Remember the proposed soda tax? The added penny per fluid ounce, generating $50 billion in funds to combat obesity in the next 10 years?

Well, forget about it.

Never mind obesity. To hell with diabetes.

The beverage industry needs to grow its bottom line, and no one is going to to tax its products. Certainly not a bunch of do gooders on behalf of the “nanny-state”.

You see, in this great democracy called America, money votes. And through a series of contributions and investments of the American Beverage Association, the proposed tax has been all but buried.

In a saddening-as-much-as-it-is-enlightening article in the Los Angeles Times, the money trail is revealed. A series of well planned moves by beverage industry lobbyists included:

1. Discrediting researchers from Yale and UCLA who linked soft drink consumption with obesity.

2. Funding of research that showed no relationship between soft drink consumption and obesity. The researchers are or have been on the payroll of the beverage industry at one time.

3. Contribution to Hispanic organizations. Reasoning: the soda tax will hit the poor the most. Hispanic groups are now against the tax, despite diabetes hitting Latino youths especially hard.

4. A $10 million Ad campaign aired on prime time and playing on chords of hard working moms not needing to pay extra in these tough times.

5. Enlisting the aid of other industries in order to thwart the tax:

“The industries in our coalition realized that this is a slippery slope, that once government reaches into the grocery cart, your business could be next,” said Kevin Keane, senior vice president, public affairs, for the American Beverage Assn.

6. A big bribe (north of $600,000) to the American Academy of Family Physicians, to be used to underwrite “educational materials to help consumers make informed decisions.”

What you need to know:

Make no mistake, soda pop and sweetened beverages are a major contributing factor to obesity. The price poor people are paying for their soda now is minuscule compared to their health expenses 10 or 20 years down the road.  Unfortunately, there is no ANTI-Beverage-Association with deep pockets to coordinate a counter offensive.

As long as companies externalize the true cost of their products, gullible consumers will choose cheap and sweet satisfaction now, with heart disease and heartache down the road. This must end, but as you can see, there are no effective mechanisms, even at government levels, to stave off the power of corporate lobbies.

And with the recent supreme court decision to allow unlimited campaign contribution by companies to our politicians, you can rest assured Washington DC will NOT make an effort to change things.

What to do at the supermarket:

If you want to impact change, stop buying liquid calories. Switch to tap water. Switch your whole family. Switch as many of your friends and neighbors as you can to do the same. You’ll save money, you’ll save your health.

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The best kept secret in the food industry is its liberal use of the definition of a serving size. You’d think a serving size should reflect what the average person consumes, but it seems that many manufacturers are selling their products to smurfs, not humans. How else can you explain exactly 11 potato chips or half a cup of ice cream counting as a serving?

The FDA, it appears, is calling the bluff, and according to the New York Times,

is now looking at bringing serving sizes for foods like chips, cookies, breakfast cereals and ice cream into line with how Americans really eat. Combined with more prominent labeling, the result could be a greater sense of public caution about unhealthy foods. Read more…

The NY Times article also include four graphic examples of how wrong serving sizes distort people’s perception of the calories they will actually consume.

What you need to know:

The serving size is a regulated term required for presentation on the nutrition facts panel of packaged foods and beverages. The Nutrition Labeling and Education Act (NLEA) of the early 90’s mandated manufacturers to state the serving size of a product in both measurable amount (grams, fluid ounces, etc..) and consumer graspable terms (2 cookie, half a cup, 1 doughnut). The actual quantity of product per serving is based on outdated consumer surveys, before the era of super-sized meals, big-gulp drinks, and a-pint-at-a-sitting ice creams.

Many companies take advantage of this loophole to literally trick consumers into thinking they’ll be consuming less calories than what they actually do. Here’s a fun trick when you want to create a 100 calorie snack out of a 150 calorie serving – reduce the serving size from 3 to 2 cookies. Genius!

Most annoying are the single serving products that end up actually containing more than a single serving. For example – vending machine soft drinks that come in 20 fl oz bottle meant for a single person to consume, but actually composed of two and a half servings! Duane Reade’s potato chips single serve bag state that there are only 100 calories per serving. Careful examination shows a discrepancy where the serving is defined as 1 oz, but the bag is one an one third ounces, adding 34 more calories to the deal.

If the FDA does take action on this issue, it will be a godsend. We recently published a list of Ten fixes the FDA can require for nutrition labels, such as  getting rid of the silly health claims and stating amount of ADDED sugar. Out #1 request was for proper indication of serving sizes.

What to do at the supermarket:

It’s not enough to check the calorie count per serving, you also need to make sure the serving size suggested by the manufacturer is what you really intend to consume. Be on the lookout especially with snacks and soft drinks, where the empty calories can easily double or triple before you even stop for your first breath of air.

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The single biggest day for for avocado is Superbowl Sunday. Avocado is a super food, providing you with heart healthy mono-unsaturated fats, just 250 calories and vitamins A, C, E, the B vitamins, as well as fiber and potassium.

You can scoop it from the skin using a spoon straight into your mouth. It’s just that good. Squeezing a few drops of lemons juice and a tad of salt make it even better. But for most of us, avocado equals guacamole dip. “Guacamole” is Aztec for “Avocado Sauce”, the original recipe calling for crushed avocado, tomatoes and salt.

Unfortunately today, many people settle for sub-par, store brought guacamole dips, which not only taste like bird droppings, but are also nutritional atrocities. We covered one such bastardization of the term guacamole a few months ago.

Today we’d like to offer you a quick recipe. This guac recipe takes less than a time-out to make and will have you dishing out a super bowl filled with a tasty dip that everyone can dig into with whole grain tortillas.

Ingredients:
6 ripe avocados
2 limes (lemons OK)
2 tomatoes (optional)
A bunch of chives
1 TBSP Dijon mustard (or more, to taste)
cilantro or Italian parsley (not a must)
salt and pepper to taste
Directions:
1. halve the limes.
2. peel and pit the avocados, immediately squeezing 2 lime halves over the the avocado meat to prevent browning. Optionally add the pits to the avocado mass, it seems to repeal the browning process as well.
3. dice two avocados into quarter inch cubes, and crush the rest with the back of a fork. place in in your super bowl.
4. dice the tomatoes. add to bowl.
5. finely dice the chives and cilantro. add to bowl.
6. add the mustard.
7. mix everything with a wooden spoon (or your hands).
8. taste. add salt and pepper (you’ll need a bit less than normal due to the mustard)
9. douse with juice of the second lime and refrigerate till game time.

Enjoy!

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Several days ago, a small New Zealand based company called BioVittoria received an FDA GRAS (generally regarded as safe) status for its “Fruit-Sweetness” brand low-calorie sweetener:

The sweetener is made from Chinese-grown luo han fruit. It is 200 times sweeter than cane sugar and sells for about $450kg, mostly to beverage, food and confectionary manufacturers.

The company expects to process 3000 tonnes of fruit from Miao and Yao hill tribe growers in mountainous areas of Guangxi province, southern China. read more…

The sweetener comes in powder form and can be used in flavors, foods, beverages, gums, baked goods, dietary supplements, powdered drinks, nutritional bars, and chocolates, according to Food Navigator.

What you need to know:

The luo han fruit is also known as Monk Fruit. The sweet components of  the fruit, mogrosides, are naturally very low in calories. When extracted from the fruit and concentrated, the mogrosides are 200-300 times sweeter than sugar, very similar to stevia extracts.

While this is good news for BioVittoria, and may also help Guangxi’s hill tribes, we have a question.

Does the world really need another sweetener?

We already consume too much sweet food. Instead of trying to train our taste buds to enjoy other flavors, we are looking for workarounds that may trick our metabolism.We are so used to extra-sweet, that when we eat a banana or an apple it is suddenly bland and tasteless. No wonder kids who drink chocolate milk for lunch don’t like to eat fruit for dessert.

What to do at the supermarket:

What’s with the sweet tooth people? Grow up and start eating real food. Drink water if you’re thirsty. Sugar and sweeteners should be relegated to special occasions, not every single meal and snack.

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credit: George Burns, Harpo Productions

Today’s episode of Oprah is dedicated to type 2 diabetes. Over 24 million Americans are suffering from diabetes and a staggering 1.6 million are added every year. million of us are “pre-diabetic”, meaning we are on our way to fall off the cliff. This is crazy!

There is a very strong correlation between obesity and diabetes, and that’s why creating good eating habits at a young age is probably your best bet against the disease.

According to USA Today,

Oprah and her health team will encourage viewers to go to their nearest Walgreens pharmacy Friday to get a free blood glucose reading that will tell them whether they could be at risk for type 2 diabetes.

Walgreens is bolstering all its retail locations with nurses and pharmacists who will be on deck to handle as many people as possible.

This is (another) great initiative on Oprah’s part, and some great PR for Walgreens too.

Too bad Walgreens is also a contributor to many people’s obesity and diabetes problems. 100 years ago pharmacies sold medicine, not junk food and soda. Step into a Walgreen’s today and you’ll have to pass through the Snickers and Seven Up before reaching the back of the store to talk with a pharmacist. And waiting for the cashier at the checkout counter, you again have an opportunity to buy some candy.

While we commend Walgreens for the diabetes testing, it would be much braver for them to stop selling junk food altogether. Yeah, right…

What to do at the supermarket:

We will never tire of dishing you this advice – buy less processed foods. Eat more vegetables and fruits. Whole grains. And don’t be tempted to buy (junk) food at places they don’t belong (gas stations, pharmacies, bookstores, and the likes).

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If you’ve ever been on a weight loss diet, you know how difficult it is to stay the course, achieve your target weight, and then maintain it for months and years. The majority of dieters fail to maintain their low weight for over a year.

For many, a diet means a temporary sacrifice and inconvenience in order to reach a certain goal (Weddings, bikini season, etc..). But unlike other one time sacrifices – working as a teen all summer long to save up money to buy a car, or spending 4 years crunching textbooks to get an engineering degree – once you’ve achieved your goal, you’ve got to continue working hard to maintain it.

Jennifer LaRue Huget, Washington Post’s Eat Drink and Be Healthy blogger, has a great piece on a current trend:

…a subtle shift in the diet-guidance market: Instead of prescribing eating regimens, many weight-loss experts are suggesting that we reevaluate our relationship with food, focus on eating healthful whole foods and use psychology to aid our efforts to shed pounds. read more…

What you need to know:

The weight loss industry is a huge business and still growing – close to $70 billion in revenue expected this year alone (compare to $500 billion we spend on groceries). But obviously something is afoul, as the average American is still getting heavier year after year.

A lifestyle change seems like a better approach, because habits are, well, habitual. We get used to doing things a certain way, and then it’s not an effort to continue doing them. For example, getting into the habit of eating whole grain products instead of refined grains. Getting into the habit of drinking only water. Getting used to less salty food over the course of several months through gradual reduction. Ditto for sugar.

We’re not saying that this is easy. If you’ve been drinking pop for 30 years, making it a habit to drink just water is a daunting task. That’s why starting young is a key success factor. If your children equate thirst with water, not juice, that’s a life lesson that will help them manage their weight ten or twenty years down the road (not to mention dentist bills).

Another issue to consider is the role that the food industry is playing in creating good or bad lifestyle choices for us. With snacks getting shoved in front of our faces every which way we turn, it’s so easy to succumb to temptation. Think Doritos and Coke when filling up the minivan, a 400 calorie latte at the bookstore, or even a “healthy” 500 calorie snack at the gym after a workout.

What to do at the supermarket:

For those of us complaining about the high price of healthy foods (fresh fruits and vegetables) here is some interesting math: 72 million Americans are on some sort of diet. They will spend $70B this year on dieting. That works out to almost $1000 per person spent on dieting, on average. Imagine using those $1000 to improve the quality and nutrition of the products you purchase – an extra $20 a week to get more nutrients into your body. And if you kick the soft drink habit, switching to tap water – that’s another $125 of savings annually.

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It seems like the best and brightest MBA graduates go to work for marketing firms. In 1989, one of them came up with a great idea to increase snack sales in the ho-hum month of February. According to the Snack Food Association (SFA) the idea of the month long munch-fest was

to increase consumption and build awareness of snacks during a month when snack food consumption was traditionally low. The result has been a substantial increase in snack food sales during this month. The promotion kicks off on Super Bowl Sunday and publicity is generated throughout the month of February.

Twenty plus years later, you can’t argue with “success.” We’re a snackin’ nation, that’s for sure, with over $60 Billion in sales of snacks annually.

What you need to know:

The decline of family sit-down meals as well as a blurred line separating meals from snacks means that today it’s easier than ever to not even once during the day eat a meal. Whether it’s the breakfast bar you can chew on your commute or a bag of chips in your desk drawer, we’re always an arm’s reach away from a quick and easy hunger fix.

Riding on the health trend, marketers are now busy reformulating and re-messaging their products has healthy snack options. Whether it’s the 100-calorie snack genre, the “health hallowed” granola bar, or potato chips with only 3 natural ingredients, consumers are being convinced that the snacks they are consuming by  the billions are the best thing to happen in the world since sliced bread.

Now don’t get us wrong, snacking is fine, and can fill an important part of the day both nutritionally and socially (cookies and milk, anyone?), but we’ve really, really got to notice how often we snack, what we choose, and how it affects our mealtimes.

Especially with young children, where a less than ideal snack can fill up a small tummy instead of a much more balanced meal to be served an hour or two later.

What to do at the supermarket:

Get out of the snack aisles, and choose your snacks from surprising lanes in the supermarket. Fruits? Check. Veggies in a dip? Check. Bake your own cookies from scratch? Check.

A great resource full of ideas for healthy snacking is over at the Snack-Girl blog.

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We’ve been blogging recently about chocolate milk.  One of our readers commented with a question about Ovaltine as an option to sweeten milk .

Ovaltine is a milk flavoring invented in Switzerland more than a hundred years ago. The original formula contained eggs, malt, and a bit of cocoa. It then reached the UK and eventually the US, with each country using a different formula adapted to national preferences.

In the US today, Ovaltine is sold in 2 flavors – Malt and Rich Chocolate. Ovaltine is owned by Nestle (makers of Nesquik) and we checked their website for product info.

Here is our analysis. Read more…

Huntington, West Virginia is the sickest city in the country. The stats show that almost half its inhabitants are obese. Diabetes rates are very high; people are suffering from heart ailments and other assorted maladies.

British celebrity chef Jamie Oliver, who has already revamped the UK’s school lunch system is now attempting to achieve same in the home country of fast food.

Will he succeed? A new reality show, Food Revolution, will start airing on ABC in March. It will follow Jamie’s attempt to undo decades of damage, all with his cooking skills, charisma, and passion to improve people’s lives.

Should be interesting.

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Yogurt.

- Say who?

Harry Belzer.

- Who is Harry Belzer, and how did he come to this conclusion?

Mr. Belzer is a senior executive at NPD group, a market research group, who’s been following the food industry for decades:

“We started off with about 17% of all Americans eating yogurt in 2000, and we end the decade with something like 28% consuming yogurt on a regular basis,” he said. “No other category has seen that kind of increase in the absolute number of people using the product.” read more from the REFRESH blog…

Indeed, yogurt is a $4 billion industry with a substantial portion of supermarket dairy refrigerators dedicated to hundreds of varieties.

What you need to know:

Yogurt is healthy. This is largely based on the live & active “friendly” bacteria that help our intestines and keep us “regular”. While all yogurts have these probiotics, some are better at marketing their presence than others.In Europe, people have been enjoying the flavor and health benefits for centuries, but the US was relatively indifferent.

The problem with yogurt reaching mass market in America was its tart flavor. Not sweet enough. Food companies started to add fruit purees, sugar, colorings, and other goodies in order to make the products more appealing to American taste buds.

Oh, and a marketing blitz too.

Key marketing messages: Healthy, portion controlled, convenient, endless flavors, no cleanup.

Today yogurt enjoys a health halo status few foods reach. But most people who consume flavored brands regularly don’t notice the added junk that’s put in many products. Here’s an example of a strawberry yogurt from a leading brand:

Cultured Pasteurized Grade A Low Fat Milk, Sugar, Strawberries, Modified Corn Starch, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Nonfat Milk, Kosher Gelatin, Citric Acid, Tricalcium Phosphate, Natural Flavor, Pectin, Colored with Carmine, Vitamin A Acetate, Vitamin D3.

Who needs all that sugar and High Fructose Corn Syrup? Gelatin? corn starch?

Here’s what strawberry yogurt should contain:

Cultured Pasteurized Grade A Low Fat Milk, Strawberries, optionally – 1 tsp of sugar

What to do at the supermarket:

Buy PLAIN YOGURT. Not white yogurt that is lightly sweetened. Not Vanilla flavor. They’re all full of added sugar. Buy plain yogurt and sweeten it on your terms! Whether you add strawberries, a teaspoon of honey, or mix in some granola, you’ll be better off. Plus, plain yogurt can be purchased in bulk sizes, this providing an additional saving.

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