Tag Archives: obesity

Teenaged Girls Fail to Lose Weight

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Yet another recent study failed to show improvement in diet, physical activity, or weight status in teenaged girls. I, for one, can’t say I’m surprised. This study randomly assigned girls to the intervention group, or a control group. Girls in the intervention group were offered nutrition and physical activity sessions throughout the school day, at lunch hour, and given homework assignments pertaining to these topics. Girls in the control group were given no special nutrition or physical activity sessions.

As well meaning as these types of studies are, they are not addressing the root cause of obesity. Studies like this place the onus on the individual. If you were a teenaged girl (or even in your current situation) would you want to spend your lunch hour learning about nutrition? Or do physical activity “homework”? Why was no difference seen between the two groups? One reason is that, as one researcher put it, “we need to make the programs more appealing and exciting and present information in a way that is meaningful to adolescent girls”. Obviously, if the individual can’t see the incentive for making changes then they’re not going to make those changes. Even when they can see the incentive they often still fail to make changes. That brings me to the second, and more important reason why studies like this one often fail. All of these girls are in the same environment. As long as the environment is obesogenic then it’s extremely unlikely that you will see any meaningful long-term change in weight. We need to make more of an effort to change the environment in which people live so that healthy eating becomes the easy choice and physical activity is supported and encouraged.

Follow Friday: Yale Rudd Center

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Interested in learning about cutting-edge obesity research and policies? Check out the Yale Rudd Centre for Food Policy & Obesity. According to their website: “The Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity is a non-profit research and public policy organization devoted to improving the world’s diet, preventing obesity, and reducing weight stigma.” You can also follow them on twitter: @YaleRuddCenter

The perfect wedding weight

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I can understand the desire to look perfect on your wedding day but I’m shocked at the lengths people will go to to achieve what they think is the perfect weight. According to a recent article in the New York Times women are going to extreme measures to lose weight. These include the usual fad diets and cleanses as well as injections with hormones and tube feedings! This is disturbing on so many levels. If you’re getting married hopefully your partner loves you as you are. A wedding should be a celebration of a relationship and making the commitment to spend the rest of your lives together. Why would you want to undertake drastic and dangerous measures to achieve an idealized weight on your wedding day? It seems like most of the women who are doing this are not particularly overweight and even if they were, they should take a closer look at their motives for losing weight. I’ve said it before, and I’m sure I’ll say it again: the only way to achieve sustainable weight loss is to make sustainable life changes. This is decidedly not what these women are doing. Sure, they may look svelte in their wedding photos but will they feel healthy, strong, and happy? How long after the wedding will that weight stay off? It’s more than likely that it’s all going to come back, with some friends for good measure, and be less likely to budge if they decide to attempt to lose it again. You know, for wedding number two or three or eleven.

What the heck is wrong with our society that some people think that using a feeding tube to lose weight is actually a reasonable idea?? Despite the talk about obesity being rampant in our society, there is also a disturbing underground trend in the other direction. I hesitate to talk about it because I don’t want to promote disordered eating and eating disorders but I also think that knowledge is power and no one is being helped by turning a blind eye to the problem. I was shocked to learn about the online “thinspiration” community and the “pro-ana” and “pro-mia” websites. There’s this whole subculture of extreme thinness out there. I googled “thinspiration” and was so disturbed by some of the information I found that I had to stop looking! We’re a population of extremes driven by desires to have it all. It seems we either have no control or excessive control of our consumption. Hence, we see more and more people struggling with their weight and fewer people happily at a healthy weight.

I think most of us could do with a reminder that healthy bodies come in myriad different shapes and sizes. We need to be less quick to judge others. We especially need to be less quick to judge ourselves.

Hungry for Change film review

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After my not so glowing review of the documentary film Food Matters I thought it would only be fair to give their latest effort Hungry for Change a chance. I was pleasantly surprised by this film. Although it may have been largely due to my low expectations. I thought that Hungry for Change was the film that Food Matters should have been. As I did with the previous film I’ll break it down into the good and the bad…

What was bad about this film?

  • As with the last film there were a number of dubiously credentialed so-called experts. For example, a “Traditional and Wild Foods Expert” and a “Cleansing and Detoxification Expert”. Maybe it’s just me but I’m pretty sure anyone could claim to be such “experts”. Also, there were a whole lot of authors. Sorry people but just because you wrote a book doesn’t mean you are a credible source.
  • This one, I’m not 100% sure about but the film claims that to study obesity in mice researchers inject them with MSG. To me, MSG might make sense to promote weight gain when added to food as it’s a flavour enhancer, but as an injection I’m not sure. As I don’t do obesity research in mice myself it’s hard for me to flat-out reject this claim. However, a scan of journal articles appears to show that a high-fat diet is the most popular approach to inducing obesity in mice.
  • Another bizarre claim they make is that dietary aspartame and caffeine kill brain cells. Really? Can someone share the research to back this up because I am hugely skeptical and can find nothing to support this myself.
  • One of the “experts” Dr. Northrup states that it’s “Not fat that’s making us fat. It’s sugar” and then goes on to suggest that sugar is an addictive drug, comparing sugar in kids cereal to injecting them with heroin. Yes, we consume far too much sugar but vilifying any one nutrient is foolish and placing sugar on-par with heroin is ludicrous.
  • At one point the film shows a promo for itself. Who does that?? Obviously the viewer is already watching the film, you don’t need to advertise it. That’s just lame (and boring).
  • Oh detoxification. These holistic nutritionists just love their detoxification diets. Listen up: DETOXIFICATION IS BULL****! Sorry, had to get that one out. And stop pushing the juicing on us already.
  • The main actress in the film is waging a constant battle with her weight. Yet, to me, she appears to be at a healthy weight. I don’t think it’s promoting the right message to show an attractive healthy woman trying to lose weight.

Hmm… Now that I’ve written all that I’m wondering if I should have been so quick to say that this film was an improvement on Food Matters.

There were some good points to this film:

  • Not once did they try to push supplements!
  • The overarching messages about eating a healthy balanced diet and learning to love yourself were good.
  • They basically state that pop is evil. I’m okay with that assertion.
  • It’s pointed out that North America decided that fat was the enemy and started loading food with sugar to replace the fat. They state that low-fat diets are bad as we need good fats (e.g. avocados, nuts, seeds, and salmon).
  • The dieting paradigm is flawed because diets are only temporary.
  • The best “diet” strategy is to add-in the “good” stuff (e.g. veg) and you’ll come to want the “bad” stuff less. Diets shouldn’t be about deprivation.
  • Stress hormones can contribute to weight gain. The best ways to reduce stress hormones are through sleep, exercise, and laughter.
  • “Obesity is not the problem. It’s the solution to a problem.” I thought this was a great way to make the point that obesity is often a manifestation of psychological issues.
  • I’m going to repeat this one: LOVE YOURSELF. No matter what your size, you deserve love and the most important person to get it from is yourself. Cheesy maybe but true.

While this film didn’t contain any new revelations, the overall message was good and the misinformation was relatively benign.

Mars solves the obesity epidemic!

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Kudos to Mars for their valiant efforts to curb obesity! I’m so glad that I can quit my work on improving the food environment and will no longer have to rant on here about the food industry because Mars is leading the way. With their pledge “Not to ship any Mars chocolate products that exceed 250 calories per portion by the end of 2013” it won’t be long before everyone has attained their healthy weight.

But wait, how many calories were Mars Bars to begin with? After a little bit of searching (funny how difficult it was to find the website that included Mars Bars nutrition information) I learned that a single 58 gram Mars Bar contains 250 kcal (or 260, depending which chart you look at on the page). Wow, so Mars is promising to cut zero to ten calories from their standard Mars Bar. I’m sure that’s going to have a considerable impact on the obesity epidemic. Perhaps if we were all consuming a Mars Bar per day, but I’m going to o out on a limb here and assume that the vast majority of us are not. Mars does ship other chocolate bars as well as Mars. Perhaps there will be increased benefits from cutting calories from those bars? 3 Musketeers (marketed as a ”light treat”) is currently sitting pretty at 260 kcal. Snickers comes in tops at 280 kcal. So, basically, it seems that Mars is promising to shave from zero to 30 calories off each of its chocolate bars. Who wants to take the bet that this will be done purely by reducing the total size of each bar? This way, Mars can save money and save us from our gluttonous ways, win-win!

I’d also like to point out the careful wording of this statement. First, it’s a “target” and we all know that targets are not always achieved. Second, this 250 calorie limit is per portion. This absolves Mars from actually making any changes to their chocolate bars. All they actually have to do is change the labels. As long as the portion size indicated on the label complies to the 250 calorie maximum Mars will have met its target.

It should also be kept in mind that chocolate bars are not a great source of essential nutrients. Marginally reducing the overall number of calories in a Mars Bar does not make it any healthier of a choice.