We’ve been hearing for years that in France the women are thinner, despite the croissants, buttery dishes and other saturated fats. A whole book entitled “French Women Don’t Get Fat,” explained that the ladies savour their food calmly, abstain from snacking, and eat small portions.

Alas, no more. Turns out that the American food McCulture has successfully rooted itself in the cradle of modern gastronomy. A recent study found that:

15.1 percent of France’s women are classed as clinically obese, while a further 26 percent are overweight.

The survey, conducted by TNS Sofres Healthcare and Swiss pharmaceuticals company Roche, also pointed to similar trends among the male population, with 13.9 percent of Frenchmen obese and 38.5 percent overweight.

The researchers largely blame the modern, urban lifestyle – sedentary jobs, little physical activity, and food everywhere.  On a consolatory note, Doctor Marie-Aline Charles, one of the researchers, said that other countries, especially the United States, were faring much worse:

We’re currently seeing in France the same levels of obesity as in the United States in the 1970s, so we’re about 40 years behind.”

In the US, adult obesity levels are over 30%, and another 30% are classified overweight.

What you need to know:

It’s not just France. Japan, China, Greece, and just about every country that has industrialized its food system is marching down the same, dare we say inevitable, path to obesity. At an age where convenience trumps all, the Big Mac, Coke, and Frozen TV Dinner are creating for the first time in history, more fat people that hungry people.

By the way, the term French Paradox is linked more specifically to the low rates of coronary disease in France compared to the US. In 1991, a study attributed this to drinking red wine. Overnight, sales of red wine skyrocketed in the US. Researchers think that resveratrol, an antioxidant found in red wine, may be the answer.

What to do at the supermarket:

You can try to reverse the trend in your family by going back in time to the day when people actually prepared and ate real food. But you’ll have to invest time and effort. Luckily there are countless resources both online and off that can help you master a few basic dishes in very little time.

Making homemade soup is a cinch, and so is a basic tomato pasta sauce. Even meat and potatoes don’t take more than 15 minutes of work once you’ve gotten the hang of it.

Buy more fruits, vegetables and staples and pull up your sleeves…

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Some friends were chewing Trident bubble gum recently at a long drawn meeting and they offered a piece to everyone so we could stay alert.The package as well as the gum itself are glowing pink. Knowing about Fooducate’s food label fetish, we got to take the empty pack home and analyze the ingredient list.

What you need to know:

There are no nutrients to speak of in this gum, and most others as well. Just 3.5 calories, no fat, no sugar, no vitamins and no minerals. But that’s also because we are talking about a really tiny serving size. Even kids’ bubble gums sweetened with sugar  have less than 30 calories.

Here is the ingredient list:

Sorbitol, Gum Base, Xylitol, Glycerin, Manitol, Artificial and Natural Flavoring, Soy Lecithin, Acesulfame Potassium, Aspartame, Sucralose, Red 40 Lake, BHT (To maintain freshness)

Gum base is a synthetic rubber, whose exact makeup is a trade secret. A gum base is usually composed of  an elastomer (synthetic rubbers), resin (more chemicals), wax such as paraffin, fats, emulsifier (keeps everything mixed together) such as lecithin, filler (provides texture) such as talc. Yummy.

Sorbitol, Xylitol, and Manitol are sugar alcohols. These are 60% as sweet as sugar and have 2.6 calories per gram compared to 4 for sugar. Not that it’s a big deal when we’re talking about a stick of gum. Sugar alcohols are not fully digested and may cause a laxative effect in some people. On the plus side, Xylitol is considered effective in prevention of dental carries, a fact embellished heavily by Trident and other manufacturers. On the package of this product there are no less than 3 acknowledgments: “cleans and protects teeth” – on the front of package and on the back, as well as on each individual gum wrapper.

Glycerin (Glycerol, E422) is a humectant (keeps things moist), solvent, sweetener and preservative. It used in foods and beverages as well as gum.

Artificial and Natural Flavoring are a trade secret so NO YOU CAN’T know what they are.

Soy Lecithin (E322) is an emulsifier, which means it helps keep all the goop mixed together and of uniform consistence.

Acesulfame Potassium (Acesulfame K, E950) is an artificial sweetener 200 times sweeter than sugar. It is often used in conjunction with aspartame (Nutrasweet) another artificial sweetener found in diet soft drinks. Both of these sweeteners are approved by the FDA despite several studies that have linked them to cancer.

Sucralose (E955) is an artificial sweetener 600 times sweeter than sugar. It is a synthetic chemical made by chemically reacting sugar (sucrose) with chlorine. It is considered safe.

Red 40 (Allura Red, E129) is the most widely used artificial food dye. It has been linked to hyperactivity in children. The UK Food Standards Authority has asked manufacturers to voluntarily phase it and other artificial colors out of foods.

BHT (E321) - a preservative that has been linked to cancer.

Summary – this is an odd cocktail of various chemicals and sweeteners that we’re supposed to be masticating on for hours on end in our mouths.

What to do at the supermarket:

Despite all of the above chemicals, we’re talking about tiny amounts of all these ingredients in each stick of gum, so don’t lose too much sleep over the nutrition issues.

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The National Dairy Council is launching a new campaign today -  Raise your Hands for Chocolate Milk. The gist of it:

• Schools MUST keep chocolate milk available for children to choose at lunchtime.
• Milk is a much better choice nutritionally than sodas or juice.
• Chocolate milk  has only 60 more calories than plain milk.
• Kids love it and will therefore drink more milk.

While this sounds great, there’s a problem not addressed: Children are consuming much too many calories from sugar. The additional sugar in flavored milk can add up to an extra 5 pounds of body weight over the course of a school year, says chef Ann Cooper, Renegade Lunch Lady of Boulder, Colorado.

So is this new campaign justified?

What you need to know:

Few people would argue that drinking milk instead of soda pop is a bad choice. And anyone who has children knows that their attraction to sweet is like a magnetic force. So if adding some sugar and flavor is the vehicle to get children drinking milk, it makes sense that we all raise our hands for chocolate milk.

The question then becomes, how much added sugar?

Would you add over 3 teaspoons of sugar to your child’s 8 oz cup of milk?

Probably not. But that’s exactly the amount being added to kids’ chocolate milk.

We asked Karen Kafer, RD, VP Health Partnerships at National Dairy Council, about all that added sugar. She responded that in market testing conducted by the milk manufacturers, the 3 added teaspoons seemed to be the magic number that got kids to drink the most milk. She did not disagree that less sugar would be better, but added that right now that’s what manufacturers are selling because that’s what kids like.

The problem for many parents is that once kids get used to sweet, it’s hard to get them back to “un-sweet”. At home they may be used to drinking plain milk, or very lightly sweetened milk at breakfast (flattened teaspoon of Nesquik anyone?). But once they start school and get a daily fix of super sweet chocolate milk, they’ll demand the same at home.

So here’s a challenge to the National Dairy Council – work with the processors of flavored milks to schools and get them ALL to agree to a gradual reduction in the sugar content of their products. Maybe not overnight, but in the course of a year or two, they can easily cut those 3 teaspoons of sugar down to one. Everyone wins -

1. Children will be getting an even healthier product without even noticing a taste sacrifice,
2. Manufacturers won’t lose market share because all of them will be taking this step at the same time, and
3. The National Dairy Council will earn extra credit promoting a holistic nutrition approach, not just milk.

And one more request to the manufacturers – although chocolate milk has no artificial colorings, the strawberry milk does. Red 40 has been associated with hyperactivity in children and is being phased out in the UK. Please, please remove it from your products and use natural colors instead.

What to do at the supermarket:

As a matter of practicality, buying prepared chocolate milk is very convenient. However the Yoo-hoos of the world are extremely sweetened. One option is to mix it with regular milk to lower the sugar content. Another is to buy the powders or syrups and control how much you add to each glass of milk.

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• Chocolate milk controversy (timesunion.com)

Consumer interest in omega-3 is not as high this year as it was in the 2005-2007 time frame. Perhaps it’s because we’ve been inundated by so many omega-3 messages on the news, web, and supermarket that most of us have simply come to accept the easy to remember association:  “omega-3 = good”.  In the same time period we also learned that “trans-fat = evil”.

It’s a bit like Star Wars , what with the dark and light side of the force. The “force” here is fatty acids, or what dietary fats (animal fat and vegetable oils) are composed of.

While the trans-fat message is quite simple at the practical level – just avoid products containing it – with omega 3 things are a bit more complicated. And when something is not as simple as good/bad, you can be sure there’s lots of money to be made off of the public’s ignorance. Enter the thousands of processed products now marked with “omega-3″ in large font type on the front of the package.

The analogy to Star Wars ends here because not all omega-3’s are created equal. Which means you may be buying a product fortified with omega-3 that has almost no health benefits for you. Yet you will likely be paying more than you would have for the standard, un-enriched version. In order to better understand what’s going on, here’s a quick primer on omega-3, in 10 bullet points.

What you need to know:
1. Food can be broken down to three categories – protein, carbohydrate, fat. Our bodies need all three to function.

2. Fats can be broken down into the “good” and “bad” fats (though this is an over-simplification). The bad fats are “saturated” and “tran-fats” – they increase the risks of heart disease, for example.

3. The “good” or “heart healthy” fats are called unsaturated fats and they are further divided into polyunsaturated and mono-unsaturated fats. They can be found in olive oil, walnuts, avocado, and fish.

4. Fats are actually composed of different types of fatty-acids. It is the fatty acids that are saturated or unsaturated. For example, Canola oil is regarded a healthy oil because it is composed of 90% unsaturated fatty acids – oleic acid, linoleic acid and linolenic acid, and only 10% saturated fats.

5. Fatty acids are further broken down into groups based on their chemical makeup. The omega-3, omega-6, omega-9 classification of fatty acids is based on position of certain carbon-bonds inside the fatty acid molecule. This was the most difficult part of the post, so hang in there. Omega-3 and omega-6 are also called “essential fatty acids”; this means our body does not manufacture them on its own, so we need to get them from food.

6. If you’re still with us, omega-3 is actually a family of fatty acids which includes alpha-linolenic acid (ALA), eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA), and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA). All three are polyunsaturated (reminder: that means good).

7. Studies have proven unequivocally that omega-3 consumption is good for our health, in an all round sort of fashion. From raising the IQ of unborn babies, to better heart health, and even more mental stability.

8. But not all omega-3 fatty acids yield the same benefit. They are further classified into 2 groups -  “long chain” such as DHA and EPA, and “short chain” such as ALA (alpha linolenic acid). The long chain fatty acids are the ones that are considered most beneficial. They are readily available from oils of cold water fish such as salmon, sardines, and mackerel.  The short chain ALA is found in flax seeds and chia seeds for example.

9. The human body does know to turn ALA into the more useful EPA and DHA but only at a 10-15% efficiency. The omega-3 health claims have  regulatory organizations in a tizzy, because manufacturers are fortifying foods with cheap (read vegetable) sources of omega-3 in order to plaster health claims on them, when in fact they may prove less beneficial than omega-3 sourced from fish oils.

10. To complicate things even further, it appears that high omega-3 consumption is not enough. The proportion of omega-3 to omega-6 fatty acids in our bodies also plays a role in improving our health. The modern diet has raised our consumption of omega-6 (through soybean and corn oils) to levels that way too high compared to our omega-3 levels. This imbalance needs to be rectified by either consuming less omega-6, or more omega-3.

What to do at the supermarket:

As you can see from the above example, nutrition is quite complex. Scientists are discovering new interactions every day. And while better understanding of how our body works with nutrients is important, let’s keep in mind that food itself has been, for thousands of years, a pretty straightforward affair: Grow, harvest, prepare. And somehow, humanity survived.

The modern supermarket has changed our relationship to food. Now it’s pretty much just one verb -  “buy”.

While fortification with omega-3 in all sorts of prepared foods won’t cause harm, and in some cases be healthy for you, the naturally good sources of omega-3 are sardines, salmon, flax oil, with other seeds and nuts to some extent.

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Which is more nutritious – A raw carrot or a cooked one? What about tomatoes? Mushrooms? Cabbage?

If you answered raw to all of the above, you may be in for a surprise. According to the Scientific American, the answer is not so simple. It turns out that some nutrients are actually more available to the body when the veggie is heated.

The most popular example is lycopene, an antioxidant found in the red pigments of tomatoes. Lycopene levels in tomatoes rose 35% after being cooked for 30 minutes at 190 degrees farenheit. Why? Probably because the heat breaks down the thick cell walls of the vegetable, releasing the nutrient that was bound to the wall.

Other nutrients, of course, suffer from heat. The best example is vitamin C, which seems to evaporate from just about anything from the moment its harvested. Luckily, vitamin C is so abundant in fruits, vegetables, and in fortified foods and drinks, that people rarely form a deficiency.

Frying is another story. The high temperature of the oil creates oxidized oil molecules – free radicals – which can then damage cells in our body by intermingling with tem. That’s why everyone is talking day and night about anti-oxidants that recapture the rebelling radicals and prevent them from messing with our cells.

Bottom Line: there’s no clear cut winner. Almost all forms of vegetables are good for you.

What to do at the supermarket:

This is one part of your grocery shopping where you can have your cake and eat it too. There are an infinite number of ways to prepare vegetables and fruits for consumption. Raw, cooked, chopped, diced, juiced, baked, mixed, frozen. Just get more into your diet.

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Every day, week, and month there’s a holiday somewhere in the world.

While most holidays have religious, historical or national connotations, there’s a new category of “marketing” holidays, embellishing whatever there is to be sold. Food is no exception, and just this week, for example, the country celebrated National Sandwich Day (Nov 3). The date was chosen to honor the birthday of Sir John Montag, a.k.a Earl of Sandwich, an 18th century Englishman who requested to have his lunch meat served between 2 pieces of bread so that he may continue playing cards with his buddies. This year Sara Lee and other bread manufacturers helped “celebrate” with PR pizazz.

Here’s a (very partial) list of a few more food festivities. In no particular order:

Get the day started right on National Eggs Benedict Day (April 16). And while we’re having breakfast, wouldn’t it make sense to unite National Pancake Day (Sept 26) and National Maple Syrup Day (Dec 17)?

Beverage Day is on May 6, but behemoth Coca Cola has it’s own very special Have a Coke Day 2 days later on May 8. too bad there’s no tap water day. For parents to messy toddlers there’s Don’t Cry Over Spilled Milk Day (Feb 11).

There’s an entire month devoted to Hamburgers (May 1-31). Not to be outdone, Pizza has several holidays, depending on the toppings; our favorite is coming up next week – National Pizza with the Works Except Anchovies Day (Nov 12).

Venerable vegetables have lots of special days – Does Eat Your Vegetables Day (June 17) drive up sales of broccoli? probably not. Do people get discount when signing up to become vegetarians on World Vegetarian Day (Oct 1)? Kick the New year off with legumes on Bean Day (Jan 6). And don’t forget America’s #1 vegetable on Potato Day (Aug 19). While the Spinach Festival(March 26) sounds interesting, the more interestingly named Sneak Some Zucchini on Your Neighbor’s Porch Night (Aug 8th) will have us awake in bed til the morning of August 9.

Why would anyone celebrate Poisoned Blackberries Day (Sept 29)?

The sweets have lots of partying with an entire National Dessert Month in October, a National Pumpkin Pie Day on Christmas, followed 2 days later by National Fruitcake Day (Dec 27), and in the heat of the summer a National Cheesecake Day (July 30).

Lest we forget our favorite snack on National Ice Cream Day (July 18) with gourmands looking forward to National Vanilla Ice Cream Day (July 23) celebrated less than a week later. FYI: We just celebrated National Chocolate Day last week (Oct 28).

Thank goodness February is short, as it is also National Snack Food Month. It’s followed by National Potato Chip Day (March 14) and then National Pretzel Day (April 26). Healthy snacking will have to wait till summertime with National Trail Mix Day (Aug 31).

National Soup Month comes in the dead of winter, lasting all of January. Canned Food Month (February) is followed by National Frozen Food Month in March. April gets off to a sticky-in-the-roof-of-my-mouth start with National Peanut Butter and Jelly Day (Apr 2) but then continues to a more solid Garlic Day (Apr 19) mid month.

But our favorite holiday, dedicated to all the unfortunate chefs who burn toasts and can’t seem to scramble an egg, is Kitchen Klutzes of America Day (June 13). We’ll be eating out that day, thank you.

Got any more interesting holidays we should know about? Comments welcome…

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Last month another brick in the stalwart battered wall of scientific and medical integrity in America was regretfully removed. The American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) signed a sponsorship deal with the Coca Cola Company to promote Coke’s products, more or less:

The Consumer Alliance is a program that allows corporate partners like The Coca-Cola Company to work with the AAFP to educate consumers about the role their products can play in a healthy, active lifestyle.

What exact role do sugar laden beverages such as Coca Cola, Vitamin Water, and others play in a healthy lifestyle?

None. You don’t need an educational program to figure that one out. True, a soda pop here and there won’t kill anybody, but you don’t need the Coca Cola company to tell you that. And your physician should be telling you to cut down on your consumption, not explain how to fit a six pack into your busy schedule.

The exact 6 figure sum paid to the AAFP was undisclosed. It was, at most, $999,999, but likely much less, and puts a $10 price tag on each of  AAFP 95,000 members. That’s a good deal for Coke, but for the doctors it doesn’t sound so great.

So why is this deal, just like Coke’s sponsorship of the American Dietetic Association, so infuriating?

Because the people at Coca Cola are so…nice.

Yes. on a personal level, Coke’s execs are lovely, personable, and amicable. So are the leaders of McDonald’s, Mars, and the rest of the junk food industry. But their companies have a slight image problem. It seems that the public has caught on to the fact that they are selling us crap, which in turn is making us sick. That nagging public concern is bad for business.

So all these amenable execs, which get paid handsomely because they are also very sharp business people, figured out a solution. —> Lets convince the public that we are not selling crap. Or not too much of it. And the little that we do is “fine in moderation”.

—> Better yet, lets find people who are the most trustworthy in consumers’ eyes, and have them tell our story. Enter the funding strapped dietitian organization and the AAFP. These organizations get to fill their coffers with much needed funds, and in turn acknowledge their newly found industry buddies.

Here’s what AAFP CEO Dr. Douglas Henley says:

…the deal won’t influence the group’s public health messages, [Coke] will have no control over editorial content. read more…

We STRONGLY DISAGREE.

It’s a question of human psychology more than anything else. On a personal level, once you get to know someone, talk with them, and then take lots of money from them, you are no longer objective. Your behavior changes because you don’t want to be rude towards your benefactor.

On an organizational scale, it’s not different at all. As Harvard Nutrition Professor Dr. Walter Willet said:

“Coca-Cola, like other sodas, causes enormous suffering and premature death by increasing the risks of obesity, diabetes, heart attacks, gout, and cavities. [The AAFP] should be a loud critic of these products and practices, but by signing with Coke their voice has almost surely been muzzled.”

Thankfully, a few brave physicians from Northern California agree, and about 20 of them have decided to quit the AAFP in protest.

What you need to know:

Unfortunately for us consumers, this is not the first or last case of companies swaying scientists into their camps. The next time you read about a scientific study and its results, ask yourself who funded it. If industry is behind the numbers, there’s a 400-800% increase in the likelihood that the results are favorable to the funder.

What to do at the supermarket:

While abstaining from soft drinks may be too hard for some people, try to gradually reduce your dependence on soft drinks. By switching to tap water, a family of 4 can save $500 a year and 10-15 lbs. of body weight per person.

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The December Edition of Consumer Reports, already out, is bringing BPA, a controversial chemical, back to the headlines. The non-profit publisher, Consumers Union, tested various canned foods for BPA and found alarmingly high values in daily staples such as tuna, beans and soups. You can read more about it here.

This is a good opportunity to get reacquainted with a chemical we  all consume in some form, whether we know it, like it, or not.

What you need to know:
1. Bisphenol-A  is a chemical compound used as a building block of several polymers and polycarbonates that in turn are found in plastic bottles and cans. Which means all of us are exposed to tiny amounts, whether drinking canned juice, milk from a baby-bottle, or any other product sold in a plastic container or a can.

2. The chemical has been sold since the 1940’s and starting in the 1960’s has been lining the insides of cans in order to extend shelf life.

3. 7 billion pounds of BPA are produced annually, for use in food packaging, PVC water pipes, electronics, and more.

4. In 2008, more than 22 billion cans for food and more than 100 billion cans for beer and soft drinks were produced with BPA.

5. BPA behaves like the hormone estrogen once it enters the body and disturbs the normal working of certain genes. Estrogen mimicking chemicals like BPA are potentially harmful even at very low doses, such as those found in plastic bottles and cans.

6. Toxicity questions have been around for decades, raising safety issue, especially for babies who ingest a proportionally larger amount due to their small size. Potential problems include hyperactivity, learning disabilities, brain damage, and immune deficiencies.

7. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) calculated that people consume 50 micrograms of BPA per kilogram of body weight every day over the course of a lifetime. Over 40 studies have found adverse health effects in rats given less than one hundredth of that amount!

8. Over 200 animal studies that have linked BPA consumption in tiny amounts to a host of reproductive problems, brain damage, immune deficiencies, metabolic abnormalities, and behavioral oddities like hyperactivity, learning deficits and reduced maternal willingness to nurse offspring.

9. In 2008, Canada added BPA to its list of toxic substances and plans are to ban BPA from all baby bottles.

10. The FDA has zigzagged on BPA safety. In August 2008 it deemed BPA safe. However, in December 2008, the FDA’s own advisory board accused the FDA of weighing 2 industry-backed studies much more heavily than the hundreds of other independent studies. The FDA’s excuse: all the other studies did not meet the FDA’s guidelines for determining safety for human consumption, did not provide raw data, and a host of other “reasons”.

11. In March 2009, six manufacturers announced that they would voluntarily stop manufacturing bottles with BPA. Playtex Products, Gerber, Evenflo, Avent America, Dr. Brown and Disney First Years decided to so in order to preempt legal action being considered at the time by several state attorney generals.

12. In May 2009, Chicago became the first city to ban sales of baby bottles and sippy cups with BPA. Denmark became the first European country to do the same.

13. Many other European countries conducted reviews in the past 2 years but decided to maintain BPA’s safe status for now.

14. If you think you’re safe, 93% of the population has BPA in their bodies, according to urine sampling conducted by the Center for Disease Control, CDC.

15. There’s hope – Many Japanese manufacturers voluntarily stopped using BPA in 1997. In a 2003 study, BPA levels in people’s urine had dropped by 50%.

What to do at the supermarket:
Here are some tips on how to reduce your family’s  BPA intake:
1. if you have a baby or toddler, purchase BPA free plastic bottles.
2. If microwaving formula, do so in a glass bottle.
3. Opt for fresh or frozen products less than canned.
4. Drink tap water instead of bottled water

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Food, Inc., the powerful, and slightly depressing, documentary about our modern food industry is out on DVD today. You can buy the movie from Amazon.com here. If you didn’t have a chance to catch this movie in theaters earlier this year, it is highly recommended.

The documentary touches upon many aspects of the modern, industrialized food system, whose quest for efficiency and economies of scale has led to cheap food for everyone. This, at a high cost to the environment, farmers, animals, and our health.

The first part of the movie examines meat and poultry “production” by taking the viewer to CAFO – concentrated animal feeding operation – basically a huge factory for building the biggest, fattest, animal in the shortest amount of time and with the cheapest feed possible.

The next segment focuses on corn and how this single crop, heavily subsidized by the US government,  has completely changed the food industry. This, mostly through using it as cheap feed for animals, and even cheap sweetener in the form of high fructose corn syrup.

The last part discusses food safety, or rather unsafety that is the result of the huge factory farm systems. A mother who lost her two year old son to e-coli, from a hamburger he ate when they were on a family vacation, is now crusading for improved safety standards. Unfortunately for her, she and the few congress-people on her side are facing a massive, well-funded food/ag lobby that likes things just as they are.

The movie is presented straight forward without the over-dramatizations of Michael Moore’s works, yet it is this lackluster narrative that drives the message home.

Some critics view the movie as a one-sided attack on the food industry that does not provide real alternatives to feeding a planet with 6 billion people. The producers stated that they invited all the large food manufacturers to share their views and participate in the movie, but that they had declined.

We’ll let you be the judge, but don’t base your decision on just one movie. Read more about the food you’re eating, how it got to your table, your supermarket, your country.

For us, one big question looms after learning the issues: Is there an inherent conflict between economies of scale and sustainable food production?

What to do at the supermarket:

You’ll certainly view the food you eat and buy differently after watching Food, Inc. While some people may take an extreme approach and revamp their entire pantry, most of us can make slower gradual changes in our eating habits.

Here are some of the changes the movie’s producers suggest:

Stop drinking sodas and other sweetened beverages. You can lose 25 lbs in a year by replacing one 20 oz soda a day with a no calorie beverage (preferably water).

Eat at home instead of eating out. Children consume almost twice (1.8 times) as many calories when eating food prepared outside the home.

Tell schools to stop selling sodas, junk food, and sports drinks. Over the last two decades, rates of obesity have tripled in children and adolescents aged 6 to 19 years.

Meatless Mondays—Go without meat one day a week.

Buy organic or sustainable food with little or no pesticides. According to the EPA, over 1 billion pounds of pesticides are used each year in the U.S.

Make a point to know where your food comes from—READ LABELS. The average meal travels 1500 miles from the farm to your dinner plate.

Remember that whatever small upgrades you choose, you’ll be affecting not only your health, but also impacting the environment, and all the people, animals, and crops along the food chain from farm to the fork.

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School lunch is a hotly debated topic these days.

Around 30 Million children are served a hot lunch every day. The National School Lunch Program is funded and regulated by the Food and Nutrition Service of the USDA. Participating schools get cash minimal subsidies and donated commodities from the USDA for each meal served (now there’s an incentive to get all the kids to eat..). The meals must meet specific nutrition requirements, and eligible children must receive free or reduced price lunches.

So what are people fretting about?

The low budget for the meals usually means preprocessed chicken nuggets, hot dogs, fries, and a host of other fast foods that may be filling, but hardly nutrient rich. Parents, educators, and nutrition professionals would like to see children getting better food. Entrenched businesses find that concept difficult to accept.

Baltimore public schools, serving 80,000 children, decided to try out a new concept – Meatless Mondays. Instead of protein from meats, they are serving up beans and cheese. This is in order to reduce the amount of saturated fats and cholesterol from the meats (although cheese, an animal product, also contains saturated fats and cholesterol).

The decision, reports Eliza Barclay for the Atlantic, has caused the meat industry serious grief. No less than 4 organizations have attacked Baltimore’s moves:

The American Meat Institute says that kids are being deprived of much needed protein. A bogus claim stating that 75% of kids are protein deficient is totally unbased. In fact, there are barely any Americans with a protein deficiency these days.

Pork Magazine alleged that the decision was made without any dietetic consultation. Unfortunately for them, the entire meal plan was created by a school dietitian and a chef.

The Animal Agriculture Alliance and Missouri Beef Concil were just plain “shocked” and hoped this maligned decision would not spread to other communities.

While the  business fears of the meat industry are understandable, only good can come of Meatless Mondays. Nobody is being forced to become a vegetarian, and a good portion of the kids will probably be having some form of meat for dinner anyway. So why the fuss? Introducing children to vegetable lasgana, various bean dishes, and other additions such as whole grains and fresh fruits and vegetables is but a small measure in trying to fix childhood obesity.

Onwards and upwards, school lunchers. Get ready for for tasty Tuesdays and weight-loss Wednesdays…

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