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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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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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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This is a guest post by Melissa Marek, RD LD

Fiber is an extremely important part of your daily diet. Its best known benefit is its ability to help keep our bowels moving. Eating enough fiber will help prevent constipation. The added benefit is that it also plays a role in protecting against diseases such as diabetes, heart disease and cancer. If that isn’t enough reason to get a daily dose of fiber, it also helps with weight management by helping to keep you fuller longer.

In order to make sure you are getting enough fiber, it helps to understand where it comes from and where you can find it. Fiber comes mainly from plant cell walls, the parts that cannot be digested by the enzymes of the GI tract. For that reason, fiber can be found in plant foods such as fruits, vegetables, and grains.

To best benefit from fiber, the recommended daily amount is 21-25 grams per day for women and 30-38 grams per day for men. This is not a difficult goal to meet, but remember that when adding fiber to your diet, you will need to increase your fiber intake slowly and more importantly, increase your fluids. If you don’t drink enough fluids you may suffer from constipation, the very thing that fiber helps alleviate.

To better comprehend the benefits of fiber and how to best meet daily requirements, it helps to understand that there are different types of fiber. They come from different sources and, accordingly, help with different things.

SOLUBLE FIBER may help lower blood cholesterol, especially LDL (bad) cholesterol. It also helps control blood sugar in people with diabetes. You can get soluble fiber from oats, oat bran, dried beans and peas, nuts, barley, flax seed, oranges, apples, carrots, and psyllium husk.

INSOLUBLE FIBER moves bulk through the intestines, which helps prevent constipation. It also controls and balances the pH in your intestines. Insoluble fiber can be found in fruit skins, root vegetable skins, dark green leafy vegetables, whole wheat products, corn bran, seeds and nuts.

Soluble fiber, as it name alludes, becomes a jelly-like mass when mixed with water and ferments in the intestinal tract, but insoluble fiber just absorbs the water and bulks up stool.

The term DIETARY FIBER, which appears on nutrition facts labels is merely a sum of the soluble and insoluble fiber content in a product, per serving.

A common source of fiber is whole grain. Whole grain refers to the entire grain seed (bran, germ, & endosperm).  Whole grain foods are an important source of not only fiber, but also of vitamins, minerals and other health-promoting compounds that you won’t find in a refined grain.

HOW MUCH SHOULD I BE EATING?

According to the 2005 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 3 or more ounce-equivalents of whole grain products per day is ideal. You can meet this requirement by adding barley, buckwheat, bulgur, corn, millet, rice, rye, oats, sorghum, wheat and wild rice to your daily diet.

What does a one-ounce equivalent of whole grains look like?

• 1 slice 100% whole grain bread
• 1/2 of a 100% whole grain English muffin or bagel
• ½ cup hot cooked oatmeal (Rolled oats or quick oats)
• 2 cups popped popcorn
• 1 ounce baked tortilla chips (About 15 chips)
• 1/3 cup cooked whole wheat pasta
• 1/3 cup cooked brown rice, bulgur, sorghum, or barley

TIPS TO INCREASE YOUR FIBER INTAKE:

• Sprinkle flax meal, wheat germ,  or nuts/seeds onto your cereal, cottage cheese, yogurt, or even frozen yogurt
• Add fresh or dried fruits to your cereal or yogurt
• Substitute whole wheat flour for at least 1/3 of the all purpose flour in baked goods
• Add frozen vegetables to soups or casseroles
• Add beans into a salad, soup, or stew
• Cut prunes into pieces and mix them into yogurt, cereal, or pancake mix

What to do at the supermarket:

Packaging for fiber rich foods now often contain a label promoting its fiber content. These labels make finding fiber-rich foods easy so shoppers don’t have to go through the hassle of checking out the food label or searching for the fiber content. But what do these regulated fiber claims mean exactly?

• 100% Whole Grain or 100% Whole Wheat: The product doesn’t have any refined white flour
• Good source of fiber:  There are at least 3g per serving
• Excellent source of fiber:  There are at least 5g per serving
• When reading the ingredient statement, a whole grain should be listed FIRST!

Here’s a handy list of fiber rich products:

• Oats
• Oat bran
• Grains (Barley, bulgur, Kasha, Amaranth, Quinoa, Couscous)
• Polenta
• Brown rice
• Whole wheat breads and pastas
• Fresh fruits (Oranges, pears, dried figs, apples, berries, raisins)
  —> Choose whole fruits (fresh, frozen, or dried) over juices, which have most of the fiber removed
• Fresh vegetables (Winter squash, peas, eggplant, beets, cabbage, broccoli, artichoke hearts, corn)
• Potatoes & sweet potatoes
• Dried beans
• Nuts

Melissa Marek is a graduate of Texas A&M University with degrees in both Nutritional Sciences and Food Science & Technology.  She has experience with recipe analysis for magazines and restaurants as well as with nutrition facts labeling for large corporations and private label companies. She is a registered dietitian at Axxya Systems, makers of Diet Analysis and Food Labeling software products. Contact her at mmarek [at] axxya [dot] com.

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This is a guest blog post by Jenny Westerkamp, RD

The dietetics profession has changed in the last century, alongside our nation’s eating habits. Different demand, such as increased need for weight loss solutions — stemming from obesity epidemic — mean different kinds of supply such as dietitians that specialize in weight loss, write weight loss books, are spokespeople for weight loss companies, etc. The possibilities are endless — and that’s awesome.

When I started studying dietetics in college, I was unsure of what I would do with my chosen career path. Clinical nutrition is where a majority of dietitians find careers. As I went through my dietetic internship (which ended three months ago), my soon-to-be-defined passion slowly grew with each ill patient that walked through the dietitian’s door.

How do I PREVENT people from getting diseases so that they don’t have to see this dietitian? How do I stop the downward slope that people slide on when they follow the standard American diet full of processed foods?

I knew that dietitians play a critical role on the healthcare team once people get diagnosed with these diseases/conditions. But where were dietitians many years ago when these patients began eating poor quality diets? Isn’t diet more often than not a cause of these diseases?

Was I being too optimistic to think that providing prevention through good nutrition was a possible and respectable mission?

Every patient that I met during my internship year—suffering from obesity, Type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, or any other preventable chronic disease—was a source of inspiration for a career in prevention.

There is a sense of urgency among young dietitians right now, myself included. Something tells me if we don’t start preventing chronic diseases TODAY, there will not be enough dietitians to effectively manage all the sick people tomorrow! My hope is that young dietitians realize these opportunities outside of the hospital halls and join in on the prevention conversation that people have everyday about food and nutrition.

Unfortunately, young dietitians up against a culture (and clientele) that is hard to please. And it’s getting worse.

1. First, clients wanted easy. Now they want effortless.

2. Once, they wanted quick results. Now they want immediate results.

3. Any solution also had to be cheap. Now, even cheap is too much to invest in their health.

People are quickly losing grip on the lifestyle that can keep them and their families from spending money later on. It’s too bad prevention is not the trendy thing to do – that would certainly help this cause.

Dietitians possess powerful, life-changing, life-saving information that so many—TOO many—people don’t want to know about until it is too late. It is terribly sad to know that those who aren’t investing wisely in their health will be more likely to have a chronic disease. My mission is to find those people before chronic illness finds them.

So many people to save, so little time…And that’s this young dietitian’s dilemma.

Jenny Westerkamp, RD is a sports nutritionist for SportFuel and a nutrition consultant for an organic meal delivery service, Eat Like the Pros, based out of Chicago. She is the co-founder of All Access Internships, an online resource and community for dietetics students. For more on Jenny or if you want to ask her what you should be eating, visit her blog “Trendy Nutrition” at jennywesterkamp.com.

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Diabetics, like air force pilots when flying, need to be slightly paranoid. Always on the lookout for potential danger. But whereas a flight ends after several hours in the skies, a diabetic must be in constant awareness of blood sugar levels.

An article in the New York Times touts vinegar, of all foods, as a potential aid in the battle for low blood sugar. Adding vinegar to your dinner

… seems to help slow the absorption of sugar from a meal into the bloodstream, apparently because vinegar helps block digestive enzymes that convert carbohydrates into sugar. read more…

What you need to know:

The word “vinegar” derives from the Old French vin aigre, which literally means sour wine. It is made by fermentation of wine/beer/cider/fruit juice/other and creates a highly acidic liquid that has been used in kitchens across the globe for ages.  The acetic acid in vinegar is what gives vinegar its pungent smell and strong acidic flavor.

A study in Italy found that healthy people who ate a meal with an addition of said acetic acid versus a control group that did not, had a lower level of glycemic response. The 4 teaspoons of vinegar was added as a salad dressing together with olive oil.

Diabetics can try for themselves to see if vinegar helps, according to Sue McLaughlin, a spokesperson for the American Diabetic Association.

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Here’s irony for you. Walgreens’ coupon of the week is for a $10 ENTIRE MEAL (complete junk food meal). On the same web page is  a link to their DIABETES center.

The meal includes a Digiorno pizza, a 12 pack of Coke, and quart and a half of Dreyer’s Ice Cream. We did some number crunching to see just how bad this meal can be.

The Entire Meal consists of 5160 calories, 672 grams of sugar, 54 grams of saturated fat, and 4700 mg of sodium. If consumed by 6 people, that leaves us with 860 calories per person and 112 grams of sugar! That’s almost half the daily caloric intake, virtually without any healthy nutrients. It’s 28 (yes, TWENTY EIGHT) teaspoons of sugar in a single meal.

No wonder there’s a link to Walgreen’s “Diabetes Center” right on the same page.

Shame on you Walgreens. Read more…

Courtesy of the Economist

A global trend for the past few decades is the increased use of chilis and hot peppers in western diets. Capsaicin is the active ingredient which causes us to sweat and tear, but then reach a “high” as the result of the release of endorphins. The Economist, of all publications, provides interesting insight:

Hot chilies, once the preserve of aficionados with exotic tastes for cuisine from places such as India, Thailand or Mexico, are now a staple ingredient in everything from ready meals to cocktails. One reason is that globalisation has raised the rich world’s tolerance to capsaicin. What may seem unbearably hot to those reared on the bland diets of Europe or the Anglosphere half a century ago is just a pleasantly spicy dish to their children and grandchildren, whose student years were spent scoffing cheap curries or nacho chips with salsa.

Read the full article…

What you need to know:

Lets start with spelling – Chili, chilli, or chile are all acceptable.

Red peppers in general are considered very healthy, containing twice the vitamin C as oranges. While chilis are not quite as loaded, they do purport to provide the following health benefits:
* Effective in reducing pain from arthritis by “numbing” a part of the nervous system
* Keeps arteries unblocked, thus reducing cholesterol and the risk of heart disease.
* Prevents growth of some cancerous cells, reducing the risk of prostate cancer.
* Speeds up metabolism, thus helping in weight loss.
* Lowers risk of Type 2 diabetes by controlling the blood sugar levels.

Can too much chili cause any harm?

Certainly capsaicin can be painful, causing stress: in itself a potential health risk. A big dose incapacitates. But as far as permanent physical damage is concerned, the evidence is negligible to non-existent.

If you wish, you can build up your chili stamina slowly, starting with a tiny sliver of hot pepper in your soup or stir fry, and increasing the amount over time. Bon apetit.

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A highly fragrant spice, cinnamon has been around since biblical times and was used even by Moses. The inner bark of a small evergreen tree, cinnamon originated in Sri Lanka, where 90% of the world’s supply comes from.

What you need to know:

Studies conducted by the USDA have shown that cinnamon may help  better regulate blood-sugar levels.This could be a boon to diabetics. In tests, half a teaspoon a day lowered blood-sugar levels in patients with Type II diabetes and reduced LDL (bad) cholesterol levels. Cinnamon may also inhibit cancer cells, is anti-inflammatory, and anti-bacterial. It also tastes darn good sprinkled in a cup of hot coffee or tea.

What to do at the supermarket:

Cinnamon can be purchased in 3 inch sticks, or powdered. The sticks can be thrown into stews, punches, and even soups, whereas the powder can be sprinkled into hot drinks, blended into pastries, or added as a condiment to various dishes. For freshness, best to take a stick and grate it yourself (warning – it’s a tedious task).

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photo credit: dno1967

The presidential election is here. Once in 4 years, we get a chance to decide the country’s future. This election, timed with a severe financial crisis and international restlessness, has led many to declare that the US is ailing and needs to be healed.

But what about each of us? People are ailing too. Six out of ten Americans need to lose weight, 24 million are diabetic, millions are suffering from hypertension and heart disease.

These elections are an opportunity for reflection on personal change as well. Personal change that comes from personal choices.

We choose our president once in four years; we choose our food once in four hours.

No individual vote shapes the future of the country, and no individual food choice will change the shape of someone’s body and health.

But just as the aggregate of all ballots set America’s future, the sum of a person’s food choices over the course of years sets her medical future.

So starting tomorrow, elect to eat better.

Vote for fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and lean dairy and meat.

Good luck America, and good luck each and every one of us.