Health Canada's Whole Grain Cover Up

I'm the first person who'll tell you there's plenty I don't know, but I have to admit I was surprised to learn what I didn't know about "whole wheat" in Canada.

This morning Rosie Schwartz, consulting dietitian, author and National Post columnist exposed yet another Health Canada failing - turns out that in Canada a food label that reads 100% whole wheat doesn't mean that it contains 100% whole wheat!

A labeling law dating back to 1964 allows products with roughly 70% of the whole grain's germ removed (in this case the word germ refers not to a bacteria but rather to the germ, the bran and the endosperm of the wheat) to still call themselves whole wheat.

Frankly I'm flabbergasted.

Rosie contacted often posted about here Dr. Walter Willett from Harvard to offer his thoughts on this matter and here's what he had to say,

"Whole wheat should mean the whole wheat and nothing but the whole wheat. Excluding part of the germ means the loss of essential fatty acids, antioxidants and other important nutrients. Whole grain consumption can reduce risks of heart attacks and type 2 diabetes. Consumers of "whole grains" with 70% of the germ missing may be rudely disappointed when they land in hospital"

Combine that with Health Canada's brilliant recommendation to make only "half your grains whole" in the draft Food Guide (fingers are firmly crossed hoping this will change) and you can basically kiss the benefits of whole grain consumption goodbye to anyone following the Food Guide's recommendations.

If this upsets you as much as it does me, you can do something about it.

Until February 12th, 2007 Health Canada is accepting submissions for a revision on their definition of whole grain.

You can send your submission to:

Section Head: Nutrition Labelling and Claims
Nutrition Evaluation Division, Health Canada
Sir Frederick G. Banting Research Centre,
251 promenade Sir Frederick Banting Driveway
A.L. 2203A
Ottawa, ON Canada, K1A 0K9

Or email them at: healthclaims_submissions@hc-sc.gc.ca

Though why they need folks to send their submissions to help change a labeling law that contributes to increased morbidity in Canadians is beyond me, but far from surprising given the political, industry pandering, bureaucratic quagmire that apparently is Health Canada.

Chocolate Cereal - Your new Weight Loss Weapon?

Nothing says weight loss like chocolate cereal!

Special K, in that special way they have of marketing refined carbohydrates and sugar as a powerful weight loss aid, have now extended their never-ending wisdom to chocolate, or at least the suggestion of chocolate, because despite the name "Special K Chocolatey Delight", the cereal doesn't actual contain any chocolate. Instead it contains "chocolatey" chunks that include sugar, partially hydrogenated palm kernel oil, cocoa processed with alkall, cocoa, soy lecithin, artifical flavor and milk. I suppose that's why it's a chocolatey delight and not a chocolate one.

The news release is a quobesity goldmine, starting with the fact that the entire news release is written only about women.

Here are some of my favourites:

"Research shows by replacing a higher-calorie evening snack with a lower-calorie snack, like a bowl of Special K(R) Chocolatey Delight(TM) cereal, women may lose weight."

You don't say. Eat less calories and lose weight?

"Women's eating habits can swing dramatically good to bad throughout the day, including during the evening hours, according to an August 2005 study by Insight Research Group for Kellogg Company."

Not men though. We're immune to "eating habit swings".

"We know from talking with women that they want simple tips and tools, not rules, to help them meet their weight-management goals"

Ummm, isn't "Eat a bowl of cereal instead of another snack" kind of like a rule or something?

How about this for a rule, look at the Calories in your usual foods and try to replace them with foods lower in Calories.

Here's another one. Don't fall prey to the marketing machine that promotes refined carbohydrates and sugar as either healthy choices or weight loss options.

[Hat tip Nutrinformation Blog]

Big Food Coup for Hershey's!

Check out these new Valentine's day stamps.

Available at your local US post office, they feature quite prominently the venerable Hershey's Kiss.

Amazingly the Kiss has been around for 100 years.

I guess that kind of staying power gets you a national stamp.

Anyone out there know if Hershey's pays for this kind of advertising?

If you want to figure out something to do with your Kisses, head over to the Hershey's website where believe it or not there are 64 recipes.

We like Kisses at our house - they've been extremely successful as potty training tools - Brown gets you brown (whereas yellow just gets you stickers). Amazingly I did not note this use on the Hershey's Kiss page.

25 Calories per.

[Hat tip to bookofojoe]

Always Prepare before an Interview

Stephen Colbert's interviewing skills are frightening. Watching his show I often wonder how it is he's able to keep a straight face and how it is that someone's PR people would allow them to be interviewed by him.

Here's an example of what I'm talking about.

Have a great weekend!

Who Wants a Doughnut Bacon Cheeseburger?

It consists of a thick and juicy burger topped with sharp cheddar cheese and two slices of bacon. The burger is then placed in between each side of a Krispy Kreme Original Glazed doughnut.

You can buy it in Sauget, Illinois at the home of the Frontier Baseball League's Gateway Grizzlies.

A 1,000 Calorie Dinner-ssert!

Who needs separate courses!

Oy.

Big Food Money buys Study Results!

Hot on the heels of yesterday's post (detailing Big Milk's Info-Udy) comes proof that my cynicism is well warranted.

A non-industry funded study in this month's Public Library of Science Journal looked at the relationship between the funding source and the conclusions among nutrition related scientific articles.

They identified three types of studies - interventional studies, observational studies and scientific reviews having to do with soft drinks, juice and milk published between January 1999 and January 2004. There were 206 articles in the study and of them 22% were funded by Big Food, 47% had no Big Food funding and 32% had mixed funding.

The studies were sadly not surprising.

For interventional studies (where a beverage was used as in intervention like increasing milk consumption to minimize fracture risk) the proportion of industry funded studies with results unfavourable to the intervention was ZERO percent comapared with 37% for non-industry funded studies.

So not a single interventional study funded by Big Food provided a result or conclusion that was unfavourable to the funding source!

For all studies, the odds of a Big-Food-favourable conclusion vs. an unfavourable conclusion was 6.18 times more likely if the study was funded by Big Food, a number that rose to 7.61 times if you eliminated the neutral studies.

Again I have to reiterate, think about where you read it - always, always question the source!

Think About Your Drink - a New Milk Info-Udy

If you haven't heard it yet, you'll hear it soon, the new mantra of milk ads, "Think about your drink". They have a website, a "study", and already ample media attention.

So why did I put the word study in quotations?

Because this report is to studies what infomercials are to commercials. I'll call it an info-udy

The info-udy is called, "What America Drinks: How Beverages Relate to Nutrient Intakes and Body Weight".

The first tip-off that something's up is the fact that this info-udy was not actually published in a medical journal but rather was,

"commissioned by the Milk Processor Education Program. What America Drinks is a component of an education campaign called Think About Your Drink."

The rest of the tip-offs come from the content. How's this line for objective empirical conclusions?

"The results of this study show that beverages make significant contributions to calorie and nutrient intakes of Americans. Milk provided Americans with a substantial portion of essential nutrients, while other types of beverages tended to contribute substantially to calories and added sugar intakes but provided few nutrients other than vitamin C, potassium and some folate"

Looking at their data, depending on the age group, milk actually is the second highest contributor of liquid calories to most diets, but of course, it's not spun that way.

Here's another oddity. The info-udy did something I've never seen before. They took their data, divided folks by age and sex and then subdivided by beverage intake, with two categories. The first category was "High Milk/Low Sweetened Beverage" consumers and the second was, "Low Milk/High Sweetened Beverage Consumers". They then drew conclusions from the body mass indices of these groups and concluded that folks who drank more milk weighed less that folks who drank more sugared beverages. Big problem here - they didn't bother controlling for anything else!

What if the folks who drank more milk did so because they were trying to live what they thought were healthier lifestyles (after all, milk's done a bang up job of marketing itself as a healthy choice)? Perhaps they were more active? Perhaps their dietary choices as a whole were lower in calories? The info-udy tries to suggest that they controlled for calorie intake, but with a dietary recall study, that's pretty much impossible.

Bottom line, when you hear the call to action, "Think About What you Drink", I'd advise you to, "Think About Where you Heard it".

So what's not in the report? How about the fact that higher dairy consumption has been shown to be linked with increased risks of ovarian cancer and increased severity of prostate cancer? How about the fact that higher dairy consumption has not been shown to minimize the risk of osteoperosis?

Oh, and if this type of info-udy and its reporting bothers you, if you feel that there's an obvious lack of objectivity, if you feel that the scientists involve should not be selling their good names for such clearly spun data, it might also bother you to learn that Susan Barr, the scientist who according to the report itself, "provided invaluable input on the design of the study and the analysis of the results" is a member of the 12-member advisory board to the revisions to the Canada's Food Guide - interestingly her official Food Guide bio doesn't mention her ties with Big Milk (she's a member of the medical advisory board for the International Dairy Foods Association)

No, our upcoming Food Guide couldn't possibly be influenced by conflicts of interest (please note the non-veiled sarcasm).

Chalk up another win for the marketing machine that is Big Milk!

CBC Time Change

If there is anyone out there planning on listening to my interview with the CBC, the time has been changed from 10:30am to 10:05am on CBC Radio One.

Stupidest Weight Loss Drug Ever Round II

It's called Slentrol and it's being marketed by Pfizer as a prescription weight loss drug for dogs.

Yes, I did just write a prescription weight loss drug for dogs.

So where does this dramatic rise in canine obesity come from?

It must be the growing prevalence of suburbia where the dogs are much more likely to drive to work than walk. Or perhaps it's all of the commercials that basically brainwash dogs into eating more. Maybe it's the rapid growth of fast dog food restaurants where dogs get to great-dane-ersize all of their portions for just a few pennies. I suppose it's also possible there's a new doggie gut bacteria causing rapid weight gain, or maybe an adenovirus?

Or maybe, just maybe, it's from their owners feeding them too much food and not going out with them for exercise?

If a doggie weight loss drug isn't enough of an example for you of a world gone wrong, how about a doggie gym? Or a doggie treadmill?

Here's a simple rule - you know your lifestyle needs a major makeover if : (a) Your dog is fat, and (b) The best solution you can come up with for helping your dog lose weight is a prescription weight loss drug.

Mmmm Coffee!

Yesterday if I hadn't had coffee, I may not have made it through the day. I was up at roughly 4:00am so that I could have some time to blog and get down to the CBC Radio One studios by 6:30am for an interview.

This Monday at 10:30am on CBC Radio One, on their show, Sounds Like Canada, my interview will run along with others detailing the politics of the creation of the Canada's Food Guide. As my readers will know, I'm not a big fan of the Food Guide or the entrenchment of Big Food in its creation.

In honour of my fatigue and Funny Fridays, here's a classic Saturday Night Live skit featuring decaf coffee and the comedic stylings of the late Chris Farley.

Have a great weekend!

Seventeen Magazine makes me want to Vomit!

Ok, that's a bit of an exaggeration, but I do find the magazine to be rather repulsive.

But the question that researchers have asked and that the media has reported on is does reading magazines like Seventeen make young women vomit, practice other disordered eating behaviours or negatively affect their body images?

A study conducted by Dr. Patricia van den Berg looked at over 2,500 teenage girls and boys in Minnesota and followed them for 5 years. They followed their body image attitudes, whether or not they fasted, skipped meals, smoked, binged or used laxatives to help control their weight, and the frequency with which they read dieting articles in the lay press. What they were looking to see was whether or not reading the shlock dieting articles in magazines like Seventeen led to an increase in any or all of these behaviours or attitudes.

The authors concluded that indeed, among teenage girls (not boys), more frequent reading of diet articles led to increased frequency of unhealthy eating behaviours and unhealthy body images.

BUT, and this is a very big but, the researchers did NOT control for weight gain over the 5 years of this study and it's affect on these young women.

Teenage years are hard to say the least. Given societal role models for teenage girls, gaining weight would almost certainly lead many teenagers to look for help. Where would they look for help? Well they'd probably look at what they might well already have at hand - magazines, and the diet/weight loss articles therein.

Frankly the omission of a control for weight or BMI at the end of the study is a staggering one. I think it is extremely likely that those girls who may have gained more weight during the five years of the study would in turn be the ones to be more likely to read diet articles, be more likely to engage in unhealthy eating behaviors and have more difficulties with their body images.

I don't doubt that the fascinating pieces like the one in the issue above entitled, "Is that my Butt?" can't help with a young woman's body image, but to blame the articles for triggering unhealthy eating behaviours and attitudes is not substantiated because weight gain was not taken into consideration during the study as a possible cause of trouble.

It's a matter of chicken and egg and in many cases I would venture, the weight comes first and may well inspire disordered eating even in the absence of reading dieting articles.

Heck, a large percentage of the adult population turns to unhealthy behaviours to lose weight and has poor body images, why should teenage girls be any different?

A Ph.D. in Fat Studies?

An article published in the New York Times recently discussed the growing field of "Fat Studies" - a discipline dedicated to the social and political consequences of weight.

The concept behind the field is to follow an approach similar to that of the women's movement in the 60s with the birth of women's studies and more recently in the 90s of gay and lesbian studies - as the New York Times put it all of these disciplines are, "a study of a people its supporters believe are victims of prejudice, stereotypes and oppression by mainstream society."

I think it's a great idea.

There's an absolutely tremendous amount of anti-weight bias in society and scholarly research on both its impact and potentially a means to help combat bias is a great idea, especially considering that obesity is not something that's going to be disappearing from society any time soon.

I have no doubt that some of the courses will take a very anti-intentional weight loss view and that others will likely purport that all the research ever done that has ever shown any risk with weight to be flawed - but I don't really care. We need passionate people on both sides of the fence to advance this issue forward, both in terms of ethical and effective approaches to weight management and in terms of countering the bias of what has often been referred to as the last socially acceptable form of stereotype.

Perhaps when I retire I'll go back to school.

Why Do my Plates Keep Yelling at me?

Put this one on your do-not-buy list.

Dr Hryhory Chausovsky, a Ukrainian scientist from the University of Zaporizhia's Life Activities Laboratory has invented the irritating plate (he calls it a talking plate).

The plate is quite small, 15cm in diameter and it's hooked up to a small computer and has a built in scale.

If the plate decides you've put too much food on it, it yells at you,

"Stop right there",

"What about excess weight?"

"Where's your willpower?"

Chausovsky apparently hasn't met really anyone with a background in nutrition. The problem with his vision, as I'm sure many of you are aware, is that weight alone does not dictate the nutritional or caloric content of a food. I don't want my heaping plate of salad yelling at me and asking me about my willpower.

The plate reminds me of a common occurrence in many households - Food Cops.

He or she is the guy that watches you carefully while you eat and asks "helpful" questions like, "Are you supposed to eat that?" and "How much of that are you allowed?".

Food cops aren't helpful. Instead of helping they push our buttons - buttons that once pushed, often lead to angry eating.

If you've got a food cop at home feel free to forward this blog where they can read the only question they're is ever allowed to ask you, and they're only allowed to ask it once. The question is,

"Is there anything that I can do to help you honey?"

And if the answer's no, no more questions.

Calorie Awareness - A Doable New Year's Resolution

So it's New Year's and therefore it's also resolution time.

Sure lose weight, exercise more, are the most common New Year's resolutions, but how many people stick to them?

May I suggest an easily achievable resolution - Calorie Awareness.

I'm not telling you to count Calories, I'm not telling you that Calories are bad and that a food simply having lots of Calories makes it unhealthy. What I'm suggesting is that you make 2007 a year where you practice Calorie Awareness.

Simply know what you're eating.

I've used the money analogy before - before you buy something it's a good idea to know how much is in your bank account, how much you make a month and how much it costs. As far as weight goes, it's currency is Calories and therefore it's a good idea to know how many Calories you burn in a daytime, how many you've had and how many you want.

In terms of how many you burn I've provided the link before, but here it is again. The best online how many calories do I burn calculator I've ever found is located here.

In terms of how many Calories you have, yes counting works better than simple awareness, but I bet lots of folks don't keep carefully balanced cheque books every month, instead they simply try to remain aware of how much they've spent. How do they do it? Well certainly they know how much they make and definitely they read the price tags. There may be some months here and there where their Visa bills are surprising, but it's definitely a better strategy than not paying attention to prices at all.

The price tag of weight is Calories. Look at the food label and use the four simple rules I posted before to evaluate it. With regards to home recipes, spend the time figuring out how many calories are in them. Most families only have a few recipes that they eat over and over, once you've figured them out once, you'll never have to do it again. Simply take all the ingredients and head over to a website like Calorie King and plug them into their search engine and add them all up.

So eat high Calorie foods, but you pick and choose when they're worth it. And a simple rule for eating out - estimate and then add at least 40%. Lastly remember that Dr. Wansink would tell you not to trust your eyes. Consider buying a high quality kitchen scale to really track how much you're choosing. Scale's job is to tell you how much you've had, not how much you're allowed.

So by all means, pick those other resolutions, but make sure at the very least, you keep this one.

Happy New Year!

Jamba Juice - More Calories than a Footlong Meatball Sub!

It's possible that fruit and vegetables are the easiest products in the world to market as healthy.

Everyone and his mother, this blog included, touts the health benefits of fruit and vegetable consumption.

That said, there's a world of difference between eating fruit and drinking it, and part of that world is calories.

Jamba Juice, a rapidly growing fruit smoothie franchise is a case in point.

On their website, they blindly stick to the low fat message and extol the virtue of carbohydrates,

"You can see that fat on a weight basis yields more than twice the energy per gram compared to carbohydrates and proteins. But since the body uses carbohydrates for energy, and carbohydrate foods also provide other nutrients, you should try to meet your energy needs with carbohydrates rather than fats."

So how much energy are we talking about at Jamba Juice?

Insane amounts!

If you were to drink their "Power" version of virtually any of their products, you're drinking more calories than a Big Mac.

If you were to choose unwisely (with unwise here not really referring to calories, but rather to a choice that you felt was a healthy one because it was Jamba Juice after all), and had their Power Peanut Butter Moo'd, which as described by the Jamba Juice website is,

"Made with all-natural peanut butter, this super-smoothie is chock full of good stuff and tastes great too."

and then you looked at the ingredients,

"nonfat frozen yogurt, chocolate moo’d base, soymilk, ice, frozen bananas, all-natural peanut butter"

and thought, gee, that seems healthy, I'll have that, wanna know what you'd be having?

1170 Calories! The equivalent of 2 Big Macs, a foot long meatball marinara sub, a 1.5lb T-Bone steak or almost a full cup of peanut butter.

Yummy?

So why did I go off on this Jamba Juice rant? Well for Funny Friday of course.

Here's Natalie Portman in one of the best skits I've seen on SNL in years, making fun of the added health benefits of the "boosts" of Jamba Juice.

Have a great weekend and happy New Year!

Why Does Universal Studios care more about you than Health Canada?

Well, maybe that's just blogger license to get you to read, but as of this Christmas Eve, Universal Studios Hollywood is trans-fat free.

Trans-fats, as covered in one of my prior posts, aren't very good for you. Trans fats have been shown to raise bad cholesterol, raise triglycerides, lower good cholesterol and make our blood stickier increasing the risk of blood clots. Trans fats have also been shown to increase the process of inflammation in our body which in turn has been implicated in heart disease and diabetes and may well also be involved in other disease processes.

Amazingly in Canada despite the wealth of knowledge on the risks of trans-fats, despite the June 2006 final report of Health Canada's trans-fat task force calling for a dramatic regulatory minimization of trans-fat in our food supply, it appears to this outsider at least, that Health Canada has spent the last 6 months apparently doing nothing to try to put their recommendations into action (no doubt much to the joy of the Canadian Restaurants and Food Services Association and the Food and Consumer Products of Canada Association - Merry Christmas Big Food, Love, Health Canada).

The thing is, we're talking about a product which without tremendous upheaval (Denmark has been trans-fat free since December 2003) can indeed be removed from the food supply. If applied to North America, according to the Center for Science in the Public interest, a trans-fat ban could save 11,000-30,000 lives per year along with $50 billion in annual health care costs.

I suppose given my experiences with Health Canada and Canada's Food Guide, I shouldn't be too surprised - remember, Health Canada didn't even bother to mention the words trans-fats in the draft of their upcoming new Food Guide.

Sometimes I wish I lived in Denmark.

Kudos to Universal Studios.

Weight Loss Decreases your Risk of Aggressive Prostate Cancer

This month's Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers and Prevention journal has a fascinating study on the effect of weight loss on the development of prostate cancer (Full-text free here).

Author Carmen Rodriguez and colleagues were curious to see whether or not weight loss affected the risk of prostate cancer.

Seven of nine prior prospective studies had demonstrated that increased weight was associated not with increased risks of prostate cancer overall, but rather increased risk of aggressive prostate cancer and prostate cancer mortality.

The study population started with the 86,404 male participants of the Cancer Prevention Study II Nutrition Cohort followed by the American Cancer Society since 1992.

In a methodology too rarely seen in weight loss studies, the authors chose to exclude the first 2 years of followup (1992-1994) for their 11 year study due to the fact that many diseases lead to weight loss, and should initial weight loss be unintentional and due to an as yet diagnosed serious illness, the results from those individuals would negatively skew the results of the study. This type of lead-in bias in studies including weight as a variable has certainly tainted the results of the many of them that did not include a first-few years weight loss exclusion criteria.

The results were rather striking.

Firstly the risk of low-grade (less aggressive) prostate cancer actually decreased significantly with increasing weight! In contrast however, the risk of high grade (more aggressive) prostate increased with increasing weight, as did the risk of metastatic spread from the prostate and prostate cancer mortality.

(For the authors comments as to some possible biological explanations for these trends, read their clear discussion in their paper)

In terms of weight loss, men who lost 11 or more pounds between 1982 and 1992 had a 40% lower risk of developing aggressive prostate cancer!

That weight increases your risk of developing cancer has certainly been established beyond any significant shadows of doubt in multiple prior studies. What's so exciting about this study is that it's now the second study that has specifically identified intentional weight loss as a means to decrease your risk of cancer (the first demonstrating that women who lost 22lbs had a 60% decrease in their risk of developing breast cancer, published in 2006 in JAMA).

11 pounds is certainly not 100!

Truly even small amounts of weight loss can lead to dramatic affects on your health.

Children's Fitness Tax Credit for Rich Canadians

Last week Jim Flaherty, the Minister of Finance, released the guidelines for the Children's Fitness Tax Credit.

If you want to use it, it's sure as heck gonna cost ya.

In order to qualify you'll have to enroll your child in an ongoing supervised program that,

"includes a significant amount of physical activity that contributes to cardio-respiratory endurance, plus one or more of: Muscular strength, muscular endurance, flexibility, and balance."

But wait, there's more! Eligible programs must,

"last at least eight weeks at a minimum of one session per week"

That sure sounds like one hell of an expensive tax credit as it's not as if the credit's going to cover the costs of these programs in their entirety!

What about the Canadians who can't afford to send their children to organized programs?

What about the Canadians who might live in the country where the availablity of such programs is minimal?

What about the Canadians whose kids don't happen to enjoy organized sports?

What about the Canadians who are too busy trying to put food on their tables to drive their kids around to sports, let alone outfitting them in gear and paying for their supervision?

Does the government really think that a small tax credit is actually going to enable families who otherwise can't afford to send or outfit their children for organized sports to actually do so?

Why can't the tax credit be applied to anything that might promote physical activity in children?

What about the purchase of skates? A family might not be able to afford to send their kid to play competitive hockey, but a pair of skates and a local rink sure can afford a kid a great deal of exercise.

What about running shoes, a sled, roller blades, a baseball glove, a football or a basketball net?

Why does play have to be organized and supervised in order to be valuable as a determinant of health?

It may surprise you to learn that over the course of the last seven years, Canada has posted a budget surplus of over $60 billion, and it's predicted that there will be similar surpluses over the next seven years.

Why not use some of it to help all of our children become more active, not just the rich ones?

CLA - Far from a Magic Weight Loss Bullet

The media are alive with the sound of CLA!

I can't get over the number of articles I've read, in both mainstream and blogosphere press, about the benefits of supplementation with CLA (conjugated linoleic acid) on body weight and body fat percentage, and all from a very small, limited, and poorly designed study.

The study took 40 (yes, just 40) people and randomly assigned 20 to receive a CLA supplement and 20 to a placebo for a 6 month period. The subjects were exclusively young (between the ages of 18 and 44) and none of them were obese to begin with (BMI between 25 and 30). They were watched to see if there was a difference in weight loss and/or a difference in their body fat percentage.

The study was written in a manner that was supposed to reflect "holiday weight gain" by being conducted over the course of last year's Christmas holiday season. That said, while the study participants were indeed controlled so that the placebo and control groups were roughly the same age and weight, what was not controlled for was lifestyle.

What do I mean by that? Well, there's no note about whether or not the participants used gyms, whether or not they had sedentary or active jobs and importantly, given the aim to discuss "Holiday" weight gain, their religions, whether or not they had large family gatherings over the holiday season and whether or not they themselves celebrated a holiday season were not mentioned in the methodology or controls.

Regardless, even if we ignore the clear lack of appropriate controls, the results were far from spectacular.

With a percentage just barely greater than would happen by chance, the folks in the CLA group lost a grand total of 1.3lbs and their body fat percentage went down by 1%.

So what can we conclude from this paper?

Not too much.

Best case conclusion:

If you're a non-obese, young adult and you want to spend over $20 a month on CLA supplements, you may lose 1.3lbs over a 6 month period.

Woo-hoo?

Wanna know how else you could lose 1.3lbs over a 6 month period?

Burn or not eat 25 calories a day.

Hmmm, let's see, $120 in pills that may have long term risk (in multiple studies CLA has been shown to increase insulin resistance and increase deposition of fat in the liver and spleen) or you could simply walk for an extra 5 minutes every day.

As I tell all my patients, if there was something that I could sell them that would help them lose weight and help me pay the rent, I would.

Guess I'm the scrooge of supplements 'cause I don't sell any!

Merry Christmas to all those celebrating, and a big Bah-Humbug to the neutraceutical corporations and the press who get folks excited about non-exciting stuff!

The Creepiest Fast Food Mascots Ever!

Today for Funny Friday, a blast from the past.

The creepiest fast food mascots ever envisioned.

Watching the commercials I wonder two things: Firstly, how high were the folks who came up with these spots and secondly how is it possible that the folks over at Quiznos signed off on them?

So without further adieu, I bring you Quiznos' singing teratomas!

Have a great weekend!

[Hat tip and more creepy fast food mascots here]

Why the City is Now Wasting Less of my Tax Dollars

Just a follow up on the couriered packages sent by the City.

I have a friend and colleague in Ottawa Public Health with who I had addressed my concerns regarding the delivery costs of questionably useful materials.

I have been reassured by him that indeed this has been looked into and considered and here is the scoop:

With regards to the mailing on shaken baby syndrome, the costs were funded by the Province, not the City and it was sent out to less than 500 local family physicians at a cost of closer to $2,000 or $4 per shipment.

With regards to the actual content, the City is going to take a step back to take more time to evaluate the usefulness of the materials sent out.

With regards to offices where there are multiple doctors (like my friend who in his 11 person practice received 44 shaken baby posters with each doc getting their very own 4) they will only be sending one or two for the whole practice.

My friend with the City noted that he was told the cost of the shipment was less than what Canada Post had offered, and I believe that only with regards to courier costs, or same day delivery costs. At $4 per shipment, the cost is roughly the same as it would have been with regular mail without any discount whatsoever applied for bulk.

I discussed this matter with a high-ranking executive from Canada Post and was assured that there was no way that any type of couriered shipment could be cheaper than a bulk rate on regular mail.

I will continue to follow with interest the issue on mailing costs. I have asked the gentleman from Canada Post to provide me with a name of a salesperson so I can have him or her speak to my friend over at the City and hopefully I will have a final answer on that matter of cost soon.

Regardless, kudos to the City for looking into the matter so quickly and for making some very positive changes!

New Chinese Adoption Rules Ban the Very Obese

Since 1985 there have been close to 60,000 children adopted from China to parents in the United States. Last year alone there were close to 8,000.

The Chinese government, undeniably not one to be overly concerned with rights, recently imposed some new rules whereby they've imposed some exclusion criteria on foreign adoption applicants. They've barred applicants who are unmarried, over 50, on antidepressants, have a "severe facial deformity" or meet the NHLBI's definition of extreme obesity with a body mass index greater than 40.

I'm at a bit of a loss.

On the one hand, there's no doubt whatsoever that having a body mass index greater than 40 confers very dramatic medical risk of both illness and premature death. On the other hand, so too does smoking, a recent admission to the hospital for congestive heart disease, a diagnosis of cancer, and a myriad of other medical conditions.

Now it's possible that China discriminates against the other medical conditions as well, though certainly the article I read didn't mention them.

Bias against the obese is longstanding, not just in China, but globally. I still see political cartoons, regular cartoons and articles vilifying the obese. I still see "fat suits" advertised as fun Halloween costumes. To read about some of the bias against obesity in American society, read Kelly Brownell's fantastic paper on the matter.

Do you have negative attitudes towards the obese? Studies have shown that most of us do, there have even been studies that show folks with weight to lose look down on other folks with weight to lose.

The first step to stopping bias is identifying it. Take stock of your own responses and thoughts on obesity. The next time you interact with an individual with weight to lose, try and identify whether or not you've got negative associations, and then more importantly, try to rid yourself of them.

Obesity is predominantly a disease of the environment, not the individual.

I wonder whether or not China's new rules will affect the number of children adopted. While the BMI over 40 crowd is not terrifically large, it is growing rapidly. I imagine the bigger hit will be the ban on folks taking antidepressants, they're much more common, perhaps partially because societal bias as a whole is so damn pervasive and so damn depressing.

Stupidest Weight Loss Drug Ever?

Compellis Pharmaceuticals has secured a patent on a new pharmacological means to treat obesity.

Their solution?

A nasal spray that would take away your sense of smell and taste. The theory I suppose, if you don't like what you're eating because you can't taste it you'll eat less. If you read their patent application you'll find that it worked on rats!

While I'm well aware that weight is a terrifically important determinant of health and that folks will try a lot of crazy stuff to help themselves lose, do the folks over at Compellis really think that people would be willing to give up one of life's most basic pleasures, the taste of food, to lose weight?

Clearly they must, and certainly people might be willing to put up with that loss of pleasure while they lose weight, but as with any weight loss effort that involves any sort of suffering, as soon as the scale stops whispering sweet nothings, most folks will decide they want the suffering to end.

As I've stated in many posts before, unless you like the way you're losing weight; unless you plan on continuing to live that way forever; it'll never stay off.

If only Compellis were a public company that I could sell short....

Kids, remember to drink your Diet Coke Multivitamin!

Perhaps someday soon we'll be seeing ads like this old one for Ovaltine from Coca Cola soon.

According to Beverage Digest, the Coca Cola company plans to roll out Diet Coke Plus.

Plus what you ask?

Why plus vitamins, minerals and herbs and course.

A veritable multi-vitamin in a pop can.

Because nothing says healthy like Diet Coke.

Except perhaps Ovaltine (chocolate vitamin powder added to milk) which according to the old ad has:

More vitamin C than 4 ounces of orange juice

More vitamin B than 3 servings of oatmeal

More vitamin D than 10 ounces of butter

More protein than 3 eggs

More vitamin G (for those of you confused, Vitamin G is riboflavin) than 1 pound of sirloin steak

More iron than 3 servings of spinach

More niacin than 6 slices of enriched bread

More vitamin A than 2 servings of peas

More calcium and phosphorus than 2.5 servings of American cheese

And more food energy (calories) than 2 dishes of ice cream.

MMMmmm food energy.

Ovaltine by the way is still around. Now they also market directly to children with a product they call Max for Milk complete with happy cartoon boy.

Their website states,

"Just simply mix it with cold milk for a wholesome milkshake drink your kids can enjoy every day."

They also state,

"Each drink is made with the wholesome goodness of barley and malt, and contains 11 vitamins and 4 minerals – great to keep kids going! It also contains no artificial colours or sweeteners and is low in fat."

It's a good thing for Ovaltine that no one makes ice cream with multivitamins in it because that would be direct competition.

Everyone knows ice cream would be a great choice if there were multi-vitamins included!

Multi-vitamins make everything healthy, chocolate milk, carbonated beverages - you name it, it'll be good.

If you're confused here, please go back and include dripping sarcasm with the last two lines.

Frankly as far as I'm concerned, I'm turning down Ovaltine and Diet Coke Plus in favour of my new favourite functional food - Fibe Mini! I don't know what's in it, but as you can see from the following video, drinking it will morph you into a winged, lightsaber wielding superhero able to vanquish giant life size parasites and bacteria and bring joy back to the world!

The Skinny on Low Fat and Breast Cancer

It's because of headlines like this that I actually started writing this blog,

"Lower-fat diets cut breast cancer recurrence: Study".

They've been all over the net and newspapers over the course of the past few days, all because of a study that has followed 2,437 breast cancer survivors and compared those who followed a low-fat diet with those that didn't with regards to breast cancer recurrence.

The results, trumpeted loudly in the press, report that those with a lower fat diet had a 24% lower risk of breast cancer recurrence over a 7 year period.

Sounds great right? Low-fat must be the only way to go right?

Probably not.

It's not that a low-fat diet is a bad thing. It's not that I'm telling people not to follow low-fat approaches. It's just that the most likely reason for the reduction in recurrence in the low-fat group is the fact that the low-fat group lost weight.

Obesity and the risk of cancer is a very well established fact. The biggest study looking at cancer and obesity was conducted by Calle et al and published in the New England Journal of Medicine. The authors, after following over 900,000 men and women for over 16 years concluded that 20% of all cancer deaths in women were associated with overweight and obesity as were 14% of all cancer deaths in men.

To me, there's no doubt that there were some women in the control group (the non low-fat group) that also lost weight. I have no doubt because many women will take the diagnosis of breast cancer and use it to inspire them to live much healthier lives than before their diagnoses, improving their fitness, their dietary choices and quite often, their weights. Given that there is no formal in-paper comparison between low-fat weight losers' and regular fat weight losers' risks, and given that I'm by nature a highly suspicious guy, and given that an article stating that a low-fat diet reduces breast cancer recurrence risk is a much more exciting result than one that does not, I can't help but wonder if either the authors had those numbers and chose not to report the result that any way you lose weight is good, or if they purposely avoided crunching those numbers so as not to have to report them.

This argument wasn't lost on the American Cancer Society either, who in the press report I read specifically pointed out,

"that studies focusing on fat in the diet have not clearly shown this to be a breast cancer risk factor, although being overweight has been found to raise breast cancer risk, especially for women after menopause."

Clearly the argument wasn't lost on the authors of this study either as the last line of the Reuters piece reads,

"The researchers noted that women who ate less fat lost weight, and that the weight loss may have been at least partially responsible for lowering the relapse risk rather than the reduced fat intake alone."

So if you've had breast cancer should you go on a low-fat diet to improve your chances? Sure, but ONLY if you actually feel like you can live on that low-fat diet forever and more importantly ONLY if your low-fat diet leads you to lose weight.

Remember, weight loss has nothing to do with low-fat or low-carb. Weight loss has everything to do simply with lower calories, and whatever way works for you is good.

The World's Best Potato Latkes!

So Chanukah lands on Funny Friday, and therefore I've got to find something appropriate to both celebrations.

I found something great, but first something else great, a recipe for my wife's potato latkes:

Be forewarned - high Calorie, not very nutritious, but very, very yummy. Considering she makes them about twice a year, I feel fairly safe.

If you shape your latkes to be no more than about 1cm thick and about 10cm in diameter, we worked out the calories last year to be about 80-100 per latke.

6 potatoes peeled, pared, grated and drained well (squeeze out as much of the potato juice as you can - cheesecloth works great)
One small onion, grated
3 eggs
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
1/4 cup flour
1 tbsp canola oil
2tsp baking powder
Canola oil for frying

Combine all ingredients and either fry in pan with oil (flipping once when edges start to get crispy or look brown) OR bake in oven at 400F on oiled baking sheet/tin foil, flipping when edges look brown (obviously far fewer Calories if baked). Let cool on very absorbent paper towels and enjoy!

Why Does the City Waste My Tax Dollars Part II

15 minutes ago I received another couriered package from the City of Ottawa Public Health department. My understanding is that these packages go to every doctor in Ottawa.

In this high priority package (it was shipped via DHL Express, not DHL Ground) was 4 copies of a poster that advises a person to hold and rock but never shake a baby.

Indeed an important message, but really, did it need to be couriered to me express? Is tomorrow National Shake Your Baby Day and therefore an urgent pressing emergency public health measure?

Again I went to DHL's website and plugged in the dimensions and weight of the parcel. I wasn't given the option of DHL Express pricing but DHL ground had a rough cost of $15 per 4 posters.

Using the CPSO Doctor Search tool 3,359 doctors in Ottawa.

That's $50,385 in courier costs!

So for those keeping score, in 9 weeks our City has spent $100,770 to courier doctors a bunch of pretty much useless and certainly non-urgent materials (in early November I received my urgently couriered Flu Pandemic Preparedness Handouts).

Sure doesn't give me any warm and fuzzies.

UPDATE: See most recent post detailing City's investigation

What's Wrong with our Food Supply - on a Stick!

Drumroll please.

220 Calories each not including syrup. 53% of Calories from fat, including 4 grams of saturated fat.

How many are you going to have for breakfast?

Mmmm Frankenfood!

Rather than spend time trying to wax eloquently about them, I'll hand it over to an absolute hero of mine to do that for me - Mr. Jon Stewart.

Watch it quickly cause Viacom's lawyers are likely to yank it off the youtube.

The Easy Way to Read a Food Label

I scratch my head when I look at food labels. I can't imagine that the average consumer cares to know all of the information provided and can't help but wonder whether or not having so much information may simply cause the consumer to avoid using it.

Take for example Canadian Member of Parliament Rick Dykstra. In discussing the unfortunately defeated Bill C-283 he commented on his use of food labels,

"The frustrating part for me is that I don't know what three-quarters of the things are that are actually on the label itself, and then I need to get a magnifying glass to read what I don't know."

Rick's definitely not alone in his confusion, so for all of the Ricks out there, here is the quick, down-and-dirty, 4 step Nutrition Facts label reading program.

Step #1: Look at the Serving Size. Until Health Canada mandates more useful and toothful labeling laws, serving sizes are pretty arbitrary. Sometimes you'll see things like 1/2 a cookie serving sizes or 1/4 of a bag of microwave popcorn. Multiply everything on the label by the number of "servings" you personally imagine consuming.

Step #2: Look at the Calories. If you're watching your weight or concerned therein, less is more when it comes to Calories.

Step #3: Look at the fats. If you can avoid buying foods with trans-fats, do so. When it comes to saturated fats, less is more but don't sweat them too much. When it comes to unsaturated fats, don't worry about them at all and in fact, more is more.

Step #4: Look at the sugar. 4 grams of sugar per teaspoon (so you can quickly divide and see how many teaspoons of sugar you're getting). Less is more.

Seem too easy? Want some advanced techniques?

Advanced Step #1: Look at the fibre content. More is more.

Advanced Step #2: Look at the sodium content. Less is more.

Advanced Step #3: Look at the ingredients list. If sugar is listed as one of the top three ingredients, try and find an alternative.

Don't worry about the percentage daily values stuff, don't worry about the micronutrients (the various vitamins and minerals), and don't worry if you don't know for instance how much sodium is too much. The more frequently you look at the labels, the more of a grounding you'll get in what's out there and the more you'll know what's a lot and what's a little.

With regards to micronutrients and the percent daily values stuff, I recommend a multivitamin, and the cheap ones by the way work fine.

Consider a multivitamin nutritional insurance, not a license to eat poorly. Just because I have car and home insurance doesn't mean I don't buckle my seatbelt, drive safely and lock my house when I leave.

If you're concerned about your health, not reading food labels before you eat something is comparable to being concerned about your finances but not looking at price tags when you go shopping - a bad idea.

Low-fat Foods May Make you Fat!

At least that's what the headlines are going to read once they get hold of Brian Wansink's latest paper.

Published in this month's Journal of Marketing Research, his paper (full-text of his article freely provided by Dr. Wansink on his website www.mindlesseating.org in Word format in the "Free Stuff" section) explores the influence that a label like, "Low-fat" has on consumption.

First some minor background and the take home point of this blog entry:

LOW FAT DOES NOT EQUAL LOW CALORIE!

Now onto the studies.

In study #1, University open house attendees were taken to one of two bowls. One contained regular M&Ms labeled, "New Colors of Regular M&Ms" and the other the same M&Ms this time artificially labeled, "New Low-Fat M&Ms".

Low-fat labeling led participants in the study to eat 28.4% more M&Ms, and interestingly participants who were already classifiable as being overweight (via body-mass index means), took 16.7% more M&Ms than healthy weight participants.

Dr. Wansink and authors postulated that perhaps this was due to the fact that the "Low-fat" label seemed to affect the over-underestimation of calories by overweight participants compared with healthy weight participants.

Only problem with this experiment is the fact that there is no such thing as a "Low-Fat" M&M therefore one might assume that with a truly low-fat product, the increased consumption due to the labeling might not be reflected in consuming more calories.

The thing is, you'd likely be wrong.

Dr. Wansink's no dummy and of course, he surveyed the fat and calorie content of ALL brands of chocolate candies, bars, cookies, milk drinks and muffins with at least a 5% market share. He found that 17 products had both a "Regular" and a "Low-Fat" version. The serving sizes were comparable for all products.

On average the "Low-Fat" products contained 59% less fat than their "Regular" counterparts, but ONLY 15% fewer calories!

Taking his original study with M&Ms, if there were a low-fat M&M with 59% less fat and 15% fewer calories than regular M&Ms, participants would still have consumed 9% more calories from the low-fat product.

Dr. Wansink goes further and quotes the work of Marion Nestle who found that ingredients used to replace fat often tend to make people hungrier and therefore he feels that in fact eating "Low-Fat" labeled products may well causes us to consume even more than an additional 9% of calories!

To ensure that this wasn't due simply to the fact that "Low-Fat M&Ms" were something perceived as a too good to be true item that then led to over consumption, Dr. Wansink performed a similar experiment using granola. He found very similar results and then when comparing his statistics with real world products found that the "Low-Fat" label would lead a person to consume 33% more calories than the "Regular" version.

The paper concludes:

1. Labeling snacks as “low fat” increases food intake
2. For normal weight people, “low fat” labeling increases consumption most with foods that are believed to be relatively healthy.
3. For overweight people, “low fat” labeling increases their consumption of all foods.

Bottom line - Don't get conned by Big Food.

Don't take anything at face value. Ignore claims like "Low-fat", "Low-carb" and definitely be very leery of both industry sponsored Healthy Options stamps like the as “Sensible Snacking” (Nabisco/Kraft), “Smart Spot” (Pepsico), or “Healthy Living” (Unilever) and even non-industry sponsored stamps like the Health Check from the Heart and Stroke Foundation.

Just because there's a claim or stamp on a product does not make it healthy, nor does it mean it's low calorie.

Stay tuned tomorrow for down and dirty label reading. All you need to know, in 4 easy steps!

Whitey, Yellowy, Goopy Gold - $5,000 a Litre Biodiesel!

There's gold in them-thar bellies!

I'm not sure if this qualifies as a smack your forehead, why didn't I think of that story, but you have to admire the lateral thinking.

Lauri Venoy, a Norwegian businessman, has apparently signed a deal to obtain over 11,000 litres of human fat a week.

What will he do with all that fat you ask? Well he sees it as white gold - he plans to convert it into combustible, foreign-oil-dependence killing, car-fueling, biodiesel!

Wisely, he's not basing his business in Norway, but rather in the USA where there is much greater abundance of natural resources.

Ever the businessman, Venoy plants seeds for growth stating,

"Maybe we should urge people to eat more so we can create more raw material for fuel"

Thankfully for Venoy, there is no shortage of people trying to convince us to eat more (Big Food, and these days in Canada, Health Canada) and with 65-75% of North Americans overweight or obese, there's no shortage of "raw materials".

Don't worry about the cost at the pumps though, the $5,000 a litre is for the patient.

I imagine once outside of the body, human fat's probably pretty cheap.

Scary Poppins!

As more frequent readers of my blog know, Fridays lately have not been so funny. The problem was during the posting of the Canada's Food Guide series, I had a tough time finding anything humourous.

Now that the series is completed, I can go back to the relatively new tradition of Funny Fridays.

Today's post - a brilliant recut of the original Mary Poppins film to create a trailer for the new horror film, Scary Mary.

Have a great weekend.

Enviga - Burn your Money....I mean your Calories

Coca Cola and Nestle, a match made in marketing heaven, are about to release Enviga, which according to Dr. Rhona Applebaum, the chief scientist of the Coca Cola company (that's what the press release calls her anyhow), the "perfect partnership of science and nature".

So what does this perfect partnership entail? A crap load of caffeine (3x the caffeine of a can of Coca Cola), and a component of green tea lovingly named epigallocatechin gallate, or EGCG. And EGCG, what does it do? According to Dr. Hilary Green, corporate shill and sell-out scientist for Nestle, it "speeds up metabolism and increases energy use, especially when combined with caffeine". Put this all together and Coca Cola and Nestle's marketing campaign tells us that if we drink 3 cans of this stuff a day, we'll lose weight!

Can you say ka-ching?

So first, let's ask how much weight we're talking here. According to the companies', an extra 60-100 calories a day or 6-10lbs per year. Remember that number, I'll come back to it.

So how much do we have to pay for the privilege of losing an extra 6lbs in a year? Roughly $1500 given that each can costs on average $1.39 and you'll have to drink over 1,100 of them a year.

Marketing in the test market of New York is fierce with billboards stating, "Burning Calories is now officially delicious", and "Be Positive, Drink Negative".

The science by the way, surprise surprise, is lacking to say the least, but I'm not even going to bother getting into it.

I know, you've been reading my blog and are baffled by the fact I'm resisting an opportunity to provide references.

Here's a case where I don't need references, but if you want some, feel free to turn to the Center for Science in the Public Interest who 3 days ago sent a cease and desist letter to the Enviga folks.

Why don't I need references? Let's go back to that 60-100 calories burned. Let's even assume it's true. What else burns 60-100 calories - drinking 8 glasses of fridge cold water a day or really drinking 8 glasses of any cold zero-calorie beverage a day (because it takes energy to raise the temperature of the cold liquid) or taking just three extra 5 minute walks a day.

Any zero-calorie beverage marketers reading my blog? If so, take the wind out of this Frankenfood's sales by starting your own drink negative campaign!

So what would you rather do? Drink 8 glasses of cold water a day, go for three 5 minute walks a day, drink 4 glasses of cold water and take one 7.5 minute walk a day, go for three 10 minute walks a day, or would you rather spend $1500/year and in so doing help pay the salary of a clear researcher of the night who actually put her name behind the statement calling Enviga a "perfect partnership of science and nature"?

Shame on Dr. Rhona Applebaum selling her name that way, shame on Dr. Hilary Green for promoting shaky science as fact, and shame on you if you buy into this incredibly stupid campaign.

(Looking for the Food Guide series? It can be found if you click here.)

Colonel Sanders - Your Personal Health Guardian

As you can plainly see from this ad, the Colonel espouses a healthy living attitude as I'm sure that the football on the ad means that I should be playing rather than watching football.

What's that? You think it's about eating a bucket of fried chicken while watching football?

Couldn't be. You know how I know? Yesterday while researching KFCs plans to scare away invading aliens I stumbled across their nutrition resources in a page Con-Agra calls, "Keep it Balanced" and it was on that page that I finally learned how to manage my weight and enjoy fried foods along with a few wonderful quobesities!

You see, according to the nutritional wizards working for Supreme Overlord Sanders (if you're confused, scroll down to yesterday's post),

"Many quick picks like tacos and pizza are full of important nutrients [Hey, Health Canada LOVES nutrients!] providing three or four food groups all in one."

So you see, they're SMART picks! So when I eat a pizza, I'm getting TONS of nutrients and basically a salad because I have tomato sauce with onions, hot peppers and pineapples!

But Supreme Overlord Sanders, even you must admit it seems like the World is getting heavier quite quickly. Did you see the report that said that there were now more overweight Africans than underweight Africans [a huge blow to the clean-your-plate club motivational speaking wing]? Well, those nutritional wizards know what to do,

"No single food causes weight gain [that's right, if you just eat one piece of food a day, you'll never gain weight]. It's about the total calories. So make your calories count by eating foods rich in nutrition [like Tacos and Pizza], and kick up the exercise a few notches when you eat more than you need."

Clearly those Africans must not exercise enough!

What I'll probably do for dinner - I think I'll have a KFC crispy twister sandwich (670 calories), along with KFC potato wedges (240 calories), a slice of KFC pecan pie (480 calories) and a large Pepsi (280 calories) and then when I get home, I'll just tell my wife and 27 month old daughter that I love them but the Colonel says I have to kick up my exercises a few notches and then I'll go for the 3 hours of running that I would need to take to burn off the over 1600 calories I ate for dinner at KFC. You know, I guess that's unfair, I do after all need some calories for dinner, so I guess I'll go for a short 2 hour run and keep some of those chalk full of nutrients calories just for me.

Gee, those folks over at Con-Agra foods sure are smart! I hope that Health Canada consulted them when creating their new Food Guide.

Great news! On the Food Guide's revision 12-member Advisory Board sits Ms. Carolyn O'Brien, the Director of Scientific & Regulatory Affairs at the Food and Consumer Products Manufacturers of Canada - a purely industry based organization whose members include KFCs Con-Agra!

Hurray! Way to go Health Canada! No one knows nutrition better than the Colonel, and no one cares more about the health and welfare of Canadians than the food industry. Right?

(Looking for the Food Guide series? It can be found if you click here.)

A Giant Warning to Space Aliens!

As if enlightened extra-terrestrials needed another reason to avoid popping by!

The first corporate logo to be visible to the Hubble telescopes of other intelligent lifeforms - KFC.

I wonder if they'll think the Colonel is the supreme overlord of Earth?

All hail Supreme Overlord Sanders, champion of deep fryers, feeder of families and scourge of chickens!

(Looking for the Food Guide series? It can be found if you click here.)

Health Canada Quobesities

While researching this series, I read through a great many comments made by Health Canada officials regarding the Food Guide.

Some were remarkable due to their comparison with the path the Food Guide revisions have actually taken, and others were remarkable simply due to what was said.

In no particular order, what follows are some of my favourite Health Canada Food Guide related Quobesities:

1. On obesity in general

"Obesity is a very complex issue but I think that we’re not needing to label it as a disease"

despite it being labeled a disease by the World Health Organization , the National Institutes of Health, and virtually every major medical organization in the world.

2. On blindly following the Food Guide to maintain a "healthy weight" without paying any attention to calories,

"Canadians who follow the draft guide will in fact find that they will maintain a healthy weight"

Magically I suppose.

3. On the revision process,

"The revision process is evidence-based, collaborative, transparent and tied to public-health priorities",

but don't ask them to show you the revisions, the evidence or the process itself because those are secret.

4. On what the industry actually contributes to the Food Guide revision process,

"The lobbying is intense but the revisions will be based on proper nutrition."

And in the same article a note saying that the Beef Information Centre is pushing for more beef (got it), Refreshments Canada is pushing to not have a list of good and bad foods (got it), Kellogg's is lobbying over serving size (got it), and the Canadian Poultry and Egg Processors Council pushing to ensure that the Food Guide doesn't specifically call out packaged and restaurant foods (got it).

5. On fruits and vegetables,

"For example, we know that fruits and vegetables provide protection against forms of cancer and cardiovascular disease"

BUT they're going to recommend that you eat less of them!

6. On "Other" foods,

"It means we're talking about breads and cereals, not croissants and muffins. There's very little room for extras in this pattern such as cakes pastries, french fries, ice cream and alcohol. It requires different choices to be made"

BUT they won't provide you with any guidance on other foods, they'll simply pretend they don't exist despite the fact that they know that Canadians on average get 25% of their calories from "Other" foods.

7. On their revision,

"What we did in November was come out with a platform. It was the best we could do at the time. What we heard back was, "Sorry, it's not good enough". So what we've done is take the nature of "Sorry, it's not good enough," and we have taken the next steps."

22 months was just not enough time to come out with a good product? What? You want to see the changes they've made? Sorry, not going to happen.

8. On those very changes,

"Help me guys, is there another piece here?"

Question asked by Health Canada official to other Health Canada officials after Liberal MP Ruby Dhalla asked if they could provide another example of the changes they'd made to their "Sorry, not good enough" draft after they had provided the singular example of sodium.

9. On their listening skills,

"So we've spent an enormous amount of time trying to take the input that's been given to us, understand it, reflect on it, and make sure that when we finish the process we have something that's stronger"

Yet when they asked Dr. Arya Sharma, the head of the Canadian Obesity Network if he felt there should be guidance on Calories and he said to them "YES", their enormous amount of time taking his input, understanding his input and reflecting on his input led them to report to the House of Commons that,

"I can tell you that we've actually met with the scientific director of the Canadian Obesity Network, Dr. Sharma. We asked him whether he thought we should be talking about caloires. His answer was no."

10. On nutrients being more important than foods,

"An earlier comment said that we seem to be preoccupied with nutrient adequacy. We are not. If I leave you with one thought, it is that the chronic disease prevention components of this guide are every bit as important to us as the nutrient adequacy"

Yet they do not recommend maximizing whole grains and minimizing refined, they do not recommend decreased red meat consumption, they do not recommend the preferential consumption of fish over other protein sources, they recommend you eat fewer fruits and vegetables and plenty of dairy despite the fact that ALL of those shortcomings fly in the face of what we understand about diet and the prevention of chronic diseases.

11. On using current Canadian dietary habits as a design basis,

"We can't develop a de novo pattern"

Ummmmm, why not?

12. On the release of the new Food Guide,

"I can categorically tell you that when this Food Guide comes out there will be criticism"

Well isn't that something, I actually agree with Health Canada!

Tomorrow: What Can You Do? - Some ideas about how to make your concerns known, and where can you turn to for sound dietary advice?

Yesterday: Guidance? What Guidance? - The sage advice of the Food Guide on how to manage your weight