Rudd Sound Bites

Rudd Center Week in Review

2009-11-08T11:02:43-05:00

Hot on the heels of our Cereal FACTS launch, Kellogg Company announced they will discontinue immunity statements on their Rice- and Cocoa- Krispies cereal boxes. While the momentum for this move was building over the last few weeks, H1N1 hysteria really sealed the deal for - in Kelly D. Brownell parlance - the hall of fame health claim.

Our intrepid leader flew to Tinseltown this week for another Rudd Center cause célèbre. He provided testimony on the relationship between sugar-sweetened beverage consumption and health for the California Senate Joint Hearing on Obesity and Diabetes. Sugar-sweetened beverage taxes are not (yet) part of health care legislation, but menu-labeling provisions did indeed make their way into Pelosi's health care bill. The bill was passed by House Democrats with a final vote of 220-215 late Saturday night.

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Eating for Two?

2009-11-03T17:22:16-05:00

by Gabrielle Grode

Ever since I became pregnant a few months ago, my family has been pushing food on me at every meal and even every few hours between meals.

“You’re eating for two,” they say.

Which is true in a sense… But the second person for whom I’m eating is currently the size of a mango and hardly has the caloric needs which would require, for example, a chicken salad sandwich, French fries and mashed potatoes, a meal my mother recently presented to me.

Another family member told me that my pediatrician would be very angry if he could see the way I was eating (too little in his mind), which at the time, was an afternoon snack of grapefruit juice and Triscuits.

With all these comments, I couldn’t help but wonder if I was doing something wrong. I checked my pregnancy book and it turns out that a pregnant woman’s caloric needs only require an extra 300 calories a day. That's a handful of almonds and a yogurt! A piece of whole wheat bread with peanut butter!

Plus, healthcare providers seem more concerned with one gaining too much weight during pregnancy rather than too little. The IOM writes in 2009, “[w]omen today are heavier; a greater percentage of them are entering pregnancy overweight or obese, and many are gaining too much weight during pregnancy.” Excessive weight gain in pregnancy, which for a normal weight woman is beyond 35 lbs, is associated with gestational diabetes, high blood pressure, and increased difficulty in losing weight post delivery. It has even been linked to having a baby that becomes an overweight child.

So, it seems I’m doing just fine. But if my family, who is well educated, believes that one should literally translate the eating for two adage, many others must think the same thing.

Perhaps people are taking this eating for two idea too far.

Drowning in a Sea of Food Marketing

2009-10-26T11:15:00-04:00

by Megan Weinberg

Today, the Rudd Center released a report to the public entitled “Cereal FACTS: Evaluating the nutrition quality and marketing of children's cereals.” The report is the culmination of a year’s worth of research funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), and its release coincides with the launch of our new website, www.CerealFacts.org.

The Rudd Center received a grant from RWJF in November of 2008 to study food marketing to children, as part of a larger goal to reverse the childhood obesity epidemic. Exposure to food marketing is strongly linked to this epidemic, as noted by the World Health Organization (WHO) and in the 2006 Institute of Medicine report. The objective of the F.A.C.T.S (Food Advertising to Children and Teens Score) project was to document the vast amount of marketing that is targeted to children, with the hope of improving the quality of food marketed to our children, and the overall food marketing landscape. We chose cereal first, because children are exposed to more advertising for it than any other packaged food category.

The actual findings of the FACTS project not only confirmed some suspicions about what was going on, but were also astounding. Marketers are heavily advertising their worst products to children. They are sneaky about it, often reaching our children when we’re not looking, undermining our authority by luring children with cartoons, games and toys to products we would otherwise avoid, and targeting children as young as 2 years old.

As a parent of a 2 year old, and as a Rudd Center staff member who has been intimately involved with this project for the last year, I’d like to speak about my personal experience.

In December of 2008, when I proudly began my position on the Marketing Team at Rudd, I was unaware of the ubiquitous nature of food marketing. I don’t think I ever really cared about, or paid any attention to it (although research shows it was still having an effect on me). It was there, in the background of my life, and wasn’t bothering me. I knew how to defend myself against advertising anyway.

Today, I find myself drowning in a sea of food marketing. It pops up as product placements in my favorite TV shows, tries to grab my attention while I’m surfing the internet, trolling facebook, using my cell phone, driving on the highway, picking out food for my family at the grocery store, etc. If I only had myself to worry about, I don’t think I would be as deeply affected as I am. But, now that my husband and I have a young daughter, I worry. I know that while she’s young I can be selective about what she is exposed to, and shield her from commercial television and the like. She’s not yet using the internet or a cell phone, but there will come a day when she will be able to do both. There will come a day when she will visit friend’s homes and watch their TVs, when she will be influenced by her peers, and there’s no escaping the reality that no matter what we do…she will be exposed to advertising for unhealthy food in a myriad of ways.

My old attitude, prior to Rudd, would have me thinking that as long as my husband and I present a positive influence and teach her about this in our home, then she’ll be okay. But my new attitude acknowledges that my influence only goes so far in a toxic food environment where the worst products are being aggressively marketed to children, in more inventive ways. Viral videos pop up on YouTube, where millions of children see and talk about them, and marketers even follow children around to learn about their preferences and enlist them to become ambassadors for their products.

So what have I learned from all of this? In a nutshell, there is only so much we, as parents, can control, even though many of us are doing our best. So much marketing to us and to our children falls under our radar, it’s impossible to safeguard ourselves against it all. I’ve learned that food companies, despite their pleas to us that they’ve added nutrients to their products, do not have our children’s best interest at heart. If they did, why would they push products like cereal made up of 40% sugar and try to lure children with animated characters and advergames? I’ve learned that companies have healthier products but they’re not marketing them to our children. They argue that they produce what children will eat, but I’ve learned that children will eat the better stuff too if it’s given to them (a study we did here at Yale confirmed that. Children ate low sugar cereals without complaining, and even enjoyed and ate more fruit with them).

So what can we do about this? Well, once you’ve become aware of what’s going on, if it bugs you as much as it does me, try to take ACTION against it. We’re doing our best here at the Rudd Center to create meaningful change in a flawed system, but parents can and should be a voice too. Talk to your friends and family about this and pass along our website address (www.cerealfacts.org) so that other people can learn about this as well. Be more vigilant about your children’s food environment. Be aware that marketing is affecting you and your children in ways you may not realize. If you’re so bold, get a petition going about food marketing to children or write letters to legislators and let them know how unhappy you are. Learn from marketers themselves and employ some of their own tactics for good, for example, create your own blog site or YouTube video about your thoughts on this topic that thousands or even millions of people could see.

Be your own ambassador for change!

A Lack of Self-Control?

2009-09-30T17:43:31-04:00

by Amir Goren

Sure, one of the causes of obesity is a lack of self-control… and willpower, personal responsibility, or what have you. Sure, individuals are capable of saying “no” to unhealthful food. They can put down their cheap, sugar-laden sodas and pick up cheaper water instead. Seems like common sense, right? Well, the toxic food environment is still to blame. Why? Because it pushes self-control and long-term planning beyond what the average mind can handle.

People may realize that the food industry has helped create a toxic food environment by marketing ever more—and cheaper—unhealthful food products over the past few decades. But even as health-conscious consumers face an increasingly uphill battle, most Americans still believe that it is entirely up to individuals to exercise restraint and good judgment. If you find yourself surrounded by twice as many candy bars, just say “no” twice as often and you’ll be fine.

Unfortunately, due to the limitations of our individualistic minds, this task is not so simple. Saying “no” to temptation on one occasion makes us much more likely to indulge in unhealthy behavior subsequently, in part because the mental exercise depletes our brains of glucose (see research on self-regulation; eating & smoking; glucose & resisting temptation). Choose the apple over the cookie for lunch and you’re more likely to order a latte during your coffee break.

If this sounds unconvincing, try putting yourself in the shoes of someone who works at two low-paying jobs, struggling to make ends meet, and living in a poor neighborhood with a plethora of fast food restaurants, snack food-laden convenience stores, and no supermarkets. This person is already under cognitive overload from the various decisions and compromises that he or she needs to make to survive, and yet we expect this same person to make informed and healthy choices at the end of the day when faced with a wall of 2-liter soda bottles to bring home at 99¢ apiece.

As if self-control limitations weren’t enough of an obstacle, people also face ever-increasing difficulties in choosing long-term health over short-term indulgence. The poorly defined, unappreciated, and far-off benefits of long-term outcomes such as good health have to be weighed constantly against the immediate, concrete, and salient rewards of short-term behaviors such as eating sugary, fatty foods. True, each of us is responsible for deciding whether to sacrifice instant gratification (e.g., forgoing a huge slice of cheesecake) in order to benefit from good health and longevity in the long-run, but how many such decisions must we confront? In the past, there were fewer tradeoffs to make, because there were fewer opportunities to indulge. Unhealthful foods were less available, were priced more as luxuries than as commonplace items, and were offered in smaller portions. In today’s food environment, the short-term rewards have exploded in number, and these are pitted against the same few long-term benefits. So now, instead of deciding once a day whether I can afford to eat a bar of chocolate, I have to make this decision many times over. Online, at the vending machine, at the grocery store, and on the street, it is up to me to ignore the ads for fast food, the cookies and chips, the bottles of soda, and the smell of fried chicken and hamburgers. In the past, my one successful daily attempt at avoiding temptation may have sufficed in preserving my state of health. In today’s toxic food environment, several rounds of successful resistance may be inadequate in compensating for the long-term costs (e.g., diabetes, heart disease) of the few times we give in to temptation.

Is it fair of us to place the entire burden of healthy decision-making on the shoulders of the individual consumer, even as the food industry makes our environment increasingly unhealthy? Is it fair of us to expect individuals (a) to exercise increasingly monumental and depleting efforts at self-control and (b) to make ever more decisions that place short-term rewards at odds with long-term benefits?

When the environment is at fault, we need to clean it up.

People for the Ethical Treatment of the Obese

2009-09-24T13:46:36-04:00

by Andrea Wilson

Recently PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) posted a billboard in Jacksonville, Florida which read, “Save the Whales, Lose the Blubber: Go Vegetarian.” The organization has come under fire for the use of sexist, homophobic, transphobic, and racist messaging in its campaigns to protect animals. PETA employees have one-upped themselves this time with their blatant stigmatization of overweight and obese people.

PETA, the largest animal rights organization globally, “focuses its attention on the four areas in which the largest numbers of animals suffer the most intensely for the longest periods of time: on factory farms, in laboratories, in the clothing trade, and in the entertainment industry.” In this case they attempted to reduce animal suffering through the promotion of vegetarianism/veganism (AKA veg*nism) for health reasons, an understandable strategy.

As a self-identified “healthy vegan,” I am well aware of the health benefits of nutritious, plant-based food and advocate for healthy veg*nism on the basis of well-being and weight management. Veg*nism benefits the health of animals, people, and the earth. PETA claims to be the leading organization focusing on the first, but is furthering one cause worth hindering another? How does preventing or ending cruelty to animals translate into adding to cruelty to humans through stigmatization of overweight and obese people? I don’t expect PETA to actively work to prevent or reverse weight stigma, but I find it appalling to become a part of the problem.

I expect a group such as veg*ns, like those at PETA, who experience so much stigma to understand the challenges of other marginalized groups and not play a part in the intersectionality of oppression, while hurting the cause they are attempting to advance. Oppressing people, including the obese, is never justifiable. The consequences of weight stigma are severe. Stigmatization is an ineffective weight-loss strategy, threatens physical and emotional health, and contributes to overeating/unhealthy eating.

After much criticism, PETA begrudgingly replaced the billboard with one reading, “Gone: Just like all the pounds lost by people who go vegetarian.” Instead of acknowledging the damage the billboard caused, PETA President and Co-Founder Ingrid Newkirk attempted to defend their decision to post the billboard. Her “defense” dug their grave deeper: “Only three percent of the population has a medical condition that genuinely prevents them from losing weight. The rest of the obese people hiding behind them are obese because they shovel in food and haven't a clue (or don't want to have a clue) about a healthy diet.”

If PETA employees are actually concerned about obesity (which I doubt), I recommend that they spend their time on effective, non-stigmatizing macro- or micro-level obesity prevention that advocates for a veg*n diet. Acknowledge that obesity is not solely a matter of personal responsibility and change the food landscape by getting schools, grocery stores, work places, and health care settings to offer more healthy vegan options. Continue outreach and education, but change the method and the message. Stop bullying people into veg*nism. Put away the vinegar and attract many more people to veg*nism with honey (or a vegan sweetener like agave nectar).

To learn more about PETA’s cruelty to people, visit L.O.V.E. – Living Opposed to Violence and Oppression and Vegans Against PETA.

School Lunch for Health

2009-09-23T11:12:54-04:00

by Meredith St John

Obesity accounts for $147 billion in health care spending per annum. This now oft-repeated figure has shifted the national conversation to the need for a more preventive approach to health. In his New York Times op-ed, Big Food vs. Big Insurance, Michael Pollan discussed reform in the context of health care and the food industry at large, saying we need both if we’re going to address chronic disease in America. Pollan touched on insurance company practices, farm subsidies, the agribusiness lobby…and school lunches. If we offered “more fresh produce and fewer Tater Tots” we might just be able to tackle rates of obesity and type 2 diabetes.

Pollan’s suggestion will be topic of conversation come October when Congress is set to review the Child Nutrition Act – the law that governs the National School Lunch Program (NSLP). The program, which provides meals for more than 30 million students every day, has been criticized for serving food and beverages that contribute to increasing rates of childhood obesity, rather than high quality, nutrient-dense meals that promote good nutrition and a healthy weight. Good nutrition is essential for proper growth and development among children and adolescents, and affects many facets of their daily lives, including school performance. We also know that overweight children and adolescents are likely to remain so through adulthood. Eating habits are established in childhood and can be quite difficult to change later in life, so ideally schools would model exemplary behavior.

The importance of proper nutrition in school meal programs is certainly recognized by Ellen Gustafson and Lauren Bush, co-founders of FEED Projects. Their organization supports UN World Food Programme (WFP) school feeding operations around the world through profits generated from their collection of FEED bags (n.b. they have donated more than 50 million meals since 2007). In a recent conversation with Gustafson, she talked about micronutrients for brain development in children and how significantly school meal programs improve cognitive function, citing the success of programs in Chile. When probed about her work with malnourished children in the developing world and how she views the obesity epidemic at home, Gustafson stressed that this “unbelievable dichotomy” is something FEED aims to address. “If the program (NSLP) we have is making people sick, then we have to work on our own system,” she said.

To date, FEED Projects have focused their efforts on developing nations, but American initiatives are slated for later this year. They hope to help correct the global food system imbalance through creative policy solutions, and creative design. Last week they launched their newest bag, the FEED/READ 3 tote bag available at Barnes & Noble. One tote ($24.99) provides one child with three meals and three local language books. FEED Projects’ work is particularly relevant in light of recent news from the WFP agency: the number of hungry people will pass one billion this year for the first time, and the WFP is facing budget shortages.

Budget considerations will also be topical when Congress reviews the NSLP – as it stands, Tater Tots are a lot cheaper than fresh produce. If giving children a healthy start and preventing disease is the goal, then globally, school meal programs are certainly a good investment.

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To show your support for NSLP reform, sign the Slow Food petition. And if you’d like to help children internationally as well, purchase a FEED bag to support WFP school feeding operations.

http://www.feedprojects.org/

Applause for the American Heart Association

2009-09-10T10:38:34-04:00

by Kathy Henderson

I just read through the American Heart Association’s (AHA) Scientific Statement on dietary sugars intake and cardiovascular health – kudos to the AHA!

The report states very clearly that added sugar should make up no more than 50% of a person’s discretionary calories, which are the number of calories an individual has to spend on “extras” after meeting basic nutritional requirements (read more about discretionary calories here). This translates into approximately 100 calories per day for women and 150 calories for men. (As a side note, applause for highlighting recommended limits on discretionary calories).

Finally a firm and concrete stance on sugar – no waffling with the “everything in moderation” motto. One additional piece I’d like to have seen in the statement is clear examples of what 100 or 150 calories of added sugar amounts to. I think most readers would be very surprised. U.S. News and World report has helpfully detailed some examples, such as baked beans (15 grams in a one-cup serving) and ketchup (12 grams in just a quarter-cup). To calculate added sugar for yourself, just remember that 1 gram of sugar equals 4 calories, so the limit for women would be 25 grams, or 6 teaspoons, of sugar (37 ½ grams or 9 teaspoons for men).

I would have liked to have seen the AHA set recommended sugar limits specifically for children…perhaps coming soon?

Lunch Time Activist

2009-09-09T15:20:09-04:00

by Meredith St John

Slow Food USA’s National Day of Action was a huge success. More than 20,000 people attended the 300 Eat-Ins (“part potluck, part sit-in”) held across America this Monday to show they want Congress to reform the Child Nutrition Act. Slow Food’s petition was signed by 30,000 plus people in an effort to “get real food into schools and show our legislators we want them to take action.”

If you missed the official Day of Action, sign the petition online.

The Media’s Complicit Role in Fueling Weight Stigma

2009-09-08T12:53:12-04:00

by Rebecca Puhl

Time Magazine recently highlighted a new study by Salvy and colleagues, which suggested that obesity can be contagious in children. The study examined 130 children (ages 9-15) who were provided with foods to snack on while they hung out with a friend or an unfamiliar peer. All of the children, regardless of their weight, ate more food when they were with their friends, than with the child they did not know. However, overweight children ate the most when paired with overweight friends, leading the authors to theorize that obesity can be contagious.

A similar finding among adults appeared a couple of years ago in a different study by Christakis and colleagues, which suggested that obesity is promoted through social networks. I blogged about this after multiple stigmatizing headlines for articles on the study emerged in the press (e.g., “Find yourself packing it on? Blame friends” or “Latest Diet Advice: Don’t Hang Around with Fat People”).

With both of these studies, the complexity of the causes of obesity is at risk of becoming simplified and prone to stigmatizing messages by the media. Instead of acknowledging the complexities of establishing a cause and effect relationship between obesity and social networks (e.g., children and adults often seek out friends who share many similar characteristics besides weight, such as race, age, religion, political orientation, etc.), we end up seeing unfortunate headlines that tend to blame obese individuals even more for things that are caused by an unhealthy food environment. As with the Time headline “You Are Who You Eat With,” I have concerns that history may repeat itself, this time fueling stigma toward overweight youth.

Dr. Salvy, the lead author of this recent study in children, warns that her findings do not indicate that youth should stop having overweight friends, and that stigma and shame toward obese peers have damaging social consequences. Interestingly, other research by Dr. Salvy has found that overweight children actually eat significantly more calories when they are alone, compared to when they're in the company of peers. My worry is that these equally important messages are being lost. The blame and stigma associated with obesity, particularly among youth (who are already extremely vulnerable to stigmatization and its negative consequences), are simply being reinforced. The focus should be on changing the environmental conditions that have created obesity in the first place.

More to Love Leaves Much to Be Desired

2009-08-25T15:37:14-04:00

by Meghan O'Connell

In a recent Rudd Center blog entry, Chelsea Heuer discussed the latest reality TV craze and asked: “Is it about time that overweight people have presence on T.V.? Or do these (reality) shows perpetuate weight-based stereotypes and add to the weight prejudice that is already plentiful in the media?” After watching a recent episode of Fox TV’s latest dating competition More to Love, I think I have my answer.

It's both interesting and promising that the networks have decided to feature average people, who are not necessarily thin (nor tall, with flawless skin, glamorous hair, etc.) on primetime TV, but I doubt if this show will do anything to challenge stereotypes about overweight individuals.

More to Love follows a throng of single, “plus size” women, all competing for the attention (and ultimately the love) of one man. The man in the bachelor role is also overweight (which wasn’t necessary), and is portrayed as physically strong, successful in his career and financially well-off, friendly, confident, affectionate, and romantic. Many of the women (who were presumably interviewed and hand-selected for the role), however, are portrayed as desperate, jealous, crude, excessively shy, clingy, or mentally unstable.

The women are filmed sharing stories of being rejected by men because of their weight, and the hurt feelings that resulted. They are given a chance to talk about the prejudice they have faced as overweight people, which should be a positive thing for the audience to be exposed to. But the program fails to capture enough of their personalities to show that they are interesting people with families, careers, friends, interests, and talents that make them who they are. Instead, the focus is only on their weight (which is actually displayed on the screen!), and their desperate, all consuming desire for a romantic relationship.

It is refreshing to see obese women on primetime TV, and on a major network. But in the future I hope to see a more representative group of “average” overweight people, engaged in positive activities. Reality TV may not be the best vehicle for promoting fat acceptance, but hopefully these shows will pave the way for positive portrayal of overweight people across TV genres.