Posts Tagged ‘children’s food’

Health Claims Running Rampant

The advancement of technology has given impetus to the marketing machine of major food manufactures. Their health claims are running rampant.

False Health Claims

Following a second action in 12 months by the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for making false claims about a product, the leading cereal maker Kellogg has agreed to new advertising restriction.

They said the company has agreed to expand a settlement order reached after the Commission alleged that the cereal maker has falsely claimed there was clinical evidence that its Frosted Mini-Wheat Cereal improved children’s attentiveness by nearly 20 per cent.

Could it be the trans fats, sugar, corn syrup, gelatin, or sodium, that provides such a boost. Wow, all the kids in American should be real attentive.

Trans Fats

Food manufactures use trans fats in products to optimize taste, appearance, texture and shelf life. These fats are formed when liquid oils are made into solid fats like shortening and margarine during a process known as hydrogenation.

Kellogg defends their use of trans fats by saying trans fat is similar to saturated fat because it has also been found to raise low-density lipoprotein, or “bad” cholesterol, which can increase your risk of coronary heart disease.

What they left out is crucial: The trans fat molecule is different from the saturated fat molecule.

(1) Saturated fatty acids raise HDL cholesterol, the so-called good cholesterol, whereas the trans fatty acids lower HDL cholesterol;

(2) Saturated fatty acids lower the blood levels of the atherogenic lipoprotein [a], whereas trans fatty acids raise the blood levels of lipoprotein [a];

(3) Saturated fatty acids conserve the good omega-3 fatty acids, whereas trans fatty acids cause the tissues to lose these omega-3 fatty acids;

(4) Saturated fatty acids do not inhibit insulin binding, whereas trans fatty acids do inhibit insulin binding;

(5) Saturated fatty acids do not increase C-reactive protein, but trans fatty acids do increase C-reactive protein causing arterial inflammation;

(6) saturated fatty acids are the normal fatty acids made by the body, and they do not interfere with enzyme functions such as the delta-6-desaturase, whereas trans fatty acids are not made by the body, and they interfere with many enzyme functions such as delta-6-desaturase; and

(7) Some saturated fatty acids are used by the body to fight viruses, bacteria, and protozoa, and they support the immune system, whereas trans fatty acids interfere with the function of the immune system.

This is from the Ban Trans Fats website.

Another Problem

Food manufactures can list no trans fats on their label and still use it. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in this case the fake disappearing agenda; guidelines specify that percentages should be rounded up if over 0.5 grams per serving or down if under. If the amount of tras fats is less than half a gram(0.5) per serving, FDA labeling guidelines state that the Nutrition Facts label must show the total amount of trans fats per serving as zero grams (0 grams).

This amounts to 1/20 of a teaspoon of trans fat per serving. What’s the problem with this? One serving is stated to be a cup, how many kids snack on sweet cereals and go over a cup. If you have a diet of packaged foods and they all claim no trans fat, you can be ingesting a good amount.

Now for kids the issue is this will be for a lifetime, add it up, and they will be consuming too much trans fats.

Last But Not Least

 The label ingredients from the strawberry Mini-Frosted Wheats

WHOLE GRAIN WHEAT, SUGAR, STRAWBERRY FLAVORED CRUNCHLETS (SUGAR, CORN CEREAL, CORN SYRUP, MODIFIED CORN STARCH, PARTIALLY HYDROGENATED COTTONSEED AND/OR SOYBEAN OIL, CITRIC ACID, GLYCERIN, NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL FLAVOR, RED #40, BLUE #2), NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL STRAWBERRY AND CREME FLAVOR, SORBITOL, GELATIN, REDUCED IRON, NIACINAMIDE, ZINC OXIDE, RED #40, PYRIDOXINE HYDROCHLORIDE (VITAMIN B6), RIBOFLAVIN (VITAMIN B2), THIAMIN HYDROCHLORIDE (VITAMIN B1), FOLIC ACID, BLUE #1, AND VITAMIN B12. TO MAINTAIN QUALITY, BHT HAS BEEN ADDED TO THE PACKAGING.

Make better decisions, these are empty claims, and a marketing campaign that seems like pure baloney.

The L.E.A.N start program is essential to both yourself and your children. What has happened to our food supply is a crime against mankind. I really do not consider this an overstatement.

Guide

This is taken from the introduction to an Eater’s Manifesto by Michael Pollan. By the way this is probably the best book on the topic of what to eat.

This is a quote from the introduction; “To guide us we had instead, Culture, which, at least when it comes to food, is really just a fancy word for your mother. What to eat, what order in which to eat it, with what and when and with whom have for the most part of human history been a set of questions long settled and passed down from parents to children with out a lot of controversy or fuss.”

“But over the last several decades, mom lost much of her authority over the dinner menu, ceding it to scientists and food marketers (often an unhealthy alliance of the two) and, to a lesser extent, to the government with its ever-shifting dietary guidelines, food-labeling rules, and perplexing pyramids.”

Personal

The problem is personal, not something in the third person. Another quote from Michael Pollan’s book sums up the changes and damage incurred by the American food supply.

“What is driving such relentless change in the American Diet? One force is a thirty-two-billion-dollar food-marketing machine that thrives on change for its own sake. Another is the constantly shifting ground of nutrition science that, depending on your point of view, is steadily advancing the frontiers of our knowledge about diet, and health or is just changing its mind a lot because it is a flawed science that knows much less than it cares to admit.”

This is personal to the public that switched to margarine from butter. Then learned  that saturated fat was harmful and switched to poor quality vegetable oils. From a diet of real food we are told that fortified junk food is just as good.

It is personal because our own healthcare is now in doctors hands. We have lost control of our health by listing to the marketplace. This becomes even more personal when it affects our children’s lives.

Unintentional

Our children are the unintentional victims of our lifestyle. A child’s health begins in utero and progresses to the habits that they acquire in childhood. This is the time parents have the most influence and can form the foundation for their child’s health.

L.E.A.N Start

Dr. William Sears a foremost authority on children’s health has founded a program that addresses the concerns of today’s parents. He knows “A Child’s Health Begins with the Parent.”   

This is a course for the parents that pay dividends to their children.