American Obesity Rates Hit Plateau

According to data released on Wednesday from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, American obesity rates have remained constant for at least 5 years for men and about 10 years for rates of obese women and children.

That's not to say the numbers aren't high, though. An estimated 34 percent of American adults are obese, which is more than double the percent thirty years ago. Perhaps scarier, during the past thirty years, the percent of obese children tripled to 17 percent.

Though Dr. William H Dietz of CDC calls the data "promising" and credited the plateau to increased awareness of obesity, he is careful to note that we can't congratulate ourselves jut yet. In a New York Times article, he says, "I don't think we have in place the kind of policy or environmental changes needed to reverse the epidemic just yet."

Dr. Ludwig, the director of the Optimal Weight for Life program at Children's Hospital Boston also stresses that a leveling off is not a free pass to drop the ball on working to prevent obesity. "Until we see numbers improving, not just staying the same, we can't have any confidence that our lifestyle has improved." He even goes so far as to suggest we may have reached a "biological limit" for obesity.

Hm...

I just find it amazing that for a country so obsessed with thinness, we have such high rates of overweight and obesity. I wish my program offered more opportunities to study the psychological aspect. I guess that would be a whole separate degree though. Sometimes I think if it weren't for being so interested in clinical nutrition, I'd focus more on public health and/or food studies. Time for everything, I suppose.

Calorie Counts are Frequently Off

Overall, as I've said many times, I tend to be a fan of calorie labeling in restaurants and other eating establishments because I think they motivate people to think a little more closely about what they want to "spend" their calories on the way we also consider what to spend our dollars on. I've also expressed that I worry that some people could become a little obsessed (who likely would look up calorie content online even if it weren't posted on a menu), and unfortunately, this bit from Time isn't going to help anyone chill out.

Susan Roberts, professor at Tufts, along with Jean Mayer of Tufts' USDA Nutrition Research Center on Aging decided to analyze an array of restaurant and frozen food items, taking care to select the ones dieters might be most likely to reach for. Sure enough, the calorie counts posted on labels and menus were off by as much as 18% for restaurant foods and 8% for frozen foods.

I think the main thing I would take away from the article is that even when an item is said to contain a certain number of calories, your best bet is really to listen to the cues your body sends you. Eating when you're hungry and stopping when you're full, for most people (myself included), sounds simpler than it is in practice, but mindful eating is something to work towards.

For a laugh, you could try practicing on a raisin. The Center for Mindful Eating is a really interesting organization, and their website is worth checking out. You might also want to read this post I wrote last summer for Five Seasons Healing, an acupuncture practice in Union Square.

Takeout or Frozen Meal?

When it comes to lunch at your desk or dinner on a busy or late night, what's a better choice—takeout or a frozen "diet" meal? I don't know about you, but when I was first living on my own at 20, I subsisted mainly on Amy's organic meals and other heat-and-eat dishes. I was so clueless in the kitchen...

In their February 2010 issue, Consumer Reports takes a look at frozen entrees from companies such as Weight Watchers, Lean Cuisine, Kashi, and Healthy Choice.

What they mainly found was that these meals taste pretty good but tend to be too small—many clock in at 300 calories or less. However the magazine points out that this provides a good opportunity for consumers to add vegetables and fruits to balance out the dish. Another downside was that a lot of these frozen items pack a lot of sodium, with 800 mg being a pretty typical amount, though 600 mg is considered a reasonable amount for someone taking in the recommended 2,300 mg or less per day.

Still, Consumer Report considers a frozen entree a much better option than takeout because of their automatic portion control—especially a plus for people trying to monitor their weight in a healthy manner.

Lucky Foods for New Years

Hope you've got some great New Years plans lined up. Since I live way too close to Times Square, I am chilling in for the evening and instead going out tomorrow night. Chris and I are cooking up a nice dinner using recipes from the cookbooks we got for Christmas alongside some old favorites.

On the menu:

*Mixed greens with roasted beets, sliced pear, toasted walnuts, and maybe blue cheese in a balsamic vinaigrette
*Roasted garlic, served with roasted peppers, hummus, and whole wheat flatbread
*Vegetable antipasto—lots of roasted and grilled vegetables, served with olives and feta
*Sesame soy slaw, made with brussel sprouts, sesame oil, ginger, soy sauce and red onion
*Lentil-stuffed peppers

Jury's still out on dessert. We have a lot of sweets we were given over the holiday, so we'll probably use those in some capacity. I also have diet gingerale and Prosecco on hand.

Did you know that in some cultures, certain foods are considered lucky to eat on New Years Eve? For example, greens are supposedly an auspicious thing to chew on since they look like money and are said to attract the green stuff in the coming year. Legumes like beans, peas and lentils are also said to symbolize money. I guess it's good that our New Years meal involves a lot of both.

Some other lucky eats? Pork and fish—but not lobster. According to this article, lobster is considered a decidedly unlucky thing to eat since lobsters move backwards and could lead to setbacks. Good to know.

Happy New Year!

And please, please, please—whatever resolutions you choose to make, remember to be kind to yourself!

Diet Drinks

As I sit here typing this, I am sipping a tall glass of diet pepsi leftover from our party Friday night (I'm shocked it's still fizzy, like, four days later). While I cut way back on diet soda about a year ago, it's been hard for me to avoid it recently, thanks to finals and needing to stay awake through marathon group study sessions. Sure, it's better than cocaine, but it makes me a little dizzy to think of all the weird chemicals I've taken in over the past three weeks.

This entry on Washington Post blog The Checkup reminded me of some of the reasons I am not such a fan of diet sodas. While so far, scientific studies have shown that artificial sweeteners don't appear to pose cancer risks, there is some speculation that they mess with our perception and processing of real sugar.

David Ludwig of Children's Hospital Boston suggests that diet drinks, with their lack of nutrients and intensely sweet flavors may condition us to be less satisfied by naturally-sweet, nutrient-rich foods like fruits as well as the non-sweet flavors of vegetables, legumes, and the like. This could cause some people to make unhealthy choices, often replacing those calories absent from the drinks with other sources. Being able to associate sweetness with caloric intake is one of the internal cues that may be subdued by excess consumption of diet drinks. I guess only time and long-term studies of the effects of diet drinks will tell for sure.

A sundae is a beautiful thing once in a while, and with a balanced diet, you can easily work in the occasional treat, but it's no substitute for a vitamin-packed piece of fruit—or a meal. I am totally talking to my 19-year-old self here, who was known to eat ice cream with cereal for dinner when the dining hall was having an off-night, which happened pretty often. Glad I learned how to cook.

Champagne is the New Red Wine

Good news! According to a recent British Study, a glass of champagne delivers as many health benefits as red wine and chocolate.

Researcher Dr. Jeremy Spencer of Reading University found that it contains the same polyphenol antioxidants, which help promote heart health by slowing down the removal of nitric oxide from the blood, thus lowering blood pressure. Cheaper alternatives to champagne such as cava and Prosecco also contain these antioxidants.

Says Dr. Spencer, "We have found that a couple of glasses a day has a beneficial effect on the walls of blood vessels – which suggests champagne has the potential to reduce strokes and heart disease."

I'm not sure if the guidelines are different in the UK, but here, women are advised to stick to one drink a day and men to two, but hey, I'm always happy to have a reason to drink champagne. I don't drink very often, so when I do, I like it to be something really good!

Consumers Crave All-Day Breakfast

Living in New York, I think I take it for granted that if I really want, I can get an egg-white omelet or a belgian waffle or oatmeal any time of day or night I want. Unfortunately, not everyone is so lucky.

There are, naturally, many people who would like to be able to get breakfast all the time. According to recent restaurant surveys, nearly half of US consumers report wanting full-service restaurants to offer breakfast fare all day and about a third would like limited-service restaurants to do the same.

As noted in Technomic's "Breakfast Consumer Trend Report," consumers in general find breakfast food comforting, but women are even more into the idea of being able to get breakfast at lunch and dinner. I guess I can see that.

Also interesting, apparently the purchase of breakfast sandwiches is on the rise. I don't know why I find this so interesting or amusing exactly...maybe because I've always thought of, like, bacon-egg-and-cheese-type breakfasts as hangover food (at least for me, though it's fortunately been a long, long time...).

Even though you could joke that a lot more people are probably drinking a lot because the economy sucks, I think it's also true that a savory breakfast is very comforting and makes people feel like they're getting a good, solid start to their day. I guess you could also say that in times like these, you need to feel like you're getting off on the right foot in at least some respect.

It could also be, too, that breakfast tends to be cheaper than other meals.

Over the weekend, I had a discussion with someone who remarked on how America is perhaps the only country where "the poor are fatter than the rich."

I don't know if we're the only country where those with a lower income tend to have a higher body mass index, but it interesting to think about why this is.

About one in eight people in the US are on food stamps, a quarter of them children, and living off of roughly three dollars a day. That doesn't make it easy to cover one's basic nutritional needs, which causes many people to fill up on cheap, high-calorie foods with little nutritional value.

It seems unfair that foods people really need cost so much. I mean, I spent two bucks on a container of strawberries yesterday, and that's considered a bargain in New York! In a lot of ways, it's like an entire population is excluded from the healthy-eating discussion. Yeah, you can tell someone to eat salmon to get their omega-3s, but a 6-ounce fillet will run you at least five dollars. For someone trying to feed a family on a fixed income, that's just not going to happen.

Stocking up on basics like brown rice and dried beans is a good start, but we have to get more information out there and work to make it more possible to eat well on a budget. I totally sound like an idealist, but it could happen...

Here's an article about the challenges of being on a "food-stamp diet."

McMona Lisa

I know it was announced a few weeks ago, but I'm still not over the fact that the Louvre is going to install a McDonald's in the basement food court of the famous Paris museum.

Even though there are already a few small food establishments and a shopping mall down there, I can't but help like this is just a bit much...

While this article does go into a few ways in which the French McDonald's is slightly more gourmet than the one we know and love (to hate) in the US, I don't know...Call me old-fashioned, but I feel like the Louvre should be one of those sacred McDonald's-free zones.

Image courtesy of Boggle

In a country where overnutrition and obesity are starting to seem like the norm, it's quite a wake-up call to remember that a billion people in the world still go hungry. It's pretty imbalanced that in the US, we produce more food than we need, yet in many developing countries, people are starving because of a shortage of food.

Here's an article from today's Times about what's being done to address the issue, including the challenges anticipated.

Another Look at Calorie Labeling

In this Atlantic article from October 8, author Corby Kummer takes another look at the initial results of New York's calorie-labeling laws by calling into question some of the methods and timing of the study written about in the New York Times article, which offered up a pretty dim outlook.

He points out that the study was perhaps conducted too soon and on too small and specific a population to give a clear idea of whether the laws have had much of a positive impact. In discussing some of the pros and cons of the laws, he also brings up the fact that some companies, in addition to posting the calorie content of their foods, have also begun to reformulate some of their recipes in an attempt to lower calories.

"Public health," he said, "is about protecting the whole public, not any subset, even if underserved and strongly affected subsets are of course its frequent focus. It's about making society safer and healthier."

I tend to agree with that. I find it interesting, though not in a good way, that so much research focuses only on low-income populations. While data shows that these populations do show the highest incidences of obesity and related health conditions, it's just one piece of a much larger societal puzzle, the way that calorie labeling is just one corner of a very big picture.

Junk Food Habits—starting early

Last night, I was having a conversation with someone from Sweden about the differences she's noticed in the way people eat in the U.S. versus Sweden, and—surprise, surprise—she told me that whenever she goes home, even if she's still eating favorite treats, she loses weight.

"It's so hard for me to eat healthy here!" she said, griping about how hard unhealthy foods are pushed and how she feels like stores go out of their way to steer you away from the good stuff.

While I've never been to Sweden, I definitely agree that healthy foods are sort of marginalized here and made into these, like, luxury items, even though there are plenty of healthy foods like sweet potatoes and oatmeal and beans and lentils and such that are actually very inexpensive. The thing is, Americans have been programmed in recent years to think that eating healthy costs a lot of money.

This Times article looks at a study that was published in the journal Pediatrics of about 800 low-income Philadelphia school-children ages fourth grade to sixth grade who were able to buy about 400 calories worth of snacks with just the dollar and change in their pocket. Some of the most common snacks were candy (Sour Patch Kids, Peanut Chews) in the morning on the way to school, and chips after school—foods that are high in calories but almost totally lacking in nutritional value.

We start 'em young here, I guess. Maybe I was born an old lady, but my favorite after school snack used to be an apple with peanut butter. Cereal was another go-to. It still is. I guess I did like Fruit Roll-Ups and Fruit-by-the-Foot and Gushers when I was younger because "everybody else" was eating them and they were all over TV. At least those things were fortified with vitamin C, if just barely...

What's it going to take for people to stop equating "healthy" with "boring" and "expensive?" That's not the kind of attitude we should be passing down to our children.

Eating a Mediterranean Diet May Stave Off Depression

As many of you know, I'm a big fan of the Mediterranean diet, which is rich in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, and fish and includes moderate amounts of olive oil, wine, and low-fat dairy.

I now have another reason to add to my list of why more people should adopt this eating style.

According to a recent Spanish study, people who followed a Mediterranean were less likely to develop depression. And I don't mean simply marginally less likely—we're talking a 42-51% decrease in risk. Dr. Miguel A. Martinez-Gonzaler, a co-author of the study, is calling this a "very strong association."

He goes on, though, to make the distinction that while the Mediterranean diet may be a great help in preventing depression, that patients currently dealing with depression seek the proper psychiatric care that they need.

While this diet regimen has long been prescribed to improve cardiovascular health, perhaps soon doctors could be recommending it to patients at risk for depression.

Read more here.

Teaching Schools to Care

Today on her blog, Food Politics, Marion Nestle described a recent tour she took of a few schools in the New York area

Her conclusion: "School food can be really good, even in poor neighborhoods, if everyone involved cares about it. Can we teach schools to care? Of course we can."

She also references an article that ran in the Times on October 2nd about how local schools are banning bake sales as part of a new wellness policy that also limits what can be sold in vending machines.

I think that in some ways, children are the most susceptible to the intense marketing of unhealthy foods. I'm in favor of these restrictions. Doritos and Snickers bars are not going to give students the fuel they need to perform. Plus, eating a real meal makes it easier to stay awake during class. Schools are a really great place to begin reinforcing the importance—and benefits–of making positive choices.

Maybe if people stopped talking so much in terms of enforcing restrictions and instead using language that emphasizes the inclusion of more healthy foods it might foster a more upbeat attitude. Rather than focus on what you're giving up, focus on the good things you're embracing.

When An Unlucky Hamburger Changes Everything

On the front of today's New York Times is an article about a woman who was paralyzed from the waist down in 2007 after eating a hamburger tainted with E. coli. I'm not going to go on an anti-beef rant here, but it is worth taking into consideration that ground beef alone has been responsible for a reported 16 outbreaks in the past three years. And this past summer, according to this article, ground beef had to be recalled from over 3,000 grocery stores in 41 states. Un-f-ing-acceptable.

While vegetables are not immune to contamination (remember the E. coli in spinach incident or the Salmonella outbreak in peanut butter last winter?), stories like this one really do make a good case for limiting the amount of meat you consume. True, a consumer can take steps to prepare food in a safe manner, but if the store is selling you a tainted product, there's really nothing you can do. And yes, if your number is up, your number is up. However, you can potentially turn the odds in your favor by not playing the game as often.

And try to educate yourself because, clearly, the food companies really aren't looking out for you. They just want to sell their product, and sometimes maintaining clean and sanitary facilities is not a priority. Stories like this make me so mad because this young woman should not be in this position.

Ugh, sorry, that is a total rant. I just find this stuff so sad. I can only imagine how this girl's mother feels—she's the one who cooked the aforementioned unlucky hamburger. She was just trying to feed her family, and look what happened. Not fair.

Here's a little more info included with the article about how various companies handle their beef to help prevent outbreak.

Quinoa

Getting over the pronunciation is the hard part. Quinoa ("keen-wah") is the seed of a leafy plant grown for centuries in the Andes that cooks like a seed and tastes like a nut. That should totally be its slogan!

One of the best things about quinoa is that it is a complete protein, which means it contains all nine of the essential amino acids and can serve as a great substitute for eggs, meat and cheese in a vegetarian or vegan diet. It's also great for those with gluten intolerance and scores a 35 on the glycemic index, making it a good choice for diabetics. It's also high in iron, magnesium, and riboflavin and low in fat and calories.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette recently posted an article about the increase in quinoa sales and the slow path toward acceptance and mainstream-ness. Quinoa only recently (as in, within the past 40 years) became available in the U.S., and while many consumers have been both baffled by and curious about it, they have been hesitant to embrace it, mostly due to poor preparation.

This article both describes how many chefs and restaurant owners use and experiment with it, and it even includes a few great-looking recipes at the end!

I think I have a box hiding somewhere in the back of my cupboard. Maybe it's time to try this thing again...

Soda Tax Could Raise Money and Shrink Waistlines

I wasn't sure at first what to think about the soda tax—in some way, it seemed like a way to inconvenience people out of buying sugary drinks. And by that, I mean sneaky instead of addressing the fundamental issues behind Americans' overconsumption of soda.

I think I'm in favor of it, though. Food companies have just kept giving people bigger and bigger portions, selling empty calories as a "good value." In the short term, perhaps it is better to simply discourage people from buying soda by putting a high tax on it—a penny per ounce, to be specific.

An article that ran on September 16th on Bloomberg.com discussed some of the benefits of the soda tax. According to an article in the New England Journal of Medicine, this could raise $14.9 billion dollars in the first year and cutting a person's daily calorie intake by at least 10%. Not too shabby. Thinking about it, my dad once cut soda out of his diet without making any other changes and lost, like, four pounds right away.

What I'm curious about it what will be done with those $14.9 billion. I'd love to see it go into, say, a campaign to educate consumers about how to eat a healthy diet.

On a semi-related front, I decided yesterday while sipping a can of diet pepsi at 9 a.m. waiting for a lecture to begin, that I need to reign it back in. This summer, I got back into drinking diet I'm drinking, it creeps me out. And I could totally save the money I spend each week on pre-class caffeine fixes to buy, like, one really good drink at some point later in the week. Now that the weather is getting cooler, my usual green tea is a lot more appealing!

USDA Describes Organic Foods as "Increasingly Mainstream"

When you look in your fridge, chances are, you see at least something with "organic" on the packaging somewhere, am I right?

Last year, organic food accounted for more than three percent of US food sales, and according to the Organic Trade Association, organic food sales grew at a much faster rate in 2008 than general US food sales, which grew by 4.9 percent during the year – or about a third as much as organics.

The USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service said: “Organic products have shifted from being a lifestyle choice for a small share of consumers to being consumed at least occasionally by a majority of Americans.”

Though organic foods are still much more expensive and there are general trends to be noticed in terms of who's buying organic, overall, there are more and more people across the board purchasing organic foods. USDA went so far as to say that organic consumers have become "increasingly mainstream."

Does this mean that soon it's going to be ironic to eat, like, twinkies? Oh wait...

Read more here...

Another New York Times Piece

In a July 29th article, former New York Times food critic Frank Bruni explores the awkward, nerve-wracking territory parents encounter when it comes to their children's eating habits. Anyone interested in the communication between parents and children about healthy eating, especially as childhood obesity continues to be a concern, should find this interesting. Of course, how do you promote healthy messages without setting the stage for an eating disorder?

An excerpt:

What’s the best course for today’s parent, in a society where fast-food come-ons drown out Alice Waters, and models no thicker than swizzle sticks still rule fashion magazines?

“We get nutrition advice, but that’s not the same as eating advice,” said Rebecca Saidenberg, a Manhattan mother of a 16-year-old girl, referring to child-rearing tips. She said that as her daughter went through puberty, she worked particularly hard to encourage healthy habits — balanced meals, restrained portions — in the hopes of minimizing the chances of a weight problem that might follow her daughter through life.

At the same time, Ms. Saidenberg wanted to push back against “a trend of treating food like medicine.”

“I don’t like that,” she said. “There are a lot of psychological pleasures that come from sitting at a table and enjoying a meal.” She doesn’t want her daughter deprived of those.

So she didn’t despair when the teenager recently returned from a summer trip to Italy during which, it was clear, the joys of gelato were fully explored. But she did get herself and her daughter a membership at a local gym, where they go together.

In my conversations with Ms. Saidenberg and other parents, I was struck by just how much thought they had given to coaxing their children toward sensible eating and away from extreme indulgence or self-denial. They clearly saw that as a parental responsibility akin to giving a child a first-rate education.

But their prescriptions and beliefs diverged, illustrating the elusiveness of a ready consensus about what’s most effective.

If you haven't had a chance, check out Bruni's piece about his own issues with food and disordered eating here in his piece, "I Was A Baby Bulimic" from July. He also has a memoir called Born Round that sounds pretty interesting.

Feed the Artist

As I was passing through Union Square Park on my way to work this morning, I saw a cardboard sign in my path that said: DUDE! I need food!

There was a small painting of the same size a few feet away. I'm not sure if the painting and the sign were related, but it made me want to look around for the artist of the painting and/or the sign.

I never know whether to offer money or food to people begging (vocally or with signage), but this sign kind of made me want to hand something over. This morning, though, the cynic in me said, "Eh, it's probably some artist dude who came up with the idea for the sign over PBRs with his buddies in Bushwick last night."

The painting was pretty good though. I always say that one day when I have money, I'll buy art from people on the street, since it's usually more interesting to me than stuff I see in galleries, but that day seems really freaking far away.