Book Review: Appetite For Profit: How the food Industry undermines our health and how to fight back

In this groundbreaking book, Michele Simon, public health attorney, shows how the Food Industry - fast foods and beverages & processed foods manufacturers - has been undermining our health.
She covers everything from vending machines in schools, marketing to children, the 30-year battle to make restaurants label nutrition information and the collusion with our government officials to prevent food regulations to the co-opting of scientists and the medias to push their profit-making agenda at our expense.
She exposes such ubiquitous phrases as "energy balance" and "personal responsibility" as being devised by Big Food in order to avoid being blamed for the current chronic diseases epidemic, while pretending to be "part of the solution".
She concludes her case with a manual on how to work with school boards, the media & legislature to create a "just food system", which would fix our current corporate-controlled food supply and stop the commercialization of chilhood.
This book should be required reading in schools, government circles and the press.

Restaurant menu labeling laws: Veto in California, new hope in NYC

3 Americans out of 4 would like to have restaurants label their offerings with nutrition facts in order to be able to make informed choices. Unfortunately, consumers meet strong resistance from the National Restaurant Association throughout all states. As of today, none of the states protect their citizens' health with a menu-labeling law.

Recently, the California Assembly made California the first state in the nation to pass statewide legislation requiring fast-food outlets and chain restaurants to provide nutritional information at the point of purchase by a vote of 42 to 31.
Commonly known as the menu-labeling law, Senate Bill 120 (Padilla/Migden) was seen as landmark legislation to help Californians make healthier choices.
This decision was vetoed on October 14th by Gov. Arnold Schwartzenegger with this accompanying statement.

Should you disagree with this decision, like 84% other Californians, you can make it known by signing this petition from the California Center for Public Health Advocacy.

Meanwhile, The New York City Board of Health announced on october 24th that it would seek public comment on its revised proposal to require chain restaurants to post calories where customers can actually see them. The public hearing will take place on November 27.

Crackdown on superfoods rage

About 3 years ago, started the current fad for superfoods.

These foods supposedly offer health benefits beyond basic nutrition, such as disease prevention.

As of today, about a hundred food ingredients have been put in the superfoods Hall of Fame, eg. pomegranate, acai, goji berries, etc., mostly due to their high antioxidant content in their whole foods original form.

The problem is that food manufacturers have largely capitalized on these superfoods in order to market such unhealthy products as sugary bars, energy drinks, juice blends and supplements, which include some undefined amount of superfoods, mostly processed into powders, concentrates, etc. These additions, along with the multiplication of all sorts of extraordinary health claims have spurred more and more skepticism.

Back in July, the European Commission cracked down on this phenomenon with the new European Nutrition and Health Claims Regulation: Now no food or beverage are allowed to be branded as superfoods without scientific backing. Claims are to be approved by the European Food Safety Authority.

In the US, there is currently no such legislation.

Meanwhile, let us keep checking ingredient lists thoroughly, and figure out what is in our food for real.

Supplements and functional foods and drinks: New evidence of shortcomings

A new scientific study shows yet another evidence that when you combine some antioxidants and vitamins together, such as ubiquitous Beta Carotene and Vitamin E, proper absorption of these nutrients is compromised.

This is what we get with both supplements and these new "Frankenstein foods or drinks", made with patched-up processed ingredients, and a bunch of fad antioxidants. Food and supplement manufacturers tamper with Nature, while whole foods contain nutrients in the right proportions for correct metabolization. This latest scientific evidence shows again that the food processing and supplements world needs some serious regulations.

Now what do you think when Coca Cola studies Chinese medecine to dig up some new herbal extracts to boost the marketing of their sugary beverages?

Child Obesity

The situation: Looking at the statistics from the National Center for Health, we see that the proportion of children considered obese (95th percentile of BMI) has almost tripled for ages 2-5 and 2-19, and more than quadrupled for ages 6-11 between 1974 and 2004.

Some of the explanations for this phenomenon are:

Competitive price of nutrient-poor processed foods: As an example, between 1984 and 2000, the price of High Fructose Corn Syrup has decreased by 23% in real terms, while in the same period the price of fruits and vegetables has increased by 40%. A major factor for the competitiveness of cheap, processed foods vs. healthy, whole foods is the government: Indeed, through the Farm Bill, the government heavily subsidizes these very commodities -corn, soy, wheat, rice and cotton- that are the basis for such processed ingredients as HFCS, hydrogenated oils, refined flours and rice. To learn more about the Farm Bill issues, visit Michael Pollan's website, and check out Daniel Imhoff's very accessible book Food Fight.
As Farmer Al summed it up: "Americans have been brainwashed to think food should be cheap. Processed foods have indeed become cheap. Not only dollarwise, but also nutritionwise."
A new Farm Bill has just been passed through the House of Representatives this summer. As is, a staggering $42 Billion of subsidies are planned for commodities, while a mere $1.6 Billion will go to fruits and vegetables. It is currently reviewed by Senate.

Food corporations marketing to kids: When we compare Coca Cola's advertising budget of $250 million, with the National 5 a day program's mere $5 million dollars budget -a public health organization which promotes consumption of fruits and vegetables-, we can see a drastic difference in advertising dollars.
Another recent phenomenon has been the multiplication of pouring contracts that school districts sign with food companies. This allows exclusivity of their products to be sold in the schools' vending machines, sporting events, cafeterias over a period of time, like say 5 or 10 years. They are also then allowed to advertise in their schools as well.
TV and internet. The average child watches 2-5 hours of TV per day, which translates into more TV watching than any other activity, next to sleeping. Kids are exposed to 30,000 to 40,000 ads a year. Of the food ads, 98% of them are advertisements of food items that are high in sugar, salt, and/or fat, like sugary cereals, sweetened beverages, and fast foods. So in addition to advertising done in schools, kids are exposed outside of school to TV and internet ads.

Other lifestyle issues: PE program funding have decreased substantially -as an example, in Walnut Creek school district, elementary school students get only 45 min. PE per week-, so it is up to parents to make sure their children get a decent amount of physical activity daily, at least 30 min., which has become unfortunately difficult for low-income families.
Also, our environment is not always conducive to outdoors activities -lack of sidewalks, public lighting, insecurity in some areas, etc.

Portion sizes have also dramatically increased in the last 20 years. See our What's in a Portion post.

Processed foods: The proportion of processed foods in our diet has increased to over 51% of our daily calories. To know more about the nutrient loss involved, refer to our Whole Foods vs. Processed Foods post.

Increase in carbs intake, especially sugars and refined flours -which raise insulin levels, and create addiction. Refined carbs like sugars increase hunger sensation, which makes us overeat. They also prevent fat stored in adipose tissues from being released for energy. To learn more about the vicious circle leading to obesity and other chronic diseases, read Gary Taubes fascinating, well documented Good Calories, Bad Calories.

An excellent resource for parents is this guide to a healthy weight in a fast food/fake food world by Dr. David Ludwig, Director of the Optimal Weight For Life Program, Children's Hospital, Boston: Ending the Food Fight.

Gary Taubes' Good Calories, Bad Calories Book Review

This important book thoroughly dissects over a century of scientific studies about proper nutrition -all meticulously referenced in some 67 pages of bibliography.

First, Gary Taubes questions the conventional wisdom - that fats, and especially saturated fats, cause high cholesterol, heart disease, obesity and other current chronic diseases- that has been spread by Public Health authorities, prominent health associations, as well as the Press for over 50 years.

He demonstrates how this conventional wisdom, turned into an axiom is actually based on thin scientific evidence, analyzing every single flaw in each one of the related studies, and pointing at the lack of underlying scientific method.

He shows how just a handful of "scientists" actually manipulated observational data so that they would fit their personal agenda, ignoring the embarrassing details that would cast any doubt, and spur more research. Then, they would use their personal clout in order to transfer their dogma into what are now our current Public Health diet recommendations.

The fact is, since the 80ies, when the fat hypothesis became fully legitimated into our Public Health policy, such chronic current diseases as the metabolic syndrom have started reaching epidemic level. Meanwhile, a few skeptics in scientific circles around the world have been testing the carbohydrates hypothesis from various angles. Gary Taubes also analyzes some 140 years of studies looking at the harmful effects of all sugars and refined carbs on our hormonal system (i.e. insulin issues), and all their consequences on our health, including coronary heart disease, diabetes and obesity.

The integrity of Gary Taubes' analysis is striking as he raises the very questions a real scientist should ask himself when performing a study, with such sheer objectivity and meticulous attention to details that one cannot help reaching some unsettling conclusions, like : "Dietary fat, whether saturated or not, is not a cause of obesity, heart disease and other chronic diseases", as long as we are talking about natural fats.

This book makes a serious case for:

- bringing the fat axiom back to a hypothesis that remains to be proven.

- public funding to be provided for long-term clinical studies to validate or reject each hypothesis.

- Food corporation funding for scientific research to be counterbalanced by public funding to test the adverse hypothesis, or at least define an ethics code so that the results are cleared from vested interests before they are taken into account in Public Health recommendations.

- Public Health diet recommendations to be much more cautious before either hypothesis is scientifically validated.

- All scientific specialists to be encouraged to cross the barriers of their sub-specialization field and collaborate with other sub-specialists to work on larger task studies, such as an obesity study, that would involve different angles.

Dr. Lorrene Ritchie on obesity and sugars consumption-interview excerpt

Dr. Ritchie: You know one of the interesting things if you look at the trends in diet over the time period that obesity has increased; and when I say obesity, I refer to both children and adults. Since as you all know, this is not a child-only issue. Within the last 30 years, child obesity has quadrupled and adult obesity has also increased, such that now almost two-thirds to three-quarters, depending on where you live exactly, are overweight or obese as adults. But what we see is that calorie intake has definitely increased and the intake of most things has increased. So we can’t just pinpoint it on sugar; certainly sugar has increased. When we look at the diet quality of children, we see that very few kids meet the dietary guidelines. Right now, the recommendation is that an average person get 10% or less of their calories from sugar. What we see is most people get one-quarter or one-third, much more than 10%, of calories from sugar.

S: So you’re saying, Dr. Ritchie, that our children, our youth, are actually getting two or three times as much sugar in their diet than they actually should be.

Dr. Ritchie: Yes, 2-3 times more sugar. And that is not only true among kids but of adults also. But what that trend data shows is just that a lot things have changed. It’s not just the sugar intake. So we’re actually eating a little bit more fruits and vegetables than we used to.

S: Really? Without the syrup?

Dr. Ritchie: Well most of those fruits and vegetables if you look at them there’s just a very few fruits that have increased. It’s mostly apples and bananas, not a wide variety of fruits. Vegetables that have increased are mostly potatoes.

M: Which end up fried.

Dr. Ritchie: Exactly. French fries. Certainly the trends are not anywhere near optimal for anything. About the only thing that has decreased during the time period is milk consumption. And that is actually quite well correlated with the increase in soda consumption. So if you see a kid that has a high soda intake; more than likely they will have a low milk intake. If they have a high milk intake, more than likely they have a low intake of sweetened beverages.

S: So it is an inverse relationship.

Dr. Ritchie: So we have kind of switched to replacing what we would call more healthy beverages, the low-fat or non-fat milk; our kids and adults too have switched and replaced those with sweetened beverages.

S: Well, let’s just talk about sugar for a minute as far as the types. You know you look at what you are eating or drinking and there is sugar in there, but that doesn’t mean that is the only word that says how much sugar is in there. They sneak different words in there that are also sugars. So, let us talk about the sugar types and what to look out for. You want to be careful of your nutrition and daily sugar intake.

M: Yes, especially with the increase in proportion of calories coming from sugars. I understand that it should be down to 10% of total calorie intake; and for some kids it goes as high as one-third or 40% of their total calorie intake. So this is something we really have to watch out – sugars in our kids’ diets.

Dr. Ritchie: Let me just add that that is 10% of added sugar. So in milk, in fruits, in various foods there are natural sugars that are present, but we want to avoid the added sugars.

M: Yes. Well, unfortunately, with nutrition facts labels, we are not able to make a difference between those naturally occurring sugars and added sugars, so we have to look closely at the ingredient list. Sugar is not always indicated as ‘sugar,’ so we have to look for words like, high fructose corn syrup, brown sugar, fructose, corn syrup solids, dehydrated cane juice, honey, dextrose, concentrated fruit juice, concentrated fruit, molasses, maple syrup, rice syrup, inverted sugar, malt, etc. Basically, all these words that end in - ose, syrup, juice end up as sugars on the nutrition panel.

Dr. Ritchie: The sugar that we eat from fruit and from natural foods – as part of the natural foods that we eat – contain some of those very same sugars, so it’s not like the body can really tell if you eat a fruit and get some fructose from that fruit versus a drink that has high fructose corn syrup added and has fructose in it. Your body can’t tell that that fructose was added or whether it was a natural part of that food. But what we want to do when we read labels, we want to avoid things that have those sugar and sugar-related ingredients added to them. When you eat a fruit, it has that sugar packaged naturally and comes with a lot of nutrients whereas a soda just has that sugar but no other nutrients; there is nothing else that is redeemable in it. It’s what we call an empty calorie in that it gives you calories from that sugar but doesn’t give you any other nutrients, no other phytochemicals, no dietary fiber -- nothing else to be healthy. And what we are seeing is that people are getting more and more of their calories from empty calories and less of their calories from nutritious, whole foods. And what that leads to is a lot of consumption of calories and not a lot of nutrient intake.

S: Can it also lead to malnutrition?

Dr. Ritchie: So what we call overnutrition is really a form of malnutrition. In the past, when we talk about malnutrition, we always thought about kids that were starving and not getting very much nutrition. But nowadays, kids that are overconsuming on calories but aren’t getting enough nutrients are also malnourished.

S: Do you have any statistics?

Dr. Ritchie: The U.S. has Dietary Guidelines for Americans and The Food Guide Pyramid have guides for certain food groups. On a national basis, and here I am including adults, is that no one is meeting those recommendations. The statistics are that 2% of kids and maybe 3% of adults are meeting those recommendations. So when we are talking about public health and intervening to prevent obesity, what we are really talking about is intervening on the entire population. Some of us are maybe more or less genetically prone to overweight. But all or most of us are not doing a great job of managing our diets. People are very interested in obesity because it is so visual. You can see it and grasp onto it, but some of the other diseases associated with obesity are much less obvious to us, like cancer, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, diabetes. So even in the absence of obesity, a healthy diet is important for the promotion of health.

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M: The 1980’s started a low fat period in America. Food with less fat means increased carbs. This translated in an increase in sugars and starch fillers, especially in the form of HFCS, in manufactured processed food in the 1980’s in America. In the 1980’s, 35 pounds of HFCS per person per year was consumed, whereas in 2004, the number more than doubled to 78 pounds per person per year.

K: To tie this to the Farm Bill (last week’s topic), the reason why we might be seeing the increase in consumption. The Farm Bill helps to subsidize some of the commodities (such as corn) that help to produce ingredients like HFCS. Because these commodities are so highly subsidized, it is cheaper for manufacturers to use ingredients such as HFCS, especially if we are talking about using sugar in soda and other junk food.

K: There isn’t a set dietary guideline for a safe maximum amount of sugar intake per day but there are some experts that talk about the recommended maximum added sugar in our diet. So added sugar does not mean sugar we get from fruit and natural foods but only added sugar. It is at about less than 10% of your total calorie intake, so if you are at approximately 2000-calorie diet, that is about 40 grams of sugar per day is the recommended max. This is about 10 teaspoons of sugar per day.

Examples of sugar in 20 ounce bottles of sweetened beverages:
Cola = 17 teaspoons of sugar
Cherry flavored cola = 18 teaspoons of sugar
Lemon lime soda = 17 teaspoons of sugar

Examples of sugar in snacks:
Candy bar (2 ounces) = 7.5 teaspoons of sugar
Lemon fruit pie = 11.5 teaspoons of sugar

We need to be careful about the amount of added sweeteners daily.

Dr. Ritchie: For every man, woman, and child, there are approximately two cans of soda produced. This is not counting all the other sweetened beverages like juices, lemonades, and others, so even without the snacks, we are consuming a lot of sugar in just beverages.
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whole foods vs. processed foods

Let's start comparing the nutrition of the same weight (100g = 3.5 oz) of raw apple, applesauce, apple juice and apple Pop Tart -based on USDA Nutrient Database-

- Calorie content of the first 3 items are equivalent at around 45 cal. If you multiply this amount by 9, you get the number of calories in 100g of Apple Pop Tart.

- Sugars content in the first 3 items is equivalent at around 10g, while it is multiplied by 3.5 in Apple Pop Tart.

- Fat content for the first 3 items is zero; it comes to 11g in Apple Pop Tart.

- Sodium for the first 3 amounts to 1-3mg at most, compared to 348mg in Apple Pop Tart.

- Fiber content of 100g raw apple is 2.4g. It is divided by 2 in applesauce and the Pop Tart, and comes to zero in the juice.

-Vitamin C content of 100g raw apple is 4.6mg. It is divided by 2 in applesauce, divided by 4 in the juice, and comes to zero in the Pop Tart.

- Folate amount to 3 mcg in the raw apple. You get only a third of it in the applesauce, and none in the juice and the Pop Tart.

- Choline comes to 3.4mg in the raw apple and applesauce, but disappears from both the juice and the Pop Tart.

- Vitamin K comes to 2.2mcg in the whole apple. This amount is divided by 3 in the applesauce, and there's none in the juice and the Pop Tart.

- Phytonutrients (which you don't see on Nutrition Panels): The most important in raw apple, betacryptoxanthin and lutein+zeaxanthin disappear as the apple gets more processed, to amount to zero in the Pop Tart.

This is just an example of the dramatic loss in nutrients as the original whole food gets processed, losing its natural fiber, a bunch of vitamins, and phytonutrients. Processing also concentrates sizably calories, sugars, etc.... And adds a bunch of undesirable ingredients, oftentimes highly processed themselves.

What started as a nutrient-dense food -with the proper balance of nutrients, which won't interfere with each other's absorption and metabolism as intended by Nature- now becomes a nutrient-poor, high-calorie processed food.

Whole foods are what our human bodies are programmed to get nourishment from. Millions of years of evolution got us adapted to eat minimally processed foods: cooked, ground, fermented etc. -any kind of simple physical processing that you can perform in your own kitchen. In the past few decades however, we have been offered a tremendous amount of ever more processed foods, starting with refined carbohydrates like flour and sugar and highly processed hydrogenated oils, high fructose corn syrups, etc. Our bodies clearly haven't had the time to adjust to these new foods. There are more and more scientists who claim that the recent rise in chronic diseases like metabolic syndrom comes from the amount of unnatural processing in our foods.

So, how do you tell apart minimally-processed foods from highly-processed foods (the bad guys)?
Flip the package over, and read the ingredient list. It will tell you sometimes much more than the nutrition facts panel, which is indeed a very incomplete picture of the actual nutrition: Phytonutrients are missing from the picture, carbs are not itemized into whole and refined, sugars are not itemized into naturally-occuring and added sugars, etc.

A whole food is one ingredient, in its natural form. Period.

The more ingredients on the ingredient list, the more highly processed the foods are: e.g Apple Pop Tart ingredient list shows a total of 27 ingredients.

The more scientific-sounding the ingredient name, the more processing is involved.
Example of processing involved in turning corn into high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), courtesy of the Corn Refiners Association:

HFCS is made from corn starch, which is separated from other kernel components through multiple grinding and screening steps, centrifugation and washing. The HFCS refining process utilizes multiple enzymes and consists of numerous steps including: multiple refining using membrane filters, carbon filters and ion-exchange columns; centrifugation; chromatographic separation; and multiple evaporation steps.

...Definitely something you won't be able to perform in your kitchen!

Some ingredients do not have to be mentioned on ingredient lists: All additives belonging to the FDA's list of GRAS additives (Generally Recognized As Safe). You may just read "natural or artificial flavors", which could involve a list of stuff as long as:

Amyl acetate, amyl butyrate, amyl valerate, anethol, anisyl formate, benzyl acetate, benzyl isobutyrate, butyric acid, cinnamyl isobutyrate, cinnamyl valerate, cognac essential oil, diacetyl, dipropyl ketone, ethyl butyrate, ethyl cinnamate, ethyl heptanoate, ethyl lactate, ethyl methylphenylglycidate, ethyl Nitrate, ethyl propionate, ethyl valerbate, heliotropin, hydroxyphrenyl-2butanone (10% solution in alcohol), a-ionone, isobutyl anthranilate, isobutyl butrate, lemon essential oil, maltol, 4-methylacetophenone, methyl anthranilate, methyl benzoate, methyl cinnamate, methyl heptine carbonate, methyl naphthyl ketone, methyl salicylate, mint essential oil, neroli essential oil, nerolin, neryl isobutyrate, orris butter, phenethyl alcohol, rose, rum ether, g-undecalactone, vanillin, and solvent.

These 47 GRAS additives are found in the strawberry flavoring part of a Burger King strawberry milk shake. (Source: E. Schlosser: “Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal”. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin, 2001).

Now let's take a look at how food companies use ever more refined marketing techniques to sell us more and more highly processed foods, even though we get more health-conscious: They actually capitalize on our wish to eat healthier in a fast-paced world: We now choose convenience foods with a personalized healthy-sounding profile over whole foods because we don't have the time to choose wisely or because we don't prioritize cooking our own food in our culture.

Think of all these new "healthy" segments of the processed foods market, such as "organic", "low-fat", "vegan", "gluten-free", "fortified", "enhanced", you name it...

Let us make a reality check with ingredient lists.

We found in an increasingly popular supermarket chain an "organic apple toaster pie". The ingredient list showed 26 ingredients -only short 1 ingredient from the original non-organic, and most of these processed. On the nutrition panel, the amounts of calories, sugars and other bad guys were equivalent. This product is certified organic, but what does this mean in terms of nutrient-density? Is this really better for you than a conventional raw apple?

Recently, we have seen a tremendous growth for the "functional foods" market: These so-called enhanced foods that claim sometimes amazing amounts of a few fashionable nutrients or herbal extracts. Think probiotics, lycopene, Omega3s, spirulina, etc. What does this really mean in terms of actual balanced nutrition when found in highly processed foods, that come with concentrated amounts of sugars, dense calories, etc.?

Call for action to all angry parents.

As we were doing field research on what was offered in vending machines in middle and high schools in Walnut Creek, CA, we discovered, among other things: Tropicana flavored juice drinks (68g sugars per 20oz bottle) at the high school -clearly not allowed under SB 965 from July 2009 on- and Glaceau Vitamin waters at the middle school. We proceeded to send e-mails to the principals of both schools to have them remove those beverages from their campuses. While we have yet to receive the high school principal’ s response, we got a reply from the middle school principal.
It stated that "SB 965 allows the sale of “electrolyte replacement beverages” to our age group. Beverages in this category may contain no more than 42 grams of added sweetener per 20-ounce serving."
We checked, and indeed, these types of beverages are the only drinks with added sugars allowed in middle and high schools in California.

Which raises this question:
Is there any legal definition for electrolyte replacement beverages?
Indeed, looking at the nutrition facts of the bottle of FOCUS Vitamin Water, there is no trace of sodium, no mention of potassium, magnesium or calcium, although these last 3 electrolytes are mentioned in the ingredient list. We also read that the first ingredient is deionized water, which means that it has been stripped of minerals/electrolytes.
Besides, we see that ingredient #2 is fructose. In the link below, a study on exercise and fluid replacement,
http://www.acsm-msse.org/pt/pt-core/template-journal/msse/media/0196.htm
we single out the following statement:
“fructose should not be the predominant carbohydrate because it is converted slowly to blood glucose not readily oxidized (41,42)
which does not improve performance (8). Furthermore, fructose may cause gastrointestinal distress (59).”

So, officially, Vitamin Waters are allowed in our middle schools on the grounds that they are considered “Electrolyte Replacement Beverages”
even though they have no visible electrolytes on their nutrition facts panels, and the wrong type of carbs is used.
One thing is certain: Our young adolescents get 32.5g sugars per bottle -We had to do the maths-, and they do not get the hours of
intense physical activity that would justify such a replacement drink either.”

Mr Harold Goldstein referred us to Paul Dantzig at the California State Board of Education, who had Phyllis Bramson-Paul reply:

“First, we are in the midst of proposing regulations to further define and clarify areas within the two laws, Senate Bills 12 and 965. As your research has revealed, for example, there is no definition for an Electrolyte Replacement Beverage (ERB) in the law.”

So , until November 20th, we have a chance to help define the only category of beverages containing added sugars allowed in our schools. Please help prevent any sweetened “enhanced waters” or other so-called “functional beverages” call themselves ERBs, and be allowed in our public education places! You may click on the following link: http://www.cde.ca.gov/re/lr/rr/FoodandBeverages.asp, and e-mail your comments to: mailto:hregcomments@cde.ca.gov by November 20th.

P.S. Our guest speaker from yesterday's Sugar show, Dr. Rob Lustig, Professor of Clinical Pediatrics at UCSF Division of Pediatric Endocrinology made the following comment:

"Fructose can be converted by the liver to glycogen through a back-door pathway; so a fructose-containing sports drink can replete hepatic glycogen stores once they are depleted by exercise. This is how the sports-drink companies deflect criticism. But if you don’t have depleted glycogen stores (as in no exercise, which is really who drinks these), then all the fructose gets converted to acyl-CoA, which get packaged into VLDL, causing dyslipidemia.
The electrolytes in vitamin water are useless."

What's in a portion?

We eat far more calories than we think. Take a look at the increase in calories per portion over the last 20 years: Go to: http://hp2010.nhlbihin.net/portion/, and have fun with the portion distortion quiz.

Now what's in a serving size? Serving sizes on food labels are really based on consumer surveys dating back to the late seventies - a far cry from food portions actually consumed nowadays...

When we look at a food label to check calories, fat, sugars, etc., let us not forget to multiply all these numbers by the number of serving sizes in the package if it looks like we will eat the whole portion. Think of how many times we underestimate the numbers!

Welcome to The Health Today Show Blog!

The Health Today Show is an educational radio program that focuses on important topics of nutrition as it pertains to childhood obesity.

The hosts of the The Health Today Show are three passionate women from various backgrounds: Margot is a mother of three who cares deeply about her children's nutritional health; Suzy is a culinary chef who teaches nutrition; and Korin is a public health practitioner who works to bring nutrition education to schools and community youth organizations.

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