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There’s a slight discrepancy in estimates of how much food and beverage marketers spend targeting kids. A mere $8.4 billion.
An FTC report says food and beverage companies spent $1.6 billion marketing to children under 17 in 2006. But $10 billion is the estimate cited in a government study from the National Academies of Science Institute of Medicine.
It seems that the lower number has more validity. According to a consumer group, the higher number includes some money that was intended for marketing to parents.
“The obesity problem is a complex problem. It’s not only about advertising,” Lydia Parnes, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection.
True, but billions of dollars can be a pretty powerful persuader.
Most people don’t want to consider the idea of a nanny state. But one can make the argument that junk food is as dangerous as elicit drugs in the long run. And most activists don’t want to treat junk food exactly like drugs. That is, it should always be perfectly legal to eat, just that we need to understand the consequences of massive junk food marketing.
Congressmen Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) is a strong critic of junk food marketing to kids:
“Food companies are spending millions of dollars to target children so they can become lifelong consumers of their unhealthy products… While many food and beverage companies have pledged to market healthier options to kids through self-regulatory programs, I want to see real results and changes in the types of products marketed towards children. If these programs do not produce significant changes — government will have to act,” he said.
This doesn’t seem to be a real shocking discovery, but a new study suggests that the very low rates of coronary heart disease among the Japanese may be due to their lifelong high consumption of fish. We’ve known for a while now that omega 3 fatty acids in fish have many health benefits, among them being improved cardiovascular health. This study just further cements the notion. As for me, I’ll happily eat fish - raw or cooked!
Here’s a good overview of the health benefits of omega 3 fatty acids:
With childhood obesity out of control, there comes some nasty baggage. Adult health problems such as Type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol are all now on the rise with kids. So, now children are taking obesity-related drugs to combat these problems. Indications are that hundreds of thousands of children are on drugs to control blood pressure and sugar levels.
This opens the debate on whether kids should be on these drugs in the first place. Obviously it needs to be looked at on a per-patient basis, but the conspiracy theorist in me thinks that this can be seen as an opportunity for drug companies to up their bottom line.
Here comes the “back in my day” speech… It’s time to get kids to play outside more instead of web surfing. And while I’m certainly not an old fuddy-duddy about video games, it might be nice to see kids play more honest-to-goodness mud-slinging football than by joystick on the couch.
A new study insinuates that a high BMI (body mass index) is linked to a higher mortality rate for women who suffer from breast cancer. This article at Yahoo.com on the study is a little confusing because after making the aforementioned link, it quotes Dr. Barnett of Addenbrooke’s Hospital, in Cambridge, UK regarding a link to pregnancy:
“We have found strong evidence that high BMI and a recent pregnancy are associated with a poorer prognosis after a diagnosis of breast cancer,” say Dr. Barnett.
Slight confusion aside, this was my take:
- A high BMI makes breast cancer riskier.
- A high BMI and a recent pregnancy is possibly a bad omen.
And then you have this out-of-the-blue twist: moderate drinking may improve survival chances by 22 percent.
I swear I’m not trying to turn this into a blog about California… but there’s more health news here on the West Coast.
The “Govenator” is terminating trans fats!
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has signed legislation banning the use of trans fats in the state’s restaurants. The ban will be “phased in” in 2010. California will be the first state to ban unsaturated fats, which raise the risk of heart disease, while cities like New York and Philadelphia have passed similar legislation.
I’ve addressed the issue of the “walkability” of our cities, and how modern urban design has helped make us fatter. That made WalkScore an interesting website to stumble upon. WalkScore.com ranks 2,508 neighborhoods in the U.S. for how walkable they are. The top four U.S. cities, according to WalkScore, are:
1. San Francisco
2. New York City
3. Boston
4. Chicago
Are you thinking about a move? Maybe this can influence your plans.
A Los Angeles city council planning committee unanimously approved a one-year ban, which could be extended for a another year, on new fast food outlets. The measure will go to the full council for a vote next month. It will be interesting to see if there is any long-term good that will come of this. One key is to replace prospective fast food establishments with healthier options. The plan is to encourage that. How, I’m not sure.
I’ve always been amazed that healthy fast food businesses haven’t spread like wildfire in recent years. It seems that given a fast healthy option, people would go for it. Here in Roseville, California there’s a UFood Grill, which has locations in several states across the country.
If you have healthy fast food businesses in your hometown, share them with us- because it just seems like a huge niche waiting to be filled. I don’t know if it just hasn’t been handled by the right business minds, or if the costs of fresh and healthy foods don’t match the dynamics of fast drive-thru service. It seems there has to be a good reason why they haven’t started to flourish.
Years ago, Alanis Morissette caught some flack for not understanding irony. If you need refreshing, her song Ironic was filled with lines that were put forth as irony, but were really just some bad luck.
It’s like rain on your wedding day
It’s a free ride when you’ve already paid
It’s the good advice that you just didn’t take
Anyway, Alanis, if you’re reading this - here is irony:
Researchers from Stanford University in California think they may have found a treatment for cancer using tobacco. They are using tobacco plants for an antibody chemical specific to the cells which cause follicular B-cell lymphoma, a type of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. The BBC explains more about this interesting development.
Last spring I did a piece on the efforts by New York City officials to make restaurant nutrition information more transparent. More specifically, they wanted all nutritional information printed for consumers to see and evaluate their choices.
There are many levels to the battle between government and private enterprise on the subject of public health, with most of the headlines coming from the Big Apple. But it’s now spread to the West Coast.
Los Angeles city-council member Jan Perry is spearheading legislation that would ban new fast food restaurants from opening in a 32-square-mile area of the city. According to Perry, the area already has 400 fast food establishments.
Here’s a quick video that explains more on the fight:
Is Obama pandering to the fitness vote? Is there even a fitness lobby to pander to?
All kidding aside, Presidential health is one of the underdog issues in the campaign. A few days ago The New York Times did a piece on how Barack Obama was “caught” going to the gym three times in one day.
An Associated Press report jokingly compared Obama’s fitness regimen to that of Mr. Universe. His campaign gives what seems to be a good enough explanation, if there even has to be one:
Mr. Obama went to his regular gym appointment in the morning, but was interrupted by a telephone call, so he went back later to finish the workout. He met with his trainer at the East Bank Club to check on a sore hip.
But the real fun begins when you see the partisan bickering in the comments section. In the age of 24 hour news, every minutia is analyzed and analyzed again. In this case, die-hard opponents can even find fault in Obama’s fitness habits.
John McCain’s age and health have been a concern to some. By and large, it does seem that his overall health was vetted a few months back when the candidates had to open their medical records. And if he does little to no real exercise, it would be understandable considering he is a 71-year-old man whose leg was shattered when his plane was shot down in Vietnam, and then he was subsequently imprisoned and tortured for five years.
Does fitness play a part in who is fit to be Commander-in-Chief? We’ll see in November.
An FTC report says food and beverage companies spent $1.6 billion marketing to children under 17 in 2006. But $10 billion is the estimate cited in a government study from the National Academies of Science Institute of Medicine.
A new study insinuates that a high 
That made 
Anyway, Alanis, if you’re reading this - here is irony:
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