First Lady to Meet with Food Companies on Anti-Obesity Strategy

March 16, 2010

Associated Press

Michelle Obama has talked to schools and nutrition groups across the country in her effort to reduce childhood obesity. On Tuesday she will face the food companies that make the snacks and junk food that stuff grocery aisles and school vending machines.

Not that the companies mind. The Grocery Manufacturers Association — which counts Kraft Foods Inc., Coca Cola Co. and General Mills Inc. among its members — invited her to speak at its science forum.

Welcoming the first lady and embracing her campaign for healthier kids, launched earlier this year, could have advantages.

The industry is positioned to take some blows in the coming year, including a child nutrition bill about to move through Congress that could eliminate junk food in schools, digging into some companies’ profits.

The Food and Drug Administration is also beginning to crack down on misleading labeling on food packages, saying some items labeled “healthy” are not, and the Senate last year mulled a tax on soda and other sweetened drinks to help pay for overhauling health care.

That tax did not make it into the health care bill, but it could be seen as an opening shot in a quietly growing effort to target food companies, especially as local, state and federal governments scrounge for revenue in a tight fiscal environment.

Michelle Obama has not previously taken her anti-obesity campaign directly to the large food companies. She said recently, however, that she would like to see more customer-friendly food labels “so parents won’t have to spend hours squinting at words that they can’t pronounce to figure out whether the foods that they’re buying are healthy or not.”

She has also said she will push companies that supply foods to schools to improve nutritional quality. Her campaign is largely focused on school lunches and vending machines, along with making healthy food more available and encouraging children to exercise more.

Scott Faber, a lobbyist for the grocery association, said the industry is open to working with the government on finding ways to produce healthier foods.

“Consumers are demanding more and more healthy choices,” he said. “Our industry will do our part by changing the way we make and market our foods, but government has a big role to play as well.”

This approach is a far cry from the fights consumer groups had with food companies a decade ago, said Margo Wootan, director of nutrition policy at the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

“When I first started working on junk food in schools, it was a very contentious issue where we regularly did battle with junk and snack food companies,” she said. “Now it’s a whole new world, and many of them are supporting updating standards.”

Wootan said she believes that embarrassment is in part fueling the companies’ push, as more attention has been placed on foods’ nutritional values or lack thereof. More uniform federal standards could also be helpful to food companies, she said, as some states and localities are creating their own standards for marketing and making foods.

“When you see the handwriting on the wall, it’s time to get on the right side of the issue,” Wootan said.

Consumer advocates say they are cautiously optimistic about the industry’s involvement, but will wait to see how amenable they are to real change.

“They want to be riding that crest rather than fighting it,” said Jeffrey Levi, executive director of the Trust for America’s Health, a Washington-based public health research organization. “There is a long ways between saying the right things and doing the right thing.”

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Sugar and Salt Infiltrate “Healthy” Snacks

March 15, 2010

Natural News

By David Gutierrez

Many children’s snacks marketed as healthy alternatives are actually full of unhealthy ingredients like sugar, salt and fat, according to an analysis conducted by the consumer watchdog organization Which?.

“Parents should be able to pick out healthy products for their kids’ lunchboxes, but what you see isn’t always what you get,” said the group’s Martyn Hocking.

“Many [products] declare that they don’t contain additives, but don’t mention they’re also full of salt or sugar – giving the impression they’re healthier than they are,” the report reads.

For example, while Dairylea Lunchables Ham ‘n’ Cheese Crackers are advertised as providing half of the recommended daily calcium for a child, nowhere on the label or in promotional materials does the company acknowledge that the product is high in fat, saturated fat and salt — containing 1.8 grams of the maximum daily recommended 3 grams of the latter.

The report also singles out Kellogg’s Frosties Cereal and Milk bars, which the company promotes by saying, “”Fortified with vitamins, iron and calcium, now you can give your kids a great tasting snack that you can be sure won’t come back from school in the lunchbox!” Yet the company does not explain that the bars contain seven different sugar ingredients and thus are nearly one-third sugar by weight.

Other supposedly healthy products that are actually high in sugar include Robinson’s Fruit Shoot orange juice drinks, with nearly five teaspoons (23 grams) or sugar in a single 200 milliliter bottle; Fruit Factory fruit strings, with 13.7 grams of sugar in a 24 gram product; and Munch Bunch Double Up fromage frais, which contain only 2.25 grams of fruit puree but more than two teaspoons (12.4 grams) of sugar.

“The best way to beat the lunchbox baddies is by checking the nutrition and ingredient information,” Hocking said. “We’d also like to see the rules on health and nutrition claims made tougher, so there’s less confusion on the supermarket shelves.”

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Weight Watchers Partnering With McDonald’s

March 15, 2010

Natural News

By Mike Adams

Weight Watchers has now officially endorsed Chicken McNuggets as a “healthy meal” in New Zealand, where McDonald’s restaurants will begin carrying the Weight Watchers logo on several menu items. This bizarre and inexplicable decision has now made Weight Watchers the laughing stock of the health world where nutrition and weight loss experts normally don’t use “McDonald’s fast food” and “weight loss” in the same sentence.

As The Guardian reports, “As part of the deal, which the company says is the first of its kind in the world, McDonald’s will use the Weight Watchers logo on its menu boards and Weight Watchers will promote McDonald’s to dieters.”

Nutritionists, not surprisingly, were shocked at the announcement. The idea of eating at McDonald’s to lose weight seems a bit ridiculous, and anyone who believes that eating Chicken McNuggets will cause you to lose weight is arguably one nugget short of a Happy Meal. Sometimes you just have to point out the stupidity of these things, even at the risk of offending someone who has convinced themselves that eating more Chicken McNuggets is their ticket to a slim, fit and sexy body.

Watch your weight balloon!
Weight Watchers, by the way, never actually claims that eating the foods they endorse will cause you to lose weight. If you examine it carefully, even their name isn’t really about weight loss. It’s about weight watching… as in, watch your weight grow larger by the day…

A “weight watch” is sort of like a “tornado watch” or a “tsunami watch.” You keep your eyes peeled and wait for something disastrous to happen — such as ballooning to 300 pounds while engaging in unhealthy eating McHabits based on snarfing down meat parts from factory-farmed cows raised in bovine concentration camps that might more accurately be called “Cowschwitz.”

If Weight Watchers is going to endorse McNuggets, then why not just endorse the entire McDonald’s menu and throw the logo behind Big Macs and ice cream shakes, too? It’s not like Weight Watchers is trying to “protect its reputation” by not crossing a line, you know. Once you’ve endorsed McDonald’s as “healthy” food, that line is no longer anywhere in sight.

Of course, McDonald’s products merely join a long list of questionable foods marketed under the “Weight Watchers” brand name — a brand that in my opinion has discovered great commercial success in selling the false hope of weight loss to clueless consumers who are unwilling to read ingredients lists on food labels.

Not coincidentally, Weight Watchers has now become the “McDonald’s” of the weight loss industry — and industry filled with so many scams and shams that the idea of eating Chicken McNuggets to lose weight doesn’t even seem that strange to many people.

We live in a world where corporate promotional lies are disgusting at best, and criminal at worst. We’re told that psychiatric drugs will make you happy, that chemotherapy will make you healthy and that eating at McDonald’s will make you lose weight. We’re told that sugary junk drinks will give you “energy”, that toxic vaccines are necessary for your immune system to work correctly and that buying silly pink-ribbon products will somehow cure cancer.

At the same time, we’re told that vitamins are dangerous, that sunlight causes cancer and that there’s no such thing as a cure for type-2 diabetes. Everything that’s good for you is discredited as bad while everything that’s toxic is hyped up as “healthy.”

I suppose in light of the corporate-sponsored sick-care insanity that passes for medical advice these days, the idea that eating at McDonald’s will make you lose weight doesn’t seem as insane as it really should.

But that doesn’t make it any more true.

In a world gone mad with dietary misinformation touting fictional foods, insanity can now be marketed to the intoxicated mainstream as if it somehow made sense.

… and people swallow it.

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Accidental Truth in Advertising

March 1, 2010

Natural News

By Mike Adams

Junk food advertising has reached a new low with the recent Doritos “Crash the Super Bowl” ads which portray Doritos consumers as violent murderers who will kill fellow human beings to get a bag of Doritos.

One Doritos ad portrays a man backing out of a parking lot when his car strikes an innocent person who drops a bag of Doritos and falls to the ground behind the car. Rather than trying to help the innocent victim, this man throws his car into reverse and drives over the victim, killing him with the vehicle and stealing the bag of Doritos.

The message? Doritos are so valuable that it’s okay to kill people just to score a bag.

A second Doritos ad shows two loser-looking gym bums being attacked by an insane junk food ninja who uses Doritos chips as throwing stars to murder the guy who stole his bag of Doritos. The message here? Doritos are so valuable that it’s okay to kill others to defend your snack.

A third Doritos ad shows one elderly man attacking a young man with a stun gun in order to buy the last bag of Doritos from a vending machine. Same gratuitous violence. Same message: Committing violent acts against others is perfectly acceptable when you’re pursuing a bag of Doritos.

Yet another Doritos ad shows two grown men smacking each other in the face to decide which loser has to go buy more Doritos. The loser ends up with a black eye after being punched so hard he flies through the air and lands on a coffee table, shattering it. Gee, why not just use the women in this role and make it a wife-beating commercial?

A common theme: Violence against innocent people
What’s the common theme of all these Doritos television commercials? Acts of senseless violence committed against fellow human beings.

Doritos marketing executives apparently think these commercials showing gratuitous acts of violence and murder are going to help them sell more Doritos. Maybe they’ve been eating too much of their own product and their brain function has been suppressed by all the MSG found in Doritos… because these ads aren’t funny, they’re sick!

“Demented” might be a better term. It’s hard to see the humor when there’s so much realistic violence in the way. And yet somehow Frito-Lay executives gave these ads the big thumbs up. Let’s use violence to sell junk foods!

It sort of makes sense, actually: Junk food consumption is correlated with violent crime. Virtually all the criminals in prison across the country are nutritionally imbalanced due to their consumption of processed junk foods and their lack of sufficient nutritional supplementation. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if a study revealed that fried snack foods like Doritos are a favorite food among violent criminals. These are, after all, the kind of people depicted in some Doritos advertisements.

In my view, the violent Doritos commercials accurately reflect the senseless, violent behavior that typifies people (younger males, mostly) who consume large quantities of processed junk foods, sugary soft drinks and gimmicky “sports drinks.” These are the people who end up being put on antidepressants and other psychotropic drugs, after which they sometimes end up in a school shooting rampage.

It might make a good Doritos commercial, actually: A kid grows up on junk food and diet soda laced with aspartame. He’s drugged up on Ritalin and Prozac. One day he brings a semiautomatic rifle to school, barges into a classroom and opens fire on his classmates, shooting and screaming, “I WANT MY F*@!KING DORITOS!”

Hilarious, huh? Some people think so. The Frito-Lay executives apparently think this kind of violence is appropriate for mainstream television. This is the kind of imagery they’re using to try to convince people to buy their products! How sick is that?

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McCain’s Dietary Supplement Bill is Direct Assault On Natural Health Freedom

February 26, 2010

Info Wars

By Brandon Turbeville

A bill recently introduced to the U.S. Senate, the Dietary Supplement Safety Act of 2010 (S. 3002), by Senators John McCain and Byron Dorgan is possibly the most direct assault on natural health freedom we have seen for some time. If passed into law, this bill would require all dietary supplement manufacturers, distributors, and holders all the way down to the retail store level to be comprehensively registered. It would also allow for the arbitrary banning of nutritional supplements by the FDA and the introduction of deceitful reporting of adverse events related to them.

The cover for this legislation is that it is designed to prevent both intentional and unintentional steroid adulteration of dietary supplements. The trigger, according to McCain, was six NFL players who were accused of doping with supplements tainted with steroids. Even with this being the case, however, the FDA already has the authority to regulate synthetic anabolic steroids via the Anabolic Control Act of 2004 which permits them to do just that. Nevertheless, under the guise of the behavior of six NFL players, an entire market that has been proven not only very safe but very healthy will be essentially regulated out of business. (NHF)

The Dietary Supplement Safety Act of 2010 would require registration of any “business or operation engaged in manufacturing, packaging, holding, distributing, labeling, or licensing a dietary supplement for consumption in the United States,” definitions which could possibly include even retail stores that sell herbal and nutritional products. (DSSA p.2) Currently, under the Dietary Supplements and Non-Prescription Consumer Protection Act, small retailers are not required to register. This, however, will change with the passage of McCain-Dorgan’s bill. (NHF)

The switch from the current practices of Serious Adverse Event Reporting to that of simply Adverse Event Reporting is of concern as well. Existing law requires the reporting of serious adverse events related to the supplement in question to be reported for regulatory and recall purposes. The McCain-Dorgan bill, however, removes the language “Serious Adverse Event” and replaces it with the term “adverse event,” opening up the floodgates for the most ridiculous possible claims of adverse events such as bad taste or even dislike of packaging. This “report everything possible” stance is will vastly increase the numbers of complaints that will hence be used to add credence to the arguments for banning supplements in the future. Not only that, but more government bureaucracies will have to be created in order to organize and sort through all of the incoming “adverse event reports.” (NHF)

Yet the most frightening aspect of this bill is the immediate effects it would have on natural supplements. Currently, due to the Dietary Supplements Health and Education Act of 1994 (DSHEA), all supplements on the market prior to October 15, 1994 can lawfully be sold in the United States. However, the legislation being proposed completely reverses this and defines a “new dietary supplement” as one that “is not included on the list of ‘Accepted Dietary Ingredients’, to be prepared, published, and maintained by the Secretary” (DSSA p.5-6). This seemingly slight change in language actually removes the grandfathering in of supplements on the market prior to 1994. These new dietary supplements will also be considered “adulterated” unless “there is a history of use or other evidence of safety establishing that the dietary ingredient when used under the conditions recommended or suggested in the labeling of the dietary supplement….” (DSSA p.5) The registrants are then required to create and maintain a “scientifically reasonable substantiation file” which is to be made available for the Secretary of Health and Human Services to inspect at his/her whim. These products are to be registered at least 75 days prior to market. (NSF)

As quoted above, the bill also mandates that an “Accepted Dietary Ingredients” list should be created by the Secretary of HHS which will replace the current guidelines. Such a list effectively gives the FDA carte blanche to do whatever it wishes in regards to natural supplements. The FDA is given absolute authority to determine what supplements are allowed on the “Accepted Dietary Ingredients” list, thereby granting it the authority to ban any supplement without due process, scientific merit, or even a hearing simply by refusing to place it on the ADI list. (NSF) The FDA will also be able to remove supplements from market even after it has allowed it to be included on its’ list. As the bill states,

“If the Secretary finds there is a reasonable probability that a dietary supplement or a product marketed or sold as a dietary supplement would cause serious, adverse, health consequences or death, or is adulterated or misbranded, the Secretary shall issue a cease distribution and notification order requiring the person named in the order to immediately – cease distribution of such dietary supplement or a product marketed or sold as a dietary supplement; notify distributors, importers, retailers, and consumers of the order; and instruct those distributors, importers, retailers, and consumers to cease distributing, importing, selling, and using the dietary supplement.”(DSSA p.9)

The cost of the recall, of course, will be absorbed by the retailer. (DSSA p.11)

While the Dietary Supplement Safety Act of 2010 is an egregious attack on Americans’ freedom of choice, it is also a symptom of an even larger problem. The McCain-Dorgan bill is not just another silly attempt by corrupt politicians to demonstrate that they still have some value to their constituents, but an attempt to implement Codex Alimentarius at the national level and move the United States away from our Common Law heritage. The European Union has already passed similar legislation in the European Union Food Supplements Directive which has decimated open access to natural dietary supplements. Canada has passed laws to the same effect in recent weeks as well.

Click here for the full report

Treating Brain Injuries with Amino Acids

February 22, 2010

Natural News

By Mike Adams

Researchers from The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia have found in a lab study that amino acids are highly effective at restoring cognitive function and balancing neurochemical levels in those who have undergone brain trauma. Conducted on mice who had been inflicted with traumatic brain damage, the study holds promising potential for humans with similar injuries.

The study appeared in the online journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. In it, researchers fed brain-injured mice leucine, isoleucine, and valine, three branched chain amino acids (BCAAs) that have been shown to heal severe brain injuries. The result was that the brain-injured mice demonstrated a full cognitive recovery, visibly responding the same as uninjured mice following their treatment.

The BCAAs used in the study are the precursors to two important neurotransmitters, glutamate and gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) which jointly balance proper brain activity. Damage to the hippocampus, the portion of the brain that sustains memory and higher learning, is typical during a traumatic brain injury (TBI) and results in reduced BCAA levels. Supplementation with BCAAs has proven to rejuvenate the brain and restore it to normal function.

Intravenous nourishment with BCAAs has been done before, however in this study the BCAA mixture was added to the mice’s drinking water. Dr. Akiva Cohen, Ph.D. and author of the study, recommends dietary supplementation with BCAAs for human TBI treatment. He believes oral rather than intravenous supplementation is preferable because, rather than flood the brain with too high a dose intravenously, drinking BCAAs will provide a more sustained dose with increased benefits.

Comments by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
This is interesting research because it shows how dietary supplements can give the brain the raw materials it needs to heal itself. The fact that this process exists at all is considered utterly impossible by the FDA, which maintains the ridiculous position that there is no such thing as a nutritional supplement that has any therapeutic effect on the human body whatsoever.

If BCAAs actually worked, the FDA says, they would be “drugs” instead of supplements. And they would be regulated and available only by prescription. The FDA cannot tolerate the existence of a nutritional supplement that actually works to accelerate healing while being freely available to anyone who wants to buy it.

Reality, however, stands in contrast to the FDA. In the real world, nutrients do help the brain heal. In the real world, food is medicine. The FDA, to its own embarrassment, continues to deny this simple fact of human physiology.

Click here for the full report

Doctors in Canada Urge Immigrants to Take Vitamin D

February 22, 2010

CBC News

Immigrants who come to Canada from sunnier parts of the world are at risk of health problems caused by a lack of vitamin D unless they take supplements, doctors and nutritionists warn.

“This is a really great example of how … immigration to Canada could be dangerous or bad for your health,” said Dr. Kevin Pottie, who teaches family medicine at the University of Ottawa.

Pottie said when he tests his immigrant and refugee patients, almost all of them show inadequate levels of vitamin D, especially in winter.

Vitamin D is needed to maintain healthy bones. A deficiency may lead to osteoporosis in adults, making them susceptible to breaking bones. Children with a deficiency can develop rickets, a disease in which bones grow soft, leading to skeletal deformities. Some studies also suggest that a lack of vitamin D could be linked to diabetes, multiple sclerosis, cancer and some forms of mental illness.

People can get some of their vitamin D by consuming food such as milk and fatty fish. But humans’ own bodies can produce far larger amounts if their skin is exposed to the ultraviolet B rays of the sun, said Reinhold Vieth, a University of Toronto researcher who studies vitamin D. The ability to produce vitamin D varies with the colour of a person’s skin.

“A white person like me, if I lie on my lawn chair for 10 minutes on [my] front, 10 minutes on the back, I’m going to be putting into my body 100 glasses of milk worth of vitamin D,” Vieth said.

People whose ancestors come from sunny places such as Pakistan or Somalia often have darker skin to protect them from sunburn and other sun damage.

“But as you move north, that skin colour makes it harder and harder for you to make vitamin D,” Vieth said. “Basically, what we’re doing is transplanting people from an area for which their skin is optimized in terms of its colour to an area where their skin is often too dark to be healthy.”

Diet and clothing
Skin colour isn’t the only factor that puts immigrants at risk; diet and culture also play a role.

Vieth co-authored a study of healthy University of Toronto students that found those of South Asian descent were almost six times more likely to have a vitamin D deficiency than those of European descent. Students of European descent got an average of 231 international units (IU) of vitamin D daily from food and supplements — 73 per cent more than the East Asian students and 40 per cent more than the South Asian students, said the study published in 2008 in the journal BioMed Central Public Health.

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First Lady Links Obesity to National Security

February 12, 2010

CNS News

By Penny Starr

At a ceremony at the White House on Tuesday, First Lady Michelle Obama announced the launch of the ‘Let’s Move’ campaign to end childhood obesity in the United States, an epidemic she said is costly and a threat to national security.

“A recent study put the health care cost of obesity-related diseases at $147 billion a year,” Mrs. Obama said. “This epidemic also impacts the nation’s security, as obesity is now one of the most common disqualifiers for military service.”

The ceremony, attended by many officials of President Barack Obama’s cabinet, followed the signing earlier in the day of a presidential memorandum establishing a task force to study the problem and make recommendations after 90 days.

Obama announced a long list of goals she said she hopes the “Let’s Move” campaign will accomplish, including many that can be done “in a generation.”

“This isn’t like a disease where we’re still waiting for a cure to be discovered – we know the cure for this,” Obama said. “This isn’t like putting a man on the moon or inventing the Internet. It doesn’t take some stroke of genius or feat of technology.

“We have everything we need, right now, to help our kids lead healthy lives,” Obama said.

Some of the goals include ending what Obama referred to as “food deserts” with a $400 million a year “Healthy Food Financing Initiative,” which will bring grocery stores to low-income neighborhoods and “help places like convenience stores carry healthier food options.”

Obama called for overhauling many federal laws and guidelines, including adding $10 billion over the next decade to “update” the Childhood Nutrition Act, which feeds 31 million children at school and would add funding to feed more children.

The federal food pyramid would also get a makeover through the campaign, and there would be new efforts to get manufacturers to add “family friendly front-of-package labeling” that discloses a product’s nutritional value.

The First Lady said a broad coalition of groups interested in children’s health are coming together to form the Partnership for a Healthier America, which will use professional athletes, members of the media, and state and local dignitaries to promote the “Let’s Move” campaign and its goals around the country.

Obama used anecdotal details from her own life to explain the challenges faced by overworked parents and children who spend too much time watching TV or playing video games because their neighborhoods are unsafe for playing outside.

“So many parents desperately want to do the right thing, but they feel like the deck is stacked against them,” Obama said. “They know their kids’ health is their responsibility but they feel like it’s out of their control.”

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Margarine Found to Lower IQ of Children

February 12, 2010

Natural News

By David Gutierrez

A recent study on dietary influences on IQ turned up a surprising connection: children who ate margarine regularly scored significantly lower on intelligence tests than their peers.

The study was conducted by researchers from Auckland University in New Zealand and published in the journal Intelligence.

Researchers studied the dietary intake and intelligence scores of children born in the mid-1990s.

“We found a number of dietary factors to be significantly associated with intelligence measures,” the researchers said. “The association between margarine consumption and IQ scores was the most consistent and novel finding.”

After adjusting for other factors that might influence IQ, including socioeconomic status, the researchers found that children who ate margarine daily scored three points lower on IQ tests by the age of three-and-a-half than children with lower margarine consumption.

By the age of seven, the average IQ scores of some margarine eaters were six points below those of their peers. This occurred only in children who had been born underweight, suggesting that disadvantaged brains might be more vulnerable to diet-induced problems.

Because the study was correlational, researchers were unable to determine what exactly caused the IQ gap between the two groups of children. They suspect, however, that the culprit may be transfats, also known as partially hydrogenated oils.

Formed by adding hydrogen atoms to unsaturated vegetable oils, transfats have a longer shelf life and are more solid at room temperature than natural vegetable oils. In the mid-1990s, margarines were made with up to 17 percent transfats. In recent years, however, scientists discovered that not only do transfats have no nutritional value, they also drastically increase the risk of heart attack and death in those who consume them.

Most margarines now contain approximately 1 percent transfats.

Sian Porter of the British Dietetic Association noted that while margarine tends to be healthier than butter, dietary consumption of both should be kept low.

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Teenage Girls Live on Junk Food

February 11, 2010

Times Online

By Valerie Elliott

Teenage girls are eating a worse diet than they did ten years ago and putting their long-term health at risk, a national nutrition survey suggests.

Girls of secondary school age are not only living on junk food such as crisps, cakes, biscuits and fizzy drinks, but they are also smoking and drinking more than boys.

The pattern of consumption suggests that many girls are being influenced by fashion models. However, while girls aim to be slim, the study found that 37 per cent of teenage girls are overweight and 22 per cent are classified as obese. Among boys of the same age, 35 per cent are overweight but only 16 per cent are obese.

The preliminary findings of the National Diet and Nutrition Survey, released yesterday, have made such depressing reading for health chiefs that civil servants have turned to social networking sites such as Facebook and Bebo to see if 13 to 16-year-olds can be weaned on to healthy eating by their own friends.
The tactics are radical, but officials from the Food Standards Agency and Department of Health are dismayed that, despite all the healthy eating messages, only 7 per cent of girls are eating their “five a day” portions of fruit and vegetables and the average girl’s consumption is 2.8 portions.

Almost half of all girls are also failing to eat food rich in iron, such as cereals and red meat. A deficiency can lead to anaemia, which causes fatigue and lethargy and is a factor in some women failing to become pregnant.

Eleven per cent of girls aged 13 to 15 also admitted drinking alcohol every week, compared with 1 per cent of boys the same age, while 29 per cent of the young teenage girls said that they smoked cigarettes, compared with 16 per cent of boys.Dr Alison Tedstone, head of nutrition research at the agency, said: “Broadly, teenage girls don’t eat enough. Overall, they are a stand-alone group of the population whose diets are poor.”

An analysis of eating diaries found that the average teenage girl eats 54 grams of chips or fried potatoes every day while the average woman aged 19 to 65 eats just 40g. Each day the teenager also eats 14g of crisps or other salty snacks, 22g of sweets and choocolate, and 37g of cakes and biscuits.

The average older woman, however, will eat just 6g a day of crisps, 10g of sweets and chocolate, and 27g of cake and biscuits.

Researchers also found that teenage girls and boys were eating too much sugar and saturated fat. It is recommended that only 11 per cent of energy should come from food with sugars, yet secondary school age boys are consuming 16.3 per cent sugars a day and girls 15 per cent.

High levels of saturated fat which is linked to heart disease are also being eaten. The average recommended daily intake is 11 per cent, yet girls are eating 13.1 per cent a day and boys 12.7 per cent.

Dr Tedstone said she hoped that diets would improve as manufacturers reformulated products and lowered saturated fat and sugar content.

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