Yeah, they’ve coined a new term. Now, in addition to carcinogens which can be found almost everywhere including the air we breathe, we now have to worry about obesogens – toxic chemicals present in food, food packaging and pesticides that cause weight gain.
So it may not be that burger and fries that’s making you fat – it could be the plastic in your water bottle or the essence of bug spray that lingers in the skin of the apple you just ate. Eating healthy may not be so healthy after all.
This article at msnbc.com gives the scoop on obesogens and cites them as yet another reason why diets don’t work for so many people. You can’t lose weight if your body is trying to be fat against all odds. The article advocates eating organic foods as one way to combat the abundance of obesogens in the environment.
The article makes a very scary point – especially about commercially produced meat. Inject a cow with growth hormones, make a hamburger out of it then blame the person who eats the hamburger for their weight gain.
If you need me, I’ll be at the organic food store.
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Monday, March 8, 2010
To fish or cut bait?
Since I’ve started researching nutrition, I’ve come across tons of information about the benefits of fish oil. Book after book and website after website tout the role of fish oil in heart health as well as its efficacy in helping to treat high cholesterol, depression, anxiety, AHDH, low immunity, cancer, diabetes, inflammation, arthritis, IBD, AIDS, Alzheimer’s disease, eye disorders, macular degeneration and ulcers.
It sounds like a wonder drug – well, not actually a drug. Let’s call it a wonder-substance since it can be had over the counter without a prescription.
The supermarket vitamin aisle is overflowing with fish oil – in fact this past week my local store had an entire endcap devoted to large, colorful jars of the enormous amber capsules. They were on sale so the price was right – the only thing stopping me, aside from the sheer size of the pills [I could probably find a whole fish smaller than some of the capsules] was of course that I recently read information discounting everything that’s out there about the benefit of fish oil.
Insert a big sigh here.
I'd just picked up the book Eat to Live by Joel Fuhrman, MD which for the most part enforces a lot of what I’ve been learning about the subterfuge practiced on us by the food industry. Dr. Fuhrman advocates a diet rich in fruits and vegetables which makes sense, but on pg. 127 he opines that fish oil can actually ‘decrease the activity of the immune system’ and may have a role in liver dysfunction, citing that much of the oil in those jewel-like amber capsules may in fact be rancid.
He also believes eating fish in general [another health tip promoted heavily everywhere else] isn’t as good for us as we’ve been lead to believe thanks to elevated mercury content.
Once again, information overload wins the day. I’m not saying I believe Dr. Fuhrman over everyone else, but it’s interesting and disheartening to find yet more contradictory health information. If everything we eat is bad for us – then why not just eat anything we want?
I suppose that’s exactly what the food industry is hoping we will do.
It sounds like a wonder drug – well, not actually a drug. Let’s call it a wonder-substance since it can be had over the counter without a prescription.
The supermarket vitamin aisle is overflowing with fish oil – in fact this past week my local store had an entire endcap devoted to large, colorful jars of the enormous amber capsules. They were on sale so the price was right – the only thing stopping me, aside from the sheer size of the pills [I could probably find a whole fish smaller than some of the capsules] was of course that I recently read information discounting everything that’s out there about the benefit of fish oil.
Insert a big sigh here.
I'd just picked up the book Eat to Live by Joel Fuhrman, MD which for the most part enforces a lot of what I’ve been learning about the subterfuge practiced on us by the food industry. Dr. Fuhrman advocates a diet rich in fruits and vegetables which makes sense, but on pg. 127 he opines that fish oil can actually ‘decrease the activity of the immune system’ and may have a role in liver dysfunction, citing that much of the oil in those jewel-like amber capsules may in fact be rancid.
He also believes eating fish in general [another health tip promoted heavily everywhere else] isn’t as good for us as we’ve been lead to believe thanks to elevated mercury content.
Once again, information overload wins the day. I’m not saying I believe Dr. Fuhrman over everyone else, but it’s interesting and disheartening to find yet more contradictory health information. If everything we eat is bad for us – then why not just eat anything we want?
I suppose that’s exactly what the food industry is hoping we will do.
Friday, March 5, 2010
Get ready for the McDiet
I just came across this glimpse into the absurd – apparently Weight Watchers is planning on teaming up with McDonald’s to promo some of the fast food giant’s menu options as being health conscious.
Fortunately this is taking place so far only in New Zealand where the Weight Watchers logo will premiere on some selected menu items including Chicken McNuggets.
This one definitely has me perplexed. Weight Watchers certainly does advertise that you can successfully eat out and still lose weight, which I have to respect, since in the real world, you can’t [and don’t want to] always cook at home. Sometimes you need to go out, sit back, relax and let someone else serve you and clean up after you...but it does boggle my mind a bit that a company dedicated to teaching people how to eat right in order to achieve and maintain a healthy weight would endorse any type of deep fried fast food.
It’s not just calorie and fat content that govern whether a food is healthy or not – and anyone who’s seen Super Size Me in which a man literally endangers his life by eating nothing but McDonald’s food for 30 days knows there’s a lot more stuff in chicken nuggets than just chicken.
Granted McDonald’s has been jumping through hoops trying to convince the public that its food isn’t all bad, and that there are healthy options on the menu for those who know how to choose their meals carefully, but this just seems like a sell out on Weight Watchers’ part. Maybe things are different in New Zealand, but the battle of the bulge is fought daily here in the states and McD’s is a general in that war. In the world of healthy eating this strikes me as a bit treasonous.
Fortunately this is taking place so far only in New Zealand where the Weight Watchers logo will premiere on some selected menu items including Chicken McNuggets.
This one definitely has me perplexed. Weight Watchers certainly does advertise that you can successfully eat out and still lose weight, which I have to respect, since in the real world, you can’t [and don’t want to] always cook at home. Sometimes you need to go out, sit back, relax and let someone else serve you and clean up after you...but it does boggle my mind a bit that a company dedicated to teaching people how to eat right in order to achieve and maintain a healthy weight would endorse any type of deep fried fast food.
It’s not just calorie and fat content that govern whether a food is healthy or not – and anyone who’s seen Super Size Me in which a man literally endangers his life by eating nothing but McDonald’s food for 30 days knows there’s a lot more stuff in chicken nuggets than just chicken.
Granted McDonald’s has been jumping through hoops trying to convince the public that its food isn’t all bad, and that there are healthy options on the menu for those who know how to choose their meals carefully, but this just seems like a sell out on Weight Watchers’ part. Maybe things are different in New Zealand, but the battle of the bulge is fought daily here in the states and McD’s is a general in that war. In the world of healthy eating this strikes me as a bit treasonous.
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Read the label, but don't believe it
I was thumbing through the March 18th issue of People magazine this weekend [not an authoritative source for much of anything, I know] and I came across two legal notices round about page 124.
Both notices were about class action lawsuits being brought against major food companies for essentially false advertising. Apparently Dannon is being sued for claims made about their Activia and DanActive yogurt products – the ones hawked by Jamie Lee Curtis as being good for your digestive health by helping with irregularity. Similarly Tyson is being sued for claims about their chicken products that supposedly were raised without certain types of antibiotics.
As a consumer [not of either of these products though] I have to wonder how many other foods are out there making claims that will later be questioned, or in fact proven false. It seems like every packaged food out there is making some kind of promise these days. It’s not enough just to taste good, it has to be good for you in some way...which is wonderful, if in fact the products are actually good for you. But these law suits are telling me that a lot of the hype we see on packages at the supermarket is just that. Hype.
We’re told to read food labels and study nutrition information as part of a healthier lifestyle but how healthy can we really be if we can’t trust what we read?
For more information on these settlements you can check out these websites. I’d love to hear from anyone who is going to participate in the suits.
www.DannonSettlement.com
www.ChickenSettlement.com
Both notices were about class action lawsuits being brought against major food companies for essentially false advertising. Apparently Dannon is being sued for claims made about their Activia and DanActive yogurt products – the ones hawked by Jamie Lee Curtis as being good for your digestive health by helping with irregularity. Similarly Tyson is being sued for claims about their chicken products that supposedly were raised without certain types of antibiotics.
As a consumer [not of either of these products though] I have to wonder how many other foods are out there making claims that will later be questioned, or in fact proven false. It seems like every packaged food out there is making some kind of promise these days. It’s not enough just to taste good, it has to be good for you in some way...which is wonderful, if in fact the products are actually good for you. But these law suits are telling me that a lot of the hype we see on packages at the supermarket is just that. Hype.
We’re told to read food labels and study nutrition information as part of a healthier lifestyle but how healthy can we really be if we can’t trust what we read?
For more information on these settlements you can check out these websites. I’d love to hear from anyone who is going to participate in the suits.
www.DannonSettlement.com
www.ChickenSettlement.com
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Bored by chocolate
Yes, you read that right. I’m official bored with chocolate and I’ll tell you why.
I read too much about it.
A couple weeks ago I ordered The Healing Powers of Chocolate by Cal Orey. I thought it would be fun and informative and give me lots of good excuses to eat my favorite food. I had visions of curing all my common ailments with a Hershey Bar or pound or two of good ‘ol Jersey Shore fudge.
As it turns out, according to the author, who also penned The Healing Powers of Vinegar and The Healing Powers of Olive Oil, chocolate can cure a host of complaints from acne to weight gain. You could probably convince me that chocolate is not responsible for pimples [who doesn’t want to believe that?] and that chocolate in moderation will not make you fat, but the extensive list of ills found in the chapter titled ‘Home Remedies’ also includes much less believable items such as Economic Stress and Universal Emergency. When an author has to reach for stuff like this to fill up a list, her credibility hits the skids as far as I’m concerned.
Overall the book is a lighthearted look at how awesome chocolate is. I can’t argue with that, and yes, I certainly agree it’s not the root of all evil as so many diets would have us believe. But after slogging through the first 200 pages, I’m pretty much done with my journey through chocolate’s healing powers. I should have given up on page 71 in the middle of the list of herbs that can be added to chocolate. The author includes Marshmallow [the plant Althaea officianalis] for its ability to sooth a sore throat or an upset stomach. That’s cool. But she lists dark chocolate topped with marshmallows as a way to get this healing effect. Um...marshmallow may be a plant with curative powers, but marshmallows are made of SUGAR. They might make you feel better because they’re yummy, but they’re not herbal.
My take home message from the book is something I already knew: Chocolate is not bad for you. My life without chocolate would be much less happy and much less healthy, so I’m not ever giving it up...but I can do without the book, thanks.
I read too much about it.
A couple weeks ago I ordered The Healing Powers of Chocolate by Cal Orey. I thought it would be fun and informative and give me lots of good excuses to eat my favorite food. I had visions of curing all my common ailments with a Hershey Bar or pound or two of good ‘ol Jersey Shore fudge.
As it turns out, according to the author, who also penned The Healing Powers of Vinegar and The Healing Powers of Olive Oil, chocolate can cure a host of complaints from acne to weight gain. You could probably convince me that chocolate is not responsible for pimples [who doesn’t want to believe that?] and that chocolate in moderation will not make you fat, but the extensive list of ills found in the chapter titled ‘Home Remedies’ also includes much less believable items such as Economic Stress and Universal Emergency. When an author has to reach for stuff like this to fill up a list, her credibility hits the skids as far as I’m concerned.
Overall the book is a lighthearted look at how awesome chocolate is. I can’t argue with that, and yes, I certainly agree it’s not the root of all evil as so many diets would have us believe. But after slogging through the first 200 pages, I’m pretty much done with my journey through chocolate’s healing powers. I should have given up on page 71 in the middle of the list of herbs that can be added to chocolate. The author includes Marshmallow [the plant Althaea officianalis] for its ability to sooth a sore throat or an upset stomach. That’s cool. But she lists dark chocolate topped with marshmallows as a way to get this healing effect. Um...marshmallow may be a plant with curative powers, but marshmallows are made of SUGAR. They might make you feel better because they’re yummy, but they’re not herbal.
My take home message from the book is something I already knew: Chocolate is not bad for you. My life without chocolate would be much less happy and much less healthy, so I’m not ever giving it up...but I can do without the book, thanks.
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
My kingdom for a boot
Or actually a pair of boots.
It’s silly, I know – wanting to buy a pair of boots in the middle of the winter. I must be insane. The retail machine tells me so, but I have a hard time accepting that I can’t get a decent pair of boots in late February in the North east.
Here’s the dilemma. My son needed a pair of winter boots because the pair we had sequestered in his room back in the fall mysteriously disappeared. Well, one boot did. We assume it was thrown out. He claims they didn’t even fit him, but they did when he tried them on. Details, details. The long and the short of it was that with massive amounts of snow and slush on the ground, the kid needed some decent boots.
So Friday night, after the storming stopped, we went out in search of a good pair. I figured while I was at it, I’d pick myself up a new pair too, just because mine aren’t all that comfortable and I’ve had to wear them an awful lot lately.
Both the show store [Payless] and the department store [Wal*Mart] were not on board with this idea. You see, it’s time for sandals and shorts in retail land. No one is buying boots in February. That’s just nuts. It’s time to prepare for summer vacation. Apparently, if you want boots, you had to do your shopping well before Christmas. [I don’t mean December either, I mean retail-Christmas which now begins shortly before Halloween.] We were out of luck in the snow boot department.
We ended up solving the problem by going with a relatively expensive pair of all-weather work boots which are both water and oil resistant. Hopefully he won’t be in a situation where his footwear has to repel large amounts of oil, but if he is, he’s ready.
I now understand why so many stores are going out of business and the country is still in the grips of a recession. It’s because the stores insist on selling people things they don’t need when they don’t need them. Who’s buying shorts and sandals in February? Anybody? It’s sad to think of all those retail execs sitting around scratching their heads trying to figure out why they’re not making any profit on bathing suits and lawn chairs between New Years and Easter. Maybe if they worked a little harder on inducing global warming, they’d capture the summer attire market in the middle of winter. One can only hope they figure it out soon.
In the mean time, I could still use a new pair of boots. I guess I’ll have to mark my calendar start looking for boots in September.
It’s silly, I know – wanting to buy a pair of boots in the middle of the winter. I must be insane. The retail machine tells me so, but I have a hard time accepting that I can’t get a decent pair of boots in late February in the North east.
Here’s the dilemma. My son needed a pair of winter boots because the pair we had sequestered in his room back in the fall mysteriously disappeared. Well, one boot did. We assume it was thrown out. He claims they didn’t even fit him, but they did when he tried them on. Details, details. The long and the short of it was that with massive amounts of snow and slush on the ground, the kid needed some decent boots.
So Friday night, after the storming stopped, we went out in search of a good pair. I figured while I was at it, I’d pick myself up a new pair too, just because mine aren’t all that comfortable and I’ve had to wear them an awful lot lately.
Both the show store [Payless] and the department store [Wal*Mart] were not on board with this idea. You see, it’s time for sandals and shorts in retail land. No one is buying boots in February. That’s just nuts. It’s time to prepare for summer vacation. Apparently, if you want boots, you had to do your shopping well before Christmas. [I don’t mean December either, I mean retail-Christmas which now begins shortly before Halloween.] We were out of luck in the snow boot department.
We ended up solving the problem by going with a relatively expensive pair of all-weather work boots which are both water and oil resistant. Hopefully he won’t be in a situation where his footwear has to repel large amounts of oil, but if he is, he’s ready.
I now understand why so many stores are going out of business and the country is still in the grips of a recession. It’s because the stores insist on selling people things they don’t need when they don’t need them. Who’s buying shorts and sandals in February? Anybody? It’s sad to think of all those retail execs sitting around scratching their heads trying to figure out why they’re not making any profit on bathing suits and lawn chairs between New Years and Easter. Maybe if they worked a little harder on inducing global warming, they’d capture the summer attire market in the middle of winter. One can only hope they figure it out soon.
In the mean time, I could still use a new pair of boots. I guess I’ll have to mark my calendar start looking for boots in September.
Monday, March 1, 2010
Eating may be hazardous to your health
I came across this article put out by the Associated Press discussing the need for more warnings on food labels. Pediatricians are apparently spearheading the movement in response to the alarming number of choking deaths of children.
As a mother of children who were once small, I’m all about fear of choking. I can vividly recall several incidents of having to jam my finger into a tiny mouth and pull out something dangerous that should not have gone in there in the first place and I can also recall those missed heartbeats any time one of my kids got that ‘I can’t swallow this’ look in their eyes.
It’s terrifying to say the least and it’s one of the hundreds of job hazards that come with being a parent. Constant vigilance over what goes in your child’s mouth is…well…constant.
However, I have to ask myself how many warning labels are really necessary before we can deem our children completely safe. When does it end? The article cites hot dogs as a particularly dangerous food and mentions a parent by name who lost her child in this horrible way. Just like hot dogs, grapes, raisins, lollipops, beans, berries, even peanut butter can pose a risk – not only for children but adults as well. Bread, bagels, hard candy, meat of any kind, apples, carrots…anything that doesn’t melt quickly at body temperature has the potential to cause a choking hazard. Do all these foods really need labels stating that?
I have no desire to blame the victim or cast aspersions on a grieving parent, but the line in the first paragraph of article that states his anguished mother never dreamed that the popular kids' food could be so dangerous is a head/desk moment for me. Kids are born knowing how to swallow, but they’re not born knowing how to chew. Any food you put in your kid’s mouth has the potential to be dangerous. If you’ve never dreamed something could choke your child, you’re sleeping a little too soundly to be a parent.
It occurs to me also that putting these warnings on foods, though they’re meant to spare parents the agony of losing a child, may in fact cause more problems than they solve. If, after reading the warning label on a package of hot dogs, a parent gives their child a hot dog anyway and the child does choke, is that parent now guilty of child abuse or even worse, negligent homicide? After all, a family services agent could certainly ask – ‘If you knew this food posed a choking hazard, why did you give it to your child?’ Imagine the horror of having your child choke to death being compounded by guilt that you didn’t heed a warning label.
Instead of putting warnings on every single food product on the market, since they all could potentially cause a choking hazard if you have to put them in your mouth, maybe children should now come stamped with a universal warning: Small objects, if inserted into an orifice, can cause damage. This includes ALL foods. Proceed with caution.
As a mother of children who were once small, I’m all about fear of choking. I can vividly recall several incidents of having to jam my finger into a tiny mouth and pull out something dangerous that should not have gone in there in the first place and I can also recall those missed heartbeats any time one of my kids got that ‘I can’t swallow this’ look in their eyes.
It’s terrifying to say the least and it’s one of the hundreds of job hazards that come with being a parent. Constant vigilance over what goes in your child’s mouth is…well…constant.
However, I have to ask myself how many warning labels are really necessary before we can deem our children completely safe. When does it end? The article cites hot dogs as a particularly dangerous food and mentions a parent by name who lost her child in this horrible way. Just like hot dogs, grapes, raisins, lollipops, beans, berries, even peanut butter can pose a risk – not only for children but adults as well. Bread, bagels, hard candy, meat of any kind, apples, carrots…anything that doesn’t melt quickly at body temperature has the potential to cause a choking hazard. Do all these foods really need labels stating that?
I have no desire to blame the victim or cast aspersions on a grieving parent, but the line in the first paragraph of article that states his anguished mother never dreamed that the popular kids' food could be so dangerous is a head/desk moment for me. Kids are born knowing how to swallow, but they’re not born knowing how to chew. Any food you put in your kid’s mouth has the potential to be dangerous. If you’ve never dreamed something could choke your child, you’re sleeping a little too soundly to be a parent.
It occurs to me also that putting these warnings on foods, though they’re meant to spare parents the agony of losing a child, may in fact cause more problems than they solve. If, after reading the warning label on a package of hot dogs, a parent gives their child a hot dog anyway and the child does choke, is that parent now guilty of child abuse or even worse, negligent homicide? After all, a family services agent could certainly ask – ‘If you knew this food posed a choking hazard, why did you give it to your child?’ Imagine the horror of having your child choke to death being compounded by guilt that you didn’t heed a warning label.
Instead of putting warnings on every single food product on the market, since they all could potentially cause a choking hazard if you have to put them in your mouth, maybe children should now come stamped with a universal warning: Small objects, if inserted into an orifice, can cause damage. This includes ALL foods. Proceed with caution.
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