How The Food Industry Eats Your Kid’s Lunch
Lucy Komisar, who contributed the essay “Dirty Money and Global Banking Secrecy” to the disinformation anthology Everything You Know Is Wrong, contributes a major op-ed to this Sunday’s New York Times:
An increasingly cozy alliance between companies that manufacture processed foods and companies that serve the meals is making students — a captive market — fat and sick while pulling in hundreds of millions of dollars in profits. At a time of fiscal austerity, these companies are seducing school administrators with promises to cut costs through privatization. Parents who want healthier meals, meanwhile, are outgunned.
Each day, 32 million children in the United States get lunch at schools that participate in the National School Lunch Program, which uses agricultural surplus to feed children. About 21 million of these students eat free or reduced-price meals, a number that has surged since the recession. The program, which also provides breakfast, costs $13.3 billion a year.
Sadly,…
Marijuana Munchies Won’t Make You Fat
Three hash cakes made with hashish from different Amsterdam coffee shops.
Thanks to some fearless French researchers, we now know that you have nothing to fear from an attack of the munchies, reports Reuters:
Anybody who’s smoked marijuana knows about “the munchies,” that desire to eat everything within reach. But a study from France has found that, surprisingly, pot smokers are actually less likely than non-smokers to pack on weight.
Using data covering more than 50,000 U.S. adults, researchers headed by Yann Le Strat, a psychiatrist at the Louis-Mourier Hospital in Colombes, France, found that roughly 14 percent to 17 percent of the people reporting that they smoked pot at least three days per week were obese.
That compared with a 22 to 25 percent obesity rate among people who said they had not used pot in the past 12 months.
“Initially, we thought we made a mistake,” said Le Strat, adding that he and…
Half of U.S. Adults Obese By 2030
Silhouettes and waist circumferences representing normal, overweight, and obese
When I mentioned this to my friend across the room she said, “I thought they already were…”
From the Washington Post:
Based on trends, half of the adults in the United States will be obese by 2030 unless the government makes changing the food environment a policy priority, according to a report released Thursday on the international obesity crisis in the British medical journal the Lancet.
Those changes include making healthful foods cheaper and less-healthful foods more expensive largely through tax strategies, the report said. Changes in the way foods are marketed would also be called for, among many other measures.
A team of international public health experts argued that the global obesity crisis will continue to grow worse and add substantial burdens to health-care systems and economies unless governments, international agencies and other major institutions take action to monitor, prevent and control the problem.
Changes over…
One Quarter Of American Teens Drink Soda Every Day
For those of you wondering why America’s greatest threat is obesity, this is at least part of the answer, although the CDC is spinning it as good news. From AP via Yahoo News:
A new study shows one in four high school students drink soda every day — a sign fewer teens are downing the sugary drinks… That’s less than in the past. In the 1990s and early 2000s, more than three-quarters of teens were having a sugary drink each day, according to earlier research.
The CDC reported the figures Thursday, based on a national survey last year of more than 11,000 high school students. They appear in one of the federal agency’s publications, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
Consumption of sugary drinks is considered a big public health problem, and has been linked to the U.S. explosion in childhood obesity. One study of Massachusetts schoolchildren found that for each additional sweet drink…
Lost At The Con
[disinfo ed.'s note: The following is an excerpt from Lost At The Con, new fiction from Big Shiny Robot's Bryan Young.]
A political writer for a second rate, online news magazine, Michael Cobb is assigned by his editor to cover a sci-fi and fantasy convention in a bid to humiliate him.
Since Cobb can’t afford to turn down the job, he heads to Georgia and dives head first into the world of Griffin*Con, renowned the world over as the Mardis Gras of geek conventions. In Atlanta he finds a place that takes geeky debauchery to new heights: science fiction and fantasy, cosplay, booze, sex, comic books, drugs, slash fiction, and more.
This scene takes place on Cobb’s first day at the con:
My heart sank, killing the warmth of the drugs. The urge for locomotion finally returned to my legs and I continued my sojourn to the elevator.
That feeling of flying high without a safety net returned as the elevator doors I’d finally reached opened with a sharp DING.
And there before me was a Darth Vader…
Religious Americans Twice As Likely To Become Obese
Is this why mostly secular Europe’s citizens are so much skinnier than still religious America’s? Courtney Hutchison reports for ABC News:
Americans who are religious are more likely to be happy, healthy … and hefty?
According to research from Northwestern University, youths of a healthy weight who frequently participated in religious activities were twice as likely to become obese by middle age than their less-religious peers.
Even when controlling for race, sex, education and income — several factors that could independently be affecting likelihood of obesity, this affect remained. Researchers drew on data from the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults study, which tracked weight and a number of physical and behavioral variables, including religious involvement, in more than 2,000 men and women over the past two decades.
“We had previously found that those with high religious involvement were more likely to be obese [as middle-aged or older adults], but we wanted to follow…
Fat Friends May Make You Fat
What’s the old adage — you are the company you keep? From Reuters:
Americans will keep growing fatter until 42 percent of the nation is considered obese, and having fat friends is part of the problem, researchers said on Thursday.
The prediction by a team of researchers at Harvard University contradicts other experts who say the nation’s obesity rate has peaked at 34 percent of the U.S. population.
The finding is from the same group, led by Nicholas Christakis, that reported in 2007 that if someone’s friend becomes obese, that person’s chances of becoming obese increase by more than half.
They now think this same phenomenon is driving the obesity epidemic, which will climb slowly but steadily for the next 40 years.
Alison Hill, a graduate student at Harvard and the Harvard-Massachusetts Institute of Technology Division of Health Sciences and Technology, said the study is based on the idea that obesity can spread like an…
As Many As A Third Of Americans Will Have Diabetes By 2050
The blue circle symbol used to represent diabetes
Obesity truly is the “Killer At Large.” If this statistic won’t stop people from consuming vast quantities of HCFC-laced junk food and soda, I don’t know what will. From Reuters:
Up to a third of U.S. adults could have diabetes by 2050 if Americans continue to gain weight and avoid exercise, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention projected on Friday.
The numbers are certain to go up as the population gets older, but they will accelerate even more unless Americans change their behavior, the CDC said.
“We project that, over the next 40 years, the prevalence of total diabetes (diagnosed and undiagnosed) in the United States will increase from its current level of about one in 10 adults to between one in five and one in three adults in 2050,” the CDC’s James Boyle and colleagues wrote in their report.
“These are alarming numbers that show…
Late Night TV and Web Surfing Can Cause Obesity
Source: CAD-Comic.com (CC)
Although recent research suggests that obesity may be partly genetic, intuitively one feels that being a late night TV couch potato or site surfer can’t help. The LA Times reports on a study showing just that, but with an unexpected twist:
Researchers already know that people who stay up late watching TV, playing video games or surfing the Web have an increased risk of becoming obese. The thought was that all that sedentary awake time amounted to more opportunities to snack, and thus to put on pounds.
But a study published online Monday says another mechanism may be at work too – the additional exposure to light at night messes with one’s circadian rhythm and throws the body’s metabolism out of whack.
To prove that light at night actually causes obesity, researchers from Ohio State University and University of Haifa in Israel kept three groups of mice. One group followed the normal pattern of 16 hours of full light and…
Lunch Line: The School Lunch Debate
LUNCH LINE reframes the school lunch debate through an examination of the program’s surprising past, present, and possible future.
Senators, Secretaries of Agriculture, entrepreneurs, and activists from all sides of the hunger and school lunch reform debates add top-down perspective to a bottom-up film about the American political process, its future health and welfare, and the realities of feeding more than 31 million children a day.
Obesity In Children Caused By Common Cold Virus
Photo: Walter Siegmund (CC)
Nothing to do with eating too many high-fructose corn syrup-laden foods and gallons of sugary drinks, of course! Hard to believe this is a serious story, but here it is from Discovery News:
Childhood obesity is not only an epidemic, it may be an infectious disease transmitted by a common cold virus, a new study suggests.
Children exposed to adenovirus-36 were more likely to be obese than were children who had no evidence of infection, according to a study published online Sept. 20 in Pediatrics. The new study is the latest to link the virus to obesity in people. Recent studies of Korean children and both American and Italian adults have shown that obese people are more likely to have antibodies against the virus — a sign of a prior infection — than normal-weight people are.
Adenoviruses are some of the many viruses responsible for causing colds and stomach ailments…
High Fructose Corn Syrup Changes Name To ‘Corn Sugar’
Who are they kidding? It’s not sugar and it’s not natural! From Fast Company’s Co.Design:
Cast as an evil, oozing harbinger of obesity and diabetes, sales of high fructose corn syrup have seen a downward spiral as companies swap the over-processed sweetener for healthier-sounding ingredients. So what’s the solution for the industry, according to the Corn Refiners Association? Change the name. To “corn sugar.” And presto! What was once a scary sounding goo becomes more natural-sounding, just as sweet and pure as cane sugar.
A new Web site and campaign rebranding HFCS as the innocuous term was launched today in the hopes that they will get FDA approval to change the name on food labeling. Over at CornSugar.com, ads and imagery of a maze mowed through corn fields symbolizes the path of misdirected customers confused by current labeling systems, as quotes from dietitians float helpfully above. (The Corn Refiners Association also own Corn.org and the icky-sounding SweetSurprise.com.)
[A brand-new ad, touting the subtle rebranding]
“This seems to be a last-ditch attempt to…
Michelle Obama Program Blames Sony PlayStation For Making America’s Children Fat
A great post from disinformation friend and neighbor Nicholas Deleon, over at Crunchgear:
Consuming more calories than you use makes you fat. That’s a fact, Jack. Figuring out where these calories come from, OK, that’s a noble endeavor, but let’s not pretend there’s anything secret going on here. Like, you see this graphic here? It’s the winner of some Michelle Obama-headed design contest to help folks figure out how to best fight childhood obesity. And you’ll see the PlayStation completely demonized, as if Sony itself is somehow responsible for little kids packing on the pounds.
The chart, part of the Let’s Move program (and you’ll want to see the full-res version), highlights a few bad guys, including the use of high fructose corn syrup in soda, the launch of Super Size-sized foods at McDonalds, the increase in screen-watching hours, and, yes, the launch of the Sony PlayStation.
Surely Nintendo and Microsoft are thrilled with the award-winning…
Want To Lose Weight? Simple – Drink Water!
Photo: Matthew Bowden (www.digitallyrefreshing.com)
Can it really be this easy? It certainly won’t cost much to try it out (just don’t use bottled water!). From Business Week:
Close the diet books and skip the pills. The latest weight-loss trick may be as simple as gulping a couple of glasses of water before you eat.
A new study found that middle-aged and older adults who drank two cups of water before each meal consumed fewer calories and lost more weight than those who skipped drinking water.
Researchers divided two groups of overweight and obese men and women aged 55 to 75 into two groups: one group was told to follow a low-fat, low-calorie diet; the other group was told to follow the same diet and to drink two cups of water before breakfast, lunch and dinner.
After 12 weeks, those who drank water before meals had lost 15.5 pounds, compared to 11 pounds for the non-water…
Wisconsin’s Answer To The Obesity Crisis: The Krispy Kreme Cheeseburger
They’re trying to persuade us that it’s low-calorie and healthy … come on Wisconsin, this is going to send you straight to the morgue, especially if you add the optional chocolate-covered bacon!
The Fattest States In The Nation
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control is warning of a “major public health threat” as it reports that nine states now have obesity rates exceeding 30% of their population (Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and West Virginia). That’s three times as many in just two years. Overall, more than 72 million U.S. adults, or 26.7 percent, are obese. The CDC says:
In every state, more than 15% of adults are obese, and in nine states, over 30% of adults are obese. The medical care costs of obesity in the United States are staggering. In 2008 dollars, these costs totaled about $147 billion.
This echoes the warnings of former Surgeon General Richard Carmona and others in the disinformation documentary Killer At Large: Why Obesity Is America’s Greatest Threat — and it’s getting worse every year. The CDC’s recommendations of what can be done to combat the problem are here — but are they…
McDonald’s Not So Happy Meals
Looks like Mickey D’s is about to undergo another round of public and media lashing now that childhood obesity is a major priority in Washington. As the Los Angeles Times reports, a watchdog group says giving away toys with Happy Meals contributes to childhood obesity and threatens to sue:
Weeks after a Silicon Valley county became the first in the nation to ban toys from McDonald’s Happy Meals and other food promotions aimed at children, a public health watchdog group called on the fast food giant to remove the playthings from all its meal packages.
Citing toys aimed at promoting the latest “Shrek” movie, the Center for Science in the Public Interest said that the plastic promotions lure children into McDonald’s restaurants where they are then likely to order food that is too high in calories, fat and salt.
The organization on Tuesday served the fast food giant with a letter expressing its intent…
The “As Seen On TV” Diet
Photo: Toddst2 (CC)
In a sort of Supersize Me-type of experiment, scientists have shown what most of us (hopefully) already know: Food advertised on television is not good for you, reported by Science Daily:
Making food choices based on television advertising results in a very imbalanced diet according to a new study comparing the nutritional content of food choices influenced by television to nutritional guidelines published in the June issue of the Journal of the American Dietetic Association.
Investigators found that a 2,000-calorie diet consisting entirely of advertised foods would contain 25 times the recommended servings of sugars and 20 times the recommended servings of fat, but less than half of the recommended servings of vegetables, dairy, and fruits. In fact, the excess of servings in sugars and fat is so large that, on average, eating just one of the observed food items would provide more than three times the recommended daily servings…
Killer At The White House!
Shawn Talbott, the nutritional biochemist behind the disinformation documentary Killer At Large, is taking his film to the White House. Here’s the post from his blog:
I’m VERY excited about my trip to Washington DC tomorrow to participate in Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! campaign to fight childhood obesity. I’m attending this event through my role as Executive Producer for the Killer At Large film and as part of the advisory board for the Chef & Child Foundation of the American Culinary Foundation (ACF).
It will be a thrill to join more than 50 chefs for the kickoff of the “Chefs Move to Schools” on June 4. This new program is part of Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! campaign and will be led by White House assistant chef, Sam Kass as a way to take the message of healthy nutrition to schools across America.
For a long time, we have made the Killer At Large documentary about…
