Drinking Diet Soda Actually Causes Weight Gain, Blood Sugar Spikes

July 25th, 2011

Natural News

By: Ethan A. Huff

Contrary to popular belief, diet soda and other foods and beverages made with artificial sweeteners like aspartame are not healthy, and they do not bring about weight loss.

A landmark new study out of Texas confirms this, having found that not only do diet sodas not help with weight loss, but they actually cause both weight gain and health problems.

Researchers from the University of Texas Health Science Center (UTHSC) at San Antonio gathered ten years worth of data on 474 participants from a larger, ongoing study called the San Antonio Longitudinal Study of Aging. Among these participants, those that consumed two or more diet sodas a day experienced waist size increases that were a shocking six times greater than those who did not drink diet soda.

“Data from this and other prospective studies suggest that the promotion of diet sodas and artificial sweeteners as healthy alternatives may be ill-advised,” said Helen P. Hazuda, a study researcher and professor at the UTHSC school of medicine. “They may be free of calories, but not of consequences.”

Presented at the annual meeting of the American Diabetes Association (ADA), the findings debunk the false notion that drinking diet beverages is beneficial for weight loss. Since consuming them actually leads to a 70 percent increase in waist size compared to those who do not drink them, it is clear that using the name “diet” is, in and of itself, misleading.

In a related study presented at the same time, researchers also found that aspartame, a commonly-used chemical sweetener in diet foods and beverages, is actually responsible for raising blood sugar levels. In tests using mice, those that consumed chow with added aspartame experienced elevated blood sugar levels compared to mice simply eating regular chow.

“These results suggest that heavy aspartame exposure might potentially directly contribute to increased blood glucose levels, and thus contribute to the associations observed between diet soda consumption and the risk of diabetes in humans,” said Gabriel Fernandes, researcher of that study and professor of rheumatology and clinical immunology at UTHSC.

A 2008 study published in the journal Behavioral Neuroscience found similar results when testing the effects of saccharin, another type of artificial sweetener, compared to sugar.

Rats in that study that were fed saccharin gained more weight than rats fed an equivalent amount of plain sugar.

“There’s something about diet foods that changes your metabolic limit, your brain chemistry,” said Dr. Marie Savard, a medical contributor for ABC News, in response to those findings. “The truth is, we’re putting artificial sweetener in so many different things: in water, in yogurt. We have to rethink what this artificial stuff does to us.”

A 2010 study conducted by researchers from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases adds to this, having found that the body’s reaction to the ingestion of artificial sweeteners appears to be brain confusion over how exactly to process it, which in and of itself is implicated in causing various other negative consequences.

US Food and Drug Administration adverse event reports going back several decades indicate that artificial sweeteners like aspartame are also responsible for destroying brain neurons, which in turn leads to a host of chronic illnesses.

These include, but are not limited to, chronic headaches, seizures, strokes, vascular disorders, heart disease, premature birth, dementia and other brain disorders, and cancer.

So rather than consume artificially-sweetened beverages and foods with the hope that they will somehow induce weight gain and promote health — two notions that have proven once again to be false — the best way to begin to lose weight is to consume less processed, refined sugars and simple carbohydrates in the first place.

Instead, develop new eating habits that incorporate clean, whole foods into your diet, and reteach your body how to digest and assimilate nutrients from real food, which is the way it was intended to be.

And remember, not all sugar is necessarily bad for you. The sugar found naturally in fruit, as well as unprocessed sugar from raw sugar cane and coconut sap, for instance, can be beneficial for health.

Coconut sugar, for instance, is very low on the glycemic index, which means that diabetics can safely consume it in moderation, and it is also rich in B vitamins and other nutrients.

Stevia extract, a natural sweetener derived from the leaves of the stevia plant, is another great option. This natural sweetener contains no sugar at all, but is not artificially derived from chemicals as are aspartame, sucralose, and saccharin, so it is a great option for anyone trying to reduce sugar intake, or for diabetics.

Just be sure to buy real stevia extract, not the commercially-sold stevia packets made by Purevia (PepsiCo) and Truvia (Cargill / Coca-Cola), which contain a modified version of their own patented stevia, as well as other additives.

Click here for the full report from Natural News

U.S. Companies Shrink Packages as Food Prices Rise

April 4th, 2011

Daily Finance

By: Douglas McIntyre

U.S. food prices have been rising in the last year, but it seems the growth is only just beginning. A sharp jump in commodities’ prices this year will soon result in sticker shock for American consumers.

Large food companies have recently announced that they will raise the prices they charge grocery retailers for commodities-based products. For example, a chocolate bar will cost more soon: Hershey last week announced a 10% increase for most of its confectionery goods.

Of course, straightforward price hikes could cause consumers to buy less of those products or to choose less costly store brands. So in many cases, food companies are trying a different tactic: Keeping the price of an item the same while decreasing the amount of food in the package. The company recoups the costs of the rise in commodities and hopes consumers don’t notice that they’re getting less of the product for the same price.

Food companies have no obligation to tell customers about the smaller packages, but may suffer a backlash from consumers who notice how the packaging trick works. Here are some of the shrinking products that you might notice in your grocery aisles:

Kellogg Cereal
Company: Kellogg (K)
Commodities: corn, wheat, sugar
Size Reduction: roughly 15%, or 2.4 ounces, on average
Kellogg, which makes cereal such as Apple Jacks and Corn Pops, has passed higher grain costs on to consumers. In 2008, the company reduced the amount of cereal in its boxes by an average of 2.4 ounces. And in February, the company announced that it will raise the price of its cereals 3% to 4%. According to a U.S. Agriculture Department report in March, “higher wheat commodity costs should begin to affect cereal and bakery product prices over the next few months, causing prices to rise 3.5% to 4.5% overall in 2011.”

Snickers Bars
Company: Mars
Commodities: cocoa, dairy, nuts
Size Reduction: 11%, or 0.41 ounces
Supposedly in response to pleas from obesity activists, the Mars Company split their “King Size” Snickers bar in half so that it could be more easily shared between two people. What calls the nobility of the company’s intentions into question is that, in addition to making the cut, Mars also reduced the total amount of candy in each package from 3.7ounces to 3.29 ounces — an 11% decrease — while keeping the price the same.

Tropicana
Company: PepsiCo (PEP)
Commodities: frozen orange juice concentrate, gasoline
Size Reduction: 8%, or 5 ounces
A series of prolonged frosts last year sent citrus prices up 11.5% and drove up the price of frozen orange-juice concentrate to several-year highs. Meanwhile, the cost of transporting the concentrate has gone up as gas prices have increased. In response, Tropicana has made two adjustments: It increased the price of its gallon jugs by 5-8% and stealthily reduced the size of its half-gallon cartons from 64 ounces to 59 ounces. This 5-ounce reduction represents nearly an 8% decrease in size.

Haagen-Dazs
Company: General Mills (GIS)
Commodity: dairy, sugar, cocoa
Size Reduction: 12.5%, or 2 fluid ounces
The luxury-ice-cream company reduced the size of its standard container to significantly less than a pint, cutting it 12.5% from 16 fluid ounces to 14 fluid ounces. To make the smaller package less obvious, the company cleverly kept the top the same size, so it looks identical from above, but tapers dramatically in the middle. Haagen-Dazs’s cheaper brands, Edy’s and Breyer’s, have cut their portions as well. Daily prices increased just over 1% in 2010, but are expected to rise as much as 5.5% in 2011.

Chicken of the Sea Tuna
Company: Thai Union Group
Commodity: tuna
Size Reduction: 17%, or 1 ounce
Chicken of the Sea’s albacore tuna, previously sold in 6-ounce cans, now comes in 5-ounce cans. Rising tuna prices amid a worldwide shortage of the fish are partly to blame. Other tuna brands also have shrunk their can sizes, a trend which has been going on for years. Just over a decade ago, tuna was most commonly sold in 7-ounce cans.

Frito-Lay Chips
Company: PepsiCo (PEP)
Commodity: wheat, corn, potatoes
Size Reduction: 12.5% – 20%
With all the air included in chips packaging, it is easy for manufacturers to reduce the amount of chips in the bags without drawing attention. PepsiCo reduced the Lay’s “Family Size” potato-chip bag from 16 ounces to 14 ounces in 2009. Bags of Doritos, Tostitos, and Fritos now contain 20% fewer chips than they did in 2009, according to The New York Times. Even smaller bags have been reduced by a quarter of an ounce. Rising gain prices have driven the changes.

Click here for the full report from DailyFinance.com

Pepsi Faces Steep Input Price Inflation

March 14th, 2011

FinancialTimes.com

By: Jonathan Birchall

PepsiCo faces the highest levels of input price inflation in many years, underlining the broad pressures confronting global food companies amid steep rises in the price of oil and agricultural commodities.

The snacks and soft drinks company, whose food business includes Frito-Lay and Quaker, expected an additional $1.4bn to $1.6bn in extra input costs in its 2011 financial year, equivalent to cost inflation of 8 to 9.5 per cent.

“There aren’t many years in my 23 years at PepsiCo that I remember seeing that range,” said Hugh Johnson, chief financial officer, as the company issued its fourth-quarter results on Thursday. “That type of inflation has a pretty strong impact.”

Inflation concerns contributed to a lowered forecast for earnings growth in its 2011 financial year in the range of 7 to 8 per cent, down from a previous forecast in March last year of low double-digit percentage growth.

It also said it expected earnings growth in the lower range to continue after 2011, in spite of its $7.8bn investment acquiring its largest bottlers in 2010, and purchasing a controlling stake in Wimm-Bill-Dann, the Russian dairy company, for $3.8bn.

Indra Nooyi, chief executive, defended the company’s strategy, telling Wall Street analysts that “had we not had the macroeconomic sluggishness and this extraordinary commodity inflation, we’re a solid double-digit [earnings growth] player.”

She also emphasised the “considerable uncertainty” that had led to the decision to lower earnings guidance.

“We have no idea what the commodity markets are going to look like in 2012 and beyond,” she said.

“We have no idea what the developed market economic situation is going to be, whether it is going to improve robustly or whether the current sluggishness is going to continue.”

Coca-Cola, Pepsi’s main rival, earlier this week reported sales growth across leading markets during the fourth quarter for the first time since 2003, supported by strengthening consumer demand and gains in market share from investments in marketing and distribution.

Muhtar Kent, Coca-Cola’s chief executive, said: “At best the recovery is still mixed around the world … But I think there’s more stability and less concern about a major upheaval.”

Mr Kent said he believed Coca-Cola’s strong results reflected its own efforts to improve its global business performance.

PepsiCo’s food brands account for over 50 per cent of its revenues. Several other leading global food companies have warned of the impact of commodity price inflation in the coming year. John Bryant, chief executive of Kellogg’s, the cereal company, said last week that he expected pressure on grain prices to continue “for several years to come”.

PepsiCo has said it expects to pass on some of the price increases to consumers, but would seek to minimise sudden price moves.

For the fourth quarter, PepsiCo reported core earnings per share – excluding the impact of its takeover of its two largest bottlers – of $1.05 per diluted share.

Sales volumes rose 9 per cent across its worldwide business, while net income, lifted by the bottling deals, rose 37 per cent to $18.1bn. Net earnings fell 5 per cent to $1.36bn, again reflecting the costs of the bottling acquisitions.

In North America, soft drinks sales volumes rose by 1 per cent against the same quarter last year, trailing the 3 per cent growth reported on Wednesday by Coca-Cola

Click here for the full report from Financial Times

75% of Americans Obese or Overweight by 2020

October 10th, 2010

Natural News

By: Mike Adams

America is already on the verge of drowning in sick-care bankruptcy, but the situation is about to get even worse. According to a new study released by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, three-fourths of Americans will be obese or overweight by 2020. That puts America in first place for the world competition to see which nation can create the most obese population.

We’re number one!

Seriously, according to the research, America is No. 1 on the world obesity rankings, meaning a higher percentage of the U.S. population is obese (or overweight) than in any other country in the world.

Not surprisingly, why this is happening brings up all sorts of different explanations ranging from entirely valid to completely bizarre. But the simple truth of the situation is that Americans are fat because of these three simple reasons:

Reason #1) We don’t get much exercise.
Reason #2) We eat too much food.
Reason #3) The food we eat is mostly processed dead food of marginal nutritional value.

These three reasons largely explain why America has become the fattest nation in the world.

Why do we eat so much junk food?
Knowing this, the next question seems obvious: WHY do we eat so much junk food? The answer may seem complex, but it really isn’t. Americans eat junk food because that’s what’s available and that’s what they’re told to eat by their television sets.

You can buy junk foods at any convenience store, gas station or vending machine in America. But getting something that’s actually healthy for you is far more challenging. Most people opt for the quick, easy and cheap solution: Drive-through burgers or genetically modified tacos! Why bother with real food when factory-made imitation food is so much cheaper (and more convenient)?

Why don’t we get much exercise?
The sad, simple answer is that most Americans are just flat-out sedentary. A recent study revealed that an astonishing 95% of Americans never do anything strenuous — ever! The people you see in the gyms or jogging in public are the 5% who actually engage in some form of exercise.

The other 95% of Americans just do don’t much in terms of physical activity, yet at the same time Americans tend to eat huge meal portions that would be considered obscene in many other countries. When I lived in South America, for example, I quickly learned that South American meal portions are about one-fourth the size of a typical North American meal portion (in terms of what restaurants serve you, anyway). A typical one-person meal at a family Mexican restaurant in the United States, in other words, would feed a family of four in Ecuador.

This combination of eating larger meals while avoiding most exercise is the “perfect storm” for exploding obesity. It is accelerated even more by the lack of nutritional density in the food people do choose to eat.

The nutritional depleted foods we eat
Most foods consumed by Americans are heavily processed, factory-made foods. Just check out the grocery carts of the average American shopper — they’re loaded up with the most heavily processed, chemically adulterated imitation food products you can possibly imagine. And there’s a not-so-surprising correlation between the health of the person shopping and the quality of the foods in their cart. Healthy people shop primarily for fresh produce and food staples like legumes and beans.

The least healthy people are the ones purchasing canned soups, dinner “helper” products, macaroni and cheese, sweet pastries, cow’s milk, processed meats and cheeses. Not surprisingly, these are the same people who end up in the drive-thru pharmacies, buying their latest round of diabetes drugs. They’re also the same ones driving up your health care costs by destroying their own health and racking up billions of dollars in disease maintenance costs.

Think about it: When people buy and eat processed foods, they are not only destroying their own health; they’re passing along the sick-care costs to all the other people who share the cost burden of either private health insurance, Medicaid or Medicare. When a person buys a 99 cent hamburger, they may actually be generating five dollars in future health care costs to be paid by all the rest of us.

That’s one reason why obesity is bankrupting America. Many of the junk food eaters seem to think someone else is going to pay for their disease. Someone else is going to fix the broken health care system. Someone else is going to find a cure someday. So why bother changing their own dietary habits anyway?

Too many people dismiss their own role in creating the very disease and bankruptcy from which they’re suffering. This is happening at both the personal level and the national level. When America as a nation has its food supply regulated by a corrupt, criminal agency called the FDA that actively censors the truth about healing foods which prevent disease — and then the same country asks “Why are our people so diseased?” — you gotta just shake your head in disbelief.

America is obese and diseased precisely because that’s the kind of outcome you’d naturally expect when you imprison the herbalists, shut down the nutritional supplement companies and ban honest health claims about healthy food products while allowing toxic chemicals and GMOs into the food supply. The FDA sure deserves a round of applause here, eh?

And then when people actually do get sick, instead of teaching them how to be well, the government pushes an agenda of dangerous chemical medications and vaccine injections that only further compromise health (while driving up health care costs even more).

When companies can sell infant formula made with over 50% sugar and state food stamp programs actually cover such products by making them free to low-income mothers, then of course you’re going to end up raising a generation of obese diabetics!

This isn’t rocket science, folks. If you feed a whole generation of people junk foods, liquid sugars (HFCS) and heavily processed foods while promoting chemicals and pharmaceuticals as the answer to health care, you cannot possibly get any result other than widespread obesity, diabetes, cancer and heart disease. It’s no coincidence that’s exactly what we see in America today. The answer is so simple that even a fifth grade could figure it out.

We must choose between the People or the corporations
If America really wants to get healthy, it’s not a difficult thing. Just put a dozen natural health and nutrition advocates in charge of regulating food, drugs and personal care products. We would clean house and put a whole slew of junk food companies out of business, and then we would restore health freedom to natural product companies so they could communicate the truth about how their products can help people prevent disease.

Make no mistake: The American people can never be healthy if Big Pharma and the junk food companies stay in business as they operate today. You literally have to bankrupt all the toxic product industries (or force them to shift to completely different products) in order to save America from the medical bankruptcy that now seems inevitable.

But these toxic product industries are very powerful and very influential. They fund political election campaigns and hire armies of lobbyists to get things passed like the recent health care reforms that effectively lock in a Big Pharma monopoly for decades to come. Disease pays big bucks to these powerful corporations, and they’re not about to see Americans get healthier if that would eat into their profits.

It would quite literally take some sort of temporary dictator in America to clean house and shut down all the consumer product companies that are right now causing widespread obesity and disease. Although I don’t support dictatorships, if such a dictator did exist and he really wanted to improve the health of the American people, he would have to radically reform or force the shutting down of companies like Coca-Cola, Monsanto, Proctor & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson and Pepsico. All the top pharmaceutical companies would be next: Merck, Pfizer, GSK, Astrazeneca, etc.

If you shut down all these companies, seized their products, halted their operations and arrested and prosecuted their top executives for their various crimes against the People, then you might have a shot at improving the long-term health of the American people. Note carefully that this is almost exactly what the FTC and FDA do right now against natural product companies, so this kind of action actually takes place quite regularly (although it’s directed at the wrong companies). This isn’t “something that would never happening in America.” It’s happening right now!

It’s all just a matter of national priorities. If America’s politicians would rather protect the health of the profits of giant drug companies and food conglomerates than the health of the working people, then they should just keep doing what they’re already doing… it’s working beautifully! But if they actually want to help Americans get healthy and stay healthy — while saving literally trillions of dollars in long-term health care costs — they’ve got to be willing to put these toxic product companies out of business for good while promoting sensible nutrition and exercise programs through public education campaigns.

In other words, the United States government needs to be doing what NaturalNews.com is already doing: Educating people about nutrition, promoting personal health responsibility, teaching disease prevention and fitness.

Maybe one day they’ll figure out that the way to have a healthy nation is to start with creating healthy people.

Click here for the full report from Natural News

Pepsi Goes Healthy – in 10 Years

July 23, 2010

Natural News

PepsiCo has announced a worldwide plan to decrease its contribution to poor health through widespread changes to its product line, drawing both praise and skepticism.

The company has committed to reduce the sodium content of “key foods” by 25 percent by 2015, the saturated fat content of “key foods” by 15 percent by 2020, and the added sugar content in “key drinks” by 25 percent by 2020. It plans to incorporate more fruits, vegetables, nuts, whole grains and low-fat dairy into its product line and to develop new artificial salts and low- or no-calorie sweeteners. Pepsi also plans to expand and triple the sales of its healthier product lines, including Naked juice, Tazo tea, Tropicana and Quaker.

The announcement that drew the most attention, however, is the company’s commitment to stop selling full-sugar beverages in schools worldwide by 2012. The move is an expansion of a policy implemented in U.S. schools in 2006.

Under the new policy, Pepsi will sell only water, fat-free and low-fat milk, and sugar-free juice for general consumption in primary schools. Gatorade will be made available only “when physical activity is carried out — in special relation to sports, not for everyday use,” according to Derek Yach, the company’s senior vice president of global health policy. The same rules will be in force in secondary schools, except that low-calorie (diet) drinks may be sold in those schools.

Pepsi garnered praise for the move, with Kelly Brownell of Yale University comparing it favorably with country-specific pledges by the tobacco industry. Yet even the much-lauded school policy has its loopholes. Aside from the vague guidelines over when sugary sports drinks can be sold, the new policy still allows Pepsi to sell sugary fruit juices. In addition, Brownell noted, whether the policies will lead to an overall decrease in caloric consumption remains to be seen.

Click Here to Read The Full Article

PepsiCo Plans To Reduce Junk Food Risks By 2020

July 22, 2010

Natural News

David Gutierrez

PepsiCo has announced a worldwide plan to decrease its contribution to poor health through widespread changes to its product line, drawing both praise and skepticism.

The company has committed to reduce the sodium content of “key foods” by 25 percent by 2015, the saturated fat content of “key foods” by 15 percent by 2020, and the added sugar content in “key drinks” by 25 percent by 2020. It plans to incorporate more fruits, vegetables, nuts, whole grains and low-fat dairy into its product line and to develop new artificial salts and low- or no-calorie sweeteners. Pepsi also plans to expand and triple the sales of its healthier product lines, including Naked juice, Tazo tea, Tropicana and Quaker.

The announcement that drew the most attention, however, is the company’s commitment to stop selling full-sugar beverages in schools worldwide by 2012. The move is an expansion of a policy implemented in U.S. schools in 2006.

Under the new policy, Pepsi will sell only water, fat-free and low-fat milk, and sugar-free juice for general consumption in primary schools. Gatorade will be made available only “when physical activity is carried out — in special relation to sports, not for everyday use,” according to Derek Yach, the company’s senior vice president of global health policy. The same rules will be in force in secondary schools, except that low-calorie (diet) drinks may be sold in those schools.

Pepsi garnered praise for the move, with Kelly Brownell of Yale University comparing it favorably with country-specific pledges by the tobacco industry. Yet even the much-lauded school policy has its loopholes. Aside from the vague guidelines over when sugary sports drinks can be sold, the new policy still allows Pepsi to sell sugary fruit juices. In addition, Brownell noted, whether the policies will lead to an overall decrease in caloric consumption remains to be seen.

click here to read full article

Michelle Obama Applauds Corrupt Food Industry

May 18, 2010

The Washington Post

By Jane Black

In a direct response to Michelle Obama’s declared war on childhood obesity, an alliance of major food manufacturers on Monday pledged to introduce new, more healthful options, cut portion sizes and trim calories in existing products.

The Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation, a coalition including Campbell Soup, Coca-Cola, General Mills, Kellogg, Kraft Foods and PepsiCo, will slash 1 trillion calories by the end of 2012 and 1.5 trillion calories by the end of 2015. The 16 members make 20-25 percent of food consumed in the United States.

“This is precisely the kind of real private-sector commitment that we need. And I hope that more will follow the example that they’ve set,” Obama said at a news conference at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.

The announcement is one of the first substantial results of the first lady’s “Let’s Move!” campaign, which aims to end childhood obesity within a generation. The industry’s pledge comes two months after Obama urged food corporations “to move farther, faster” and less than a week after the White House announced the findings of its Childhood Obesity Task Force.

Click here for the full report.

Frito-Lay Goes Where No Chip Manufacturer Has Gone Before

April 29, 2010

SlashFood.com

by Nicole Nelson

Everything you love about potato chips comes down to the combination of three basic flavors: potatoes, oil and salt. But as health concerns about sodium continue to rise, food manufacturers are scrambling to figure out how to reduce it — without sacrificing taste.

Research and development executives at PepsiCo, the company that owns Frito-Lay, think they have the answer. And it’s a solution only a chemist could love: They’re going to change the basic shape of salt.

A quick high-school science class recap: Salt molecules are basic cubes, which means it takes each crystal awhile to break down in your mouth when you’re chomping on chips.

“Early on in our research, it became apparent that the majority of salt on a snack doesn’t even have time to dissolve in your saliva because you swallow it so rapidly,” Mehmood Khan, senior vice president, chief scientific officer and a former Mayo Clinic endocrinologist, said during a recent PepsiCo investor presentation.

A Wall Street Journal piece reported only about 20 percent of the salt on a potato chip dissolves on the tongue, while the remaining 80 percent is swallowed without contributing to taste. The solution? Use crystal chemistry to re-jigger the shape of salt to create more surface area. That way, no un-tasted salt ends up in your digestive system. PepsiCo thinks it can cut up to 25 percent of the sodium in their chips using this technique.

If messing with nature makes you a little nervous (remember Olestra?), you can breathe easier knowing that Brits have been consuming a similarly altered salt for three years with no reported problems. And you have some time to get used to the idea — chips using this technology aren’t expected on shelves for at least a year.

Click here to view the full article

FDA Plans To Limit Salt Allowed In Processed Foods

April 20, 2010

The Washington Post

By: Lyndsey Layton

The Food and Drug Administration is planning an unprecedented effort to gradually reduce the salt consumed each day by Americans, saying that less sodium in everything from soup to nuts would prevent thousands of deaths from hypertension and heart disease. The initiative, to be launched this year, would eventually lead to the first legal limits on the amount of salt allowed in food products.

The government intends to work with the food industry and health experts to reduce sodium gradually over a period of years to adjust the American palate to a less salty diet, according to FDA sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the initiative had not been formally announced.

Officials have not determined the salt limits. In a complicated undertaking, the FDA would analyze the salt in spaghetti sauces, breads and thousands of other products that make up the $600 billion food and beverage market, sources said. Working with food manufacturers, the government would set limits for salt in these categories, designed to gradually ratchet down sodium consumption. The changes would be calibrated so that consumers barely notice the modification.

The legal limits would be open to public comment, but administration officials do not think they need additional authority from Congress.

“This is a 10-year program,” one source said. “This is not rolling off a log. We’re talking about a comprehensive phase-down of a widely used ingredient. We’re talking about embedded tastes in a whole generation of people.”

The FDA, which regulates most processed foods, would be joined in the effort by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees meat and poultry.

Currently, manufacturers can use as much salt as they like in products because under federal standards, it falls into the category deemed “generally recognized as safe.” Foodmakers are merely required to report the amount on nutrition labels.

But for the past 30 years, health officials have grown increasingly alarmed as salt intake has increased with the explosion in processed foods and restaurant meals. Most adults consume about twice the government’s daily recommended limit, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Until now, the government has pushed the food industry to voluntarily reduce salt and tried to educate consumers about the dangers of excessive sodium. But in a study to be released Wednesday, an expert panel convened by the Institute of Medicine concludes that those measures have failed. The panel will recommend that the government take action, according to sources familiar with the findings.

Although the specifics of the government’s plans have not been made public, the food industry has been bracing for a federal initiative.

“We’re working on it voluntarily already,” said Melissa Musiker, senior manager of science policy, nutrition and health at the Grocery Manufacturers Association. In recent months, Conagra, Pepsico, Kraft Foods, General Mills, Sara Lee and others have announced that they would reduce sodium in many of their products. Pepsico has developed a new shape for sodium chloride crystals that the company hopes will allow it to reduce salt by 25 percent in its Lay’s Classic potato chips.

Morton Satin, director for technical and regulatory affairs at the Salt Institute, which represents salt producers, said regulation “would be a disaster for the public.” He said that the science regarding sodium is unclear and that consumption does not necessarily lead to health problems.

“If you consume a lot of salt, you also get rid of a lot of salt — it doesn’t mean it’s an excess,” he said. “I want to make sure they’re basing this on everything that is in the scientific literature, so we don’t end up being guinea pigs because someone thinks they’re doing something good.”

Michael Jacobson of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, which first petitioned the FDA to regulate sodium in 1978, said voluntary efforts by industry are laudable, “but they could change their minds tomorrow. . . . Limiting sodium might be the single most important thing the FDA can to do to promote health.”

In January, New York City launched a campaign against salt, urging food manufacturers and chain restaurants to voluntarily reduce sodium by 25 percent in their products nationwide over the next five years. Baltimore, Boston, Los Angeles, Chicago and the District are among a list of cities supporting the New York initiative.

A recent study by researchers at Columbia and Stanford universities and the University of California at San Francisco found that cutting salt intake by 3 grams a day could prevent tens of thousands of heart attacks, strokes and cases of heart disease.

Most salt eaten by Americans — 77 percent — comes from processed foods, making it difficult for consumers to limit salt to healthy levels, experts say.

“We can’t just rely on the individual to do something,” said Cheryl Anderson, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health who served on the Institute of Medicine committee. “Food manufacturers have to reduce the amount of sodium in foods.”

Reducing salt across the food supply will be a massive and technically challenging project. Although many artificial sweeteners have been discovered, there is no salt substitute.

Humans have an innate taste for salt, which is needed for some basic biological functions. But beyond flavor, salt is also used as a preservative to inhibit microbial growth; it gives texture and structure to certain foods; and it helps leaven and brown baked goods.

Gary K. Beauchamp, a psychobiologist and director of the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia, said salt also provides another, less understood quality. “It gives something that food people refer to as ‘mouthfeel,’ ” said Beauchamp, who also served on the Institutes of Medicine committee. “For some soups, for instance, it’s not just the salty taste — sodium makes the soup feel thicker.”

Policymakers will have to decide whether to exempt inherently salty foods, such as pickles, while mandating changes in other products to reduce the overall sodium levels in the food supply.

Above all, government officials and food industry executives say, a product with reduced salt must still taste good, or it will flop in the marketplace, as evidenced by several low-sodium products that had abysmal sales.

“Historically, consumers have found low-sodium products haven’t been of the quality that’s expected,” said Todd Abraham, senior vice president of research and nutrition for Kraft Foods. “We’re all trying to maintain the delicious quality of the product but one that consumers recognize as healthier.”

Click here for the full report.

Pepsico Grows as American Snack Food Intake Increases

February 12, 2010

Business Week

By Duane D. Stanford

PepsiCo Inc., the world’s largest snack maker, said fourth-quarter profit doubled, as food sales grew in the Americas.

Net income increased to $1.43 billion, or 90 cents a share, from $719 million, or 46 cents, a year earlier, Purchase, New York-based PepsiCo said today in a statement. Year-earlier profit included restructuring costs. Earnings per share matched the average of 10 analysts’ estimates compiled by Bloomberg.

PepsiCo affirmed its forecast of an 11 percent to 13 percent gain in earnings per share this year, excluding some costs and foreign-currency effects. Changes in pricing last quarter helped counter little-changed sales volume at the Americas foods division and volume declines at Americas beverages. Total revenue increased 4.5 percent to $13.3 billion, in line with analysts’ estimates.

PepsiCo rose 81 cents to $61.19 at 4:15 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. The shares gained 11 percent in 2009.

Latin America Foods’ net revenue rose 10 percent, leading the food gains in the Americas. The results exclude the effects of foreign currency fluctuations. The company forecast a one- time charge of about $125 million in the first quarter because of currency devaluation and hyperinflationary accounting in Venezuela.

Share repurchases together with a voluntary $600 million funding of PepsiCo’s pension plans may total about $5 billion this year, the company said.

Coca-Cola Co., the world’s largest soft-drink maker, said Feb. 9 that fourth-quarter profit gained 55 percent as volume sales grew in China and India.

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