Archive for the ‘Food Policy and Nutrition’ Category

Darby Pearson
Darby
Pearson

Hungry Kids and the New School Lunch Guidelines

Monday, October 8th, 2012

New federal laws, designed to create healthier public school lunches, took effect on October 1. The new guidelines are part of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010. The initiative aims to combat childhood obesity by focusing on the lunchroom - increasing the servings of fruits and vegetables, limiting carbohydrates and serving meals that contain a reduced number of calories. For example, high school lunches should now contain 750-850 calories. The guidelines, particularly the calorie restrictions, have elicited passionate reactions from students and parents.

Hungry Kids Respond.

One of the more creative responses, garnering almost 1 million online views, is from high school students in Kansas who posted a YouTube parody video titled "We Are Hungry."  The video shows athletes passing out on a football field and students finding ways to sneak food. This inventive response to the new regulations, from the young people it directly affects, is the focus of many news stories about the new guidelines.

Are They, Perhaps, Missing the Point?

There is no denying that childhood obesity is indeed an epidemic and a pressing public health issue. According to the American Heart Association, one-in-three American kids and teens are overweight or obese. Childhood obesity is also a pressing issue on a global scale - with 1-in-10 children globally being obese. GLOBALHealthPR recently did a study of the global conversation online about childhood obesity. The results highlighted an alarming trend – the global online dialogue about this issue falls very short. Feel free to view the infographic and get a taste (pun intended) of our insights.

A Step in the Right Direction.

Most school (and home) meals are not made in-house, from scratch, with the time and attention to ingredients and nutrition that signal to kids it is a priority. It is important to applaud the fact that something is being done at a nationwide level to promote healthy eating and help young people be more mindful about nutrition. Whether you fully support or view the new guidelines as an infringement on your right to eat what you want, it is ultimately a step in the right direction to see new programs put into practice. That said, until we can address the way that many children and adults think about and interact with food, we are still going to have a big problem on our hands.

I mentioned that childhood obesity is a global problem, and there are some countries that take a progressive, yet very traditional approach. This CBS segment demonstrates how the French approach school lunches. To sum it up, it’s about the food. Novel idea, no?

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Kaitlin Doody
Kaitlin
Doody

Nutrition and Disease: What’s the Link? #ACCN12

Thursday, July 5th, 2012

At the end of June, the American Society for Nutrition (ASN) and the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine hosted the second annual Advances and Controversies in Clinical Nutrition meeting in the stunning Palmer House hotel in downtown Chicago.

The opening session on Friday, June 22 explored the link between nutrition and disease, focusing on diet and cancer prevention, as well as the current controversies surrounding sodium intake. The evening also included a networking session and poster presentation display. Although less sizable than some other scientific meeting I’ve seen, the step ASN is taking to increase conversations around the science behind nutrition is notable.  Providing a forum for discussion of today’s cutting-edge nutrition research and controversies is very valuable for a field that affects so many facets of human health.

Keynote Speaker Dean Ornish, MD, stole the show that afternoon with his engaging presentation on how diet and other lifestyle changes can prevent and treat chronic disease. Dr. Ornish, founder and president of the Preventive Medicine Research Institute in Sausalito, CA, has pioneered research around using lifestyle changes to reverse the progression of illnesses such as heart disease and prostate cancer. In many cases, Dr. Ornish feels that lifestyle changes can be synergistic with drug-based treatments. For diseases like diabetes, he said that lifestyle changes can be better than drugs in treatment and prevention.

The data he presented packed the punch behind what some may consider his “West Coast philosophies,” and provided some really interesting principles that can resonate among health care providers and patients alike. Here’s a list of his most memorable concepts related to lifestyle change, disease prevention and treatment:

  • You need to turn off the faucet: When addressing a problem, you need to turn off the faucet, not just mop the floor. It is important to look at the root cause and not get distracted by superfluous side effects of the issue. Dr. Ornish says that your body often has remarkable capacity to begin healing itself, if you treat the root cause.
  • Your genes are not your fate: Just because you are predisposed to something, it doesn’t mean you will succumb to its fate. For the dieticians and health care professionals in the room, the key message was that it’s a lot about empowerment and helping patients frame their outlook and expectations around a given situation. Dr. Ornish reminds us that it’s not just what happens to you, it’s also how you react to it.
  • Fear is not sustainable: Fun, not fear needs to be the mentality when it comes to behavior change. Dr. Ornish says the more you change, the better you feel and the more you improve. Ultimately, this approach has more success and higher adherence than fear tactics.  He says that shame around food is toxic, and food should never be characterized as good versus bad because that creates a negative perception around a person’s diet.
  • Creatures of community: Research shows that depression can increase mortality. Conversely, connecting and sharing with others who are similar to you can improve health outcomes. A recent study of metastatic breast cancer patients who had community support groups on a regular basis in addition to the baseline chemotherapy treatments lived significantly longer than the control group. As “creatures of community,” humans thrive on altruism, forgiveness, compassion and love.

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Darby Pearson
Darby
Pearson

Obesity Epidemic: A Communications Tipping Point

Wednesday, May 16th, 2012

So the obesity epidemic is not news to anyone, but this week it seems everywhere I turn there is more data, more commentary and more perspective on what we need to do to fix it. To name a few, American Journal of Preventive Medicine published a study projecting that at the current rate of growth (no pun intended), 43% of American’s will be obese by 2030. 2030?! Almost half of our population will be obese in just over 15 years – this is soon, people.

In other news, HBO is airing a documentary, Weight of the Nation, which began last night. It’s part of a broader partnership with the CDC, NIH and IOM, to take on the issue through a community-based outreach program, including a two-day conference this week in Washington with the same name. In other news, the cover of Newsweek featured a baby holding a box of French fries, exclaiming, “when I grow up, I am going to weigh 300 pounds.” It seems we are literally surrounded by the obesity problem, but, still, people don’t seem to be shedding those extra pounds.

I guess the good news is that people are talking more about the problem. And the conversation across most media seems to focus more on prevention when it comes to obesity-related diseases like diabetes and heart disease. This is crucial if we are to actually change our current trajectory, as the ties between obesity and disease are well documented and a growing burden on our healthcare system and its resources.

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bmccabe
Brigid
McCabe

Wellness Week Kicks Off on Capitol Hill

Wednesday, February 22nd, 2012

Credit: Judy Kurtz / Washingtonscene.thehill.com

Last week I had the opportunity to attend the kickoff event for Wellness Week, presented by SPAFinder, which was held on Capitol Hill to highlight the critical role that wellness businesses play in long-term healthcare and disease prevention.

Although Wellness Week, from March 19-25, 2012, succeeds in encouraging many  gyms, spas and dance studios nationwide to reduce their service costs by half, the real triumph, in my opinion, is the recognition of how wellness businesses are essential to the health of Americans.

Representatives Tom Petri (R-WI) and Lynn Woolsey (D-CA) joined with integrative medicine thought leader Dr. Daniel Friedland and Academy Award nominee and bestselling author Mariel Hemingway to take the Wellness Week Pledge and discuss how wellness should be a priority in everyday living.

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Darby Pearson
Darby
Pearson

There’s Salt in THAT?: CDC’s New Report on Sodium

Friday, February 17th, 2012

Last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s newest “Vital Signs” reportindicated that nine in 10 U.S. adults consume much more sodium than they should, putting them at risk for heart disease and stroke.  While this probably doesn’t come as a shock, what was surprising were some of the main culprits; some every day favorites that haven’t been thought of as particularly

Flicker credit: LokenRC

unhealthy in the past. Things like bread, luncheon meat and soups were newly lumped in with known salty fare like pizza, cheeseburgers and potato chips.

While many of the items on the CDC’s list might not have struck us as “bad for you” in the past, they all have something in common.  What is written between the lines here is that, for most Americans, this list is composed largely – if not entirely – of processed, packaged foods. The implications of a diet comprised mostly of foods created in a factory or chain restaurant are far reaching, and this is just one more example of the harm they can do to your body. Salt is one problem, but the larger problem is that when people are hungry, not enough are reaching for real food and, even when they do, they tend to reach for too much of it. How many people you know regularly reach for an apple instead of a granola bar? Or slice up an avocado instead grabbing takeout or opening some processed deli meat and cheese? The issue is not that all processed and restaurant foods are bad for you, but that most American’s don’t know or seek to understand what goes into the foods they eat every day. The simple act of reading labels (and understanding what they mean) can be an empowering experience that enables you to make deliberate decisions about food.

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ldiaz
Leticia
Diaz

Coming To A Crossroad: Paula Deen, Diabetes and Me

Tuesday, February 7th, 2012

If your office is anything like ours, celebrity chef Paula Deen’s diabetes announcement has become quite the topic of conversation over the past week. As I read the coverage online and caught a few TV interviews, I was struck by the backlash against the timing of Deen’s decision to announce her type 2 diabetes. Questions swirled about why she waited three years to talk about her diabetes and criticism came from fellow chef personalities like Anthony Bourdain, among others. While fans and critics alike will continue to disagree, Deen’s announcement helped to push the important but sometimes unsexy issue of lifestyle changes and type 2 diabetes into the media spotlight. For patient groups, advocates, diabetes educators and health care professionals, sponsorship deals like Deens’ help to drive awareness about living with diabetes and help to infuse some creativity into everyday meal planning – an important part of managing the disease.

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