Sony Chairman Pushes For Healthy Alternatives at Cinemas
March 17, 2010
TimesOnline
By: Jacqui Goddard
For many, a night out at the movies would not be complete without the sound of popcorn and chocolate wrappers from the stalls. One of the most powerful studio bosses in Hollywood, however, would like to see cinemas selling healthier snacks.
Michael Lynton, chairman and chief executive of Sony Pictures, says that audiences would be better off nibbling on granola bars, fruit salad, yogurt and vegetable crudités with dips. “I can almost imagine the Romans eating popcorn and drinking Coke at the Colosseum 2,000 years ago,” he told a convention of cinema owners in Las Vegas. “But by bringing healthier snacks into your concession stands you would be helping our country meet an urgent public health need.”
The average cinema bucket of buttered popcorn has 76 grams (2.6oz) of fat — the equivalent of six McDonald’s cheeseburgers — and 1,100 calories.
Behind Mr Lynton’s call is an awareness of obesity on both sides of the Atlantic. Last month Tim Smith, the chief executive of the Food Standards Agency in Britain, called for filmgoers to be told how many calories there are in the popcorn, ice cream and fizzy drinks that they buy in cinemas and for them to be available in smaller portions.
However, Mr Lynton admitted that old habits might die hard. “I don’t think giant tubs of spinach or broccoli is a good idea. And nobody wants to eat cauliflower while watching Spider-Man, or drink a 40oz cup of prune juice,” he said.
He did not, he said, intend to “close the window for popcorn, soda and candy” but items such as baked crisps and unbuttered, air-popped popcorn, would enhance the choice. “I’m just talking about adding some healthier items to what you already sell.”
Deirdre Flynn, spokesman for the Popcorn Board, a non-profit organisation funded by US popcorn processors, said: “If you ask most consumers what they consider the number one movie snack, they will tell you it’s popcorn. Popcorn and movies have gone hand in hand since the early 1900s.”
The Alliance for a Healthier Generation, started by the former President Clinton, and the American Heart Association to fight childhood obesity offered to advise on nutritious menus.
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Study Claims People Could Lose 5lbs a Year with Junk Food Tax
March 10, 2010
ABC News
By Kristina Fiore
Taxing junk food may help reduce obesity and improve health, researchers have found.
Patients got significantly less of their calories from soda or pizza when there was a 10 percent increase in the price of either, Penny Gordon-Larsen of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and colleagues reported in the March 8 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine.
“Policies aimed at altering the price of soda or … pizza may be effective mechanisms to steer U.S. adults toward a more healthful diet and help reduce long-term weight gain or insulin levels over time,” the researchers wrote.
Talk of a soda tax has sparked debate across the country, particularly in New York and Philadelphia, where such legislation is currently under consideration. However, not much research has been done to study how price changes would affect health outcomes.
So the researchers looked at data from 5,115 patients enrolled in the longitudinal Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults (CARDIA) Study from 1985 to 2006.
During that time, the inflation-adjusted price of soda and pizza actually decreased, with the largest drop observed for soda, falling from $2.71 to $1.42 for a 2-liter bottle — a 48 percent decline.
In their analyses, the researchers found that changes in the price of soda and pizza were associated with changes in the probability of consuming those foods, as well as in the amounts consumed.
A 10 percent increase in the price of soda was associated with a 7.12 percent decrease in calories consumed from it, while the same increase in the price of pizza led to an 11.5 percent drop.
Price was also significantly associated with total caloric intake and body weight. A $1.00 increase in soda prices, for example, was tied to a mean of 124 fewer total daily calories, which amounted to an average weight loss of 2.34 pounds.
The researchers noted that similar trends were seen for pizza, adding that a $1.00 increase in the price of both soda and pizza together was associated with even greater changes in total energy intake, body weight, and insulin resistance.
“Our results provide stronger evidence to support the potential health benefits of taxing selected foods and beverages,” they wrote. “Similar taxation policies have proven a successful means of effectively reducing adult and teenage smoking.”
They calculated that an 18 percent tax on junk food would result in a 56-calorie decline in total daily energy intake. At the population level, that would translate to about five pounds per patient per year, along with significant reductions in the risks of most obesity-related chronic diseases, they said.
Since their study looked at only a small number of foods, they called upon researchers to assess more in future studies.
In an accompanying editorial, Dr. Mitchell H. Katz and Dr. Rajiv Bhatia of the San Francisco Department of Public Health wrote that taxing is “an appropriate method of correcting for health and other social costs not accounted for in the private market cost.”
However, they added, in addition to taxing unhealthy foods, policymakers should consider ways to reward healthy behaviors.
“Sadly, we are currently subsidizing the wrong things, including the production of corn, which makes the corn syrup in sweetened beverages so inexpensive,” they wrote. U.S. agricultural subsidies should instead “be used to make healthful foods such as locally grown vegetables, fruits, and whole grains less expensive.”
“In the end,” Katz and Bhatia concluded, “putting our money where our mouth is means aligning our economic incentives so that we always serve up the healthful choice.”
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Drastic Measures: Tax Soda and Pizza to Cut Obesity
March 10, 2010
Reuters
By Julie Steenhuysen
U.S. researchers estimate that an 18 percent tax on pizza and soda can push down U.S. adults’ calorie intake enough to lower their average weight by 5 pounds (2 kg) per year.
The researchers, writing in the journal Archives of Internal Medicine on Monday, suggested taxing could be used as a weapon in the fight against obesity, which costs the United States an estimated $147 billion a year in health costs.
“While such policies will not solve the obesity epidemic in its entirety and may face considerable opposition from food manufacturers and sellers, they could prove an important strategy to address overconsumption, help reduce energy intake and potentially aid in weight loss and reduced rates of diabetes among U.S. adults,” wrote the team led by Kiyah Duffey of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
With two-thirds of Americans either overweight or obese, policymakers are increasingly looking at taxing as a way to address obesity on a population level.
California and Philadelphia have introduced legislation to tax soft drinks to try to limit consumption.
CDC director Dr. Thomas Frieden supports taxes on soft drinks, as does the American Heart Association.
There are early signs that such a policy works.
Duffey’s team analyzed the diets and health of 5,115 young adults aged age 18 to 30 from 1985 to 2006.
They compared data on food prices during the same time. Over a 20-year period, a 10 percent increase in cost was linked with a 7 percent decrease in the amount of calories consumed from soda and a 12 percent decrease in calories consumed from pizza.
The team estimates that an 18 percent tax on these foods could cut daily intake by 56 calories per person, resulting in a weight loss of 5 pounds (2 kg) per person per year.
“Our findings suggest that national, state or local policies to alter the price of less healthful foods and beverages may be one possible mechanism for steering U.S. adults toward a more healthful diet,” Duffey and colleagues wrote.
In a commentary, Drs. Mitchell Katz and Rajiv Bhatia of the San Francisco Department of Public Health said taxes are an appropriate way to correct a market that favors unhealthy food choices over healthier options.
They argued that the U.S. government should carefully consider food subsidies that contribute to the problem.
“Sadly, we are currently subsidizing the wrong things including the product of corn, which makes the corn syrup in sweetened beverages so inexpensive,” they wrote.
Instead, they argued that agricultural subsidies should be used to make healthful foods such as locally grown vegetables, fruits and whole grains less expensive.
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Sugar Gains Favor On Labels
March 8, 2010
Wall Street Journal
By Anjali Coredeiro
High fructose corn syrup, the sugar alternative used to sweeten sodas, cookies, condiments and cereals, is beginning to lose some ground in the packaged-food industry.
More big-name food and beverage products—including Kraft Foods Inc.’s Wheat Thins —have begun dropping the ingredient in favor of sugar, despite a big difference in cost, saying they are responding to consumer preferences for ingredients perceived as more natural.
ConAgra Foods Inc. in May will start replacing the sweetener with sugar in its Hunt’s tomato ketchup. “That’s what consumers are looking for—simpler ingredient listings and ingredients they are familiar with,” ConAgra spokeswoman Teresa Paulsen said. …
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Study Links Soft Drinks to Pancreas Cancer
February 8, 2010
Reuters
By John O’Callaghan
People who drink two or more sweetened soft drinks a week have a much higher risk of pancreatic cancer, an unusual but deadly cancer, researchers reported on Monday.
People who drank mostly fruit juice instead of sodas did not have the same risk, the study of 60,000 people in Singapore found.
Sugar may be to blame but people who drink sweetened sodas regularly often have other poor health habits, said Mark Pereira of the University of Minnesota, who led the study.
“The high levels of sugar in soft drinks may be increasing the level of insulin in the body, which we think contributes to pancreatic cancer cell growth,” Pereira said in a statement.
Insulin, which helps the body metabolize sugar, is made in the pancreas.
Writing in the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, Pereira and colleagues said they followed 60,524 men and women in the Singapore Chinese Health Study for 14 years.
Over that time, 140 of the volunteers developed pancreatic cancer. Those who drank two or more soft drinks a week had an 87 percent higher risk of being among those who got pancreatic cancer.
Pereira said he believed the findings would apply elsewhere.
“Singapore is a wealthy country with excellent healthcare. Favorite pastimes are eating and shopping, so the findings should apply to other western countries,” he said.
But Susan Mayne of the Yale Cancer Center at Yale University in Connecticut was cautious.
“Although this study found a risk, the finding was based on a relatively small number of cases and it remains unclear whether it is a causal association or not,” said Mayne, who serves on the board of the journal, which is published by the American Association for Cancer Research.
“Soft drink consumption in Singapore was associated with several other adverse health behaviors such as smoking and red meat intake, which we can’t accurately control for.”
Other studies have linked pancreatic cancer to red meat, especially burned or charred meat.
Pancreatic cancer is one of the deadliest forms of cancer, with 230,000 cases globally. In the United States, 37,680 people are diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in a year and 34,290 die of it.
The American Cancer Society says the five-year survival rate for pancreatic cancer patients is about 5 percent.
Some researchers believe high sugar intake may fuel some forms of cancer, although the evidence has been contradictory. Tumor cells use more glucose than other cells.
One 12-ounce (355 ml) can of non-diet soda contains about 130 calories, almost all of them from sugar.
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Fecal Matter Found In Fast-Food Soda Fountains
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25% of Americans Get Sick from Food
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Strangers On A Plane
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Fecal Matter Found In Nearly Half Of Fast-Food Soda Fountains
January 8, 2010
ABC News
By Lauren Cox
Those soda fountain machines found in restaurants and fast food joints may be squirting out liquids contaminated with fecal bacteria, a small study found. Whether it was self-serve or behind the counter, nearly half of all sodas dispensed from a sample of 30 machines in the Roanoke Valley in Virginia had coliform bacteria — a group of bacteria banned in drinking water by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) because it indicates the possibility of fecal contamination.
“The EPA regulates our drinking supply, and there can be some bacteria, but one of the things that is not allowed is coliform bacteria,” said Renee D. Godard, professor of biology at Hollins University and a co-author of the paper published in the January print issue of the International Journal of Food Microbiology.
“We can’t have that in our drinking supply. But they’re coming out of these soda fountain machines,” she said.
The soda machines had turned into a bacteria metropolis with Escherichia coli (E. coli), species of Klebsiella, Staphylococcus, Stenotrophomonas, Candida, and Serratia. Most of the bacteria were resistant to the 11 antibiotics Godard tested on her samples.
“About 70 percent of the beverages had bacteria and 48 percent of them had coliform bacteria,” said Godard.
However, only 20 percent of the sodas sampled had coliform bacteria that exceeded the EPA limit for drinking water.
Since the tap water and ice from the machines didn’t test positive for bacteria, Godard and her team ruled out the possibility of a valley-wide contamination of the water supply.
Various brands of soft drinks and various types — sugared, diet or even water — were contaminated, leading Godard to think that it wasn’t the soda, but the machine that was growing bacteria.
From all her testing, Godard still isn’t sure where the bacteria came from. Few people observed in the restaurants touched the nozzles of the soda fountain machines and restaurant managers Godard interviewed reported cleaning the nozzles daily.
But only one restaurant manager reported rinsing the plastic tubing within the machines on a regular basis.
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Drinking Soda Causes Obesity
December 28, 2009
Natural News
By David Gutirrez
Regular soda consumption significantly increases a person’s risk of obesity, according to a study conducted by researchers from the University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA).
“We drink soda like water,” said Harold Goldstein of the Center for Public Health Advocacy, which also took part in the study. “But unlike water, soda serves up a whopping 17 teaspoons of sugar in every 20-ounce serving.”
Researchers interviewed 40,000 adults on their beverage consumption habits, finding that adults who drank one sugary beverage per day were 27 percent more likely to be classified as overweight than those who drank sugary beverages less frequently.
Drinking one soda per day involves the consumption of 39 pounds of sugar per year.
According to the San Jose Mercury News, 15.5 percent of adults, 56 percent of teenagers, and 41 percent of children under the age of 12 in Santa Cruz County, Calif., consume one soda per day. The figures on children’s consumption were obtained from their parents.
An estimated 64 percent of adults in the city of Pajaro Valley are overweight or obese. The Pajaro Valley Unified School District says that 39 percent of its seventh graders are already overweight or at risk of being overweight.
Health advocates are acting on levels from the local to national to limit the damage done by soda and other sugary beverages. Many schools have banned sugary drinks from their campuses, but Watsonville High School Principal Murry Schekman admits that it is easy for students to get around this restriction by purchasing the beverages off campus.
“We need to provide a steady stream of information to students and families so they can very much understand the real dangers of sugar-sweetened products,” Schekman said.
On the city, state and national levels, there are also campaigns to impose a tax on soda. And the federal Women, Infants and Children (WIC) food assistance program recently banned the use of its funds to purchase juice for infants.
“By feeding infants breastmilk and water only, there is less opportunity to develop an early taste for sweetened beverages,” said WIC’s Santa Cruz County program director, Cathy Cavanaugh.
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