Nerdel » healthy foods

Graehm Gray: The White House To Reduce 1.5 Trillion Calories From Food and Beverage by 2015! Yes We Can!

Nerdel — Wed, 19 May 2010 17:05:57 +0000

First Lady Michelle Obama, in a press conference with members of the Food and Beverage Industry, announced that the Partnership for a Healthier America has signed an agreement with The Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation (HWCF) whose members are pledging to take actions aimed at reducing 1.5 trillion product calories by the end of 2015. As an interim step to this goal, HWCF will seek to reduce calories by 1 trillion in 2012.

“Solving the obesity epidemic requires far more than anything government can do alone and today’s announcement represents an important step forward to providing Americans with healthier choices so that they can choose to lead healthier lives,” said Mrs. Obama, who also serves as honorary chair of the Partnership. “This is precisely the kind of private sector commitment we need. I want to thank the Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation for stepping up to the plate and I hope this encourages others to do the same.”

“On behalf of the Partnership, I am pleased to acknowledge this major first step by the Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation. Pledges like this one – with targeted and achievable results that are meaningful and measurable – will help us reach our goal of curbing childhood obesity within a generation,” said Dr. James R. Gavin III, chairman of the Partnership’s board of directors.

So how will these companies do it? Here is their plan:

growing and introducing lower-calorie options
changing product recipes where possible to lower the calorie content of current products
reducing portion sizes of existing single-serve products

“Accountability is a critical element of our agreement with the Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation. These types of calorie reduction efforts can have a significant impact on the obesity trend, so we want to be sure that organizations making commitments are following through with real results,” said S. Lawrence Kocot, interim President and CEO of the Partnership and a member of its board of directors.

Mrs. Obama went on to say…today, between what’s in our food and how much of it that we eat, Americans consume more calories, fat and sugar today than ever before. Compared to 40 years ago, we consume 23 percent more calories, 56 percent more added fats and oils and dairy fat, and 14 percent more sugar and sweetener. Now, that’s 12 extra pounds of sugar a year just in 40 years.The Healthy Weight Commitment is a partnership between 16 corporations that account for roughly 20 to 25 percent of the American food supply. And today, I am thrilled to say that they have pledged to cut a total of 1 trillion calories from the food they sell annually by the year 2012, and 1.5 trillion calories by 2015.

The Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation is working to promote ways to help Americans achieve healthy weight by balancing the energy (calories) they consume with the energy they expend through physical activity. HWCF focuses on increasing access and opportunities for physical activity, healthier nutrition options and raising awareness of the energy balance approach – in the marketplace, in the workplace and in schools.

So what does this mean for all of us? Well, first of all, it appears that President Obama and First Lady Michele are intent on trying to get at a solution to the childhood obesity crisis in this country. Reducing calories means more products with lower calorie counts (e.g. 100 calorie snacks, etc.). Parents will be able to bring more control into their homes. Instead of kids eating entire boxes or bags of high caloric snacks, we can control the portion sizes. Now doesn’t that sound a bit like the beginning of the “Outer Limits” television show: “do not attempt to touch the dial-we control the vertical, we control the horizontal…” It does, but in a good way. Portion control is a main factor in today’s supersized environment. Our kids and adults have been eating more and more calories, without an end in sight. Now that “end” is in the sights of the Obama’s. Cutting calories, decreasing sugar consumption in the daily nutrition of kids, increasing physical exercise are some of the biggest goals in this attack on obesity. The Nerdel News and I applaud President Obama and First Lady Michelle, in their continuing efforts to solve the childhood obesity epidemic within our generation. Let me hear from you-contact me at talk@nerdel.com.

About the Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation
The Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation is first-of-its kind coalition that brings together more than 80 of the nation’s largest retailers, non-profit organizations, food and beverage manufacturers and trade associations aimed at helping to reduce obesity. The calorie-reduction initiative is part of a multi-pronged effort by the Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation and its members to help American families reduce the calories they consume while increasing the calories they expend. For more information, visit www.healthyweightcommit.org.

About the Let’s Move! Campaign
The First Lady’s nationwide initiative seeks to solve the challenge of childhood obesity, so that America’s youngest children reach adulthood at a healthy weight. Her plan offers four pillars:

Offering parents the tools and information they need to make healthy choices for their kids;
Getting healthier food into our nation’s schools;
Ensuring that all our families have access to healthy, affordable food in their communities; and
Increasing opportunities for kids to be physically active, both in and out of school.

The Partnership will support these pillars through a campaign to unite and inspire families from every corner of the United States to take real and sustained actions to eat better, be more active, and make a commitment to embracing healthier lifestyles. For more information, visit www.letsmove.gov.

About the Partnership for a Healthier America
The Partnership for a Healthier America is an independent, nonpartisan organization that will mobilize broad-based support for efforts to solve the child obesity challenge. Core activities of the Partnership include:

Developing a strong membership network of leaders across sectors with commitment to scaling meaningful and measurable solutions;
Convening members annually to affirm, align, and announce commitments;
Promoting broad understanding among all sectors about the role healthy food, physical activity, and the environment play in reversing the childhood obesity epidemic;
Facilitating and measuring the impact of members’ commitments against clear and transparent targets; and
Connecting potential partners in the private and nonprofit sectors to each other and to the correct points of contact in government to ensure efficient leveraging of actions, and sharing of knowledge and lessons learned at the community, state, and national levels.

The Partnership emerged out of a series of conversations between The California Endowment, Kaiser Permanente Fund for Community Benefit, Nemours, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, and the Alliance for a Healthier Generation, which is a partnership of the American Heart Association and the William J. Clinton Foundation. Sonnenschein, Nath and Rosenthal, LLP has provided operational and legal support in establishing the Foundation. The Brookings Institution has also contributed thought leadership to the effort. For more information, visit www.aHealthierAmerica.org.

My friends, stay fit and healthy the New Nerdel Way!

Graehm Gray: Eating Healthy Foods Makes Us Hungrier!

Nerdel — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 15:42:33 +0000

I spend a lot of time trying to tell my daughter and her friends the benefits of eating healthy. I do this when we eat at home as well as when we go out to a restaurant. Sometimes, I think that I must sound like a broken record. “What about a salad,” I spout out, when I hear the chicken parmigiana or pizza being ordered. “Try the salmon, have some walnuts, what about blueberries, forget the soda, do you really want ice cream?” “Do you know how many calories is in that whatever you call it?” Yes, I am an ogre. I admit it. But I do it because I believe in eating healthy and also so my daughter will learn and eat healthy as well. Well that comes to my article of the week-which comes to us from Ayelet Fishback, and Stacey R. Finkelstein of the University of Chicago- “When Healthy Food Makes You Hungry,” and published on line in the Journal of Consumer Research. These authors examined healthy foods in the context of personal choice and freedom, commitment to a goal or target and “forced or external control” and the effect on appetite afterwards. To do this they looked at three groups of people: those given an item to eat labeled as “healthy foods”; the second group given the same exact item labeled as “tasty foods” and the third group did not eat at all. This study was very interesting in the fact that several principles that we take for granted were presented. A. Do we eat because we are hungry as our Neanderthal and hunter gatherer ancestors did or do we eat because we are told it is the appropriate “mealtime”? I remember watching the Westerns as a child on television and see someone ring the triangle on the porch to indicate that it was dinnertime. Now we have three distinct mealtimes: breakfast, lunch and dinner. And of course snacks throughout the day. B. Who selects the foods we will eat? School lunch programs are pre-designed for kids with limited options. Most of us have a choice when we are about to eat but is that choice limited by the governmental laws around us-(e.g. no trans fats, low salt, etc.)? C. Are we influenced by people around us when we eat? If we eat in groups, is there any influence by group behavior in selecting an item? D. By eating “healthy items” will they fulfill their appetite and hunger? E. Is a person who eats healthy items committed to becoming a “healthier” person? F. Is the choice of “healthier foods” made freely or imposed on the individual? It seems that the author’s research and literature review indicates that by imposing “healthier items” on an individual, that individual will become hungrier afterwards and subsequently increase their calorie consumption to fulfill their hunger compared to the individual that ate a “nonlabeled” similar item. And there may be a memory factor involved for later consumption of “healthier items,” and the increased hunger that follows.

So what does this mean to all of us? Well it simply means that when you are told that an item is “healthy” and you eat it, you may get very hungry afterwards. Okay-I can deal with that. I can get hungry after eating any type of foods. So what? Well, it seems that after eating a “healthy item” not only do we get hungry, but we satisfy our appetite with substantially more calories that we would if we ate something that was labeled as “tasty.” What? And boom- we gain weight!!

I have a problem with the entire labeling process. “Healthy,” “tasty,” “organic,” “low fat,” “spa program,” “low salt,” “low carb.” We are overloaded with labels on foods. Do these labels actually influence our behaviors and appetites? Yes! I remember hearing my mom and many friends tell me that a half hour after they ate Chinese food, they would feel hungry again. Now, as well all know, that wasn’t exactly “healthy” food. Fried egg rolls, fried won ton, egg drop soup, white rice, foods cooked with lots of oils (probably peanut and others)-and still the hunger came on. So, I am asking myself- there is a total 180 degree split between the so called’ healthy items” and the Chinese foods and still the same result. But the Chinese foods weren’t tested in this current study.

Are we so influenced by a label or name that it can physically cause a real chemical/hormonal reaction? Is the hunger response we are seeing just an exaggerated form of glucose-insulin mechanism reacting normally?

And what about the foods we eat when we are hungry. Once we eat, and think we are satiated ( a stomach brain connection), normally we stop eating. But the foods we just consumed are digesting. The mechanisms that control hunger, satiety and appetite continue to work. And depending on our bodies, the glucose levels drop, the hormones-glucagon and insulin are moving in and out of the cell stimulating more reactions leading to our feelings of hunger. And boom its meal time!

So getting back to the original question-does eating an item labeled as healthy stimulate more hunger later, resulting in an increase in calorie consumption compared to the consumption of items labeled as tasty?

I guess by the conclusions of this research, the answer is yes. We get hungrier and eat more if its labeled “healthy.” Behavior issue versus chemical reaction? So what is the solution? Should we come up with different labels? Are people already conditioned to the “healthy” label and have a memory that they will be hungry after eating it? Should we just get rid of the “healthy” label altogether. Food is food-right? Maybe we should try another experiment: what about using the ideas of authors Jessica Seinfeld (Deceptively Delicious: Simple Secrets to get Your Kids Eating Good Foods; HarperCollins, October 2007)) and Missy Chase Lapine (The Sneaky Chef: Simple Strategies for Hiding Healthy Foods in Kid’s Favorite Meals, Perseus Book Groups, April 2007) and then challenging people with the same structure. Can we fool people’s behavior and thought processes and stomachs-will they eat a so called healthy item and the same item labeled as tasty and have similar results? Both Seinfeld and Lapine found that kids could be easily fooled-and ate healthy items that were cleverly disguised.

It all comes down to behavior doesn’t it? Labels-they influence our behavior-sometimes in good ways and now as we find, sometimes in a negative way. Send me your thoughts here at talk@nerdel.com.

My friends, stay fit and healthy The New Nerdel Way!

For more information-please read: When Healthy Foods Makes You Hungry: Ayelet Fishbach, Ph.D, Professor, behavioral science and marketing, University of Chicago, Chicago, Ill.; Connie Diekman, R.D., M.Ed, Director, University Nutrition, Washington University, St. Louis, Mo.; Journal of Consumer Research, March 10, 2010, online