Diabetes News

As regular readers of this SUGAR SHOCK! Blog know, I attended and graduated from the amazing Institute for Integrative Nutrition (IIN) in New York City, which brings in a Who's Who of nutrition experts to teach students there.

Now, as an alumni of IIN, I periodically receive e-mails about subjects of interest. I am including verbatim the contents of one such e-mail because it is vitally important. It's about the Farm Bill currently up for consideration in Congress.

I believe that it's important to galvanize as many people as possible to tell our legislators that they need to change the Farm Bill so that we make significant changes in the availability of healthy foods and nutrition education for Americans.

Please join the Institute for Integrative Nutrition, the Center for Science in the Public Interest and me to send an important message to your representatives in Congress so that they will realize that their constituents believe nutrition and health should be a major priority in the Farm Bill and that the bill should help:

• Improve the nutritional quality of school foods
• Increase the availability of fruits and vegetables in schools
• Expand research at the U.S. Department of Agriculture
• Ensure that low-income pregnant women and small children have access to nutritious foods
• Strengthen nutrition education initiatives through the Food Stamp Nutrition Education Program

This is what the Institute for Integrative Nutrition sent me:

Make your voice heard in Congress!

This month the American Congress will vote on the “Farm Bill,” a major piece of legislation on food, agriculture and nutrition in the U.S. for the next five years.

This legislation is a chance to make significant improvements to the availability of healthy foods and nutrition education in America. In partnership with Michael Jacobson and the Center for Science in the Public Interest, Integrative Nutrition and our students and alumni are getting active.

Please take a moment now to send a message to your representative in Congress. Let them know that you think nutrition and health are a major priority.

When you're done, please forward this message to everyone you know. Your life depends on it!

Together we can rock this world! Thank you for your support.

Please click here to take action now.

Again, I urge you to please join the Institute for Integrative Nutrition, the Center for Science in the Public Interest and me so that we make our legislators realize that we need the Farm Bill to increase the availability of healthy foods and improve nutrition education for Americans.

You can listen to me at 8 am on "The Big Show" with Michael Patrick Shiels, a radio program that is aired on 12 stations statewide on The Michigan Talk Network.

We're going to talk about the recent Kellogg's story about how the company is avoiding litigation by making some changes to improve the nutritional value of their cereal. What a great topic!

Listeners of "The Big Show," write to me here and let me know that you tuned in today. The first three listeners who contact me here at my SUGAR SHOCK! Blog will receive a free teleseminar on Wed., July 17 with famous children's obesity expert David Ludwig, M.D., Ph.D., who will help you help your kids to slim down. You'll be in for a real treat!

Would someone please explain this to me? Why would someone even want to hold a title as dubious as the man who ate the most hotdogs in the shortest period of time?

Why would anyone in his right mind ever want to gobble down 59½ “HBDs” -- or hot dogs and buns, as the Associated Press put it?

So anyhow, 22-year-old Joey Chestnut of San Jose, California set a new record during the Southwest Regional Hot Dog Eating Championship at the Arizona Mills Mall in suburban Tempe.

No offense, but my reaction is, "Well, whooptydo."

The best part of this story is a quote from a wowed Ryan Nerz, who works for Major League Eating, a "world governing board for all stomach-centric sports."

"He’s unbelievable — he just keeps on going,” he gushed.

It certainly appears that this Major League Eating organization, as well as winner Joey Chestnut, have no clue or concern that America is in the midst of a horrific, life-threatening obesity crisis.

Clearly, anyone who cheers on or participates in such a potentially dangerous, gulping-down-food-as-fast-as-you-can contest is in dire need of my book SUGAR SHOCK!, which would explain to them that all those white-flour, nutrient-lacking buns -- or what I call "much-like-sugar carbs" -- can wreak tremendous havoc on your blood sugar levels. (Of course, I'm not even talking about all those disgusting hot dogs.)

Anyhow, I just had to rant about this disgusting event.

Simply banning sugary foods and drinks and encouraging kids to replace junk with healthy, fiber-rich foods, decreased the rate of childhood obesity, according to an important new Swedish study from the Swedish medical university Karolinska Institutet, whose press release about this research appears on Medical News Today.

This study, called the Stockholm Obesity Prevention Project (STOPP), involved children ages 6 through 10 at 10 schools in the Stockholm area. Half the schools removed sweets and sugary beverages from their premises, offering kids higher-quality fare instead. The other half of schools didn't take out the sweet stuff and let the kids continue to indulge in them.

The results were amazing but expected:

• The rate of overweight kids at the schools that just said no to sugar-filled food dropped from 22% to 16%.
• The youngsters allowed to continue eating sugary foods saw their rates of obese and overweight kids rise from 18% to 21%.

(In fact, in Sweden as a whole, the rates of childhood obesity have been climbing, just as they have in the U.S., according to another study reported on by Nicholas Bakalar of the New York Times.)

This study is really good news, because it's proof positive that we can do something about childhood obesity. And thankfully, more and more American schools are getting the message and kicking more and more sugar to the curb.

I hope parents whose kids attend schools that still ply them with needless sugar will use this study to spur their children's schools to change.

But parents need to act on the home front, too. Yes, as a mother, I understand that it's challenging to get your little ones to give up sweet stuff they love. But it's not impossible. In fact, Connie offers great advice on what parents can do to get their kids away from sugar in her book SUGAR SHOCK! (The tips -- provided by a number of experts -- are in Chapter 17, to be exact).

Let's hope news of this study spreads quickly to responsible adults and that they'll take action to fight this very serious problem for our kids.

From Jennifer Moore

Note from Connie: Wow! This is fabulous! I've been eagerly awaiting for this results of this study to be released, and sure enough, the findings are quite impressive. Also, please note that STOPP was financed by the Stockholm County Council, with contributions from the Swedish Research Council and the Masonic Home for Children in Stockholm. Maybe some American organizations will get the same idea to do such a study?

It's great to see a high profile-person speak bluntly about the crisis of childhood obesity in America, and in a speech before the National School Boards Association in San Francisco, Bill Clinton did just that.

"We are playing Russian roulette with our kids' future," Clinton declared to the gathering, according to journalist Thomas Peele's story in the San Jose Mercury News.

The former president warned that "America's obesity epidemic threatens to destroy the health care system, the economy and the nation's future," Peele reported.

Thankfully, Clinton cited sugar as a major culprit in America's obesity epidemic in his speech. He also pointed to trans fats, ever-increasing portion sizes and economic pressures that lead families to make less-than-optimal nutritional choices.

Clinton urged school boards to make good nutrition a top priority, and he used the devastating example of a woman he met in Biloxi, Mississippi to illustrate what might happen to many American kids if responsible adults don't act now.

The woman, whom Clinton estimated couldn't have been more than 35, is obese, wheelchair bound, and had her right leg amputated due to her diabetes, according to Peele's story in the San Jose Mercury News.

As you may already know, Clinton has been actively trying to fight the childhood obesity epidemic since May 2005, when the William J. Clinton Foundation and the American Heart Association teamed up to create the Alliance for a Healthier Generation.

Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee (who, by the way, wrote a glowing endorsement for Connie's book SUGAR SHOCK!), is the Alliance's co-chairman. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which just pledged over $500 million to combat the obesity problem, awarded the Alliance for a Healthier Generation an $8 million grant in support of its Healthy Schools Programs, according to Clinton's foundation website.

Clinton delivered a message that cannot be repeated and amplified enough: Childhood obesity will destroy the health and lives of countless kids if we don't do something about it. Kudos to him for being on the forefront of this issue, and let's hope he can influence others to take action.

From Jennifer Moore

I was just scouting around on MSNBC.com, one of my favorite websites for breaking news stories, and I noticed a whole section about Conservative candidate Mike Huckabee.

Why do I care about the governor or Arkansas? Well, you see, ever since his own diabetes diagnosis -- and losing quite a bit weight -- Huckabee has been quite active in seeking to improve the health of residents of his state and he's spearheaded a number of programs to do just that.

Anyhow, I just discovered some interesting stories about him, including Newsweek's article, "Campaigning for a Healthier America," an Associated Press story, "40 Percent of Children Overweight in Arkansas" and another Newsweek story, "A Would-Be Knight for the Religious Right,"

By the way, Gov. Mike Huckabee was one of a number of well-known experts and personalities, who was nice enough to offer an endorsement for SUGAR SHOCK!

Gov. Huckabee kindly wrote:

“When I finally decided to turn my life around through exercise and better nutrition, one of the first things I did was give up eating refined, processed sugar. SUGAR SHOCK! by Connie Bennett is the definitive look at how Americans are simply eating too much sugar and how this is having a profound negative impact on millions of people. This well-researched book should be considered must reading for anyone interested in the complex health discussion underway in America today!”
- Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee

Pity our poor, TV-watching kids. Just about every time they turn on the tube to watch their favorite shows, they're accosted by ads pushing one sugary food after another.

If they're not tormented by commercials trumpeting the scrumptious flavors of certain candies, then they're being nudged to become a fan of the newest sugary cereal.

And if they don't see ads for candies or cereals, then they're teased into submission to chomp some processed-carb crap snacks.

• Children aged 8 to 12 (they call them "tweens") see the most food ads on TV, an average of 21 ads a day, or more than 7,600 a year.
• Teens see slightly fewer ads, about 17 a day, or more than 6,000 a year.
• And children ages 2 to 7 see about 12 food ads a day, or 4,400 a year."

Not suprisingly, the study found that food was the top product advertised. Sure enough, of the food ads that target children or teens:

• 34% are for candy and snacks.
• 28% are for cereal.
• 10% are for fast foods.

And we wonder why our kids are becoming moody, depressed, tired, irritable and fat?

Then, the Kaiser Foundation study found that:

• A mere 4% are for dairy products and
• 1% for fruit juices.

And get this: Of the 8,854 ads reviewed in the study, not one sinle ad targeting children or teens urged them to eat fruits or vegetables.

Duh! Small wonder that why our nation's kids aren't getting enough nutrient-rich fruits and vegetables.

"Children of all ages see thousands of food ads a year, but tweens see more than any other age group,” said Vicky Rideout, vice president and director of the Program for the Study of Entertainment Media and Health at the Kaiser Family Foundation. “Since tweens are at an age where they’re just becoming independent consumers, understanding what type of advertising they are exposed to is especially important.”

This a follow-up to yesterday's item about the Kaiser Family Foundation's study on how kids are bombarded with TV ads that peddle junk food.

As I've stated here before, such massive marketing to kids is one that offends me greatly, because our innocent, defenseless children are basically being almost brainwashed to eat their culprit carb foods. Not only could all this junk food lead to obesity, but it could trigger many other health and emotional problems.

Kids eating lots of junk food could have difficulty concentrating, get headaches, be excessively exhausted, anxious, depressed, moody, and even get bad grades.

Anyhow, see this thoughtful, thorough New York Times article from Elizabeth Olson today about the new study.

She writes:

"For years, health officials have warned that bombarding children with junk food commercials has contributed to the problem of childhood obesity. Food conglomerates, eager to fend off federal regulation, have made various commitments to improve, including a pledge in December to meet goals for promoting fitness and healthier foods.

"The Kaiser Family Foundation{cq} released a study yesterday that it said provides a way to measure the companies’ progress. The foundation, a nonprofit group that focuses on health care issues, found that 50 percent of ad time on children’s shows is devoted to food. Among the ads aimed at children and teenagers, 72 percent are for candy, snacks, sugary cereals or fast food."

The repoter continues:

"These advertisements `are largely for products that children should be eating less of, not more of, if we’re going to get a handle on childhood obesity,' said Victoria J. Rideout, director of the foundation’s program for the study of entertainment media and health.

Of the food ads that the study examined, 34 percent were for candy and snacks, 28 percent for cereal and 10 percent for fast food. Ms. Rideout said that almost 100 percent of the cereals were sugared."

Do take time to read Elizabeth Olson's entire New York Times story. It's a great overview about the situation and the food industry's defensive, "I've changed!" reaction.

Kudos to the the Mayo Clinic staff for putting up this post recently about "Type 2 diabetes in children."

While more specific recommendations on how children can combat the disease would have been nice -- cutting out high-fructose laden soda would be a good start -- every article that warns people about how our youngers can avoid this unnecessary epidemic helps.

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