Diabetes News

Timely message -- New Yorkers, take action today

I just received the following urgent appeal from the New York Coalition for Healthy School Food (NYCHSF), a statewide nonprofit group that works to improve the health and well-being of New York's students by advocating for healthy plant-based foods, farm-to-school programs (including organic where possible), the elimination of unhealthy competitive foods in all areas of the school (not just the cafeteria), comprehensive nutrition policy, and education to create food- and health-literate students.

The organization has been closely following the bills up for vote so rather than summarize the contents of their urgent memo, I'm including it in in its entirety.

Please note that the New York Coalition for Healthy School Food recommends that you take action today. FYI, the organization's suggestions clearly do still include some sugar (not my preference but I think what they're suggesting is more realistic).

Also, please forward this to all your friends, relatives, colleagues, etc. who live in New York so that they, too, can take a stand.

• Senator Steve Saland (S.5892), Poughkeepsie (ph:) 518-455-2411  saland@senate.state.ny.us
• Assemblywoman Catherine Nolan, (A.8698), Queens County (ph:) 518-455-4851 nolanc@assembly.state.ny.us
• Speaker of the Assembly, Sheldon Silver, ( A.8698), NYC  (ph:) 518-455-3791 speaker@assembly.state.ny.us
• Your Assemblyperson: go to http://assembly.state.ny.us/mem/
• Your Senator: go to http://www.senate.state.ny.us and click on “Senators”

After calling, tell the person that you speak with that you will be emailing the recommended amendments. But do not email only, call first!

PLEASE make these calls now. Let’s show the New York state elected officials that NYCHSF has a powerful voice, one that is louder, and stronger, and more determined than the food industry lobbyists!!! Exercise your democratic rights. We absolutely can not let the powerful food industry determine food policy, nor our children’s future, so PLEASE make your calls right away.

Thank you for your support,

Amie Hamlin
Executive Director

Support Governor Spitzer’s Bill (A.8642) with these Amendments:

Follow the link below to read the suggestions, please.

1. Tighten Language

• Close large potential loophole on p3, line 43 that exempts all foods and beverages offered “in order to raise funds for school activities.”
• Require that all nutrition standards for school districts and regulations regarding food policy take effect immediately (to prevent districts from signing new long term contracts with food and beverage companies)
• Require that schools shall make available to the Department, parents and students, upon request, documentation setting forth the ingredients and nutrients of any food item sold, served or offered.
• BMI’s should not be reported to parents until such time that all families can have referrals and access to support services such as NYS Certified Dietitian Nutritionists, Registered Dietitians, and/or a community based program that addresses overweight/obesity.
• If Local Wellness Policies are addressed in the bill, it should be mandated that NYS Certified Dietitian Nutritionists or Registered Dietitians be on the committee since they are the nutrition experts.

2. Nutrition Standards

• Mandate that only fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and legumes be available outside of the school meal program.
• Require that fresh fruits, fresh vegetables, and whole grains be available at each meal
• Mandate no artificial colors, artificial flavors, artificial preservatives, or artificial sweeteners
• Mandate that foods/beverages contain no added transfats, ie, the ingredients list shall not contain any hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated fats. Currently up to ½ gram would be allowed based on the current labeling law and this is not acceptable.
• Mandate that no foods/beverages contain any high fructose corn syrup
• Mandate that foods/beverages with added sugars should be limited to 10 grams per serving or less
• Require that snack items meet a sodium content limit of 200 mg or less per package (regardless of number of servings) or 480 mg or less per entrée
• Require that meals contain no more than 5 milligrams saturated fat total per meal.
• Mandate that plain potable water is available throughout the school day at no cost to students
• Mandate that schools will offer during lunch period vegetables and entrees which are not fried, pre or post procurement
• Rewrite plant-based entrée requirement to read “as its primary component, one or more of the following: legumes (beans or bean products, including soy or lentils), Seitan (wheat protein), nuts, and/or seeds or their butters. Such an entrée will contain no cholesterol and will be part of a meal containing no more than 5 grams of saturated fat in total.” Without this provision, we will see entrees containing cheese - the primary source of saturated fat in school menus - on the menu every day.
• Require that yogurt should contain no more than 30 grams of sugar per 8 ounce serving (IOM recommendation), 
• Mandate that fruits shall be packed in their own juices or water

3. Mandate key elements rather than leaving them to the discretion of the school district wellness committees

• Mandate the use of skim or low fat milk (1%)
• Prohibit the use of food or beverages as a reward or punishment
• Require schools to provide students with a minimum of 20 minutes to eat breakfast and thirty minutes to eat lunch, and that lunch meals occur between the hours of 11 am and 2 pm to prevent students from having lunch too early or late in the day
• Require schools to provide students in eighth grade and under a recess period involving physical activity of up to 30 consecutive minutes on each day when there is no physical education class
• Prohibit schools from disciplining a student by taking away such recess period
• Require the establishment and implementation of nutrition education competencies for K-12

4. Schools need increased funding for school food and nutrition programs if there is to be accountability for achieving strong nutrition standards. Current reimbursements are not enough and an investment in children now will result in lower medical costs to the state later.

Note from Connie: Thanks to my research assistant Jennifer Moore for this enlightening post about the dangers not of sugar but of the sodium benzoate in soft drinks. There is so much news to comment about here that I'm thrilled to have her helping out here from time to time.

Just when you thought soda couldn't be any worse for you -- aside from its insanely high sugar content and the way it packs on pounds -- new research from Britain uncovers yet another way this sweet stuff may be hazardous to your health.

Peter Piper, a professor of molecular biology and biotechnology at the UK's University of Sheffield, believes that soft drinks containing the additive sodium benzoate may shut down parts of the DNA in a person's cells, a claim we learned about, thanks to consumer affairs reporter Martin Hickman in the British paper The Independent.

Professor Piper, whom Hickman refers to as an expert in aging, made this discovery after testing the additive on living yeast cells in his lab. The sodium benzoate affects the cell's mitochondria, which Hickman calls the "power station" of a person's cells. (FYI, in Chapter 2 of Connie's book SUGAR SHOCK!, Dr. Stephen Sinatra -- contributing author to her book -- also talks about the important role of mitochondria.)

So why is this scary news that sodium benzoate in soda affects the cell's mitochondria?

Dr. Piper explains to The Independent:

"The mitochondria consumes the oxygen to give you energy and if you damage it -- as happens in a number if diseased states -- then the cell starts to malfunction very seriously. And there is a whole array of diseases that are now being tied to damage to this DNA -- Parkinson's and quite a lot of neuro-degenerative diseases, but above all the whole process of ageing."

Let's put it another way: Some brands of soft drinks contain a substance that might very well cause the kind of cell damage typically seen in devastating illnesses like Parkinson's disease, which is the terrible condition from which actor Michael J. Fox suffers. Just click the National Parkinson Foundation's website to learn what the disease does to a person's body. Yikes!

According to Hickman, sodium benzoate is widely used by a variety of soft drink manufacturers, including Coca-Cola, Pepsi Max, Diet Pepsi, Sprite, Dr Pepper, and Fanta. This substance, which Hickman reports occurs naturally in healthy foods like berries, is used in large amounts to keep mold out of soda.

Interestingly, according to Hickman, the World Health Organization even admitted that the science supporting the contention that the additive is safe is "limited."

What's more, the combination of sodium benzoate and vitamin C was found to create a carcinogen called benzene, as Connie wrote about here last year. While the UK's Food Standards Agency took the drastic measure to call for four products containing benzene to be taken off the market, our own FDA  has't taken such a step. The agency insists that the levels of benzene found in sodas sold here aren't a safety risk.

Now, the FDA says that some soft drink companies did formulate their sparkling, sugary beverages to cut the amount benzene and that they continue to monitor the situation.

Pardon me for being a bit skeptical that the FDA is doing everything it can to keep toxins out of soda -- after all, the FDA is same governmental agency that let Avandia be unleashed on millions of diabetic Americans, despite research showing that the drug could substantially increase the risk of heart attacks.

As far as sodium benzoate goes, Professor Piper thinks that the FDA's tests aren't good enough.

"By the criteria of modern safety testing, the safety tests were inadequate," he said. "Like all things, safety testing moves forward and you can conduct a much more rigorous safety test than you could 50 years ago."

So now Americans have yet another reason to avoid soda. Of course, staying away from soda is easier said than done for many people. In fact, according to the Center for Science in the Public Interest's widely acclaimed 2005 report on soda (called "Liquid Candy"), soft drinks are the # 1 source of calories in the American diet.

If Professor Piper's research is to be believed, millions of Americans may be inadvertently damaging their cells just by having a can of soda every day.

My advice: Check out Connie's book SUGAR SHOCK! for tips on how to quash those powerful sugar cravings and lick your soda habit for good. And ask your representatives in Congress to urge the FDA to take some serious action in light of Professor Piper's revealing research about sodium benzoate.

Most Americans are unknowingly falling prey to obesity-generating traps that are put into place by the United States Department of Agriculture. You see, all around us, folks are overeating potentially dangerous sugary, fatty, high-calorie, nutrient-poor, processed junk foods laden with high fructose corn syrup and soybean oil, in large part, because of Uncle Sam.

Sadly, the U.S.D.A. funds a farm bill that encourages over production and over consumption of many of the foods that it warns against. At the same time, the governmental agency is encouraging the profits of agribusiness and ignoring its own advice -- to eat plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables.

These are some of the important points made in an enlightening and much-needed editorial in the Baltimore Sun from physician and Johns Hopkins University postdoctoral fellow Scott Kahan, M.D.., founder and director of the Institute for Evidence-Based Nutrition, an organization dedicated to promoting a sensible and scientific approach to nutrition and preventive health.

Specifically, more than $20 billion yeartly -- or more than one-fifth of the USDA’s budget -- is spent on the farm bill, which mostly subsidizes corn and soybean crops, Dr. Kahan writes as this year's farm bill is up for consideration.

"Take corn," he writes, "the most highly subsidized crop, which received $9.4 billion in 2005 -- nearly as much as all other crops combined."

Dr. Kahan continues.

"Corn production has more than doubled since the 1970s, and all of this artificially cheapened corn is unloaded on the public, largely in the form of tasty but empty-calorie junk foods. Refined corn is the chief source of carbohydrates and calories in most processed foods, particularly snack foods. High-fructose corn syrup is the most widely used caloric sweetener in the United States. And corn meal is widely used as cheap animal feed to fatten factory-raised livestock." (Incidentally, my book SUGAR SHOCK! delves into the dangers of high fructose corn syrup.)

The US government also pushes soybeans -- it's the fourth-most-subsized crop. "Although soy protein is a healthful meat substitute, soybeans are more commonly used in junk foods," Dr. Kahan points out.

In fact, he observes, soybean oil "accounts for 75 percent of the fat in processed foods and is commonly hydrogenated to create trans fats, which improve shelf life but are known to cause cardiovascular disease."

At the same time, "healthful foods are grossly underfunded," Dr. Kahan rightly observes.

He then supports important facts to back up his observations about the USDA's hypocrisy.

"USDA guidelines advise that fruits and vegetables make up at least one-third of daily intake, but just 5 percent of its food funding supports the fruit and vegetable indsutries. There is virtually no funding for public education and advertising encouraging fruit and vegetable consummption. At its peak, the `Five-a-day' campaign budget was just $3 million annually -- compared with the $11 billion spent yearly in the United States for fast food and junk food advertising..."

But the new farm bill could provide a venue to change these current fat-promoting policies, Dr. Kahan writes in his Baltimore Sun editorial.

I was very happy to see such an eye-opening opinion piece. More Americans need to know about the USDA's hypocrisy, and we need to encourage our legislators to vote on behalf of us consumers, not agribusiness.

Thanks to Althea Chang for doing back-up research for this post.

Note from Connie: SUGAR SHOCK! Blog researcher/writer Jennifer Moore got very worked up after reading an enlightening Associate Press article from Rukmini Callimachi about how obesity is actually encouraged -- if not forced upon residents of the African country of Mauritania. Read Jennifer's impassionated commentary.

Amidst our ongoing obesity epidemic in the U.S., we're absolutely obsessed with thinness.

We try all manner of diets; we admire models who wear impossibly tiny size 0 clothes; and our supermarket tabloids routinely run cover stories about how celebrities stay so thin (with a special focus on how famous actresses peel off pounds after childbirth). So, despite the fact that as a whole, Americans are decidedly not thin, many of us certainly strive to be, and we consider thinness ideal.

In light of all that, I found recent news from the Associated Press to be a real jaw-dropper. Reporter Rukmini Callimachi writes, in a horrifying, yet fascinating story -- which ran in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and other papers -- that in the African country of Mauritania, obesity in women is encouraged to the point that some families have been known to force-feed their daughters to make them gain weight. (There's also an oddly glib take on this story from Catherine Price at Salon.com.)

In Mauritania, Callimachi explains, obesity is considered beautiful in women, and it is also a sign of a family's prosperity in a desert country that's been repeatedly ravaged by drought.

The story cites data from the World Health Organization showing that 25% of Mauritania's 1.5 million women are obese, this, despite the fact that there isn't a single fast food joint -- a main culprit in America's obesity epidemic -- in the entire country.

The anecdotes Callimachi provides are heartbreaking. The story opens with this vivid, haunting image:

"Mey Mint struggles to carry her weight up the flight of stairs, her thighs shaking with each step. It will take several minutes for the 50-year-old to catch her breath, air hissing painfully in and out of her chest. Her rippling flesh is not the result of careless overeating, though, but rather of a tradition."

Wow. I can only shake my head in sadness and disbelief. But it gets worse. Mint told Callimachi that at the age of 4, her parents forced her to consume 14 gallons of camel's milk a day in attempt to fatten her up.

If she tried to refuse, she suffered hideous physical abuse -- her family would bend her fingers backwards until they touched her hand. If she vomited, which the child obviously couldn't help after having an excessive amount of milk shoved down her throat, she was beaten.

By the time she turned 10, Mint was so heavy she couldn't even run. Her mother's reaction?

"Unconcerned, her proud mother delighted in measuring the loops of fat hanging under her daughter's arms," Callimachi writes.

"My mother thinks she made me beautiful. But she made me sick," says Mint. 

Of course, Mint suffers from diabetes and heart disease, presumably due to a lifetime of forced overeating.

There is a glimmer of good news here. Mauritania's government has launched a public health campaign to alert its citizens to the perils of obesity. The country's National Office of Statistics says that only 10% of women under the age of 19 have been force-fed, Callimachi writes, while one-third of women aged 40 or over report having suffered force feeding.

Also, foreign soap operas starring slender women have apparently caused a reduction in forcible feeding, particularly among well-to-do urban women, Callimachi writes. (I can't believe I'm about to say this, but thank goodness for the influence of TV!)

On the other hand, a country's cultural mores can be hard to change, and some young women in Mauritania take medication that increases appetite so they'll eat more, the story says.

It would be easy (and perhaps unfair) for a Westerner like me living in a largely prosperous, agriculturally rich land to disdain the cultural beliefs of people in other less arable parts of the world, where scarcity is likely a constant concern. I can only assume that the people of Mauritania who engaged in this awful practice weren't malicious, but they simply didn't know what most Americans know about the dangers of obesity (although beating up a child for not wanting to eat is unforgivable, IMO).

But still, this story, written very powerfully by the AP's Callimachi, is positively shocking and ultimately tragic. I hope that since Mauritania's government apparently knows that obesity kills, they'll do everything they can to change to effect a change in the beliefs and behaviors of the people there.

This story strikes a nerve with me in another way, too. My 4-year-old daughter is pretty slight for her age, and I sometimes worry that she's not growing fast enough because she doesn't eat as much as other kids her age. While I certainly have never struck or otherwise physically harmed her when she refuses food, I know I've exerted pressure in other ways to get her to eat more. I certainly don't want to be the unwitting cause of her having an unhealthy relationship with food.

Thanks to Calorie Lab for alerting me to this unforgettable article, which also ran in an abbreviated version in the Philadelphia Inquirer. It makes me look at my small, picky-eating little one with a newfound respect for her ability to know when she's had enough and sensitivity to her right to say no to food.

From Jennifer Moore

Excuse me! How many people really know what the word "discretion" means?

So how much sense does it really make for the allegedly venerable U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to give its stamp of approval on junk foods? Huh? 

Well, I was taking a peek today at the MyPyramid, because it's getting some good buzz recently. According to Health Day, dietitians are saying that it's helping Americans understand how to eat healthily.

As you may recall, the not-so-new pyramid -- which was unveiled April 2005 -- trashes the horizontal pyramid sections and instead features vertical bands in six different colors to represent various foods. For instance, orange stands for grains, green is for vegetables, red implies fruits, blue signals dairy, purple means meat and beans, and yellow conveys oils.

Well, today I zeroed in on the USDA's fascinating idea. You see, the governmental agency says -- well, I'm paraphrasing here -- "Go for it. Use your allowance of `discretionary calories' to eat sugary cereals, soda, candy or other crap."

OK, I'm exaggerating a bit, but seriously, the USDA tells you that if it takes 2,000 calories per day to keep you running, "you need to spend at least 1,735 calories for essential nutrients, if you choose foods without added fat and sugar. Then you have 265 discretionary calories left."

That means you can go for “luxury” versions of foods such as higher fat meat or sweetened cereal. "Or, you can spend them on sweets, sauces, or beverages."

"Luxury" versions of foods? Clearly, the FDA and I differ on our definitions of luxury. (When I think luxury, I think of expensive, tasty, gourmet goat cheese, hearts of palm, fennel or jicama. Yum!)

Discretion really wasn't on my mind today until my blog research assistant Jennifer got me thinking. She encountered this Health Day article, which got here thinking.

Well, my health-conscious point of view seems to positively affect everyone around me. Sure enough, working for me has influenced Jennifer, who's struggling to convey good-food habits to her adorable four-year-old.

She e-mailed me: "Am I the only one who thinks this is crazy? I mean, should the USDA really tell people it’s fine to ingest even a tiny bit of soda or candy, which have no health-boosting properties whatsoever?"

Yeah, yeah, the food pyramid website does caution people to use only a fraction of their recommended daily caloric intake on this stuff. But come on, does the USDA expect us fast-paced, multi-tasking, almost-always-behind-schedule Americans to calculate how much food to leave to discretion?

Besides, should our government agency, whose job is to safeguard public health, give the thumbs-up on soda, candies and other culprit carbs?

Hey, it's one thing to have a "treat" once a while (or even once a week) but to carefully connive and calculate that you can spreand your 265 calories on junk food every day is an absurd notion to consider -- in my opinion, at least.

OK, I'm being a bit harsh here -- the new pyramid definitely really does some good things about it, especially that cute little exercising figure.I just don't think discretion is one of the pyramid's better traits.