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).
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AP, Marilynn Marchione, December 1, 2011
It’s true — apple juice can pose a risk to your health. But not necessarily from the trace amounts of arsenic that people are arguing about.
Despite the government’s consideration of new limits on arsenic, nutrition experts say apple juice’s real danger is to waistlines and children’s teeth. Apple juice has few natural nutrients, lots of calories and, in some cases, more sugar than soda has. It trains a child to like very sweet things, displaces better beverages and foods, and adds to the obesity problem, its critics say.
“It’s like sugar water,” said Judith Stern, a nutrition professor at the University of California, Davis, who has consulted for candy makers as well as for Weight Watchers. “I won’t let my 3-year-old grandson drink apple juice.”
Many juices are fortified with vitamins, so they’re not just empty calories. But that doesn’t appease some nutritionists.
“If it wasn’t healthy in the first place, adding vitamins doesn’t make it into a health food,” and if it causes weight gain, it’s not a healthy choice, said Karen Ansel, a registered dietitian in New York and spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association.
The American Academy of Pediatrics says juice can be part of a healthy diet, but its policy is blunt: “Fruit juice offers no nutritional benefit for infants younger than 6 months” and no benefits over whole fruit for older kids.
Kids under 12 consume 28 percent of all juice and juice drinks, according to the academy. Nationwide, apple juice is second only to orange juice in popularity. Americans slurp 267 ounces of apple juice on average each year, according to the Food Institute’s Almanac of Juice Products and the Juice Products Association, a trade group. Lots more is consumed as an ingredient in juice drinks and various foods.
Only 17 percent of the apple juice sold in the U.S. is produced here. The rest comes from other countries, mostly China, Argentina, Chile and Brazil, the association says.
READ THE REST OF THE ARTICLE at Apple juice can pose a health risk — from calories | The Salt Lake Tribune.
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HealthDay, November 1, 2011
A new report claims that the makers of sugar-laden drinks such as sodas, sports drinks, energy drinks and fruit drinks take direct aim at children, particularly black and Hispanic kids, in their marketing campaigns.
Read the report at: Report slams makers of sugary drinks for targeting kids – USATODAY.com.
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Subway posters map how far you’d have to walk to burn off the calories from just one sugary drink
Oct. 24, 2011 – New York City Health Commissioner Dr. Thomas Farley today unveiled a new Health Department education campaign that describes how drinking just one 20 ounce soda a day translates to eating 50 pounds of sugar a year. The 30-second TV spot will air on major broadcast and cable TV stations over the next two months as a stark reminder to New Yorkers about how sugary drinks can lead to obesity, which can cause diabetes, heart disease, stroke, arthritis and some cancers. This latest installment of the Department’s “Pouring on the Pounds” campaign was launched at an event in Times Square today commemorating the nation’s first Food Day, a day modeled after the popular Earth Day, but focused on healthy food and eating.
“The majority of New York City adults are now overweight or obese, as are 4 in 10 elementary school children and the health consequences are staggering,” said Commissioner Farley. “Sugary drinks are the largest single source of added sugar in the diet, and a child’s risk of obesity increases with every additional daily serving of a sugary drink.”
The TV spot is complemented by bilingual subway posters that ask New Yorkers to think about how far they would need to walk to burn off the calories from drinking just one sugary drink. A YouTube video shows a man taking that calorie-burning walk across town and asks, “Are You Pouring on the Pounds?”
One element of the campaign states that to burn off the 650 calories of a medium frozen vanilla coffee one would need to walk 8 miles, from the Goethals Bridge to the Verrazano Bridge. The distances are based on a 160 pound person walking 3.5 mph.
There are many healthier alternatives to sugary drinks. The “Pouring on the Pounds” campaign encourages New Yorkers to avoid sugary beverages and quench their thirst with water, seltzer or low-fat milk instead.
New Yorkers are making some strides against the obesity epidemic and are beginning to turn the epidemic’s tide by consuming less sugary drinks, especially in some areas of the city. Between 2007 and 2010, the percentage of adults who reported on the Health Department’s annual telephone survey that they drank one or more sugary drinks a day fell from 36 percent to 30 percent. In high-poverty neighborhoods, the percentage of adults who drank one or more sugary drinks per day decreased from 44 percent in 2007 to 36 percent in 2010. Materials to support schools, organizations, and encourage New Yorkers to be “sugary drink free” are available through the Health Department.
In addition to the “Pouring on the Pounds” media campaigns, the Health Department has worked with over 400 community organizations, faith-based organizations, and businesses to adopt policies and educational campaigns, which create healthy environments by reducing sugary drink consumption at their sites. Of the nearly 200 organizations who are actively working to promote a healthier environment, 80% are located in the city’s highest need neighborhoods where sugary drink consumption is the highest.
For additional information search for “Pouring on the Pounds” and “Eating Healthy” on NYC.gov or call 311.
]]>September 14, Philly.com, Karen Heller
The offer from Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia to fund an antiobesity program, financed by the soda industry, just fizzled like so many flat colas.
We have a monstrous obesity problem, and Philadelphia could use the money. But saying no was the obvious choice for the Nutter administration, waging a campaign for healthier diets.
The choice was also right.
“It seems to me that accepting money from the beverage industry to fight obesity would be like taking money from the NRA to fight gun violence or from the tobacco industry for smoking cessations,” Mayor Nutter said. “I mean, it’s ludicrous.”
Instead of blood money, this was fat money.
The funds, part of a $10 million grant from the American Beverage Association, was specifically targeted to government programs. “The city health centers were the only ones being offered this funding, when there are other federally qualified health centers,” said health commissioner Donald Schwarz, a pediatrician and former Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia division chief in adolescent medicine. There was no legal conflict. He checked.
“Taking money from the beverage industry when we are often and several times in conflict, I have to worry about appearances but what I really worry about is substance,” Schwarz said, noting that “if the beverage industry came, as they have in the past, and said, ‘We’ll fund something in exchange for you not introducing a sugary beverage tax in the future,’ this was not appropriate.”
Schwarz made the decision in consultation with Nutter, who keeps a Mountain Dew bottle in his office not as a thirst-quencher but as a political tool, informing visitors that the 20-ounce soda contains the equivalent of 19 packets of sugar.
“It’s really nothing more than fat in a bottle,” Nutter said. “And there’s very little recognition by the industry of the problems and challenges that their product creates.”
The city has become “ground zero in the beverage wars,” noted University of Pennsylvania bioethicist Arthur Caplan.
Obesity is a leading contributor to many life-ending illnesses. More than half the city’s children are obese or overweight; in North Central Philadelphia, the rate is a staggering 70 percent. Almost a third of our adults are obese, and one in eight has Type 2 diabetes.
READ MORE: Karen Heller: Offer of soda-industry funds fell flat, as it should have – Philly.com.
]]>September 23, 2011, Vancouver Sun, Sara Schmidt
Coca-Cola Ltd. has reduced drastically the amount of Vitamin A in one of its fruit drinks after nutrition experts complained the elevated level could pose a health risk.
The cola giant confirmed Thursday that its Orange Mango FUZE Vitalize drink is now boosted with about onethird of the amount of vitamin A it contained just a few months ago. The company began producing the reformulated beverage in June. The product no longer contains what the government calls the “tolerable upper intake level” for adults, and instead contains the recommended daily dose of the vitamin for men.
The maximum daily level, set at 3,000 mcg (retinol activity equivalents), was established after evidence showed that consuming more vitamin A in the retinol form – the type contained in this drink – may cause liver abnormalities and, if consumed by pregnant women, birth defects. The change now sets the level at 907 mcg.
“We are continually monitoring consumer needs and feedback with regards to our products for opportunities to improve our portfolio to ensure we are providing the best product possible,” Coca-Cola Refreshments Canada said in a statement.
Nutrition experts are welcoming the news, but say the voluntary change to reduce the vitamin A in each 547-ml bottle shows why Health Canada needs to overhaul the way it regulates fortified food and drink products.
“I’m happy they did this. The good news or positive spin is they made a change in response to this concern, even if it took a while,” said Susan Whiting, a professor of nutrition of University of Saskatchewan.
Whiting and Ottawa-based nutrition specialist Yoni Freedhoff complained separately to the company last year.
“I’m still wondering, ‘where’s Health Canada on this?’” added Whiting. “They never should have had it at that level to begin with. It should never have been permitted and it’s just an example where these vitamin waters are deemed to be unregulated.”
The FUZE drink is one of hundreds of “food-like” products on store shelves in Canada sold as natural health products (NHP). Other “food-like” NHPs include cereal bars, puddings and candies.
Under the food regulations, Health Canada limits the ability of companies to fortify products with nutrients at their discretion to ensure the integrity of the food supply and make sure people don’t overconsume certain nutrients.
In the absence of a permissive discretionary food fortification policy, the industry has called the use of the natural health product designation as a “workaround” to these rules. The chief of Health Canada’s nutrition evaluation division has characterized the situation as a “legal loophole” in internal correspondence obtained under access to information legislation.
Whiting said the effect of regulating products like FUZE Vitalize as NHPs rather than foods is that products are evaluated on an individual basis rather than a wider perspective of nutrient intake in the food supply.
Internal Health Canada records, dated April 2009, indicate that departmental experts flagged this potential problem with evaluating “oneoff requests” for NHP licences because they fail to consider the “impact on the whole food supply, recognizing that many of these products are going to be used as part of their food intake by many consumers.”
The department has been working on a plan for the last few years to transition “foodlike” products sold as natural health products into the food regulatory framework.
Vitamin A, found in retinol form in animal and dairy products or carotene form in fruits and vegetables, helps maintain immune function, eyesight and skin membranes.
But if a pregnant woman over-consumes retinol during her pregnancy, there’s a risk of birth defects. And in older adults, there is a risk of liver damage.
Health Canada’s recommended daily dietary intake for men is 900 mcg of vitamin A and 700 mcg for women.
Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/health/Coca+Cola+cuts+vitamin+content+fruit+beverage/5446524/story.html#ixzz1Z8qq2d8A
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September 12, 2011, CMJ
Health organizations are comparing their battle with makers of sugary beverages to the war they once waged with big tobacco. Advocates for healthy living have run educational campaigns and called for marketing regulations and taxes on high-calorie drinks. The beverage industry, meanwhile, has accused some health departments of launching baseless attacks and has even responded in one jurisdiction with a lawsuit.
Health departments in a number of areas — including Chicago, Illinois; Seattle, Washington; and Chatham-Kent, Ontario — have launched public health campaigns that expose the high-calorie count in soda, sports drinks and some juices. One particularly graphic ad, sponsored by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, shows cola being poured into a glass and turning into fat.
In response to the ads, the American Beverage Association has filed requests under freedom of information legislation with several health departments and is suing the New York City health department for allegedly holding back email correspondence that details the decision-making process that led to the ads.
“These campaigns are really off-putting,” says Chris Gindlesperger, spokesperson for the association. “They’re being paid for with tax payer dollars, at a time when…cities and states aren’t able to meet their financial obligations.”
By “singling out” sugary drinks, Gindlesperger argues, the campaigns simplify nutrition and weight gain and do the public a disservice. “These beverages only make up 7% of the average American’s diet,” he says.
But Michael Jacobson, cofounder and secretary of the board of directors of the Center for Science in the Public Interest based in Washington, DC, points out that “the 7% figure averages in a lot of little old ladies who don’t drink any soda. But teenagers are actually getting 20% of their calories from soft drinks,” he say. In California, for instance, 41% of children aged 2–11 drink at least one soda a day (http://escholarship.org/uc/item/1fj3h5cj;jsessionid=32D3B5FB5A4EFC44B0C4AF3B9FFF4132).
In addition to educational campaigns, many organizations, including the California Center for Public Health Advocacy, based in Davis, California, and the Vancouver, British Columbia-based Childhood Obesity Foundation, are calling for a tax on sugary drinks. Harold Goldstein, executive director of the California center, says a penny-per-ounce tax could cut sugary drink consumption in the same way taxes reduced smoking, and the revenue could be funneled into exercise programs in schools and health care. And he doesn’t buy Gindlesperger’s claim that a tax would have the greatest financial impact on low-income families.
“This is after decades of spending marketing dollars to target low-income communities and communities of colour that now have the highest obesity rates,” says Goldstein, who argues PepsiCo’s recent “We Inspire” campaign, featuring rapper and actress Queen Latifah among others, was specifically aimed at getting African-American mothers to consume more soda.
Gindlesperger, however, argues that industry representatives are concerned about obesity rates and have voluntarily “cut calories in schools by 88%” by replacing soft drinks with juice, water and milk. In addition, the American Beverage Association’s “Clear on Calories” initiative will see the Coca-Cola Company, PepsiCo, the Dr Pepper Snapple Group and other companies move calorie counts from the back to the front of their labels. As well, Gindlesperger points out, some makers of soft drinks have voluntarily ceased marketing their high-calorie, low-nutrient beverages to children under 12 years of age.
Goldstein disagrees, noting that marketing comes in many forms. “They may not use cartoons like Camel cigarettes did, but they market in shows that kids watch, like American Idol,” where judges are seen drinking a sweetened beverage.
Goldstein and Jacobson both say marketing restrictions should be mandatory rather than voluntary, and that sugary drinks shouldn’t be available in areas children frequent. Goldstein adds that the drinks should be prohibited in all public places, including community centres and sports arenas. “At the very least, cities, counties and states shouldn’t be in the business of selling sugary drinks,” he says.
Until then, the billions of dollars spent on beverage marketing will give the industry a much greater advantage over campaigns of the “Rethink Your Drink” variety, which altogether consumed funding in the low millions, says Joe Prickitt, director of the Network for a Healthy California. “It’s really not a level playing field for children or adults in terms of the messaging that’s out there.”
CMAJ: Soda war heats up.
September 6, 2011, Boston Globe, Kay Lazar
Hoping to blunt the pervasive reach of sugary drinks, Boston officials today unveiled a public awareness campaign that urges residents to reduce their consumption of the beverages , which public health specialists link to rising obesity rates and higher health care costs.
The campaign, which will include a media blitz of the city, comes a month before an executive order by Mayor Thomas M. Menino takes effect, phasing out the sale, advertising, and promotion of sugar-sweetened beverages in all municipal buildings.
“We are in the midst of a health crisis in the city of Boston,” Menino said at a City Hall press conference this morning. “Forty percent of the kids in Boston Public Schools are overweight or obese.”
The $1 million federally-funded campaign will blanket Boston with TV, radio, MBTA, web, print, and billboard advertisements . The program will particularly target black and Latino neighborhoods, including Dorchester, Roxbury and Mattapan, where obesity rates are much higher, officials said. Some of the ads will be in Spanish and air on urban hip hop radio and TV stations. They will run for about six weeks.
About 63 percent of black and 51 percent of Latino adults in Boston are considered overweight or obese, compared with 49 percent of white adults, according to the Boston Public Health Commission.
The media campaign is aimed at two age groups — parents who do the bulk of the household grocery shopping, and teens and young adults who consume more soda, energy drinks, and other sugary beverages than any other age group, according to a US government nutrition study.
The ads aimed at parents feature children in various activities, roller blading with helmet and protective pads, or strapped into a car seat. Near them is a stash of empty cola and other sweetened drink bottles.
“You do so much to protect them. But, maybe, you never realized how much these could hurt them,” the ad states. “After all, your kids are sweet enough already.”
The other ads, dubbed “Don’t get smacked by Fat” and developed by a panel of teens who worked with the Boston Public Health Commission, show young adults sipping sugary drinks while a neon yellow glob of fat is soaring through the air and about to hit them.
“Calories from sugary drinks can cause obesity and Type 2 diabetes,” the ads state.
Brandon DaGraca, a 16-year-old Boston Arts Academy junior and member of the youth council working with health officials on the anti-sugar campaign, said many young people don‘t understand how insidious sugar is.
“A lot of teens in Boston aren’t taught the important stuff,” DaGraca said. “What I hear from my peers is, ‘You eat too much, you gain weight.’ But it can also be sugar-sweetened beverages.”
A typical 20-ounce soda contains about 16 teaspoons of sugar and 250 calories, according to the Boston Public Health Commission.
To burn off just these calories, the average adult would have to walk at a brisk pace for 45 minutes, the commission’s data show.
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Vending Times, Emily Jed, September 2011.
New rules that dictate what beverages can be sold or served on Boston city property will go into effect on Oct. 1. They apply to vending machines, in addition to cafeterias, concession stands, meetings and events where food is purchased with city dollars.
Mayor Thomas Menino’s executive order establishes color-coded standards for determining what beverages can be allowed on city property. Beverages coded “red” — banned from city properties — include such sugar-sweetened beverages as presweetened teas and juices with added sugars, and refrigerated coffee, energy, sports and nondiet soft drinks. City buildings have six months before they are required to phase out sales of “red” beverages.
The promotion of “red” beverages on city property through sponsorship agreements with municipal departments, including banners and advertising panels on vending machines, will be prohibited.
Drinks considered to be the healthiest — coded “green” — are bottled water, flavored and unflavored seltzer water, low-fat milk and unsweetened soymilk. They will be allowed on city property. Items carrying a “yellow” code, are also allowed. They consist of diet sodas, diet iced teas, 100% juices, low-calorie sports drinks, low-sugar sweetened beverages, sweetened soymilk and flavored sweetened milk.
Posters featuring a traffic light symbol with the words “Stop. Rethink Your Drink. Go on Green.” are being placed near vending machines. Public health employees will conduct educational workshops for city employees and will work with city departments to ensure the rules are implemented.
via Boston Beverage Vending Rules Begin Oct. 1 | Articles | Vending Features | Vending Times Inc..
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Life’s Sweeter with Fewer Sugary Drinks
Start today. Take on the Life’s Sweeter Challenge to limit soda and other sugary drinks in your home, your workplace, and your community.
Help protect our children, our families, our co-workers, and ourselves from the harmful effects of soda consumption, one of the biggest contributors to obesity in America.
Support a realistic goal to reduce consumption of soda and other sugary drinks by more than half to a maximum of 3 per person per week by 2020, a healthy target proposed by the American Heart Association.
Take the challenge at: CSPI Sugary Drinks- Challenge.
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