December 21, 2011, Los Angeles Times, Shari Roan

Feeding young babies solid foods such as crackers, cereals and bread, which tend to be high in salt, may set them up for a lifelong preference for salt, researchers reported Tuesday.

The study, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, suggests that efforts to reduce salt intake among Americans should begin early in life.

It is even possible, the authors said, that infancy contains a “sensitivity window” in which exposure to certain foods and tastes programs the brain to desire them in the future.

Americans’ fondness for salt, a source of dismay for health experts, is well known. A 2010 report from the Institute of Medicine concluded that the average intake of 3,436 milligrams a day for Americans over age 2 is more than double what is recommended, and that new government standards are needed to reduce the salt content in processed and restaurant food.

But little is known about the biology behind our love affair with salt. Researchers don’t even know what receptors are involved in tasting it. And though babies are born with a clear preference for sweet foods and an absolute distaste for bitter foods, they appear indifferent to salt in the first few months of life, said Leslie Stein, the lead author of the study and a senior research associate at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia.

“When you give 2-month-old babies salt water, they have no facial expression,” Stein said. “This could mean that the baby doesn’t detect the salt or just doesn’t give a hoot about it.”

To get at the issue, Stein and her colleagues first gave 61 healthy 2-month-old infants a mild solution of salt water: Based on facial expressions and how much they drank, the authors concluded the infants indeed were indifferent to the taste.

READ MORE via Giving salty food to babies may create a lifelong preference – latimes.com.

August 8, 2011,  WalesOnline, Madeleine Brindley

We know that too much salt isn’t good for us, but we’re still eating far more than we need. Health Editor Madeleine Brindley looks at our ongoing love affair with salt and what it’s doing to our health

EVERY time television chef Rick Stein adds a generous handful of salt, he tells the camera crew the salt police won’t like it.

While it’s debatable whether the salt police actually exist, there’s certainly been a high profile and ongoing campaign to gradually cut the amount of salt we eat.

The justification for this concerted campaign, coupled with stringent targets for manufacturers to gradually reduce the amount of salt in foods, has been the adverse effect eating too much salt has on our health.

But while the “holy grail” of an absolute link between high salt intake and cardiovascular disease has yet to be made, persistently high levels of salt in our diets has been found to be an important causal factor in the development of high blood pressure.

This, in turn, is known to increase the risk of suffering heart problems, including heart failure, angina, heart attack or stroke.

Evidence of such a link between high levels of salt and high blood pressure led the Committee on Medical Aspects of Food and Nutrition Policy to recommend, in 1994, reducing the average salt intake to 6g a day in the UK.

Almost a decade later, in 2003, the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition (SACN), in its report on Salt and Health, concluded the evidence for a link between salt intake and blood pressure had increased since 1994.

It said the current high levels of salt habitually consumed by the population raise the risk of high blood pressure, which increases the risk of stroke and premature death from cardio- vascular diseases.

It confirmed the benefits of reducing salt intake to 6g a day and recommended maximum levels of salt intake for babies and children for the first time.

Alan Jackson, chair of SACN, said, in his introduction to the Salt and Health report: “Meeting these targets would be of major benefit to public health. Even a small reduction in salt intake could help to reduce the burden of high blood pressure on our population.”

The publication of this landmark report would pave the way for the ongoing campaign to reduce salt consumption.

The first study into how much salt we consume was carried out in 2000 and found adults were eating an average of 9.5g each every day – men consumed an average of 11g a day and women 8.1g.

A subsequent survey, in 2008, found salt consumption had fallen to an average of 8.6g per person per day. The next set of results is due next year.

Dr Susan Jebb, head of nutrition and health at the Medical Research Council’s Human Nutrition Research unit, said: “The target to reduce salt consumption to 6g was set as an achievable population target to bring very real health benefits, but it’s still much higher than what we actually need.

“The estimate of how much salt we need is much lower at 4g a day.

“The 6g target is meant to be an achievable target to bring health gains, but many other countries have much, much lower salt intakes.”

A 3g reduction in the amount of salt we eat has been associated with a 13% reduction in stroke and a 10% cut in cardio- vascular disease.

Consensus Action on Salt and Health, an expert group set up amid concern about the link between salt and health, said: “There is strong evidence that links our current high salt intakes to high blood pressure.

“High blood pressure is the main cause of strokes and a major cause of heart attacks and heart failures, the most common causes of death and illness in the world.

“It is also widely recognised that a high salt diet is linked to other conditions, such as osteoporosis, cancer of the stomach, kidney disease, kidney stones, obesity and exacerbating the symptoms of asthma, Meniere’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease and diabetes.

“There is now evidence to show that a high salt intake in children also influences blood pressure and may predispose an individual to the development of a number of diseases including: high blood pressure and osteoporosis.

“The older population and certain ethnic minorities are also at a great risk of health- related problems due to salt intake.”

Many experts believe the UK is at the forefront of efforts to reduce the amount of salt we consume – the approach to date has concentrated not just on persuading people to use less salt at home but on reducing the amount of salt added by food manufacturers.

Three-quarters of the salt we eat is found in ready-produced foods. The Food Standards Agency has set targets for the food industry to reduce the amount of salt in certain foods; Dr Jebb said the 2012 targets, if met, should result in a further 1g reduction in salt consumption.

“It’s important that salt is reduced incrementally,” she added. “We have developed a preference and taste for salt – all the evidence says we have to lower people’s salt preference slowly.

“Over the last few years there’s been a 30% reduction in salt in bread; there’s 50% less salt in most of the big name breakfast cereals and 25% less salt in pasta sauces and soups.

“But there’s still a long way to go.”

More than 50 companies, including supermarkets and food manufacturers, have signed a public health responsibility deal, launched by the Department of Health earlier this year.

The deal is a series of pledges regarding food, alcohol, occupational health and physical activity. The three key food- related pledges are out-of-home calorie labelling, salt reduction and trans-fat removal.

The salt reduction pledge states: “We commit to the salt targets for the end of 2012 agreed by the responsibility deal, which collectively will deliver a further 15% reduction on 2010 targets.

“For some products this will require acceptable technical solutions which we are working to achieve. These targets will give a total salt reduction of nearly 1g per person per day compared to 2007 levels in food.

“We recognise that achieving the public health goal of consuming no more than 6g of salt per person per day will necessitate action across the whole industry, government, non-governmental organisations and individuals.”

But there has been some debate about whether such action to reduce salt consumption will have a positive long-term effect.

A recent Cochrane review of all the available research appeared to show that cutting back on salt has no clear benefits in terms of the likelihood of dying or experiencing cardiovascular disease.

This was followed by a commentary in The Lancet and a reanalysis of the data, which showed a “significant reduction” in stroke and heart attacks. It said reducing salt consumption by 2g a day is associated with a 20% reduction in stroke and heart attacks in people with either high or normal blood pressure.

Prof Rod Taylor from Exeter University, one of the Cochrane review’s authors, said: “We don’t believe that our results don’t necessarily mean that asking people to reduce their intake of salt is not a good thing.

“It is one of a number of strategies – we don’t believe we shouldn’t be telling people to reduce their salt.

“Our results indicate that this strategy has focused on giving individual advice – that advice is anything from giving people a list of foods high in salt and asking them to avoid them to providing some recipes to help prepare foods in a way that they don’t have too much salt in.

“We believe this alone is not as effective as we may have hoped it would be. We have to think what other strategies we can use for reducing dietary salt.”

Read More http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/health-news/2011/08/08/dietary-advice-that-shouldn-t-be-taken-with-a-pinch-of-salt-if-you-want-to-guard-against-a-range-of-diseases-91466-29194418/#ixzz1UoGUaMgN
Why we still have too much salt in our diets despite the health warnings – Health News – News – WalesOnline.

July12, 2011, Wall Street Journal, Jennifer Corbett Dooren

A new study suggests that in addition to cutting the amount of sodium in their diets to improve heart health, Americans should also increase consumption of a key mineral found in many fruits and vegetables: potassium.

The study, lead by researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, looked at more than 12,000 adults who participated in a federal nutrition study. It tracked their diets and followed them for nearly 15 years to observe rates of cardiovascular disease, heart attacks and death. The study was published in this week’s Archives of Internal Medicine.

Sodium, a key component of salt, has been shown to raise blood pressure, which in turn raises the risk of heart disease, but studies have shown inconsistent results as to whether high-sodium diets actually boost the risk of heart-related problems. Potassium has been found to offset sodium’s impact on blood pressure.

The study, which looked at sodium and potassium intake, found that higher sodium intake was associated with a higher risk of premature death from any cause, while higher potassium intake was associated with a lower risk of dying prematurely. Looking at heart-related deaths alone, sodium itself wasn’t associated with an increased risk, but researchers said higher potassium intakes were linked with lower heart-related death rates.

Researchers then looked at what is called the sodium-potassium ratio. A high sodium-potassium ratio means a person consumes more sodium relative to potassium. Sodium-potassium ratios could be improved by either lowering sodium intake or raising potassium intake, or both.

The study found that people with the highest ratios were more than twice as likely to die from a heart attack compared with those with the lowest ratios. They also were 46% more likely to die from a heart-related death compared with those with the lowest ratios. (Looking at all causes of death, people with high ratios saw a 46% higher risk.)

“When you have a more imbalanced diet, you are more at risk,” says Elena Kuklina, an epidemiologist at the CDC’s division for heart disease and stroke prevention.

An easy way for people to improve their sodium-potassium ratios is to eat more fruits and vegetables, researchers said. About 80% of the sodium consumed by Americans comes from processed or restaurant foods, making it harder to lower sodium intake than it is to raise potassium intake.

The most recent U.S. dietary guidelines, released earlier this year, recommend adults consume 4,700 milligrams of potassium a day.

Foods high in potassium include potatoes, spinach, bananas, prune juice, plain yogurt and fish. People with chronic kidney disease may need to limit potassium intake. The guidelines called on Americans to reduce their daily sodium intake to less than 2,300 milligrams or about a teaspoon of salt. People who are 51 and older, African-American or have hypertension, diabetes, or chronic kidney disease, recommendations call for no more than 1,500 milligrams a day. The average American adult consumes 3,400 milligrams of sodium a day.

via Study Recommends Increasing Potassium to Improve Heart Health – WSJ.com.

BBC News, Helen Briggs, November 2, 2010

Forcing food manufacturers to cut salt levels in processed food could help cut heart disease rates, claim Australian researchers.

A theoretical study suggests mandatory salt limits could help reduce heart disease rates by 18% – far more than by using existing voluntary measures.

High-salt diets are linked to high blood pressure, which can lead to heart attacks or strokes.

Adults are advised to consume a maximum of 6g of salt a day – about a teaspoon.

The study looked at the effectiveness of different strategies around the world for reducing salt in processed foods.

Many countries, including Finland, the US, the UK, Canada, France, Australia and New Zealand, have adopted salt reduction programmes based on food labelling and voluntary cuts.

Australia uses a “Tick” programme, where food manufacturers can use a health promotion logo on packaging if they volunteer to cut salt content.

The team calculated that voluntary use of the logo could reduce heart disease rates in Australia by almost 1% – more than twice that of dietary advice alone.

But if all manufacturers were made to use the logo, the health benefits could be 20 times greater, they predict.

“If corporate responsibility fails, maybe there is an ethical justification for government to step in and legislate,” the authors, led by Linda Cobiac, of the University of Queensland, write in the journal Heart.

A UK heart charity said voluntary measures placed on food companies in the UK had made a difference but more could be done.

Victoria Taylor, senior heart health dietician at the British Heart Foundation, said: “We’re making progress without the need for compulsory limits and as a result we’ve seen a reduction in salt intake.

“But as three quarters of the salt we eat is already in the food we buy, we need to build on this work and watch carefully to make sure the food industry doesn’t slip back into old habits.”

Katharine Jenner of Consensus Action on Salt and Health (CASH) said the UK had pioneered a voluntary approach where all food sectors reduce the amount of salt they put in food.

“This cost-effective approach has been very successful and has already led to population average salt intakes falling by 10%,” she said.

via BBC News – Call for mandatory salt curbs.

Salt shaker

Despite constant pleas by public health experts to hold the salt, the sodium intake of the U.S. population hasn’t decreased over the past 46 years, according to a new review.

Most of us eat a lot more sodium than is recommended, says researcher Adam Bernstein, MD, ScD, a research fellow in the department of nutrition at Harvard School of Public Health in Boston.

”We would support the recommendation for 1,500 milligrams-a-day intake,” Bernstein tells WebMD, referring to one of various guidelines. In his analysis, he found the average intake was more than two and a half times that amount. The review is published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

But in the same issue, a critic says ”not so fast” to across-the-board sodium rationing, contending that the new report proves that our bodies have a set point for sodium. Restrictions on sodium should target only some people, not the entire population, says David McCarron, MD, an adjunct professor of nutrition at University of California, Davis, and a consultant for the Salt Institute. He wrote an editorial to accompany the analysis.

Sodium Intake Study
With Walter Willett, MD, MPH, DrPH, chair of the department of nutrition at Harvard, Bernstein reviewed studies published in the medical literature from 1957 to 2003 to determine if sodium intake had declined.

They found the average for the U.S. population is 3,712 milligrams of sodium a day — well above the range of 1,200 to 2,300 milligrams recommended by various organizations, depending on age and health factors.

To arrive at that figure, the researchers first estimated the average 24-hour urine sodium excretion per person — 3,526 milligrams of sodium. Then, figuring that 95% of dietary sodium intake is excreted in the urine, they computed the average dietary intake at about 3,712 milligrams.

Organizations recommend various limits to sodium, as Bernstein and Willett note in the report. The Institute of Medicine recommends 1,500 milligrams daily for young adults, 1,300 for adults ages 50 to 70, and 1,200 for those 71 and older.

The American Heart Association recommends an upper limit of 2,300 milligrams for those not at risk for high blood pressure; 2,300 milligrams, about a teaspoon of salt, is also the maximum advised under the 2005 U.S. Department of Agriculture Dietary Guidelines.

Bernstein and Willett note in the report that the prevalence of high blood pressure over the past 20 years has risen in the U.S. population and that higher dietary sodium is a factor in the development of hypertension. Overweight and obesity are also important factors.

The researchers cite computer simulation models finding that population-wide declines in sodium intake would decrease cardiovascular disease as well as costs, but say that only a few studies to prove that have been done.

Even so, the Harvard researchers support lowering sodium for all. ”We would support the recommendation for 1,500 milligrams a day,” Bernstein says. “We would suggest lower intake for all.”
via Americans Still Reaching for the Salt Shaker.

Every five years the American public gets a newly tweaked directive on what we’re supposed to be eating.

And every five years the American public largely ignores it.

For example, the 2005 Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommend we eat 2 1/2 cups of vegetables and 2 cups of fruit a day. But according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, only about 14 percent of adults are even coming close.

Special interest groups, however, watch the guidelines closely and are speaking out. Just last week, nearly 50 speakers from industry and the science and health communities went to Washington to provide oral comments on the proposed guidelines for 2010, which will be released at the end of the year.

The proposed recommendation to reduce salt intake dramatically drew a statement from Morton Satin, Salt Institute vice president of science and research, that “no modern society consumes so little salt.”

The Healthy Eating Pyramid displayed here is the one created by Harvard School of Public Health, and is the only pyramid solely based on scientific evidence.

Dr. Richard Feinman, on behalf of the Nutrition and Metabolic Society, invited members of the federal Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee to a debate on the guidelines’ proposed decrease in saturated fat consumption, saying that carbohydrates eaten with saturated fats were the real problem. The Weston Price Foundation, which advocates the healthful properties of fat from pastured animals, also took issue.

A dietary supplements industry group called the Council for Responsible Nutrition objected to the proposed statement that “a daily multivitamin/mineral supplement does not offer health benefits to healthy Americans.” The council said the committee’s report implies “it’s reasonable to allow people to live with nutrient inadequacies.”

If the guidelines are largely ignored by the average American, why do health and industry groups care so much about influencing them?

“I think to a certain extent they are followed,” said Weston Price Foundation President Sally Fallon, whose organization also supports the consumption of whole, rather than processed, foods. “Schools who get federal money and prisons are supposed to be following them for their menus.”

Have questions about the new food guidelines? Many do. Reporter Monica Eng answers some of them at Trib Nation.

Dr. Robert Post, deputy director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion, said all public comments are taken into consideration along with scientific reviews and lively debate within the committee’s meetings.

He noted that last month the department debuted something called the Nutrition Evidence Library, a new online resource cataloging the latest science on nutritional matters and the ways the USDA interprets it to create policy.

But some observers still worry that the guidelines may be too influenced by industry concerns.

“I believe that by supporting low-fat products and grain products, rather than actual low-fat foods and whole grains like quinoa and teff, they are just trying to support the food industry,” said Adele Hite, a University of North Carolina public health graduate student who represented the Committee for a Healthy Nation during last week’s meeting.

The USDA started giving out nutritional advice more than 100 years ago with a table of food composition and dietary standards that later morphed into food shopping guides for various income levels. In 1992 the agency developed the food pyramid, an image in which horizontal bars represented food groups.

In 2005 the pyramid was given a new look (and renamed My Pyramid) in which the bars were replaced by vertical stripes that some argued made it hard to read at a glance.

“The new pyramid is not so much an information image as something to send people to the mypyramid.gov Web site,” explained USDA spokesman John Webster.

“While making it, there was a concern that it was not specific enough,” Webster said. “But as we added more information it started to look like a Christmas tree. Finally we said we can’t continue to add more information and still make it meaningful, and so decided to put the information on the Web.”

Congress mandates that a committee on the dietary guidelines convene every five years to review the latest science and state of the American diet to make adjustments, but the pyramid usually does not change as often. It will likely get another makeover in early 2011 as part of the national Let’s Move campaign against childhood obesity.

The main changes proposed for the dietary guidelines include reducing daily sodium intake from 2,300 milligrams to 1,500 milligrams, reducing the percentage of saturated fat in the diet from 10 percent to 7 percent, reductions in foods with added sugars and an avoidance of artificial trans fats altogether. The report also highlighted the importance of vitamin D, calcium, potassium and dietary fiber, and it recommends eating 8 ounces of seafood a week.

Because most Americans already consume more sodium than was recommended in the last version of the guidelines, the new target of 1,500 milligrams is likely to pose formidable challenges to American consumers, not to mention food processors who rely on sodium as a flavor enhancer, preservative and binder.

Some experts acknowledge that although the proposed guidelines may force manufacturers to reformulate processed foods for schools and prisons that follow the standards, they may have little effect on what consumers eat at restaurants or at home.

“I think people ignore them when it comes to eating more fruits and vegetables and reducing refined sugars, but they will listen when they see the permission to eat six to 11 servings of grain per day,” Fallon said.

The proposed 2010 guidelines are the first to acknowledge America’s dire obesity epidemic and the roles environment and communication play in actually getting the public to follow the suggestions.

They cite “powerful influences that currently promote unhealthy consumer choices, behaviors and lifestyles” in our environment and call for cooperation with the Department of Health and Human Services to encourage improvements in areas including health, nutrition and physical education in schools; greater financial incentives to purchase, prepare and consume healthful food; more health-promoting foods and portions offered in restaurants and by manufacturers; and more exercise-friendly communities.

Among the questions the committee considered for this year’s guidelines was how much and what kinds of fish consumption it could endorse given the latest research on mercury contamination.

Unlike the current food pyramid, the government’s latest proposed advice takes into consideration the health threats posed by mercury, a toxic metal that taints certain types of fish and can trigger learning difficulties in children and neurological and heart problems in adults.

The proposed guidelines reflect a 2004 joint advisory from the Food and Drug Administration andEnvironmental Protection Agency that cautions young children, pregnant women, nursing mothers and women of childbearing age not to eat swordfish, shark, king mackerel and tilefish because of high mercury levels. It also advises those groups to consume no more than 12 ounces of fish a week, including no more than 6 ounces of canned albacore tuna.

An online version of the current food pyramid continues to recommend swordfish and tuna, four years after the Tribune first reported on the government’s contradictory advice. The National Academy of Sciences has sharply criticized the government for not doing enough to advise consumers about which fish are safest to eat, a job that has fallen to nonprofit health groups.

Based on the government’s own testing, Consumers Union, the publisher of Consumer Reports magazine, says the chances that any type of canned tuna will contain high levels of mercury are great enough that pregnant women should never eat it.

“You can get all of the benefits of fish and avoid the dangers of mercury by eating low-mercury fish,” said Jean Halloran, the group’s director of food policy initiatives. “It’s been distressing to see the government isn’t doing a better job helping women make smart choices.”

The seafood industry has argued that advising women about high- and low-mercury types of fish would scare them away from eating seafood altogether. Yet a 2008 federal study found a decline in the number of women nationwide with high levels of the toxic metal in their bodies, even though those women were eating the same amount of seafood. The finding suggested that consumer advisories about mercury had started to work.

via Food pyramid: New dietary guidelines coming from U.S. government – chicagotribune.com.

Salt shaker

The New York Times, May 29, 2010

With salt under attack for its ill effects on the nation’s health, the food giant Cargill kicked off a campaign last November to spread its own message.

“Salt is a pretty amazing compound,” Alton Brown, a Food Network star, gushes in a Cargill video called Salt 101. “So make sure you have plenty of salt in your kitchen at all times.”

The campaign by Cargill, which both produces and uses salt, promotes salt as “life enhancing” and suggests sprinkling it on foods as varied as chocolate cookies, fresh fruit, ice cream and even coffee. “You might be surprised,” Mr. Brown says, “by what foods are enhanced by its briny kiss.”

By all appearances, this is a moment of reckoning for salt. High blood pressure is rising among adults and children. Government health experts estimate that deep cuts in salt consumption could save 150,000 lives a year.

Since processed foods account for most of the salt in the American diet, national health officials, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York and Michelle Obama are urging food companies to greatly reduce their use of salt. Last month, the Institute of Medicine went further, urging the government to force companies to do so.

But the industry is working overtly and behind the scenes to fend off these attacks, using a shifting set of tactics that have defeated similar efforts for 30 years, records and interviews show. Industry insiders call the strategy “delay and divert” and say companies have a powerful incentive to fight back: they crave salt as a low-cost way to create tastes and textures. Doing without it risks losing customers, and replacing it with more expensive ingredients risks losing profits.

When health advocates first petitioned the federal government to regulate salt in 1978, food companies sponsored research aimed at casting doubt on the link between salt and hypertension. Two decades later, when federal officials tried to cut the salt in products labeled “healthy,” companies argued that foods already low in sugar and fat would not sell with less salt.

Now, the industry is blaming consumers for resisting efforts to reduce salt in all foods, pointing to, as Kellogg put it in a letter to a federal nutrition advisory committee, “the virtually intractable nature of the appetite for salt.”

The federal committee is finishing up recommendations on nutrient issues including salt. While its work is overseen by the Department of Agriculture, records released to The New York Times show that the industry nominated a majority of its members and has presented the panel with its own research. It includes two studies commissioned by ConAgra suggesting that the country could save billions of dollars more in health care and lost productivity costs by simply nudging Americans to eat a little less food, rather than less salty food.

Even as it was moving from one line of defense to another, the processed food industry’s own dependence on salt deepened, interviews with company scientists show. Beyond its own taste, salt also masks bitter flavors and counters a side effect of processed food production called “warmed-over flavor,” which, the scientists said, can make meat taste like “cardboard” or “damp dog hair.”

Salt also works in tandem with fat and sugar to achieve flavors that grip the consumer and do not let go — an allure the industry has recognized for decades. “Once a preference is acquired,” a top scientist at Frito-Lay wrote in a 1979 internal memorandum, “most people do not change it, but simply obey it.”

In recent months, food companies, including Kellogg, have said they were redoubling efforts to reduce salt. But they say they can go only so far, so fast without compromising tastes consumers have come to relish or salt’s ability to preserve food. “We have to earn the consumer’s trust every day,” said George Dowdie, a senior vice president of Campbell Soup. “And if you disappoint the consumer, there is no guarantee they will come back.”

via Pushed to Lower Salt Use, Food Industry Pushes Back – NYTimes.com.

Nutrition Action Healthletter Exposes 9 Caloric Heavyweights

May 24, 2010

WASHINGTON—Would you top a Pizza Hut Personal Pan Pepperoni Pizza with six Taco Bell Crunchy beef Tacos? And then eat the whole thing? Well, pass the Pepto-Bismol, please: The nutrition and food safety watchdogs at the Center for Science in the Public Interest today conferred its Xtreme Eating awards on nine items from seven American restaurant chains.

“One might think that chains like Outback Steakhouse and The Cheesecake Factory might want to lighten up their meals now that calories will be required on their menus, courtesy of the health care reform law signed in March,” said CSPI executive director Michael F. Jacobson. “But these chains don’t promote moderation. They practice caloric extremism, and they’re helping make modern-day Americans become the most obese people ever to walk the Earth.”

Photo Credit: Melissa Pryputniewicz
The Outbeak Steakhouse New Zealand Rack of Lamb plus the
sides has 1,820 calories, 80 grams of saturated fat, and 2,600
milligrams of sodium.

Most people wouldn’t think to order two orders of deep-fried steak and eggs for breakfast at a casual chain like Bob Evans. But if you order Bob Evans’ Cinnamon Cream Stacked & Stuffed Hotcakes, you’ll be getting 1,380 calories and 34 grams of bad fat—about what you’d get in two country-fried steaks and four eggs. But the hotcakes are worse because seven grams of their bad fat comes from trans fat—more than one should get in three and a half days. Syrup adds another 200 calories for every four-tablespoon serving.

Pancakes, which are usually lightly fried white flour topped with sugary syrup, have never been a healthy breakfast. But Bob stuffs his hotcakes with cinnamon chips made of sugar and fat; adds a layer of cream-cheese-flavored filling; and tops them with sugary “cream” sauce, whipped topping, and powdered sugar. And that makes the item one of CSPI’s top Xtreme Eating dishonorees for 2010.

To put these numbers into context, keep in mind that the average American should consume about 2,000 calories per day, and consume no more than 20 grams of saturated fat. Others examples of Xtreme Eating include:

• California Pizza Kitchen Tostada Pizza with Grilled Steak. With 1,680 calories,1½ day’s worth (32 grams) of saturated fat, and more than 2 day’s worth (3,300 mg) of sodium ordering the single-serve pizza is like eating a Pizza Hut Personal Pan Pepperoni Pizza topped with six Taco Bell Crunchy beef Tacos.
• Five Guys Bacon Cheeseburger. At McDonald’s, most people probably wouldn’t opt for a second Quarter Pounder (410 calories each). But at one of the trendy Five Guys’ 550 outlets, one Bacon Cheeseburger sans toppings has 920 calories and a day-and-a half’s worth (30 grams) of saturated fat. A large order of French fries at Five Guys has 1,460 calories—about triple the calories of a large order of fries at McDonald’s. (Famous Five Guys patrons pleasetake note.)
• P.F. Chang’s Double Pan-Fried Noodles Combo. You could eat 10 egg Rolls and not top the 1,820 calories in this dish. “They fry these noodles to make them hard and crunchy, while you end up soft and flabby,” says CSPI nutrition director Bonnie Liebman. If this noodle dish does indeed have the 7,690 milligrams of sodium to which the chain confesses, that would be about three teaspoons of salt—a five-day supply.
• The Cheesecake Factory Pasta Carbonara with Chicken. When CSPI first dubbed fettuccine Alfredo a “heart attack on a plate,” it was because CSPI’s lab tests found it had 1,500 calories and 48 grams of saturated fat. But, according to the company, this dish—with four cups of white-flour pasta, smoked bacon, chicken, and Parmesan cream and butter sauce—has 2,500 calories and more saturated fat (85 grams) than one should consume in four days. It’s like eating the chain’s onion-ring-topped Grilled Rib-Eye Steak with French Fries, and a slice of Tiramisu Cheesecake.
• The Cheesecake Factory Chocolate Tower Truffle Cake. A tower of any food is rarely a good idea. This six-inch-long, three-quarter-pound slab of cake has 1,670 calories and two-and-a-half days’ worth (48 grams) of artery-clogging saturated fat. Feel like eating 14 Hostess Ho Hos for dessert?

The full list of the 2010 Xtreme Eating Awards is published in the June issue of Nutrition Action Healthletter.

“I wouldn’t accuse California Pizza Kitchen or P.F. Chang’s of being a threat to national security, but with a quarter of young Americans too heavy to join the military, these and other chains ought to get the extremes off their menus,” said Liebman. “At a minimum, they should disclose calories on menus now, even before federal regulations make it mandatory.”

Packaged-food manufacturers recently made a commitment to slash a trillion calories from the foods they produce by 2012. But the Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation includes only one restaurant company, Darden, the parent company of Olive Garden and Red Lobster. And none of the companies involved in the initiative are revealing any details on how calorie reductions will be achieved. CSPI noted that, while a trillion calories sounds like a lot, it represents only a drop in the bucket of the more than 350 trillion calories that Americans consume every year.

“For all the industry’s rhetoric about providing consumers with ‘choice,’ the choices at restaurants mostly range from bad to terrible,” Jacobson said. “The healthy choices are largely afterthoughts and Xtreme Eating reigns supreme. If chain restaurants want to practice corporate responsibility, they should substitute fruits, vegetables, and whole grains for white flour, sugar, salt, and fat.”

The health-reform law enacted in March gives the Food and Drug Administration a year to propose a regulation specifying how restaurant chains with 20 or more outlets should disclose calories on menus and menu boards. The law will also require chains to make information about saturated fat, carbohydrates, sodium, and other nutrients available to diners upon request.

And the Envelope, Please: The 2010 Xtreme Eating Awards Go To… ~ Newsroom ~ News from CSPI ~ Center for Science in the Public Interest.

The Wall Street Journal, May 18, 2010, Ron Winslow

Maybe that juicy steak you ordered isn’t a heart-attack-on-a-plate after all. (But still raises the risk of colon cancer sic.)

A new study from the Harvard School of Public Health suggests that the heart risk long associated with red meat comes mostly from processed varieties such as bacon, sausage, hot dogs and cold cuts—and not from steak, hamburgers and other non-processed cuts.

The finding is surprising because both types of red meat are high in saturated fat, a substance believed to be partly responsible for the increased risk of heart disease. But the new study raises the possibility that when it comes to meat, at least, the real bad actor may be salt. Processed meats generally have about four times the amount of salt as unprocessed meats.

While the study is far from definitive, researchers said the findings suggest that people, especially those already at risk of heart problems or with high blood pressure, should consider reducing consumption of bacon, processed ham, hot dogs and other packaged meats that have a high salt content. Salt increases blood pressure, a major risk factor for cardiovascular disease.In a report that pooled data from 20 different studies from around the world, the researchers found that daily consumption of about two ounces of processed meat was associated with a 42% increased risk of heart disease and a 19% heightened chance of diabetes. By contrast, a four-ounce daily serving of red meat from beef, hamburger, pork, lamb or game wasn’t linked to any increased risk of heart disease. There was, however, a small, but statistically insignificant risk of diabetes.

“The conventional wisdom is that red meats have higher saturated fat and cholesterol levels,” factors that have made all red meats potential culprits in raising the risk of cardiovascular disease, said Renata Micha, a research fellow in the Harvard School of Public Health’s epidemiology department. “But when you try to separate processed from unprocessed meats, you get an entirely different picture.” She is lead author of the study, which appears in Tuesday’s issue of the American Heart Association journal Circulation.

None of this suggests that steak is a new health food. While red meat wasn’t linked to an increased risk of heart disease in the study, it didn’t lower it either. Other research suggests frequent red meat consumption is associated with increased risk of colon cancer. The new report didn’t look at cancer effects.Based on information about meat products sold in the U.S., levels of saturated fats are similar in processed and unprocessed meats, while steak and other red meats have on average slightly higher levels of cholesterol, the researchers found. But sodium levels average about 622 milligrams per two-ounce serving of processed meat, about four times the 155 milligrams found in steak, hamburger or pork. Other preservatives, called nitrites, were also higher in the processed meats. In some studies, nitrates have been shown to interfere with the health of blood vessels and the body’s ability to process glucose.

“Should people eat more red meat because of this analysis?” asked Robert Eckel, a cardiologist and nutrition expert at University of Colorado, Denver. “I don’t think that is what the study is saying.”

The study was a meta-analysis, which combines the results of several studies looking at the same issue. Like others of its kind, the study “is limited in terms of scientific value,” Dr. Eckel said. None of the studies in the analysis, for example, was a randomized controlled clinical trial, just one factor affecting the strength of the findings. The report is helpful in raising issues for further study, but “it doesn’t answer any questions,” he said.

Nevertheless, Dr. Eckel said, “I was amazed to see the differences in sodium content” between the two categories of meat.” It suggests that people with high blood pressure “might need an [additional] drug” to control their condition if they eat a lot of processed meat,” he said.

The American Meat Institute Foundation took issue with the findings, saying they conflict with national dietary guidelines. “The body of evidence clearly demonstrates that processed meat is a healthy part of a balanced diet,” James H. Hodges, president, said in a statement. He said the study didn’t “achieve the standard threshold that would generate concern” and that “it is no reason for dietary changes.”

Current U.S. dietary guidelines call for limiting saturated fats—the kind found in red meats and dairy products such as milk, cheese and butter—to less than 10% of calories consumed each day—while keeping overall fat consumption to under 30% of calories. A big reason is that saturated fats are associated with higher levels of cholesterol in the blood. Dr. Eckel said that “is still a reasonable recommendation.”

“There is growing evidence that it’s not which nutrient we eat, but the type of foods we eat that is important,” said Harvard’s Dr. Mozaffarian. “We have to get away from trying to micromanage nutrients and look at the health quality of foods.”The report is the second meta-analysis in recent weeks to question just how much of a culprit saturated fats are when it comes to cardiovascular risk. In March, a meta-analysis (involving 21 different studies) by a team headed by Ronald Krauss at Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute, Oakland, Calif., found that intake of saturated fat wasn’t linked to a statistically-significant increased risk of heart disease, stroke or cardiovascular disease.

That a good cut of red meat might be healthier than a heavily processed serving of other meat, he added, “is intuitive to most Americans. Maybe the science is catching up with the intuitive sense.”

That’s not necessarily a license to unleash your inner carnivore. Calorie control as well as a diet rich in fruits and vegetables, fish, whole grains and nuts remain the mainstay of heart-healthy eating, he said.

“If once in a while somebody wants to eat meat, our study suggests steak or other unprocessed cuts aren’t going to increase their heart risk,” he said.

Eating Hamburger, Steak Dont Raise Heart-Disease Risk, Study Says – WSJ.com.

Salt shaker

Salt may be a hidden killer but as health campaigners call for regulations, the picture keeps shifting. Geoff Cumming sifts through the evidence

Give the food police credit for trying. Knocked back on calls for maximum sugar limits, junk food advertising bans and school tuckshop restrictions, some health experts now want a government clampdown on the amount of salt we eat.

A call by the United States Institute of Medicine for the Obama Administration to impose maximum limits for salt content – and progressively lower them – across a vast range of foods is the kind of intervention needed here, say the Stroke Foundation and leading researchers.

Despite quiet moves to reduce salt content by New Zealand and multinational food manufacturers in the last five years, some experts claim a national strategy is needed.

“We don’t think leaving it to industry alone will be enough,” says Stroke Foundation chief executive Mark Vivian.

“The general public can be sold the message that salt is important as a flavour and a preservative but who is saying ‘salt is killing us’? What’s the strategy around the health implications of too much salt?”

Too much salt has long been linked to high blood pressure, a leading cause of cardiovascular disease and strokes, along with obesity, smoking and excessive alcohol consumption.

Together, heart disease and strokes are our leading killers, responsible for around 32 per cent of deaths each year, ahead of cancer (28 per cent).

Yet salt has escaped the blowtorch applied to saturated fats, sugar, alcohol and tobacco as health watchdogs try to change behaviours to reduce premature deaths and soaring medical costs.

Meantime, changed diets – a trend towards more packaged and processed foods, ready-to-eat meals, more fast food and eating out – lead researchers to suspect our salt intake has gone through the roof.

They already believe our average daily salt intake is at least 50 per cent higher than the safe maximum of no more than 5.8g (just over a teaspoon) a day, and some experts argue the limit should be set even lower. Sampling of 704 blood donors in Hamilton and Dunedin in the 1990s found women were consuming an average 9.2g of salt a day and men 11.3g/day.

The problem is that most of our salt intake comes not from what we sprinkle on to home cooking but from the packaged, processed and ready-to-eat foods we are increasingly buying.

Several recent international studies have highlighted the potential to significantly reduce strokes and heart disease simply by targeting salt. Researchers argue that a national strategy to lower salt levels would be more effective than tobacco control in reducing premature deaths and reducing the billions spent on high blood pressure medication and hospital care. It is seen as a “simple” intervention which would remove the onus from individuals to cut down.

READ MORE: Pure, white and deadly – Health – NZ Herald News.