Does This Ad Make Me Fat?

Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons, The New York Times, March 10, 2013

OBESITY is a problem everywhere, with significant consequences for personal health and public spending. People weigh more than ever — but why? If we can find the causes of obesity, we can try to eliminate or counter them.

Unfortunately, finding causes is easier said than done, and causes we think we see can turn out to be illusions. Consider a recent study in the journal BMC Public Health under the anodyne title "Outdoor advertising, obesity, and soda consumption: a cross-sectional study."

A team of researchers walked every street in 228 census tracts around Los Angeles and New Orleans and recorded every outdoor ad they saw. Another group surveyed 2,881 residents of the same census tracts by telephone, paying them to report their height, weight and other information.

After analyzing this hard-won data, the authors conclude: "For every 10 percent increase in food advertisements, the odds of being obese increased by 5 percent." That is, areas with more outdoor food ads have a higher proportion of obese people than ones with fewer ads.

Referring to their advertising-obesity link, the authors later write, "If the above associations are confirmed by additional research, policy approaches may be important to reduce the amount of food advertising in urban areas." They discuss bans, warning labels and a tax on obesigenic — that is, obesity-generating — advertising.

We first encountered this study in a news release from one of the authors' academic institutions. Public relations being what it is, such documents often exaggerate the importance and minimize the limitations of the underlying research. In this case, however, the researchers themselves went out on a limb that their data did not fully support.

The problem is that their policy recommendations rest on a crucial but unjustified assumption: that any link between obesity and advertising occurs because more advertising causes higher rates of obesity. But the study at hand showed only an association: people living in areas with more food ads were more likely to be obese than people living in areas with fewer food ads. To be fair, the researchers correctly note that additional steps would be needed to prove that food ads cause obesity. But until those steps are taken, talk of restricting ads is premature.

In fact, it is easy to imagine how the causation could run the opposite way (something the article did not mention): If food vendors believe obese people are more likely than non-obese people to buy their products, they will place more ads in areas where obese people already live.

Suppose we counted ads for fitness-oriented products like bicycles and bottled water, and found more of those ads in places with less obesity. Would it then be wise anti-obesity policy to subsidize such ads? Or would the smarter conclusion be that the fitness companies suspect that the obese are less likely than the fit to buy their products?

This is not an arcane statistical point or a mere technical criticism of one academic article. Too often, relationships that are far from being understood are assumed to reflect a particular, strong causal connection, leading to no end of regulatory mistakes. Time, effort and money wasted on unsupported policies decrease the resources available for finding and implementing real solutions.

When we seek to base policy on evidence, we must remember that not all "evidence" is created equal. Taken at face value, the study on ads and obesity provides some indication that the two are linked, but no evidence that food ads cause obesity. The fact that the causal conclusion may coincide with a moral belief — that it is wrong to tempt people who overeat by showing them ads for food — does not make it valid.

"Confirming" the association with more studies will not change this logic. Indeed, it would add just as much evidence for the countertheory that obesity in neighborhoods causes food ads to be placed there. Put another way, no matter how often we see that wealthy people live near luxury stores, we cannot conclude that Neiman Marcus is "wealthogenic."

Still, we need not throw up our hands. There are ways to legitimately test whether outdoor ads cause obesity. We could start by seeking cases in which food advertising increased or decreased for reasons that had nothing to do with trends in obesity. Researchers could examine changes in zoning laws regarding billboards, for example, and compare the obesity trends in areas where the changes led to more or less advertising.

The gold standard for inferring causation in social science, as in medicine, is the randomized controlled trial, in which people or places are randomly assigned to receive different treatments. In this case, the "treatment" would be the amount of outdoor food ads in an area. But advertisers are unlikely to agree to randomly distribute their signs, nor would people consent to live in a randomly chosen place.

A superior method would be to restrict food ads temporarily in a randomly selected set of areas, and then compare the prevalence over time of obesity in those areas and the nonrestricted ones. Carefully executed, such an experiment would be a much better test of the hypothesis of obesigenic advertising.

That the experiment would be hard to do does not entitle us to act as though we already know its results. Pretending we have evidence for a cause when all we really have is an association can lead to erroneous and even harmful policies, and ultimately the deprecation of science as a guide to wise government.

Christopher Chabris is a professor of psychology at Union College. Daniel Simons is a professor of psychology at the University of Illinois. They are the authors of "The Invisible Gorilla: How Our Intuitions Deceive Us."

Mark Bittman: Let's Make Him Do It

Mark Bittman, The New York Times, August 16, 2012

For positive change in the issues that affect our daily lives — not only food but also jobs, income, housing — we need active political leadership. But until President Obama is pushed more strongly by the left, the coming presidential election represents a choice between a full-fledged attack on government services and a continuing slide into the gloomy and depressing world of austerity economics. That’s a real choice, but it’s not a happy one.

When Obama has been pressured on issues, like gay rights, immigration and the Keystone XL pipeline, he’s responded positively. But he hasn’t been pushed on food, and as a result has not followed up on campaign promises like his vow to label foods containing genetically modified ingredients, nor has he used his bully pulpit to try to protect SNAP (food stamps) from the ravages of Congress. Since there isn’t a real food movement — yet! — progressives haven’t made Obama do much.

At least he won’t dismantle government, as Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan would. Ryan’s anti-stimulus plan is an unemployment-boosting scheme that would finance the military at a high level, the social safety net at the lowest possible level (Ryan is calling for a 17 percent cut in food stamps, enough to elicit criticisms from a pair of high-ranking Catholic bishops, for example) and just about nothing else. It benefits no one but the superrich and their representatives.

Not that that’s anything new. Most people — call them working class, middle class or the 99 percent — have less money than they did a generation ago; the superrich have scads more. A vast majority of Americans are on the losing side of the class war, as evidenced by lower pay scales, eviscerated unions, fewer benefits, later retirement, shortened or eliminated vacations, starved municipalities and of course the quality of our food and the impact it has on us and the environment.

Obama has seen more power and money arrayed against him than perhaps any Democrat ever. But his lack of a workable plan for economic recovery and his right-leaning stances on fiscal responsibility and debt reduction remind us that the basic problem is not one of “progressive” Democrats versus “conservative” Republicans.

This isn’t new either: in the last 40 years we’ve witnessed a long, steady move to the right, which Democrats occasionally whine about, protest and even fight, but in which they’ve been mostly complicit. Unless you reduce defense budgets — practically unheard of — whenever you cut taxes, you starve social programs and infrastructure, thus undermining the legitimate and beneficial role of government. (Even “progressive” Democrats are onboard with some cuts to food stamps in the as-yet-unpassed farm bill.) With government providing fewer services, it becomes easy to persuade people that it’s an albatross, so why not cut taxes further? Enter Paul Ryan.

Candidate Obama led us to believe that he was a different kind of Democrat, and he stirred new and even skeptical old voters. Yet he’s disappointed many supporters. You can argue that his hands have been tied: money is power — Citizens United has made this even more so — and until there’s meaningful electoral and campaign-finance reform, along with real limits on lobbying, there’s no chance for real progress.

President Obama didn’t create this system; he’s a product of it. A fundamental problem now is that the right has devised both a strategy and a movement, and the left has done neither. “All the bold answers are only from one side,” Van Jones, author of “Rebuild the Dream,” told me. “But we have to stop acting like there’s one person with agency in America, whose name is Obama. It’s not what he should do — it’s what we should do.”

That’s right. Only by building real movements around food and other important issues can we pressure Obama (or even Romney; just look at the inroads the right made with a Democrat in office) to act in the interests of the great majority. A strategy for this is neatly outlined in the just-published paper “Prosperity Economics” by Jacob Hacker and Nate Loewentheil, which counters the nonsense of austerity economics and lays out a credible plan for public investments and economic security, a plan that could help revive jobs and growth and ensure “that gains are broadly shared.” Their agenda improves on most economic plans by adding demands for dramatic political reform. “The best ideas are of little use without political movements, and those movements can only succeed in a political regime in which votes count more than money,” Hacker said to me.

It’s worth voting for progressives, but it’s equally important to recognize that until there is real pressure from the left, the money and influence of the right will continue to pull any president in that direction.

Diabetes doctors: NYC big-soda ban is just a start

Ransdell Pierson, Reuters, June 21, 2012

PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - Doctors treating the casualties of the global obesity epidemic say an unpopular proposal to limit soda portions in New York City should be just the beginning of stricter regulation of unhealthy foods.

Public opinion polls show a majority of Americans oppose New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's plan to limit single servings of sugary drinks to 16 ounces (0.45 kilograms) at restaurants and other public venues.

Many view the measure as unwelcome government intervention in their daily diets.

But exasperated diabetes specialists say people need even greater protections from a food industry that keeps enticing them with ever-bigger portions, as more than two-thirds of the country's adults are now overweight or obese. Excess weight contributes to health problems from diabetes to hypertension.

"We're spending billions of dollars for drugs to cure the problem after the problem happens, instead of preventing the problem," said Dr. Bryce Palchick, a general practitioner in Pittsburgh.

"This goes beyond individual freedom; if you have diabetes and end up in the hospital, somebody else is paying for your bills if you're not paying for it yourself," Palchick said in an interview at the American Diabetes Association annual meeting in Philadelphia last week. 

"Not only are you endangering your own life, you're making everybody else pay for it."

Obesity accounts for $190 billion in annual U.S. medical costs -- or almost 21 percent of the total, according to a recent Lehigh University study. On average, obese individuals incur $2,741 higher medical bills each year than other people do, the study said.

A report presented this week by the American Medical Association estimated that 46 percent of the nation's intake of added sugars came from beverages. It said increasing taxes on sugar-sweetened beverages to a penny per ounce would lead to a 5 percent drop in the prevalence of people who are overweight and obese, and cut medical costs by $17 billion within a decade.

Other medical experts predict the scope of the problem will lead to further restrictions on food portions, from oversized hamburgers to super-size servings of French fries. New York City may be one of the first major centers to adopt new rules and become a template for other regions across the United States, they said.

"It wouldn't be unreasonable to consider other high-calorie and empty-calorie foods" for regulation, said Dr. Andrew Ahmann, a professor of endocrinology at the Oregon Health and Science University in Portland.

He did express concern, however, that such intervention would be most costly to lower-income people, who rely more on the cheaper fare of fast-food restaurants.

Bloomberg's soda proposal might seem a little over-reaching, but makes total sense from a health perspective, said Karen Weiland, a nurse practitioner from Ohio State University Medical Center in Columbus.

"The person gets a huge jolt of sugar, and there's no protein or fat in the soda to mitigate that, and the body's insulin is not equipped to deal with that," she said. "Plus it's adding a lot of calories nobody needs."

Weiland expects New York to regulate other high-fat or high-calorie foods within a year or two and for such restrictions to "go global," as other governments follow suit.

However, the proposed soda restrictions face stiff opposition.

Coca-Cola Co has called the Bloomberg proposal an insult to New Yorkers. And the American Beverage Association, which represents that company as well as PepsiCo Inc and other soda makers, is fighting the measure.

The city's Board of Health is expected to vote on the measure by September, after a three-month public comment period. If approved, the regulations would take effect in March.

Even so, they could face a court challenge from opponents, including a coalition of the beverage association, the National Restaurant Association, the National Association of Theatre Owners and others.

"We're watching developments, but I can't tell you at this point what we will do" in terms of legal or other strategy, said Gary Klein, general counsel of the theater owners group.

GLOBAL PROBLEM

Bloomberg's proposal follows a series of failures by individual U.S. states and local governments to introduce new taxes on sugary drinks. Residents of Richmond, California, will vote in November on a proposed 1-cent-per-ounce tax on sugar-sweetened beverages. The city would use the estimated annual proceeds of $2 million to $8 million for soccer fields, school gardens and health programs for children.

Governments abroad have already begun to embrace taxes and other regulation on foods that contribute to weight gain.

Denmark imposed a tax last year on foods containing more than 2.3 percent saturated fats -- lifting the costs of butter by 30 percent and a bag of chips by 8 percent. A year earlier, the country had raised excise taxes on chocolate, ice cream, sugary drinks and candy by 25 percent.

In 2011, Hungary started taxing prepackaged foods high in sugar, salt or caffeine -- including carbonated sugary drinks, cookies, jams and instant soups. Finland introduced a tax the same year on sweets, chocolates and ice cream, and raised its existing excise tax on soft drinks.

Belgium, Ireland, Romania, Italy and the United Kingdom have considered similar measures as obesity rates among their citizens catch up to the United States.

Even Tasmania, whose isolation has protected many animal species from extinction since the Ice Age, is succumbing to fast food, said Dr. Gary Kilov, a primary care doctor from the Australian state who attended the diabetes meeting.

"There has been a doubling of childhood obesity in the last decade, and this pretty much reflects what's happening in all the Western world," he said. "Food is cheap, and lives are busy, so we opt for convenience over activity."

Australia now has one of the world's lowest smoking rates after emulating Bloomberg's earlier ban on the practice in bars and restaurants, Kilov said. But the New York big-soda ban does not go far enough, he added.

"To select soft drinks as the sole target of obesity is laughable; it's just fiddling at the edges," he said. "A better option would be an empty-calories tax on sugary drinks and high-fat foods and putting that money back into health and education. Tax your french fries, your doughnuts and ice cream."

Dr. Saleem Qureshi, an endocrinologist from Islamabad, Pakistan, said he wholeheartedly supported Bloomberg's big-soda restriction and expected his country to follow suit.

"It is time for the government to interfere," Qureshi said. "It's not about the words 'sugar' or 'diabetes' -- it's about the heart attacks, the strokes, the kidney failure, the blindness and the amputations that come from diabetes. And it's hitting at a younger and younger age."

(Editing by Michele Gershberg and Lisa Von Ahn)

Disney Junk-Food Ban Is Seen Costing It Less Than $7.2M

Edmund Lee, Bloomberg, June 5, 2012

Walt Disney Co. (DIS)’s plan to bar junk- food advertising from children’s programming would have cost less than $7.2 million in television ad revenue if it were in effect last year, according to estimates by Kantar Media. 

That’s the amount that Disney generated from beverage and food commercials aimed at children in 2011, the New York-based research firm said. The figure is less a 10th of 1 percent of Disney’s total annual advertising sales. The company reported ad revenue of $7.6 billion for its media networks in its last fiscal year, an increase of 8 percent. 

Zenia Mucha, a spokeswoman for Burbank, California-based Disney, said the company doesn’t disclose ad revenue from individual networks or from particular advertisers. She said the Kantar figure was inaccurate, without elaborating. 

Disney announced today that the Disney XD cable network and its block of Saturday morning shows on ABC will bar advertising of foods and beverages that don’t meet its nutrition guidelines by 2015. The same restrictions also will apply to the Disney Channel and Disney Junior -- cable channels that feature sponsorships but no commercials and therefore aren’t counted by Kantar. 

Kantar’s estimates suggest that the change isn’t a big gamble for Disney, the world’s largest entertainment business. The company also stands to gain from promoting healthier Disney- endorsed foods. It’s developing a “Mickey Check” logo, which will indicate that products meet its nutritional standards. That will begin appearing by the end of 2012. 

The company unveiled the plan at an event today with first lady Michelle Obama, who has made healthy eating a signature issue of her office. Chief Executive Officer Robert Iger declined to comment on which products don’t meet the standards, beyond saying that there were “a lot.” 

“We hope to work with these companies so that they can continue advertising on our programs with a product that is nutritious and meets our guidelines,” he said at the event.

Giving parents assurance that Disney-branded products are healthy will ultimately will increase sales, Iger said. “We can create huge change without having the government step in.”

Promoting Nutrition, Disney to Restrict Junk-Food Ads

Brook Barnes, The New York Times, June 5, 2012

 

LOS ANGELES — The Walt Disney Company, in an effort to address concerns about entertainment’s role in childhood obesity, plans to announce on Tuesday that all products advertised on its child-focused television channels, radio stations and Web sites must comply with a strict new set of nutritional standards. 

The restrictions on ads extend to Saturday-morning cartoons on ABC stations owned by Disney. Under the new rules, products like Capri Sun drinks and Kraft Lunchables meals — both current Disney advertisers — along with a wide range of candy, sugared cereal and fast food, will no longer be acceptable advertising material. 

The initiative, which Disney plans to detail Tuesday at a Washington news conference with the first lady, Michelle Obama, stretches into other areas. For instance, Disney will reduce the amount of sodium by 25 percent in the 12 million children’s meals served annually at its theme parks, and create what it calls fun public service announcements promoting child exercise and healthy eating. 

The move follows the announcement last week of a plan by New York City to ban the sale of large sodas and other sugary drinks amid increasing concern about childhood obesity in America. 

Disney said that in adopting the new advertising standards it was largely following recommendations proposed last year by federal regulators. The suggestions were aimed at inducing the food industry to overhaul the way it marketed things like cereal, soda and snacks to children. 

Food companies have vociferously fought government regulation on advertising, saying they can take steps on their own. Disney acknowledged it would most likely lose some advertising revenue — it declined to say how much — but said that the benefits outweighed the downside. 
(Disney Channel does not currently accept traditional ads, although a range of promotions and sponsorships are allowed; other channels like Disney XD are supported by commercials.)

Disney’s ad restrictions apply to any programming targeted to children under 12, which includes popular live-action programs as well as cartoons. 

Robert A. Iger, Disney’s chairman, said he felt strongly that “companies in a position to help with solutions to childhood obesity should do just that,” but added: “This is not altruistic. This is about smart business.” 

Taking steps to combat childhood obesity allows Disney the opportunity to polish its brand as one families can trust — something that drives sales of everything from Pixar DVDs to baby clothes to theme park vacations. In addition, Disney has carefully studied the marketplace and executives say they believe there is increasing consumer demand for more nutritious food. 

Mr. Iger noted that health food for children had already become “a very, very solid business” for Disney. Since 2006 consumers have purchased about two billion servings of Disney-licensed servings of fruit and vegetables, according to the company. 

Margo G. Wootan, director of nutrition policy at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, said Disney’s plan put it “far ahead of competitors.” At the same time, she cautioned that Disney’s guidelines still fell short of what her organization would like to see, particularly for cereal. Disney’s new standards require cereal to contain less than 10 grams of sugar a serving, for instance, while Ms. Wootan would prefer about six grams. 

“This limits the marketing of the worst junk foods, but it won’t mean you’re only going to see ads for apples, bananas and oranges, either,” she said. 

On Tuesday, Disney will also introduce what it calls Mickey Check in grocery store aisles: Disney-licensed products that meet criteria for limited calories, saturated fat, sodium and sugar can display a logo — Mickey Mouse ears and a check mark — on their packaging. The logos will include the slogan, “Good For You — Fun Too!” 

Some elements of Disney’s campaign — the Mickey Check, in particular — could revive parental criticism that the company has a way of moving into areas it does not belong, such as approval over what foods children eat. 

Moreover, consumers have also come to distrust or ignore healthy eating symbols on packaging because so many food companies have introduced self-serving varieties, said Kelly D. Brownell, director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University.

“Here comes Disney with yet another symbol, and it’s too early to say whether this will simply add to the chaos and confusion or actually help steer parents and kids as they shop,” Mr. Brownell said. 

Still, Mr. Brownell, who was given an advance briefing of Disney’s plans, said the effort was “enormously important.” He cautioned that he had not yet deeply examined Disney’s nutritional guidelines, but said “they appear quite good.” 

Disney developed the new nutrition standards with the assistance of two child health and wellness experts: James O. Hill, director of the Center for Human Nutrition at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, and Keith T. Ayoob, associate clinical professor of pediatrics at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. 

The company’s standards are based on the federal government’s Dietary Guidelines for Americans and the Federal Trade Commission’s proposed guidelines for food marketing to children. Disney also looked at the Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative, a self-policing effort by food giants like Burger King and Campbell Soup to set their own marketing limits. 

Disney’s guidelines will be available starting Tuesday at www.thewaltdisneycompany.com/mohl. 

Disney’s new guidelines, which will not take effect until 2015 because of long-term contracts with advertisers, are likely to have a ripple effect through the children’s entertainment industry. Rivals like Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network will face pressure to follow Disney’s lead. Advertisers spend some $950 million annually on television tailored to children under 12, according to industry estimates. 

“With this new initiative, Disney is doing what no major media company has ever done before in the U.S. — and what I hope every company will do going forward,” Mrs. Obama said in a statement. 

Food companies will also feel the effects. Giants like Pepsi and Kellogg in 2007, trying to squelch calls for government regulation, said they would stop advertising products that failed to meet various nutritional standards to children under 12. Food companies then started pushing healthier items and reformulating junk food products. 

Disney has sent similar dominoes falling in the past. In 2006, Disney said it would sharply curtail the use of its name and characters with foods high in sugar, salt and fat. Mickey Mouse stopped appearing on boxes of Pop-Tarts, and Buzz Lightyear and his “Toy Story” pals disappeared from McDonald’s Happy Meals. Within months, Nickelodeon and Discovery Kids announced similar restrictions; the 2007 effort by food companies to reel in advertising was also linked to Disney’s lead. 

As part of its Tuesday announcement, Disney will unveil a tightened version of the nutritional standards it first adopted in 2006, including a required additional 10 percent reduction in sugar in yogurt and flavored milk products. 

“We need to motivate consumers to make changes, and Disney, because of its sheer size and brand power, can do that better than anybody,” Mr. Ayoob said.

New York Plans to Ban Sale of Big Sizes of Sugary Drinks

Michael M. Grynbaum, the New York Times, May 31, 2012

New York City plans to enact a far-reaching ban on the sale of large sodas and other sugary drinks at restaurants, movie theaters and street carts, in the most ambitious effort yet by the Bloomberg administration to combat rising obesity. 

The proposed ban would affect virtually the entire menu of popular sugary drinks found in delis, fast-food franchises and even sports arenas, from energy drinks to pre-sweetened iced teas. The sale of any cup or bottle of sweetened drink larger than 16 fluid ounces — about the size of a medium coffee, and smaller than a common soda bottle — would be prohibited under the first-in-the-nation plan, which could take effect as soon as next March. 

The measure would not apply to diet sodas, fruit juices, dairy-based drinks like milkshakes, or alcoholic beverages; it would not extend to beverages sold in grocery or convenience stores.

“Obesity is a nationwide problem, and all over the United States, public health officials are wringing their hands saying, ‘Oh, this is terrible,’ ” Mr. Bloomberg said in an interview on Wednesday in the Governor’s Room at City Hall. 

“New York City is not about wringing your hands; it’s about doing something,” he said. “I think that’s what the public wants the mayor to do.” 

A spokesman for the New York City Beverage Association, an arm of the soda industry’s national trade group, criticized the city’s proposal on Wednesday. The industry has clashed repeatedly with the city’s health department, saying it has unfairly singled out soda; industry groups have bought subway advertisements promoting their cause. 

“The New York City health department’s unhealthy obsession with attacking soft drinks is again pushing them over the top,” the industry spokesman, Stefan Friedman, said. “It’s time for serious health professionals to move on and seek solutions that are going to actually curb obesity. These zealous proposals just distract from the hard work that needs to be done on this front.” 

Mr. Bloomberg’s proposal requires the approval of the Board of Health, a step that is considered likely because the members are all appointed by him, and the board’s chairman is the city’s health commissioner, who joined the mayor in supporting the measure on Wednesday. 

Mr. Bloomberg has made public health one of the top priorities of his lengthy tenure, and has championed a series of aggressive regulations, including bans on smoking in restaurants and parks, a prohibition against artificial trans fat in restaurant food and a requirement for health inspection grades to be posted in restaurant windows. 

The measures have led to occasional derision of the mayor as Nanny Bloomberg, by those who view the restrictions as infringements on personal freedom. But many of the measures adopted in New York have become models for other cities, including restrictions on smoking and trans fats, as well as the use of graphic advertising to combat smoking and soda consumption, and the demand that chain restaurants post calorie contents next to prices.

In recent years, soda has emerged as a battleground in efforts to counter obesity. Across the nation, some school districts have banned the sale of soda in schools, and some cities have banned the sale of soda in public buildings. 

In New York City, where more than half of adults are obese or overweight, Dr. Thomas Farley, the health commissioner, blames sweetened drinks for up to half of the increase in city obesity rates over the last 30 years. About a third of New Yorkers drink one or more sugary drinks a day, according to the city. Dr. Farley said the city had seen higher obesity rates in neighborhoods where soda consumption was more common. 

The ban would not apply to drinks with fewer than 25 calories per 8-ounce serving, like zero-calorie Vitamin Waters and unsweetened iced teas, as well as diet sodas.

Restaurants, delis, movie theater and ballpark concessions would be affected, because they are regulated by the health department. Carts on sidewalks and in Central Park would also be included, but not vending machines or newsstands that serve only a smattering of fresh food items. 

At fast-food chains, where sodas are often dispersed at self-serve fountains, restaurants would be required to hand out cup sizes of 16 ounces or less, regardless of whether a customer opts for a diet drink. But free refills — and additional drink purchases — would be allowed. 

Corner stores and bodegas would be affected if they are defined by the city as “food service establishments.” Those stores can most easily be identified by the health department letter grades they are required to display in their windows. 

The mayor, who said he occasionally drank a diet soda “on a hot day,” contested the idea that the plan would limit consumers’ choices, saying the option to buy more soda would always be available. 

“Your argument, I guess, could be that it’s a little less convenient to have to carry two 16-ounce drinks to your seat in the movie theater rather than one 32 ounce,” Mr. Bloomberg said in a sarcastic tone. “I don’t think you can make the case that we’re taking things away.”

He also said he foresaw no adverse effect on local businesses, and he suggested that restaurants could simply charge more for smaller drinks if their sales were to drop.

The Bloomberg administration had made previous, unsuccessful efforts to make soda consumption less appealing. The mayor supported a state tax on sodas, but the measure died in Albany, and he tried to restrict the use of food stamps to buy sodas, but the idea was rejected by federal regulators. 

With the new proposal, City Hall is now trying to see how much it can accomplish without requiring outside approval. Mayoral aides say they are confident that they have the legal authority to restrict soda sales, based on the city’s jurisdiction over local eating establishments, the same oversight that allows for the health department’s letter-grade cleanliness rating system for restaurants. 

In interviews at the AMC Loews Village, in the East Village in Manhattan, some filmgoers said restricting large soda sales made sense to them. 

“I think it’s a good idea,” said Sara Gochenauer, 21, a personal assistant from the Upper West Side. Soda, she said, “rots your teeth.” 

But others said consumers should be free to choose. 

“If people want to drink 24 ounces, it’s their decision,” said Zara Atal, 20, a college student from the Upper East Side. 

Lawrence Goins, 50, a postal worker who lives in Newark, took a more pragmatic approach.

“Some of those movies are three, three and a half hours long,” Mr. Goins said. “You got to quench your thirst.” 

Colin Moynihan contributed reporting.

Getting America on a Diet That Works

The Editors, Bloomberg,  May 20, 2012

Obesity has become a danger far greater than hunger. Yet amid the alarming stories about its harm to America’s health and economy, one bit of information has been drowned out: The percentage of U.S. adults who are obese appears to have plateaued. 

According to data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, which measures the heights and weights of a representative sample of almost 6,000 Americans, the prevalence of obesity in 2009-2010 was essentially the same as in 2003- 2008. Given that the rate had doubled from 1980 to 2000, this is positive news. 

It should not, however, be reason to give up the fight. Rather, the findings lead us to twin conclusions: We can make gains against obesity, and we should find ways to accelerate that progress. 

The U.S. prevalence remains disastrously high: Thirty-six percent of adults (78 million) and almost 17 percent of children (12.5 million) weigh enough in relation to their height to be considered obese. For Hispanic and Mexican-American women, the prevalence is more than 40 percent, and for black women, it’s over 58 percent. 

The health risks are unambiguous: diabetes, heart disease, stroke, breast and colon cancer, liver and gallbladder disease, sleep apnea, osteoarthritis and infertility. Treating these and other problems costs $190 billion a year, more than a fifth of the nation’s medical bill. 

Why We’re Heavy

Many causes have been clearly identified: Our plates bulge with dense, starchy, high-calorie foods, but hold fewer fruits and vegetables than nutrition guidelines recommend. We eat out and order in more than ever, as both parents work outside the home. Our office jobs are sedentary. Kids sit around indoors too much. We spend a great deal of time watching TV, moving little and absorbing ads for all sorts of cheap, sugary, salty foods. 

As a species, we lack biological mechanisms to block our appetites at the point when we’ve eaten enough or, having overeaten, to hunger less for the next meal. To the contrary, our bodies are naturally adept at gaining fat. 

Conquering obesity will require changing our “obesogenic” culture in such a way as to steer people, en masse, away from fattening habits and lead all of us to choose healthy foods in modest portions, and become more active. 

This cannot be accomplished with one sweeping national policy, although the federal government can push for some useful changes. The 2010 health-care reform law, for example, requires restaurants and vending-machine operators with at least 20 locations to list the calorie content of their standard menu items. The Food and Drug Administration is working out the rules to make this happen. 

The FDA is also working to update its labeling requirements for packaged food, aiming in part to make calorie information more prominent, on the front of the package. Britain has created a model for this, with its voluntary front-of-package labels in traffic-light colors: Fat, saturated fat, sugar and salt content are given with rankings of green for low, amber for medium and red for high. 

We’d also like to see national agriculture policy changed to refocus crop and insurance subsidies away from corn, soybeans, wheat and cotton and toward vegetables.

But state and city policy makers can push for changes, too, and can arguably have the greater effect. Foods and eating habits have local qualities, after all. Obesity rates vary by state -- from 20 percent in Colorado (in 2010) to 34 percent in West Virginia. And each city and state has its own tolerance for government interference. 

Local Preferences

Not all county officials would be willing to demand, for example, that kids’ meals containing toys adhere to limits on calories and salt, as supervisors in San Francisco and Santa Clara, California, have done. But some cities might follow New York’s example and ban artificial trans fats in restaurants. 

States can experiment with modifying the food environment in other ways. Iowa, for instance, has enhanced vending machines at highway rest stops by adding healthy snacks and providing traffic-light-colored nutritional labels. 

Some cities might want to try putting pressure on restaurants to limit portion sizes, aiming for a weight- conscious 700 calories per meal, as has been proposed by scientists at the RAND Corp. Many local governments would no doubt resist such a step as “nannying,” but state and local health officials set various other standards for food and water, to prevent food-borne illness and contamination. Now that one in three adults are obese, it’s clear that calorie count is also an aspect of food safety. 

Local officials can provide tax breaks and streamlined permitting processes to encourage fresh-food grocers and farmers’ markets to set up shop in neighborhoods that need them. They can zone neighborhoods to get housing developers to provide safe and convenient sidewalks. 

We would especially like to see some cities follow the recommendation of many obesity experts -- including, most recently, the Institute of Medicine -- and put a penny-an-ounce tax on sugar-sweetened beverages. A study published this year suggested this could reduce per capita consumption by 15 percent. But it would be nice to find out for sure whether people would choose less fattening beverages if sodas cost more. 

Although no one knows how well each strategy will work, there is good reason to think that the prevalence of obesity can be reduced in adults. As for children, a prime target for obesity prevention, they will be the subject of the next editorial on the subject.

USDA Regional Food Hub Guide: An Innovative Tool for Growing Local Food Systems

 USDA,  April 2012

"Last week, at the National Good Food Network (NGFN) Food Hub Collaboration Spring 2012 Conference in Chicago (sponsored by USDA and the Wallace Center at Winrock International), USDA released our new Regional Food Hub Resource Guide, a collection of information, resources and background on everything needed to develop or participate in a regional food hub.

The guide presents a series of key questions about the current state of food hub development and examples from operating food hubs. It also outlines the role that food hubs can play in regional food systems; their innovative business models; and their economic contributions to local communities. It describes funding opportunities and other resources, best practices, and additional strategies for anyone interested in developing regional food hubs."

Start-Ups Look for a Shortcut From Farm to Table

Jessica E Vascellaro, The Wall Street Journal, January 26, 2012

A host of new tech companies are creating ways to buy food directly from local food producers, cutting out grocery stores and some of the middlemen.

They are also providing new services to educate consumers about what they are eating, down to the growing conditions of a carrot.

Founded by alumni from tech giants like Google Inc., the companies are using the same sorts of online tools that changed how people rent an apartment or find a date to make it easier to buy locally grown food. They are part of a growing class of start-ups targeting food and eating, from sites that deliver celebrity-chef meals to your door to a business that aims to turn roofs into vegetable patches. Many are steering clear of delivering fresh foods to your door, trying to avoid the pitfalls that felled some food-delivery companies in the past.

Among the new entrants is Farmigo Inc., a San Francisco company that has 50,000 subscribers after launching late last year. Founded by Microsoft Corp. and SAP AG veteran Benzi Ronen, Farmigo allows consumers to search for and buy produce and meat from local farms that deliver to pick-up locations in their neighborhood, including offices like Yelp Inc., Twitter Inc. and Google.

Many of those inclined to shop from the source rather than the store currently have to hunt for a seller via word of mouth. Farmigo tries to automate that process and hopes its technology increases the number of farmers that sell directly to consumers in the first place.

"At the end of the day farmers want to be in the field," not cobbling together technology, says Mr. Ronen. The company has raised $2 million from Silicon Valley angel investors.

Farmers like Annie Salafsky, just south of Olympia, Wash., say they appreciate how Farmigo lets customers register themselves online rather than having to enter in all their data manually. Farmigo takes a 2% cut of a farm's sales through the system and allows farmers to build their own Web store to sell additional products like lamb and honey. Those add-ons have brought Ms. Salafsky's farm, Helsing Junction Farm, about $35,000 in sales over the past year or so, out of annual sales of $500,000, she says.

Meanwhile, former Silicon Valley engineer Karl Rosaen co-founded Real Time Farms LLC and is building a database of farms and their growing practices, making it possible, for instance, to find a place to buy a tomato grown without synthetic pesticides with a few clicks. So far, the site has growing-practice information for a few hundred farms.

And Rob Spiro, co-founder of Good Eggs Inc. in San Francisco, left Google in June to start developing software for local food producers, testing ideas like allowing them to sell their products via mobile apps and helping them market with email newsletters.

Good Eggs is testing a consumer site offering information about where local foods are available, along with recipes. The goal is to "make local food even more convenient than typical grocery shopping" for national food brands, Mr. Spiro says. His company—which raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Silicon Valley venture-capital firms Baseline Ventures and Harrison Metal Capital in August—plans to launch its service this year.
Write to Jessica E. Vascellaro at jessica.vascellaro@wsj.com

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Last Saturday: TEDX Manhattan - Changing the Way we Eat

Event Program
10:30am Session 1- Issues
ETHEL
TED Video
Dr. David Wallinga, Antibiotic Resistance
Wenonah Hauter, Food/Farming Consolidation in Poultry Industry
Dr. Robert S. Lawrence, Health/Meat Reduction/Consumption
Performance
Patty Cantrell, New Roads to Markets
Urvashi Rangan, Labeling and the Controversy Around it

12:05pm-1:20pm-Lunch
1:20pm Session 2- Impact
TED video
Fred Kirschenmann, Soil
Michelle Hughes, GrowNYC – Immigrant Farming
Performance
Mitchell Davis, How Taste Affects Food Behavior
Wayne Pacelle, Impact of Factory Farming
Howard Hinterthuer, Veteran’s Food Production Project
Stephen Ritz, Edible Food Walls and How They’re Changing Students’ Lives.

3:15pm-3:45pm Break

3:45pm-5:35pm Session 3- Innovation
TED Video
Cara Rosaen, Online System for Restaurant Goers to Find Out Where Their Food Came From
Marianne Cufone, Recirculating Farms, What They Are and How They’re Helping People
Stefani Bardin video
Kerry McLean, Green Cart Program in NYC
Paul Lightfoot, Commercial Hydroponics on Top of Stores
Performance
Frieda Lim video
Kavita Shukla, Organic Paper That Keeps Produce Fresh
Gary Oppenheimer, Food Pantries and Food Distribution

We're Eating Less Meat. Why?

Mark Bittman     The New York Times      Janury 10,  2012

Americans eat more meat than any other population in the world; about one-sixth of the total, though we’re less than one-twentieth of the population.
But that’s changing.

Until recently, almost everyone considered their dinner plate naked without a big old hunk of meat on it. (You remember “Beef: It’s What’s for Dinner,” of course. How could you forget?) And we could afford it: our production methods and the denial of their true costs have kept meat cheap beyond all credibility. (American hamburger is arguably the cheapest convenience food there is.) This, in part, is why we spend a smaller percentage of our money on food than any other country, and much of that goes toward the roughly half-pound of meat each of us eats, on average, every day.

But that’s changing, and considering the fairly steady climb in meat consumption over the last half-century, you might say the numbers are plummeting. The department of agriculture projects that our meat and poultry consumption will fall again this year, to about 12.2 percent less in 2012 than it was in 2007. Beef consumption has been in decline for about 20 years; the drop in chicken is even more dramatic, over the last five years or so; pork also has been steadily slipping for about five years.

The report treats consumers as victims of government bias against the meat industry. We’re eating less meat because we want to eat less meat.
Holy cow. What’s up?

It’s easy enough to round up the usual suspects, which is what a story in the Daily Livestock Report did last month. It blames the decline on growing exports, which make less meat available for Americans to buy. It blames it on ethanol, which has caused feed costs to rise, production to drop and prices to go up so producers can cover their increasing costs. It blames drought. It doesn’t blame recession, which is surprising, because that’s a factor also.

All of which makes some sense. The report then goes on to blame the federal government for “wag[ing] war on meat protein consumption” over the last 30-40 years.
Is this like the war on drugs? The war in Afghanistan? The war against cancer? Because what I see here is:

·       a history of subsidies for the corn and soy that’s fed to livestock
·       a nearly free pass on environmental degradation and animal abuse
·       an unwillingness to meaningfully limit the use of antibiotics in animal feed
·       a failure to curb the stifling power that corporate meatpackers wield over  smaller ranchers
·       and what amounts to a refusal — despite the advice of real, disinterested experts, true scientists in fact —  to unequivocally tell American consumers that they should be eating less meat

Or is the occasional environmental protection regulation and whisper that unlimited meat at every meal might not be ideal the equivalent of war? Is the U.S.D.A. buying $40 million worth of chicken products to reduce the surplus and raise retail prices the equivalent of war?

No. It’s not the non-existent federal War on Meat that’s making a difference. And even if availability is down, it’s not as if we’re going to the supermarket and finding empty meat cases and deli counters filled with coleslaw. The flaw in the report is that it treats American consumers as passive actors who are victims of diminishing supplies, rising costs and government bias against the meat industry. Nowhere does it mention that we’re eating less meat because we want to eat less meat.

Yet conscious decisions are being made by consumers. Even buying less meat because prices are high and times are tough is a choice; other “sacrifices” could be made. We could cut back on junk food, or shirts or iPhones, which have a very high meat-equivalent, to coin a term. Yet even though excess supply kept chicken prices lower than the year before, demand dropped.

Some are choosing to eat less meat for all the right reasons. The Values Institute at DGWB Advertising and Communications just named the rise of “flexitarianism” — an eating style that reduces the amount of meat without “going vegetarian” — as one of its top five consumer health trends for 2012. In an Allrecipes.com survey of 1,400 members, more than one-third of home cooks said they ate less meat in 2011 than in 2010. Back in June, a survey found that 50 percent of American adults said they were aware of the Meatless Monday campaign, with 27 percent of those aware reporting that they were actively reducing their meat consumption.

I can add, anecdotally, that when I ask audiences I speak to, “How many of you are eating less meat than you were 10 years ago?” at least two-thirds raise their hands. A self-selecting group to be sure, but nevertheless one that exists.

In fact, let’s ask this: is anyone in this country eating more meat than they used to?
We still eat way more meat than is good for us or the environment, not to mention the animals. But a 12 percent reduction in just five years is significant, and if that decline were to continue for the next five years — well, that’s something few would have imagined five years ago. It’s something only the industry could get upset about. The rest of us should celebrate. Rice and beans, anyone?

-P Please consider the environment before printing this e-mail.

Y.M.C.A. ‘Healthy Living Standards’ for Children - NYTimes.com

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/30/us/ymca-healthy-living-standards-for-children.html?_r=1&src=rechp

Y.M.C.A. Adopting Health Policies for Youth
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

WASHINGTON — The Y.M.C.A., one of the nation’s largest child-care providers, intends to announce Wednesday that it is adopting new “healthy living standards,” including offering fruits, vegetables and water at snack time, increasing the amount of exercise and limiting video games and television for youngsters in its programs.

The guidelines grow out of discussions the Y has been having with Michelle Obama, the first lady, and the Partnership for a Healthier America, a year-old nonprofit group dedicated to supporting Mrs. Obama’s campaign to reduce childhood obesity. The first lady will join Y officials for the announcement.

Roughly 700,000 youngsters are enrolled in early childhood, after-school and summer programs at 10,000 Y chapters around the country, and the organization has a broad reach into the lives of American families. Independent experts and White House officials say they hope the Y’s move will serve as a model for other day-care providers.

“The difference between kids getting a sugary beverage and an unhealthy snack versus water and an apple can change a kid’s life, if that’s what they are eating day in and day out after school,” said Sam Kass, Mrs. Obama’s top food policy adviser. “The Y sets a standard.”

The standards, however, will be voluntary; Neil Nicoll, president and chief executive of the Y.M.C.A. of the U.S.A., said the national organization could not impose them on chapters. But Mr. Nicoll said that they had been developed in consultation with Y leaders around the country, and that he expected 85 percent of chapters to comply.

“We don’t anticipate a lot of pushback,” he said. “We find that once kids get into healthy habits of eating carrots instead of cookies and being physically active instead of sitting in front of the screen, they go with the flow pretty easily.”

Specifically, the Y is urging its chapters to serve fruits and vegetables at each meal, and to offer water instead of juice. For young children, the guidelines call for 15 minutes of exercise per hour, no more than 60 minutes per day of screen time for 2- to 5-year-olds, and no screen time for children under 2. Older children would have 60 minutes a day of physical activity, and no access to television or movies. Digital devices would be used only for homework or programs that promote physical activity.

Mr. Nicoll estimates the changes will cost 50 cents per child per day; he said the Y was working with food vendors to help chapters buy discounted fruits and vegetables. It has also pledged an independent evaluation of the program’s effectiveness.

“The early childhood and youth development fields need more evidence of what works to prevent and treat obesity in children and adults,” said Carol Emig, president of Child Trends, a research organization not affiliated with the Y. “Hopefully, the Y experience will produce such evidence.”

The Y is the latest in a string of companies and organizations, including Wal-Mart and Walgreens, to sign onto Mrs. Obama’s initiative. This year, Bright Horizons, a company that provides day care to about 70,000 children, agreed to standards similar to those adopted by the Y.

The Partnership for a Healthier America, financed by philanthropies like the Kaiser Permanente and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundations, was founded to work with the private sector, and to ensure that Mrs. Obama’s initiative continues beyond her White House tenure. The Y will unveil its program at the partnership’s first conference; Mrs. Obama will be the keynote speaker.

“One in three kids are overweight or obese,” said Lawrence A. Soler, the partnership’s chief executive. “We are not going to be able to solve this problem in one or two presidential administrations.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: November 30, 2011

An earlier version of this article incorrectly described the source of funding for the Partnership for a Healthier America. It was financed in part by the Kaiser Permanente Foundation, not Kaiser Permanente.