Health Halos and Kellogg's new FiberPlus Antioxidants Cereals

Brian Wansink coined the term, "Health Halo" when he was studying consumer behaviours when faced with healthier sounding front of package statements and restaurants perceived as healthier.

Words like, "low fat", "low carb", while not formal health claims in terms of function, still have strong influence on consumer perception, ingestion and likely purchase.

I couldn't help but think of Dr. Wansink's work yesterday when I read an article in the Big Food e-tradezine Food Navigator. The article detailed Kellogg's new cereal brand that they claim, "makes no health claims".

One of my favourite blogs, Fooducate, covered this cereal a few days ago, but when I saw that, "makes no health claims" piece, I had to weigh in myself.

The cereals, will be part of Kellogg's new FiberPlus Antioxidants Cereals and their launch comes right on the heels of the Federal Trade Commission's slap for Kellogg's suggesting their cereals improved, "Immunity".

Want to take a guess at how many ingredients there are in their Kellogg's FiberPlus Antioxidants Berry Yogurt Crunch? I guarantee you'll be wrong.

82!

Here they are in all their splendor with the 12 different sugar sources highlighted for good measure.

WHOLE GRAIN WHEAT, SUGAR, RICE, CHICORY ROOT FIBER, MIXED BERRY FLAVORED CLUSTERS (ROLLED OATS, SUGAR, OAT FIBER, CORN BRAN, CORN SYRUP, WHEAT STARCH, HONEY, YELLOW CORN FLOUR, CORN CEREAL, CANOLA OIL, NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL FLAVORS, FRUCTOOLIGOSACCHARIDES, MODIFIED CORN STARCH, SOYBEAN OIL, SALT, CARAMEL COLOR, MALT EXTRACT, STRAWBERRY POWDER, CITRIC ACID, GLYCERIN, BHT [PRESERVATIVE], RED #40, BLUE #2, CELLULOSE GUM, GREEN #3, BLUE #1, RED #40 LAKE, BLUE #2 LAKE), MODIFIED WHEAT STARCH, SOLUBLE CORN FIBER, MALT FLAVORING, SALT, ROLLED OATS, FRACTIONATED PALM KERNEL OIL, INULIN, OAT FIBER, NONFAT DRY MILK, CORN BRAN, MODIFIED CORN STARCH, GLYCERIN, WHEAT STARCH, CORN SYRUP, HONEY, APPLE PUREE CONCENTRATE, YELLOW CORN FLOUR, STRAWBERRIES, BLUEBERRIES, VITAMIN A PALMITATE, NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL FLAVORS, KIWI JUICE CONCENTRATE, WHEY, MONOGLYCERIDES, SOY LECITHIN, CORN STARCH, NONFAT YOGURT POWDER (HEAT TREATED AFTER CULTURING), CANOLA OIL, INVERT SUGAR, STRAWBERRY JUICE CONCENTRATE, ASCORBIC ACID (VITAMIN C), CINNAMON, FRUCTOOLIGOSACCHARIDES, RED RASPBERRY JUICE CONCENTRATE, GUAR GUM, BLUEBERRY JUICE CONCENTRATE, NIACINAMIDE, MALT EXTRACT, CARAMEL COLOR, CITRIC ACID, VITAMIN D, ALPHA TOCOPHEROL ACETATE (VITAMIN E), BHT (PRESERVATIVE), PYRIDOXINE HYDROCHLORIDE (VITAMIN B6), RIBOFLAVIN (VITAMIN B2), THIAMIN HYDROCHLORIDE (VITAMIN B1), BETA CAROTENE (SOURCE OF VITAMIN A), FOLIC ACID, VITAMIN B12.

So what does 82 ingredients including not 1, not 2, not 3, not 4, not 5, but 6 different artificial colours (including one that now has to have a warning label slapped on it in the EU) buy you nutritionally?

170 calories per cup dry (not wonderful for a cereal)
200mg of sodium (meh)
10g of fibre (holy crap - no pun intended)
12g of sugar (3 teaspoons worth)
And a smattering of vitamins including some "antioxidants"

Kellogg's of course isn't stupid. They're simply expecting consumers who don't take the time to think about what they're eating and read food labels to be saying, "you had me at antioxidants" when they walk down the cereal aisle.

Sure, there's no formal health claim, but that doesn't change the fact that this Frankencereal is banking on the words "FiberPlus" and "Antioxidants" to serve a health halos whose job it is to dupe you into thinking that what's in the box is good for you, which it probably is.....if you're a shareholder.

A rose may be a rose but perhaps a calorie's not a calorie

File this one under cool data!

Simple study published in Food and Nutrition Research to look at the differences between whole foods and processed foods and the calories the body utilizes to metabolize them (something called diet induced thermogenesis and also known as the thermic effect of food).

18 subjects were enrolled in a cross-over study (meaning they each ate both test meals) whereby the thermic effect of food was measured following the ingestion of two different cheese sandwiches.

One cheese sandwich was made with cheddar cheese and a multi-grain bread containing whole sunflower seeds and whole-grain kernels, while the other cheese sandwich was made with white bread and processed cheese.

Both sandwiches contained the same number of calories.

The results?

While subjects reported that the whole food sandwich was tastier, both sandwiches conferred equal levels of satiety, and in a not completely surprising, but ultimately fascinating result, eating the whole food sandwich led to roughly double the thermic effect of food than the processed sandwich and that effect lasted nearly an hour longer than the processed meals.

Why wasn't this surprising?

Whole grains take longer to digest due to the protective fibrous sheath that processing removes. We also would expect the whole grain sandwich to have more protein and fat (which it did) which in turn delays the speed with which the body is able to break down its accompanying carbohydrates.

Calorically what does this mean?

It takes more energy to release the nutrients of the whole food sandwich with the differences between meals resulting in a 9.7% increase in the net energy gain of the processed food meal.

Translation?

Eat processed crap and you're effectively consuming 10% more calories than you would be were you eating healthier whole food alternatives.

Now this is a small study and certainly it's too soon to extrapolate this across the board, but were it to be true for all processed foods, given their viral spread across the developed world these past 30 years, and given that a 10% net energy gain is huge, this might be another great reason to ditch the Wonder bread and Velveeta.

Barr, S., & Wright, J. (2010). Postprandial energy expenditure in whole-food and processed-food meals: implications for daily energy expenditure Food & Nutrition Research, 53 DOI: 10.3402/fnr.v54i0.5144

Burger King - Stricter Nutritional Criteria than Health Check!

Last week Burger King Canada announced new nutritional criteria for their advertised kids' meals. I'll come back to that word, "advertised" in a bit, but wanted to look at what Burger King thinks their healthier kids' meals should contain:

1. No more than 560 calories
2. No more than 600mg of sodium
3. Less than 30 percent of the calories from fat
4. Less than 10 percent of calories from saturated fat
5. No added trans fat
6. No more than 10 percent of calories from added sugars

Doesn't sound particularly healthy to me. 560 calories is still more than a child should consume in a single meal. 600mg of sodium is half a day's worth. The calories from fat and saturated fat stuff I don't care too much about. No trans fats - seems like a no brainer. I was pleased however to see the no more than 10% of calories from added sugars as that's the World Health Organization's recommendation.

So basically it's a bit of healthier window dressing but certainly nothing brag worthy.

Nothing brag worthy unless of course you're comparing Burger King's new guidelines with those of the Heart and Stroke Foundation's awful misinformation program Health Check.

What does Health Check have to say about restaurant kids' meals?

1. No caloric limits
2. Allows up to 720mg of sodium
3. Similar limit on total fat
4. Similar limit on saturated fat
5. Allows 5% of fat to be artery clogging trans-fat (and here I thought zero trans fat was a "no-brainer")
6. No limit on added sugar

Man, if I was the marketing director of Burger King's brand I'd be all over this as for those keeping score, compared with Burger King's, Health Check's kids' meals allow for unlimited calories, ignore added sugar, allow for a whopping amount of trans-fat and allow for 20% more sodium.

So should we be cheering for Burger King? I'm not. Ultimately this is just smoke and mirrors as their new dramatically stricter than Health Check but still weak nutritional criteria only apply to their "advertised" kids meals and likely is just another ploy to appease parents and try to steer governments away from considering regulations.

Interesting too that a day after the announcement the media was all over it and rightly pointed out the hollowness of Burger King's pledge. What a shame the media doesn't hold Health Check and the Heart and Stroke Foundation up to the same degree of scrutiny.

Not everything's caused by obesity: Brain and memory function edition

Good lord.

I know people like to blame obesity for everything. Every disease, every problem - everything.

You know what I'm blaming on it today? Authors' and peer reviewers' attitudes about their studies and results.

Last Tuesday I was asked by CTV to read a study that was pending publication in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society so that I could comment on it for the national news. The study looked at 8,745 women between the ages of 65-79 free of dementia and evaluated their weight and waist to hip ratios in relation to their scores on the 3MSE, a modified mini-mental state examination validated to give an overview of cognitive function.

So I read the study.

Want to know what I found out?

That after controlling for age and education the test scores of folks whose BMI's were <25 were 95.2 while those whose BMIs were >40 were 94.1. I also discovered that the authors failed to provide the p value (the number whereby you'd see what the likelihood simple chance would lead to the result) for that comparison but they did provide a p value for the larger difference when age and education weren't controlled for and guess what, that p value, the one that looked at an even larger variance in test scores, wasn't even close to significant (at 0.10 there was a 10% likelihood the result occurred solely due to chance).

Another odd result? Women with abdominal weight distributions (apples) scored better than those with truncal distributions (pears) suggesting that unlike pretty much everything else weight related, abdominal obesity was protective against this supposed negative impact on cognition.

So basically in a best case scenario the authors could conclude that obesity may lead people to score a single percentage point lower on a test of global cognition but they'll point out at least that the difference in scores could easily have occurred due to chance. Worst case? They'll make it sound important so that they could get published.

My take? I took it to read that obesity doesn't lead to any statistically significant differences in a test of global cognition and that consequently it would seem that obesity and cognition aren't too tightly linked - a result that perhaps is bolstered by the fact that abdominal obesity appeared to be beneficial (though I should note, it may simply be due to the fact the researchers didn't measure waist circumference properly as rather than use a consistent bony landmark they used the floating umbilicus).

So what did the authors conclude?

"Higher BMI was associated with poorer cognitive function in women with smaller WHR....Further research is needed to clarify the mechanism for this interaction".

What I wrote back to CTV was the following,

"It would have to be an unbelievably slow news day for this to make the rotation."

And yet it was all over the news.

Sigh.

The media? I can forgive them, they're just trying to sell stories.

The authors? I can almost forgive them too as certainly negative publication bias might have precluded this piece and it's a publish or perish world.

The peer reviewers? I got nothin'.

Kerwin, D., Zhang, Y., Kotchen, J., Espeland, M., Van Horn, L., McTigue, K., Robinson, J., Powell, L., Kooperberg, C., Coker, L., & Hoffmann, R. (2010). The Cross-Sectional Relationship Between Body Mass Index, Waist-Hip Ratio, and Cognitive Performance in Postmenopausal Women Enrolled in the Women's Health Initiative Journal of the American Geriatrics Society DOI: 10.1111/j.1532-5415.2010.02969.x

Saturday Stories

The shocking, sugary truth behind the recent massive recall of Froot Loops and kin.

Kim Hebert from Skeptic North takes on Canada AM's health coverage.

CSPI wonders why Americans are subsidizing the purchase of sugary soda?

Pharmacist Scott Gavura rips apart Health Canada's decision to rubber stamp hundreds of unapproved natural "health products".

How to rock a karaoke bar!

Simple, be a rock star to begin with.

Today's Funny Friday video is entertaining, funny and oddly heartwarming as it covers Jewel, in a disguise, singing Jewel songs at a karaoke bar and for reasons I can't seem to really pin down, I'd rate this one a must watch.

Have a great weekend!

Undercover Karaoke with Jewel from Jewel

Why the world needs Calories 101

Small wonder the world struggles with obesity.

The world is obscenely calorific. Calories are everywhere. Restaurant salads can have over 1,000. Kids' meals even more and with our supersized foodscape, almost nothing is safe.

So let's shift gears and talk money.

Let's pretend you got dropped into an exotic foreign country and while there were price tags on everything, you didn't know the exchange rate. Sure you might know that more was more expensive, but could you really be sure you weren't overspending?

Or how about if you got hired for a job but weren't told your salary. How would you budget your monthly expenditures?

Now back to calories.

In a survey conducted by the International Food Information Council Foundation (a Big Food funded organization), only 12% of those surveyed knew how many calories they burned a day.

What that means of course is that Americans (and probably it's a finding that's true the world over) don't have a clue how many calories they need in a daytime, and so even though calories are posted on nutritional facts panels and in some jurisdictions even on menu boards, how are they going to do any good?

These results should serve to alert allied health professionals and public health officials that in the absence of an anchoring statement regarding how many calories a person needs, initiatives like mandatory menu labeling will fall deaf on ignorant ears.

What we really need are public health officials to provide us with a Calories 101 campaign (like the one in the photo up above from New York's forward thinking, "Read 'Em Before You Eat 'Em" campaign) because if people don't know how many they've got to spend in a day, how can they possibly be expected to navigate our increasingly obesogenic food environment?

Canada's only national food radio show? CBC's the Main Ingredient.

Recently I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Khalil Akhtar for the CBC's new weekly food show The Main Ingredient.

I was asked to chat about Canada's Food Guide and its contributions to obesity.

Having listened to the show's first 3 episodes I can certainly vouch for its entertainment and interest value and would encourage you to have a listen.

All of the shows are hosted online at the CBC's The Main Ingredient homepage and the episode I'm in can be found here (I come on at roughly the 9:14 mark).

Kudos to the CBC for recognizing that not only is food delicious, it's fascinating.

The Main Ingredient airs on CBC Radio One Mondays at 11:30 a.m. (3:30 p.m. NT) and Fridays at 7:30 p.m. (8 p.m. NT) and on Sirius satellite radio channel 137 Mondays 4:30 p.m., Thursdays 1 p.m., Fridays 3 a.m. and Saturdays at 6:30 p.m. (all times ET).

Chewable Lipitor candy for kids?

Thanks to blog reader Craig for forwarding me a report on the EU's approval of a new chewable tablet of Lipitor (the cholesterol lowering medication) geared for use in kids ages 10 and up.

And according to a study published yesterday in the Journal Pediatrics, the market's probably bigger than once thought. The lead researcher of the study, one where over 20,000 kids' cholesterol levels were screened, was quoted by the Wall Street Journal as stating that current pediatric cholesterol screening guidelines would have missed 36% of kids with, "seriously high LDL".

Sigh.

England - the stupidest country in the world (when it comes to obesity)?

Wow.

Wow, wow wow.

How's this for the dumbest thing you've ever heard a country do to help combat obesity - England has just turned over the reins for it's already crappy Change4Life program (I've blogged about it before) to the food industry and in return for Big Food's help the government's already promised not to mess with them anymore when it comes to things like labeling, taxes or other nutritional regulations or reforms.

I have no words and as regular readers know, it's tough to render me speechless.

Wow.

As Marion Nestle put it on her blog,

"Moral: Expect no public health messages about eating less, or further restrictions on health claims from this campaign."

[Here's The Observer's scathing editorial about the decision.]

Carl's Jr.'s bid to out-gross KFC's Double Down

First found by the folks over at Food Beast (that's their picture too - thanks Food Beast!) may I introduce to you the Foot Long Cheeseburger.

While there are no numbers on it yet, if we take a look at Carl's Jr.'s bacon cheeseburger's calories and multiply by 3 it may well run you in the neighbourhood of 2,460 calories and 5,070mg of sodium.

For those who like comparisons that'd be eating the caloric and sodium equivalent of roughly 5 KFC Double Downs.

Cost per calorie? Well we can't use the $4 cost because that doesn't include bacon but $7 apparently does so that'd be 3.5 calories per penny.

Head over to Food Beast to read their review and check out their pics.

Saturday Stories

Ezra Levant takes on Michael Ignatieff's speech on human rights where he states Canada can learn lessons from China, positive ones, on justice.

Peter from PhD Nomads and Obesity Panacea muses on friendships lost and what's important in life.

Never take dietary advice from Baba Ramdev!

Journalist Gaia Vince explains how Seed Magazine (the Scienceblog overlords), aren't strangers to questionable editorial decisions and then Emily Anthes quickly backs her up.

Apple provides Apple apostles with friends

Do you know an Apple apostle?

The Onion News Network does and that's what today's Funny Friday clip is all about.

Have a great weekend!


New Apple Friend Bar Gives Customers Someone To Talk At About Mac Products

PepsiCo. tries to buy credibility by buying ScienceBlogs

Wow.

For evidence based bloggers like me the news that ScienceBlogs has just published a new nutrition blog, Food Frontiers was shocking news. It was shocking because it's not being written by some hand-selected blogger, it's being written by Pepsi Cola.

So why does that matter?

Because PepsiCo.'s job isn't to push science or evidence based nutrition, Pepsi's job is to push calories and products that increase shareholder's value with no concern for the public good (unless the public good happens to sell products).

The irony on the blog itself is sugary sweet as well given that Pepsi's products have dramatically increased the burden of disease over the course of the past half century and yet their new ScienceBlog is reporting they're there to,

"Discuss the science behind the food industry’s role in addressing global public health challenges"

PepsiCo. of course isn't stupid. Their job is to make themselves look like the good guys and partnerships with folks like ScienceBlogs allow them to whitewash their sugary laundry in a way that simple press releases cannot.

Of course it's not just me who's upset - have a peek at some of ScienceBlog's own bloggers who are chomping at their own bits:

Orac from Respectful Insolence - Blindsided by my corporate overlords and PepsiCo

Peter Lipson from White Coat Underground - Rethinking blog networks and ethics

Grrlscience from Living the Scientist Life (with a URL that includes how she really feels) - Pepsi Ethics

Alex Wild from Myrmecos - Enjoy a nice cold Pepsi today.

Mark C. Chu-Carroll from Good Math, Bad Math - Seed, Conflicts of Interest and Sleaze.

Jason G. Goldman from The Thoughtful Animal - A Pepsi Blog? Initial Thoughts.

Janet D. Stemwedel from Adventures in Ethics and Science - Welcome to Inescapable Conflict of Interest

Abel Pharmboy from Terra Sigillata - PepsiCo Food Frontiers blog did not have to be a #sbFAIL

Martin Rundkvist from Aardvarcheology - An Egoistic Perspective on the Pepsiblog Debacle

John Wilbanks from Common Knowledge - Of Pepsi and ScienceBlogs...

John Dupuis from Confessions of a Science Librarian - A Teachable Moment

Joshua Rosenau from Thoughts from Kansas - More on Pepsi

And so far Sharon from Causobon's Book, James Hrynyshyn from Class: M, Rebecca Skloot from Cuture Dish, Erik Klemetti from Eruptions Mark Chu-Carroll from Good Math, Bad Math, Chris Rowan and Anne Jefferson from Highly Allochtonous, Brian Switek from Laelaps, Mike from Mike the Mad Biologist, Alex Wild at Myrmecos, David Dobbs at Neuron Culture, Scicurious at Neurotopia, Eric Michael Johnson from The Primate Diaries, Dave Bacon from The Quantum Pontiff, Blake Stacey from Science after Sunclipse, and Maryn McKenna from Superbug, have either gone on hiatus or quit in disgust.

That's 33% of all current ScienceBloggers either pissed off or gone due Seed's strange decision to start selling blogs.

Interestingly here's what Seed Media Group has to say about how ScienceBlogs goes about choosing their bloggers,

"We have selected our 80+ bloggers based on their originality, insight, talent, and dedication and how we think they would contribute to the discussion at ScienceBlogs."

And yet for Food Frontiers there's no particular voice they've chosen as according to the Food Frontiers sidebar,

"All editorial content is written by PepsiCo's scientists or scientists invited by PepsiCo and/or ScienceBlogs"

My advice to Seed Media - if you're not going to dump Food Frontiers, at the very least change your ScienceBlogs About Us page to reflect the fact that you'll also sell anyone a blog if the price is right because if you didn't haul in a huge wad of dough for this asinine move then you're crazier than I imagine and given who you've just sold out to, I think you're pretty freakin' crazy.

[Update 10:32AM - The word on Twitter is that ScienceBlogs will be dumping Food Frontiers though I haven't seen anything official anywhere

Update 11:01AM - Official word]

Heart and Stroke Jump Rope for Pizza

Ever hear of the Heart and Stroke Jump Rope for Heart program? Basically school children across Canada skip rope to fundraise for the Heart and Stroke Foundation.

According to the Heart and Stroke Jump Rope for Heart parents' page the program is important because,

"The biggest threat today is childhood obesity, with 26% of Canada's children (2 - 17 year olds) being overweight or obese - over 1.6 million!

JUMP FOR A HEALTHIER TOMORROW

At the Heart and Stroke Foundation, we're working hard to stop this trend through programs like Jump Rope for Heart."

One of my reader's elementary school kids participated in this year's Jump Rope for Heart and you wanna guess what they and all their friends received for jumping rope for a few minutes? They each received a coupon for a free kid's meal at Boston Pizza, a Heart and Stroke Foundation mega-sponsor.

I've blogged about the unholy partnership between Boston Pizza and the Heart and Stroke Foundation before with regards to their Valentine's Day heart shaped pizzas and the Health Check restaurant program, but this really takes it to a new level of abominable.

Why?

Before I get into some numbers, bare in mind that the recommended maximal number of calories per kid's meal is 400 and that a child's recommended daily total sodium intake is 1200mg, and that childhood obesity is the primary driver behind the Heart and Stroke Jump for Heart program.

Now, doing the math on the Heart and Stroke Jump for Heart coupon kid's'meals, the average meal (and full disclosure here, I admittedly didn't include the "Baked Salmon" main or the "Steamed Vegetables" side because what kid in their right mind would order them when eating out at Boston Pizza) contains 742 calories and 1,197mg of sodium - 2 meals worth of calories and a full day's worth of sodium.

But that's just the average. If your kid eats the Boston Pizza grilled chicken sandwich with mayo, a side of fries, a juice and a "Monster Cookie", they'll consume a Heart and Stroke Foundation sponsored 1,293 calories and 2,220mg of sodium along with 10 teaspoons of sugar for good measure.

So there's a few great lessons for these impressionable kids - unhealthy food is a fabulous reward for good deeds and that a few minutes of light exercise earns a highly processed, high calorie, high sodium and high sugar meal.

Oh but parents, don't worry. According to the Jump Rope for Heart website,

"When your child participates, they learn the importance of physical activity, healthy eating and social responsibility."

Because what's healthier than your child eating a full day's worth of calories and two days worth of sodium in one meal at Boston Pizza, and what's more socially responsible than a for-health, non-profit organization like the Heart and Stroke Foundation encouraging families to eat out at restaurants to help combat the scourge of childhood obesity?

Fire. Them. All.

Built environments impact on obesity through food, not fitness.

Chalk up another causal win to food in the battle of what's responsible for our current obesity epidemic - this time in the arena of built environment.

Built environment is the term given to the neighbourhood you live in. It has to do with things like walkability, parks, bike paths, sidewalks and all the various and sundry that city planners can do to try to shape your use of where you live.

Built environment is also a hot button issue at obesity conferences with researchers trying to find ways to get people moving more through smarter urban planning.

My belief is that casually moving more doesn't matter too much with regards to obesity. There's simply no amount of sidewalks or bike paths or beautiful parks that you could put in a neighbourhood to help with the issue of obesity because obesity is primarily about energy intake, not energy output, and really no amount of leisurely strolling is going to negate our horrendously calorific food environment.

But built environment does matter. What matters about the built environment though is food and how close you are to it, and what type it is.

In a study published this month in the Journal of Planning Education and Research Samina Raja et al looked at the influence of built and food environments on 172 women's BMIs in Erie County New York between 1999-2004.

What did they find?

1. The more restaurants within walking distance the higher the BMI (p=0.037).

2. The closer you live to a healthful food destination (supermarket), the lower the BMI (p=0.025).

3. Walkability didn't make one whit of difference.

Interestingly the authors listed the fact that they didn't know the types of restaurants as a limitation and suggested that there might be healthier ones. I'd argue, with exceedingly rare exceptions, restaurant food, regardless of whether it's sit down, stand up, casual, or fancy, has non-intuitively, astronomically large numbers of calories.

Ultimately what matters isn't the sidewalks, it's where they take you.

Raja, S., Li Yin, ., Roemmich, J., Changxing Ma, ., Epstein, L., Yadav, P., & Ticoalu, A. (2010). Food Environment, Built Environment, and Women's BMI: Evidence from Erie County, New York Journal of Planning Education and Research, 29 (4), 444-460 DOI: 10.1177/0739456X10367804

How do you know you're on a "good" diet?

Simple. You like it.

What do I mean?

Tolerating a diet's not good enough. If you're only tolerating your new lifestyle you're certainly not likely to keep living it.

Food wise - you can't be regularly battling hunger, it can't be making you feel unwell and your life has to be "normal" meaning you should be able to include food for comfort, food for celebration, with no forbidden foods.

Fitness wise - you can't be running out of time, running out of energy, hurting yourself or hating it.

Ultimately you're aiming for a lifestyle where you can't happily eat any less and you can't happily exercise any more.

Sure we can all improve our lifestyles but to use an extreme example, do you really think you can be a tee-totaling vegan, shut-in, marathon runner forever?

If you can't happily eat less, you're not going to eat less. If you can't happily exercise more, you're not going to exercise more.

Your goal should be your personal best recognizing that the best lifestyle you can enjoy and the best lifestyle that you can tolerate are two very different things.

Is there any other aspect of your life about which you're striving to be "ideal"?

Saturday Stories

Torontoist discusses their experience on the ground with the moronoic protestors at Toronto's G20.

The New York Times does a great job covering the controversy surrounding Dr. Zamboni's new-fangled treatment for MS and here's a report on a study that refutes Zamboni's initial findings.

Harvard toxicologist Julie Goodman tells moms to keep using BPA containing products.

Pharmalot has an interesting piece on the limits of conflicts of interest in scientific publishing. I think ultimately the question can be thought of as is confirmation bias a conflict of interest? Since we all have them, I guess we're all conflicted.

I want a piece of Bubbie's strudel!

Today's Funny Friday is another gem from Old Jews Telling Jokes.

Have a great weekend!

Honest ad executive calls for kids' advertising ban

His name is Alex Bogusky and he's the "Chief Creative Insurgent" (aka the boss) of MDC Partners who according to Wikipedia are the 10th largest advertising agency in the world (and who have one of the coolest websites I've ever seen). Consequently he certainly knows more than you or I do about the ins, outs, evils and lies of advertising and since his clients have included the likes of Burger King, Domino's and Coca Cola to name just a few, he also probably knows more about how Big Food markets than we do.

So what has Alex recently called for on his blog? An advertising award given to the consumer brand that

"takes into consideration all the potential effects of their marketing and have built a plan that carefully avoids abusing the power of advertising"

He's calling it the Cannes Crystal Grand Prix Lion.

More specifically he's calling for a ban on advertising to children as he believes that cognitively they're simply unable to see the world in shades of gray and hence are defenseless,

"As we all know from experience, children are not small grownups. Their brains are fundamentally different, the big difference being that right hemisphere brain development doesn’t really kick in until the age of twelve. This is important because without the right hemisphere involved, all decisions and concepts are very black and white....And this leaves them fundamentally and developmentally unequipped to deal with advertising in the way an adult can."

The picture he paints of a post-children advertising ban is indeed rosy. He sees improved eating as Moms and Dads won't be caving into the pressure to buy their kids the crap their televisions tell them they want and by extension he sees improved parent-child relationships and increased childhood self-esteem. He sees increased incentives for kids to get involved in free thinking play as television networks built off the backs of children's nag power/advertising dollars crumble and kid TV becomes less lucrative to air. He sees companies being forced to make healthier kids' foods as now it'll be left to Mom and Dad to determine what should enter their homes and he sees those companies feeling better about themselves.

Alex once turned down Burger King's kids' marketing campaign and hopes that somewhere out there a major Big Food player's public relations team is going to decide that it'd be well worth it to call for and support a ban on advertising to kids. He figures that North America's ready to applaud just such a move and that applause would serve that insightful firm as all the marketing it needs.

Head over to Alex' blog and be sure to read his whole piece.

Kudos to Alex Bogusky!