HEALTH REFORM TO DELIVER CALORIE COUNTS TO CHAIN RESTAURANT MENUS NATIONWIDE

CSPI Celebrates "Huge Victory for Consumers" After 7-Year Fight

WASHINGTON--Tucked neatly inside the health reform legislation headed to the Oval Office for a presidential signature is language that will require calorie labeling on chain restaurant menus, menu boards, and drive-through displays, as well as on vending machines. The legislation applies to chains with 20 or more outlets, and requires them to provide additional nutrition information on request.

This Subway in New York City has posted calorie information
for all its menu items since the implementation of the local
menu-labeling law in 2007. Soon all chain restaurants with
20 or more outlets nationwide will be required to post this
information on menus, menu boards, drive-through displays
and vending machines.

Similar measures are already in effect or are awaiting implementation in California, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Oregon, New York City, Philadelphia, and a dozen other localities. The federal standard will supersede the varied state and local requirements.

"Coffee drinks can range from 20 calories to 800 calories, and burgers can range from 250 calories to well over 1,000 calories," said CSPI nutrition policy director Margo G. Wootan. "With the health reform legislation passed today, Congress is giving Americans easy access to the most critical piece of nutrition information they need when eating out. While it's a huge victory for consumers, it's just one of dozens of things we will need to do to reduce rates of obesity and diet-related disease in this country."

CSPI began pressing for nutrition labeling at chain restaurants in 2003. In past sessions of Congress, stand-alone menu labeling bills were introduced by Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) and Representative Rosa DeLauro (D-CT). New York City became the first jurisdiction to enact menu labeling, via regulations issued by the city's Board of Health, in 2006. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed California's menu labeling law in 2008, after vetoing a similar measure the year before. The National Restaurant Association dropped its longstanding objection to menu labeling last year, and actually supported the language passed by Congress today.

"The historic legislation that President Barack Obama will sign will do so much to give more Americans access to health care, but it also does much to help prevent disease in the first place," Wootan said. "Menu labeling at restaurants will help make First Lady Michelle Obama's mission to reduce childhood obesity just a little bit easier."

The bill exempts small businesses, and does not apply to daily or temporary specials and customized orders. It requires the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to propose specific regulations not later than one year from now. Those regulations will be finalized through a formal rulemaking process, and the FDA must make quarterly reports on its progress to Congress.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest is a nonprofit health advocacy group based in Washington, DC, that focuses on nutrition, food safety, and pro-health alcohol policies.  CSPI is supported by the 900,000 U.S. and Canadian subscribers to its Nutrition Action Healthletter and by foundation grants. 

Pepsi Leads Way In Schools With New Soda Policy (1/1/2011)

CSPI Applauds Pepsi for Making World-Wide Commitment Not to Sell Sugary Soft Drinks in Schools

Coca-Cola Will Still Target High School Kids in Most Countries

WASHINGTON—PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi has announced that the company will phase out full-sugar carbonated soft drinks from all schools around the world.  The move followed from the

Global Dump Soft Drinks Campaign led by the Center for Science in the Public Interest.  The group proposed negotiations in 2008, which were led by the Geneva-based World Heart Federation with PepsiCo, Coca-Cola, and the International Council of Beverage Associations.

PepsiCo’s policy will still allow the sale in high schools of non caloric drinks and sports drinks such as Gatorade that have about half the calories of regular carbonated soft drinks, and the policy will not limit the portion sizes of fruit juice.  

Last week Coca-Cola, the world’s largest purveyor of what CSPI calls “liquid candy,” announced a policy, which also springs from the negotiations, that the company will “not offer our beverages for sale in primary schools.”  But the policy then states that if school authorities request drinks “to meet hydration needs, we will endeavor to meet those requests.”  The Coke policy explicitly allows the sale of its sugary soft drinks in high schools.  

Smaller regional and national companies represented by the International Council of Beverage Associations, and others not represented by the association, did not make any commitments to change their policies.

“We applaud PepsiCo for its global commitment not to sell carbonated sugary soft drinks in schools,” said Bruce Silverglade, legal affairs director of CSPI and president of the International Association of Consumer Food Organizations, which represented CSPI and other consumer groups in the talks.  “But shame on Coca-Cola for insisting on targeting high school students in most countries around the world.  Childhood obesity is a world-wide problem and high school students everywhere deserve the same help as American high schoolers.”

The new policies come on the heels of a study by the American Beverage Association that shows that in the United States the industry has made very significant progress in getting high-calorie sodas out of all schools as a result of state and local pressure to remove soft drinks, a threat of litigation, and a 2006 agreement with health groups.  That study found that non-diet soda, sports drinks, diluted fruit drinks, and ice teas have decreased dramatically over the past five years.

When the school lunch and other child nutrition programs are reauthorized by Congress this year, health advocates expect that the bill will require the U.S. Department of Agriculture to update the nutrition standards for foods sold in vending machines and a la carte programs in cafeterias, presumably excluding soda and other high-calorie drinks.

Pepsi’s new policy takes effect on January 1, 2011, and the company says it hopes to have full compliance by January of 2012.  The company says that in some countries, parts of the distribution chain are out of its control.  Coca-Cola’s policy does not go into effect until 2013 when the company says its existing beverage contracts with schools will expire.  The International Diabetes Federation was also represented in the negotiations leading up to PepsiCo’s and Coca-Cola’s announcements.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest is a nonprofit health advocacy group based in Washington, DC, that focuses on nutrition, food safety, and pro-health alcohol policies.  CSPI is supported by the 900,000 U.S. and Canadian subscribers to its Nutrition Action Healthletter and by foundation grants. 

CSPI: Highest Grade In Food Marketing To Kids--B+ To Mars,Inc (3/2010)

Joanna Dolgoff, MD--

We were starting to think that Vitamin D deficiency was a thing of the past.  I mean, when was the last time you met someone with rickets?  But a recent study in Pediatrics showed that over six million children in the United States do not get enough Vitamin D.  That is one out of every five kids!  It seems that Vitamin D deficiency is more common than we thought.

Vitamin D is an important vitamin!  New studies are proving that vitamin D can help prevent many diseases such as cancer, depression, diabetes, hypertension, osteoporosis, chronic fatigue, autoimmune diseases and cardiovascular disease.  Other research has linked low Vitamin D levels to obesity; studies show that overweight individuals are much more likely to be Vitamin D deficient.  It is not clear, however, whether increased body fat leads to Vitamin D deficiency or if low Vitamin D levels cause a person to gain weight.  Is one responsible for the other?  More research is needed in this area.

There are a few different ways to get vitamin D.  Vitamin D may come from foods or vitamin supplements; vitamin D can also be made by the skin when it is exposed to ultraviolet rays (UV light). Fortified foods are the main dietary sources of Vitamin D as few foods naturally contain it.  Although milk is fortified with vitamin D, dairy products made from milk, such as cheese and ice creams, are generally not fortified with vitamin D.  Fatty fish and fish oils are natural sources of Vitamin D.

Vitamin D deficiency is often missed because there are no real symptoms associated with it.  Rickets and osteomalacia (softening of the bones) are the most common signs of vitamin D deficiency but there is no way for parents to tell if their child is suffering from these illnesses.  The only way to prove that your child is vitamin D deficient is by completing a blood test which screens for a particular form of vitamin D, called 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25(OH)D).

Think that name sounds complicated?  Unfortunately, many doctors do too.  In fact, doctors often order the wrong blood test when assessing vitamin D levels.  Be sure to ask for 25(OH) D blood test not 1, 25-dihydroxy-vitamin D (aka calcitriol).  With such complicated names, it is no wonder that such mistakes are made!

Vitamin D deficiency exists when 25(OH) D levels fall below 25 ng/mL.  Levels may vary depending on time of year, direct sunlight exposure, skin color and vitamin D consumption.  Levels should be between 50 – 80 ng/mL year-round for both children and adults.

As a doctor, I am finding more and more children with low levels of vitamin D, mainly because kids are spending less time in the sun.  These days, toddlers are more often inside watching TV than playing outside.  And if they are in the sun, they are lathered with sun block, which reflects the sun’s rays and decreases vitamin D formation.  Obviously, sunscreen is important and should not be avoided!  But it does lead to lower levels of vitamin D. Also, many toddlers do not get enough vitamin D to meet their needs since there are limited food sources of high vitamin D content.

The current recommendation is 400 IU per day in the form on of vitamin D3 (cholecalciferol).    New studies are showing that higher levels may be needed to prevent the diseases discussed above.  Many are now recommending 1,000 IU per day in the form of vitamin D3 (cholecalciferol).  If your child doesn’t get this amount of vitamin D in his diet, you may want to consider a multivitamin that contains vitamin D.

Joanna Dolgoff, M.D. is a pediatrician whose practice solely deals with child and adolescent weight management. A graduate of Princeton University, she completed her education at NYU School of Medicine and finished her Pediatric Residency training at Columbia Presbyterian's Children's Hospital of New York. She has previously worked as a private practice pediatrician, helping children reach their weight loss goals. A Board Certified Fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics, Dr. Dolgoff is also the proud mother of two children. She is the author of Red Light, Green Light, Eat Right (Rodale/ 2009). Click here to learn more about Dr. Dolgoff's Weigh Child and Adolescent Weight Management Program.

School Lunches Usually Not Healthy--Alternatives

Top 10 Food Myths

The Truth About High Fructose Corn Syrup

Copyright © 2006-2010, Basil & Spice. All rights reserved.

Reviewed By Melissa Danielle

In New York City, if you’re an aspiring something-or-other, it’s important to see and be seen. Eating out is more than just about food: for some, where you’re dining counts just as much as what you’re wearing while, who you’re eating with and what they’re wearing; and for others, it's about who sees you. So to not eat out at least once a week means you’re out of the social loop, and then, well, what’s the point of living in NYC?

Many months ago, my partner and I found ourselves weighing over our dinner plans. Did we feel like going out to a restaurant, and if yes, what were we in the mood for? If we stayed in, what did we feel like cooking? Unable to agree on a restaurant and bored with what we had on hand, we headed to the local supermarket in hopes of inspiration.  When the groceries rang up to about $50, we looked at each other and observed, “For 50 bucks, we could have gone out to eat….  And we still have to go home and prepare it.” 

“And wash the dishes,” I added glumly.

I don’t recall what we purchased, but it wasn’t anything special and it certainly wasn’t a lot of food. And for someone who prepares most of our meals (most of my meals, anyway), I didn’t expect to pay that much for a few groceries at a run-of-the-mill supermarket. It wasn’t Whole Paycheck or anything remotely close, mind you.  So when I heard that Cathy Erway of Not Eating Out in New York was about to release a memoir on the subject, I was immediately brought back to that moment.

Thankfully, The Art of Eating In: How I Learned To Stop Spending And Love The Stove (Gotham/Feb 2010) is not a few things. First, it’s not her blog, so if you’ve been following her adventures over the past few years, you don’t have to worry that you paid to read something you've already read. Second, it’s not a make-you-feel-guilty-for-being-so-lazy-you-can’t-even-fry-your-own-eggs-or-make-a-bowl-of-soup-and-while-you’re-at-it-shop-organic-ALWAYS-and-cruelty-free-and-save-the-world-book. Cathy shows us that she’s a real person, trying to live within her means and have a little fun while she’s at it. Lastly, she confesses that she’s not a gourmand, so if you can’t boil water, there’s no excuse why even you can’t try one of the recipes that ends each chapter. And plenty are worth checking out. I’m looking forward to trying out the Moroccan dishes inspired by her trip.

So how does a twenty-something manage to spend two years in NYC eating in without committing social suicide?  By discovering some of NYC’s underground supper clubs, dumpster diving and urban foraging, amateur cook-offs, and the best no-knead bread, that’s how.

I eat out about once or twice a week, on purpose. And yes, I managed to do this living in NYC. (I don’t anymore). When I talk to people about their eating habits, the three things that come up the most are cost, convenience, and cleanup. When I mention that I generally don’t spend tons of money on food or a lot of time cooking, I’m met with the slanty eye or the screwface. I imagine that the idea of cooking at home, for most people, conjures up visions of expensive ingredients and huge productions that leave you too exhausted to enjoy the meal. So I was relieved to read that Erway herself wasn’t sweating it out in the kitchen every night turning out 4 course meals from scratch. Dishes are a whole other thing for me and something I haven’t quite been able to figure out. Not using 10 dishes to cook one thing, that is.

Cooking doesn’t have to be a chore, nor does it have to take up most of our time. Even the most passionate home cooks streamline their weekly cooking schedules with meals that take less than a half hour to throw together. I’ve got a dozen or so recipes that I work from the most, adding to some, taking away from others, improvising with what I have on hand.

Cathy Erway writes the tremendously popular blog Not Eating Out in New York, featuring recipes, ruminations, and rants about all things home-cooked. You'll find the author online at http://noteatingoutinny.com/

Prevent Alzheimer's With 4 Key Lifestyle Changes (Gotham Books)

Book Review: Making Babies: A Proven 3-Month Program for Maximum Fertility

Copyright © 2006-2010, Basil & Spice. All rights reserved.

Most Food & Entertainment Companies Get Failing Grade for Policies on Marketing Food to Children

Few Have Any Policies in Place at All, According to CSPI Report Card

March 9, 2010

WASHINGTON—Most food and entertainment companies have received Fs from the nonprofit Center for Science in the Public Interest, which today issued a report card that rates 128 companies’ policies with regard to food marketing aimed at children. Three-quarters of companies are getting an F, either for having weak policies or for failing to have any policies whatsoever.

CSPI's highest grade, a B+, went to Mars, Inc., though the group emphasized that the grade is not for the foods Mars sells, but rather for its policy on marketing to children. Mars' policy excludes marketing to children under 12 and covers most of the key marketing tactics used to reach children. The entertainment company given CSPI’s highest grade, a B, is Qubo, a family-friendly children's television channel delivered nationwide over ION Media Networks 59 local digital television stations. Qubo’s policy is comprehensive, applying reasonably good nutrition standards to its full range of programming, according to CSPI.

One food company (Procter & Gamble, which makes Pringles) received a B, six got a B-, 17 got a C, and 7 a D. Ninety-five companies received an F.

The Most Disappointing Toy Ever? At first glance it resembles the classic Easy Bake, but the Chuck E. Cheese's® EZ-2 Make!™ Pizza Maker doesnt even have a heating element; it’s just a cheap plastic shell.

"Despite the industry's self-regulatory system, the vast majority of food and entertainment companies have no protections in place for children," said CSPI nutrition policy director Margo G. Wootan. "If companies were marketing bananas and broccoli, we wouldn’t be concerned. But instead, most of the marketing is for sugary cereals, fast food, snack foods, and candy. And this junk food marketing is a major contributor to childhood obesity."

According to the Institute of Medicine, TV commercials affect children's food choices, food purchase requests, diets, and health. And the mere act of watching commercial television is linked to obesity

CSPI gave restaurant chain Denny's an F for marketing to children through its children's menu, which includes many nutritionally poor items; games on its Web site; and a kid's birthday club. Lucasfilms received an F for not having a policy. Presently, Lucasfilms is licensing Star Wars toys as a premium to go with McDonald's Happy Meals, many of which are nutritionally poor. Candy company Topps also got an F. That company makes, among other things, Baby Bottle Pop, a powdered candy sold in a miniature baby bottle, eaten by dipping a candy nipple in a sugary powder and licking it off. Over the years Topps has retained the services of the Jonas Brothers and Clique Girlz singing groups to convince children to purchase that infantilizing product, whose 140 calories all come from sugar.

Companies spend about $2 billion each year marketing foods and beverages to children. Food manufacturers and restaurants more often had policies for television, radio, print, Internet, and product placement than for digital marketing, like cell phones, iPods, and social networks, characters, games, and contests on food packages, toy give-aways with children's meals at fast-food restaurants, or branded marketing programs for schools. Half of the entertainment companies with policies, like the Cartoon Network, apply nutrition standards to the licensing of their characters, but few have policies for their television advertising or Web site, which are the primary ways they market to children.

In 2006, the Council of Better Business Bureaus announced a self-regulatory program called the Childrens Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative. Sixteen major food and restaurant companies, representing about 80 percent of television food advertising expenditures, have joined the program and announced that they will not market foods to children under 12 that don’t meet companies’ individual nutritional standards. But those standards often are carefully tailored and still allow a considerable volume of junk-food advertising to reach young kids, according to CSPI. The group's analysis of advertising on Nickelodeon, conducted in November, found that 80 percent of food ads on the popular children's network were for junk food.

While 64 percent of food manufacturers that advertise to children have marketing policies, only 24 percent of restaurants and 22 percent of entertainment companies do. For Qubo’s part, the company says its nutrition policy reinforces an overall message about healthy living and providing children with the foundations for self-esteem that the company promotes in popular kids’ programs such as Turbo Dogs, Willa's Wild Life and Babar.

"Shortly after the launch of the Qubo kids' channel in 2007, we established very stringent nutritional guidelines for advertising only healthy foods to children," said Brandon Burgess, chairman and CEO of ION Media Networks, the parent company of the Qubo Channel. "We were responding to the alarming increase in childhood obesity and the seminal work established by the FCC's Task Force on Media and Childhood Obesity. Then and now, we were happy to work with policymakers, CSPI, and our industry colleagues to fight childhood obesity and provide children with important educational building blocks in making healthy lifestyle choices."

In the next few weeks, the Federal Trade Commission together with other federal agencies is expected to propose a set of nutrition criteria and other standards for foods marketed to children that, when finalized in July, the agency hopes companies will adopt on a voluntary basis.

"If food, toy, and media companies fail to adopt those voluntary standards, they will be clanging the death knell for their self-regulatory initiative and inviting strong government involvement in food marketing aimed at kids," Wootan said.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest is a nonprofit health advocacy group based in Washington, DC, that focuses on nutrition, food safety, and pro-health alcohol policies.  CSPI is supported by the 900,000 U.S. and Canadian subscribers to its Nutrition Action Healthletter and by foundation grants.  

© 2010 Center for Science in the Public Interest

CSPI: Food Label Makeovers For Next 15 Years

Desiree Jones, Ph.D.--

On March 4, the US Food and Drug Administration announced the recall of a commonly used flavor enhancer known as Hydrolyzed Vegetable Protein or HVP – after samples of the product were found to contain a bacterium identified as Salmonella Tennessee.  The bacteria were found in HVP manufactured by Basic Food Flavors Inc. of Las Vegas, Nevada. 

HVP is a flavor enhancer used in thousands of processed food products such as soups, sauces, dips, dressings, chilis, stews, hot dogs, gravies, seasoned snack foods, and numerous other products.  Fortunately, many products that contain HVP involve cooking prior to eating, which would kill any bacteria present.  However, items that contain HVP but do not require cooking prior to ingestion are currently in the process of being recalled.  Here is the link to the list of products that have been recalled, or are currently in the process of being recalled:  Searchable Database of Recalled HVP-Containing Products.

Concerns over our nation’s food safety have been brought to the forefront in the past year owing to recalls associated with contaminated meat, cookie dough, peanut butter, and contaminated spinach/packed salads.  Now, this latest recall of an item that is present in literally thousands of foods has numerous food safety advocacy groups deeply concerned.  There is no doubt that preventive measures that would eliminate the possibility of mass contamination of foods are essential and pressing.  The multiple food recalls of the last year have significantly undermined public confidence in the overall safety of our nation’s food supply chain.

Notwithstanding the above, here is a thought I would like to leave you with:  HVP and similar other “flavor enhancers” are industrial products that are used on a mass scale in processed foods.  Is it really that radical a thought to consider that we CAN make foods delicious without such industrial agents?   As a research scientist who happens to have a professional culinary background, I have studied both traditional and contemporary food preparation methods utilized in  cultures around the world.  Of note is the fact that for centuries, food has been prepared across the globe and in disparate cultures – with only the purest, most natural flavoring agents  (such as locally grown herbs, spices, etc.) – a technique which, incidentally, has been historically demonstrated to have a “built-in” safety factor.   However, it seems to me that only now, in our present times in which the reliance on artificial, chemical, and largely “industrial” flavoring agents has skyrocketed, our worries about food safety have skyrocketed also.

I believe that the solutions to what often seem like mass, insoluble problems are actually quite simple, and inevitably lie in falling back on the fundamentals.  We can live without processed foods, or at the very least, we can minimize their use.   The evidence of history shows that those who do are the better for  it.

Desiree Jones, PhD is a Doctor of Epidemiology, who speaks and writes on cutting-edge issues pertaining to chronic disease prevention in the Western and the newly Westernizing nations. She has worked collaboratively with researchers at The University of Texas, Baylor College of Medicine, and Harvard University. Her first book is expected to arrive on the market this year, and is entitled, HALTING THE DEATH MARCH - Why America and The Westernized World are Dying from Heart Disease, Cancer, Diabetes, and Other Chronic Diseases, And How to Stop It.  Dr. Jones’ work has been featured numerous times - and continues to appear - in major news media such as Basil & Spice, The New York Daily News, Business Week, Google News Top Stories of the Day, USA Today, The Chicago Sun Times and numerous other nationally syndicated health and news sites. Dr. Jones writes on the underlying root causes responsible for high rates of chronic disease in the U.S. and the Western nations.  She is the Founder of The Prevention Revolution, a site that brings medical/nutritional research and informed opinion on critical health-care issues to individuals and physicians, as well as to corporations facing skyrocketing health-care costs. Dr. Jones focuses on translating evidence-based research into real-life choices that can help prevent deadly chronic diseases and create lasting health.

2034: Diabetes To Double To 44.1 Million, Costs U.S. $336 Billion

BPA: Avoid All Food/Bev Containers Numbered 3 Or 7

Copyright © 2006-2010, Basil & Spice. All rights reserved.

Joanna Dolgoff, MD--

Recently, America’s school lunch menus have been under fire and parents are becoming increasingly concerned about the state of their children’s health and well-being.  Federal law, under the School Lunch Act, provides nutritional guidelines and criteria to which schools must adhere.  These guidelines include the amount and type of foods the cafeteria must offer, in addition to placing limits on nutrients like saturated fat, cholesterol and sodium.  Specifically, school lunches must provide 1/3 of the Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) for protein, calcium, iron, vitamin A, vitamin C, and 1/3 of the Recommended Energy Intake (REI) for calories.  In addition, the cafeteria must offer 5 components as part of a school lunch, of which three of the five must make their way onto the child’s lunch tray.  These include a starch, meat (or meat substitute), fruit, vegetable and milk.  There are similar guidelines for schools that serve breakfast as well.  These guidelines are especially important because many children eat the majority of their meals at school.

Milk contributes a good portion of nutrients to school lunches.  It is a valuable, nutrient-dense source of protein, calcium and vitamin D, all of which are important for achieving adequate nutrition and optimal growth in school-age children.  However, whole milk can significantly contribute to the saturated fat and cholesterol content of a meal.

According to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) whole milk and other full-fat dairy products are only appropriate for children under the age of 1-2 years old. Children under two, who are in a stage of rapid growth and brain development,  have high energy and dietary fat requirements.  They need the extra fat that whole milk contains.

Everybody else, however, should choosing low fat dairy products, including skim milk.  In fact, the AAP states that no child over the age of two should be drinking whole milk.  Skim milk is identical to whole milk in terms of nutritional value, but is markedly lower in saturated fat, cholesterol and calories.  Diets high in saturated fat are associated with increased risk for obesity, heart disease and certain cancers.  Saturated fat intake causes harmful buildup in the arteries and blood vessels of healthy individuals, starting in young children.  It is important to begin healthy eating habits as a child and to continue making healthy choices throughout life.

A good portion of a child’s learning happens through modeling.  That is, by watching their parents or other caregivers’ actions, they learn how to be an adult.  This is especially important when it comes to eating:  your food preferences as an adult are closely related to the foods you saw your parents eating.  But what happens when your child is eating 2 out of 3 meals a day at school, plus a snack?  Because they are eating so many meals outside the home or the care of their parents, kids are increasingly reliant on teachers, caregivers and cafeteria staff to guide them to make healthy choices and model healthy eating behaviors.

The fact is, the people who are responsible for serving food to or eating with your children usually receive no formal nutrition education.  In most cases, a position as a preschool classroom aide or a kitchen worker requires a high school level education.  Regardless, whatever their educational background, it is a common misconception for people to think that whole milk has a nutritional advantage over skim milk.  It is also very common that parents encounter teachers or caregivers who have different beliefs than their own when it comes to feeding their child.  Especially when you’re talking about the welfare of a child’s health, when a parent feels one way but their caregiver feels another way, this can create some tension.  A well-meaning day care worker just may not be aware of or understand the reasons why full-fat milk can be dangerous, even for young children.  Parents often have a difficult time getting this message across but should continue to be an advocate for their child’s health.

In situations like this, as a parent you have the right to decide what your child does and does not eat.  You can stress this issue to the teacher in a polite way while still standing firm.  If needed, refer them to an appropriate resource, such as www.MyPyramid.gov, the American Academy of Pediatrics, your pediatrician, or even a local dietitian for further advice on this matter.  Your child’s health comes first!

Joanna Dolgoff, M.D. is a pediatrician whose practice solely deals with child and adolescent weight management. A graduate of Princeton University, she completed her education at NYU School of Medicine and finished her Pediatric Residency training at Columbia Presbyterian's Children's Hospital of New York. She has previously worked as a private practice pediatrician, helping children reach their weight loss goals. A Board Certified Fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics, Dr. Dolgoff is also the proud mother of two children. She is the author of Red Light, Green Light, Eat Right (Rodale/ 2010). Click here to learn more about Dr. Dolgoff's Weigh Child and Adolescent Weight Management Program.

School Lunches Usually Not Healthy--Alternatives

Top 10 Food Myths

Copyright © 2006-2010, Basil & Spice. All rights reserved.

Robyn O'Brien--

Just got a call and “Something very big is going down with ice cream…”

And it is.  More and more people are finding out that an artificial growth hormone called rBGH (also known as rBST) that is used in our dairy products causes harm, leads to increased antibiotic resistance in humans and may increase cancer rates. The use of this growth hormone has been banned by Canada, Australia, New Zealand and all 27 nations of the European Union. 

According to the FDA, this synthetic growth hormone is “substantially equivalent” to naturally occurring growth hormones.  But the problem is that no tests have ever been run.  So we don’t know if our children with milk allergies are allergic to the milk that we grew up drinking or to these engineered milk proteins in rBGH which was  introduced into our milk in 1994.

Thankfully, despite the FDA language, eaters like you are insisting on the same standards seen by eaters in Europe, Australia, Japan and in other developed countries, which has led dozens of retailers and dairy processors and to stop using rBGH completely, including Starbucks, Chipotle Restaurants, Darigold, Tillamook and many more. Walmart, Kroger, Kraft and others have started offering rBGH-free product lines and last year, Yoplait and Dannon yogurts both went completely rBGH-free in response to consumer demand.

But two of our nation’s largest ice cream makers, Breyers and Dreyers, are still using this growth hormone in their products – growth hormones that are engineered in a lab and linked to diseases and antibiotic resistance in humans.  Let Breyers and Dreyers hear from you!  Kids matter, food matters and synthetic growth hormones in our ice cream matter!

To e-mail U.S. Ice Cream, which includes Breyers,  go to http://www.icecreamusa.com/contact_us/comment.cfm or call (800) 931.2826 

To e-mail Dreyer’s, go to http://www.dreyersinc.com/contact.asp  or call (877) 437.3937

Together, we can get synthetic growth hormones out of our dairy, one scoop of ice cream at a time!

According to the New York Times, Robyn O’Brien is “Food’s Erin Brockovich.” Robyn is the founder of AllergyKids, an organization designed to protect the 1 in 3 American children with autism, allergies, ADHD and asthma. Robyn has appeared on the Today Show, Good Morning America, CBS Evening News with Katie Couric and CNN highlighting the role that chemicals in our food supply are having on our health. O'Brien is the author of The Unhealthy Truth: How Our Food Is Making Us Sick and What We Can Do About It (Random House/ May 2009) and it exposes the role that money plays in our federal food policy.  Born and raised in Texas, Robyn earned a Fulbright Fellowship, an MBA and served as an equity analyst on a multibillion dollar fund prior to moving to Boulder, Colorado with her husband and four children. Additional resources, articles and information are available at www.robynobrien.com and www.allergykids.com

265% Increase In Hospitalizations Related To Food Allergic Reactions

Copyright © 2006-2010, Basil & Spice. All rights reserved.

Statement of CSPI Legal Affairs Director Bruce Silverglade

The FDA’s coordinated enforcement actions today against 16 food manufacturers, including Gerber, Beech-Nut, Gorton’s, Sunsweet, Nestlé, Pom, and Diamond, should send a loud and clear signal to industry that time is running out on misleading health-related claims on labels.  For far too long, manufacturers have exaggerated the healthfulness of their products, or even implied that their products contain special “functional” ingredients that provide drug-like protection against various diseases.  The previous administration tolerated such shenanigans, but I hope that the party is now over.

While today’s action is the largest crackdown on deceptive food labeling in more than a decade, the FDA must now turn its individual enforcement actions into binding regulations.    

Some companies highlighted in CSPI’s recent report found themselves targets of FDA action today, while others apparently escaped scrutiny.  The FDA dodged some issues, like not cracking down on false claims that Ocean Spray Cranberry Juice and other foods help strengthen your immune system.  And the agency should have banned misleading “0 grams trans fat” claims for foods high in saturated fat, instead of just instructing companies to add a disclosure like “see nutrition panel for saturated fat information.”  FDA also needs to set standards for claims such as “made with whole wheat” by specifying that the percentage of whole grains appear on the label in conjunction with the claim.

In addition to issuing industry-wide regulations to halt misleading claims, the FDA should update the 20-year-old Nutrition Facts label and improve the readability of ingredient lists.  The FDA currently is studying various schemes for providing key pieces of nutrition information prominently on front labels.

The warning letters sent by FDA today are a welcome step.  But unless the FDA uses its authority to issue new, industry-wide regulations to prevent such abuses, the agency will forever be playing a game of Whac-A-Mole with companies that use deceptive labeling.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest is a nonprofit health advocacy group based in Washington, DC, that focuses on nutrition, food safety, and pro-health alcohol policies.  CSPI is supported by the 900,000 U.S. and Canadian subscribers to its Nutrition Action Healthletter and by foundation grants.  

CSPI: Food Label Makeovers For Next 15 Years

Review By Susan Schenck

Amazon.com recommended the university textbook Food And Western Disease (Wiley-Blackwell/2010) to me, based on my purchase of hundreds of nutrition books. Well, I hadn’t spent so much money on a book since I was in college! But one look at the table of contents was enough to convince me that my nutritional knowledge would never be complete without this information. Then the snow storms delayed the book’s arrival by a week. I eagerly anticipated the book’s arrival and daily tracked its whereabouts on Amazon.com.

I was not disappointed. I read the book from cover to cover in less than a week. It is jam-packed withinformation. Nearly every sentence is backed with a footnote citing a study as evidence. There are a few things that I disagree with, for example that a high fat diet may be dangerous, but even the author admits those studies often include grains in the diet (which are, as the author  would agree, detrimental to our health). I also wish the author had delved more into the relevance of cooked vs. raw since the Paleolithic diet (advocated in the book) undoubtedly contained mostly raw, enzyme-rich foods.

Why study our evolutionary diet? Author Staffan Lindeberg, MD, PhD, explains that (from the perspective of evolutionary biology) there are four causes of disease or symptoms: attack (as with bacteria and viruses); defense (as with a fever, in which your body is heating itself up to limit the cell division of the bacteria and virus); design error (as with choking on food—airway and gastrointestinal system are crossed); and lack of adaptability to new environment (as with insulin resistance, since we are eating more high glycemic carbs than our ancestors did).

The drug companies would have you believe that every disease is a design error and needs to be fixed by a new chemical concoction. In reality, modern diseases began with agriculture. We have clearly not adapted to a diet rich in carbs and especially grains and legumes filled with anti-nutrients such as lectins and phytates.

Lindeberg points out the limitations and contradictions found in scientific nutritional studies. Epidemiological research (which involves observing factors affecting the health and illness of populations) is unreliable because we cannot control all factors. Molecular biology is hard because lab animals are not biologically the same as humans. Furthermore, there are many as yet undiscovered nutrients and molecules that can impact the studies. An intervention study with a controlled trial has the flaw that people often simultaneously improve their lifestyle in other respects, such as giving up smoking or exercising more. Then there is publication bias, as studies with a positive outcome get published more often. There is funding bias, since scientists want to please those who finance their studies so they can get more work. Citation bias also occurs: drug studies get quoted much more than nutritional ones do. Then there is the influence of preconceived ideas: of course, every researcher hopes that his or her hypothesis will be confirmed.

Evolutionary medicine provides an important complement to traditional scientific methods. The new study of nutigenomics looks at the effects of foods and food constituents on gene expression. It considers the diet that people evolved eating. Traditional people on their traditional diets have been observed to be free of modern day illnesses. Those that were best suited to the food that was available were the ones that had the greatest chance of surviving. Adaptation is very slow, often taking about 40,000 years. Tale the last 365 million years and convert them to a calendar year, making each million years one day. On January 1, we have our amphibian ancestor. Early mammal is born on June 10. Our first primate ancestor arrives on October 28. Homo Sapiens is born December 31 at 7:30 PM. Agriculture develops at 11:45 PM. At 11:59:50, just 15 minutes after agriculture and 10 seconds before the end of the year, cardiovascular disease begins.

This book not only discusses our ancestral diet, but also includes a chapter with a section on every disease of civilization: heart and cardiovascular issues, diabetes, cancer, dementia, autoimmune diseases, obesity and more.

The bottom line from all the studies is: eat a diet based on fish, lean meat, fruits, vegetables, and nuts. (Eat seeds sparingly as they are too high in omega-6 fats.) Grains and dairy are not our original foods, although some people can eat them when they are prepared properly. (For example, dairy should be fermented.)

Staffan Lindeberg is Associate Professor of Family Medicine at Lund University, Sweden and a practicing GP at St Lars Primary Health Care Centre, Lund, Sweden.  You'll find the author online at www.staffanlindeberg.com/

Susan Schenck is author of The Live Food Factor

5* Product Review: NuNaturals--NuStevia (Feb 2010)

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