Whether it’s Michelle Obama’s health initiatives or programs to make school lunches more healthy, there has been an increasing focus on America’s increasing waistline and obesity epidemic.

However, a suburban community is realizing that there are even more consequences to being overweight than simply high blood pressure and diabetes.

According to WREX in Rockford, Ill., a fire began in a one-story home just before 4:00 a.m. Monday. The two parents, Joe and Delores Herron, escaped, but when firefighters arrived, their daughter and two foster sons, ages 10 and 11, were still trapped inside.

Firefighters were able to get the 2 boys out through the window, but firefighters could not lift Jamaya

Investigators say she weighed more than 500 pounds. through.

Winnebago County Coroner Sue Fiduccia said, “That [the weight] did hamper the fire department and fire rescuers from taking her out a window. They did have to bring her out the door and in doing that, two firefighters we’re actually injured.”

By then, it was too late for Jamaya.

The daughter of a pastor and a singer at the church died at the scene. Fire Chief Derek Bergsten, stated:

“They gave 110 percent, did their best and sometimes we’re not able to save everyone, but we were able to get two individuals out of that structure alive.”

Investigators say Jamaya died from breathing smoke. There will be an autopsy later this week.

Fannie Barbee, a relative of the family, says, “She was very faithful in the church. Whenever I go over there, she was a really nice person.” [source]

Of course, I waited a few days to write about this just because I needed to think without the presence of anger or sadness…

..but then I realized that a little anger might be appropriate.

The video above is from the news clip regarding the events surrounding Jamaya’s passing. (If you’re a subscriber, you may want to visit this post on a computer to view it.)

Far be it for me to disrespect a grieving family, but we’re adults, here. Adults take situations and learn from them all the time. This needs to be one of those situations.

She was the daughter of a pastor and actively involved in her church. Obviously well-known.

All those people in her community… and no one was able to assist her before she reached the 300, 400 or 500lb mark? How does a teenager gain so much weight before they even reach adulthood?

Those of us who read this site know the importance of having a supportive environment full of people who care about us to help us reach our goals. What, in the world, is going on in a church when a girl can be “very faithful” yet still no one was as devoted to her as she was to them?

I mean, I get it – I’m the main one saying that we shouldn’t judge people who stand before us because we don’t know where they are on their journey to wellness. That’s my line. I know it by heart. But Jamaya passed away because no one bothered to stop her before it got to the point where her quality of life was so impacted that she couldn’t even be rushed to safety! This isn’t a young girl who we see outside walking and decide to judge from our cars. This is a girl who no one bothered to intervene with 200lbs ago. Major difference.

Now a while back, I wrote asking the readers of BGG2WL if there was anyone in their lives who was allowed to let them know their weight might be getting out of hand… and a lot of the messages I received publicly and privately implied that no one was allowed to tell them. No one was allowed to make them feel like something was wrong with them for gaining weight. And if you’re 140lbs at 5’8″, that makes sense. No one should be making you feel bad.

Having said that, those of us who are on the path to wellness and are experiencing positive results… You know how hard it was for you to obtain the knowledge you’ve developed. Be it from books, from your peers, even from this site. It is your responsibility to “be the change you wish to see” in your community and be a role model for better health. You don’t have to tell anyone “You’re getting fat” – in all my time, I’ve never used those words – but you can show people that good food doesn’t have to be full of sugar or fat or salt. You can be excited by your own loss and share with people how “easy” it’s been for you. (Maybe “simple” might be a better word.) You can let people know that your success has come from cooking more, being more active, and using less junk foods. People don’t want words, and they certainly don’t want insults. They want to see that something works, then they want to know what that something is. Do you think you’d be here reading MY words if you didn’t know that what I write about worked for me? I doubt it.

I question why no one in Jamaya’s community could be “that kind of person” for her. They had 200lbs worth of time to be there for her, and no one did it. I’ll even put it out there – what kind of emotional damage is a teenager going through that she’d rather continue harmful habits than try to get help? The same kind of emotional damage caused by parents who can get out of a house, yet leave their three children inside?

Sorry, I take that back. But I am a devoted parent and… let’s just say there better be a logical explanation for that part.

That is a beautiful girl lost because no one could save her. No one could get to her fast enough. In more ways than one. It is shameful that we have young girls in our community that need help and, apparently, aren’t getting it. It is shameful that they have no one to talk to about their insecurities and seek out some kind of guidance. It is a pain that we should  all feel that there are women who would rather endure the decreased quality of life than do what they need to do to be on a path to wellness.

Make no mistake about it – this isn’t about her dress size. This isn’t about her appearance, either – look at her, she’s a beautiful girl! This is about the fact that a girl, obviously devoted to her church community, was able to become so large that two individuals were harmed in an attempt to save her while she was impaired. That is a serious problem.

This should make us all look at ourselves. What do we do for those individuals who might be struggling? Do we talk to them, befriend them to see if they’re okay? Do we invite them over for dinner and, even though we might endure the “forget this – I want some real food!” comments, at least show them what healthier food looks like? Do we offer emotional support? Offer to go for a walk with them? Or are we just judging from afar, and make sure we can chip in on the casket?

I know that’s a bit sensationalist, but that’s real talk.What are we doing to stop this kind of silliness?

500lb Teen Unable To Be Rescued From Fire, and I Blame EVERYONE is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. Teen Girls, Weight Loss Surgery, Body Image and Class Distinctions

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© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2012. | Permalink | 30 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: obesity, teenage obesity

Academy Award winner Jennifer Hudson headlined a campaign fundraiser for Mayor Rahm Emanuel, and today he returned the favor by joining the Chicago singer in opening a South Side Weight Watchers center that bears her name.

Emanuel appeared onstage with Hudson and used an oversize pair of scissors to help her cut the ribbon at the Kenwood neighborhood storefront location a few blocks from President Barack Obama’s home.

The mayor said Hudson’s work as a spokeswoman for the weight loss company promotes a healthy lifestyle and dovetails with his initiative to institute a “wellness program” for city workers that rewards employees with lower health care costs for participating. Emanuel also drew a connection between Hudson’s weight loss work and his attempts to end “food deserts” in Chicago by bringing in more fresh food options.

“While this center is focused on weight loss, it’s also about healthy living, not just about weight loss,” Emanuel said.

Hudson appeared at a sold-out fundraiser for Emanuel Jan. 11 at House of Blues. Tickets to the fundraiser cost from $30 to $500, according to the Emanuel campaign.

I ain’t mad at it.

Chicago readers, how is this being received out there? What effect will it have, if any?

What are y’all thinking out there?

Jennifer Hudson Opens Weight Watchers Center In Chicago is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

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2. Jennifer Hudson Gets Down To A Size 0
3. Jennifer Hudson Tells Her Story To Self Magazine

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An actual lap-band, from Allergan's own site.

Allergan Inc’s already approved stomach band was effective for reducing weight in a broader group of obese patients, U.S. reviewers said in documents released on Wednesday.

The maker of Botox, breast implants and other cosmetic products wants approval to promote the surgically implanted Lap-Band device to people with lower body mass indexes who are still considered obese. Wider approval could boost sales.

Allergan shares gained 0.3 percent to close at $66.46 on the New York Stock Exchange.

In an Allergan study, “there was significant decrease in all measures of weight loss,” Food and Drug Administration reviewers wrote in a summary prepared for outside advisers who will consider the wider use on Friday.

The company is seeking FDA approval to promote the Lap-Band for adults with a BMI of 35 or higher, or at least 30 plus one weight-related health problem such as diabetes or high blood pressure. A person 6 feet tall would need to weigh about 225 pounds (102 kilograms) to have a BMI of at least 30.

The Lap-Band is approved for adults with a BMI of at least 40, or at least 35 plus one other health problem. About 15 million Americans are candidates under the currently approved definition and about 27 million more fit under the broader group, Allergan said.

The company studied 149 patients in the less obese group. Nearly 81 percent of them had lost at least 30 percent of their weight at one year, FDA reviewers said.

No unexpected complications were reported. About 2 percent of device-related problems were considered severe, FDA staff said. One patient’s band had eroded and was removed, while another’s was repositioned in a new operation after it slipped.

The FDA reviewers said they had some questions about Allergan’s data, including whether the people who were studied represented the types of U.S. patients who would be eligible if wider use is approved. Most patients studied were white women, and nonwhite men were underrepresented, they said.

Collins Stewart analyst Louise Chen said she conservatively estimates Lap-Band sales could rise to $390 million by 2016. The device, which is placed around the upper part of the stomach to create a small pouch and limit food intake, already commands two-thirds of the $300 million to $400 million gastric band market.

Wider approval would be positive for Allergan, Chen said, but “uptake may be slow given the high unemployment rate” as many patients pay out of pocket for the device.

The surgery costs between $12,000 and $20,000, Allergan said.

More than 72 million U.S. adults are obese, which raises the risk of heart disease, stroke, diabetes and some types of cancer. Efforts to fight fat with a pill have fallen short, leading some patients to consider surgical options.

Allergan dominates other markets with products such as wrinkle smoother Botox and dermal filler Juvederm, making it an attractive takeover target for large drugmakers.

The FDA cleared the Lap-Band for sale in 2001. The device can be implanted through a small “keyhole” incision. The procedure is less invasive than stomach stapling or gastric bypass, which involves cutting and rerouting the stomach. Johnson & Johnson sells a rival device called Realize.

The FDA panel is set to vote on Friday afternoon on whether to recommend approval for the less-obese patients. The agency usually follows panel recommendations.

Doctors are free to implant the Lap-Band now in any patient they consider appropriate, but Allergan needs FDA approval to market the device for the wider group.

In a summary also released by the FDA, Allergan said its study findings “make it clear that the benefits of the weight loss exceed the risk of surgery and the risk of failure to treat” obesity.

Allergan also is studying the Lap-Band in teens ages 14 to 17.

From the Q&A on the lap-band:

For starters, I don’t understand why weight loss procedures are considered some great, grand solution to every obesity-related illness, especially when the only thing the surgery immediately solves is the “obese” issue – you lose the weight. You’ll still have the hypertension, you’ll still have the high cholesterol and you’ll still have the diabetes to contend with. It is not a cure all.

In fact, I can recall a conversation I had with an MD a while back regarding surgeries… because I feel some kinda way about how they are peddled as being The End All Be All To Curing The Real Health Woes In America. Her words to me were, “Surgeries aren’t intended to be a cure-all, they’re meant to aid the people who are genuinely unable to function because of the weight they’ve put on, or the people who actually need to quickly lose weight so that we can go in and perform other procedures. If there’s too much fat for us to go in and do what we need to do, then a procedure will be recommended for weight loss first… then the other procedures come afterwards.”

Excerpted from Q&A Wednesday: Should She Go Lap-Band? | A Black Girl’s Guide To Weight Loss

Now, if the idea is that because a person is limited in how much food they can take in because of the lap band, and that they don’t, in fact, have to actually change what they’re eating… that just means it’ll take longer to experience the same obesity-linked illnesses. Doesn’t mean those illnesses will never resurface.

From the comments on the Q&A post:

I have a friend who is 5’10″ tall and weighs around 425lbs. She gained the last 30lbs whole wearing a lapband that she just had removed in August. Somehow she ate the same amount of food in teeny tiny meals, ALL DAY! Since vegetables caused her indigestion, she didn’t eat them. So lots of meat and potatoes, and starches. Because she gained that extra weight, the lapband was rubbing against her liver causing pain and internal bleeding..

We get along as as long as the topic of food doesn’t come up. Now she’s on a mostly liquid diet of 1000 calories/day to lose weight in preparation of gastric bypass surgery in January. She said she doesn’t want to develop Type 2 Diabetes like me, so she going to get herself cut up. I understand her fear, but I cringe whenever I think of what she puts in her mouth. Since she’s limited to 1000 calories, she stocked up on fat-free puddings, and diet pop. I asked her to just do herbal teas, and a few squares of dark chocolate but she complained that that little bit wouldn’t fill her up. And she HATES water!

One more:

I wrote the post lap gastric bypass/calorie restriction post yesterday and I feel that there are some necessary clarifications to be made about bariatric surgery.

1) Whether lap band or bypass, you will regain the weight if you don’t change your behaviors. Period. Limiting calories to1,800/day, exercising, eating healthy food…that’s the only way to go to have long-lasting results.

2) The gastric bypass surgery functions quite differently from the lap band. The bypass removes approximately 95% of the stomach (although not following directions can cause it to stretch back to its original size) and affects the hormones released by the digestive system. These hormones affect how the body processes food, burns it, and can absolutely change your palate. Pre-surgery, my problems were with sugar (thankfully I didn’t have high blood pressure, diabetes, or any other co-morbid condition). Now, I can’t eat some natural sugars because I’m so sensitive to it. A slice of pineapple almost had me updating my will. I’m an outlier; all folks don’t have this experience. However, since sugar was my main problem, my surgeon and I are very confident of my success as I can no longer tolerate (nor do I crave it). I also work out 3x week with a trainer. This, in addition to the surgery, accounts for how I’ve lost more than 60% of my excess weight in less than 11 months.

3) The lap band physically reduces, though not permanently, the size of the stomach which limits intake. There is no cutting. It does NOT affect hunger hormones and there is no “dumping” syndrome, where the body rids itself of everything (it seems) if the patient eats too much fat or sugar in one sitting. Lap band folks can eat sugar, fat, anything they want, just in smaller quantities. This is why a significant proportion of lap band patients eventually have the bypass surgery.

No matter what you do (surgical or non-surgical intervention), your eating habits and exercise regimen will ultimately determine your weight and thus, your health. I had years of therapy before I had the surgery, which is partly why I’ve been successful. And for the record, I lost nearly 50 pounds BEFORE the surgery (30 pounds MORE than my surgeon required) because I was able to address many of my psychological issues around food and “practice” my post-surgery habits for a full 11 months before the surgery.

Bariatric surgery is not for everyone. No matter how good your intentions, how great your support system, you should not have the surgery until you’ve addressed emotional/psychological reasons for eating.

I’m a doctor and can address more specificities of the surgeries. However, I’m not here to give medical advice; that’s for your primary care physician.

One more thing: one can be too obese for the surgery. At my highest weight, 400+ pounds, there are surgeons who would not have accepted me as a patient. My surgeon, PCP, and therapist all knew that I was in it for the long haul and that I would comply with all requirements. No surgeon wants an extremely obese patient who can’t follow directions. It sounds callous, but it destroys their surgery statistics…and that matters quite a bit for reputational and malpractice purposes. I’m shocked that someone above stated that their 650 pound mother had a bypass. NO way surgeons at my Top 10-ranked hospital would have accepted her as a patient. She got very lucky.

There is one thing I’d like to highlight from the article:

Doctors are free to implant the Lap-Band now in any patient they consider appropriate, but Allergan needs FDA approval to market the device for the wider group.

In a summary also released by the FDA, Allergan said its study findings “make it clear that the benefits of the weight loss exceed the risk of surgery and the risk of failure to treat” obesity.

Allergan also is studying the Lap-Band in teens ages 14 to 17.

One final question:

Anyone notice that the end goal, here, is to ensure that people don’t have to stop eating how they want.. so that the food industry’s money isn’t affected by our weight loss? ‘Cause, I mean, if you actually lost weight by eating what you’re supposed to eat… the entire food system would have to change.

Update:

Allergan Inc.’s stomach-shrinking Lap-Band won a favorable vote from a federal advisory panel Friday, showing how surgery rather than drugs is increasingly gaining favor as a treatment for obesity.

The panel at the Food and Drug Administration voted 8-2 that the benefits of the Allergan device outweighed the risks of using it in a broader patient population.

[...]

The Lap-Band is already approved to treat adults with a body-mass index of 40 or more or a BMI of 35 with at least one obesity-related condition such as Type 2 diabetes or high blood pressure. Allergan wants to market the device to all adults with a BMI of 35 or those who have a BMI of 30 and one obesity-related condition.

Body-mass index is a measure of weight relative to height. A person who is 5 feet, 5 inches and weighs 180 pounds has a body-mass index of 30. [source]

Funny how that works out. Thoughts, y’all?

Makers Of Lap-Band Want Bigger Share Of The Market is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. MSNBC: Gaining Weight To Quality For Lap-Band Surgery?
2. Q&A Wednesday: Should She Go Lap-Band?
3. Our Trip To The Farmer’s Market

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© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2012. | Permalink | 16 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: advertising, allergan, FDA, government, lapband, marketing, weight loss surgery

DEKALB COUNTY, Ga. — Michelle Fonville said her experience at Natural Nails on Covington Highway in DeKalb County turned from pleasant to painful in a matter of moments.

“I was humiliated. I almost cried. Tears were forming in my eyes,” said Fonville.

She said things went downhill on Monday after the salon manager gave her the bill for her manicure, pedicure and eyebrow arch.

Fonville realized that she had been overcharged by $5.

“I said, ‘I’ve been overcharged. She may have made an error,’” said Fonville. “She broke it down, then told me she charged me $5 more because I was overweight.”

Fonville said she couldn’t believe what was happening and recounted the experience with Channel 2 Action News reporter Eric Philips.

“I said, Ma’am, you can’t charge me $5 more. That’s discrimination because of my weight,” said Fonville.

Salon manager Kim Tran told Philips that the surcharge was due to costly repairs of broken chairs by overweight customers. She said the chairs have a weight capacity of 200 pounds and cost $2,500 to fix.

“Do you think that’s fair when we take $24 [for manicure and pedicure] and we have to pay $2,500? Is that fair? No,” Tran told Philips.

Tran said she refunded the $5 surcharge, and told Fonville to take her business elsewhere.

“I didn’t want to argue with her about $5. I wanted to make her pleased with her service,” Tran said. “I whispered … I said, ‘I’m sorry, next time I cannot take you.’”

“The word has to get out there that these people are discriminating against us because of our weight. I mean come on, we’re in America. You can’t do that,” said Fonville. [source]

Now, surely there’s a legal eagle out there that can clarify something for me.

In America, qualities like race and gender are protected classes. Being a “protected class” basically means one cannot discriminate against another based on those qualities.You’re “protected” against discrimination. Which leads to my next question…

Can one be protected because of weight? (I’ve heard the argument that it should be protected under disability, but…) Should they be? Anyone have thoughts they’d like to share? I have mine, but… I’m saving that for later.

Georgia Nail Salon Charges More For Overweight Customers is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

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Post tags: anti-fat, discrimination

What also makes sense is that when it comes time to change as a person, if our friends can’t accept that change or downplay/inhibit that change in some fashion, they should fall to the wayside… right?

So what happens when our friends are standing in the way of our growth as healthy individuals? Think about it. Do we get together over a jog, or over a giant Three-For-All (pictured above)? Do we get together and drink a six pack together, or do we go someplace…. where food isn’t involved? If I suggest that we get together over an activity, not a meal… is someone wondering, “Yeah, and can we stop at Chili’s? I’m starving!”

I think it’s a difficult realization to face – that the people we love might be enabling bad habits that are hazardous to our health. I remember my best friend – who actually models – and I always would get together for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and/or the bar. She started working out at a local gym, and I… went for 7 days. That was it for us and the gym thing. And eventually, the more in-tune she got with her health, the more time it resulted in her spending away from me. Phone time? I’ve got you covered. Otherwise, it wasn’t happening.

I can admit it now – her “healthiness” made me uncomfortable! It was a constant reminder of how unhealthy I was, and instead of telling myself “Yeah, she might lap me on the track but I’m good if I keep going,” I said “I’m not going to embarrass myself like this!” She would also tell you, that my friendship was bad for her health. We talked all the time, but we couldn’t hang – because I always needed food to be involved, for some reason. That’s just the way it was. We can joke about it now, but it’s an underlying issue in many friendships, I’d presume.

Enter this lovely article that I came across via Yahoo! discussing how our friendships impact our health. Taken from the article:

In the study, 130 kids ages 9 to 15 were allowed to snack as much as they wanted while hanging out with a friend or with a peer they did not know. All the kids ate more when they were with a friend than with a stranger. But the overweight children ate the most when paired with an overweight friend – an average of 300 more calories than when they spent time with leaner friends. The research also found that friendship itself makes the appetite grow stronger: when overweight kids ate with similar-weight kids who were already their pals, they threw back an extra 250 calories than when they ate with chubby kids they had just met.

If that wasn’t enough to make you raise an eyebrow, here’s a little more:

Socializing with overweight people can change what we perceive as the norm; it raises our tolerance for obesity both in others and in ourselves. It’s also about letting your hair down. Past research has shown that adults tend to eat more around friends and family than they do with strangers. They shed their inhibitions about how it looks when they go back for thirds or order the alfredo sauce instead of the marinara.

I’ve got one more that goes in line with what I mentioned earlier:

Finally, there’s the idea that we like to hang with people who are like ourselves. Cornell food sociologist Jeffrey Sobal explains that “especially among two overweight people, there’s a sort of permission-giving going on. We’re encouraging each other to eat more.”

So knowing this, what do we do? Do we start dumping our friends who are less healthy than ourselves? Do we begin to grow offended by the friends who might’ve faded out of our lives? Do we simply chalk it up to natural progression and look forward to experiencing our own?

I can honestly tell you, I don’t know. Almost ALL of my friends were in single-digit sizes. They all tried to help me, but I had to come to this conclusion about my self and my health.. on my own. With the logic in this article, I should’ve fallen by the wayside a long time ago.

However, their lack of desire to talk to me about health and fitness wasn’t helping me, either. It was almost as if it made them uncomfortable, or they were afraid to hurt my feelings. No lie, it probably would’ve hurt my feelings for sure. It enabled my bad behavior (not like they should be responsible for it in any capacity, anyhow.) It took my making friends who were as fitness focused as I eventually became to help me integrate my healthy habits into my life.

It took me seeing that people “really live this way” (and yes, I put that in quotation marks because that’s the exact quote I said to myself!) for me to accept that this was an option for me. It took me learning that people “really think about these things” when they order food. And sure enough, when I started to blindly and openly talk about these things with my friends, all of a sudden we started to have new conversations! About calories, cooking, health, fitness, exercise, yoga, junk food, everything! It was like they were keeping a part of themselves away from me because they didn’t want to hurt me. Sure enough, our friendships grew much better beyond that because we were able to bond over one more important part of our lives. I learned a lot of the things that I share in this blog from those relationships.

So, I say all of that to say this: If your friends are hindering your progress, don’t just fall back – if they’re in the same boat as you, talk to them and see if you all have the same concerns and are just afraid to bring them up. If they’re “not concerned” or “just trying to enjoy today,” then find more friends to share your fitness goals and experiences with… and serve as a role model for your friends who are in the same boat as you. You never know who you may inspire, or who may bond with you after they become inspired by your progress!

What About Your Friends: Are They Helping Or Hindering Your Progress? is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. Motivation and Measuring Weight Loss Progress: The Progress Dress
2. Q&A Wednesday: Unsupportive Friends Tell Me “Live A Little!”
3. A Year Of Progress In Photos

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© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2012. | Permalink | 7 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: emotional eating, relationships, social eating

FDA officials said they aren’t concerned about the safety of the juice but will increase testing to make sure the contamination isn’t a problem.

In a letter to the juice industry Monday, the agency said that an unnamed juice company contacted FDA in late December and said it had detected low levels of the fungicide carbendazim in the company’s own orange juice and also in its competitors’ juice.

Fungicides are used to control fungi or fungal spores in agriculture.

Carbendazim is not currently approved for use on citrus in the United States, but is used in Brazil, which exports orange juice to the United States.

An FDA spokeswoman said the company’s testing found levels up to 35 parts per billion of the fungicide, far below the European Union’s maximum residue level of 200 parts per billion.

The United States has not established a maximum residue level for carbendazim in oranges. In the letter to the Juice Products Association, FDA official Nega Beru said the agency will begin testing shipments of orange juice at the border and will detain any that contain traces of the chemical.

Because it is not approved for use in the United States, any amount found in food is illegal.

Beru said that because the FDA doesn’t believe the levels of residue are harmful, the agency won’t remove any juice currently on store shelves.

But he asked the industry to ensure that suppliers in Brazil and elsewhere stop using the fungicide.

“If the agency identifies orange juice with carbendazim at levels that present a public health risk, it will alert the public and take the necessary action to ensure that the product is removed from the market,” he said.

So…do I have this right? The government doesn’t have standards for the fungicide, doesn’t test for it, has it (by definition) considered illegal for use in our supply, and are currently requesting that the industry ensure that Brazilian suppliers cease using it… and none of this is reason enough to pull it off the shelves? I guess that’s too much of an inconvenience to the manufacturers, eh?

Yeah, and the absence of evidence is the evidence of absence… or something. Yeesh.

What’s Going On With Your Orange Juice? Round II is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. What’s Going On With Your Orange Juice?
2. Dr. Oz, Apple Juice, Arsenic and “Fear-Mongering”
3. The Case Against… Juice?

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First, there was this:

When The Dr. Oz Show first heard reports of arsenic in apple juice, we launched an extensive investigation. Using an independent lab for sophisticated, state-of-the-art testing, we uncovered that some of the best-known brands of apple juice contain arsenic. Learn what you need to know to protect your family.

Apple juice made from apple concentrate is not just popular in juice boxes. Often used instead of refined sugar, apple juice is used to sweeten candy, cereals, snack bars and more. Despite its ubiquity in our country’s kitchens, most apple juice is not all-American. In just one type of juice, there can be apple concentrate from up to seven countries. Although arsenic has been banned in the US for decades, it’s not always regulated in other countries where it may be in the water supply or used in pesticides contaminating the juice you’re giving to your children.

The EPA has a limit on arsenic in drinking water – the level allowed is 10 parts per billion. Currently, there is no limit on arsenic in apple juice. The Dr. Oz Show tested three dozen samples from five different brands of apple juice across three different American cities, and compared the levels of arsenic to the standard for water.

Of these, 10 samples came back higher than the arsenic limit allowed in drinking water.

Note: Lab results standard deviation is +/- 20%

• Minute Maid Apple Juice
  • Lowest Sample for Arsenic: 2 parts per billion
  • Highest Sample for Arsenic: 3 parts per billion
• Apple and Eve Apple Juice
  • Lowest Sample for Arsenic: 3 parts per billion
  • Highest Sample for Arsenic: 11 parts per billion
• Mott’s
  • Lowest Sample for Arsenic: 4 parts per billion
  • Highest Sample for Arsenic: 16 parts per billion
• Juicy Juice
  • Lowest Sample for Arsenic: 2 parts per billion
  • Highest Sample for Arsenic: 22 parts per billion
• Gerber
  • Lowest Sample for Arsenic: 3 parts per billion
  • Highest Sample for Arsenic: 36 parts per billion

Click here to read the full results of Dr. Oz’s independent study. [source]

Then, this:

Can’t watch the video? Read on:

In a spirited showdown on “Good Morning America ” today, ABC News Health and Medical Editor Dr. Richard Besser confronted Dr. Mehmet Oz on what he called “extremely irresponsible” statements made on “The Dr. Oz Show” show Wednesday concerning arsenic in apple juice.

“Mehmet, I’m very upset about this, I think that this was extremely irresponsible,” Besser said. “It reminds me of yelling fire in a movie theater.”

“I’m not fear-mongering,” Oz fired back. “We did our homework on this risk.”

Oz’s appearance on ‘GMA’ is the latest development in a story that likely has many parents on edge about whether to continue serving apple juice to their children.

Oz and the show’s producers drew criticism for Wednesday’s episode of the “Dr. Oz Show,” which focused on the dangers of trace levels of arsenic present in many popular brands of apple juice. Juice manufacturers, government regulators and scientists said the results of what the program called its “extensive national investigation” were misleading and needlessly frightening to consumers.

According to the “Dr. Oz Show,” a laboratory tested “three dozen samples from five different brands of apple juice across three American cities” and compared the levels of arsenic to the limits of arsenic for drinking water set by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). They found 10 samples of juice with arsenic levels higher than the limits for water.

In a statement, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said, “There is no evidence of any public health risk from drinking these juices.”

The FDA sent a letter to the Oz show Sept. 9, five days before the show was to air, which warned that airing the show would be “irresponsible” and “misleading” because the testing ignored that there are two forms of arsenic: organic and inorganic. Organic is generally thought not to be harmful to health, whereas inorganic is.

The FDA also conducted its own tests of the apple juice investigated by the “Dr. Oz Show.” In some of the very same lots of juice tested for the show, the FDA reported finding very low levels of inorganic arsenic; 6 parts per billion at most, even lower than the 10 parts per billion recommended by the EPA as a safe level for drinking water.

Oz acknowledged that “no children are dying from acute lethal arsenic poisoning,” stating instead that his concerns were about the long-term effect of arsenic exposure.

Still, Besser said Oz was implying to parents that drinking apple juice poses a risk to kids’ health.

“You have informed parents they are poisoning their children,” he said, a charge that Oz denied.

“We just want to have the conversation, and we’ve been trying to make this conversation happen,” Oz said.

He also added, “I would not take apple juice out of my kids’ containers now.”

…so, let’s talk.

First and foremost, I can’t – and refuse – to debate numbers on this. I’m sure I could order my own tests (y’know, with all my money to spare and whatnot) and find no arsenic in any sample of apple juice. People need to understand what “parts per billion” means – “In science and engineering, the parts-per notation is a set of pseudo units to describe small values of miscellaneous dimensionless quantities, e.g. mole fraction or mass fraction. Since these fractions are quantity-per-quantity measures, they are pure numbers with no associated units of measurement. ” – and the fact that the FDA does, in fact, allow harmful chemicals in our food supply under the guise of “well, it’s in this certain item in tiny, indiscriminate amounts, so it’s okay to us” is non-debateable. I wrote about it with trans-fat, I wrote abut it with rat feces in peanut butter… I’m writing about it now with apple juice.

Arsenic, as noted above, has been banned for use in the United States, but is not banned in other countries from where we import apple concentrate, and (if I’m not mistaken) our imports are not required to meet our standards for food. (To me, this is all the more reason to shoot for eating locally, but I digress.) It’s also – again, as noted above – in the water supply… the same water supply that is used to dilute the apple juice concentrate. Parts per notation doesn’t mean that there will only be less than 10 parts per billion (the “acceptable level” for my example) in each serving of the juice. It means that, in some servings, you’ll only get 2 parts per billion and in others, you may find 18 parts per billion. No matter what lab does the testing, you’ll still get the same variations. This is why so many of the companies are harping on this “same batch” mess – sure, it could’ve been the same batch, but you wouldn’t have had the same sample. (One of you brilliant scienc-y chicks help me out, here – depending upon whether arsenic sinks or floats, it’d be a matter of pulling your sample from the top or bottom of the batch, no? I’ll remove this once one of you answers.)

Did Dr. Oz jump the gun? Yes and no – I think he could’ve done due diligence and ordered more testing, but the fact remains that there are far too many variables at play, here, and the public needs to be aware of them all in order to make appropriate decisions for their families. I’m glad he brought it up and I hope he chooses to air the segment in question.

This leads me to my next point… which is really what burns my toast: this idea of “fear-mongering.”

What is fear-mongering? “Fear mongering (or scaremongering) is the use of fear to influence the opinions and actions of others towards some specific end. The feared object or subject is sometimes exaggerated, and the pattern of fear mongering is usually one of repetition, in order to continuously reinforce the intended effects of this tactic, sometimes in the form of a vicious circle.”

Here’s what I don’t get – educating the public about what’s going on with our food supply is tantamount to fearmongering? I don’t have the right to know that companies are putting rocket fuel and known cancer-causing agents and known neurotoxins and known non-food substances in my food? I don’t have the right to make educated decisions?

It’s a new day in America when the standard for whether or not I should buy something for my child boils down to whether or not it will instantly kill you. News flash: the FDA only monitors whether something is “generally regarded as safe,” not whether extended exposure over time will kill you or leave you brain dead. It’s a new day when labeling someone a “fearmongerer” is used to discredit them and cover up the fact that our food supply, as currently maintained in processed food, is nowhere near as “pure” as we think it is. I read the statements from the  juice companies that they wrote in response to The Dr. Oz Show. No one wanted to explain anything about arsenic and what they’re doing to keep as much of it out of our supply as possible. They all wanted to explain why the amount that’s in there is “okay.” They wanted to shift the focus off of them – the focus that Dr. Oz put on them in the first place – and put it onto his show. And don’t get me wrong – we’re talking about our food supply, here. Both sides deserve scrutiny. But I’ve seen two separate interviews where Oz gracefully handled the situation and accepted criticisms. I can’t say the same for the other side. (It also should not be surprising to anyone anywhere that when the juice companies had their juices tested, they didn’t find the same results.)

If I were an apple juice drinker, what would I do? I’d avoid apple juices that come from concentrate, for starters. I’d do my best to try to get my apple juices from local places – think farmer’s market, local health food store, your own blender. Apple juice and apple juice concentrate are often used as sweeteners in other foods and drinks, so I’d keep my eyes peeled for that on labels, but I’d simply make that conversion. I’d also file this situation away in my memory, and keep it in mind when you pick up anything in a package at the grocery. I’m pretty sure your body will thank you for it.

Dr. Oz, Apple Juice, Arsenic and “Fear-Mongering” is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. The Case Against… Juice?
2. Q&A Wednesday: Overcoming Cardio Fear

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Post tags: ABC, apple juice, arsenic, dr oz, FDA, fearmongering, good morning america, processed food

Be glad you’re not in the UK right now, because we know you’d be beating down the doors of your local Burger King just to get your hands on the limited-time-only “Sprout Surprise Whopper,” featuring that most beloved of burger add-ons, Brussels sprouts.

Brussels sprouts are apparently associated with the holidays in the UK (maybe they are here too, though I’ve never come across it), so the King has created a Whopper topped with sprouts and emmental cheese.

Said someone in charge of culinary development at BK UK with a completely straight face:

We believe that taste is king, and as such, we wanted to create a recipe that would challenge existing sprout perceptions, and genuinely make sprouts a flavour to be reckoned with.

Judging by this statement on the BK UK Facebook page, it appears that even in Ol’ Blighty the response to the Sprout Whopper wasn’t exactly oohs and ahhhs: “[S]orry to hear some of you weren’t too keen on the idea of the Sprout Surprise Whopper yesterday, but we’re confident that The King can make even Brussels Sprouts taste good!” [source]

Even though this is in the UK – it would be clearly labeled a result of “food policing” in the US – I still have questions.

The article was dropped on the FB page with the question of “while i’m sure it’s unhealthy and all that, could it be considered a “cleaner” alternative?”

I know my answer… but what’s yours?

And furthermore… what does it take for you to consider a fast food restaurant “clean” or is “cleaner” acceptable?

Can Fast Food Ever Be A Part Of Clean Eating? is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. Re-Thinking Fast Food: Reading What You’re Eating
2. Clean and Healthy Eating on Food Stamps
3. Does Your State Allow Fast Food Purchases On Food Stamps?

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Post tags: burger king, clean eating, Fast Food

Photo courtesy of mrbling.

…while 47 percent of Americans say they’d like restaurants to offer healthier items like salads and baked potatoes, only 23 percent tend to order those foods, according to a survey last year by food research firm Technomic.

That explains the popularity of KFC’s Double Down, a sandwich of bacon and cheese slapped between two slabs of fried chicken. It’s the reason IHOP offers a Simple & Fit menu with yogurt and fruit bowls, but its top seller remains a 1,180-calorie breakfast sampler of eggs, bacon, sausage, ham, hash browns and pancakes. It’s also why only 11 percent of parents ordered apple slices as an alternative to fries in McDonald’s Happy Meals.

[...]

But revamping a menu can be difficult and expensive, requiring months or even years. For example, it took Dunkin’ Donuts four years to figure out how to make its doughnuts without trans fat — which doctors say is one of the unhealthiest types of fat — without altering the taste.

[...]

As a result, many chains have scaled back their efforts to roll out healthy foods. The number of health-related claims made on menus, like reduced fat or reduced carbs, fell 5 percent from 2008 to 2010, according to Technomic’s study of more than 1,200 restaurant chains.

Most restaurants won’t share specifics about how their salads and veggie omelets compete when they’re up against burgers and crepes. But the healthy stuff appears to be only a small proportion of revenue at most chains.

The IHOP pancake house, owned by DineEquity Inc., says that Simple & Fit sales have roughly doubled in the year since the menu was introduced. But it still makes up only a single-digit percentage of revenue.

The Cheesecake Factory, which introduced a “Skinnylicious” menu in August featuring entrees with 590 calories or less, says those foods have also performed well. But sales of its decadent cheesecakes are up too. “We recognize that ‘cheesecake’ is in our name,” said Alethea Rowe, senior director of restaurant marketing.

There’s a host of reasons for the disparity between word and deed. Sometimes people who eat healthy at home want to treat themselves when they go out. Others doubt that the so-called healthier items on fast-food menus are really healthy. Even peer pressure can play a role. (?????)

Jason Sierra, who was eating a Whopper hamburger and fries at a Burger King in New York recently, said he’s cut back on unhealthy foods because his cholesterol and blood pressure were getting too high. But when his office buddies order lunch, he opts for “man food” like pizza to fit in.

“One day I did try to order a salad,” said Sierra, 40, who works in tech support. “And I caught hell for that.” (?!?!?!?!?!)

Healthier foods also are usually among the most expensive menu items, which can be tough for recession-weary customers to stomach. Efrain Vasquez and his wife, Evelyn, were recently eating fried chicken and gravy-drenched mashed potatoes at a KFC in New York. They say there’s a big difference between a $2 burger and a $6 salad when you’re on a tight budget.

“We’ve got bills to pay,” said Efrain Vasquez, 51, a maintenance worker who’s raising four kids with Evelyn, a 37-year-old receptionist. “We try to economize.”

Like so many American dieters, fast-food restaurants have tried and failed to go healthy. The Wendy’s Co. burger chain led the way in the mid-1980s with a short-lived effort to sell tomato halves filled with cottage cheese and pineapple chunks on lettuce leaves.

“Consumers weren’t ready for it,” said Denny Lynch, a spokesman for Wendy’s, where burgers and chicken are the biggest sellers. “Or at least they certainly didn’t buy it.”

In 2003, during the low-carb Atkins diet craze, Domino’s Pizza Inc. couldn’t get people to bite on a low-carb pizza it tested in Indianapolis. “While many people at the time made their voice heard that they wanted it, few people actually ordered it,” said Chris Brandon, Domino’s spokesman.

McDonald’s, the world’s largest burger chain, says the fruit smoothies and oatmeal with brown sugar and raisins it rolled out last year are selling well, although it declined to disclose their revenue. “We would not have them on the menu if we were not selling them at a rate that we could sustain them at,” said Molly Starmann, director of McDonald’s family business category.

But the chain didn’t always have such luck. It spent three years developing the McLean Deluxe, a 91-percent fat-free hamburger it introduced in 1991 only to suffer disappointing sales.

More recently, McDonald’s got a lukewarm response when in 2004 it began offering parents the option of choosing apple slices instead of fries for Happy Meals. So, in July, McDonald’s said it would stop offering a choice and instead serve a half portion of both. It had considered taking fries out Happy Meals completely, but nixed the idea when parents in tests said “No.”

For now, restaurants continue to straddle the line.

Burger King Corp. this summer pledged to promote healthier foods for kids, but announced last week that it would sell ice cream desserts nationwide, including an Oreo brownie sundae with 530 calories and 17 grams of fat. KFC introduced grilled chicken in 2009, then launched the Double Down sandwich the following year. The 540-calorie, 32-grams-of-fat breadless sandwich started as a limited-time offering, but proved so popular that the chain ended up keeping it.

Andy Puzder, CEO of CKE Restaurants Inc., which runs Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr., said even though his restaurants offer salads and turkey burgers, he figures his best seller at Hardee’s is probably the Thickburger. The most decadent version of it comes with two types of cheese, fried onions, mayonnaise and nearly half a pound of beef and weighs in at 1,170 calories and 83 grams of fat. (The government recommends that most people consume 2,000 calories and no more than about 70 grams of fat each day.)

“We have wonderful, healthy foods if people want to buy them,” Puzder said. “But they don’t sell particularly well.”

I have so many thoughts on this… I’m going to wait. But I wanna know: How often do you dine out? What are you eating when you go? What are your thoughts on all this?

The AJC Asks: Do You Talk “Skinny,” But Eat “Fat?” is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

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2. Lincoln University, Size Discrimination And The Skinny Girl’s Dilemma
3. Infographic: The Skinny on Obesity in America

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If you’ve ever wondered why it’s hard to stay on a diet, consider this observation from Ralph DiLeone, a brain scientist at Yale University: “The motivation to take cocaine in the case of a drug addict is probably engaging similar circuits that the motivation to eat is in a hungry person.”

That’s what brain scientists have concluded after comparing studies of overeating with studies of drug addiction, DiLeone says.

They’ve also found that, at least in animals, sweet or fatty foods can act a lot like a drug in the brain, he says. And there’s growing evidence that eating too much of these foods can cause long-term changes in the brain circuits that control eating behavior.

The food-drug link comes from the fact that both animal and human brains include special pathways that make us feel good when we eat, and really good when we eat sweet or fatty foods with lots of calories, DiLeone says.

“Drug addiction is really hijacking some of these pathways that evolved to promote food intake for survival reasons,” he says

That doesn’t necessarily mean food is addictive the way cocaine is, DiLeone says, but he says there is growing evidence that eating a lot of certain foods early in life can alter your brain the way drugs do.

Food That Changes The Brain

Teresa Reyes, a research assistant professor in the Department of Pharmacology at the University of Pennsylvania, showed that in an experiment with mice.

Reyes was part of a team that gave mice a high-fat diet from the time they were weaned until they reached 20 weeks, so they gained significant amounts of weight and became obese. Then the researchers looked at the brain’s pleasure centers — areas known to change in drug addiction.

“What we found is that in animals that were obese, there were really dramatic changes in these areas of the brain that participate in telling us how rewarding food is,” Reyes says. The changes made these areas less responsive to fatty foods, so an obese mouse would have to eat more fat than a typical mouse to get the same amount of pleasure, she says.

And some of the changes didn’t go away, even when the mice returned to a normal diet.

“So it is similar to what happens in cases of chronic drug abuse,” Reyes says. “The reward circuitry changes in a similar way, and that promotes the seeking of that drug, or in our case, in seeking palatable food.”

That could help explain why obese children tend to remain that way as adults, she says.

I’m not going to go on an “I told you so!” rant, but I’m going to go on an “I told you so!” rant.

I have the following thoughts:

1. A company with millions to invest in creating the right recipe… millions to invest in developing the right formula to produce that recipe cheaply… and millions to spend on taste testing that recipe to ensure that it’s well-received by the largest percentage of the population… do we really think they’re not tapping into this response our brains have to those “perfect combinations?” Do we really expect companies that have to produce profits to not tap into the one response that would ensure that we remain loyal, faithful customers? Providing us the pleasure that we [subconsciously] seek, outright guarantees that we’ll keep giving them our money. They’re our pushers… giving us our fix.
2. A company investing everything they’ve got in creating a product that we can become addicted to… a product that has very little nutrients, right? If, when we eat, there’s also a secondary system that compels us to keep eating so that the body can obtain those nutrients… doesn’t this only create a cycle that is only broken by a conscious decision to leave the drug–er, processed foods alone? I mean, if we’re eating for an emotional fix, and the body is perpetuating a “hungry” feeling because we’re only eating food that gives us our high, not food that nourishes us, then chasing that “hungry” only causes us to eat more “emotion fueling” food, which then only causes us to be hungry again in an hour because there’s no nourishment. Bizarre.
3. Take a cold hard look at that bold red line. If you are someone who eats food for that pleasured feeling – the feeling that causes you to feel as if you’re escaping reality, then that bold, red line is for YOU. Every time you indulge, every time you emotionally eat, you make it that much harder for you to achieve those same feelings on that same amount of food the next time you overindulge. Every time you emotionally eat, it’s going to require more… and more… and more. Period.
4. Take a second cold, hard look at that bold red line. Don’t be mistaken, sure that line says “you’d have to eat more fat” but if the vice were cocaine instead of fat (or sugar instead of fat), or anything instead of fat, it’d still apply. Think about what emotional eating really is – it’s hiding from reality because one prefers the pleasure they achieve from food. Now, if engaging in emotional eating makes it harder to get that same amount of pleasure each time you do it, and you’re seeking that pleasure as a means of hiding from reality… wouldn’t all this make reality that much more difficult to bear? Wouldn’t this trigger some form of depression? Does this coincide with the increase of anti-depression medication flooding the market?
5. “That could help explain why obese children tend to remain that way as adults, she says.” This makes it that much more important for us to address healthy eating, healthy body image and healthy living altogether with our children. Because if the habits we teach them as children wind up altering the way their brain handles pleasure or causes them to devalue the pleasures of life because they prefer the pleasures of food… it becomes that much more difficult for them to change as they age. Not that it’s impossible, but it is absolutely an uphill battle.

The article isn’t done, though:

Addictive Food?

More evidence of a link between food and drugs comes from a team that has been trying to understand how hunger can trigger an animal’s craving for drugs.

“Hungry animals will take a lot of drugs,” says Uri Shalev, a researcher at Concordia University in Montreal.

Shalev and his colleagues studied rats that had learned to give themselves heroin by pressing a lever. When the scientists removed the heroin, the rats mostly stopped pressing the lever. But when the scientists also took away the rat’s food, the lever pressing came back with a vengeance.

The rats would press the lever hundreds of times, “even though they don’t get the drug anymore,” Shalev says.

The team thought this behavior might involve a substance in the brain called neuropeptide Y, which makes animals feel hungry. And, sure enough, when hungry rats got a substance that blocks neuropeptide Y, they stopped pressing the lever.

Many other studies also have shown links between food and drugs.

A Swedish team found that a stomach hormone called ghrelin could make rats seek sugar the way addicts seek drugs. And a team at the University of California, Santa Barbara, found that male rats chose sugar over small amounts of cocaine, while female rats did just the opposite.

Even so, DiLeone, the Yale researcher, says it’s still not clear how far the food-drug comparison holds up, especially in people.

“There’s an ongoing argument in my field whether food is addictive or not,” he says. “But whether it’s addictive or not, there’s probably components that are similar to addiction.”

That means it makes sense to focus on eating behavior early in life, when the brain is adapting to a particular environment. It also probably makes sense to take approaches used to treat addiction and adapt them to overeating,” DiLeone says.

My thoughts?

1. Look for “the new drug that blocks neuropeptide Y” to come out in the next few years. Never mind what else it does to your brain… all that matters is that it’ll make you skinny. (That’s not even sarcasm – that’s exactly how it’ll be pitched, too.)
2. How is there an ongoing argument regarding whether food is addictive or not? Anything that brings pleasure and release – sex, alcohol, narcotics, exercise, whatever – can be addictive. Why not food? Which researchers are the ones who don’t think food can be addictive and what is their argument? Or is it the stigma that says “if I say food can be addictive, that’d give fat people a reason to be fat… and there’s never a reason to be fat” that’s blocking one’s ability to be open to the realities?
3. I think it’s interesting how food is painted as a gateway drug in rats, but seems unfathomable in human beings. A craving for food being satisfied by drugs instead of the food we seek. That feels much more like something society taught us – that it is unacceptable to substitute food for drugs. I wonder if society’s influence wasn’t involved, if the same results could be seen in human beings. I know that’s a rhetorical question, because there’s no possible way you could test for that without doing some wildly inhumane things.
4. Lastly. With all that we’re learning about how the brain reacts to these products-engineered-to-give-maximum-pleasure and our ability to become addicted to them… will the government ever get involved? Should they? Or should the public be made blatantly aware of these issues and learn to tread lightly on their own?

Thse are my thoughts… what are yours?

Overeating: Comparable To Drug Use, Cause of Mental Illness? is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

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Post tags: food addiction, ghrelin, neuropeptide Y, NPR

Great.

Don’t get me wrong. If Wal-mart is pledging to make its produce less expensive without shafting the farmers on their cut – and sticking to that – then I am glad. However… I’d be remiss in ignoring the fact that there’s a couple of parts of this entire situation that trouble me.

For starters, this:

“We’re not just aligning ourselves with one company; we’re aligning ourselves with people who are stepping up as leaders to take this country to a healthier place,” said Sam Kass, the White House chef who doubles as Mrs. Obama’s top adviser on matters of nutrition.

“There’s no qualms about that,” Mr. Kass said. “The only question that we have is do we think this is a significant step in that direction, and do we think there is a method in place to track progress, and do we think this will have the impact we are pushing for.”
Excerpted from What Do You Think? Walmart Making Healthier Eating Cheaper? | A Black Girl’s Guide To Weight Loss

Compare his concerns to this, from Appetite For Profit:

Does anyone remember how McDonald’s promised to stop using trans fats, but oops, didn’t? Or how about the time Ruby Tuesday’s promised to list nutrition facts on its menus until they decided that wasn’t working out so well. And then there’s the soda industry, which has made so many broken promises, it’s hard to keep up. The biggest one was in 2006 when Bill Clinton announced a deal (also secretly brokered) in which soda companies promised to change the beverages they sold in schools. While industry claims mission accomplished, recent research suggests otherwise. But all that was before Michelle Obama’s time I guess.

[...]

Walmart is first and foremost accountable to those shareholders who own their stock. In other words, if less salt and less sugar also means less stock value, bye-bye Mrs. Obama and hello salt and sugar. The White House says that the Partnership for a Healthier America will track the success or failure of Walmart’s efforts, but what are the criteria or outcome measures? How are they developed? [source]

My beef isn’t with Walmart – recognize a few things, here. It is common practice for an entity – corporation or otherwise – to make a promise, get within the good graces of the public, then fall short on following through. If you are a registered voter, it’s pretty likely that you’re familiar with this practice.

What’s particularly interesting, here, is that the White House would allow a public face of a government movement to be used to promote a company’s “promise.” Especially considering the precedents that have already been set. Especially to have the audacity to question – after the fact – whether or not they can even measure Wal-mart’s progress or whether or not this will even have the effect they desire (and more on that, later.)

We also need to talk about the halo that Michelle Obama’s presence just gave Walmart’s efforts, here. What is a halo?

The halo effect is a cognitive bias whereby the perception of one trait (i.e. a characteristic of a person or object) is influenced by the perception of another trait (or several traits) of that person or object. An example would be judging a good-looking person as more intelligent.

When we think of Michelle Obama lately, we think of gardens, school lunch, “Let’s Move!”… all that. The public assigns this “she’s trying to convert us all to being healthy” halo to her, and therefore everything she aligns herself with therefore is assigned an “surely this is healthy, otherwise Michelle Obama wouldn’t be associated with it” halo. To believe that Walmart isn’t benefitting from that right now would be naive. Aligning herself – personally – with Wal-mart in this fashion passes on a halo to a corporation that hasn’t even done anything yet... and what they offered up as ideal? Questionable at best.

The plan, similar to efforts by other companies and to public health initiatives by New York City, sets specific targets for lowering sodium, trans fats and added sugars in a broad array of foods — including rice, soups, canned beans, salad dressings and snacks like potato chips — packaged under the company’s house brand, Great Value.

In interviews previewing the announcement, Wal-Mart and White House officials said the company was also pledging to press its major food suppliers, like Kraft, to follow its example.
Excerpted from What Do You Think? Walmart Making Healthier Eating Cheaper? | A Black Girl’s Guide To Weight Loss

Here, at BGG2WL, I say one thing loud and clear – the problem with processed foods isn’t just the added salt and the added sugars. It’s the processing in and of itself. No government official or representative is going to say that and potentially piss off the ginormous food industry, though.

Our processed foods are broken down to their most basic parts, mixed in with preservatives (which help, you know, preserve the final product), flavor additives, water, flour, various forms of salt, then manipulated to be whatever they want to sell us. The same ground up chicken carcass (which is what is in that photo) can be chicken patties, chicken nuggets, chicken fingers, “diced chicken,” the chicken in your chicken pot pie, the chicken in your soup… whatever. Just look for “mechanically separated [animal] parts.” You won’t have to look too hard.Once it’s broken down to create this… goo… chemicals are used to hold it in place to form whatever shape it’s going to take. Once it meets your saliva and enters your body, it breaks right back down to the goo… with no fiber inside to help push it out. It essentially deflates inside of your system, making it easier to consume more calories because you’re “not full yet.” Couple all of this with the fact that it takes approximately 20 minutes for your brain to get the signal from your digestive system that you’re “full,” and you start to see why a food that breaks down this quickly is a recipe for disaster – a breaded chicken breast on wheat bread breaks down much more slowly than a chicken patty sandwich on white bread, takes longer to chew (buying you time until that 20 minute mark… see what that 30 bites was important?), takes longer to digest (thus leaving you feeling fulfilled longer), and keeps you from overindulging. You’re getting that “full” feeling for less calories. You’re not scarfing it down because it’s breaking down faster than it can fill you up… only to find that “all-of-a-sudden-I-feel-like-I-ate-too-much” feeling arrive.

Excerpted from The Chemical “Processing” In Your Processed Foods | A Black Girl’s Guide To Weight Loss

So, Michelle Obama pretty much just aligned her “healthy eating” image with food that is still over-processed.

But what about the salt and sugars? Those will be limited, now!

You know how I often explain that change, for the public, will not come without an increase in both education and access to resources like well-grown produce and meats? Let me be frank about it. If you buy your same processed food, cook it, go to taste it and find that it isn’t quite as salty as you’d like… without thinking, what are you going to do?

You’re going to add the salt yourself. Why? Because no one told you the problem with using too much salt. The reduction was done for you without educating you on why the reduction is better for you.

Same with sugars. Reduce the sugar? By all means, go for it! If it’s not sweet enough, surely the sugar shaker can’t be too far out of reach. Surely, there’s another brand that meets my taste needs. I don’t understand why my sugar was adjusted in the first place… so I’ll just adjust it right back.

The idea of a corporation deciding FOR you what is healthy is supposed to “make it easier for you” to buy their products. The idea of that corporation “making it healthier” for you is supposed to prevent you from realizing that the original products you were purchasing were never healthy in the first place… and perhaps you should spend your money elsewhere… and First Lady Obama just attached her healthy living initiative to all of this.

I seem really difficult to please, right? I mean, I should just be happy with what’s being done so far, right? Nope. I’m simply not budging.

From Food Fight:

Walmart also isn’t doing anything new here. The food industry is already committed to taking some “bad stuff” out of packaged food. The major companies have already removed most of the trans fat from their product. Many of them have set targets for reducing sodium, and collectively they’ve promised to take out 1.5 trillion from their products calories by 2015 (also a Michelle Obama-backed pledge).

So having Walmart breathe down their necks on this front isn’t likely to accomplish much.

The idea of making fruit and vegetables more affordable could actually make a dent in the obesity problem by helping Americans to eat healthier. Too bad neither Walmart nor Obama seem to want to address the root causes of why whole foods like fruit and vegetables are often more expensive than comparatively unhealthy, processed foods.

How to make fresh, healthy food cheaper

That would require talking about our outdated system of farm subsidies, which rewards the growers of the commodity crops that go into processed foods and ignores the farmers that grow carrots, apples and broccoli. The idea that this system is badly misaligned with public health goals is becoming more and more mainstream, and anyone that wants credibility in the obesity battle should be taking this on.

We know what the answers are. Politics is causing people to make less than genuine statements, less-than-genuine promises and lend the halo that we gave them to less-than-scrupulous companies. I’d much rather Walmart focus on the “making healthier products (and who decides what’s “healthy?”) more affordable” and “decreasing the cost of produce” than anything else. This all just feels like grandstanding, to me.

In the future, I’d love it if First Lady Obama’s efforts were centered around increasing access and education… not this. This just feels beneath her, and she’s more to me than just a giant metaphorical “Now with less sodium!” sticker on a Wal-mart store.

Walmart, Michelle Obama and The Halo Effect is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. 5 Examples of How To Get Beyond The “Halo” Effect
2. What Rush Limbaugh Has To Say About Michelle Obama, And Why I Don’t Care
3. My Quest For Michelle Obama Arms

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Post tags: first lady obama, michelle obama, obama, walmart, white house

…accompanied with the following short story:

It takes several long stares to comprehend that these photos depict rapper 50 Cent, who once looked like this. In the name of his burgeoning acting career, he removed several tattoos and lost 60 lbs. to play a cancer patient.

…50 Cent can expect breathless accolades for his portrayal of a cancer patient in next year’s Things Fall Apart. These photos come from 50 Cent’s official fan site, where a moderator explains,

He dropped from 214 pounds to an astonishing 160 with a liquid diet and three-hour-a-day treadmill walks for nine weeks.

“I was starving.” Now he’s back on tour and says, “I’ve been eating. I’ll be back in shape in no time!”

I didn’t expect anyone to really ask me what I thought about it, but hey. This is a site about weight loss, huh?

Y’know, 50 Cent isn’t the first to go to drastic measures to fulfill the obligations of a role. I can think of celebrities gaining weight (Robert DeNiro in Raging Bull, Jennifer Hudson with Dreamgirls), losing weight (Tom Hanks in Cast Away, Jennifer Hudson… again, supposedly)… and working darn hard to get the rubber band to go back to normal after stretching it to its limits, so to speak.

Frankly, my dear…

I couldn’t care less. I’m certainly not inspired by his “diet” to try it on myself. Why? Because I know three things:

1) These celebrities are paid very well for their time and efforts in taking their bodies to the limits to fulfill the needs of their roles. It’s one thing to select a celebrity for either their star power (the name they’ve built) or their talent regardless of how they look nothing like the character… but to select them and expect them to go that extra distance? Someone is paying serious dough for it. I can’t knock the hustle if 50 Cent felt like the dough was worth the strain on his body that a liquid diet may leave him with – actually, I could, but like my usual statement goes… I’m neither invested in nor affected by his personal decisions.

2) They are monitoring his every-freaking-move while on this thing. Think about it – a full liquid diet and only cardio is meant to deflate the body – it’s supposed to make him look like a cancer patient! A lifestyle meant to emaciate the body that thoroughly, coupled with that money in point one? Means he’s got the best doctors monitoring his every move. And rightfully so. Liquid diets are no joke. He’s being monitored so closely because he needed extreme measures for a temporary effect. As he said, “I’ve been eating – I’ll be back in shape in no time!” He’s basically telling you… that mess was only temporary. And as anyone who reads this site often would know, I’m gonna tell you – healthy, sustainable weight loss is absolutely about a lifestyle change. Not a temporary diet.

3) Look at him. He looks like his role. They nailed it! The body I want is brickhouse-style, and I know how to get it. That certainly doesn’t include looking like I’m battling cancer. Any brickhouse you know that resembles 50 Cent in these photos, well… you’re lying about her being a brickhouse. Ya just are.

In short… unless you’re being paid millions of dollars to go out of your way to change the way your body responds to food and, well, life… I suggest you skip that idea and just look forward to seeing 50 putting this new body to use.

Drastic Celebrity Weight Loss: 50 Cent is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. How Much Is The Weight Loss Industry Worth?
2. Self-Compassion: A Key Factor In Weight Loss
3. Making Foolproof Weight Loss Resolutions For The New Year

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Post tags: 50 cent, bad ideas, celebrities, dieting, extreme weight loss, liquid diet

A little backstory:

On September 14, the Corn Refiner’s Association said in a press release posted on its website that it has asked the Food and Drug Administration to allow manufacturers of high fructose corn syrup, or HFCS, to use the name “corn sugar” instead of high fructose corn syrup.

The FDA considers HFCS as natural, even though critics point out that this sweetener consisting of both glucose and fructose is in reality, not found in corn.  This product is made by enzymatically converting some portion of glucose, which is derived from corn starch, into fructose.

The resulting high fructose corn syrup, which is commonly used in a variety of processed foods and beverages, consists of 55 percent fructose and 42 percent glucose, or 42 percent fructose and 53 percent glucose.

Use of high fructose corn syrup has been linked to an increased risk of overweight and obesity, among other things.  [source]

Read the emboldened paragraph one more time, then read the following:

High fructose corn syrup may be labeled natural when synthetic fixing agents do not come into contact with it during manufacturing, said the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), fuelling further debate on the controversial sweetener.

The decision, written to the Corn Refiners Association and considered a backtrack for the FDA by organizations opposed to the ingredient, followed a meeting that was prompted by a FoodNavigator-USA.com article published in April this year.

At that time, Geraldine June, supervisor of the product evaluation and labeling team at FDA’s Office of Nutrition, Labeling and Dietary Supplements, responded to an inquiry made by FoodNavigator-USA.com saying “we would object to the use of the term ‘natural’ on a product containing HFCS”, because it is produced using synthetic fixing agents.

However, June has now said that when HFCS is made using the process presented by Archer Daniels Midland Company, it can be considered natural.

[...]

High fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is derived from corn, and used primarily to sweeten beverages. The trade group Corn Refiners Association and numerous industry members have long maintained that HFCS is a natural sweetener.

“This is very good news, and makes it clear once again that HFCS is at a parity with sugar,” said Audrae Erickson, president of the Corn Refiners Association.

“HFCS contains no artificial or synthetic ingredients or color additives and meets FDA’s requirements for the use of the term ‘natural.’ HFCS, like table sugar and honey, is natural. It is made from corn, a natural grain product.” [source]

So, apparently, high fructose corn syrup wants to go into witness protection, since everyone’s hunting for it. I get it. Okay.

Just to make sure that we, here at BGG2WL, don’t lose perspective of the issue at hand… I’m going to say the following: the Corn Refiners Association is correct.

[insert gasp]

They’re right! They’re right, they’re right, they’re right. HFCS and table sugar both cause the same problems, create the same dependencies, and [when consumed in excess] do the exact same damage. HFCS wants to attach itself to cane sugar because cane sugar doesn’t suffer the same demonization as high fructose corn syrup. Cane sugar has been “normalized,” so to speak. It’s that simple. They’re hoping to just be blended in as “a sugar” like the other guys.. but they’re not just like the other guys. The other guys aren’t everywhere like high fructose corn syrup.

HFCS is an extremely cheap way for manufacturers to ensure that you’ll like their products just a little more.. so they add as much of it in their food as you can stand. It’s that simple. From Appetite for Profit:

So now, the public has decided that HFCS is simply the wrong sweetener. As a result of this demonizing, we are now in the ridiculous situation where food companies are falling over each other to remove HFCS from their products, slap on a natural label, and get brownie points for helping Americans eat better. Exhibit A, Pepsi Natural:

Pepsi Natural is made with all-natural ingredients, including lightly sparkling water, natural sugar, natural caramel and kola nut extract.

Only Big Food would find a way to make a product full of refined white sugar (which at one time was also demonized) seem like a healthy alternative. It’s like I always say, the food industry is very good at taking criticism and turning it into a marketing opportunity.

It’s not that HFCS is the wrong sweetener… it’s the fact that America’s sweet tooth – period – is problematic. As I’ve written before:

That’s the problem with sugar. In most cases – the way it’s used often results in there being very little to blunt the impact of the sugar on your system, thus resulting in it having the same effect as an overabundance of high fructose corn syrup in your daily diet. I won’t even get on the affects that an abundance of high fructose corn syrup, an abundance of sugar and a lack of fiber can have on our appearance. The difference between sugar and high fructose corn syrup is simply that high fructose corn syrup is in almost every processed food item, and almost every processed food item is devoid of fiber. [source]

People who avoid high fructose corn syrup without taking into consideration the fact that they should be avoiding sugar altogether(and, in a way, processed foods) as best as they can are missing the mark. They’re also buying into that cycle that convinces consumers to continuously chase “health claims” on food labels. You know, the ones that say “no trans fat!!!!!!!” but still have “partially hydrogenated soybean oil” on the side? Yeah, those.

Click here to read more about the difference between high fructose corn syrup and table sugar.

The reality of the issue is… the FDA will most likely grant the request and life will go on with people eating much more sugar than they should… that is, until they start realizing that getting rid of the boxes and reheatables and other crap is the way to go.

High Fructose Corn Syrup Wants New Name: Why You Shouldn’t Care is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. Saturday Night Live Pokes Fun At High Fructose Corn Syrup
2. Another Reason To Ditch The High Fructose Corn Syrup
3. Q&A Wednesday: High Fructose Corn Syrup vs. Table Sugar

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© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2011. | Permalink | 13 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Healthy Eating, high fructose corn syrup, processed foods

Here is a man who a few years ago contemplated suicide.  He felt hopeless and had no desire to live.  He wanted to disappear from the world around him.  Just a few years later, he’s completely changed his life and is starring in his own television show.

His story should certainly give hope to others who currently struggle with obesity.  You do not need surgery and you certainly do not need anything fancy in terms of exercise and diet.  A consistent and diligent effort has once again come out on top… [read more] — Fitness 102

Check him out:

Never be amazed by what a little hard work can do. Be INSPIRED by what a little hard work can do. : )

400 Pounds Lost? No Surgery? Stop Lying! is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

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Post tags: extreme weight loss, weight loss inspiration

She wrote in:

I know that you have discussed this type of thing before…but this goes beyond the Victoria’s secret “booty paint” type stuff.  H&M has recently admitted that they use the same virtual body on most of the models on their website (as you can see from the pictures in the article).  These bodies are “computer generated,” and H&M claims that they use these bodies because they can better display the clothing than real models could.  They simply post a real model’s head on top of the body, alter the skin tone to match her face, and then draw on the clothing.  Great, right?

SMH.  Now photoshopped bodies aren’t good enough?  We have to use entirely computer generated bodies to model clothing?

Let’s see what’s going on.

From Jezebel:

The bodies of most of the models H&M features on its website are computer-generated and “completely virtual,” the company has admitted. H&M designs a body that can better display clothes made for humans than humans can, then “dresses” it by drawing on its clothes, and digitally pastes on the heads of real women in post-production. For now — in the future, even models’ faces won’t be considered perfect enough for online fast fashion, and we’ll buy all of our clothing from cyborgs. (This news sort of explains this.) But man, isn’t looking at the four identical bodies with different heads so uncanny? Duly noted that H&M made one of the fake bodies black. You can’t say that the fictional, Photoshopped, mismatched-head future of catalog modeling isn’t racially diverse.

I feel like, at this point, they just need to hang the clothes up on hangers and take pictures of it with camera phones… y’know, the way sellers on ebay do it. That way, no one is disillusioned regarding what women actually look like. Sure, the clothes might not sell because women won’t be thinking “Hey, maybe if I buy that outfit I’ll look like THAT!” only to be sorely disappointed that they’re not a living computer-generated graphic, but hey! At least no one will be starving themselves or going on liquid diets to make it happen, right?

Right?

H&M Puts Real Model Heads On Completely Fake, Computer Generated Bodies? Swag. is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

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2. First Lady Obama “Puts Daughters On Diet,” Blogosphere Goes Nuts
3. Dismantling “Real Women Have Curves”

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What is World AIDS Day?

World AIDS Day is held on 1 December each year and is an opportunity for people worldwide to unite in the fight against HIV, show their support for people living with HIV and to commemorate people who have died. World AIDS Day was the first ever global health day and the first one was held in 1988.

Why is World AIDS Day important?

More than 90,000 people are currently living with HIV in the UK and globally an estimated 33.3 million people have HIV. More than 25 million people between 1981 and 2007 have died from the virus, making it one of the most destructive pandemics in history.

Today, many scientific advances have been made in HIV treatment, there are laws to protect people living with HIV and we understand so much more about the condition. But despite this, people do not know the facts about how to protect themselves and others from HIV, and stigma and discrimination remain a reality for many people living with HIV. World AIDS Day is important as it reminds the public and Government that HIV has not gone away – there is still a vital need to raise money, increase awareness, fight prejudice and improve education.

What should I do on World AIDS Day?

World AIDS Day is an opportunity for you to learn the facts about HIV and put your knowledge into action. If you understand how HIV is transmitted, how it can be prevented, and the reality of living with HIV today – you can use this knowledge to take care of your own health and the health of others, and ensure you treat everyone living with HIV fairly, and with respect and understanding. Click here to find out the facts.

You can also show your support for people living with HIV on World AIDS Day by wearing a red ribbon, the international symbol of HIV awareness.

World AIDS Day is also a great opportunity to raise money for NAT and show your support for people living with HIV. If you feel inspired to hold an event, bake sale or simply sell red ribbons, click here to get started. If you’d like to see what other events are taking place — click here and find out more.

But what about after World AIDS Day?

Although World AIDS Day is a great opportunity to get the public talking about HIV and fundraise, we need to remember the importance of raising awareness of HIV all year round. That’s why NAT has launched HIVaware — a fun, interactive new website which provides all the information everyone should know about HIV. Why not use what you have learnt on World AIDS Day to Act Aware throughout the year and remember, you can fundraise at any time of year too — NAT is always here to give you suggestions and ideas.

From the Black Women’s Health Imperative website:

Every 35 minutes, a woman tests positive for HIV in this country.  Yet the impact of HIV among Black women and girls is even more startling.  Nationally, Black women account for 66% of new cases of HIV among women.  HIV/AIDS related illness is now the leading cause of death among Black women ages 25-34. As the national dialogue focuses on strategies for addressing the HIV epidemic in this country, the need is greater than ever for a heightened among Black women in HIV prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and care.

Why is this important for Black women?

HIV/AIDS infection among Black women is a complex mix of economic, social, cultural, biological, environmental, and behavioral factors.   HIV statistics about Black women are often buried within the statistics of the general HIV/AIDS population, or are lumped together with statistics on Black men.  This practice disguises the compelling evidence that Black women represent a disproportionate number of HIV/AIDS cases, compared to our representation in the overall female population in the US.  The harsh reality is that 1 in 30 Black women will be diagnosed with HIV at some point in her life.  With Black women accounting for nine out of ten new HIV infections among women, it is important to acknowledge and understand how social and gender inequities and cultural dynamics shape our perceptions and realities of the disease.

What do Black women need to know?

So much has been made in the media about the poor health status of Black women that we have become desensitized to the barrage of health statistics and may be tuning out important health messages.  However, this is one health crisis that we cannot ignore.  In addition to shortening our lives, HIV/AIDS is compromising our quality of life and the vitality of our families and communities.

We must take steps to increase awareness and eliminate stigma and stereotypes about HIV/AIDS in order to begin to effectively address the HIV epidemic among Black Women.  The first step to HIV prevention is learning the facts and accepting the reality that any woman who is sexually active is at risk.

How does someone become infected with HIV?

Since HIV is transmitted through blood, semen, vaginal secretions and breast milk, engaging in any activity that includes exposure to these fluids places a person at risk for HIV infection, including:

• having unprotected (not using a male or female condom for vaginal or anal sex; not using a condom, dental dam, or other barrier for oral sex) oral, vaginal or anal sex with an infected person
• sharing needles or syringes of any kind with an infected person
• transmitting the virus from an infected mother to her child during pregnancy, birth or through breastfeeding

HIV Prevention and Risk Reduction

The only 100% sure way to prevent HIV infection is to abstain from sexual activity and drug use.  To abstain means not having vaginal, anal, or oral sex, and not using drugs of any kind.

Beyond that, there are steps we can take to protect ourselves and reduce our risk of becoming HIV infected:

• Knowing our HIV status by taking an HIV test
• Discussing HIV testing and practicing safer sex with our partner
• Practicing safer sex – using protective latex barriers (male or female condoms, dental dams)  for vaginal, anal, and oral sex every time we have sex
• Not sharing needles of any kind including drug needles, piercing needles, or tattoo needles.

What’s most important, here, is knowing your status. Knowing isn’t “half the battle” in this case; knowing is “the victory.” Empower yourself to protect not only yourself and your loved ones. Go get tested.

NYC, you have no excuse. Testing for both sexually transmitted infections and diseases as well as HIV is free:

STD Clinics accept patients from 8:30am – 3:00pm. Patients are serviced on a first come, first served basis. No appointment is necessary. Persons in need of primary care (including a routine STD checkup) will be referred to low/no cost services. The number of patients admitted to each clinic depends on the number of clinician hours per day, which is different in each site each day. Thus, we may at times, need to halt patient intake earlier then 3pm.

NOTE: Minors do NOT need parental consent for exams and treatment. For more information, call 311. These clinics are located in all five boroughs, with some having Saturday hours.

So, young girls, if you’re worried… go talk to someone.

World AIDS Day: Go Get Tested! is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

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1. “World’s Fattest Woman” Too Overweight For Medical Help?
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WASHINGTON — Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest retailer, will announce a five-year plan on Thursday to make thousands of its packaged foods lower in unhealthy salts, fats and sugars, and to drop prices on fruits and vegetables.

The initiative came out of discussions the company has been having with Michelle Obama, the first lady, who will attend the announcement in Washington and has made healthy eating and reducing childhood obesity the centerpiece of her agenda. Aides say it is the first time Mrs. Obama has thrown her support behind the work of a single company.

The plan, similar to efforts by other companies and to public health initiatives by New York City, sets specific targets for lowering sodium, trans fats and added sugars in a broad array of foods — including rice, soups, canned beans, salad dressings and snacks like potato chips — packaged under the company’s house brand, Great Value.

In interviews previewing the announcement, Wal-Mart and White House officials said the company was also pledging to press its major food suppliers, like Kraft, to follow its example. Wal-Mart does not disclose how much of its sales come from its house brand. But Kraft says about 16 percent of its global sales are through Wal-Mart.

In addition, Wal-Mart will work to eliminate any extra cost to customers for healthy foods made with whole grains, said Leslie Dach, Wal-Mart’s executive vice president for corporate affairs. By lowering prices on fresh fruits and vegetables, Wal-Mart says it will cut into its own profits but hopes to make up for it in sales volume. “This is not about asking the farmers to accept less for their crops,” he said.

The changes will be introduced slowly, over a period of five years, to give the company time to overcome technical hurdles and to give consumers time to adjust to foods’ new taste, Mr. Dach said. “It doesn’t do you any good to have healthy food if people don’t eat it.”

[...]

But Wal-Mart is pushing only so far. The company’s proposed sugar reductions are “much less aggressive” than they could be, Mr. Jacobson said, noting that Wal-Mart is not proposing to tackle the problem of added sugars in soft drinks, which experts regard as a major contributor to childhood obesity. And he said it would be “nice if Wal-Mart’s timeline were speedier” than five years.

Wal-Mart has been planning the initiative for more than a year; the effort was in its early stages when Ms. Obama joined it. The first lady’s appearance with Mr. Dach and other Wal-Mart executives when they make the announcement at a community center in Washington’s Anacostia neighborhood on Thursday morning is out of the ordinary and a prominent effort by the administration to spur further moves toward healthier food.

“We’re not just aligning ourselves with one company; we’re aligning ourselves with people who are stepping up as leaders to take this country to a healthier place,” said Sam Kass, the White House chef who doubles as Mrs. Obama’s top adviser on matters of nutrition.

“There’s no qualms about that,” Mr. Kass said. “The only question that we have is do we think this is a significant step in that direction, and do we think there is a method in place to track progress, and do we think this will have the impact we are pushing for.”

Over the last year, Mr. Kass and other aides to the first lady have spent countless hours in meetings with company officials; both Mr. Kass and Mr. Dach said Mrs. Obama pushed the company to hold itself accountable by issuing public progress reports. The Partnership for a Healthier America, a nonprofit organization that works with the first lady on her Let’s Move initiative to reduce childhood obesity, will monitor the company’s progress.

The changes will not happen overnight. Wal-Mart is pledging to reduce sodium by 25 percent, eliminate industrially added trans fats and reduce added sugars by 10 percent by 2015. Its other plans are less specific. In addition to proposing to lower prices on healthy foods, Wal-Mart is planning to develop criteria, and ultimately a seal, that will go on truly healthier foods, as measured by their sodium, fat and sugar content.

The company says it will also address the problem of “food deserts” — a dearth of grocery stores selling fresh produce in rural and underserved urban areas like Anacostia — by building more stores. And it will increase charitable contributions for nutrition programs.

A range of studies has shown that low-income people, especially those who receive food stamps, face special dietary challenges because eating healthy costs more and healthier food is harder to get in their neighborhoods. James D. Weill, president of Food Research and Action Center, an organization that has discussed the problem with Wal-Mart, said the company  recognized “how much hunger and food insecurity there is in the country.”

Mr. Dach said the lower prices and food reformulations were motivated by the demands of Wal-Mart’s own customers. He said the company believed that, if it was successful, the price reductions would save Americans who shop at Wal-Mart approximately $1 billion a year on fresh fruits and vegetables alone.

“Our customers have always told us, ’We don’t understand why whole wheat macaroni and cheese costs more than regular macaroni and cheese,’ ” Mr. Dach said, adding, “We’ve always said that we don’t think the Wal-Mart shopper should have to choose between a product that is healthier for them and what they can afford.”

Mr. Jacobson, of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, said that reducing sodium was the trickiest of the food reformulation challenges. Sodium is in every food category, and it is more difficult to replace than the partly hydrogenated oil that composes trans fats, or than sugars, because there are easy substitutes for oils and sugars. But sodium, which contributes to hypertension and raises the risk of heart disease, must simply be reduced, which can greatly alter taste.

Mr. Dach said the company had yet to conquer its reformulation challenges, and described the goals as both aspirational and realistic. “We think it’s a realistic target, but it’s aspirational in the sense that we can’t tell you today how it’s all going to get done,” he said.

My thoughts on this are so long… that if I posted them today, I don’t think anyone would read them.

I would like to know your thoughts, though. How do you feel about Walmart’s new initiatives?

What Do You Think? Walmart Making Healthy Eating Cheaper? is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. Clean and Healthy Eating on Food Stamps
2. What’s In My Clean Eating Healthy Kitchen?
3. Walmart, Michelle Obama and The Halo Effect

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© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2011. | Permalink | 27 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: butter, carrots, crushed red pepper, first lady, flotus, garlic, grocery shopping, Healthy Eating, initiatives, michelle obama, pinto beans, processed foods, spinach, squash, tomato, walmart

Seems like maybe the message is getting attention:

A calorie is just a calorie, right? So just dig in! from thisiswhyyourefat.com

[...]

But experts like Jonny Bowden, a certified nutritionist and author of Living Low Carb, (Sterling, 2010) insist that all calories are most certainly not created equal. As proof, he points to studies like this 2009 Swedish investigation where volunteers snacked on candy or peanuts to the tune of about 20 extra calories per each half pound of body weight. For example, someone weighing 150 pounds would overindulge by eating a gut busting 1,300 calories a day.After two weeks, you might expect that both groups were popping the buttons on their pants but this was the case with just the sweet eaters. The peanut snackers did gain a small amount of weight but only about a third of what the candy eaters gained and only the candy group showed an increase in waist circumference, cholesterol and overall blood fats.

“The reason for this is that the simple carbohydrate calories found in candy kept goosing the levels of the hormone insulin,” Bowden explains. “Insulin signals sharp increases in blood sugar and enhances the storage of body fat, so when it’s constantly elevated you’re primed for weight gain.”

Bowden says that, because peanuts contain virtually no carbohydrates, they don’t trigger the same effect on insulin and the body doesn’t rush to pack on the pounds. Even more interesting is that peanut eating group alone experienced a significant rise in their resting metabolism. This could indicate that the fats and proteins from the nuts rev up the body’s ability to burn calories which might also help suppress weight gain.

Researcher Richard Feinman, a professor of biochemistry at the SUNY Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, notes that insulin sensitivity impacts how you experience hunger as well. “It’s a well established fact that eating protein increases satiety and if you feel fuller on fewer calories then you are going to eat less,” he points out.

Numerous recent studies have established that dieters do initially lose more weight when they eat the same number of calories but fewer carbs and more protein. What’s more they seem to do it without ill health effects. Even after two years, a 2010 Temple University study reported that those who eat a diet higher in protein had blood fat profiles and other cardiovascular markers that were just as healthy as those who stuck with the traditionally recommended low fat, high fiber diet.

Additionally, Feinman says there is also a small but very real and meaningful effect in how you digest, absorb and metabolize the energy in different types of nutrients — and it’s greater for proteins than it is for carbs.

“For the same number of calories, you add fewer from protein to the body because they get burned during the digestion process,” says Feinman.

What irritates Feinman, Bowden and others who agree with their line of thinking, is that the ADA and most mainstream nutritional organizations refuse to acknowledge that the composition of your diet and not just the calorie count can impact your waistline, even though there’s plenty of evidence to back up these claims. [source]

To many, that point about “fewer carbs and more protein” might sound like “Oh, you mean I’ve got to get on Atkins?!” To that I say, no… and to me, that’s the problem with a lot of nutrition science. To put someone on a diet means to change their eating habits. But, what differed? What kind of carb is the person no longer eating? Refined carbs from french fries and white breads? Wheat bread? The two consist of very different kinds of ingredients (for starters, white bread is full of sugar), and that needs to be noted. That lack of consideration (or, rather, the lack of information detailed in the article) annoys me to no end. Details matter.

A body cannot thrive on cheez-twisterz. A body cannot thrive on double-freaking-downs. A body cannot operate optimally on poor nutrition, and a body that cannot operate optimally will experience difficulty with efforts to lose weight. The quality of the nutrition is absolutely determined by not only the quality of the calorie, but its origins as well. I don’t understand why this is not base level common sense, but then again I suppose most scientists haven’t experimented with this philosophy with their own bodies like a lot of us who are losing weight and trying to keep it off.

The problem with the mentality that says “the quality of calories doesn’t matter, it’s just the quantity!!!” is the fact that its advantageous to a ginormous food industry that doesn’t want the quality of its product called into question. It’s no surprise that the largest factions of nutrition science (which I have huge problems with, personally) are the ones also aligned with the USDA (and their ridiculous food pyramid) among other entities that seek to refute any claims that the quality of the product matters. Take this gem, from the article:

“While I don’t disagree that the body may not process all calories the same in theory, in practical terms it means very little to the average person,” he says. “There really isn’t much you can do with this information that will help you manage your weight. Your best — and healthiest — strategy is still to eat variety of foods and cut back on total calories.” [source]

Flag on the play. Seriously.

I hope you realize how far-reaching this debate is. Sure, on an individual level, we can process this information as proof that we need to be better stewards of our kitchens and seek to improve the foods we eat… but it’s about more than us as individuals, too. As long as we continue to devalue the claim that the quality and kind of calorie is more important than monitoring the quantity of calories… there is no reason for the government (or anyone) to take action to improve the access to calories of better quality for us all. The very thing that we need to thrive successfully will continue to be seen as a luxury, only for the things that simply keep us “belly-full” to continue to harm us.

I’m a cynic. I’m not sorry about it, either. I don’t believe this conversation will ever change… because for the conversation to change means that the policy would have to change, and there’s too much money to be lost if change happens. Oh well… until then, it’ll just be me and my broccoli.

Science Catches Up: A Calorie Is Not A Calorie is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. Understanding Calorie Counting: Creating Your Calorie Goal and Being Honest About It
2. Weekend WTF: The 98,824 Calorie Taco Night & The 71,000 Calorie Lasagna
3. Understanding Calorie Counting: What is it? Calorie Counting Defined

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© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2011. | Permalink | 9 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: calories, nutrition, science, study

Just as you were starting to feel virtuous for having switched from sugary sodas to low- or no-calorie substitutes, a new study comes along suggesting that diet sodas might be bad for your head and your heart.

The study, which followed more than 2,500 New Yorkers for nine or more years, found that people who drank diet soda every day had a 61 percent higher risk of vascular events, including stroke and heart attack, than those who completely eschewed the diet drinks, according to researchers who presented their results today at the American Stroke Association’s International Stroke Conference in Los Angeles.

Still, the researchers aren’t ready to tell consumers to skip diet sodas. More studies need to be done before that happens, said the report’s lead author Hannah Gardener, an epidemiologist at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine.

“I think diet soda drinkers need to stay tuned,” Gardener said. “I don’t think that anyone should be changing their behaviors based on one study. Hopefully this will motivate other researchers to do more studies.”

That advice may not stop some from skipping their diet drinks. “This is pretty scary,” said Denise Gainey, a 49-year-old administrative assistant from Amelia, Va. Worried that she might have inherited a higher risk of heart disease, Gainey wants to be careful. “I guess I’ll just be drinking a lot more water,” she said.

For the new study, researchers surveyed 2,564 north Manhattan residents about their eating behaviors, exercise habits, as well as cigarette and alcohol consumption. The study volunteers were also given physical check-ups that included blood pressure measurements and blood tests for cholesterol and other factors that might affect the risk for heart attack and stroke.

The increased likelihood of vascular events remained even after Gardener and her colleagues accounted for risk factors, such as smoking, high blood pressure and high cholesterol levels. Pointing the finger more squarely at diet drinks, the researchers found no increased risk among people who drank regular soda.

Does this mean there’s something in diet sodas that hurts our blood vessels? Nobody knows the answer to that question, yet, Gardener said. There could be something else that people who drink diet sodas have in common, she explained.

For example, it’s possible that people who drink diet sodas are replacing those saved sugar calories with other unhealthy choices, Gardener said.

That explanation makes a lot of sense to Dr. Nehal N. Mehta, director of inflammatory risk cardiology at the University of Pennsylvania. Although the researchers know the total calories study volunteers were consuming, they weren’t able to account for unhealthy eating habits, Mehta said.

“Maybe along with the diet soda, people are grabbing a Big Mac and a large fries,” Mehta said. “Soda may not be the villain. It may be the other things people consume in association with diet soda. After all, what goes better with pizza or fries than a soda?”

That said, it is always possible that there is something about diet soda that leads to vascular problems, Mehta said, adding that this is the second study to associate diet soda with health issues. An earlier study found that diet soda consumption was linked to an increased risk of metabolic syndrome, which is also a risk factor for heart problems and stroke.

Caramel coloring linked to vascular issues

Further, Mehta said, there are animal studies suggesting a link between vascular problems and caramel-containing products. Among other things, caramel is the ingredient that gives the dark color to sodas like Coke and Pepsi, he explained.

Despite all of that, you probably don’t want to give up diet soda until — and if — larger studies confirm the results of this one, Mehta said.

That is, unless you’re someone with a lot of risk factors for stroke or heart disease, said Dr. Tudor Jovin, an associate professor of neurology and medicine and director of the Stroke Institute at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.

“People with a lot of risk factors for vascular disease, might want to reduce the amount of diet soda they consume,” Jovin said. “Those risk factors would include high blood pressure, diabetes, high cholesterol, smoking, a family history of cardiovascular disease, metabolic syndrome and a history of cardiovascular events.”

So, in other words… this edible substance, completely devoid of any nutritional benefit… not only cannot provide you with any nourishment or improve your health, but actually may have the ability to cause you harm by way of those heinous chemicals listed in the ingredients?

We knew this already, right?

But what’s so bizarre to me, really, is the fact that nooooooooooooooobody in the video wanted to just come out and say it: leave the damn chemicals alone!

I’ll be writing my thoughts on this up a little later… but for now, what are yours?

Diet Drinks Bad For Your Heart? is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

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1. What Causes Heart Disease?
2. No Food Stamps For Soft Drinks? Cracking Down On Soda Pop
3. How Soft Drinks Impact Your Health

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© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2011. | Permalink | 12 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: diet coke, diet drinks, diet pepsi, diet soda, pop, soda, sodapop, soft drinks

Congress is in the process of figuring next year’s agriculture budget, and the food industry is using the occasion as an opportunity to bully the USDA as it rolls out new rules for the National School Lunch Program. According to the New York Times, Big Food has already dropped a cool $5.6 million lobbying to kibosh the new rules.

Why does the industry care about school lunches? Because school cafeterias get less than a dollar a day per student in federal funding to spend on ingredients (about two-thirds of the maximum $2.94 outlay per lunch goes to overhead and labor), and many public schools lack cooking facilities altogether. So cafeterias often outsource cooking to massive entities that know how to squeeze a profit by selling lots of dirt-cheap food—companies like meat giant Tyson and its infamous heat-and-serve “Dinosaur Shaped Chicken Nuggets,” and Conagra and its frozen pizzas.

In January, the USDA came out with new guidelines governing what can go on kids’ plates. Mandated by a 2004 act of Congress ordering USDA to align school lunches with the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, the rules (PDF) impose two new criteria that have drawn the ire of the food industry.

First, they rewrote the requirements around vegetable and fruit servings. Before, cafeterias were required to serve at least one vegetable per day, and the definition was expansive: Tater Tots and French fries, for example, counted. Now, they limit the amount of potatoes and other “starchy vegetables” to no more than one cup (two servings) per week—and require schools to serve at least one serving per week of dark green and red/orange vegetables. Second, they no longer allow the two ounces of tomato paste that lacquer a typical frozen pizza to count as a vegetable.

To Big Food and its friends on the Hill, none of this would do. Back in October, by a unanimous vote, the Senate slapped an amendment on its ag appropriations bill that will rescind the limit on potatoes. This, despite a major recent Harvard study finding that regular consumption of potatoes in all their forms, fried and not, contributes heavily to unhealthy weight gain.

And now, reports Politico’s David Rogers, Conagra and fellow frozen-pizza behemoth Schwan are arraying their lobbying might against the new tomato-paste rule. Rogers writes:

A June letter from Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, for example, celebrates the virtues of tomato paste in language that closely mirrors the arguments made by Schwan, a privately owned giant based in Marshall, Minn. And both Schwan and ConAgra have quietly helped to finance the “Coalition for Sustainable School Meals Programs” which maintains a red-white-blue—and yes green—website with the heading “Fix the Reg.”

According to Rogers, the House version of the ag-spending bill will likely contain a provision nixing the rule change, and preserving frozen pepperoni pizza’s status as a fruit/vegetable serving, so long as it harbors a bit of tomato paste. Between the Senate’s amendment and this coming move from the House, school cafeterias will remain profitable places to move cheap corporate French fries and pizza, and train a new generation to regard such dubious fare as every-day food.

In my recent post on food and Occupy Wall Street, I showed how the food system, like the financial system, is both in desperate need of reform and utterly trapped under the heel of industry influence. The gutting of the USDA’s new lunch guidelines provides yet another example.

UPDATE: I wrote this post before the House came out with its spending bill late Monday afternoon. It turns out, it’s even worse than I thought. Associated Press:

The final version of a spending bill released late Monday would unravel school lunch standards the Agriculture Department proposed earlier this year, which included limiting the use of potatoes on the lunch line and delaying limits on sodium and delaying a requirement to boost whole grains.

The bill also would allow tomato paste on pizzas to be counted as a vegetable, as it is now. USDA had wanted to prevent that.[source]

I have a post coming up for a new series on the blog called the “Friday 5″ that I was starting tomorrow, with a post titled “5 Things I’ve Learned From Spending Time In A School Cafeteria.” Seeing this, coupled with what I know… let’s just say I’m a little incredulous right now.

And a tomato isn’t even a vegetable. It’s a fruit!

Do You Think Tomato Paste Is A Vegetable? Your Government Does! is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. Dear Government, Taxing Soda Is Crap And You Know It
2. Friday 5: 5 Things I Learned From A Grade School Cafeteria

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© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2011. | Permalink | 6 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: children, government, school lunch, usda