A recent study has purportedly linked processed red meat consumption to metabolic syndrome (MetS), which includes health factors such as abdominal obesity and elevated triglycerides, LDL cholesterol, blood pressure, or fasting glucose, or reduced HDL cholesterol. N. Babio, et al., “Association between red meat consumption and metabolic syndrome in a Mediterranean population at high cardiovascular risk: Cross sectional and 1-year follow-up assessment,” Nutrition, Metabolism and Cardiovascular Diseases, September 26, 2010. Researchers evidently conducted cross-sectional analyses on a Mediterranean population at a high risk for cardiovascular disease, evaluating “a 137-item validated semi-quantitative food frequency questionnaire, anthropometric measurements, blood pressure, fasting plasma glucose and lipid profile” at baseline and after one year. The study authors reported that among these individuals, “higher [red meat] consumption is associated with a significantly higher prevalence and incidence of MetS and central obesity.” According to the researchers, the study is “the first that prospectively demonstrates a higher-incidence of…
Tag Archives obesity
The Institute of Medicine’s (IOM’s) Food and Nutrition Board recently launched a new activity titled “Accelerating Progress in Obesity Prevention,” which aims to review IOM’s obesity-prevention strategies and make further recommendations. Sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, an ad hoc committee of academic, industry and scientific experts will undertake a 21-month study intended for regulators, policy makers, foundations, and community-based organizations, and other health professionals. During this process, the committee will (i) consider the progress of previous IOM recommendations, using “available reports, articles, analyses, surveys, legislation and regulations, ‘report cards’, and other relevant literature”; (ii) “develop guiding principles for choosing a set of recommendations”; (iii) “identify a set of recommendations that the committee determines to be fundamental for substantial progress in obesity prevention over the next decade”; and (iv) “recommend potential indicators that can act as markers of progress and that can be readily evaluated through the use of current…
The Yale Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity has released a fall 2010 paper highlighting obesity prevention policies with “the potential for the greatest impact.” The center’s recommendations relate to preschools and schools, consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages, marketing to children, weight bias, food deserts, and ongoing surveillance of these efforts. Among other guidelines, the paper urges legislators, regulators and other public health officials to (i) prohibit the sale of sugar-sweetened beverages and whole milk in preschools; (ii) restrict school sales of competitive foods to those which meet standards set by the Institute of Medicine, as opposed to the federal government; (iii) raise the cost of sugar-sweetened beverages by 10 to 20 percent; (iv) remove materials with branded foods from schools, preschools and all government properties frequented by children; and (v) require children’s meals to meet nutritional standards if they include incentives. According to the Rudd Center, “All of these strategies…
First Lady Michelle Obama recently urged restaurants to offer healthier fare to help reduce “obesity-related conditions” in the United States. Speaking before the National Restaurant Association on September 13, 2010, Obama said “that while restaurants are offering more options and families take advantage of them more often, they aren’t always the healthiest choices.” Asserting that Americans spend half of their food dollars for meals outside the home, she reportedly called on restaurants to use “creativity to rethink the food you offer, especially dishes aimed at young people.” She suggested substituting wheat pasta for white pasta, cutting the amount of butter or cream, serving 1 percent or skim milk, and offering healthy side dishes like apple slices or carrots as the “default” menu choice. Obama also urged restaurants to actively promote healthy foods to children. “It’s not enough just to limit ads for foods that aren’t healthy,” she said. “It’s also…
The National Academies’ Institute of Medicine Standing Committee on Childhood Obesity Prevention will convene a public workshop on October 21, 2010, in Washington, D.C., to “highlight the evidence on current and potential legal strategies and their outcomes” in the prevention of childhood obesity. The gathering of researchers, policy makers, legal scholars, industry representatives, and public health advocates will discuss (i) “current legal strategies in use at national, state, and local levels and their outcomes”; (ii) “other public health initiatives that have used legal strategies to elicit societal and industry changes”; (iii) “the challenges involved in implementation”; (iv) “when legal strategies are needed and effective”; and (v) “opportunities for coordination and sharing information on the success of existing and future legal strategies."
Overweight Americans ages 2 to 19 have become heavier over the last decade, according to a newly published study. May Beydoun & Youfa Wang, “Sociodemographic disparities in distribution shifts over time in various adiposity measures among American children and adolescents: What changes in prevalence rates could not reveal,” International Journal of Pediatric Obesity, August 2010. Conducted by researchers at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the National Institute on Aging, the study used population data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey to examine changes in the body mass index (BMI), waist circumference (WC) and triceps skinfold thickness (TST) of boys and girls across sociodemographic groups. According to Wang, the data showed significant weight gains that were “unequally distributed” across the demographic groups and spectrums of BMI, WC and TST. “Heavier children and adolescents gained more adiposity, especially waist size, and these findings were most significant among children…
Food activist, author and lawyer Michele Simon writes on AlterNet about how PepsiCo has placed a number of respected, and previously anti-industry, scientific experts on its payroll to the dismay of activists like Marion Nestle and others concerned about the purported influence of corporate resources on the public debate over health, obesity and nutrition. She reports that former “public health hero” Derek Yach established his reputation by working on the Framework Convention for Tobacco Control while working at the World Health Organization and later found himself “at odds with Big Food.” He worked for some time with Kelly Brownell’s team at the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University, but then joined PepsiCo in 2007. Nestle reportedly described on her “Food Politics” blog a conversation she had with Yach after learning he was working for the food industry after which she “remained unconvinced that his role at…
A recent editorial in The New England Journal of Medicine has warned that health care reform, rising medical costs and childhood obesity have overtaken tobacco as the top public health priorities, even though smoking “remains by far the most common cause of preventable death and disability in the United States.” Titled “Don’t Forget Tobacco,” the opinion piece claims that federal, state and private efforts to reduce smoking “have seen their assets dwindle or their priorities change” as obesity comes to dominate the discourse. “Lack of insurance, childhood obesity and tobacco use are very different public health challenges, requiring different solutions. All three threaten the most vulnerable Americans,” opine the authors. “By assuming that the tobacco war has been won, we risk consigning millions of Americans to premature death.” Meanwhile, a July 27, 2010, New York Times article fleshes out this trend, tracking the dollars diverted from anti-tobacco campaigns to address…
DTC Perspectives Inc. has announced the 2010 Marketing Disease Prevention in America (MDPA) Conference, which will discuss how health care marketing can effectively address obesity prevention. Slated for October 19-21 in Atlanta, Georgia, the conference is designed for advertisers, health and wellness marketers, media representatives, pharmaceutical marketers, public health advocates, and those in the food, beverage and weight loss industries. MDPA will provide participants with information on the increasing prevalence of obesity; the latest legislative, regulatory and voluntary efforts to limit food and beverage marketing; consumer behaviors and attitudes toward healthy living; the role of retailers and manufacturers in preventing obesity; and the impact of new technologies on public health. Speakers will include David Kessler, former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, as well as representatives from the American Beverage Association, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Action Against Obesity, and Trust for America’s Health.
In a recent issue that celebrates the top diverse U.S. companies, including several food manufacturers and restaurant chains, Diversity Inc. calls out the food and beverage industry, in an investigative report, for marketing, public relations and lobbying tactics some believe have led to unhealthy eating habits and a national obesity epidemic. Titled How the Food Industry Profits While Society Pays, the report describes the effects of an overweight and obese society on the U.S. health care system, while noting that hundreds of hospitals have fast food restaurants on their premises. The report suggests that racial and social justice issues are implicated in the obesity epidemic, citing statistics showing that African-American, Latino and inner-city communities are saturated with fast-food restaurants. A report sidebar discusses the largest fast food chains, noting the tens of thousands of restaurants that bear their logos around the world and the ways they market to children. “On…
