Frito-Lay closing in Michigan

While driving to Sandusky (OH) this morning I was listening to 760 am out of Detroit and heard that Frito-Lay was laying off workers in Allen Park, Michigan, and the announcer editorialized that this was to help stockholders and management.

I was munching on some regular corn Fritos ($.99 package) as I was driving. Actually, I guess I didn't know it was owned by PepsiCo. I can pass up cake and candy, but I love crunchy, salty snacks. The AP story reports

In a press release, PepsiCo said it had net income of $1.36 billion, or 79 cents a share, including a tax benefit of 13 cents a share, for the third quarter. Excluding items, the company earned 66 cents a share.

Wall Street expected PepsiCo to earn 65 cents a share for the third quarter of 2004. A year ago, the company earned $1.01 billion, or 58 cents a share. Revenue rose 6 percent to $7.26 billion from $6.83 billion last year.

Citing the net effect of the third-quarter tax benefit and a pretax charge of $160 million it plans to take for the plant closings, PepsiCo raised its 2004 earnings forecast guidance by 6 cents to at least $2.35 a share.

Jobs will be added elsewhere, but all total, the company employs about 45,000 workers.

Give Him a Break! Stossel on Serving Size

John Stossel of ABC News 20/20 says, "a lot of us rely on labels to count calories, carbs, and salt, and may not realize that the amounts shown are not per package, but per serving. And what some call a serving is small. . .

How about the Bon Appetit blueberry muffin? Most people would eat one for breakfast. And when the label tells you there are just 215 calories per serving, you'd think you were having a reasonably low-cal breakfast. But you might be surprised to see that the label, in tiny print, also says the serving size is one third of a muffin. So, your low-cal breakfast jumps to 645 calories if you're like most people and you eat the whole muffin." August 13 show

The FDA site suggests you first look at the serving size before anything else on the label: "Pay attention to the serving size, including how many servings there are in the food package, and compare it to how much YOU actually eat. The size of the serving on the food package influences all the nutrient amounts listed on the top part of the label."

In August, Dr. Lester Crawford, the acting director of the FDA issued a report that included moving forward on the recommendation to give prominence to calories and serving size on the food label including proposing to increase the font size and provide a daily value percentage for calories.

Live a Longer, Healthier Life

Tired of carrot sticks? Missing your carbs? Low fat leave you hungry? The latest issue of JAMA says that the Mediterranean diet with regular exercise, moderate amounts of wine with dinner, and no smoking can significantly extend your life--and make it worth living!

Take a look at this issue, JAMA vol. 292, no. 12, September 22-29, or read the summary and various health web sites, such as Science Digest, and ABC News.

The American Heart Association says the following:

“What is the "Mediterranean" diet?
There's no one "Mediterranean" diet. At least 16 countries border the Mediterranean Sea. Diets vary between these countries and also between regions within a country. Many differences in culture, ethnic background, religion, economy and agricultural production result in different diets. But the common Mediterranean dietary pattern has these characteristics:

high consumption of fruits, vegetables, bread and other cereals, potatoes, beans, nuts and seeds
olive oil is an important monounsaturated fat source
dairy products, fish and poultry are consumed in low to moderate amounts, and little red meat is eaten
eggs are consumed zero to four times a week
wine is consumed in low to moderate amounts "

Two TCS contributors disagree about fat

Michael Fumento at Tech Central Station takes Sandy Szwarc to the wood shed for her series (10 pieces and over 25,000 words) "Weighing Obesity" that appeared in Tech Central Station from July 14-August 8. He says she doesn’t understand the field of epidemiology, hasn’t read some of the research she cites, hasn’t followed up on other studies, and cherry picks through the evidence that fat kills.

He goes on to say “According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, obesity is associated with congestive heart failure; coronary heart disease; angina pectoris; stroke; cancer; high blood pressure; high blood cholesterol; type 2 (non-insulin dependent) diabetes; gallstones; gout; osteoarthritis; obstructive sleep apnea and other respiratory problems; complications of pregnancy (including birth defects); poor female reproductive health (such as menstrual irregularities, infertility, irregular ovulation); and poor bladder control.”

Read the Fumento article with the links to the Szwarc articles here.

Marah's Diet

"God, I'm so tired of being overweight. I know... You naturally thin people are shouting, "Then STOP eating you cow!!!". Yah, if only it were that easy. It is like a drug. A drug you have to ingest everyday. Food is a friend, comfort, pleasure and fills a void. Now I'm a very intelligent woman. I can tell you the caloric count and fat content for most foods. I know there is something missing in my life or else I wouldn't keep doing this. I know it's killing me. I am the Queen of self analyses. Believe me, I get it. And yet I struggle... Food is the first thing I think about when I get up and the last thing I think about before bed most days. It's the yard stick I've always used to measure my self worth. I've been good today because I didn't over eat = I'm a worthy person. I know...get a life. LOL"

Butterfly Project Blog

Not Enough Time, Not Enough Will Power

A study of Canadian women concludes “Women have lower BMIs than men, a lower incidence of being overweight and a higher incidence of being underweight. However, women across all weight categories are more dissatisfied with their bodies. Sixty percent of women are inactive, and women with a BMI of 27 or higher are more likely to be inactive than women with lower BMIs. The data show that women are aware of the health benefits of exercise, but there is a gap between knowledge and practice. When asked about barriers to health improvement, 39.7% of women cited lack of time and 39.2% lack of willpower.”

We have all been given by God the same number of hours in a day. Will power, however, seems to be a function of personality. In that area, we all seem to be uniquely designed. One shortcoming of this study is self-reporting--people traditionally over estimate their height and under estimate their weight.

Read the complete study at BioMed Central.

Don’t blame the food pyramid! No one follows it.

The American Dietetic Association says, “The average American dietary style at the beginning of the 21st century resembles an hour glass rather than the federal government’s Food Guide Pyramid. . . We gobble huge amounts of added fats and sugars from the top tier of the Pyramid … and heaping plates of pasta and other refined grains from the bottom tier, but we are sorely lacking in the vegetables, fruits, low-fat milk products and other nutritious foods in the middle of the Pyramid.”

So fiddling with the carbohydrates in the pyramid won’t make much difference.

Losing Weight at McDonald's

The movie "Super-Size Me" is a documentary about how a man gained 35 pounds in a month eating at McDonald's. However, Ruth Kava, PhD, RD, has written an interesting piece for Tech Central about two people, Ms. Soso Whaley and Mr. Chazz Weaver, who lost weight eating at McDonald's, one by restricting calories to about 1800 a day, and the other, a weight lifter, who consumed over 4,000 calories a day and still lost weight because of energy expended. Dr. Kava analyzed the nutritional values of the diet.

"So the lowdown on our McDieters' diets: they could have been better, but they weren't awful. Ms. Whaley's task was the harder one, and one that should be brought to the attention of other dieters. A person who limits caloric intake has to pay particular attention to food selection in order to obtain all the necessary nutrients (or take supplements). Could she have avoided the deficits we found while eating at McDonald's? To some extent, yes. She could have consumed more fiber by eating salads more frequently; that would also have helped her get more folate. (This would be particularly important for a woman during child-bearing years, since adequate folate can help protect against some types of birth defects.) Her low intake of iron might have been helped by more meat and iron-fortified grain products, also by more eggs. Fat intake would drop with consumption of nonfat dairy products. More potassium could be obtained from increasing orange juice consumption (also by eating other fruit sources like bananas -- not served at McDonald's, to my knowledge), and even eating more French fries.

Mr. Weaver's diet had plenty of pretty much everything, which isn't surprising considering his large caloric intake. He, too, could have benefited from more vegetable foods -- salads in particular to increase his fiber intake. His potassium intake could also be increased by greater consumption of vegetables and fruits. His cholesterol intake was very high -- this could have been lowered by eating fewer eggs. On many days his breakfasts included not only sandwiches that included eggs, but also a couple of side orders of scrambled eggs! (His complete diet is listed on his website at www.truthinfitness.org). But we must note here that Mr. Weaver's blood cholesterol profile actually improved while he did his McDieting -- this can be attributed to his very active lifestyle, weight loss, and/or the likelihood that he is not in that group of people whose blood cholesterol is affected by his dietary cholesterol intake. Mr. Weaver's cholesterol levels changed for the better over the course of his McDiet month."

The complete story is here.

California's Fitness Month

California state Democratic Senator Tom Torlakson from Antioch is a former high school science teacher and coach, and he is an avid biker and runner. He initiated the "State Fitness Month" six years ago. Here is the text of this year's SCR 74 which declares the month of May 2004, as California Fitness Month, and encourages all Californians to observe proper diet and exercise.

In 2001 he launched the California Taskforce on Youth and Workplace Wellness which encourages businesses and schools to create and promote policies which decrease the obesity rates in California's schools and workplaces.

California also has a bi-partisan effort to combat obesity where members of both parties participate in a group weigh-in atop a flatbed trailer. It doesn't measure hot air.

This seems a benign program, and may actually remind Californians from time to time to lead a healthier lifestyle, which is certainly easier to do in their climate than say New York or Indiana. However, it bears watching as government resolutions sometime evolve to government mandates.

Diet Fatigue

It is very hard to maintain a weight loss. Dieters are warned, but don't believe it will happen to them when in the first blush of successful weight loss.

"Most research has focused on how best to shed pounds -- not on how to maintain the loss for the long haul. So these days, "we're trying to develop whole programs to study this very point," said Rena Wing, professor of psychiatry and human behavior at Brown University School of Medicine and co-director of the National Weight Control Registry, a database of more than 3,000 people who have lost at least 30 pounds and maintained the loss for at least three years."

Story from the Washington Post, September 7.

Anorexia and obesity, sisters under the belt

A former anorexic writes:

"All of the factors that contributed to my eating disorder were lined up in a row and ready for it to take root: It was born of a desire to exert a sense of control over myself and the world around me. It was a way to punish others, and, although I didn't realize it at the time, to punish myself. It was a way to assert my independence from my parents, and a way to reject them. . . "

The link between anorexia and obesity:

"Yes, the fast food industry has more than a tacit role in the prevalence of heart disease, obesity and premature deaths in this country. Yes, if we all turned off our televisions and computers and went for a bike ride or a walk, that'd be incredibly helpful. Yes, the pharmaceutical and surgical industries are getting rich exploiting another's misery. But an eating disorder, literally an inability to eat normally and without distress, is a highly complex psychological state. For us to point fingers at the obvious culprits without addressing that there is a deeper, insatiable hunger that drives eating disorders is to only have a superficial understanding of why anorexia, bulimia and obesity are rampant in this country. We need to learn how feed ourselves, literally and figuratively.

The emotional politics of food, by Marla Rose

How to add to our food bill

"As personal injury lawyers look for their next big payday the deep pockets of the food industry have become their target. Obesity lawsuits span the entire industry, from retailers and grocers to the farmers who harvest the raw materials and every corner fast-food restaurant."

Read the full story and what Ohio legislators are proposing at Ohio Business for Legal Reform.

Can you be both fat and fit?

ABCNews carried this health item in June. Dr. Tim Johnson who features medical stories for ABC was doubtful in this story that overweight people who exercise regularly could still be fit, but he did plug the book The Obesity Myth, by Paul Campos, a professor at the University of Colorado School of Law and opinion columnist for the Rocky Mountain News. Campos said, "The public health message that Americans are getting, which is that they ought to slim down, really doesn't make sense,. . .it's just fundamentally irrational."

In an interview with AlterNet, Campos draws a connection between anorexia and our current fascination with thinness being healthy--a value he says started with the fashion industry in the 1920s and migrated to the medical community:

"There are four classic symptoms of anorexia. But the one I find most interesting, I'm quoting the (psychiatric guidelines) DSM IV here, says, "Anorexic individuals often engage in compulsive rituals, strange eating habits, and the division of foods into good/safe and bad/dangerous categories." Now that's just called dieting. It's interesting how we'll recognize something as dangerously pathological if it puts you in the hospital but is considered healthy-choice living if you haven't taken that behavior to that level.

So the diet culture is simply the culture of anorexia at a socially functional level. That's why we have all this hysteria about obesity. People who are operating within an anorexic mind frame are naturally freaked out by the notion of "fat people" – a category that not coincidentally is getting bigger all the time."

Four out of Twelve

This cheery article assured me there were probably 12 healthy snacks in my refrigerator. I had four out of the twelve, and who keeps peanut butter in the frig, anyway?

Fat Acceptance

Big Fat Blog is written for people who've tried everything except acceptance. It is written primarily by Paul McAleer, and you'll need to register if you wish to contribute. But don't talk about your diet--it isn't about losing weight. Here is the link to the FAQ.

Is it the women's movement?

"According to our research, as much as two-thirds of the increase in adult obesity since 1980 can be explained by the rapid growth in the per capita number of fast-food restaurants and full-service restaurants, especially the former. It’s not hard to imagine how the explosive growth in these restaurants could fuel the obesity epidemic. Food served in these restaurants has extremely high caloric density, and almost certainly has contributed to obesity. We also found that the very modest growth in the per capita number of fast-food and full-service restaurants accounts in large part for the stability of adult weight in the period from 1960 to 1980, before the first major obesity upswing. During that period, the per capita number of full-service restaurants actually fell. Indications point to restaurant growth as the primary cause of increased obesity after 1980.

What caused this explosive restaurant growth? The principal driver seems to have been the increases in rates of labor force participation by women. As nonwork time for women became increasingly scarce and valuable over the last few decades, time devoted to at-home meal preparation decreased. Families began eating out more often. Indeed, the economists Patricia M. Anderson, Kristin F. Butcher, and Phillip B. Levine find that the rise in average hours worked by mothers can account for as much as one-third of the growth in obesity among children in certain families. In part, the rise in obesity seems to have been an unintended consequence of encouraging women to become more active in the workforce."

The Economics of Obesity, By Inas Rashad; Michael Grossman, Research Report, Summer 2004. [This link has deteriorated into one of those blob catch all things, but you can access it at "Access My Library" and register to become a user.

Just say no. And teach the kids, too.

Hug a way and chalk a mark

I got a gal that's mighty sweet,
With blue eyes and tiny feet.
Her name is Rosabelle Magee,
and she tips the scale at three o three,
Oh! Gee- but ain't it grand
to have a girl so big and fat that when you hug'er
You don't know where you're at
you have to take a piece of chalk in your hand and hug a way and chalk a mark to see where you began. . .