January 29, 2012, Reuters

People trying to lose weight may swear by specific diet plans calling for strict proportions of fat, carbs and protein, but where the calories come from may not matter as much as simply cutting back on them, according to a U.S. study.

Researchers whose results were published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found there were no differences in weight loss or the reduction of fat between four diets with different proportions of fat, carbohydrates and protein.

“The major predictor for weight loss was ‘adherence’. Those participants who adhered better, lost more weight than those who did not,” said George Bray, at Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, who worked on the study.

Earlier research had found that certain diets — in particular, those with very low carbohydrates — worked better than others, Bray told Reuters Health in an email, but there had been no consensus among scientists.

Bray and his colleagues randomly assigned several hundred overweight or obese people to one of four diets: average protein, low fat and higher carbs; high protein, low fat and higher carbs; average protein, high fat and lower carbs; or high protein, high fat and lower carbs.

Each of the diets was designed to cut 750 calories a day.

After six months and again at two years after starting the diets, researchers checked participants’ weight, fat mass and lean mass.

At six months, people had lost more than 4.1 kg (9 lbs) of fat and close to 2.3 kg (5 lbs) of lean mass, but they regained some of this by the two-year mark…

READ MORE via Calories count, but source doesn’t matter: study | Reuters.

January 29, 2012, CBS news, Bill Whitaker

New federal guidelines aimed at making school lunches more nutritious were announced this past week. It may seem like a welcome trend, but in the Los Angeles school district, many students are calling healthier inedible.

CBS News correspondent Bill Whitaker reports that everything inside one L.A. school cafeteria may be nutritious, but few students have anything good to say about L.A.’s health lunch menus.

“It tastes bad. It looks bad. It doesn’t even look like it’s real food,” said Baleria Franco, a student at Hollywood High School.

“The healthier it gets, the more disgusting it is,” said student Kevin Albrecht.

Some can barely describe what “it” is.

“I guess it’s like wheat pasta, but it doesn’t look like pasta,” Franco said.

“It’s called a barbecue ‘sandwich’, but it looks like an imitation Sloppy Joe,” said student Marina Sangit.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. For the past ten years, the Los Angeles school district has been working to overhaul the menu. First to go: canned sodas. Then came the push for fresh fruits and vegetables, which today account for nineteen percent of total spending, up from just two percent in 2005.

Old standbys like corn dogs are out and turkey burgers are in – moves hailed by UCLA nutritionist Wendy Slusser.

“It is common sense to serve a child healthy food,” Slusser said. “The big question is why aren’t we all doing this. And it is because it is a shift, in where we were, and change takes time.”

READ MORE VIA Some call healthy L.A. school lunches inedible – CBS News.

January 28, 2012, Dayton Daily News, Cornelius Frolik

About 78,000 people in the Miami Valley live in poorer areas that lack markets that sell affordable and nutritious food, and low-income residents and those without post-secondary educations have some of the highest obesity rates in the state.

Experts said the struggling economy is likely contributing to bulging waistlines, because consumers are spending less on food and some are sacrificing nutrition for the sake of cost. Health experts said obesity is an “epidemic” that often has grave medical consequences.

“A lot of people are digging their graves with their forks,” said Dr. John Maguire, medical director for the surgical weight-loss program at Miami Valley Hospital.

In 2010, about 34.3 percent of Ohioans earning $15,000 or less were obese, which is defined as having a body mass index of 30 or more, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s “Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System.” Similarly, 35.5 percent of Ohioans earning between $15,000 and $30,000 were obese.

But among Ohioans earning $50,000 or more, only about 27 percent were obese.

Disparities also exist among Ohioans of various education levels.

In 2010, about 35 percent of adult Ohioans who had not graduated from high school were obese, and so were about 33 percent of adults who had a high school diploma or a general equivalency diploma, according to the CDC.

In contrast, only about 24 percent of Ohioans with college degrees are obese.

Healthier food is more costly

In general, people with less education earn less, and people with low incomes live in poorer neighborhoods, which are rife with obstacles to staying fit and eating well, said Jeffrey Levi, executive director of the Washington, D.C.,-based Trust for America’s Health.

READ MORE via 78,000 area residents live in food wastelands.

January 28, 2012, Christina Hoag, AP, San Jose Mercury News

Students at Roosevelt High School have declared a food fight to win back peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

Fed up with new, healthy cafeteria cuisine that features dishes like ancho chili chicken with yakosoba edamame and tortellini with butternut squash, they’re petitioning the school district to return old favorites like PB&J and calzones to the lunch lineup.

“We, the students of Roosevelt High School, would like to be served food that we can enjoy eating, rather than the ‘healthier’ food that we just throw away,” states the petition being circulated at the 3,200-student school located in a low income neighborhood just east of downtown Los Angeles.

School districts across the nation, including Los Angeles Unified, are revamping lunch trays to meet tighter federal nutrition standards designed to stem obesity, which affects about a third of children nationally. The U.S. Department of Agriculture this week announced new guidelines calling for milk to be skim or low-fat, grains to be whole, and double the amount of fruit and vegetables.

But as many parents can attest, getting kids to try new foods, especially ones that are good for them, can be a battle of wits and wills. Little kids tend to be less finicky than big kids, who look for that elusive factor of “coolness” in everything from fashion to French fries.

“Essentially, you’re competing with McDonald’s,” said Susan Levin, director of nutrition education for the
Advertisement

Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, who works with school districts on their menus. “But it can be done.”

The emphasis on nutrition is a major swing from the 1990s when some schools featured brand-name fast-food burgers and pizza for lunch and sold potato chips, cookies and sodas in vending machines.
With national attention turning to climbing rates of childhood diabetes and other weight-related ailments, many districts have now outlawed everything from trans fats to deep-frying. Some have even dispensed with chocolate milk because of the added sugar.

But districts have found that getting kids to change eating habits isn’t easy, and involves both smarter menus and a dollop of marketing.

The Los Angeles Unified School District, which serves 650,000 meals a day, saw school lunch participation plunge by some 12 percent after unveiling the new dishes. Kids have gradually come around—participation is now down by only 5 percent as compared to last year.

Chicago Public Schools saw a 5 percent drop when it did a menu makeover last year.

High school students have some of the toughest palates to please.
READ MORE via LA schools struggle to make healthy meals popular – San Jose Mercury News.

January 28, 2012, Brittany Givens, Seascoastonline.com

U.S. Department of Agriculture Under Secretary Kevin W. Concannon said school lunch programs should be providing children with more fruits and vegetables.

“We have a serious problem of obesity in the country,” Concannon told a group of local nutrition and health services professionals Friday. “We really need to focus on activity and healthy foods.”

Concannon was the featured speaker in a roundtable discussion at Community Campus. The event was attended by representatives from programs such as St. Vincent’s, Southern New Hampshire Services and the University of New Hampshire Cooperative Extension. Participants discussed ways in which schools could improve lunches and how the USDA has been able to help people in tough economical times.

This week, 101,000 schools across the country celebrated a nutrition week by improving the dietary value of school lunch programs.

Concannon discussed ways that the USDA plans to take these efforts further and shared reasons for the program’s success. He said that one of the USDA’s major goals is to improve the diets of Americans from birth.

Representatives from local nutrition organizations voiced concerns over the current situation in schools. Many were concerned with the lack of fresh fruits and vegetables in schools and wanted to see less canned foods and sugar.

Other concerns included a need for more storage space for fruits and vegetables, as well as easier and cheaper ways to provide milk and meat.

Concannon also spoke about USDA’s efforts to help those who cannot afford to eat healthy.

“We’re living through a … tough time in the economy,” Concannon said. “I’ve been to food banks and pantries and I always hear, ‘I never thought I’d be here.’”

The USDA’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program has helped 46 million people, Concannon said.

via USDA official stresses need for nutrition in school food | SeacoastOnline.com.

 January 25, 2012, by Alexia Elejalde-Ruiz, Chicago Tribune

Confused about which carbohydrates you should be eating?

Welcome to the club.

“It’s the biggest lack-of-consensus issue in the U.S. diet today,” said Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, associate professor of epidemiology at Harvard School of Public Health. “We don’t have a standard method for assessing their quality.”

Carbohydrates, the most common of the three energy sources we get from food (the others are fat and protein), reside in the vast majority of our food, prominently in grains, vegetables, legumes and fruits. They are essential to good health — as long as you stick to the good sources and steer clear of the bad ones, which are linked to obesity and a host of chronic conditions, includingdiabetes and heart disease.

Most health experts agree that processed foods, sweetened beverages and refined grains such as white bread, pasta, flour and rice (which are stripped of their nutrients) are among the worst kinds of carbohydrate-rich foods you can eat.

Your digestive system breaks them down too easily, flooding the bloodstream with simple sugars (glucose), which in turn prompts a surge of the hormone insulin to carry the glucose into the body’s cells, said Michael Roizen, chairman of the Cleveland Clinic Wellness Institute and co-founder of realage.com. Too muchblood sugar and insulin for too long can be dangerous on several levels: more fat storage, less fat burning, malfunctioning proteins that eventually lead to organ damage, even cancer cell growth, Roizen said. Your brain also gets addicted to the high glucose levels, leaving you craving more.

What constitutes a good carb, however, can be trickier.

It’s not as basic as “simple” versus “complex,” as fruits contain simple sugars but are a highly desirable carb source.

Rather, four main factors determine the quality of a carb, Mozaffarian said: dietary fiber (the more the better); how fast it makes your blood sugar rise (aka glycemic index, the lower the better); whole-grain content (the more the better); and structure (if it’s liquid, milled or pulverized, it’s not as good).

January 16, 2012, Sean Poultier, DailyMail Online

Nutrition therapists have been condemned as quacks and accused of putting the health of the sick – including those suffering from breast cancer – at risk.

An industry has grown up based on the concept that ‘food doctor’ nutritionists can cure patients’ ills and allergies through diet.
However at least some of the practitioners, who charge up to £80 for a consultation, are providing advice that could harm health, a study by the consumer watchdog Which? found.

Healthy: But nutrition therapists’ recommendations could be harming patients, an undercover investigation by Which? has found
The group sent undercover researchers to pose as patients with a range of problems and visit 15 so-called nutritional therapists.
Which? said: ‘They found shocking examples of advice which could have put patients with real health problems at risk.’

All but one of the 15 offered either potentially dangerous or misleading advice. Six of the consultations were rated as ‘dangerous fails’ in terms of misinformation and bad advice. A further eight were rated as ‘fails’, and just one a ‘borderline pass’.

It said: ‘One researcher, posing as a breast cancer sufferer, was told by her therapist to delay radiotherapy treatment recommended by her oncologist, saying they could rid the body of cancer through diet.
‘The therapist advised her to follow a no-sugar diet for three to six months saying, “Cancer feeds off sugar. By cutting out sugar we have a better chance of the cancer going away.” ’

This was considered highly irresponsible and incorrect by a panel set up by Which? to assess the advice. It included Professor David Colquhoun, an expert in pharmacology at University College London and a GP, Dr Margaret McCartney.

Another researcher was told if the treatment prescribed for his severe tiredness started to make him feel unwell, it showed that it was working. The therapist advised him not to contact his GP as they ‘wouldn’t understand what was happening’.

Bizarre tests, including iridology, which involves examining patterns in the iris, and hair analysis were also used to ‘diagnose’ conditions.
A researcher who said she had been struggling to conceive was told after having her iris examined she had ‘bowel toxicity’ and a ‘leathery bowel’. Both are meaningless terms, the expert panel said.

Which? found the therapists often used these tests as a part of a sales talk to market unnecessary supplements costing up to £70 a month. Very few of the 15 addressed issues that would have had a positive impact on health, such as reducing alcohol intake.

Prof Colquhoun said: ‘Nutritional therapy is plagued by ‘diagnostic tests’ that are little more than quackery. Iridology and hair analysis simply don’t work.’ Dr McCartney said: ‘If you have symptoms see your GP, not someone who can’t diagnose accurately.’

Which? has decided not to name the therapists involved. However, it has reported its findings to the British Association for Applied Nutrition & Nutritional Therapy (BANT), where a number are registered.

BANT declined to comment.

The British Dietetic Association was keen to make clear its trained dietitians are very different from nutrition therapists such as those visited by Which? BDA said: ‘Anybody can set up shop as a nutrition therapist, with no qualifications. Registered dieticians working in the UK are educated to degree level and must be registered with the Health Professions Council.’

Read more via Nutrition therapists condemned as quacks who put patients health at risk | Mail Online.

January 12, 2012, Harvard School of Public Health

Boston, MA — Dozens of studies, many from Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) researchers, have shown that low-fat diets are no better for health than moderate- or high-fat diets—and for many people, may be worse.

To combat this “low fat is best” myth, nutrition experts at HSPH and chefs and registered dietitians at The Culinary Institute of America (CIA) have developed five new muffin recipes that incorporate healthy fats and whole grains, and use a lighter hand on the salt and sugar. Their goal? To “make over” the ubiquitous low-fat muffin, touted as a “better-for-you” choice when in fact low-fat muffins often have reduced amounts of heart-healthy fats, such as liquid plant oils, but boast plenty of harmful carbohydrates in the form of white flour and sugar.

Other low-fat processed foods are not much better, and are often higher in sugar, carbohydrates, or salt than their full-fat counterparts. For good health, type of fat matters more than amount. Diets high in heavily processed carbohydrates can lead to weight gain and an increased risk of type 2 diabetes and heart disease.

“It’s time to end the low-fat myth,” said Walter Willett, professor of epidemiology and nutrition and chair of the Department of Nutrition at HSPH. “Unfortunately, many well-motivated people have been led to believe that all fats are bad and that foods loaded with white flour and sugar are healthy choices. This has clearly contributed to the epidemic of diabetes we are experiencing and premature death for many. The lesson contained in these healthy muffins—that foods can be both tasty and good for you—can literally be life-saving.”

A regular blueberry muffin from a national coffee shop chain has 450 calories on average and most of those calories come from carbohydrates, primarily white flour and sugar. However, now that national chains have eliminated trans fats, a regular muffin does have heart-healthy fat, usually from soybean or canola oil. A low-fat muffin has about the same amount of calories, but contains more carbohydrates and sugar—and about 60% more sodium (700 milligrams)—than a regular muffin.

The new Blueberry Muffin recipe offered by HSPH and the CIA is less than half the size of a coffee shop muffin and contains just 130 calories. It is made with a mixture of whole wheat, white, and almond flour and uses canola oil, a healthy fat. (See “Blueberry Muffin Battle” for a nutritional comparison of the three types of blueberry muffins: www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/what-should-you-eat/blueberry-muffin-battle/index.html)

See recipes for Blueberry Muffins, Cranberry Orange Muffins, Jalapeño Cheddar Corn Muffins, Lemon Chickpea Breakfast Muffins, and Whole Wheat Banana Nut Muffins: www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/what-should-you-eat/muffin-makeover/index.html

“There are so many ingredients available to home bakers who want to offer their families healthful, flavorful baked goods,” says Richard Coppedge, Jr., chef-instructor at the CIA and a Certified Master Baker. “These five recipes not only include a wide variety of whole grain and nut flours; they also demonstrate how more unusual ingredients like canned chickpeas and extra virgin olive oil can be used in baking.”

The CIA and HSPH offer a dozen healthy baking tips that professional chefs and home cooks can use to build a healthier muffin. Here are a few of their tips:

Downsize the portions. The mega-muffins popular in bake shops are two to three times the size of the muffins your grandmother might have baked.
Go whole on the grains. It’s easy to substitute whole wheat flour for 50% of the white flour in recipes without harming taste or texture. And with a few recipe alterations, delicious muffins can be made with 100% whole grains. See the Lemon Chickpea Breakfast Muffin and the Whole Wheat Banana Nut Muffin recipes as examples.
Slash the sugar. You can cut 25% of the sugar from most standard muffin recipes without any negative impact on flavor or texture, and in some recipes, cut back even more.
Pour on the oil. Liquid plant oils—canola, extra virgin olive oil, corn, sunflower, and others—help keep whole-grain muffins moist and are a healthier choice than melted butter or shortening.
Bring out the nuts. For extra protein and an additional source of healthy fats, add chopped nuts.
Scale back the salt. The best way to reduce salt is to make a smaller muffin and to pair muffins with foods, such as vegetables and fruits, that are sodium-free.
Pump up the produce—and flavor! Fresh whole fruit and unsweetened dried fruit naturally contain sugar, but unlike other sweeteners, they also contain fiber and important nutrients. Using fruit in your muffins means you can have a lighter hand on the added sugar. Cooked or raw vegetables, such as caramelized onions, sliced jalapeños, and chives and other fresh herbs—together with a whole range of spices—can add interesting textures and savory flavors to muffins.
The muffin recipes and photos, baking tips, a Q & A on why it’s time to end the low-fat myth, and a handy chart showing how to find foods with healthy fats are all available on The Nutrition Source, a nutrition website from the Harvard School of Public Health: www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/what-should-you-eat/muffin-makeover/index.html

“We need to make healthy fats and whole grains the new baking norm, at home and in the professional kitchen,” says Greg Drescher, Vice President of Industry Leadership and Strategic Initiatives for the CIA. “We call on restaurants and other food service providers to be leaders in promoting healthy fats—and in doing away with the low-fat myth.”
A Muffin Makeover: Dispelling the Low-Fat-Is-Healthy Myth – January 12, 2012 -2011 Releases – Press Releases – Harvard School of Public Health.

January 10, 2012, CNN, Health.com, Anne Harding

[...] People tend to overeat in restaurants, but how can people fend off these extra calories? We can stay away from restaurants altogether, of course, but for most of us that’s not a viable — or particularly appealing — option.

A small new study, led by Timmerman and published this week in the Journal of Nutrition and Education Behavior, offers another potential strategy: mindful eating, a series of dining techniques that stress close attention to the enjoyment of eating and feelings of hunger and fullness.

The study included 35 middle-aged women who ate out at least three times per week and ranged in body size from slim to morbidly obese. (Roughly 30% of the women were dieting when they enrolled in the study, and another 23% were actively trying to maintain their weight.) The researchers randomly selected about half of the women to serve as a control group, and assigned the other half to a six-week mindful eating program.

The program consisted of weekly two-hour sessions in which an instructor taught the women how to limit overeating and make healthy food choices in different settings — choosing steamed rice instead of fried in Chinese restaurants, for example, or black beans instead of refried in Mexican restaurants. Then, at the end of each session, the women completed a mindful eating exercise, such as focusing on their feelings of hunger while eating cheese and crackers, or on their sensations of fullness while eating chocolate.

At the end of the program, the women were eating in restaurants (or ordering takeout) just as often as they had before — nearly six times a week, on average. Yet they’d lost an average of 3.75 pounds and were eating about 300 fewer calories per day. (Weight and calorie intake didn’t change in the control group.) What’s more, restaurant meals accounted for just 124 of those daily calories, suggesting that the participants were eating less at home, too.

Susan Albers, Psy.D., a psychologist at the Cleveland Clinic and the author of “Eating Mindfully,” isn’t surprised that changes in eating behavior seemed to carry over from restaurants into the home, since she’s seen a similar transformation after teaching her patients mindful eating techniques.

“Once you’ve learned mindful eating skills, you tend to use them whether you are eating at your own kitchen table or at a five-star restaurant,” she says.

Mindful eating is an offshoot of “mindfulness,” a meditative frame of mind that involves practicing a concentrated, nonjudgmental awareness of one’s body and thoughts. Mindfulness belongs to the Buddhist tradition and has more recently been applied to Western psychology, stress and pain management, and the treatment of depression and anxiety.

When applied to eating, mindfulness is intended to correct Americans’ tendency to eat too fast, often while doing something else at the same time (such as watching TV). Not only do people tend to eat more when they’re not paying attention, but some evidence suggests that we even digest food less effectively.

“In general, we’ve lost the art of savoring food,” says Albers, who did not participate in Timmerman’s study. “We can eat an entire plate of food and not taste one bite. Mindful eating skills teach you how to eat less but enjoy it more.”

Read the entire article at Can mindfulness curb overeating? – CNN.com.

New Zealand, January 10, 2012, Voxy.co.nz

The national nutrition policy formulated by Labour and National-led Governments favours the food industry over public health according to new research from the University of Otago, Wellington.

The new findings result from a study of the 313 submissions to the Health Select Committee Inquiry into Obesity and Type 2 Diabetes held in 2006. This study compared the positions taken by submitters from the food industry and public health groups, such as the National Heart Foundation.

These positions were then compared with the 2007 Labour Government’s response to the committee’s recommendations and the resulting national nutrition policy.

The research focused on 19 recommendations in four areas of nutrition policy: the national obesity strategy; regulation of the food industry; regulation of marketing and advertising; and school environments.

The research found that the Labour Government supported the food industry position in 13 of the 19 recommendations, against 5 where they supported the public health position. Importantly, the Government sided with industry in rejecting key committee recommendations for front-of-pack labelling and restrictions on TV advertising of unhealthy food. Only in the area of school environments did the Labour Government agree with the public health position by requiring schools to sell and promote only healthy foods.

This school nutrition policy was subsequently overturned by the National-led Government, suggesting a strengthening of industry’s influence on our national nutrition policy, says study lead author Dr Gabrielle Jenkin.

“Allowing schools to profit from the sale of unhealthy foods to their students is personally concerning to me as a parent, and should send alarm bells to other parents,” says Dr Jenkin.

She says that the public needs to consider who benefits from the current epidemic in obesity.

“The continuing trend of policy favouring the food industry is dangerous as we’re now the third most obese country in the developed world according to the OECD, with 63% of adults either overweight or obese.”

Like many developed nations such as the USA, New Zealand has a multi-million dollar health problem with increasing type 2 diabetes, directly related to an energy-dense (high fat and high sugar) diet associated with highly processed and fast foods.

International research indicates that many governments support the commercial interests of major industrial sectors like the food industry, over strategies to improve public health. These industries are often large investors and employers, and in New Zealand, central to the economy.

However this does not take into account collateral damage, the huge future health costs for diabetes, and indirect costs due to lost productivity. The study notes that current policy tends to be based on industry self regulation, leaving the responsibility of good nutrition up to the individual, but in an environment which encourages obesity and weight gain (‘obesogenic’).

“It’s obvious this self-regulatory model is a failure. The food industry continues to make large profits on the back of deteriorating public health, with the subsequent burden on the taxpayer to fund the health system. An effective public health strategy to address the obesogenic environment is needed if we are to control the escalating health costs,” says Dr Jenkin.

The study concludes that solutions lie in regulating the food industry, regulating the advertising and marketing industries, and limiting the involvement of the food industry in policy making to ensure fair treatment of public health concerns.

This study has been published in the international journal Public Health Nutrition and was funded by the Health Research Council.

via Nutrition policy favours food industry, not public health – study | Voxy.co.nz.