowsky, in Toronto Life, on his life as both an Orthodox Jew, and as a gender-reassignment surgeon.

Zora Neale Hurston, posthumously in Vulture, with the story of of Cudjo Lewis, the final slave-ship survivor.

If You Need Proof The Food Industry Doesn't Care About You, Look No Further Than Smucker's "No Sugar Added" Jam

So I was shopping the other day.

We were making a dish that included apricot jam in a sauce and I was having a peek at the various offerings on the shelves.

I grabbed Smucker's Apricot Jam and noted that the front of its package highlighted the "fact" that it had "no sugar added".

The label of course told a different story.

It told me that the second ingredient was "white grape juice concentrate", which is likely on the order of 60% sugar by weight.

So yes, sugar was added.

I expressed my indignation on Twitter and Smucker's responded to tell me that they appreciated my feedback, that the concentrated white grape juice was meant to add "fruit flavor" as well as serve as a sweetener, and that according to the letter of the law, it was legal for them to state that their product contained no added sugar.

We appreciate your feedback. White grape juice concentrate provides added fruit flavor, and acts as a sweetener as well. Please know, we follow all CFIA labeling guidelines, including full disclosure of the total grams of sugar in each product, as listed on the Nutrition Facts.

— Smucker's (@smuckers) May 1, 2018

Now the good news is that at least in Canada, the addition of white grape juice concentrate, which of course is just the addition of sugar, will soon preclude Smucker's front-of-package "No Sugar Added" claim.

But of course if Smucker's actually wanted to do right by its customers it wouldn't be waiting for the Canadian Food Inspection Agency's regulations to change.

But that's not what Smucker's is about. Smucker's, like pretty much all publicly traded food industry players, is about profit, and their "No Sugar Added" jams are great case studies in how we shouldn't wait for the food industry to do the right thing, because unless the right thing aligns with profits, they're not going to do it.

What Is It About Diets That Make Some MDs Believe There Can Be Only One?

It seems like it's a growing phenomenon.

MDs, enamoured by a particular diet, strongly recommend it to all of their patients, their colleagues, and even write op-eds in the media about why the entire country ought to be following it.

It's such an odd thing.

In part it's odd because there's no doubt that the evidence on "best" diets, whether for weight management, or overall health, is far from conclusive, is fraught with confounding, and is built, regardless of what diet we're talking about, on evidence buttressed by the inherent flaws of food frequency questionnaires and dietary recall.

It's also odd because doctors, more than most, ought to know that different treatments work differently for different people, and that adverse effects are both real and unpredictable.

Whether it's depression, hypertension, high cholesterol, arthritis, etc. - there are a myriad of treatment options and patient considerations. What works well for one patient may not work for another, and what is well tolerated by one patient, may drive intolerable side effects in another.

Yet here some MDs seem intent on promoting the notion that when it comes to diet, there can be only one.

If you do come across an MD who's doing that, maybe best to move on to another MD.

Saturday Stories: Pulitzers, Crippled Flights, and Deep Brain Stimulation

Kelsey Ables, in Columbia Journalism Review, on Mariel Padilla, the journalism student and how she found out in class that she'd won a Pulitzer.

Clive Irving, in Daily Beast, on veteran fighter pilot Tammie Jo Shults, and how she landed crippled Southwest flight 1380.

David Dobbs, in The Atlantic, on the failure, and promise, of deep brain stimulation on depression.

Please Don't Encourage Your Kids To Diet

Image Source: The Los Angeles Loyolan

I wish it went without saying, but it doesn't, so I'll say it again, please don't encourage your kids to diet.

The worry is that by doing so, you may inadvertently have a negative affect on their self esteem, their body image, and/or their relationship with food, and given they're likely not the ones doing the shopping, cooking the meals, or deciding how frequently to eat out, drive-thru, or take-out, even if there wasn't risk to encouraging them to diet, their dietary landscape is primarily in your hands.

And that risk may not just be theoretical.

A study published in last month's issue of Pediatrics found that parents encouraging their adolescents to diet was associated with,

"a higher risk of overweight or obesity, dieting, binge eating, engaging in unhealthy weight control behaviors, and lower body satisfaction 15 years later as a parent, after adjusting for sociodemographics and baseline measures of the outcomes"

It also demonstrated an inter-generational effect whereby kids who were encouraged to diet, 15 years later, were more likely to encourage their children to do so as well.

If you're worried about your child's weight, rather than suggest that they go on a diet, I'd encourage you to explore your home's food environment. Look for ways to reduce liquid calories and energy dense food availability within the home, purchase fewer meals, make it a point to help your kids learn to cook (this recent study found those reporting cooking skills at 18 were more likely to have healthful diets a decade later), and improve your family's health by looking for ways to be active together. And while there's not likely to be any quick fixes, working towards living the life you want your children to live may go a long way.

Saturday Stories: Murder, Mice, and Mossad

Image source

Amy Dempsey, in The Toronto Star, on a tale of improbable cause and 3 murders, 2 of which might have been preventable.

Emma Yaskinki, in Science, on animal studies and where therapies deemed exciting therein rarely hold up in human trials.

Raffi Berg, in the BBC, with just an incredible story about a Sudanese dive resort, staffed by the Mossad, and used to help in the transfer of thousands of Ethiopian jews to Israel (soon to be a major motion picture)

Aspartame Doesn't Increase Lean Adults' Weights, Appetites, Or Blood Sugars, In 12 Week Randomized Controlled Trial

So what happens to healthy, lean, adults, if you randomly assign them to consume 0mg, 350mg or 1,050mg of aspartame daily for 12 weeks?

Nothing.

Well at least nothing if you're measuring their weights, body fat percentages, appetites, blood sugars, insulins, incretins (GLP1), lipids, fasting leptin levels, or liver function tests. Those were in fact all the things that were looked at in this recent study.

Sorry chemophobes.

(but conspiracists can still rest easy knowing that funding was provided in part by aspartame producer Ajinomoto, and of course it would be nice to see this study repeated with study participants with obesity)

(And if you're interested here's a recent review that looked at both observational studies on non-nutritive sweeteners and randomized trials looking at non-nutritive sweeteners which found that while observational studies suggest risk to weight, to date, randomized trials, now including this one it would seem, don't).

Ontario Schools Inviting Pizza Nova To Teach Nutrition To Kindergarteners Is Apparently A Thing Now

Thanks to a colleague that probably should remain nameless for sending me this story about his 7 year old's recent nutrition lesson.

Here's the letter and photos he sent.

Hi Dr. Freedhoff,

Hope you are well, I got into a heated debate with my stubborn 7yr old son (who is starting to test the theory that I am the smarter person he knows) and I thought of you because I have seen you blog about this before.

Monday he came home with homework from a special nutrition lesson they got today from a rep from Pizza Nova. The Pizza Nova came in and fed them pizza (unknown to us), taught them to make pizza dough, and continued to teach these young impressionable minds that pizza is one of the healthiest foods there is because it has all of the food groups.

The homework included an activity book and once complete they receive a coupon for a free pizza.

This is a tipping point for me, the school already has pizza day every 2 weeks, theme food days all the time, bake sales, freeze sales regularly, food fundraisers and the list goes on, now we have food companies advertising to children false info about nutrition.

When he questioned his 7 year old's teacher, the one who invited Pizza Nova to teach her students about nutrition, about the wisdom of the guest teachers, she saw nothing wrong with it and explained to him how it is nice to have community partners come in to break up the regular school day.

As part of writing this story, I did some Googling. Apparently this isn't a one-off, and that rather this is a common event at Kindergartens across Ontario including Oakville, Hamilton, Toronto, Whitby, and Bowmanville (that's where the letter writer's son goes to school).

In fact, according to Pizza Nova, last year,

"over 120 schools, participated in over 600 workshops, entertaining more than 27,000 children."

Call me old fashioned, but I don't think schools should be providing the food industry, or any industry for that matter, with access to our children. let alone inviting a fast food company to teach nutrition to Kindergarteners.

Saturday Stories: American Army Morale, Nuclear Power Fears, And Vitamins

Phil Klay, in The Atlantic, on the plunging morale of the American Army.

Nathanael Johnson, in Grist, on nuclear power and nuclear fears.

Liz Szabo, in The New York Times, on whether you should be taking multi-vitamins and supplements.

Tony Robbins, With Estimated Net Worth of $500 Million, Not Rich Enough, Peddles Expensive Nutritional Bullshit

Thanks to my friend and colleague Brant Slomovic who alerted me to the fact that self-help guru Tony Robbins has apparently got himself into the nutritional nonsense business.

There's his $79/month BioEnergy Greens,

"packed with superfoods, this powder nourishes your body at a cellular level giving you more energy, quicker recovery from exercise, mental clarity and overall increased well-being."

Oh, and then there's $69/month Energy Now which

"will help boost your energy, focus and strength all vital elements of staying sharp and keeping your body at its peak."

Or how does strengthening and supporting your immune system to prevent illness sound? If good then maybe you need $39/month ImmunoBoost-C which apparently Tony takes,

"to prevent falling sick during his rigorous, nonstop travel and 16-hour workdays."

And how can you resist Vital Energy? At $189 per month it's a steal given Tony says it'll

"prevent illness, eliminate brain fog and experience lasting endurance all day, every day."

But if you're serious about your health, clearly you'll need to pony up another $219 to buy Tony's 10 day Pure Body Cleanse, because as Tony points out,

"Toxins. They are in the air we breathe, the water we drink and the food we eat. And they are hurting every part of our body.

Toxic buildup in our body can contribute to chronic fatigue, body odor, insomnia, skin problems, bloating, headaches and our mood.

Your body is a machine, and when you fail to take care of it, it breaks down. Even when you make healthy choices, detoxing is a crucial step in maintaining lasting peak health."

And hey, if you're struggling to lose weight and keep it off, Ultimate Weight Loss has you covered, where you can,

"achieve and maintain successful, healthy weight loss in 14 days with Ultimate Weight Loss."

No really, just 14 days, I mean it even says, in big letters,

"Hit your weight loss goal in just 14 days – and keep it off for good."

And just $189 for lifetime weight loss, who could say no?

Of course, there is this disclaimer on each and every page. I wonder if it'd be worth paying attention to?

Oh, and Tony, if you're reading this, though of course I knew you were a salesman, somehow I didn't think you'd stoop this low. My mistake.

Saturday Stories: Awfulness Edition

Sarah Boesveld, in Chatelaine, describing the horrific world of teen girls and social media.

Michael J. Koplow, in Israel Policy Forum, discusses some hard truths about Gaza sure to upset pretty much everyone who reads it regardless of with whom their sympathies lie.

Emily Shire, in The Forward, on the thriving rise of left wing anti-Semitism.

Guest Post: Coca-Cola's "Commitment To Transparency" Fails To Identify Over 95% Of The Authors They've Funded Since 2008

Today's guest posters Paulo Serôdio, Martin McKee, and David Stuckler, recently published a paper in Public Health Nutrition about Coca-Cola's transparency initiative whereby using a tool they'd created, they found that Coca-Cola's transparency initiative failed to identify over 95% of the 907 authors who published one of the 389 articles funded by Coca-Cola. What was also clear was that Coca-Cola's funded research focused primarily on emphasizing the importance of physical activity and the concept of ‘energy balance’. Stay tuned for more from these 3 on this file in the nearish future!

(A version of this post was originally published on the blog of Public Health Nutrition)

Is Coca-Cola really a model of research transparency?

Can we trust research on nutrition paid for by Big Food? Some argue that, as the industry profits from sugar-sweetened beverages, known to increase risks of childhood obesity and diabetes, they can be expected to support research that creates confusion and doubt about those risks. Others contend that researchers are independent and, as funders have no role in the study design, methods, interpretation or publication, the findings can be trusted.

What both sides agree on is the need for transparency. Its importance became clear in August 2015, when the New York Times published documents, obtained using freedom of information laws, that Coca-Cola had provided $1.5 million in financial and logistical support to the “Global Energy Balance Network”, a non-profit organization led by influential academics at the Universities of Colorado, West Virginia and South Carolina, and whose main message was that there was no compelling evidence of a significant link between sugar-sweetened beverages and obesity.

In response, Coca-Cola company published its so-called “Transparency Lists” of a combined 218 researchers and health professionals whom they had funded since 2010.

In our recent paper, we constructed a new database of the scientific articles published since 2008 reporting funding from Coca-Cola. We did this by writing a computer program to extract and parse funding statements from articles, captured by Thomson Reuters’ Web of Science database. We have made the program, written for R-software, publicly available and we hope that others will use it to search systematically search for literature funded by those with vested interests in research, such as the agrochemical, alcohol, tobacco, and other industries (freely available for download here).

Using this new dataset, we investigated four important questions:

Question 1: Are Coca-Cola’s transparency lists complete?

Using the data we gathered from Web of Science, we built a list of researchers who authored scientific articles where Coca-Cola’s funding was acknowledged, by following the same criteria that guided the makeup of Coca-Cola’s own transparency disclosure, which are available from Coca-Cola’s transparency website. We found discrepancies between the list of names that Coca-Cola’s disclose as people they fund and what can be found publicly in Web of Science. Overall, we identified 471 authors, involved in 128 Coca-Cola-funded journal articles (published between 2010 and 2015), who report Coca-Cola funding but do not appear in Coca-Cola’s transparency disclosures.

Question 2: How many studies and authors are funded by the Coca-Cola brand?

If we expand our search to the Coca-Cola brand, and include research published before 2008 and after 2015, we find that the company and its affiliated organizations have funded 461 studies between 2008 and 2016, involving 1,496 different authors (we concede not all were grant recipients). We provide a visualization of this research in the form of a co-authorship network where every researcher (nodes in the network) is linked to another researcher if they co-authored an article that acknowledges funding from the Coca-Cola brand (see Figure 3). To put Coca-Cola’s transparency initiative in perspective, we apply a network partition color scheme that highlights (1) researchers that appear on Coca-Cola’s transparency disclosures; (2) researchers that declare funding but did not appear on Coca-Cola’s transparency disclosures, and (3) researchers funded by Coca-Cola’s international affiliate companies (subsidiaries and bottlers).

Question 3: Which research topics and interventions are supported by the company?

Using structural topic modeling, a method of quantitative text analysis, we found that this research focused predominantly on topics such as “energy balance” and “physical activity”, a narrative that tends to divert attention from sugar and calorie consumption (you can find an interactive data visualization of the research topics here).

Question 4: Are Coca-Cola funded researchers declaring their links to the company in their publications?

We found that 17% (38) of researchers on Coca-Cola’s transparency list did not acknowledge funding from the company in their subsequent publications. Obviously, we could not tell whether this omission was intentional, but were it not for the company’s public acknowledgement, we would not know these researchers had collaborated with the company.

So can we trust Coca-Cola’s disclosures?

Our study suggests that Coca-Cola has taken a positive step in releasing details of research it funds, but it is clear that still a great deal of information is missing. Both the company and the researchers underreport their funding. This may be in an effort to minimize funding when it could be attached with a stigma in the eyes of public health researchers. Relying exclusively on funding statements may also give us an incomplete picture, as they often do not include the necessary information to identify the Principal Investigator(s) and the year in which the grant was awarded.

Nonetheless, approaches such as ours can help improve transparency in two ways. First, by aggregating research funded by Coca-Cola we can reveal the scale of the company’s involvement in research as well as providing a benchmark that can be used to evaluate the company’s transparency pledge; second, we leverage the company’s transparency disclosure to assess how good are researchers at revealing Coca-Cola’s financial support.

Our results underscore the need for transparency to avoid potential conflicts of interest in research funding.

Paulo Serôdio is a postdoctoral researcher at the School of Economics of the University of Barcelona, an associate member of the Department of Sociology of the University of Oxford and a visiting fellow of the Paris Institute of Complex Systems. His research merges insights from the fields of political economy, network science and data mining to study corporate influence on politics.

Martin McKee, CBE MD DSc. Martin is Professor of European Public Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Research Director at the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies, and past President of the European Public Health Association. His work has been recognised by election to the US National Academy of Medicine and UK Academy of medical Sciences, as well as by numerous visiting professorships, five honorary doctorates, and prizes and awards. He is best known for his research on the health effects of the collapse of the Soviet bloc, European law and health policy, and the health effects of the financial crisis

David Stuckler is a Professor of Policy Analysis and Public Management, Bocconi University in Milan. His research uses large datasets and statistical modelling to understand the root causes of epidemics.