Is Danone admitting Activia health claims are bogus?

Depends on your point of view I suppose.

You see the European Union has done what the United States and Canada have failed to do and that is ensure that claims made on foods purporting health benefits actually be supported by robust evidence.

So what of Danone? Well last Friday it was revealed that Danone withdrew 3 health claims for consideration from the European Food Safety Authority (I guess that poster up above isn't long for the EU).

The claims that were withdrawn?

Improves digestive comfort (Activia)

Improves slow transit (Activia)

Helps to strengthen the body’s natural defences (Actimel)

Danone now claims they withdrew the claims because,

"It is a difficult thing to find the correct wording and that has contributed to the fact no article 13.5 claims have as yet been accepted by EFSA. But we are very confident about the strength of our science."

Maybe. Or maybe they realize that when people actually apply a rigorous process to identify truthful claims that theirs will fall short, and maybe that's why Danone in the United States has decided to settle an American $300 million class action lawsuit about its yogurt-based health claims out of court.

I guess the upside for Danone is that at least they're getting their money's worth out of their in house legal and spin teams.

Irony Alert: Kellogg's named one of the "world's most ethical companies"

Or maybe I should have titled this Irony Alert: Ethisphere Edition as Ethisphere is the brain trust (and I'm not being snarky here - it's literally a brain trust) that just last week named Kellogg's to their 2009 list of the "World's Most Ethical Companies".

Want to know what else happened last week? Last week Kellogg's settled the charges laid by the Federal Trade Commission that asserted in 2008 Kellogg's violated American federal law when they falsely advertised the benefits of eating Frosted Mini Wheats in ads that I feel preyed on well-intentioned parents who wanted to ensure the best possible chances for their children - an incredibly unethical thing to do.

The ads by Kellogg's laid out in this complaint, a company who Ethisphere has put on their most ethical list for the past 3 years running, boasted:

"a clinical study showed kids who had a filling breakfast of Frosted Mini Wheats cereal improved their attentiveness by nearly 20% when compared to kids missed out on breakfast."

Great job Ethisphere, what incredible champions of ethics you are!

The Canadian Diabetes Association's Staggering Omissions

Some strange omissions over at the Canadian Diabetes Association (CDA).

The first strange omission was noted by my friend Dr. Arya Sharma who pointed out on his blog that despite bariatric surgery being a cure for nearly 80% of type 2 diabetics there's not a single mention of it on the CDA's website.

The second omission was noted by my friend Dr. Jeff Lipsitz, one of Canada's foremost sleep medicine experts, who noticed that despite the incredibly high percentage of type 2 diabetics who are obese and despite the incredibly high association of sleep apnea and obesity, that there was not one mention of sleep apnea screening or treatment in the CDA's 215 page 2008 Clinical Practice Guidelines for the Prevention and Management of Diabetes in Canada

While some may not want surgery to cure their diabetes, certainly at least a mention of surgery on the CDA's website would be warranted given the 80% cure rate and the lack of public knowledge of that fact.

Regarding sleep apnea, the International Diabetes Association certainly thinks it's worth mentioning as they point out that estimates put nearly a quarter of all diabetics as having obstructive sleep apnea and therefore made this recommendation,

"the International Diabetes Federation Taskforce on Epidemiology and Prevention strongly recommends that health professionals working in both type 2 diabetes and sleep disordered breathing adopt clinical practices to ensure that a patient presenting with one condition is considered for the other."

So here we have the CDA with a cure that's not mentioned and a comorbid condition that's not being screened for. I wonder what's up with the CDA and these staggering oversights?

Is obesity responsible for the recent rise in youth cancer?

Last week the Canadian Cancer Society released its report Canadian Cancer Statistics 2009. In it they report that between 1996 and 2005 the incidence of cancer among Canadian 15 to 29 year olds rose 0.8% per year in males and 1.4% per year in females.

So the question of course is why? Why are cancer rates rising?

While I don't want to jump on the bandwagon of blaming obesity for all of society's woes certainly given the established link between obesity and cancer in adults it doesn't seem a stretch to me to wonder if it's the rising weight of Canadian youth that's leading to this rapid rise in cancer.

The Canadian Cancer Society may think weight's possible culprit too given that along with the obvious recommendations of "not smoking", "eating a healthy diet", "exercising" and "wear sunscreen", is "maintaining a healthy body weight".

I imagine time will tell as data from surveys that include variables such as weight may help shed some light on this disturbing trend.

If these clips don't give you goose bumps, you're dead.

Wow!

Never judge books by their covers.

It takes some truly inspirational videos to get me not to post juvenile humour on Fridays on my blog. Today's Feel Good Friday is proof that sometimes dreams can and really do come true.

Have a great weekend!

"Gravitaphobia" - The Irrational Fear of Weighing

This might be the last post in what's turned out to be a mini series on how to use scales.

This one's about scale avoidance or as I'm calling it, "gravitaphobia".

Gravitaphobia tends to happen when folks who believe weight management involves strict control (often to the exclusion of using food for pleasure or comfort) have a difficult time (go figure) living their overly strict lifestyles and then consequently indulge.

Suddenly the scale that they had been stepping on multiple times daily due to their scale addiction - suddenly they want nothing to do with it. Going into the bathroom many will even avert their eyes rather than glance in its direction. Certainly they didn't consume enough calories to make a dent. A piece of chocolate cake, even a rich piece, probably doesn't even contain a quarter pound of calories, yet it's often enough to trigger gravitaphobia.

For some gravitaphobia lasts a day or two. Others it can be weeks and some months or years, and often scale avoidance goes hand in hand with giving up on many or all healthy living strategies.

Let me be clear. The scale isn't your friend or your enemy. The scale is just something to provide you with another piece of information with which to help inform your decisions.

If you're trying to lose weight - weigh weekly.

If you're trying to maintain your weight - weigh daily.

But either way, never ever let the scale push you around and remember that life is dynamic and so too is your weight and your healthy living efforts.

Sometimes life is worth more calories. Sometimes it just happens that way and sometimes it's for great reasons, but at no time should you let that scale have the power to push you around. Don't spend your emotional energies on overt avoidance or guilt - they're certainly not going to help you any they might even hurt.

Frankenfood: Passover Edition

Yes it's Passover - no leavening agents of any kind and I would venture a higher incidence of bowel obstructions among the Jewish population.

Of course food for Passover often involves pretending it's normal food. Case in point these, Streit's "Blueberry Flavoured" Pancakes.

What's "Blueberry Flavoured" you ask?

Apparently it's translucent pieces of blue candy.

So how bad are they?

Bad enough that both my 4 and 2 year old daughters insist the "berries" be removed from their "pancakes" prior to eating.

Click the picture to appreciate their lovely blue glow.

Chag Sameach!

Badvertising: Pomegranate Brain Juice

"HELP NOURISH YOUR BRAIN"

Yup, not only will pomegranate juice improve your immune system, now it will "nourish" your brain.

So how much omega-3 "nourishment" is your brain getting? 50mg of DHA per 250ml.

Per serving of salmon there's roughly 1,610mg.

So if you drink 8 litres of the stuff (32 glasses), you'll get as much DHA as having a single serving of salmon.

Of course you'll also get over a pound of calories and almost 5 cups of sugar.

That's some "nourishment".

Irony Alert: Dunkin' Donuts

Thanks to Andrea from one of my favourite non-nutrition/weight/food related local blogs A Peek Inside the Fishbowl who has noticed that Dunkin' Donuts' new slogan is, "America runs on Dunkin".

Here's Dunkin' Donuts' official explanation,

"What are the keys to getting things done? A can-do attitude, of course. And a quick stop at Dunkin' Donuts. Whether you need a delicious cup of coffee, a quick snack on the go, or an icy cold beverage, Dunkin' Donuts helps you tackle any task at hand.

Mom and dads. Students and senior citizens. Blue collar, white collar, and every collar in between. Dunkin' Donuts is how everyday people get things done, every day.

Dunkin' Donuts. America Runs On Dunkin'"

Word of advice America (Canada too, we're not doing so well ourselves) - perhaps it's time to stop running on Dunkin'.

Things you don't say to your wife

The title says it all and it's today's Funny Friday.

Have a great weekend!



[Hat tip to blog reader Kristine out in Edmonton]

Should we tax sugar sweetened beverages?

In this week's edition of the New England Journal of Medicine is an editorial written by public health crusaders Drs. Kelly Brownell and Thomas Frieden exploring the idea of taxing sugar sweetened beverages.

Unlike putting calories on menus, this would no longer simply be about passing on more information it would be about charging more money.

Basically there are two ways to approach this: Incentive taxation whereby a nominal tax would be applied with the proceeds then going to public health/obesity related initiatives or disincentive taxation whereby you put enough of a tax on the drinks so as to discourage their consumption (or of course a combination of the two).

This wouldn't be an entirely new plan. You may be surprised to know that 40 American States already have small taxes on sugared beverages and snack food and that in Canada there are many different tiers of food taxation.

The argument for taxation is simple. Sugar-sweetened beverages are strongly linked to the obesity epidemic and some argue that they are in fact the single biggest driver of societal weight. They're marketed extensively to children and in the mid 1990s their intake in children surpassed that of milk. Shockingly calories consumed from beverages now account for 10-15% of all the calories consumed by children and adolescents and for every glass consumed per day the likelihood of a child becoming obese increases by 60%. That's one hell of a big gulp.

The authors report that with regards to disincentive taxation, for every 10% increase in price, consumption decreases by 7.8% and estimate that a penny per ounce excise tax would reduce consumption by 13% or two servings per person per week. In turn the tax would generate literally billions of dollars ($1.2 billion in New York State alone) which if used to promote health and better dietary options could have further impact on health and obesity.

Opponents state that food taxes are regressive and unlike tobacco, we need food to live therefore taxation would be unfair, especially when singling out a single food.

Well I've got news for them - we don't in fact need sugar sweetened beverages to live.

As I keep hammering home, to put a dent in rising rates of obesity requires action on a societal level, not an individual one. We need to change the toxic environment itself and taxing one of the main drivers of the epidemic is one way to do that.

This is a war. Sometimes war calls for tough decisions and personally I think this would be a good one.

Badvertising: Pomegranate Immune Juice

"Loaded with antioxidant vitamins C and E to help support a healthy immune system"

I guess going with the study that reported that vitamin E seemed to increase all causes of mortality wouldn't have been a smart option.

You know what else isn't very good for your immune system? Diabetes. Biggest cause of diabetes? Obesity. Big time contributor to obesity? Sugar. So how much sugar in this "enhanced" beverage - 7 teaspoons of it per glass (more drop per drop than Coca Cola).

I wonder when we'll see beer touting it was made with the goodness of whole grain barley which has been shown to reduce the risk of diabetes?

Breaking News: OMA calls for posting of menu board calories!

As you're reading this, I'm probably answering questions at the press conference as I was invited by the Ontario Medical Association (OMA) to help roll out their call to have calories posted on chain menu restaurants and in school cafeterias.

I'm thrilled with the call to action and honoured to help out.

Here's the OMA's press release on the matter:

Ontario’s doctors call for calorie labelling on fast food and cafeteria menus

Toronto, April 7, 2009 – In a move to help combat obesity, Ontario’s doctors are calling for calorie counts to be shown prominently on chain restaurant and school cafeteria menus and menu boards province-wide. The Ontario Medical Association (OMA) says that by revealing the caloric content of fast foods, consumers will be better equipped with the information they need to make healthier choices.

“People lead busy lives and it’s not always convenient to prepare food at home,” said Dr. Ken Arnold, President of the OMA. “Ontario’s doctors are not telling people what they can and can’t eat, but when you do eat out, you should know how many calories you are consuming.”

The OMA wants to see:

• Early action on menu labeling from leaders in the restaurant field.
• The provincial government enact legislation that would require calorie contents to be listed adjacent to the items on menus and menu boards at chain restaurants and school cafeterias across the province.
• An education campaign to help inform Ontarians about the impact of caloric intake on weight gain and obesity.

The OMA is focussing on labelling calories due to common misconceptions surrounding the caloric content of many chain restaurant meals. An OMA policy paper entitled An Ounce of Prevention or a Ton of Trouble shows that most people consume more food than they are aware of and that they do not keep track of caloric intake.

“We’re hoping that when consumers see calories posted while ordering they may choose to order something lower in calories, or eat higher calorie meals less often,” said Dr. Yoni Freedhoff, Medical Director at the Bariatric Medical Institute in Ottawa.

A new OMA report, Treatment of Childhood Overweight and Obesity, highlights the increasing epidemic of childhood obesity and the need for action. It shows that:

• A quarter of children are obese, almost half are inactive and television and computer screen time is their pastime of choice.
• There is evidence linking type 2 diabetes, prediabetes, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, certain types of sleep apnea and the development of chronic kidney disease later in life to children who are overweight or obese.
• Over 75% of obese children become obese adults.
• Overall, the health impacts of overweight and obesity are estimated to cost Ontario $2.2 to $2.5 billion per year.

Ontario’s doctors want to see menu labelling enacted to help parents and children make informed choices about the foods they eat. A recent survey by the OMA shows that over 80% of Ontarians support such an initiative.

“As physicians, we know that Ontarians want to lead healthier lives,” said Dr. Arnold. “Ultimately, knowing and understanding calorie intake can help patients make healthy choices for themselves and that’s empowering.”

- 30 –

For further information: OMA Media Relations at (416) 340-2862 or toll-free at 1-800-268-7215 ext. 2862.

Important news for Ontarians considering US based weight loss surgery

Given the exceedingly long wait times in Ontario for bariatric surgery (up to 3 years) OHIP has been routinely footing the bill for more procedures to be done in a timely manner in the United States.

Last week Ontario's Ministry of Health put a bit of a crimp on this process by publishing a list of "preferred providers" which has allowed the Ministry to negotiate with them packages of services and discounted prices. The price to Ontarians is simple - OHIP won't pay for a provider that has not entered into a preferred provider agreement (PPA).

This is all effective April 1st, 2009. All applications for non-PPA providers received before then are not affected.

Drinking Fountains Prevent Childhood Obesity?

Chalk up another victory for changing the environment (rather than the individual)!

This study appeared in the most recent edition of the journal Pediatrics and it details the outcome of a very simple environmental change - the installation of water fountains in elementary schools.

The fountains were installed in 17 schools and 1,641 children received 4 class based educational sessions surrounding the importance of drinking water and its substitution for sugary beverages (juice included). Meanwhile 15 other control schools with 1,309 children didn't get the fountains or the education.

The results?

Water consumption was 1.1 glasses more per day per child in the intervention group vs. the control, but more importantly,

"After the intervention, the risk of overweight was reduced by 31% in the intervention group, compared with the control group"

Interestingly no significant intervention effect on juice and soft drink consumption was found (though there was an insignificant decrease in juice consumption) so how this intervention affected its changes is still unclear.

One thing's for sure however - the study needs to be repeated. We've longed for a "fluoride in the water" style solution to preventing childhood obesity, and while I doubt the solution will simply be water, seeing studies designed to change the environment is certainly heartening.

Weekend viewing: My Canada's Food Guide talk

If you've got some time this weekend and you're interested in hearing about some of my concerns surrounding Canada's Food Guide, feel free to head over to the First Canadian Healthcare Conference who are showcasing a talk I gave this past January in St. John, New Brunswick.

To watch the talk, click here.

What's up with Disney's DVD "Vaults"?

Does anyone understand how the Disney "Vaults" work?

I keep seeing ads saying that if I don't buy the DVD now, I'll never get a chance.

Today for Funny Friday is one such ad for Disney's the Lion King.

Have a great weekend!

Badvertising: Brain Bread

Yup, give your kids Wonder Bread to make them smart.

Recommendations generally are for children to have 2 servings of fish weekly for them to consume enough healthy fats (DHA) which may have benefits in brain development.

So how much bread would you have to eat to get the DHA of two weekly serving of fish?

Well my friends over at CBC Marketplace in their most recent show figured that out for us (and it's well worth a watch - only 6 minutes).

Want to wager a guess?

My guess is you'll be wrong, unless of course you guessed 428 slices of bread.

How nice of Wonder Bread to prey on parents wanting to help their children.

Shouldn't there be laws against this type of badvertising?

Are you being seduced by your scale?

Further to my post yesterday on scale addiction, today I'll be writing about scale seduction.

Scale seduction is often an insidious problem. You start your "diet" and begin to lose weight and bolstered by the sweet nothings the scale whispers in your ear you slowly get stricter and stricter with your dietary and/or exercise regimes. Basically watching those numbers go down seduces you into thinking you've found a lifestyle when in fact you've just on a diet.

Overly restrictive diets, regardless of weight loss, are generally doomed to fail when you finally get sick of the restrictions you don't particularly enjoy. When does that happen? Usually when the scale stops whispering its sweet nothings.

Remember, it isn't really about what you weigh, it's about what you're doing about what you weigh. Getting sucked into using the scale as your arbiter of success is risky business.

For the Star Wars fans out there consider the scale the "dark side" of the force. Powerful, seductive, but ultimately very dangerous.

Repost: Do you have Scale Addiction?

[Sorry for the repost - 6 hours yesterday of flight delays and over 100 emails in my inbox and I decided a repost would save me some extra stress]

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

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

I've met many folks who are scale addicts.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Break the habit, stop the weighing.

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

Pretty much nobody checks fast food calories.

One of the arguments that Big Food puts forward against mandatory calorie labeling is that many restaurants already have in-store brochures or online listings of calories.

Ever wonder how many people look at them?

Well wonder no more as a study published in the American Journal of Public Health set out to answer that very question.

The study was pretty straight forward. Researchers observed 4,311 people buying food at McDonald's, Burger King, Au Bon Pain and Starbucks to see how many of them looked at those respective restaurants' in-store (but not on menu) nutritional information. In order to be counted all you would have had to do is, walked up to a nutritional information poster and turned their head toward it, picked up a pamphlet, or touched the screen of the computer in Au Bon Pain that displays nutritional information.

So out of 4,311 people want to guess how many checked?

6.

6 out of 4,311 people - 0.1%.

Guess the argument that so long as it's in-store it doesn't need to be on-menu's out the window.

"I just twoted all over the place"

Some of you may have noticed that on my sidebar there's a section that states that, "I Twitter".

Today for Funny Friday I bring you a short clip that will help explain exactly what that means.

If you already Twitter, prepare to be amused.

If you don't already Twitter....look at me, look at me....

Have a great weekend!



[Via Addicted to MedBlogs]

Why Isn't Canada Banning Canned Soft Drinks?

Hypocrisy on the Hill continues.

In April of last year the Canadian government banned the sale of bisphenol-A containing baby bottles.

Their rationale was despite agreeing that the levels were below those which scientists generally worry about BPA,

"due to the uncertainty raised in some studies relating to the potential effects of low levels of bisphenol A, the Government of Canada is taking action to enhance the protection of infants and young children."

My blog post at the time pointed out the unbelievable hypocrisy of a government that banned BPA with admitted "uncertainty" as to its risk yet was quite comfortable giving trans-fats a two year free pass despite the head of the government's own task force in 2007 labeling trans-fats,

"a "toxic" killer that need to be removed from the food chain as soon as possible"

Well the hypocrisy continues as a few weeks ago a report from Health Canada came out that found BPA in 69 of the 72 cans of pop they tested - a sample that was representative of 84% of the market share of soft drinks sold in the country.

Of course there's not been so much as a governmental peep about banning them. Shouldn't they? Nursing mothers drink canned pop. So do pregnant women and unfortunately so too do far too many children. If indeed they felt taking action on the baby bottles was in order, why isn't it in order here?

The answer of course is simple.

Banning canned drinks (or trans fat) would be decidedly bad for Canadian industry, whereas banning BPA containing baby bottles only affects a small market share and certainly gives warm fuzzies to the electorate.

Just goes to show you - Health Canada's is as much (or more) a political and industry pandering body than one that serves the public's or science's best interests.

Eat Red Meat - Die?

That's what a new study from the Archives of Internal Medicine suggests is more likely to happen to you if you eat lots of red meat.

The researchers followed more than a half million adults aged 50 to 71 who completed food-frequency questionnaires for a decade during which some 48,000 men and 23,000 women died.

The study controlled for confounding variables including: Weight, smoking, physical activity, education, age, marital status, family history of cancer, race, total energy intake, alcohol intake, vitamin supplement use, fruit consumption, vegetable consumption and menopausal hormone replacement therapy.

So after controlling for everything what did they find?

"There was an overall increased risk of total, cancer, and CVD mortality, as well as all other deaths in both men and women in the highest compared with the lowest quintile of red meat intake in the fully adjusted model."

"There was an overall increased risk of total, cancer, and CVD mortality, as well as all other deaths in both men (Table 2) and women (Table 3) in the highest compared with the lowest quintile of processed meat intake"

"When comparing the highest with the lowest quintile of white meat intake, there was an inverse association for total mortality and cancer mortality, as well as all other deaths for both men and women"

Translation?

People who at the most red and processed meat had higher rates of total deaths, cancer deaths and cardiovascular deaths while white meat seemed to confer some protection.

The authors conclude that these results further bolster the call to reduce red and processed meat consumption.

According to an article written by Sharon Kirkey from Canwest the Canadian Cancer Society has already responded by reportedly lowering their recommendations for red meat consumption to 500grams weekly.

Constrast that rapid response with that of the Heart and Stroke Foundation whose spokesperson's quote suggests she didn't even bother reading the study saying,

"But the biggest meat eaters in the study were also more likely to be "out of shape and overweight."

despite the fact that the study adjusted for the obvious confounders of weight and fitness.

And yes of course the Heart and Stroke Foundation's Health Check misinformation program still happily sells their seal of approval to red meat and Canada's Food Guide still allows for women to consume 1,050grams weekly and men 1,575grams weekly - facts that I'm sure the Beef Industry press releases and letters to the editor are bound to mention in the coming days.

CBC Marketplace Bashes Health Check (Again)

I know most of my readers know that I'm far from fond of the Heart and Stroke Foundation's misinformation program "Health Check", and in my discussions with allied health professionals involved in nutrition and chronic disease prevention I can tell you my sentiments are widely shared.

CBC Marketplace, Canada's award winning investigative consumer affairs show has also rightly targeted Health Check as being deceptive and a program that may well be misleading consumers into buying less healthy choices. Last year they did a feature on Health Check (where I made a few brief appearances) and last Friday they hit them again in their "Busted" segment.

This time they were looking at the sodium content in restaurant foods such as the ones I've made fun of in the past at Boston Pizza.

To be honest at this point I really can't fathom what's going on inside the heads of the Health Check folks. Their program is maligned by anyone who bothers to take the time to really look at it (even Chatelaine magazine bashed it), the food industry itself has proposed a more rigorous front-of-package labeling program, and I have to imagine the controversy has affected donations. Why they persist in hanging onto it is beyond me. Isn't it time to hang up the gloves? Either completely revamp the program (or better yet, license Nuval) or just let it go. It's not helping Canadians and it's hurting the increasingly fragile integrity of the Heart and Stroke Foundation.

The segment's brief (5 mins) but well worth a look.

Check it out for yourselves by clicking here.

Eat red meat - go blind?

Probably not.

Much as you might think that I only like to criticize red meat (for things like increasing the risk of cancers and death and such), here's a study that doesn't worry me too much.

It was published in the American Journal of Epidemiology and it details a cohort study of 6,734 people aged between 58 and 69 and compared their incidence of age related macular degeneration (ARMD - a condition that can lead to central blindness) versus their consumption of red meat and chicken.

The findings?

People who ate more red meat were more likely to develop ARMD.

So why am I not concerned?

Because the group at risk was the group that reported red meat consumption greater than 10 times weekly.

10 times a week?

Who eats red meat 10 times a week?

You think maybe the folks who eat red meat at least 10 times weekly might in fact have some rather unique lifestyles that in turn may be responsible for the finding?

Cause and effect are tough things to suss out of a cohort study.

Breaking News! The Holy Grail of Deep Fryers Found!

This is a deadly serious post.

I, like most, enjoy French fries. I even "buried" two deep fryers in my pre-med days of bachelorhood.

Now of course I know French fries are not good for me (potatoes not so good either), but that said, sometimes they're worth the risk though usually my "fries" take the form of home-made, oven baked fries.

The days of fake fries may soon be over! Soon I may be back to "real" fries.

How?

Apparently T-fal has figured out how to make a deep fryer that fries 2.2lbs of potatoes using only one measly tablespoon of oil!

T-fal folks, if you're reading and want to send me a machine to try out (they're not yet available for purchase in Ontario) I won't complain and will happily review.

Bliss doesn't come cheap however.

$350 and apparently ready for market late this year.

X-Rated Turtle vs. Hiking Boot

I debated about posting this clip.

Then I decided that for Funny Friday everyone ought to hear the sound a turtle makes when he's getting busy.

I guess he forgot to put a sock on the frat room doorknob.

The internet is one strange place.

Have a great weekend!

Newsflash - Weight's not good for your health!

Published this week in the Lancet.

A meta-analysis summarizing 57 studies on the effects of BMI on mortality.

900,000 subjects in total and they excluded deaths in the first 5 years to eliminate the bias of death from subjects already dying (and consequently in many cases often quite skinny due to the wasting associated with many chronic illnesses).

The results?

All-cause mortality was lowest among those with BMIs in from 22.5 to 25.

Above a BMI of 25, every 5-unit increase in BMI translated to a:

30% increased risk for all-cause mortality;

40% higher risk for death from heart disease or stroke;

60% to 120% increase in renal, hepatic, or diabetic mortality;

10% increased risk for cancer-related deaths.

I wonder how folks who make their livings as contrarians to the risks of weight are going to spin this one?

Badvertising: Slenderizing Juice

"4 slenderizing vitamins and minerals"

So what are these 4 miracle vitamins and minerals?

Chromium, vitamin C, L-carnitine and something called "Super-citrimax" (an extract of garcinia cambogia.

So here's what I know.

None of those ingredients have been shown to be significantly beneficial to weight loss but all have been significantly beneficial in selling misleading products like this one.

Watch the world's best ever rendition of Danny Boy

I know it's not Friday but today's video is certainly funny.

I've been saving this one since I found it surfing youtube with my daughters over 6 months ago.

There's no doubt in my mind it's the world's best rendition of Danny Boy.

(And this one's definitely worth a click through to the blog for my email subscribers (just click the title and it'll take you there)).

Have a great St. Patrick's Day and remember, green beer has the same number of calories as regular!

Busted: President's Choice Blue Menu On Track Plus Protein Cereal

As some of you may know, my wonderful wife is pregnant with our third child and for some reason she's been much hungrier this time around. Consequently she's been focusing on eating frequently and including protein with every meal and snack.

A few weeks ago she came home with a bunch of high protein cereals. The one she was most excited about was the President's Choice Blue Menu On Track Plus Protein. She was excited because its nutrition facts panel reported that she'd get 13 grams of protein and 210 calories in 1.25 cups of the stuff. That excited her because it was a lot of protein and more importantly compared with the other high protein cereals, it was a large volume of cereal.

It actually sounded too good to be true.

Well, like most things that sound too good to be true, it's not.

My wife decided to weigh the cereal as its nutrition facts panel reported that the 1.25 cups of cereal ought to weigh 54grams.

When she weighed it, 54grams filled up 0.75 of a cup.

That means that when measured by volume President's Choice Blue Menu On Track Plus Protein provides 40% more calories than reported on its label.

That means if you decided to have the box's recommended 1.25 cup serving every day for breakfast in a year you'd consume 30,000 more calories than you bargained for.

Given that the cereal is being marketed to folks as assisting in "maintaining a health body weight" and keeping them, "On Track" that's an incredibly off-track deception.

Shame on you President's Choice.

UPDATE 17/3/2009: Just heard back from President's Choice who report that indeed there was a labeling error that they are trying to remedy. They report 54grams being 7/8s of a cup and while not quite the 3/4 we measured, certainly close enough for me not to quibble.

Do you have what it takes to be a great marketer?

Ok, so here's your dilemma.

You're a marketing executive and you've been hired to market a device that women can use to pee standing up.

What do you do?

Today's Funny Friday is proof (for me at least) that I'm not creative enough to be a marketing executive.

Have a great weekend!



[Hat tip to my friend Naz]

Follow up on Ayala's Herbal Water

Long term readers may remember my post from almost a year ago about pediatrician Ayala's Laufer Cahana's herbal water.

I was particularly irritated by Ayala's representation of her water as a potential healing tonic in her products' original press release given her clear understanding of evidence-based practice (as seen in her blog).

Well, I just took a trip around Ayala's Herbal Water website and I've got this to say - other than that original press release she's done a bang up job of not in fact making ridiculous, non-evidence based claims.

Ayala, while what I think clearly doesn't matter, I'm going to give you my thoughts anyways. Why not remove the September 18th, 2007 press releases? You've had plenty of great media and reviews since then and as noted, your subsequent press releases have never strayed into making nonsensical pseudo-medical claims. Clearly you care about your ethics and I think the Sepetember 18th press release besmirches the message you're currently trying to promote (and allows loudmouth bloggers like me to a year ago get all huffy).

Kudos to you Ayala for abandoning the miracle-in-a-bottle path.

Want cheap prescription weight loss drugs? Buy a "natural" product.

Some people swear by their "herbal" remedies.

You know when I opened my offices I scoured the medical literature hoping I could convince myself that there was a herbal supplement that I could sell patients that would help them lose weight and help me pay salaries.

Guess what?

I don't sell any products.

Oh, yours works? Maybe it's because its got prescription weight loss drugs mixed into the "natural" pills. At least that's what a recent FDA sting operation found out when they found prescription weight medications (including some not sold in the US) in 68 different "natural" products.

Why put these into the "natural" products? Because the expensive part of coming up with medications isn't manufacturing them, it's the research and development behind them. Spend pennies a pill on making a herbal weight loss product work by putting in drugs that actually affect weight and now you've got a "herbal" product that people will keep buying.

So what drugs did they use to taint the pills?

Sibutramine (can have fatal interactions with certain types of antidepressants)

Rimonabant (pulled from the weight loss market due to adverse effects of depression and suicidal ideation)

Phenolphthalein (a laxative no longer sold in Canada due to its potential contribution to getting cancer)

Phenytoin (an anti-seizure medication)

Bumetanide (a diuretic)

If weight-loss in a bottle existed the world would be skinny.

From the "What were they thinking?" file

Because there isn't enough temptation in your children's lives to eat cookies and chocolate here are more stupid kid games (like the ones I blogged about back here).

I wonder who awarded the chocolate game the "Best Games Award 2008"?

Hershey's?

Oy.

Overweight? Your dietitian probably doesn't like you.

At least not if the results from a recent study are in fact applicable to the profession as a whole.

Dr. Rebecca Puhl, one of the Rudd Center's researchers (and bloggers I might add) published a study in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association whereby she polled 200 dietitian students about their attitudes towards the obese.

Her findings were frightening.

Only 2% of those training to be dietitians had positive (and she included "neutral" as positive) attitudes towards the obese with the remaining 98% being moderately biased against prospective heavier patients.

Of course the same could be said of many health professionals (including doctors). Similar to the dietetic students in a comparable study medical students held almost universally negative beliefs while a study with practicing family physicians showed roughly 50 of them cultivating negative stereotypes.

I'm sure real-life dietitians with real-world experience are likely far less judgemental than the wide-eyed students in Rebecca's study (hint - here's a ripe study for the picking for someone with resources).

Clearly all health professionals have a long way to go at eliminating their own weight-related biases.

Altruistic Boy Scouts to Offer Free Breast Exams

Ever wonder who thinks up this stuff for the Onion?

Today's Funny Friday is their Today Now report on some clearly selfless boy scouts.

(For extra giggles make sure to read this captions)

Have a great weekend!

Guess what? You're probably not fated to be fat.

Genes.

People like to blame genes.

Now there's no doubt whatsoever that genes affect weight, but given the fact that genes haven't changed in the past 100 years and obesity rates have, it's tough to suggest that if you've got an unlucky deck you're fated to be fat.

Recently there's been some work done on the FTO gene. Readers of my friend Dr. Arya Sharma's blog may have come across his post that detailed research published in the New England Journal of Medicine that suggested kids with a particular version of the FTO gene were more likely to choose higher fat (and hence higher calorie) foods.

So are they fated to be fat? Is there nothing they can do?

Of course not.

In an article published yesterday in the PLoS Laura Johnson and colleagues looking at a sampling of 2,275 children found that those children with the higher calorie version of the FTO gene who consumed lower energy dense diets did not find themselves at an elevated risk of obesity.

Translation?

Regardless of your genes, if you're not eating more calories than you burn you're not likely to gain.

This doesn't mean that life isn't more challenging for folks with genetic contributors to weight gain - it just hammers home the fact that like those towns I blogged about in France, without tremendous education and a focus on changing the actual environment, this problem's probably not going away.

Remember too 100 years ago obesity was an incredible rarity - the world back then was truly a phenomenal behavioural weight loss program as it was a program that worked not on an individual level, but rather a societal one.

As always talks about genetics and weight bring me back to Dr. George Bray's famous quote,

"Genes load the gun, the environment pulls the trigger"

Reality Weight Loss Lies - Biggest Loser Edition

So at the end of last week's show the exiled player was shown completing one of his dreams - running a marathon with his wife. It was an idyllic ending - running hand in hand past the finish line. The somber text following the shot, complete with Biggest Loser music in the background, read that Dane finished the 26 mile marathon with his wife in 3 hours and 53 minutes - a pace that if true would have had Dane placing 14th overall.

Inspirational or impossible?

Dane, though much slimmer than his starting Biggest Loser weight, weighed in on race day at 280lbs. A sub-four hour marathon for someone who's only been training for 6 months who weighs 280lbs to me sounded impossible.

Imagine my lack of surprise when the truth actually hit the net. According to a report out of Runner's World magazine's blog, not only did Dane not complete the marathon in under 4 hours, he didn't actually complete it at all. Apparently when it became clear that he would be unable to complete the marathon in the 6 hour time limit of the Arizona Desert Classic Marathon a Biggest Loser show SUV picked Dane and his wife up and gave them a lift.

Oh, and even with the lift they didn't finish in 3:53, they finished in 5:53:48.

The Biggest Loser's production company Reveille LLC reportedly put out a press release detailing their "error" (I can't find the press release) suggesting there was a problem with the time readout. Certainly I can read 5:53 in the video below and you think that maybe, just maybe the camera guys knew how long it took and that Dane's run included an SUV ride?

Looking at the Biggest Loser website I couldn't find anything that suggested they lied to their viewers, nor did I see mention of it last night.

Dane, the guy whose incredible weight loss and commitment to changing his life I'm not knocking, isn't planning on giving back his finisher's medal because "in his mind" he finished the race.

Now as you might imagine, I don't espouse the ridiculously non-sustainable approaches the Biggest Loser broadcasts as helpful, but that said I've always felt the show was useful for that last two minutes. That's the two minutes where the incredibly dramatic weight loss is juxtaposed with the incredibly dramatic lifestyle changes that contestant has made. I've often said, "the more weight you want to permanently lose, the more things in your lifestyle you'll have to permanently change". I guess I'll have to take some of those changes with a grain of salt too as clearly lying is something the show espouses.

To watch a video of last week's last two minutes, click on below.

[Hat tip to Twitter's @stepank ]

This is not the best response to childhood obesity

Bigger clothes.

That picture up above is of British school uniform supplier Nadeem Ahmed holding the size 44inch waist trousers he's been selling to kids as young as 13.

In fact a recent report describes how some of Britain's largest retailers of childrens' clothing are joining together to fund a study into just how big Britain's children have gotten. They're going to use high-tech scanners to measure shapes and sizes with the aim to roll out better fitting clothing for ever-larger children.

Yet you'll still find folks vehemently denying increasing rates of childhood obesity.

I guess the clothing industry is in on this giant public health conspiracy.

Shocker - Calorie Burning Tea Doesn't Actually Burn Calories

Long time readers of my blog may remember my post from 2007 where I made fun of the claims being made by the Coca Cola company in the marketing of their "calorie-burning" tea Enviga.

Well guess what? On Friday Coca Cola agreed to pay $650,000 in penalties for their misleading Enviga advertisements and change them to include disclaimers that Illinous attorney general Lisa Madigan states will provide,

"clear and conspicuous disclosure that the product does not produce weight loss without diet and exercise"

I guess the,

"perfect partnership of science and nature"

doesn't actually break the laws of science and nature.

Shocker that.

Have you prepared your kids adequately for the coming apocalypse?

Yup, that uplifting subject is today's Funny Friday (courtesy of the Onion News Network).

Remember Fridays I take big swigs of mirth rather than vitriol.

(And email subscribers if you want to watch, click the link in the email to bring you back to the blog.)

Have a great weekend!

Frankenfood: French-fried Bacon

So far it's only in the experimental phase but playing off the recipe of french-fried hotdogs which I blogged about a ways back some enterprising lad has decided to french-fry bacon.

I must say, it actually looks like it would taste good but then again, I'm a sucker for bacon (don't tell my god).

That said, here is the quote from the inventor regarding taste,

"I feel ill and so very, very dirty"

[Hat tip to Rob our fitness director via The Last Appetite where there are a few more images for you to enjoy]

Read how two little French towns are curing childhood obesity

Fleurbaix and Laventie, France - combined population 57,819. Not exactly the big time, not exactly household names - yet.

Why might that change? Because they are perhaps the only two towns in the world where childhood obesity rates are in fact dramatically declining.

What's their secret? Special mineral springs? Treadmills instead of desks? A fast food ban? 10 hours of phys-ed a day?

Nope.

Their secret?

Education - lots of it, to many different players.

In Fleurbaix and Laventie healthy living education began in 1992 and for 5 years schools were recruited to teach children about characteristics of foods and nutrients, healthy eating habits, food processing and food labelling in lessons that were implemented throughout the teaching syllabus (not just in gym or home economics). Teachers at the school were trained by dietitians. There was no focus placed at this time on physical activity. Impressively classes were augmented with cross-cutting initiatives including cooking classes, visits to farms, visits to supermarkets and dietitian monitored school based family breakfast programs. This first stage was meant to last for 5 years only but given the success of the program, it's still running today.

The second stage began in 1997 and continued through 2002 and while it was meant to simply be an observational period, as the teaching from stage one became more pervasive, community involvement continued to grow. So much so that in 1999 two dietitians were employed to perform school interventions and also to present to town councils and other adult meetings. The town councils in turn started to support actions in favour of physical activity, built new sporting facilities, hired new sport educators, and created walking schoolbus programs while family activities started to focus on fitness and various local stakeholders (GPs, pharmacists, shopkeepers, sporting and cultural associations etc) set up further family activities that focused on healthy living.

From 2002 through 2007 intervention entered the home whereby a free home based healthy living checkup was offered to 3,000 residents (a full 5% of the population). The visit included blood testing, a clinical exam and a questionnaire aimed at screening for unhealthy habits. Individuals thus identified to be at risk were offered family oriented advice delivered by a dietitian on healthy eating and physical activity and if necessary were referred to a GP for specific health issues (including childhood obesity).

Over the 14 years of study the local media became involved and multiple newsletters and press releases supported the project. As a whole 212 articles appeared in local newspapers, 190 in the medical press, 208 in the national press and there were 25 television reports and 75 radio reports.

The results?

In 2005 childhood obesity rates in the control towns (and much of the UK) had reached a staggering 17.8%.

In Fleurbaix and Laventie?

8.8%.

What Fleurbaix and Laventie did was what has been missing from every other public health intervention I've ever come across. They treated this as a disease of the environment, rather than a disease of the individual.

Every public health professional interested in obesity should be encouraged to read this paper and study the interventions put forth in Fleurbaix and Laventie. We need to start pressing for similar changes yesterday.

(Want to know what Canada has done? We've created a food guide that ignores calories and recommends far too much food, spent $5 million on television advertisements that in isolation tell people they ought to exercise more and we have a Public Health Agency that explicitly and purposely refuses to label obesity a disease. Think we're in trouble? International readers if you're wondering about the TV commercials, here's a parody that sums them up pretty quickly:)

How the Food Industry Influences Food Policy

Simple - they're invited to the table and once there they're able to extend their considerable influence and spin on the proceedings (how many public citizens, scientists, doctors or dietitians have teams of PR folks and scientists helping craft their messages?).

I've blogged about this a great deal in the past and commented on how bad an idea it is to bring people with a vested interest in national food policy to the table when trying to develop new national food policies.

Rather than go through all that again I strongly encourage you to spend 6 minutes of your morning watching the following video. It does a great job covering just who it is who attends and gets involved in the consultations surrounding national food policy development.

While this particular video deals with American school lunch programs, rest assured this video could have been filmed at every "public" consultation surrounding Canada's Food Guide and of course the non-public, stakeholder invited consultations as well.


(Thanks to Marion Nestle for featuring the video on her blog)

Do you need a Weight Loss Bookie?

I read a fascinating piece in the New York Times a few weeks ago. It was about a new online service that allows you to place monetary bets regarding your ability to meet your own specified lifestyle goals. Bets may range from quitting smoking, quitting drinking, spending less, studying more etc., but one of the most popular categories are weight loss bets.

Every week you fail to meet your goals the site bills your credit card and then holds your money in escrow until the end of your challenge. Who gets your money then is up to you. You can of course set up bets whereby you've challenged a friend and the winner takes all, or you can allocate it to charity but more interestingly you also set it up so that the money goes an "anti"-charity (someone you'd hate to see your money go to).

The site, StickK.com is the brainchild of Yale professors Dean Karlan and Ian Ayres who had done research on how contractual committments helped with both smoking cessation and weight loss and with the help of a graduate student of theirs, set up the site.

I think it's a brilliant website and certainly for some may help them getting that last little bit of motivation to finally do whatever it is they've now entered into a binding contract to do.

Who'd be your "anti"-charity. Not too tough to figure out who mine might be.

Check out my new digs!

Thanks to Maggie Gosselin from Tufts this place finally got a much needed renovation!

Hope you like it!

Hope for Congenital Happiness Sufferers!

Are you so regularly happy that you annoy all the people around you?

If so, there's hope - it's called Despondex and an Onion News Network report is today's Funny Friday (beware, minor cursing in the video).

Have a great weekend!

(Given that there are a great many new subscribers - Fridays are my day off being irritated. Usually I post a video or story that I find amusing. Videos need to be watched on the blog itself and you can get there by clicking the title in the email)

Why We Need to Regulate the Weight Loss Industry

Wow, the editorial sure made a splash.

Of course editorials are brief and points always need to be limited so I just wanted to take a few moments and flesh this out some more.

Plainly put we need to protect consumers from weight management fraud, but where weight management differs from other areas is that the problems are more real and the people, more vulnerable. No one would care if you bought a shammy from Vince from Sham-Wow and it didn't work - $19.99 (or whatever it is) and no harm done. Here there's harm.

Obesity and overweight contribute dramatically to morbidity, mortality, reduced quality of life, social stigma and bias and both direct and indirect health care expenditures. Media, governments, physicians all hammer home the notion that weight has major risk and it would be healthy to lose it. Of course by not telling people where to go, consumers may find themselves in programs or buying products that they purchased due to overtly fraudulent or misleading claims.

The harm is not only in consumers being swindled into non-evidence based and likely non-sustainable approaches, not just to their pocket books that in many cases will end up much, much lighter, the harm is that those same individuals who are clearly in a state of change involving readiness, likely won't be at that same state once they've failed a program that itself was a failure - they'll blame themselves and be less likely to trust or seek out further help.

The call to action in the Journal is simple and it's a no brainer really - if you're going to make a claim about a product, pill or potion to treat obesity, if you can't back up your claim with evidence you shouldn't be allowed to make it.

With allied health professionals I'll go one step further. While Vince from Sham-Wow might be able to get away with outlandish claims, allied health professionals are not, or at least should not be able to. Physicians, dietitians, chiropractors etc., are all governed by the Heath Care Act and as such we are not allowed to make claims that are fraudulent or misrepresent the evidence base. Consequently I'll throw down my gauntlet to the Colleges of various health care professionals and state that it is their immediate and direct responsibility to protect the public from the myriad of health professionals currently sullying the good names of their respective Colleges and preying on the public that in too many cases trusts them too much.

Unfortunately doctors too can be unscrupulous.

Top ten things to know before joining a weight loss program

Yesterday the Canadian Medical Association Journal published an editorial I co-authored with my friend, colleague and fellow blogger Dr. Arya Sharma (here's his Obesity Notes blog).

The editorial very simply calls on both the medical establishment and governments to put an end to the shady practices that permeate the commercial weight loss industry.

I will likely post more thoughts on this tomorrow but for today I'd like to provide you with a top ten list. Ensure that all ten items are true for any program you're considering and if they're not, you might want to consider another program or at the very least, speak to your physician about it before enrolling.

• The program is not a one-size-fits-all diet, and has individualized nutritional, exercise and behavioural components.
• Nutritional advice is provided by a physician or a registered dietitian
• Exercise is encouraged and physical activity is promoted at a gradual, rather than at an injury-inducing rapid pace
• Reasonable weight loss goals are set encouraging at most a 3lb per week pace and the program does not promise, "guarantee" or imply dramatic, rapid, weight-loss as an outcome
• The program does not require large sums of money at the start or make clients sign contracts for expensive, long-term programs without the option of at least partial refunds (which you should discuss with them before enrolling)
• The program does not promote diets lower than 800 Calories daily and if less than 1200 daily are supervised by a physician.
• The program does not require the use or purchase of any products, supplements, vitamins or injections
• The program does not make outlandish claims such as, “you will only lose fat” or that they are able to, “target” problem areas.
• The program has an established maintenance program optionally available
• The program provides you with statistics that include the percentage of clients who drop out, the average percentage of weight loss and the average weight loss sustained following completion of their maintenance program.

Welcome Back Sally Brown!

(Yes, I know "you're" is spelled wrong in the graphic. Too bad I'm not technical enough to fix it)

Who's Sally Brown?

She's the CEO of the Heart and Stroke Foundation.

She was also the head of Ontario's Trans-fat Task Force which back in 2006 called for a regulatory approach to the removal of trans-fats from our food supply.

Sally was a strong proponent of such an approach as evidenced by these soundbites gleaned from the press of the day,

"The problem is, without regulations, we won't get everyone on board and it's harder to get product changes. Unlike french fries, with something like doughnuts and chocolate bars, you have to take it out of the formulation which is more difficult. We needed regulations uniform across both sectors"

Sally Brown, Vancouver Sun Nov. 1st, 2006

"Trans fats are a "toxic" killer that need to be removed from the food chain as soon as possible"

"We know that the government is taking our recommendations very seriously, but we also know that they're getting some push back from industry who traditionally don't like regulatory approaches"

"Our argument is, if you don't regulate it, it'll be piecemeal"

"We also say that by regulating it, you're sending a signal to the marketplace to ... create healthier oils."

"We think we've given the government a great opportunity to implement what was a consensus report," she said. "[The food industry] supported all the recommendations, they're ready to act. Now we need the government to act."

Sally Brown, National Post Jan. 11th, 2007

"could account for between 3,000 and 5,000 Canadian deaths annually from heart disease"

"The longer we wait, the more illness and in fact death will happen, so we know we have to get it out of our food supply"

"There is no safe amount of trans consumption, but many of these foods are well past recommended limits."

Sally Brown, The Windsor Star, Jun. 5, 2007

Imagine my surprise then when in late 2007 Sally Brown rolled over and congratulated Tony Clement for giving Big Food a 2 year free pass to try to voluntarily remove trans fats from the food supply!

It lead me in multiple postings to chant, "Bring Back the Old Sally Brown"!

Well I'm happy to say, she's back!

Last week the Health Canada's Trans-Fat Monitoring Program proved the old Sally Brown right in that voluntary trans-fat reduction was piecemeal and that Big Food was doing a dismal job of doing it on their own. Excitingly, unlike every other Health Canada Trans-Fat Monitoring press release this one was not accompanied by Sally Brown's apologist stance and wait and see attitude, this one had her stating this,

"Although some companies and sectors have stepped up to the plate and done well, overall the food industry is not sufficiently reducing trans fats voluntarily.

"So our view is this data seems to be suggesting quite strongly that it's not going to happen without regulation"

Welcome back Old Sally Brown!

Shame though that during these past two years of wait and see pandering to Big Food, according to the Heart and Stroke Foundation's own estimates, Health Canada's voluntary free pass lead directly to the deaths of between 4,000 and 6,000 Canadians.

[You might notice a new feature in my sidebar - it's a countdown timer to the official 2 year mark set by the then Health Minister as to when regulations will be employed if voluntary efforts fail. Anyone care to wager as to how long AFTER the countdown's finished we see a regulated effort?]

Funny Friday: Literal Video (Rick Astley's Never Gonna Give you Up)

So what if you take an 80s video, cut out all the lyrics and then dub back in a literal description of what's going on in the video?

Well it makes Funny Friday on February 13th, 2009.

Have a great weekend!



(As always, email subscribers you need to visit the blog to view - just click on the link at the top of the email)