The Dairy Show

If you Teach it, They will Eat it

Another of my favorite talks from the TEDx Manhattan conference was by Dr. Melony Samuels.  Dr. Samuels is the founder and director of the Bed-Study Campaign Against Hunger.  This organization runs a food pantry and community garden.  In her talk Dr. Samuels tells the story of how this innovative food pantry, which allows people to pick from their stock whatever items they choose, found itself stocking fresh produce that people weren't taking.  So, they started teaching people how to cook with the vegetables they were unfamiliar with.  Lo and behold, after the clients learned how to use these vegetables they started to "buy" them.  Next the pantry took their backyard and turned it into a garden that the local community cared for and used the vegetables they grew to stock the pantry.  Here Dr. Samuels tell this story and more in her own words below.

How Not To Build A Food System

This past weekend was the food focused TEDx conference in Manhattan.  The title of the conference was "Changing the way we eat" and brought together over 20 speakers to give their takes on the US Food System.  The speakers ranged from farmers to chefs to academics to film makers and were all great.  Over the next few days I will highlight a few of my favorites.

First up is Dr. Scott Kahan.  Scott is a preventive medicine physician who graduated from the program I am currently in, he is on the faculty at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, George Washington School of Public Health, and the Co-director of the George Washington University Weight Management Center.  In his talk, Scott describes why the defaults in society make it easy for people to eat unhealthy

food and gain weight.

 

USDA Advises Eat More-No Eat Less-No Eat More Cheese

In this week’s New York Times there is an article about cheese and public health.  The perfect topic for a post!

The article by Michael Moss, who has written great articles some about beef safety in the past, discusses the dual responsibilities of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).  On one hand the USDA is charged with providing nutritional guidelines to the public and on the other it is also charged with promoting agricultural products to improve sales.  Moss discusses how the Dairy Management Organization, started by the USDA, recently advised Domino’s to add more cheese to their pizza in order to increase sales.  The writes that the new pizza has 40% more cheese and that ¼ of a pie contains ¾ of the daily-recommended allowance of saturated fat.  He contrasts this with recommendations from the USDA’s Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion, who advise eating a diet low in saturated fat.  A diet low in saturated fat should involve eating less cheese and meat.

Is High Fructose Corn Syrup Just Sugar? Part II

In my last post on High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) I wrote about how the Corn Refiners want to change the name of HFCS to Corn Sugar.  I suggested that this was not such a big deal, because the main problem, in terms of diet, with both HFCS and "real sugar" is that they both provide the same number of "empty" calories.  Weight gain is the result of an imbalance of energy intake and expenditure, in that you take in more calories than you use.  Americans get about 25% of their calories from sugar and everyone should make an attempt to eat less sugar, no matter what its source.  It is important to keep this in mind and realize that even in comparison to HFCS "real sugar" is not a health food.  So in the answer to the title of the previous post (Is HFCS just sugar?), I said Yes, minus the greater impact on the environment.

That being said, I would now revise my answer in light of recent news to Maybe. 

Is the end of the irresponsible use of antibiotics in farm animals near?

There was an article in the NY Times yesterday titled "U.S. Meat Farmers Brace For Limits on Antibiotics." When I saw the article in the dining section, I was both excited and surprised. Excited, because I consider the non-therapeutic use of antibiotics in farm animals, to be a very significant public threat that needs to be dealt with and surprised, because I follow this issue rather closely and wasn't aware of any new developments.

The problem with the non-therapeutic use of antibiotics is that it accelerates the growth of antibiotic resistant bacteria.  These resistant bacteria can cause bacterial infections that are very hard to treat, because they are not effected by many of the antibiotics that doctors currently have available.  An infection with an antibiotic resistant bacteria can lengthen hospital stays, increase suffering, be very expensive, and even increase the risk of death.

The growth of antibiotic resistant bacteria is to some degree inevitable, but it is greatly accelerated by the indiscriminate or sub therapeutic use of antibiotics.  By using antibiotics more judiciously, however, we can slow this development and extend the usefulness of these important medications, which take years and millions of dollars to develop. And thankfully the Public Health and physicians communities are keenly aware of this problem and have focused great amounts of energy on using antibiotics more carefully.

Unfortunately though, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists about 70% of the antibiotics used in the United States are not prescribed by physicians, but are used indiscriminately in healthy farm animals on factory farms.  On these factory farms animals are kept in crowded conditions and antibiotics are added to animal feed in order to make them grow faster and prevent the illnesses that result from their poor living conditions.

Do Small Dietary Changes Effect Weight?

Tara Parker-Pope recently wrote an interesting article for her Well Column in the New York Times about the effect of making small changes in diet, like eating one less cookie per day, on weight.  Her article was based on a Commentary in JAMA by Martijn Katan and David Ludwig titled "Extra Calories Cause Weight Gain—But How Much?"

She points out that 1lb of fat is equal to about 3500 calories.  This means that in order to lose a pound of fat you need a calorie deficit of about 3500 calories.  That means you must burn 3500 calories more than you take in. 

Interestingly though, to gain a pound of fat, you need to have an excess of about 4000 calories.  This is because the process of converting foods is not 100% efficient and on average about 500 calories are needed to create 1lb of fat from the food you eat.

The average daily supply of calories available per person in American is about 1000 calories more than the average person's daily requirements.  Based on the previous paragraph, eating an extra 1000 calories per day would lead to a weight gain of 1.75 lbs per week or 91.5lbs per year!  However, this is not exactly what happens, because the bodies metabolism and energy requirements change with time and size.  So as you gain weight your energy requirements will increase in order to maintain that weight and so you need to eat increasingly more calories to gain more weight.

The same issues come into play when we talk about losing weight.  As you lose more weight your energy requirements will decrease, so that in order to maintain weight or lose more weight you must take in even less calories.

I think though that the messages in the NYT and JAMA articles is confusing.  But the gist of what they are saying is that figuring out how our caloric intake effect our weight is not a simple equation and therefore gaining and losing weight over time takes more calorie intake or deficit than we might think.  Small dietary changes such as cutting out a soda or a cookie from diet isn't going to make a major long term impact on weight, because most people are taking in so many extra calories that they are still going to have an excess of calories and gain weight in the long run.  However, it will make a difference, because while you would still gain weight, you will gain less in the end.  But if you want to lose weight or maintain weight in the long run its going to take more than just one small changes.  It requires multiple small changes that add up to creating no net gain of calories to maintain weight or a net loss of calories to lose weight.  The amount of calories taken in will have to change over time because of changes in the bodies metabolism.

What do you think about the effects of small dietary changes on weight?

Let's Move

Last week the White House and the First Lady unveiled there new plan to combat childhood obesity.  This is a very serious problem as in the past 30 years the prevalence of childhood obesity has grown to 30% of the population. 

There are two main parts to the White House Initiative.  First the President has established the creation of a childhood obesity task force and second the first lady will head up a new public relations program called Let's Move.  The goals of the programs are to ensure access to healthy, affordable food; increase physical activity in schools and communities; provide healthier food in schools; and empower parents with information and tools to make good choices for themselves and their families.

The Let's Move website, is definitely worth checking out, because is filled with great information about the program and links to other resources.    This looks like a great comprehensive program that is tackling the issues from many different angles and over the next few weeks, I'll put up some posts to highlight different aspects of the plan..  I'm very impressed by how many different organizations are involved from the FDA, to USDA, to public schools, to the American Academy of Pediatricians.  This type of multidisciplinary approach makes me optimistic that this program could work. 

Jamie Oliver wins TED prize

Jamie Oliver is the British chef who has come to America to tackle obesity and related diseases.  On his new show called "Jamie's Food Revolution", which premieres March 26th on ABC he visits "America's Unhealthiest city" Huntington West Virgina in order to teach the community about food and to try to get them to change that way they. 

On February 10th he won the this years TED prize (Technology, Entertainment, Design).  The prize comes with $100,000 and "a wish to change the world".  Which according to the TED website is supposed to mobilize the community to effect change.  Jamie's wish was

"for your help to create a strong, sustainable movement to educate every child about food, inspire families to cook again and empower people everywhere to fight obesity."

Hopefully this prize and the upcoming television show will indeed help make an impact in the improving the way people eat and fighting obesity.  To watch Jamie's TED speech, see below.

Factory Farms and Antibiotics Part II

In Part II of Katie Couric's piece from CBS News on Antibiotics and Farm she visits a new model of factory farm that does not use antibiotics.  In order to successfully raise animals in confinement succesfully without antibiotics, the farmers say that they have to provide additional space.  This of course leads to an increased price of the meat products to consumers that the National Pork Board seems to suggest is too much. 

The story also sites studies that show that incidence of infection with resistant bacteria in humans increased when animals started getting regularly fed antibiotics. After banning this practice in European countries the incidence of finding resistant bacteria in meet has decreased.  The next step is to see the effect on public health.

It is very interesting and somewhat surprising to see that intensively raising animals in confinement is possible without antibiotics, provided they have a little more space. The turkey shed that Couric visits, doesn't look that different that one of the chicken houses that you might see in movies like Food, Inc or Our Daily Bread.

Watch part II below:

Watch CBS News Videos Online

Factory Farms and Antibiotics

Around 70% of all the antibiotics produced go to farm animals.  Antibiotics in many of these cases aren't used to treat animals who are sick, but are given to healthy animals to make them grow faster and keep them from getting ill.  The indiscriminate use of antibiotics helps encourage the growth of antibiotic resistant bacteria and so is a major threat to public health.  CBS news did a story on this issue tonight, you can watch it below.

Watch CBS News Videos Online