Why Food Guides and Health Checks Matter - Advertising Edition

So when Dr. Brian Cook did in fact give his talk in Ottawa at the Centre for Science in the Public Interest's recent conference the media took notice.

The day immediately after his talk, Sarah Schmidt from CanWest Global published a piece about his findings that despite so-called self-regulatory efforts, most of what was advertised to children was junk food.

Why?

Self-imposed regulations are about as binding as a rubber band.

Don't believe me?

See all those cereals at the top of this post? Dr. Cook pointed out that all of them meet the voluntary guidelines Big Food sets for "healthier" options and hence fair game to them to advertise to children (and just two days ago he emailed me to mention that because of some reformulation Count Chocula will now also meet the Food Industry's "healthier" criteria).

So why does this post mention the Food Guide and Health Check?

Well when faced with the accusations laid by Dr. Cook and his Australian colleagues what did the spokesperson for Advertising Standards Canada, the national advertising industry self-regulatory body, use to defend Big Food?

You guessed it!

Here's the quote from Sarah's story,

"Janet Feasby is vice-president of standards at Advertising Standards Canada, a national advertising industry self-regulatory body overseeing the initiative. She said the current approach is sound because products that make the cut for a healthier dietary choice must meet established scientific and government standards.

They include foods that meet the standards for participating in the Heart and Stroke Foundation's Health Check program and foods that meet criteria for nutrient content claims in Canada's Food Guide"

If I was a Big Food executive I'd be sending huge Christmas presents to the folks behind the Food Guide and Health Check - those guys sure know how to help sell crappy food!

What's Actually Advertised to Kids in Canada

In 1847, the English Parliament passed the "Infant Relief Act" which was meant to,

"protect children from, "from their own lack of experience and from the wiles of pushing tradesmen and moneylenders"

Too bad it's not enacted in Canada where as I blogged about yesterday television channels like Treehouse and YTV target moms and their children in encouraging advertisers to consider them for their incredible reach and "kidfluence".

So what exactly are YTV and Treehouse advertising?

Well if Dr. Brian Cook's preliminary results are any indication - a lot of unhealthy food.

You see Brian recently was involved in a study looking at the top children's television channels in 12 separate countries and even more recently he reported on the Canadian results at the recent Centre for Science in the Public Interest conference.

So what did he find?

Well over 4 days of broadcasting in January, with Ontario, Quebec and Alberta's top children's channels recorded from 6am to 10am the following pie chart demonstrates what was being advertised:

Over a third of ads were for foods and when scored by his Australian colleagues for healthfulness, 95% came back unhealthy with an almost even split between fast food, sugary cereals, high fat/sugar or salt spreads/soups/pastas and snack foods and sugar sweetened snack bars:



So does that compare with adult advertisements?

Nope.

The same group also recorded and scored 3 days of adult programming and found that only 19% of advertisements were for food and of those, 44% were for healthy foods:



Moral of this story?

I think Brian said it best at his talk,

"TV food ads to children are dominated by products that undermine parents’ and public health professionals’ efforts to promote healthy diets and physical activity"

Perhaps that's why a study produced by U.S. National Bureau of Economic Research and published in this month's Journal of Law and Economics concluded that banning fast food advertisements targeting children would reduce the number of overweight children aged 3 to 11 by 18%, and for adolescents (12- to 18-year-olds) by 14%.

I tell you one thing, it sure as heck can't hurt!

[Thanks again to Dr. Brian Cook from Toronto Public Health for sharing his data and giving such a great talk]

Vote for Canada's Best Health Blog!

It's that time of year again, and this year the Canadian Blog Awards has added a Best Health Blog category and that's where Weighty Matters has been nominated!

There are two rounds to voting and the first round began yesterday.

The other health blogs nominated include:

• Ottawa Street Dental
• Medical Education Blog
• Canadian Medicine
• Breast Reloaded
• Prostate Reloaded
• Fibromyalgia and Exercise
• ZXC
• Marijke: Nurse turned writer
• Dr. Sharma’s Obesity Notes
• Facing Autism in New Brunswick
  
• My Journey With AIDS
• Salted Lithium
• Baby will you love me when i’m bald?

Feel free to bounce around and take a look at all of these great blogs including my friend and colleague Arya's.

When you're ready to vote just click here!

To see all the other categories feel free to take a trip over here!

YTV & Treehouse Proudly Exploit your Children

The tagline reads,

"Small Hands Hold Surprisingly Big Bucks!"

and it's an ad encouraging you to spend your advertising dollars on YTV. The ad itself likely comes from the folks at Pester Productions, the in-house kidvertising agency representing YTV, Treehouse and Discovery Kids.

In fact if you slide over to their respective websites you'll learn a bunch of stuff.

Treehouse, in their report entitled, "Targeting Moms", thinks that a mom plus a tiny kid equals a, "4-eyed, 4-legged super-consumer"



They also proudly report that they, "deliver kids with their parents wherever they are".



YTV builds on the "Kidfluence" theme and lets prospective marketers know that,

"96% of parents say they "always" or "sometimes" ask their tween's opinion when deciding on a Fast Food restaurant."

87% of parents say they "always" or "sometimes" ask their tween's opinion when purchasing groceries for the household.

Almost 3 in 10 parents say they "always" or "sometimes" ask their tween's opinion when deciding on which car to buy for the family.

20% of parents say they "always" or "sometimes" ask their tween's opinion when deciding which hotel to stay at for the family vacation."

They also report on the "long term prize" (emphasis theirs),

"The long term prize: Loyalty of the kid translates into a brand loyal adult customer"

They then break down where tweens get their $2.9 billion in direct spending (crunching the numbers from their allowances, extra money, birthday money, Holiday money, work money and back to school money") but of course emphasize the more than $20 billion kids control through what they call, "Nag Power", "Pester Power", or "Kidfluence".

Discovery Kids markets itself as,

"A 'must-buy' for advertisers trying to reach kids and their parents."

They go on to state,

"Discovery Kids not only effectively reaches children six to 12, it allows you to associate your brand with 'parent-approved' television."

These sites and messages sure don't give me the warm fuzzies! How about you?

Stay tuned tomorrow to find out the type of products being marketed by YTV and find out how even as far back as 1847 people recognized that advertising to children is simply unethical (I guess YTV didn't get the memo).

[Hat tip and thanks to Dr. Brian Cook from Toronto Public Health who provided me with the YTV poster and also gave a great talk at the recent CSPI conference]

China's Answer to Andy Rooney

The Onion News Network strikes again!

Today for Funny Fridays is ONN International correspondent Poyuan Wei.

Have a great weekend!

Hoodia - not safe or effective enough for Unilever

Hoodia, a cactus that grows in the Kalahari desert that was catapulted to fame by 60 minutes in 2004 as a potential weight loss aid and now a fixture on health food and pharmacy store shelves, was dropped yesterday by Unilever.

Unilever, a product manufacturing giant who had already sunk in over $40 million in the development and research of hoodia as a weight loss aid and who were reportedly grooming their Hoodia product to become a flagship $600 million a year brand reported yesterday,

"Data suggests using the extract would not meet our safety and efficacy standards",

leading me to firstly marvel that Unilever has safety and efficacy standards for supplements and secondly to wonder whether or not this will have any impact at all on sales of hoodia in health food stores.

This report also proves something very important - the pharmaceutical and manufacturing industries spend a tremendous amount of money researching any potential weight loss supplement leads and were they able to prove that a product were safe and effective, it'd land up in prescription form and they'd literally beat down the doors of doctors' offices to try to convince docs to prescribe it.

Simple statement here - if you're considering a "natural" weight loss supplement, if your doctor doesn't prescribe it to you then it's safe to say it hasn't yet been proven to be both safe and effective.

Translation - if there really were magic, I'd prescribe it.

Oh, and Unilever didn't disclose the data that led it to abandon its $40 million investment but I think it's a good bet to suggest that if you are taking Hoodia, it's probably in your best interest to stop.

A Funny Thing Happened on the way to Publication

Long term readers of my blog may recall a post from June when I detailed an exciting abstract presentation from a team of east coast researchers who concluded that their study of dietary consumption patterns in Nova Scotia youth suggested,

"If strong education and messaging regarding the need to reduce intake levels from energy dense food sources isn’t implemented, the new guide may serve to further increase dietary intake in this population, rendering the new CFG more obesigenic for youth than the previous version."

Well a funny thing happened on the way to publication - they dropped their conclusion.

Their study, Overweight Nova Scotia Children and Youth: The Roles of Household Income and Adherence to Canada's Food Guide to Healthy Eating, published in the July-August edition of the Canadian Journal of Public Health reported the following:

The combined rate of overweight and obesity in Nova Scotia children is one of the highest in Canada.

The prevalence of childhood obesity in Canada is likely grossly underestimated due to the fact that self-reported heights and weights make people taller and skinnier and the fact that it has been quantified using the criteria of the International Obesity Taskforce rather than the more stringent criteria of the Centre for Disease Control.

Nova Scotian children of all weights consume 25% of their daily calories from the sugar, fats and oils that comprised the now-ignored by our Food Guide "other" category but consumption was lower in the overweight vs. the normal weight students (yes, lower).

There was only one significant difference found in consumption patterns of normal weight vs. overweight children with regards to Canada's Food Guide and that was the overweight students in Grade 11 (note, not significant in Grade 7), drank less milk.

and here's their most important finding:

The VAST majority of both overweight and healthy weight students did not come close to meeting the recommended number of daily servings from the four food groups.

So what did they then go on to suggest?

1. That perhaps overweight kids underreport their consumption of "other" foods.
   
2. That perhaps energy balance (ie exercise calories) is more important than they had thought.
   
3. That perhaps overweight kids should drink more "energy dense" milk.

So to summarize - they published a report that states that the prevalence of childhood obesity is far greater than we imagine and that with the exception of milk intake in Grade 11 there's no real difference in dietary patterning between normal weight and overweight/obese kids, and that none of the kids (including the overweight ones) were eating anywhere near the number of servings recommended by Canada's Food Guide and despite their well worded poster prior to publication they failed to mention that perhaps then following Canada's Food Guide carefully (and therefore having all kids including the overweight ones consume a lot more food) may in fact lead to higher rates of obesity in children!

Um, didn't you guys think that point was important enough before to base your entire abstract presentation on it?

So the real question is, did your Food Guide concerns get cut by the journal's reviewers or did you suddenly get cold feet about publically criticizing Canada's nutritional bible?

Alabama Set to Penalize Obese Workers

I don't know how I missed this story.

If you're an obese worker in Alabama who hasn't signed up for a free health screening with a doctor by 2010, you're going to get dinged an additional $25 monthly on your health insurance costs.

If you've seen the doc and you've got weight to lose then unless you make "progress" with your weight, you'll get dinged starting in 2011.

Alabama already dings smokers $25 per month.

While they haven't said what "progress" really means, the plan's horribly flawed.

While it may be fine and dandy to suggest that these workers' weights are health risks, unlike smoking, eating is not a choice, and given that there are no gold-standard commercial weight loss programs out there certainly many motivated, diligent and health conscious obese workers are going to fail in their efforts to make "progress" and then get dinged financially for something known to be incredibly difficult for the majority of self-directed and commercially directed individuals - sustaining a significant weight loss.

Sure, ding the smokers, but until you've got a great place to send your obese workers for help and a means to identify those who for medical or pharmacologic reasons may struggle with losing, get your hands out of their pockets.

[Belated hat tip to loyal blog reader Ruth]

Youtube Contest Challenges Users to actually make a "Good" Video

I'm beginning to love the Onion News Network.

Today for Funny Friday is ONN's coverage of a Youtube press conference where Youtube offers $100,000 for a video that's, "somewhat watchable" and enjoyable for people other than those who made the video.

Have a great weekend!

You've got to be kidding me

So yesterday the news hits that the arteries of our obese children and teens have as much plaque as 45 year olds.

Terrifying.

You know what I found more terrifying (maybe horrifying is more accurate)?

Yesterday I also found out that a local elementary school run through the Ottawa Catholic School board offers six year olds not only pizza days but weekly pizza days and get this, they also offer weekly ice-cream sandwich days!

I actually couldn't believe it when I heard it so our fitness director formally called up to ask the school and sure enough, St. Andrew Elementary School in Barrhaven has decided to offer parents the option of buying in to both weekly pizza and ice-cream sandwich days for their elementary school aged children.

Now before you get all self-righteous on me and tell me that parents can always opt not to include their children I think you're missing the point.

Junk food is pushed on our children from everywhere. Television, the internet, movies, video games, food aisles, magazines, newspapers, corporate sponsorships. Why the hell are we allowing it to be pushed on them in our schools?

Shame on you St. Andrew Elementary School, and shame on any school that thinks it's appropriate to peddle nutritional garbage to our children.

If you'd like to write the Ottawa Catholic School Board and St. Andrews Elementary click here and your email will be sent to Catherine Maguire-Urban the school board trustee for Barrhaven/Gloucester-South Nepean, James McCracken the Director of Education and the general inbox for St. Andrew Elementary.

Here's mine:

Dear Mr. McCracken,

Yesterday you may have read the news regarding the arteries of our obese children resembling those of 45 year olds. In general I’m certain that you’re well aware that currently there’s an obesity epidemic and that it has been predicted that the current generation of children will be the first in history not to outlive their parents.

Yesterday I was horrified to learn that St. Andrew Elementary offers not only weekly pizza days but also weekly ice cream sandwich days to even its youngest students.

While I recognize that theoretically parents can opt not to join these obscene and incredibly unnecessary programs, really that’s not the point.

One of the major contributors to childhood obesity is the never ending barrage of encouragement children receive from television, magazines, supermarket food aisles, video games, the internet and corporate sponsorship.

Frankly it absolutely sickens me that one (or perhaps more) of your schools feels it’s appropriate to peddle nutritional garbage to their defenseless, elementary aged children.

Sincerely,

Yoni Freedhoff, MD CCFP Dip ABBM
Medical Director, Bariatric Medical Institute
575 West Hunt Club, Suite 100
Ottawa ON K2G5W5
613.730.0264 (Tel)
613.730.3883 (Fax)

Eating Pizza, Coke and M&Ms Cures Breast Cancer!

Thanks to loyal Albertan blog reader Kristine for sending in this ad she received in her mail from the do-gooders over at Pizza 73.

Yup - there's a plan. Eat a ridiculously high calorie meal and a whole 50 cents will be donated to breast cancer research.

I suppose you might argue that given that obesity raises your risk of breast cancer and high calorie meals raise your risk of obesity that buying this combo helps to stack your deck?

Oy.

R.I.P. Marijuana Receptor Weight Loss Drugs

Not sure if you've heard of them since they never really hit North American shores.

They were a class of drugs that worked on the endocannabinoid receptors and multiple drugs companies were working on obesity drugs based on blocking CB-1 receptors and in so doing, decrease caloric intake.

The drugs were actually fairly effective, one of them had even been released, but unfortunately there was an unacceptably high incidence of adverse psychiatric affects including suicidal ideation and less than 2 years after their much bally-hoo'ed launch, they've been permanently pulled from the market and the drug companies have all quashed their development.

Could someone please invent a safe and efficacious medication for weight management?

Please?

Philiadelphia Passes Toughest Menu Labeling Laws to Date

Following in the footsteps of New York City and the State of California, Philadelphia just became the newest member of the menu-board calorie posting club.

Just like NYC and California, Philadelphia's legislation requires that restaurant chains boasting more than 15 locations post calories on menuboards and menus.

Unlike NYC and California however, Philadelphia takes it one step further and has legislated that menus also contain information on trans fat, saturated fat, sodium and carbohydrate contents be printed in menus!

Of course the Philadelphia Restaurant Association's not too pleased.

They issues a statement that suggests that it's going to financially cripple the restaurant industry and make people think twice about opening up a new restaurant or expanding and thereby decrease employment in Philadelphia.

Alarmist much?

This story led me to revisit an older one - the LEAN act. It was meant to put calories on menus across the country but looking closer at the act I've realized why the food industry is supporting it. It actually doesn't require calories to be posted on menus or menuboards. Instead it suggests menus and menuboards as options but also allows for other means (like the giant, small font, difficult to read poster in some Canadian McDonald's, or trayliners etc.).

Knowing that, I withdraw my support of the LEAN bill and see it for what it is - an attempt by the food industry to weasel out of more stringent laws (like Philadelphia's, NYC and California's) as the way the LEAN act is written, if passed it will pre-empt all local, county and state labeling law legislation.

Obam-ithdrawl Plagues Pie-Eyed Youth

So the election's over.

What's an idealist, fervent young Obama supporter to do?

Today for Funny Friday is ONN's coverage of this devastating condition.

Have a great weekend!

The Chocolate Olympics

The 2012 London Olympic games will be brought to you by - Cadbury.

And probably Coca-Cola, McDonald's and other healthy living giants.

Cadbury's share of the Olympic pie cost them $40 million.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Cadbury's involvement has raised some eyebrows from obesity advocates like Tam Fry of Britain's National Obesity Forum who stated his organization is,

"disappointed that the London games have gone to Cadbury, because sport and chocolate don’t mix"

The controversy reminds me of the uproar when Michael Phelps decided to endorse McDonald's.

While I'm all for more regulation and legislation to help in the treatment and prevention of obesity, overweight and sedentary lifestyles, getting your feathers ruffled by who sponsors the Olympics seems like a waste of energy.

Why?

The Olympics happen once every few years and last for two weeks.

Real life happens every day and lasts forever.

While I agree it's intellectually off-side to have fast food and chocolate as Olympic sponsors I'd rather see energy spent campaigning for such things as mandatory calorie labeling, better in-school food, better nutritional education, subsidies for fresh produce, banning advertising targeting children etc.

Picking every single battle just makes you look churlish and takes the wind out of your main sails.

Do 3 Year Olds Really Need Pizza Day - Part II

Longtime readers of my blog may remember my post regarding my 3 year old school's policy of pizza day.

Once a month the kids get pizza, carrot sticks, pretzels, juice and cookies.

Now as you might imagine, I'm not a particular fan of pizza day for 3 year olds as it really doesn't make much sense to me.

If the argument were made that it's for the kids I'd argue that 3 year olds would never expect a pizza day and therefore not miss it.

If the argument were made that it's for the parents I'd argue that while certainly at times harried, making your kids' lunches is one of the responsibilities of parenthood.

Nutritionally, depending on the type of pizza and other products it would not be difficult for the kids to be getting dramatically more calories and sodium than would be healthy for a single meal (sodium wise depending on the options they might exceed an entire day's recommendation)

My original post detailed my angst in choosing not to write the school.

Well my concern finally got the best of me and I wrote and I'm very pleased to say that the school was quite open to compromise and will be considering the following changes:

1. Asking the pizza place to only put on half the amount of cheese they would normally and to utilize part-skim mozerrella rather than full fat.
2. Making it policy to serve watered down apple juice (remembering that for 3-4 year olds the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends a maximum daily juice consumption of half a cup).
3. Losing the pretzels.
4. Keeping the cookies (3 animal crackers per kid - certainly not worth me getting worked up).

The school also asked for help on organizing a talk for parents on what makes up healthy school lunches.

I guess the lesson learned here is that in many cases non-confrontational discussions regarding nutrition and schools may in fact yield fruitful and healthful change, and while I still don't think 3 year olds need pizza day, at least it's become a little healthier at my kids' school.

What if.....?

Yesterday I received an email from a reporter doing a story on Canada's Food Guide and my criticisms therein.

In her email she noted that she had spoken to several independent dietitians regarding the potential for the Food Guide to lead to weight gain if followed (something I've blogged about extensively here and here) and they, as do many dietitians and their parent organization Dietitians of Canada, disputed my claims.

The Heart and Stroke Foundation in their promotion of Health Check, proudly announce that,

"you can trust that your choice meets specific nutrient criteria based on Canada's Food Guide."

Schools teach the Food Guide to our children.

Institutional menus (hospitals, cafeterias, nursing homes, daycares etc.) use the Food Guide for guidance.

The food industry uses the Food Guide to promote their products.

Since January alone according to my media scanning site there have been 1,174 references made to Canada's Food Guide made in the Canadian press.

So I've got a hypothetical question for you.

What would happen to all of the folks, institutions and programs listed up above if a large, independent, reputable and well respected third party came out and blasted the Food Guide? Me, I'm easy to slough off (though the evidence is not) as a lone voice...in fact in many cases that's exactly what has occurred as did with the Heart and Stroke Foundation whereupon rather than specifically address my evidence-based concerns they instead commented on me as an individual to the Canadian Medical Association Journal,

"He's not the sole arbiter of healthy eating in the country. He hates Canada's Food Guide. We respect that. We don't necessarily agree with him, but the food guide was established by hundreds of experts."

So what do you think would happen if all of a sudden I was no longer a lone voice in the nutritional wilderness?

Stranger things have happened.....

The Food Industry Delivers the Most Damning Indictment of Health Check Yet

So just how deep in the sand does your head have to be in order for Big Food to come in and generate a far more robust front-of-package labeling program than your non-profit, supposedly for health, organization's?

Why not ask the Heart and Stroke Foundation's Health Check folks?

Rolling out in 2009 is Big Food's Smart Choices Program (example above) the stated aim of which is to,

"help shoppers make more nutritious food and beverage choices, at-a-glance, throughout the supermarket"

Companies who are signing on?

Coca-Cola, ConAgra Foods, General Mills, Kellogg Company, Kraft Foods, PepsiCo, Unilever, and Wal-Mart (and Nestle's reported as considering it as well).

Nutritional criteria will include limiting:

1. Total fat
2. Trans fat
3. Saturated fat
4. Cholesterol
5. Added sugars
6. Sodium

while at the same time encouraging consumption of:

1. Fruits and Vegetables
2. Whole Grains
3. Fat Free/Low Fat Dairy
4. Calcium
5. Potassium
6. Fiber
7. Magnesium
8. Vitamin A
9. Vitamin C
10. Vitamin E

The front-of-package label will also highlight calories per serving and servings per package.

Looking closer at the Smart Choices' criteria and then comparing them with the newly updated Health Check's (posted just over a month ago and not slated to be implemented until 2010) you can quickly see that aside from the fact that even Big Food recognizes there are more than 3 nutritional determinants of health, amazingly the Smart Choices Program is far stricter than the Heart and Stroke Foundation's on Health Check's 3 primary nutrient categories:

On Sodium

The 2010 Health Check allows for 17% more sodium per entree or mixed dish

The 2010 Health Check allows for 50% more sodium per slice of bread

The 2010 Health Check allows for 100% more sodium per glass of vegetable juice

The 2010 Health Check allows for 160% more sodium per meat, fish and poultry item

On Fats

The 2010 Health Check allows for 70% more fat in ground meats

The 2010 Health Check limits the amount of fat from fatty fish despite the fact that fats from fish have been shown to decrease the risk of heart disease (a limitation that is so far beyond the realm of comprehension that it may be worthy of a blog post all its own)

The 2010 Health Check allows for 100% more saturated fat in dairy products

The 2010 Health Check allows for infinitely more trans fat in all products (as the Food Industry's endeavor forbids them outright while Health Check's happy with heart-disease promoting trans fats making up to 5% of an item's total fat - an allowance all the more confusing given Heart and Stroke Foundation's own CEO Sally Brown's belief that, "there is no safe amount of trans consumption" and her statement, "trans fats are a "toxic" killer that need to be removed from the food chain as soon as possible")

On Sugar

The 2010 Health Check allows for infinitely more sugar per dairy product (Health Check puts no limits on adding sugar to dairy thereby allowing flavoured milks and yogurts to contain more sugar and calories than Coca-Cola or ice cream and yes still sport their blessing)

What this means of course is that once the Smart Choices Program rolls out, misinformed Canadian consumers who continue to choose Health Check options over Smart Choice Program ones thinking they're,

"shopping with the Heart and Stroke Foundation's dietitians"

will at times consume orders of magnitude more salt, sugar and fat.

To give you some perspective on all of this, a comparable analogy would be Exxon coming up with a stricter set of environmental regulations than Greenpeace!

This of course brings me back to the notion that if this is the best that the Heart and Stroke Foundation's dietitians and Health Check's Technical Advisory Committee have to offer, perhaps it's time to hire some new blood (and frankly, fire some or all of the old).

Appalled?

Click here to send the Health Check's Technical Advisory Committee an email and included on the email will be Sally Brown (CEO of the Heart and Stroke Foundation), Stephen Samis (Scientific Director of the Heart and Stroke Foundation), and Terry Dean (General Manager of Health Check).

[Disclaimer: The Smart Choices Program, while certainly superior to Health Check, is still overly minimalist and lax in its inclusionary and exclusionary nutritional criteria so please don't consider this post to be an endorsement.]

When Obama Wins I'll Eat your American Brains!

I've heard that the US election has been the ugliest in history with attack ads really stretching the envelope of truth.

For today's Funny Friday I bring you an ad paid for by a number of American organizations including the devilish Aerial Moose Hunters for Truth and the dastardly People Against Amnesty for Mexican and Canadian Undead.

I sure hope Obama wins because if he doesn't, where the heck am I going to get my next American brains-fix?

Have a great weekend and Happy Halloween!



[Hat tip to my sister and fellow undead Canadian Michal]

Coca-Cola states Coke is "Wholesome and Suitable" for Kids!!?

Readers of my blog may remember some time ago when I blogged about the Coca-Cola advertisement found in the Canadian Medical Association Journal that ridiculously claimed that their ads featuring Santa Claus, animated polar bears, New Kids on the Block and more didn't target children,

"Can't remember the last Coca-Cola ad targeted at children? There's a reason. Parents tell us they prefer to be the ones teaching their children about beverage choices. That's why for over 50 years we've adhered to a company policy that prohibits advertising soft drinks to children."

The thing is, I didn't just blog about it, I also wrote a letter to the editor of the Canadian Medical Association Journal which in turn was published this week along with responses from Coca-Cola and the Journal's editors.

The editors rightly report that the advertisement,

"compl(ies) with the pertinent sections of the Food and Drugs Act and Regulations"

and therefore is kosher for publication.

Reading between the lines however would suggest that the Journal agreed that the advertisement went too far, not in the context of their editorial response but rather in their print publication of my original letter along with their contact for and publication of Coca-Cola's response.

Coke's response?

Twaddle.

They reiterate their claim and then add a minor parenthetic qualification in that,

"(Any programming or media platform for which 50% or more of the audience is under 12 years of age is considered programming primarily directed to children.)"

and then brag that they're founding members of a toothless, voluntary, non-regulated, Big Food sponsored campaign that voluntarily submits advertisements to Advertising Standards Canada, an organization described on their website as,

"The Canadian advertising industry's self-regulatory body"

Here's my bottom line:

Claiming that Santa Claus and animated polar bears in Coke commercials don't target children is about as believable as claiming that bikini-clad women in beer commercials don't target men.

The story was picked up by Sarah Schmidt of Canwest and will likely hit the newspapers tomorrow and boy did Coca-Cola corporate spokesperson Amy Laski come up with one whopper of a quobesity stating that Coke is,

"wholesome and suitable for kids"

I wonder if Amy serves her kids "wholesome", refreshing Coke?

Good lord.

Fixing Health Check - a Simple Recipe

Yesterday I blogged about the Heart and Stroke Foundation's Health Check program's call for proposals to help them review the impact Health Check has had during its ten year lifespan.

In the document, the Heart and Stroke Foundation refers to their "overarching question" that these studies will be meant to answer,

"In what areas does the HC program need to change to be relevant in the current and emerging environment?"

Allow me to save them millions of dollars in grants and redevelopment fees with a simple, succinct answer along with a proposed solution.

In order to be relevant in the current environment Health Check needs to provide an evidence-based means for consumers to evaluate all dietary products in participating marketplaces.

Health Check's current system, evaluating only those products whose parent companies buy their endorsement means that there may be more nutritious alternatives sitting right beside the Health Check items, with Health Check therefore doing little more than misinforming Canadians about what the healthiest choices are. As well, given that Health Check's meagre nutritional criteria only analyze 3 nutritional components per given item means that it ignores literally dozens of other well-established nutritional determinants of health and consequently has many "unintended consequences".

The solution?

At the recent Centre for Science in the Public Interest conference I had the opportunity to sit and chat with Dr. David Katz, the founder of the Overall Nutritional Quality Index system (now renamed NuVal). The system, which I've blogged about before, uses a complex algorithm developed by 12 of the world's leading nutritional scientists (and updated every 2 years), weighting 25 different nutritional determinants of health to spit out a number from 1-100 to indicate the nutritional score of each particular food.

The system's dead-simple to use - higher the number, the healthier the option.

David told me that in order to calculate an ONQI value all they need is a nutrition facts panel and an ingredients list (or a recipe). He also reported that they'd happily work with anyone on the system.

So what could Health Check do to save themselves millions of dollars in evaluation and reformulation along with years of tinkering?

They could scrap their current product-by-product endorsement system, set up some ties and cobranding with NuVal, and become the Canadian licensee of NuVal's robust, evidence-based scoring system. They could then use their influence and marketplace savvy to sell the program to supermarket chains, (which would be required to score every item up for sale) restaurants, (again, every item gets a score) and industrial food service providers (ditto).

What's in it for NuVal of course is the promotion of their brand by the Heart and Stroke Foundation, which aside from their involvement with Health Check, is a trusted, health-related non-profit organization. What's in it for Health Check of course is the establishment of credibility - credibility they've strained even further this past year by sticking their heads in the sand and digging their heels in against the quite clearly necessary from the ground up overhaul they require to truly be considered nutritionally relevant.

Health Check's Highly Processed Hypocrisy

Recently I read a nutrition column by Heart and Stroke Dietitian Alyssa Rolnick about how to help your child consume less salt.

Amazingly, despite the Heart and Stroke Foundation's endorsement of lower levels of salt in children (the National Sodium Policy Statement the Heart and Stroke Foundation signed off on recommends children under the age of 8 consume no more than 1,200mg daily) Alyssa stuck to Health Check's party line of adopting the far less stringent Health Canada recommendations of the nearly double 2,300mg.

But I'm not blogging today about the inanity of the Heart and Stroke Foundation's lack of adherence to sodium level recommendations that they themselves state are too high (I've done that before here) - no, today I'm blogging about these 3 lines from Alyssa's piece,

"Cook fresh foods One of the best ways to control salt intake is to prepare more home cooked meals."

"A lot of the excess sodium that we consume is hidden in processed, convenience and fast foods."

and finally,

"When shopping, look for food items that have the Health Check™ symbol."

So first off let me say I agree with Alyssa in that we need to cook our own meals more frequently and that highly processed foods are not only often laden with salt, they're often devoid of the health benefits of fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grains and healthy oils.

So can you guess which statement I disagree with?

Yup, you guessed it - her call to use Health Check to guide your choices in kid food shopping.

Why do I disagree?

Because Health Check'ed options are generally highly processed foods with far too much salt.

Don't believe me?

Well how about just asking Health Check folks?

You see just a few weeks ago they released a call for proposals to assess the impact of Health Check on the marketplace after 10 years of operation. One of the areas they want input on is one which they've labeled, "unintended consequences".

Any guesses as to the unintended consequence that they offered up as an example of what they're talking about? Here it is:

"Are Health Check products encouraging the purchase of processed foods over fresh foods?"

The answer of course is along the lines of, "Duh", for as Bill Jeffery from the Centre for Science in the Public Interest pointed out in the Canadian Medical Association Journal,

"of the 257 fruit and vegetable products enrolled in the program, 194 are juices, fruit leather and french fries — hardly nutritional superstars — and only 14 are fresh fruits and vegetables."

I'll also be happy to continue to explain why the answer is, "Duh" pictorially:


[Hat tip to loyal blog reader Dana for passing along the call for proposals]

Clean Your Plate Club Members Eat 35% More!

Mindless Eating's and USDA's Brian Wansink, one of my favourite researchers, has released some preliminary results from a study he's been working on.

He's been looking at kids who belong to the so-called Clean Your Plate Club and has found that preschool aged members ate 35% more fruit loops than non-club members when given an unlimited portion.

35% more is a lot!

Think maybe the Clean Your Plate Club might play a role in childhood obesity?

The study will be published down the road in the journal Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine.

His advice?

Same as mine. If your kids aren't cleaning their plates perhaps you ought to be offering them smaller portions, or better yet - ensure your child tastes all the foods you offer and then allow them to determine how much they want.

Disband the Clean Your Plate Club!!!

MadTV's Kevin Trudeau Infomercial

Remember Kevin? I blogged about him a few days ago - he's the infomercial king who's been banned from making infomercials and fined over $5 million for being misleading.

Want to see one of his infomercials?

I've seen a few on late night television over the years and this version from MadTV is today's Funny Friday!

Have a great weekend!

Don't Walk to Work, Walk AT Work

Treadmill desks hit the big time (the New York Times).

Promoted by Dr. James Levine and his NEAT (non-exercise activity thermogenesis) team as an easy means to combat obesity and adopted by world famous bloggers like bookofjoe's Joe (check out the picture down below to see Joe on his desk) now you can buy one from office furniture maker Steelcase for the not-so-low price of $4,000.

The way it works is pretty straight forward. Instead of sitting, you walk. Apparently walking at up to 1.5 miles an hour generally doesn't cause you to break a sweat and still allows you to type, mouse and talk normally.

My advice?

If you're interested, instead of forking out the big bucks pick up a used treadmill with arms on your local Kijiji or Craig's List and jerry-rig your own version on the cheap.

Here's Joe on his:

Meat Slammed by Yet Another Major Study

This time it was with regards to its contribution to the risk of heart disease.

The study, run out of Canada's McMaster University by Dr. Salim Yusuf, was not a small study. It analyzed the dietary patterns of 16,000 individuals in 52 different countries and concluded that what we've been saying for years is still true - diets higher in fruits and vegetables and lower in fried foods and animal meat are healthier for you, and in this study specifically healthier for your heart.

Dr. Yusuf, in one of his many interviews with the press had this to say,

"What we've shown is if you eat a healthy diet you can actually reduce the risk of heart attack by about 30 to 40 per cent. That is bigger than most drugs we have for protecting against heart disease. It's even bigger than an angioplasty or bypass"

The study was funded in part by the Heart and Stroke Foundation.

Foundation spokesperson Dr. Beth Abramson Assistant Professor of Medicine, University of Toronto and Director, Cardiac Prevention Center and Women’s Cardiovascular Health at St. Michael’s Hospital commented,

"It's a large international study that I would say reconfirms what is suggested in the literature in smaller studies that we are what we eat"

I'd agree. It does "reconfirm" what we already know to be true. Here we've "reconfirmed" that meat's in fact bad for your health whereupon folks who ate the most meat (by quartile) had an increased risk of heart attack.

Take this new data and add it to that which concluded that diets higher in red meat are associated with dramatically increased risks of multiple cancers, (colon was the strongest where every 48 grams of red meat consumption beyond a weekly limit of 500grams increased colon cancer risk by 15 per cent) and diabetes (for every increase in the number of daily servings of red meat there was a 26% increase in the risk of developing diabetes), and you've got to wonder how any credible medical or public health organization can actually recommend its consumption.

As I always say, while I think red meat's absolutely delicious I don't kid myself (and more importantly anybody else) into thinking it's good for me. Along those lines, can someone please explain why the Heart and Stroke Foundation's Health Check program, a program they report,

"makes healthy choices easier by helping you quickly identify products that can contribute to a healthy diet"

still includes red meat?

So for the scorekeepers out there - here's more evidence, this time from a Heart and Stroke Foundation funded study, "reconfirming" what we already knew about red meat consumption, evidence that states that meat consumption raises the risk of heart disease, and yet here we also have a Heart and Stroke Foundation who happily stamps its Health Check logo all over it and Health Canada who publish a "Food Guide" that doesn't caution against its consumption.

Any guesses when either will change their tunes?

Calories on Menus All Across America?

I've certainly blogged before that it's not a matter of if but rather a matter of when the posting of calories on menu boards becomes a country-wide federal law.

Well as of a few weeks ago, the United States are a few steps closer with the introduction of the LEAN (Labeling Education and Nutrition) act by Delaware Senator Tom Carper and Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski. This bipartisan bill would require that,

"restaurants and grocery stores that serve prepared foods and have 20 or more locations to disclose calories for each menu item so that consumers can see such information before they order their meal. Under the bill, calories will be posted directly on the menu, menu board or in one of the approved alternative ways, such as a menu insert or a sign directly next to the menu board."

Good luck Senators!

UPDATE:Sorry I didn't notice it sooner. The reason the Food Industry is supporting this bill is that it would not in fact require calories to be posted directly on menus or menuboards and if passed it would pre-empt more stringent local, county and state labeling laws. Consequently I can't recommend or endorse it.

Poor luck Senators!

$5 Million Fine for Bogus Weight Loss Claims

Ever hear of Kevin Trudeau?

He's the author of many fantastical books that purport the medical establishment is hiding cures from the general public.

He purports the same to be true about weight management and wrote a book entitled, "The Weight Loss Cure They Don't Want You to Know About".

Apparently what we don't want you to know is that the cure includes weekly injections of human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) which certainly to date has never been demonstrated to be either safe or effective for weight loss in any well designed randomized trial.

Oh, and there's also a complicated diet plan to follow.

His infomercials certainly make it seem effortless but the Federal Trade Commission, shockingly, felt differently.

So much differently in fact that they fined Kevin over $5 million and have banned him from making infomercials for 3 years.

20/20 had a kick at Kevin a while back and thanks to Youtube, here's their piece on his remarkable "cures":

A Time Capsule Video of a Young Gordon Ramsay

You know, the Hell's Kitchen chef.

For today's Funny Friday is his take on school lunches from back when he used to eat them.

Have a great weekend!

Can you Eat like an Antarctic Explorer?

Well if you're in London, England anytime soon you could give it a try.

Just head over to the Green Door Bar and Grill where you can take the "Shackleton Centenary Meal Challenge" which allows you to consume a 6,000 calorie meal that current Matrix Shackleton Centenary Expedition team members may be consuming in their quest to follow in Shackleton's famous boot-steps.

So what will your $150 buy you?

Appetiser
Pork Scratching with a sticky Sweet Chilli Dip 1030 cal
Bottle of Stella 242 cal

Hoosh
A Stew originally prepared by Ernest Shackleton over a methylated spirit burner and consisting of Goose (as a substitute for Penguin) Corned Beef, Oats, Potato and Seasoning 1030 cal
Bottle of Stella 242 cal

Main Course
20oz Aberdeen Angus Rib Eye on the bone 1040 cal
Cauliflower Gratin 300 cal
Mushrooms and Creamed Spinach 300 cal
French Fries 200 cal
250 ml Glass of Red Wine 160 cal
Coke 150 cal

Dessert
Chocolate Fondant with 2 scoops Vanilla Ice Cream 1000 cal
Coconut Vanilla Ice Cream Shake 500 cal

The bellyache of "pride"?

Priceless?

[Hat tip to loyal blog reader Stefan!]

Aspartame Doesn't Affect Appetite

The internet's an interesting place providing soapboxes for me and anyone else with an axe to grind.

One of the axes that gets ground regularly is that asparatame is an especially bad and dangerous molecule that is responsible for a myriad of health concerns.

One of the claims made by those who like to vilify sweeteners (including aspartame) is that consuming them causes appetite to increase and so I was pleased to see a talk at the most recent Obesity Society Scientific Assembly on that very matter.

The talk was on an as yet unpublished study that looked at the effects of aspartame, stevia and sucrose (plain old sugar) on food intake, satiety and post meal blood glucose and insulin levels. Basically folks were given standardized breakfasts and before their lunch and dinner meals they were given a blind "preload" of tea and crackers sweetened with aspartame, stevia or sucrose. Participants then reported on their hunger and satiety levels before and after each meal as well as 30 minutes and every hour after lunch throughout the afternoon. They also gave multiple afternoon based blood samples.

The results?

Both stevia and aspartame use reduced food intake over the entire day compared with sugar, and hunger and satiety levels did not differ.

Translation?

Zero-calorie sweeteners did not affect hunger and when used to replace calories from sugar led to a reduction in total daily caloric intake.

Shocker?

Jamie Oliver's Latest Great Idea (Must See TV)!

Right now it's only airing across the pond (in the UK) but thanks to the magic of the internet, with a bit of effort, you can watch it in North America.

It's Jamie Oliver's new social experiment, The Ministry of Food.

So what's his big new idea?

Go to a city of 250,000 people in Northern England, a city with one of the highest obesity rates in the nation. Once there harness the power of social networking to try to teach the city to cook.

Teach 8 cooks 10 recipes in return for a promise that they each teach two people and each of them two people and so on and in less than 6 months, all of Rotherham ought to be able to cook.

The show provides a fascinating snapshot into the lives of some working class folks out in Rotherham and the pressures surrounding making home cooked meals (do you spend your welfare check on the bus tickets it takes to travel with your two under 6 year old kids to purchase fresh produce or do you save yourself the time and energy and go to a "take-away"?) and it's also a fascinating social experiment.

So far I'm completely captivated by the first two episodes and can't wait to see more.

For a sneak peak, here's a youtube clip of the show's first 10 minutes (sorry, can't embed it).

Find it, watch it, you won't regret it and until then, head over to his website and you 'll find that already his social experiment has sprouted wings as there are 612 bloggers currently blogging about their newest cooking escapades and literally thousands of posts in the forums.

Great job Jamie! Wish you were Canadian!

The Loot Bag Manifesto

My 4 year old came home from a birthday party the other day with a loot-bag that save for one small trinket, contained solely candy.

She's 4.

4 year olds are thrilled with anything. You could put coloured popsicle sticks and cotton balls in a loot bag and they'd be happy - why do you need to send home sugar?

For guests of our daughters we generally raid our local dollar store and buy things like little fairy skirts, wooden puzzles or cars that can be put together and painted with parents, felt doorknockers where we included lettering for kids' names, small dolls, stickers, beading kits for personalized bracelets, pirate hats, squishy balls and play-doh.

Thankfully, my loot bag manifesto is a short one:

I hereby proclaim that an enlightened loot bag contains no candy!

All the Rocky Movies in 5 Seconds Flat!

Better late than never!

Today for Funny Friday are all the Rocky movies in 5 seconds flat. It's not the best Funny Friday video I've ever posted, but hey, it's 5 seconds of your life and worth a quick chuckle!

Have a great weekend!

Dr. Sharma and I have Single Bypasses!

What you see above is a picture of me and my friend and colleague Dr. Arya Sharma (The guy on the left. The guy with the stethoscope? That’s the Grill’s owner “Dr.” Jon) at the Heart Attack Grill (blogged about previously here), but really what you're seeing is a picture of Arya and me practicing what we preach.

You might think that my statement above doesn't make sense, after all, the Canadian Medical Association Journal labeled me a "nutritional watchdog" and I run a behavioural weight management program and Arya, well Arya's the head of Capital Health's Weight Wise - the country's largest tertiary care bariatric centre and the scientific director of the Canadian Obesity Network, how could us eating - "flatliner" fries and "single bypass" burgers reflect our practices?

Simple - we preach that food and calories, while worth monitoring for nutrition and weight, are also used in life for comfort and celebration, and if you can't use food for comfort and celebration from time to time, you're probably on a diet and long-term, it's probably going to fail.

In terms of my lifestyle, excluding vacations and conferences I probably eat out a maximum of twice a month and just like most folks, I enjoy the taste of some foods that are let's say less than optimally nutritious, and sometimes I'll indulge. However what I don't do is give myself a carte blanche during those meals out - instead I choose the healthiest option that I think I'll enjoy so for instance at the Heart Attack Grill I had the single bypass (rather than the double, triple or quadruple), shared a fries with Arya and had water to drink.

As I regularly say weight management and healthy eating - they're about living the healthiest lives you can enjoy, not the healthiest lives you can tolerate. The former's a liveable lifestyle, the latter's just another short-term diet.

So if you're in Phoenix and you're so inclined, the Heart Attack Grill might well be worth a visit, but as the posting on their door states in big, bold, red writing,

"Caution! This Establishment is BAD for your Health!"

[Hat tip to Joe from Active Living magazine who inadvertently reminded me that the Heart Attack Grill was in Phoenix]

An APPEAL to end exercise-only obesity interventions!

(Or why it's not about exercise)

The study is entitled, "A Program Promoting Exercise and Active Lifestyle". In it, 196 overweight (average BMI nearly 30) carefully selected for motivation and affinity to start exercising individuals were asked to exercise at moderate to vigorous intensity for 60 minutes a day, 6 days a week, for a year! To ensure objectivity, subjects were provided with logbooks and heart rate monitors and adherence was excellent. Men in the study averaged 370 weekly minutes of exercise, and women 295.

Subjects were not instructed to make dietary changes.

So if weight loss were about exercise, certainly you would expect that after a year of an hour a day, 6 days of week of exercise, that weight would be lost in a dramatic manner.

The results?

Over the course of the year, men lost an average of 3.5lbs and women 2.6lbs.

Readers of my blog will know that I'm all for exercise - reason being is that it's one of the single most important determinants of health and that doing it psychologically bolsters patients who've lost weight and helps them keep their focus on their weight loss behaviours (including dietary changes).

Clearly what it won't do is by itself lead to dramatic weight loss.

Therefore I would argue that studies and public health interventions for obesity that focus exclusively on exercise or increasing day to day activity can no longer be considered ethical as we know that the outcomes will be dismal. My other concern of course is that since we know these interventions are doomed to failure, by throwing public health care dollars at interventions whose success will be measured on the basis of weight, we're going to drain the pot of public health dollars for obesity treatment and potentially make it less likely to receive funding in the future from once burned, twice shy stretched federal, provincial and municipal governments.

How TVs in Kids' Rooms Raise Obesity Risk

Mea culpa - thanks to the Canadian contingent at this year's Obesity Society conference, I've probably had too many drinks (Thanks to Arya, Dawn, Tara and Danielle) and someone told me once that I shouldn't drink and blog. Of course if you have a daily blog, sometimes you might not have as much choice as you'd want.

Life of course includes occasional indulgences and given that I've got two beautiful little girls and a busy office, my once a month or so nights out are certainly welcome.

The conference was wonderful as always and certainly got me thinking.

I heard a talk the other day regarding childhood obesity and it recounted how dramatically the risk of childhood obesity rises when a child has a television set in their room.

It's such a dramatic increase in risk (I believe in the neighbourhood of a 61% increase in relative risk) that I was never able to understand the mechanism behind it as the studies will generally control for dietary intake and some lifestyle factors suggesting an almost magical response to advertising.

I'm not sure anyone knows the answer but this conference made me wonder, could it simply be that kids with TVs in their bedrooms sleep far less because they're busy watching TV all night long?

Stay tuned this week for some debriefing from the conference, including my review of the Heart Attack Grill.

Scariest Fries Ever?

Came across these beauties on the blog Supersized Foods.

For just $8 you can start a slow death by fries....but oh, the cheesy, potato-y goodness.

For more fried foods available at the LA County Fair (where this shot was taken), head over to the blog that dropped this fry bomb - LAist where they have the photo evidence of deep fried pretty much everything you could imagine from frog legs, to twinkies to of course bricks of cheese fries.

Anyone care to take a guess at the calories?

My guess?

3,500 or so.

Do you think they serve a kids' size?

Are Pink Mohawks an Effective Form of Contraception?

This Sunday is the annual CIBC Run for the Cure.

Over the past 4 years our office has raised over $100,000 to support breast cancer research and programs and this year's no exception - with offline donations we're well over $25,000.

To help the cause Rob Matthews, our fitness director, challenged our team that if anyone raised over $2,500 he'd allow them to shave him a mohawk and dye it pink.

Today for Funny Friday is video evidence that he's a man of his word.

If you like this blog and you haven't done so already, please consider sponsoring Rob in his Run for the Cure effort - anyone willing to get a pink mohawk to support breast cancer research deserves support in my book. Tax receipts are issued and the online run website (run out of CIBC - a major Canadian bank) is encrypted, safe and takes credit cards.

If you'd like to donate to his fundraising efforts, simply click here!

Have a great weekend and good on ya Rob.

I Say Something Nice about KFC!

Perhaps in his old age the Colonel's getting soft, or maybe he's just seeing the writing on the wall?

Yesterday YUM Brands, KFC's parent company, announced that their restaurants (which also include Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, Long John Silver's and A&W) will be voluntarily placing calorie counts on menus at ALL American locations!

This announcement came a day after the State of California passed legislation requiring all chain restaurants (more than 20 locations statewide) to do the same.

Great job Colonel, and frankly smart as given that eventually it's going to be a federal law so why not score some good press by doing it now voluntarily?

Hey Colonel, why not Canadian locations?

[Hat tip to BMI's Lorne]

Disband the Clean Your Plate Club!

What's one of the worst clubs your kid can join?

The clean your plate club - a club likely born out of war rationing back during WWII.

Here's a thought - if your kids aren't cleaning their plates perhaps you're serving them too much?

Or maybe it's that they've grown accustomed to trying to save their appetites for the tastier stuff offered to them after the meal.....but does dessert really need to be served nightly?

Are there risks to not forcing your child to clean your plate?

None that I can think of - emotionally well-adjusted children won't let themselves starve.

My recommendation?

Lose the club - you can spell "waste" two ways.

Your choice.