If you fly regularly for work or pleasure, you know that airline food is not the epitome of gourmet cooking. (We’re not talking about business and first class, unfortunately…). Nor is that foil wrapped, overcooked scrambled egg combo a nutritional powerhouse. However, the major airlines are making slow and marked improvements in healthifying their food. According to Charles Stuart Platkin, the Diet Detective,

10 years ago, the average coach dinner had 1,054 calories, about as much as a McDonald’s Big Mac and large fries. Today those elusive, rarely free airline meals are of much better quality, many with calorie totals half or less of that previous zenith. more…

According to Platkin, here’s how the airlines currently rank in terms of nutritious options: (5 stars is top score)

Continental: 4.5 stars
American Airlines: 3.75 stars
United: 3.5 stars
JetBlue: 3.5 stars
Delta/Northwest: 3.5 stars
US Airways: 2.5 stars
Southwest: 2 stars

What to do:

Why fall into the common trap of not having eaten before arriving at the airport and then having to eat fast food at the terminal or during the flight? A bit of preparing at home can help save you lots of calories, and perhaps heartburn as well. You can stock up on trail mix, healthy granola bars, apples, bananas, dark chocolate, almonds, cashews, chewing gum, etc… Heck, you can even prepare a sandwich or two, just make sure it doesn’t get too soggy by the time you get to eating it 5 hours later.

Yes, bringing your own food to your flight seems a bit dorky, but more and more people are doing it, especially now that many airlines do not provide complimentary meals.

Safe travels this holiday season!

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Nutrition fact labels are confusing. Despite the efforts of the FDA and Congress in enacting the Nutrition Labeling and Education Act in the early 1990’s, people are still stumped at the supermarket, and obesity rates are soaring.

Starting in 2004, several food manufacturers, and later grocery chains, decided to create simpler markings on the food packages or shelves. These quick glance labels would help consumers make decisions better and faster. And thus began a Front-of-Package-Nutrition-Label arms race.

In the last 12 months the number of rating systems has more than doubled. A partial list includes SmartSpot, Sensible Solutions, Guiding Stars, Smart Choices, NuVal, Healthy Ideas, nutritionIQ, Nutritional Spotlight, and Healthy Elements.

While in a free market competition is good, what has happened is that consumers are even more confused than they were before. What are these new front of pack labels? What do they mean? Can we rely on them instead of reading the nutrition label on the back of the package? Who’s behind the scores? Are they objective?

A good piece in the Chicago Tribune touches upon some of these issues:

But the new systems are anything but simple. Each is based on different criteria. Some exclude snack foods, candy, ice cream and jams from the ratings. Some try to help consumers find the healthiest food within a category, such as cookies. Others allow comparisons of foods in different supermarket aisles. And while a product might be labeled healthy according to one system, it might receive a low score elsewhere.

read the whole thing…

What you need to know:

Most of the rating systems were created by food manufacturers or supermarket chains. Don’t forget that their goal is to sell you more food, not less. So take their recommendations with a grain of salt.

We’ve put together a comparison chart that attempts to sort out all the details, like who’s backing which program, where it can be found, and what are the pros and cons.

Hopefully the FDA will step in and create a unified codex, or at the very least help establish some ground rules for creating these nutrition rating labels. Until then, buyer beware.

What to do at the supermarket:

If you’ve been reading this blog, you know the drill.

Be critical of health claims and nutrition markings, do read nutrition labels and ingredient lists.

Try to stay away from danger aisles at the supermarket.

Buy more fruits and vegetables, including frozen. Eat whole grains, low fat meats and dairy. And limit the amount of snacks you pile into the shopping cart.

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Image by tiffanywashko via Flickr

Chicago is the first major US city to adopt a strict ban on Bisephenol A (BPA) in baby bottles and sippy cups. The measure was agreed upon unanimously by the city council a few days ago.

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.

BPA behaves like the hormone estrogen once it enters the body and disturbs the normal activities of certain genes.

Toxicity questions have been around for decades, raising safety issue, especially for babies. Potential problems include hyperactivity, learning disabilities, brain damage, and immune deficiencies.

According to the Chicago Tribune,

Experts disagree on whether it poses health risks to humans, but some manufacturers of baby bottles have voluntarily removed it because of safety questions.

We say, while the experts are arguing, why take a chance with your baby?

Last year, the FDA issued a statement claiming the BPA levels found in baby bottles are safe. But, the agency relied on 2 studies that were funded by chemical companies, and was subsequently hammered by consumer groups for having a pro industry biased viewpoint.

It seems that in Europe, for a product to be allowed, its safety needs to be proven. But in the US, in order for the FDA to ban a product, it must be shown unconditionally as harmful.

Which approach would you prefer when feeding your family?

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Although food labels let consumers to learn about what they are eating, most spend only a few seconds if it all, browsing the available information. There is a large group of people though, for whom the labels are more than “nice to have”. People with with food allergies and intolerances, rely on labels to keep them alive. Just ask any mother of a peanut-allergic child.

The Chicago Tribune conducted a thorough investigation as to allergy labeling. The results were not impressive:

In one of the nation’s largest examinations of undisclosed ingredients in food, the Tribune reviewed thousands of items at 60 locations in or near Chicago, finding dozens of products obviously mislabeled. The newspaper also conducted 50 laboratory tests — more than the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration combined over the last several years — to determine precise ingredients.

Read the article…

What you need to know:

1. Label errors abound. For people with allergies, a mistake can be a deadly. Federal law requires ingredient labels to disclose 8 foods accounting for most allergies – milk, eggs, wheat, soy, peanuts, tree nuts, fish and shellfish.

2. Confusing synonyms. Consumers are not experts in food terms. A product including “durum semolina” must declare it as  “wheat” as well.

3. Cross contamination. As an example – oats are often tainted with wheat.

4. Poorly labeled imports. This is a result of lax regulations in other countries. To reduce this problem, the FDA recently opened offices in China.

5. Unlabeled food. The deli counter and bakery at the supermarket are not required to label foods. People with allergies should avoid them.

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Julie Deardorf writes for the Chicago Tribune Health Blog. In today’s post she provides great advice on how to quickly read a food label and decide go/no go for a specific food item:

Try the “5 and 20 rule.” This handy label-scanning trick can tell me whether something is high or low in saturated fat, sodium and fiber in about two seconds.

read more…

Julie also provides a 6 point checklist which includes:
- checking the serving size to make sure it is reasonable. A serving size of 2 Oreo cookies is not.
- Looking for landmines in the ingredient list. Partially hydrogenated oil is a codeword for transfat. Sugar has about 20 different synonyms.

Other words of advice – ignore the health claims on the front of package. They tell you what marketers want you to think, not what you need to know.

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flickr photo: jessicafm

Every year, 30,000 people are rushed to the emergency room because of an allergic reaction to food. Some 150 die, a high percentage are kids. In many cases, despite special care taken not to consume any product suspected to contain an allergen, horrified parents discover their child gasping for air and breaking out in hives, all because gluten, milk, or egg content were not properly disclosed on the food package label.

The Chicago Tribune provides a glimpse into the travails of one mother in her quest to protect her son. Through her story, we discover how helpless the 4 million Americans with allergies are each time they put a bite into their mouth. Highlights:

American children with food allergies are suffering life-threatening–and completely avoidable–reactions because manufacturers mislabel their products and regulators fail to police store shelves, a Tribune investigation has found.

In effect, children are used as guinea pigs, with the government and industry often taking steps to properly label a product only after a child has been harmed.

The Tribune investigation revealed that the government rarely inspects food to find problems and doesn’t punish companies that repeatedly violate labeling laws.

Read the entire article…

What you need to know:

In 2004, Congress enacted a law intended to help improve allergen labeling:  the Food Allergen Labeling and Consumer Protection Act of 2004 (FALCPA). The FALCPA imposed additional labeling declaration requirements on packaged food products that contain “major food allergens”:  peanuts, tree nuts, soy, milk, eggs, wheat, seafood, and shellfish.

The law did not, however, impose labeling requirements when food products may inadvertently contain major allergens. Why would a product contain an allergen accidentally? Turns out that even tiny amounts of an allergen present in a food are enough to cause a severe reaction and even death. Sometimes allergen free products are packaged in a plant that also manufactures products with allergens. In several cases products get cross-contaminated. That’s why you MAY see a labels stating “Manufactured in a facility that also uses peanuts.”Or may not.

This is because there’s is no clear definition of how to label products with a very rare chance to cause a very severe reaction. In September, the FDA held preliminary hearings aimed at improving allergy labeling. But don’t hold your breath; it will take a long while to make changes.

What to do at the supermarket:

If you are allergic, or a parent to an allergic child, always read the food labels and check for allergen warnings. This is not a bulletproof solution.You can do some prep work at home as well.

The Tribune put together a database with several thousand products that have been recalled over the past 10 years. You can use it to see the history of a specific product and help you make better decisions in advance of purchase.

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