Stacey Irvine takes fast food addiction to a whole new level. The British teenager has lived on a diet of practically nothing but chicken nuggets since the age of two.
“McDonald’s chicken nuggets are my favorite,” she said. “I share 20 with my boyfriend with chips. But I also like KFC and supermarket brands. My main meal is always chicken nuggets every day,” she said.
Irvine, who has claimed to have never eaten a fruit or vegetable, was diagnosed by doctors to have anemia, an iron deficiency, and swollen veins in her tongue. The 17-year old was rushed to the hospital after she collapsed and began struggling to breathe. Irvine received nutrient injections and was put on a course of vitamins before being released home.
Even after doctors urged her to change her diet, she says she will continue to eat her favorite food. “I first tasted chicken nuggets when my mum took me to McDonald’s when I was two. I loved them so much they were all I would eat. I just couldn’t face even trying other foods. Mom gave up giving me anything else years ago,” she added.
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Every parent knows that come Saturday morning, their kids will be asking for the hottest new toy, the fun new cereal, and to go to the drive thru for the kid’s meal that comes with the must-have collectible action figure. And parents know this because Saturday morning cartoons are littered with company advertisements aimed at their target audience, their captive audience: children.
Research points in many directions when it comes to the effectiveness of these ad strategies, especially when it comes to the sway the fast food and junk food companies have over our purchases. Many don’t believe that unhealthy food should be promoted to children. Others don’t think it has any effect.
Recently a Canadian study was revisited to see what kind of effect advertising has on our purchases.
There was a complete ban on junk food advertising in the Canadian province of Quebec from 1984 to 1992. Evidence found that the ban reduced fast food expenses by 13 percent per week. That equaled up to 11 million to 22 million fewer fast food meals eaten per year. All that further added up to 2.2 billion to 4.4 billion fewer calories consumed by children. Those are significant numbers. Those from the University of Illinois who researched this study believe that if the U.S. as a whole banned such advertising, the results would be similar.
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What do a gym and the Holocaust have in common? According to at the Circuit Factory, a gym in Dubai, they are both a great place to burn calories.
Whoa, wait a second! That’s incredibly insensitive and not funny. However, that did not stop the company’s marketing team from posting pictures of Auschwitz, a famous Nazi death camp in Poland, with the words “Kiss your calories goodbye” on their Facebook page. Around 3,000,000 people died at Auschwitz during World War II.
Obviously, many people were offended and upset when these images appeared on Facebook on Tuesday morning. One user said he was “shocked [at] the level of ignorance.” The company quickly took the images down and then made a statement on Twitter: “Apologies for the insane poster campaign that was put up this morning… The creative guy has been told where to go.”
It seems that the Circuit Factory really does regret the campaign. It appears that they have fired the creative guy who posted the pictures and have released the following statement from Phil Parkinson, who runs the company.
“I am mortified and extremely sorry and it was wrong,” Parkinson said. “I should not have put that campaign up. I am very sorry about that.”
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High fructose corn syrup, found in sodas, cereals and baked goods, has become a food bad guy for its link to obesity and diabetes but it might not only be food the sticky stuff is lurking in. Some common cough and cold syrups use high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) as their sweeteners, the most popular offenders including Vicks, Delsym and Robitussin brands.
Cough and cold syrup makers could use other sweeteners like sucrose but HFCS is inexpensive to manufacture. High fructose corn syrup is a chemically made sugar that primarily contains fructose (fifty-five percent,) glucose (fourty-five percent) and water. The good news is that the companies clearly list HFCS as an inactive ingredient on their labeling, which means it will have no effect on suppressing a cough, for example.
“One teaspoonful of pure HFCS has 3.8 grams of carbohydrates and is about 15 calories,” Mary Hartley, RD, our registered dietician, states, “but 1 teaspoonful of cough syrup is not one-hundred percent HFCS.” The amount HFCS that is in cough syrups compared to the rest of the ingredients is not something that is clearly labeled on their packaging. When I tried to contact a representative from Vick’s about how much of the sweetener was in their product, the rep told me the information was proprietary and legally they may not be allowed to release the information.
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Recently, Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta launched an aggressive ad campaign targeted squarely at Georgia’s staggering childhood obesity epidemic. The ad campaign uses stark imagery and emotional messaging to reach the parents of the growing group of obese children. While critics blast the ads, the reoccurring sentiment is that while these ads use a more dramatic approach, these are the issues that need to be dealt with.
The ads show young, sad, overweight children with a warning label below them featuring messages like “My fat may be funny to you, but it’s killing me.” The public’s response has been mixed, but one thing is clear: desperate times call for desperate measures. “They are in your face,” said Gayla Prestage Grubbs, mother of an overweight 15-year old struggling with weight related issues. “But I know, for me, I was not offended by it. I was more like — oh, my gosh, that’s right.”
On twitter, the response was much the same. Taking the ad’s message one step further, @BarkingUnicorn tweeted: Another question that parents don’t want to answer: “Mom, why am I fat?”
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