Prediction for 2011: Food Addiction Will Still Exist

Dr. Mark Hyman does not speak in polite euphemisms, but titles an essay in the bluntest terms, “Food Addiction: Could It Explain Why 70 Percent of Americans Are Fat?” Yes, it could! This is what Dr. Pretlow has been saying all along. There really is such a thing as food addiction, and the sooner we catch on to that fact and act accordingly, the better.

Borrowing a phrase from Michael Pollan, Dr. Hyman endorses the idea that food “made in a plant rather than grown on a plant” can be biologically addictive. In agreement with Dr. David Kessler and Dr. Pretlow, he believes that certain kinds of ersatz food are intentionally and clandestinely engineered to be as addictive as possible. Dr. Hyman says,

In his book The End of Overeating, David Kessler, M.D., the former head of the Food and Drug Administration, describes the science of how food is made into drugs by the creation of hyperpalatable foods that lead to neuro-chemical addiction.

Dr. Hyman is also certain that nobody sets out wanting to be an addict of any variety, whether the substance is alcohol, heroin, or pseudo-food made of fat, sugar, salt, and chemicals. He dismisses as humbug the notion that all food is created equal. Likewise, the “Just say no” approach is refuted.

Also, the “personal responsibility” jive that the food industry tries to lay on us is perceived as the same rationalization given by the most predatory of crack dealers: “Nobody forces them to buy the stuff.” Dr. Hyman asks us to perform a thought experiment:

Imagine a foot-high pile of broccoli, or a giant bowl of apple slices. Do you know anyone who would binge on broccoli or apples? On other hand, imagine a mountain of potato chips or a whole bag of cookies, or a pint of ice cream. Those are easy to imagining vanishing in an unconscious, reptilian brain eating frenzy. Broccoli is not addictive, but cookies, chips, or soda absolutely can become addictive drugs.

Exactly as Dr. Pretlow did in Overweight: What Kids Say, Dr. Hyman points out an interesting fact related to the childhood obesity epidemic. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th Edition, familiarly known as the DSM-IV, enumerates the criteria for addiction. If a patient has a certain number of these traits, the patient is diagnosed as addicted. We can’t help but notice how closely the characteristics of food addiction conform to those accepted signs of addiction, the ones that apply when the substance is something other than food.

When kids write in to the Weigh2Rock website and talk about their unhealthy relationships with food and eating, the feelings and behaviors they describe are the same that would be ascribed to addiction, if they were talking about some other substance. In fact, the kids come right out and say the A-word, frequently. This means it would be helpful to look at childhood obesity through the Psychological Food Dependence-Addiction Lens.

Dr. Hyman’s article is like a pocket guide to the territory of food addiction. He offers some of the questions from the quiz developed by the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University. Find out if you are an industrial food addict! Most of us are, the author says. Then, he gives us a roundup of the important studies that all point to the same conclusion: Food can be addictive.

The sociological and environmental considerations are also examined: food deserts, nutritional wastelands, school vending machines that dispense junk food, and numerous other elements that surround us. Also, advertising — the relentless merchandising of stuff that makes us fat and sick.

Here’s an interesting digression: a piece by Lea Rittenhouse about technology addiction among college students. Rittenhouse draws heavily on the ideas of Dr. Hilarie Cash, who is executive director of reSTART Internet Addiction Recovery Center. Located in Fall City, Washington, conveniently close to Microsoft HQ in Redmond, reSTART treats a variety of Internet-related addictions including video-gaming. The therapists are of course prepared to address the underlying problems that contribute to the development of addiction. These are startlingly reminiscent of the difficulties that lead to food addiction: “family problems, divorce, childhood trauma, depression, anxiety…”

For all addicts, there is hope. As Dr. Hyman says,

We can alter the default conditions in the environment that foster and promote addictive behavior. It’s simply a matter of public and political will. If we don’t, we will face an ongoing epidemic of obesity and illness across the nation.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Food Addiction: Could It Explain Why 70 Percent of Americans Are Fat?,” The Huffington Post, 10/16/10
Source: “Addiction in Student Life,” PatriotTalon.com, 11/22/10
Source: “Our Mission,” reSTART Internet Addiction Recovery Program website
Image by Ivan Walsh, used under its Creative Commons license.

Fiction and Nonfiction for Tween Girls

One of the obvious drawbacks of childhood obesity is that it hangs around and becomes adolescent obesity and, eventually, adult obesity. Sure, many people have overcome their propensity to be overweight, and they are heroes. Ruby Gettinger and others have documented their own histories, including the recognition that food addiction was controlling their lives, and what they had done about it.

And how much better it is if the problem never develops in the first place! This is why the Archive page of Dr. Susan Bartell’s Girls-Only Weight Loss website is such a treasure. We’ll just pick one at random — “Don’t Model Yourself After Models.” Back in 2006, a major world-class fashion show, the Pasarela Cibeles, made its famous decision to reject skeletal runway models. Dr. Susan says,

The Spanish government realizes that while it is important for girls not to be overweight, the opposite — being super skinny, like runway models usually are, is dangerously unhealthy. And when girls watch those models show off clothes, it sets a bad example and also makes girls frustrated. Some girls even try to get that skinny and develop eating disorders like anorexia and bulimia.

Dr. Susan is a psychologist, consultant, and an award-winning writer. Her collection of insightful and helpful articles is a splendid resource for young women struggling with weight issues. She points out to kids the things they might not have thought about, like, for instance, product placement in the media. It’s a good idea for anybody, not just a young person, to stop and consider, “Am I buying this thing just because my favorite actor had one of these in a movie?”

Once a person starts thinking about stuff like, “Why, really, do I buy Coke instead of Pepsi?” or, “Why, really, do I buy Pepsi instead of Coke,” you never know what could happen. He or she might move on to think something like, “Why don’t I just drink some nice water instead?”

Here is Dr. Pretlow’s comment about the book, Dr. Susan’s Girls-Only Weight Loss Guide:

Dr. Bartell’s book is the first I’ve seen that deals with the connection between feelings, overeating, and overweight in childhood. She is right on point. Her book contains excellent tips for improving self-love and for coping with emotions without resorting to food.

Tweens are not-quite teenagers, roughly ages 10 to 14, and they have their own set of problems. These are addressed in a fiction book for tweens, Don’t Call Me Cookie, by Vanessa Pasiadis. The author earned a Master’s degree from the School of Public Health at the University of Pittsburgh. She puts her accumulated knowledge to work as a teacher and health care consultant, and by placing good advice in a framework kids will enjoy, a story.

Twelve-year-old Cookie Lemon wants to be an actress, but meanwhile she’s dealing with obesity. With help from a savvy pediatrician called Dr. Max and a wonderful teacher, Ms. Martiss, Cookie not only sets out on a better path, but brings along her best friend and even her parents. The book has been endorsed by Children’s Hospital of Cleveland and other worthy institutions.

In a print magazine called The Hermenaut we have found a terrific article called “Fatty Fiction.” The author, Lynn Peril, re-examined half a dozen books that she had read as an overweight young girl. They were published between 1955 and 1982, and the main characters were always girls who were unhappy and/or unpopular because of their excessive weight. Even worse, Peril says the girls in the young-adult novels were passive and unwilling to fight back when bullied. Generalizing about this sub-genre of fiction tailored for teens and tweens, Peril says,

The plot hinges on her struggles to lose weight, and the denouement is reached when the young girl achieves her goal. Along the way, her emotional and social problems are resolved, the result (overtly or not) of her weight loss. Often there is a moralistic bent to the story, urging the presumably porcine young readers to diet.

Peril says that fatty fiction went out of style when anorexia nervosa became a bigger problem than obesity. Now that the polarity has reversed again, what is fiction for young girls saying today?

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Archive,” Girls Only Weight Loss
Source: “Don’t Model Yourself After Models,” Girls Only Weight Loss, 09/18/06
Source: “Book Aimed at Young Readers Takes on the Important Topic of Childhood Obesity,” PRLog.Org, 11/17/10
Source: “Fatty Fiction,” Hermenaut Number 14
Image by stars alive (Keirsten Balukas), used under its Creative Commons license.

The National Initiative for Children’s Healthcare Quality

Be Our Voice is an organization of healthcare professionals. The group was created by the National Initiative for Children’s Healthcare Quality (NICHQ), and its object is to persuade healthcare professionals to put on their “community leader” hats to pursue the goal of ending the childhood obesity epidemic. Working with and treating individual children is a basic job, and through Be Our Voice, healthcare professionals voluntarily take on another layer of accountability by accepting leadership roles in the community.

The regulations that affect children’s health are made by legislators, and since they are not born omniscient, legislators need to turn to someone for information and advice. But an organization such as the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is not allowed to use its resources to attempt to influence legislation related to childhood obesity. So, how can minds be changed?

Such organizations can provide policy briefs and research reports, and can provide technical assistance at the written invitation of a governmental body or committee. Through Be Our Voice, healthcare professionals can speak for the children as their advocates. This is the place with the resources, with the advocacy training tools to help you learn the skills and find the needed technical assistance.

It is really important to understand the difference between lobbying (prohibited) and advocacy (permitted). The publication that helps to do this, the main tool, is a 45-page PDF file titled “Lobbying & Advocacy: Foundation-funded Policy Change,” and it is full of great information.

The manual explains the difference between private foundations and public charities, and outlines the areas in which grant funds can be used to communicate ideas, including broad issues of social policy. It explains how to best communicate through letters to editors, press conferences, newsletters, websites, and even paid advertising under certain conditions.

What else is NICHQ up to? Well, there is the Prevention Center for Healthy Weight and the Healthy Weight Collaborative (HWC). Here is some information about the planned Prevention Center:

There will be two core activities of the Center. The first is to create a resource hub for information and activities designed to meet the healthy weight challenge — a place for practice sharing, quality improvement training and general exchange of information. The second core activity for the Center is to organize and manage a nationwide Healthy Weight Collaborative (HWC), in which fifty trans-sectoral teams from around the country will identify, test and implement program and policy changes in their communities to achieve local healthy weight objectives.

Speaking of mental influence, author Michael Pollan collected more than 2,500 personal eating rules from real people. He aimed to glean nutritionally valid examples of folk wisdom for inclusion in a book, and ended up with much more than he bargained for:

[… A] banquet of food policies that even when they made little, if any, nutritional sense (and therefore didn’t belong in the book) nevertheless opened a window on our current thinking about food: the stories we tell ourselves, the games we play and the taboos we invoke to organize our eating lives.

Some are funny, some are wise, and Pollan has published a large assortment of them with his remarkable essay titled “Rules to Eat By,” which originally has appeared in the New York Times magazine. Here are three excellent examples:

”It’s better to pay the grocer than the doctor’ was the saying that my Italian grandmother would frequently use to remind us of the love and attention to detail that went into her cooking.’ (John Forti)

From my Romanian grandmother: ‘Breakfast, you should eat alone. Lunch, you should share with a friend. Dinner, give to your enemy.’ (Irina A. Dumitrescu)

Eat foods in inverse proportion to how much its lobby spends to push it. (Kirk Westphal)

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “About Be Our Voice,” National Institute for Children’s Healthcare Quality
Source: “Prevention Center for Healthy Weight,” NICHQ
Source: “Rules to Eat By,” MichaelPollan.com, 10/11/09
Image by ^riza^ (Riza Nugraha), used under its Creative Commons license.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Image by paul(dex), used under its Creative Commons license.

Stress, Emotions, and Obesity

As we all know, the winter holidays are prime time for emotional turmoil. Being a fat kid is no fun at any season, and now the relatives who haven’t seen you all year come around and say, “My goodness, Johnny is certainly… growing.”

Meredith Melnick of Time magazine has been examining a new report from the American Psychological Association, called “Stress in America 2010.” From the childhood obesity point of view, the news is not good. In brief, Melnick says,

The report found that children who are overweight or obese feel particularly stressed, more so than their normal-weighted peers. And such stress may have a lasting impact on other lifestyle behaviors that negatively affect overweight kids’ health.

The sad truth about parents and children alike is, if you’re overweight or obese, you’re probably feeling more stress than a person of healthy weight. Overweight and obese kids have more trouble sleeping, more headaches, and more of a general feeling of demotivation. They self-report a tendency to get in fights more often than their slimmer agemates. Or, at any rate, more of a tendency to feel like getting in a fight. Goodbye, myth of the jolly fat person!

Strangely, fat kids are more likely than normal-weight kids to perceive their parents as being stressed out. In regard to their own malaise, tweens and teens follow a stress management program that consists of listening to music, playing video games, or watching television. It will be noted that, except for maybe a little occasional dancing to some of that music, these activities are sedentary.

Questions were asked about “disordered eating,” which in this context covers disorders ranging from not eating enough to eating far too much. Now, here comes an important statistic. Melnick says,

Further, 48% of overweight teens and tweens reported disordered eating (either too much or too little) when stressed out, compared with only 16% of children at a healthy weight.

So, what is needed is better stress management tools for kids, and preferably methods that involve activity rather than sitting. Sure, there are studies indicating that exercise doesn’t really help kids lose weight. But Dr. Colin Higgs can name you at least 14 other benefits that exercise bestows, and they are all benefits that reduce stress.

Here is something else for teenagers to worry about. Everybody wants to be in love, right? We are brought up with the idea that being in a relationship is the most desirable human state. But now science tells us that “Entry into romantic partnership is associated with obesity.” That is the name of the study done by Natalie S. The and Penny Gordon-Larsen, both of the University of North Carolina’s School of Public Health, and published in the Obesity journal.

Sharon Kirkey tells us what these curious scientists have discovered after scrutinizing the lives and weight histories of nearly 7,000 adolescents. They grow up, some get married, and the ones who get married put on weight worse than their single friends. The researchers…

[…] found that those who married were more than twice as likely to become obese than those who just kept dating.

Even cohabitation causes an increase of fleshy abundance. Within a year after moving in together, both sexes begin to pile on the pounds. The process is a little slower for men, but for both boyfriends and girlfriends, sharing a living space seems to trigger a relaxation of fitness standards.

And of course, there are all kinds of emotional tangles. Nothing can make a spouse all bristly and suspicious like an effort to lose weight. Then it’s, “Who are you trying to look hot for?” Still, overall, married folks are healthier, even if chubbier.

Holidays are always rough for people struggling with obesity issues. Remember to be kind to yourself and your loved ones, and have a Happy Thanksgiving!

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Stress in America: Overweight Children Are Affected More,” Time, 11/09/10
Source: “Big love: study links romantic partnership with obesity,” Canwest News Service, 11/10
Image by yummyporky (Vera Yu and David Li), used under its Creative Commons license.

Stop Federal Corn Subsidies to Decrease Childhood Obesity

The childhood obesity epidemic can be reversed, but nobody ever said it would be easy. Here is the question posed by journalist Mike Lillis on The Hill:

Why, when faced with a childhood obesity epidemic, would the federal government continue to subsidize corn-based sweeteners suspected of contributing to the problem?

Why indeed? This question was also asked by research physicians headquartered at the Mount Sinai Medical Center (Google Docs PDF), who took out an “op-ed ad” in The New York Times asking why Congress subsidizes corn starch but not cauliflower. What they object to is…

[…] the abundance of cheap, unwholesome food sweetened by the synthetic sugar substitute… Consumption of HFCS has increased tenfold since 1974. The obesity epidemic in America’s children precisely tracks this trend.

The op-ed piece is signed by three doctors. Philip Landrigan is a professor of preventive medicine and the Dean for Global Health. Lisa Satlin chairs the pediatrics department, and Paolo Boffetta is deputy director of the Tisch Cancer Institute at Mount Sinai. They believe that farm subsidies have made the price of HFCS go down, which leads to its wide use in food and drinks. By contrast, they note that the prices for vegetables and fruit have increased by more than 1/3 during the same time period:

It’s no coincidence, the doctors claim, that childhood obesity — which has tripled over the past 30 years — is skyrocketing at the same time that HFCS consumption has done the same.

Dr. Pretlow also thinks that discontinuing federal corn subsidies would help. The problem is, any legislation that can be seen as hurting farmers will inevitably draw opposition, lots of it, and from more than one direction. People with sentimental politics automatically feel sympathy for the embattled American farmer they have heard so much about. And it’s true, the small family farm is in more trouble than ever. But these food corporation enterprises are not normal mom-and-pop farms. They are mega-production facilities run by international conglomerates. Maybe they don’t need quite so much encouragement from Washington, D.C. As P. J. O’Rourke says,

U.S. farm policy, besides not doing what it’s supposed to, does do what it isn’t supposed to, and lots of it — the law of unintended consequences being one piece of legislation Congress always passes.

But why pick on corn? Because when there is so much of it, a lot of it gets converted into high fructose corn syrup. And what is wrong with that? In Overweight: What Kids Say, Dr. Pretlow writes,

High fructose corn syrup is a new, cheaper, easier to use sugar, which currently is being added to thousands of foods. It’s now in soft drinks, candy, ice cream, bread, crackers, salad dressing, jelly, pickles, soup, applesauce, juices, even baby food and some types of baby formula.

Although nobody has conclusively proven the connection yet, obesity rates began to rise drastically right around the time when the use of HFCS started to be so pervasive. In fact, back in 1987, when Dr. Douglas Hunt published No More Cravings, he hinted that something might be amiss. From his own experience and from the experiences of his patients, Hunt realized that people tend to become addicted to certain particular junk foods. One of the cases he wrote about was Ellie the Fritters Freak, who was addicted to two varieties of breakfast pastry, apple fritters and bear claws. His description says,

Ellie was obviously out of control. On testing we found her addicted to both sugar (corn) and yeast…

It’s interesting that Dr. Hunt differentiates between cane or beet sugar, and corn sugar. Many years later, in 2010, a Princeton Neuroscience Institute study showed that lab rats became more obese from consuming HFCS than from regular sugar, even when the number of calories was the same. Hilary Parker wrote a very comprehensive and understandable article about this. Here is an excerpt:

This creates a fascinating puzzle. The rats in the Princeton study became obese by drinking high-fructose corn syrup, but not by drinking sucrose. The critical differences in appetite, metabolism and gene expression that underlie this phenomenon are yet to be discovered, but may relate to the fact that excess fructose is being metabolized to produce fat, while glucose is largely being processed for energy or stored as a carbohydrate, called glycogen, in the liver and muscles.

A Farley Katz cartoon in The New Yorker depicts four orcas standing on their hind fins around a conference table, as a man in a suit tells them,

‘Killer Whale’ is terrible branding. From now on, people will call you ‘Happy Silly Fun Fish.’

Well, the Corn Refiners Association must have hired the same public relations firm. The CRA is asking the government if High Fructose Corn Syrup can change its name to “corn sugar” in hopes of escaping the substance’s bad reputation. If only life were that simple.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Taking on childhood obesity by attacking subsidized corn starch,” The Hill, 10/26/10
Source: “Why Are We Subsidizing Childhood Obesity?” (PDF), Google Docs
Source: “A sweet problem: Princeton researchers find that high-fructose corn syrup prompts considerably more weight gain,” Princeton.edu, 03/22/10
Source: “A New Name for High-Fructose Corn Syrup,” The New York Times, 09/14/10
Image by Ed Yourdon, used under its Creative Commons license.

Home Cooking Can Be Frontline Defense Against Obesity

The Nurturing Nutritionist is a pediatric dietician who treats children and families. At her website, we find a guest post by Beryl Henzy. It’s called “Part 1: Kitchen Essentials for Easy Cooking.”

Have you ever been to a wedding and thought, “What are these kids going to do with a crystal vase? What they need is a good basic household maintenance kit.” Forget about the glamour gifts, and consider giving useful tools to someone you love. Henzy is thinking along the same lines. She compiled a list of the basic stuff that belongs in a kitchen.

Henzy expands on the reasons why these items are necessary, but the bare list includes: vegetable peeler, colander, good sharp knife, cutting board, pasta pot, vegetable steamer, non-stick skillet, dish soap and sponge, garlic press. It’s a good list.

Of course, different people have additional ideas about what constitutes basic equipment. A set of measuring cups and spoons, for instance. At least two sizes of saucepan. A teakettle, for sure. One person I know treasures a very big pan that is shaped like a wok, but has one long, stout handle rather than two little ones. The point is, as Beryl Henzy says,

Preparing meals at home is a great way to exert control over the nutritional quality of your family’s diet. Cooking whole, fresh foods in your own kitchen usually means less saturated fat and sodium, and more whole grains, fruits, and vegetables. It can also be more economical to cook from scratch then to pay the Chinese restaurant, Swanson’s, or Chef Boyardee to do it.

The simple and relatively inexpensive implements we’re talking about are more than mere kitchen utensils. They are tools in the struggle to fend off obesity. Conscious cooking can be a marvelously effective way to keep a family healthy. It’s up to us. We can get a grip, and understand that by providing a truly nutritious diet at home, we help everyone in the family to resist the temptations of cheeseburgers loaded with salt, or those 1,200-calorie drinks that gush from machines in fast-food restaurants.

At home, the tendency toward food addiction can be avoided by keeping hyperpalatable, hedonic foods out of the house. Regular, everyday cooking can taste good enough to satisfy the urge for a flavor rush. And don’t forget, even fat people can suffer from malnutrition. What we eat really does matter. For a basically healthy person, there is something about real, nutritious food that keeps the body’s hunger mechanism in working order. The brain is able to receive the right clues about what is sloshing around in the stomach. It remembers how to say, “No thanks, I’ve eaten.” All kinds of things can mess up the “off” switch and erode the resistance to addictive foods. To avoid childhood obesity, kids need a good example at home.

If you have more than one child, chances are one of them might even get into food preparation. Younger kids are very often up for anything. Some teenagers are uncomfortably aware of their dependency, and would actually welcome a chance to make a contribution to the general welfare.

If anyone in the family has food sensitivities or allergies, home cooking is definitely not a luxury but a survival technique. And yes, shopping can be a lot cheaper if you do it with mindfulness. For instance, it makes no sense to buy two cabbages for the price of one if your family is going to get tired of cabbage pretty quickly and you wind up throwing out the second cabbage. That would definitely be a false economy.

You know what else is a false economy? Going out to Sam’s Club and buying a crate of potato chips just because each bag only comes out to half price. Get real. They’re still potato chips. Buying them by the crate is not at all economical when you factor in the doctor bills you could be facing down the road.

In any case, Henzy recommends making a weekly meal plan and shopping for it all at once. It’s very frustrating to get started on a cooking project and then realize you’re out of an essential ingredient. Don’t subject yourself to that aggravation. Plan ahead. Keep a list, and when you are almost out of one of the kitchen staples, put it on the list.

Henzy also recommends having “two or three healthy food cookbooks.” But that’s a different category of tool, and not one that everybody finds necessary. It is possible to cook from scratch and hardly ever follow a recipe. In fact, a general rule might be: The less of a recipe you need, the healthier the meal.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Part 1: Kitchen Essentials for Easy Cooking,” Nurturing Nutrition, 11/13/10
Image by wickenden (Don LaVange), used under its Creative Commons license.

Food Industry Poised to Control Britain’s Anti-Obesity Policy

The Onion is known as one of the hottest works of satirical art on the planet throughout history. Bearing that in mind, have you ever had the experience of seeing a news story that you figured has to be from The Onion? And then you found out that it’s from a regular newspaper. Don’t you hate it when that happens?

One such story is found in the United Kingdom’s venerable newspaper The Guardian. Written by Felicity Lawrence, it is titled with stark simplicity, “McDonald’s and PepsiCo to help write UK health policy.” Lawrence writes,

The Department of Health is putting the fast food companies McDonald’s and KFC and processed food and drink manufacturers such as PepsiCo, Kellogg’s, Unilever, Mars and Diageo at the heart of writing government policy on obesity, alcohol and diet-related disease, the Guardian has learned.

Is that wild, or what? Really, wouldn’t you just swear this has to be a put-on? Any minute now, somebody will run out from behind the curtain and yell, “April Fool!” Well, no such luck. It’s for real.

In Britain, health secretary Andrew Lansley has structured a number of “responsibility deal” networks in which government officials and representatives from food corporations get together to make the rules. Oh, some consumer groups and organizations with an interest in public health are thrown in there too. In the effort to reverse the childhood obesity epidemic, they tend to favor “robust regulation.” Best of luck to them. They will need it.

By the way, what is a “responsibility deal network”? Probably it’s much like a committee or a task force, except the people in it have more zeroes on their paychecks. And, apparently, it’s all about zeroes on paychecks. Somebody stands to make a lot of money by tilting the laws in their preferred direction. Many citizens are leery of this cozy relationship, which looks suspiciously like a bunch of vested interests preparing to have a field day.

Does anyone know what a field day is? The trouble with everybody living in cities is, no one understands simple country expressions any more. For example, the traditional saying, “That would be like letting the fox guard the henhouse.”

For those with strictly urban backgrounds, the joke here is that the fox is the creature that wants to break into the henhouse and eat the chickens, and he’ll do it the very first chance he gets. Bottom line: Fox guarding henhouse = bad idea. Lawrence writes,

In early meetings, these commercial partners have been invited to draft priorities and identify barriers, such as EU legislation, that they would like removed.

This state of affairs has been called the “new Fast-ist McTatorship.” Some have compared it to putting the tobacco industry in charge of the national smoking policy. It has been described as the moral equivalent of hiring a pimp to run a women’s self-esteem seminar. Straight out of National Lampoon, right?

Lawrence quotes Sir Ian Gilmore, former president of the Royal College of Physicians, who has a great deal of concern. A meaningful convergence between the needs of the food industry and the best course for public health is not foreseen by Gilmore. He says,

On food labeling we have listened too much to the supermarkets rather than going for traffic lights [warnings] which health experts recommend.

So, this influential expert is not likely to be lenient toward the food industry. But, as luck would have it, Gilmore is not a member of the appropriate “responsibility deal network.” He is instead a member of the alcohol group. He will have no say about the food issues.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “McDonald’s and PepsiCo to help write UK health policy,” The Guardian, 11/12/10
Image by Paul Dunleavy, used under its Creative Commons license.

The Childhood Obesity Perfect Storm, Part 3

We have talked about the Perfect Storm concept before. This is what happens when a whole lot of conditions converge to cause a large problem. Probably no single one of them alone would have done it. But when they gang up and come at us all at once, we’re toast. The childhood obesity epidemic seems inevitable.

Or does it? This trend, that is so much like a plague, can it be reversed? We need to look at all kinds of ideas. So, it is useful to scrutinize them one by one. Dr. Pretlow does this in Overweight: What Kids Say, where he spotlights the high-tech production methods employed to churn out tons of highly pleasurable, highly addictive food, or, in some cases, quasi-food. He says,

The level of technology and industrial production of snack food and fast food is mind-boggling… Industrialized mass-production has brought high pleasure food to an unprecedented level… Cheap, highly pleasurable food is now available to everyone, including kids.

To learn more about this, he recommends “Snack Food Tech” and “Fast Food Tech,” both from the Modern Marvels TV series produced by the History Channel. The creators of these films say,

Can fast food get any faster? Fast food joints in the US pull in $150 billion dollars in annual sales. Their mantra is ‘fast, consistent, and inexpensive.’ Learn how they grow it, process it, freeze it, ship it, track it, fry it, flip it and pack it… Find out what the future holds for fast food technology.

In the presentation “Why Are Children Overweight?” at Weigh2Rock.com, Dr. Pretlow shows a video clip of the factory that makes 83 million Tootsie Rolls per day. Holy smoke, that’s a lot of Tootsie Rolls. And they are only one of hundreds of candy brands and a seemingly infinite variety of confectionery items (Slide 43).

In Slide 44, Dr. Pretlow talks about Dr. David Kessler, who pointed out that there is such a thing as hyperpalatable food, and who has tried to alert us to what an unfortunate development that is. These hedonic substances are the ones named by kids as their biggest problem foods (Slide 49) — in other words, the ones that are most addictive.

So, not only are tons of this stuff being produced, but tons of it are being consumed, much to the detriment of the American health scene. The overall picture is not good. There is debate about the notion of forbidding junk-food vending machines in schools, which sounds like a good idea on the face of it.

On the other hand, human nature is unconquerable. Kids who want junk food will get junk food. Just ask Michael Prager about his childhood career is a food addict/thief. Supermarkets and convenience stores are open day and night, and, in a many cases, a child doesn’t even need an outside source because there is so much hedonic food in his or her home. We will be talking about this again.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Overweight: What Kids Say,” Amazon.com
Source: “Training Video DVD: Fast Food Tech (History Channel – Modern Marvels Series),” Foodsoftware.com
Image by LiebeDich. (Bruna Costa), used under its Creative Commons license.

Sarah Palin Not Worried About Childhood Obesity

Sarah Palin just can’t seem to stay out of the news. Now she has everybody riled up over cookies. But what’s a tea party without cookies? The state of Pennsylvania has some new guidelines in the pipeline aimed at reducing the childhood obesity rate. We learn from an ABC News story attributed to three writers (Taylor Behrendt, Rob Nelson, and Mary Bruce) that Palin had visited a private school in Bucks County, PA, and brought along many dozens of cookies to share.

Apparently, there were at least two points she wanted to make. One was about how lucky the kids are to be in a private school, where they are not subject to the unreasonable dictates of a “nanny state run amok.” This was a protest against proposed new rules against bringing in sweet treats for birthday celebrations and the like. Palin felt the urge to “shake it up a little bit.” At the federal level, things are still in a state of flux. The article says,

The Senate passed the $4.5 billion Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act in August… The legislation currently awaits action in the House. Supporters of the bill said it would significantly improve the nutritional quality of school lunches by upgrading menus and banning certain junk food from lunch lines.

The other thing on Palin’s mind, when she spoke at the Plumstead Christian School’s fundraiser, was a question she wanted the kids to take home to their parents: Who should be the boss of what children eat? Their own parents, or the government?

Of course, this reasoning neatly sidesteps the fact that no matter how restrictive any school board becomes about what can be served, vended, or brought in by students, the kids spend a lot of time not being in school. On their own time, parents can be as strict or as lax as they want. The freedom to eat cookies is not really endangered.

As it turns out, the terrible rules that Palin denounced are not quite as she had characterized them. This is an ancient technique, practiced by many politicians, called setting up a straw man. The object is to score points by vehemently attacking an imagined threat that never existed in the first place.

Scott Kraus of The Morning Call interviewed a spokesperson from Pennsylvania’s Department of Education, and learned that childhood obesity is not in danger of disappearing either. Steve Weitzman told the reporter that nobody is talking about a ban on anything. Kraus says,

For nearly six months, the state Board of Education has been weighing new school nutrition guidelines that encourage healthier food choices, but they wouldn’t create any no-cookie mandates.

Does this controversy remind you of something? We have talked about how hard the medical profession resists the idea that the obesity epidemic is caused by food addiction. Dr. Pretlow calls it the Medical Science and Food Addiction Barrier, a blockade made of denial. We have quoted in earlier posts from Overweight: What Kids Say. Remember this part?

Comfort eating and the notion that overweight kids may be addicted to the pleasure of food is an unpopular paradigm. Many healthcare professionals and parents are offended by the mere suggestion of this. Healthcare professionals have walked away from me in mid-sentence when I attempted to discuss this with them. Friends have become upset when I explained the notion to them. One gal indignantly grabbed a cookie and ate it in my face! No one wants to hear the message.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Cookie Protest: Sarah Palin Calls Pennsylvania a ‘Nanny State Run Amok,’” ABCNews, 11/10/10
Source: “Pennsylvania says Palin crumbled cookie policy,” The Morning Call, 11/10/10
Image by kevin roberts, used under its Creative Commons license.