Adult obesity rates increased in 16 states over the last year and did not decrease in any, according to F as in Fat: How Obesity Threatens America’s Future 2011, a report from Trust for America's Health and RWJF. For the first time, the report tracks adult obesity rates in each state over the last two decades.
Twenty years ago, no state had a rate above 15 percent. Today, more than two out of three states, 38 total, have rates over 25 percent, and just one has a rate lower than 20 percent. Included in the report are recommendations for how policy-makers and businesses can help to reverse the obesity epidemic by making it easier for children and families to be active and eat healthier foods.
· Read the report.
· Read the news release.
Friday, July 29, 2011
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Walmart's Big Plan To Feed The Food Deserts Of The U.S.
BY Ariel SchwartzThu Jul 21, 2011
In certain parts of the U.S., you can't turn a corner without bumping into a farmer's market or grocery store. But there are plenty of spots in the country where consumers lack these options and are instead forced to shop at junk food-filled convenience stores. Walmart, that bastion of low-priced, imported goods, has a plan to bring fresh food to these so-called food deserts--and probably make a hefty amount of cash in the process.
Walmart announced this week that it will open up to 300 new locations over the next five years in food deserts across the country as part of an initiative spearheaded by Michelle Obama. These locations, along with the 218 stores in food deserts that Walmart has opened over the past four years, will serve 1.3 million people--many of whom have no other option for fresh produce and unprocessed foods other than Walmart. The company is, in other words, virtually guaranteed to be the biggest grocer in these locations (Walmart already makes up 25% of grocery sales nationwide). The competition is almost nonexistent.
"By opening stores where customers need them most, Walmart will help build healthier families and stronger communities. We believe every single person should have access to an abundant selection of fresh fruits and vegetables at an affordable price," said Leslie Dach, executive vice president of corporate affairs at Walmart, in a statement."
The food desert plan is part of a larger plan by Walmart to make local, healthy food more accessible to customers. Walmart recently announced plans to double sales of fresh produce sourced from local farms in U.S. stores by the end of 2015. The company also expects to invest over $1 billion in its global fresh food supply chain over the next five years.
Would small, locally owned groceries be better for food deserts than Walmart? Possibly--they help foster community and probably pay a bit more than Walmart's notoriously low wages. But here's the thing: These mom-and-pop groceries aren't showing up fast enough in food deserts, if at all. In the meantime, obesity rates are steadily climbing and Walmart knows that there are a lot of underserved markets for its produce and other cheap goods. At least the superstore is providing healthy options for people who, in many cases, wouldn't have access to them otherwise.
In certain parts of the U.S., you can't turn a corner without bumping into a farmer's market or grocery store. But there are plenty of spots in the country where consumers lack these options and are instead forced to shop at junk food-filled convenience stores. Walmart, that bastion of low-priced, imported goods, has a plan to bring fresh food to these so-called food deserts--and probably make a hefty amount of cash in the process.
Walmart announced this week that it will open up to 300 new locations over the next five years in food deserts across the country as part of an initiative spearheaded by Michelle Obama. These locations, along with the 218 stores in food deserts that Walmart has opened over the past four years, will serve 1.3 million people--many of whom have no other option for fresh produce and unprocessed foods other than Walmart. The company is, in other words, virtually guaranteed to be the biggest grocer in these locations (Walmart already makes up 25% of grocery sales nationwide). The competition is almost nonexistent.
"By opening stores where customers need them most, Walmart will help build healthier families and stronger communities. We believe every single person should have access to an abundant selection of fresh fruits and vegetables at an affordable price," said Leslie Dach, executive vice president of corporate affairs at Walmart, in a statement."
The food desert plan is part of a larger plan by Walmart to make local, healthy food more accessible to customers. Walmart recently announced plans to double sales of fresh produce sourced from local farms in U.S. stores by the end of 2015. The company also expects to invest over $1 billion in its global fresh food supply chain over the next five years.
Would small, locally owned groceries be better for food deserts than Walmart? Possibly--they help foster community and probably pay a bit more than Walmart's notoriously low wages. But here's the thing: These mom-and-pop groceries aren't showing up fast enough in food deserts, if at all. In the meantime, obesity rates are steadily climbing and Walmart knows that there are a lot of underserved markets for its produce and other cheap goods. At least the superstore is providing healthy options for people who, in many cases, wouldn't have access to them otherwise.
McDonald’s Happy Meal to Get Healthier - NYTimes.com
McDonald’s Trims Its Happy Meal
By STEPHANIE STROM
Bowing to pressure from health advocates and parents, McDonald’s is putting the Happy Meal on a diet.
The company announced Tuesday that it would more than halve the amount of French fries and add fruit to its popular children’s meal in an effort to reduce the overall calorie count by 20 percent.
But McDonald’s appeasement only went so far. A toy will still come with each Happy Meal despite criticism that the trinkets, often with tie-ins to movies like “Toy Story,” foster a powerful connection between children and the often calorie-laden meals.
While Happy Meals account for less than 10 percent of all McDonald’s sales, the signature box and its contents — first introduced in 1979 — have become a favorite target in recent years. Lawmakers and consumers have rallied around breaking that childhood link between toys and fast food, with the efforts increasing as Michelle Obama and national public health officials point to the estimated 17 percent rate of obesity among the nation’s youths.
San Francisco, for example, has banned the inclusion of toys in children’s meals unless certain nutritional requirements are met. A New York City councilman is proposing a similar law.
Other restaurant chains have gone further than McDonald’s in acceding to calls for improving the fare on children’s menus and eliminating marketing appeals. In June, Jack in the Box announced the end of toys in its children’s meals, and this month, Burger King, IHOP and more than a dozen other restaurant chains backed an effort led by the National Restaurant Association to serve and promote healthier options for youngsters.
“McDonald’s is not giving the whole loaf, but it is giving a half or two thirds of a loaf,” said Michael F. Jacobson, executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, which is representing a woman in California who is suing McDonald’s for including toys in its Happy Meals. “This is an important step in the right direction.”
McDonald’s made it clear that it was changing the composition of Happy Meals in response to parental and consumer pressure. It also pledged to reduce the sodium content in all of its foods by 15 percent, with the exceptions of soda and desserts. It set a deadline of 2015 for limiting salt, and said it would spend the rest of this decade cutting back on sugars, saturated fats and calories and making adjustments to portion sizes.
The new Happy Meals will be introduced in September and rolled out across the company’s 14,000 restaurants by April 2012. They will all include apple slices, but in a smaller amount of three to five slices than the current eight to 10 offered as an alternative. (The Apple Dippers also will be renamed after the company phases out the caramel dipping sauce, according to Tuesday’s announcement.)
“It’s a trade-off between everybody getting a small portion and 10 percent of kids getting a larger portion, which is better than nothing and maybe will accustom kids to eating fresh fruits and vegetables when they go out to eat,” Mr. Jacobson said.
Parents will have the option of requesting more fruit or, possibly at a later date, vegetables instead of fries. McDonald’s will also offer a fat-free chocolate milk option, along with the option of low-fat milk or the traditional soda. The price is not expected to change.
Today’s Happy Meal with chicken nuggets has 520 calories and 26 grams of fat, and the reconstituted version, with 1 percent milk, will total 410 calories and 19 grams of fat, according to the company.
The company said it had experimented with eliminating French fries altogether from the boxes, but that generated a lot of customer complaints. Danya Proud, a spokeswoman for the company, said that McDonald’s tests also found that parents wanted soda among the drinks available, too. “That’s what we’ve really felt all along, that ultimately, it’s a parent decision to make about their child’s well-being,” she said.
McDonald’s has long offered parents the option of asking for fruit rather than fries, although a study by Yale University’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity found that only 11 percent took advantage of that option.
While some critics of fast-food and public health officials praised the moves (Mrs. Obama called them “positive steps”), others complained that McDonald’s did not go far enough. Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition at New York University and an outspoken critic of the food industry, called the changes a “sham,” in part because McDonald’s is not doing more to limit soda with the Happy Meal.
“They’re going to get huge publicity for this — an ounce less of French fries,” Dr. Nestle said. “I’m not impressed.”
In fact, when apples are added to the Happy Meal with a soda, the amount of sugar in the new package increases.
As part of an effort to provide better access to nutritional information about its foods, the company has developed its first mobile application for the public. McDonald’s executives also plan to tour the country to hear directly from consumers about their concerns.
“We are doing what we can,” Ms. Proud said. “We have to evolve with the times, and the times require us and our customers are asking us to offer more options.”
Ms. Proud said that even with the changes, the Happy Meal would not meet San Francisco’s requirements, which demand both a fruit and vegetable serving, among other things, before a company can include a toy with a child’s meal.
Public health experts expect the company to mount a legal challenge to that ordinance before it goes into effect in December, but Ms. Proud said McDonald’s was still evaluating its options.
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Marion Nestle on "Google’s impressive healthy food program
I'm just back from judging Google's first Science Fair for kids 13 to 18 at its corporate headquarters in California (yes, those are tomatoes growing in the foreground).
Google's famous food program: Why famous? It is:
· Available 24/7
· Totally free
· Varied and delicious
· Designed to promote health as well as environmental values (local, organic, sustainable)
On this last point, the recycling program is comprehensive and the campus is planted with organic vegetables, free for the picking:
But what about the "freshman 15″?
If free food is available 24/7, isn't Google creating a classic "obesogenic" environment? Do new Google employees gain weight?
Indeed, they do, and this creates a dilemma for the food team. I met with Joe Marcus, Google's food program manager, and executive chef Scott Giambastiani. Free and very good food, they explain, is an important recruiting perk for Google. Employees learn to manage it. And those who are eating healthy food for the first time in their lives find that they actually lose weight.
Google's food labeling program
Google labels its snacks, drinks, and the foods prepared in its 25 or so cafeterias with traffic lights: green (eat anytime), yellow (once in a while), or red (not often, please). It bases the decisions about which food goes where on the Harvard School of Public Health's healthy eating pyramid. It labels foods at the top of the Harvard pyramid red, the ones in the middle yellow, and those at the bottom green.
In theory this makes sense as a starting point. In practice, it tends to seem a bit like nutritionism—reducing the value of the foods to a few key nutrients.
The difficulties are most evident in the snack foods, freely available from kiosks all over the campus. Products are displayed on shelves labeled red, yellow, or green. For example:
GREEN: Sun chips, 1.5 oz, 210 kcal, 10 g fat, 180 mg sodium, 3 g sugar, 4 g fiber
YELLOW: Lentil chips, 1 oz, 110 kcal, 3 g fat, 170 mg sodium, 1 g sugar, 3 g fiber
YELLOW: Walnuts, 0.8 oz, 150 kcal, 15 g fat, 0 g sodium, 1 g sugar, 2 g fiber
RED: Luau BBQ chips, 1.5 oz, 210 kcal, 14 g fat, 158 mg sodium, 2 g sugar, 1 g fiber
Note: the weights of the packages are not the same, so the amounts are not really comparable, but the ranking scheme seems to give most credit for fiber.
As for these and the foods cooked in cafeterias, Google uses other strategies to promote healthier choices. It:
· Puts the healthiest products at eye level
· Uses small plates
· Tries to include vegetables in everything
· Makes healthier options available at all times
· Uses the smallest sizes of snack foods (packages of 2 Oreos, rather than 6)
· Makes it easy to be physically active (Google bicycles!)
The only place on the campus where employees pay for food is from a vending machine. The pricing strategy is based on nutrient content, again according to the Harvard pyramid plan. For the vended products, you pay:
· one cent per gram of sugar
· two cents per gram of fat
· four cents per gram of saturated fat
· one dollar per gram of trans fat
On this basis, Quaker Chewy Bars are 15 cents each, Famous Amos cookies re 55 cents, and an enormous Ghirardelli chocolate bar is $4.25. Weights don't count and neither do calories. The machine is not run by Google. Whoever does it has a sense of humor.
Impressive, all this. Not every company can feed its nearly 30,000 employees like this but every company can adopt some of these strategies. It might save them some health care costs, if nothing else.
--------------------------------------------------Stefaan G. Verhulst
Chief of Research
Markle Foundation
10 Rockefeller Plaza, Floor 16
New York, NY 10020-1903
Tel. 212 713 7630http://www.markle.org
P Please consider the environment before printing this e-mail.
Google's famous food program: Why famous? It is:
· Available 24/7
· Totally free
· Varied and delicious
· Designed to promote health as well as environmental values (local, organic, sustainable)
On this last point, the recycling program is comprehensive and the campus is planted with organic vegetables, free for the picking:
But what about the "freshman 15″?
If free food is available 24/7, isn't Google creating a classic "obesogenic" environment? Do new Google employees gain weight?
Indeed, they do, and this creates a dilemma for the food team. I met with Joe Marcus, Google's food program manager, and executive chef Scott Giambastiani. Free and very good food, they explain, is an important recruiting perk for Google. Employees learn to manage it. And those who are eating healthy food for the first time in their lives find that they actually lose weight.
Google's food labeling program
Google labels its snacks, drinks, and the foods prepared in its 25 or so cafeterias with traffic lights: green (eat anytime), yellow (once in a while), or red (not often, please). It bases the decisions about which food goes where on the Harvard School of Public Health's healthy eating pyramid. It labels foods at the top of the Harvard pyramid red, the ones in the middle yellow, and those at the bottom green.
In theory this makes sense as a starting point. In practice, it tends to seem a bit like nutritionism—reducing the value of the foods to a few key nutrients.
The difficulties are most evident in the snack foods, freely available from kiosks all over the campus. Products are displayed on shelves labeled red, yellow, or green. For example:
GREEN: Sun chips, 1.5 oz, 210 kcal, 10 g fat, 180 mg sodium, 3 g sugar, 4 g fiber
YELLOW: Lentil chips, 1 oz, 110 kcal, 3 g fat, 170 mg sodium, 1 g sugar, 3 g fiber
YELLOW: Walnuts, 0.8 oz, 150 kcal, 15 g fat, 0 g sodium, 1 g sugar, 2 g fiber
RED: Luau BBQ chips, 1.5 oz, 210 kcal, 14 g fat, 158 mg sodium, 2 g sugar, 1 g fiber
Note: the weights of the packages are not the same, so the amounts are not really comparable, but the ranking scheme seems to give most credit for fiber.
As for these and the foods cooked in cafeterias, Google uses other strategies to promote healthier choices. It:
· Puts the healthiest products at eye level
· Uses small plates
· Tries to include vegetables in everything
· Makes healthier options available at all times
· Uses the smallest sizes of snack foods (packages of 2 Oreos, rather than 6)
· Makes it easy to be physically active (Google bicycles!)
The only place on the campus where employees pay for food is from a vending machine. The pricing strategy is based on nutrient content, again according to the Harvard pyramid plan. For the vended products, you pay:
· one cent per gram of sugar
· two cents per gram of fat
· four cents per gram of saturated fat
· one dollar per gram of trans fat
On this basis, Quaker Chewy Bars are 15 cents each, Famous Amos cookies re 55 cents, and an enormous Ghirardelli chocolate bar is $4.25. Weights don't count and neither do calories. The machine is not run by Google. Whoever does it has a sense of humor.
Impressive, all this. Not every company can feed its nearly 30,000 employees like this but every company can adopt some of these strategies. It might save them some health care costs, if nothing else.
--------------------------------------------------Stefaan G. Verhulst
Chief of Research
Markle Foundation
10 Rockefeller Plaza, Floor 16
New York, NY 10020-1903
Tel. 212 713 7630http://www.markle.org
P Please consider the environment before printing this e-mail.
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