A December article from Health Education & Behavior, wanted to test the thesis that if we take junk food out of schools, kids will compensate by pigging out at home or elsewhere.

Over a 2 year period, researchers studied six middle schools in the Northeast. The research was led by Marlene Schwartz, Ph.D., deputy director at the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University. Three of the schools replaced potato chips, doughnuts, soft drinks and cookies with water, 100% fruit juice, baked chips, granola bars, and fruit. Three other schools maintained their existing food regimen.

Guess what happened?

What you need to know:

According to Schwartz – “we found that when you take soda and high-fat snacks out of schools, students did not compensate at home. Instead, they ate better at school and no worse at home.”

So why aren’t all schools rushing to rid themselves of junk food?

The answer, as usual, is money.

Children are a huge market for food manufacturers. Selling snacks and beverages at schools is a huge business opportunity and it creates lifelong loyalty. Just ask a Coke exec who once said “get them while they’re young”.

Schools benefit from junk food sales too, by getting a commission on sales from vending machines. The dimes and quarters quickly add up to 6 figure sums that help many a school under severe financial burden.

Thankfully more and more schools are realizing that the long term benefits of healthy eating outweigh the short term financial gain.

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Yale University’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity presented a report on breakfast cereal this weekend  in Washington DC as part of the annual meeting of the Obesity Society. The findings were not surprising and can be summed up as follows: Manufacturers peddle sugary cereal to kids while painting these cereals as health to parents and nutritionists.

General Mill, one of the big four cereal manufacturers, responded with a letter to health professionals. Below is an excerpt and our commentary in bold:

October 27, 2009

You may have seen or heard reports over the weekend about a cereal study conducted by the Rudd Center for Food and Policy. While the focus of the Rudd Center study is on advertising, it also seems to imply that kid-cereals are linked to obesity in children. We wanted to assure you that all General Mill’s Big G cereals continue to be nutritious and help children and adults maintain a healthy body weight while also meeting key nutrient requirements–this includes presweetened cereals.

Cereal remains a low-calorie, nutrient-dense food contributing positively to the overall nutritional status of children:
•    Kids who frequently eat cereal for breakfast have healthier body weights, have better nutritional status, and are less likely to have weight gain during adolescence. And kids that eat less sweetened cereals probably do even better, don’t they?

•    Cereal is a lower calorie breakfast choice compared to many other foods at only 110-130 calories/serving (and that includes pre-sweetened cereals). Sugar is only 16 calories per teaspoon, does that mean kids 4-6 teaspoons of sugar for breakfast?

•    Cereal is nutrient dense and provides a good or excellent source of at least 10 key nutrients and very few calories. It is only an excellent source because of fortification. The vitamins and minerals are sprayed on the cereal and dissolve into the milk. If your child doesn’t consumer the milk, she does not take in all the nutrients. And who can tell us how bio-available each one of the nutrients is. Lastly, most Americans are not deficient in any of the fortification nutrients to begin with. They are deficient in fiber. Why do kids cereals range in the 0-3 grams when they could be 5or 6 grams worth per serving?

•    Overall, cereals—including presweetened cereals—provide less than 4% of a children’s sugar intake. And according to Coke’s CEO, so do soft drinks. And if we’ll ask Mars Inc CEO, they’ll also point the finger elsewhere. So if nobody is responsible for a big chunk of of our kids’ sugar intake, where is it all coming from?

Juli Hermanson, MPH, RD                    Tamara Schryver, PhD, RD
General Mills Bell Institute of Health and Nutrition    General Mills Bell Institute of Health and Nutrition

Lastly, don’t you get a strange feeling in your stomach when a food company sets up an “Institute of Health”?

What to do at the supermarket:

Breakfast is important. Breakfast cereals can be a great start to the day. But keep the sugar low (less than 6 grams per serving) and the fiber high (5 grams per serving and up).

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photo credit: Patrishe

Have your children seen an ad for fresh apples lately? How about a commercial for yams or carrots?

Probably not.

But they most likely have seen lots of advertisements for candy, soft drinks, sugary cereals, and other processed food like substances.

And what they see, they immediately turn into action. At least, this is what a study from the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale has concluded. From the New York Times:

In one experiment, 118 children, ages 7 to 11, were each given bowls of Goldfish crackers and then left to watch a 14-minute cartoon. During the commercial breaks, some of the children saw ads for games and entertainment; others watched four spots for unhealthy snacks like waffle sticks with syrup, fruit roll-ups and potato chips. The children who saw the food spots ate 45 percent more Goldfish than those who watched the game commercials.

What you need to know:

It’s an uphill battle for parents today to try and keep their children eating healthfully. Food manufacturers are not making things easy.  Tens of thousands of nutritiously superfluous products manufactured for kids,  and the big brands spend tens of millions of dollars on advertising to those eyeballs that count the most.

Some parents have decided to live TV free. Others Tivo commercials away. But for the most part, our impressionable younger generation is learning what to eat from brand marketers on Madison Avenue.

What to do at the supermarket:

You need to start educating your children from a very early age about healthy eating habits. Definitely provide snacks and sweets, but in moderation.

You also need to explain that not everything on TV is  true, and when it comes to advertising, there are motives present not necessarily in the best interest of the consumer.

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The Milbank Quarterly, a peer-reviewed journal of population health and health policy, provides an assessment of the social, legal, and ethical dimensions of health care policy in the US.

Their March issue is dedicated to obesity, a disease that has become a top priority due to the heavy toll it is putting on us both financially and medically.

One of the interesting articles is entitled The Perils of Ignoring History: Big Tobacco Played Dirty and Millions Died. How Similar Is Big Food?

In 1954 the tobacco industry paid to publish the “Frank Statement to Cigarette Smokers” in hundreds of U.S. newspapers. It stated that the public’s health was the industry’s concern above all others and promised a variety of good-faith changes. What followed were decades of deceit and actions that cost millions of lives.

The article was written by two well respected public health researchers – Kelly Brownell, director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University, and Kenneth Warner, dean of the University of Michigan School of Public Health. Here’s what the researchers found.

Tobacco companies:
1. emphasized personal responsibility rather than industry responsibility.
2. criticized “junk” science that found harms associated with smoking.
3. paid scientists to produce counter-studies.
4. created self-regulation to preempt stricter government control.
5. lobbied with huge financial forces to stifle government action.
6. introduced “safer” products.
7. Denied the addictive nature of their products.
8. Denied the fact that they were marketing to children.

What you need to know:

Food is very different and much more complex than cigarettes. Our bodies need food, whereas they certainly don’t need cigarettes.

There is also a huge variation in food products and their nutritional values, whereas tobacco products are very limited in scope.

Therefore it is very difficult to pinpoint one specific product as so dangerous that it warrants the same treatment as a cigarette. Many foods have both beneficial nutrients along those better to restrict.

In addition, some nutrients are required up to a point and then become dangerous. For example, our bodies must get a daily dosage of sodium in order to function properly, whereas no nicotine is required at all.

Having said that, there certainly are similarities between the two industries:
* Personal responsibility is a biggie – you’re fat because you have no willpower to stop eating, not because an entire system has been built to offer you something fat/sweet/salty to stuff in your mouth every single minute of every single day.
* Many industry sponsored studies have lead to health claims on food labels that are questionable at best.
* Self regulation – take a look at the various industry initiatives to create front of label nutrition scoring (Smart Choices, Guiding Stars, etc…) as well as voluntarily providing calorie information on menus at Pizza Hut in order not to have to provide much much more.
* Lobbies – Ask the folks at the USDA and Capitol Hill about the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association and the power it wields, just as an example.
* Safer products – those would be, for example, low-fat, low-carb, reduced-sugar (but how safe are some artificial sweeteners), and omega-3 fortified products.
* Marketing to children – Any parent taking a kid to a supermarket knows that those cartoon characters on cereal boxes, yogurts, and ready-pastas are not there for our pleasure, rather for our kids to be able to nag us till we give in.

What to do at the supermarket:

Our usual recommendation is to choose minimally processed foods, those that have been around before Big Food. Sticking to the perimeter of the supermarket, where you can find fresh produce, meat and milk, as well as grains, is a good start.

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