There was good news this week with several cities reporting declining rates of childhood obesity. While modest, any decline in this alarming trend is promising: New York City reports a five and a half percent decrease; Philadelphia, five percent; and Los Angeles, a three percent decline in the number of obese schoolchildren from 2007 to 2011.

But this came on the heels of some other rather disturbing news -- mega pop star Beyoncé signed a $50 million deal with Pepsi. While advertising deals for celebrities endorsing junk foods are nothing new, this one marks a shift in its insidious nature. In a recent New York Times article the president of PepsiCo's global beverage group said, "Consumers are seeking a much greater authenticity in marketing from the brands they love. It's caused a shift in the way we think about deals with artists, from a transactional deal to a mutually beneficial collaboration."

Not only will Beyoncé be featured in ads that will premiere after her performance at the Super Bowl half-time show (sponsored by Pepsi, naturally), but her face will be featured on limited edition Pepsi cans, and she will be given money for her own "creative projects." The Times reports: "The less conventional aspects of the deal are meant as collaborative projects that indulge Beyoncé's creative whims, and might well have no explicit connection to Pepsi products."

This is a marked change for advertisers who seek to completely merge their product's image with that of a big name celebrity -- and it doesn't get much bigger than Beyoncé, who pulled in $40 million last year alone and has vast international fame.

The multi-year contract with Pepsi -- with substantial funds for Beyoncé to work on her own creative projects with "no explicit connection to Pepsi" -- shows Pepsi is confident that branding its products with her image will continue to invoke a desired response in consumers. In a method reminiscent of Pavlov's dog, Pepsi expects to see this outcome without the Pepsi logo even being present.

Pepsi will so thoroughly attach itself to her and blur the lines between product and spokesperson that everything she does, including her "creative whims" will be linked to Pepsi. Even if these creative whims have nothing to do with Pepsi, she will conjure the brand. This brings to mind the patronage of wealthy families for artists in the middle ages -- a kind of artist-indentured servitude.

Beyoncé doesn't see it that way, at least according to her statement in The Times: "Pepsi embraces creativity and understands that artists evolve. As a businesswoman, this allows me to work with a lifestyle brand with no compromise and without sacrificing my creativity."

This sounds shockingly naive; especially from a woman who has mastered the art of her brand and become one of the biggest pop stars in the world. And let's not forget, that one year ago, a video of Beyoncé dancing in a high school cafeteria on behalf of the First Lady's 'Let's Move!' campaign went viral, indicating what seemed to be her commitment to fighting childhood obesity. Now that she is a new mother, Beyoncé signs on with the one of the biggest soda vendors in the world?

But then again, there are other aspects of this new ad campaign to make one question her logic. The ad that has been revealed features her dressed in tights, high-heels, a suit jacket, and what appears to be matching underwear, while making a pout with her lips -- all the while pushing a large grocery cart overflowing with cases of Pepsi. These images will be made into life size cut outs for grocery stores.

This means millions of shoppers across the country will see a hyper-sexualized woman of color, literally pushing a product that is known to contribute to obesity and its related health problems like diabetes and heart disease.

It is especially significant that the populations most affected by these health issues are people of color, and particularly women of color. According to the Centers for Disease Control, one in two African-Americans born in the year 2000 is expected to develop type II diabetes; four out of every ten African-American men and women have high blood pressure; and blacks are 30 percent more likely to die young from heart disease than whites.

Part of Beyoncé's deal includes the limited edition Pepsi can, which has a picture of her face, open-mouthed and seductive. There's no doubt that these Pepsi ad executives know what they're doing, they've taken one of the biggest pop stars and sex symbols in the world, and conflated her talent and success with their product -- it is marketing genius. But who suffers as a result?

Unfortunately, we know the answer to that question: It's the people that always suffer from predatory ad campaigns. Youth and minority groups are routinely targeted with more ads and for less healthy products, according to the Yale Rudd Center. Researchers found that African American youth saw at least 50 percent more fast food ads on TV in 2009 than their white peers. And according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the rate of obesity for African Americans is 51 percent higher than for white Americans, and the prevalence of obesity amongst the nation's Hispanic American population is 21 percent higher than their white peers.

While there are certainly many factors that contribute to these shocking statistics, there's no doubt that carefully targeted marketing on the part of Big Food corporations play a large role. Beyoncé should think twice before playing right into the hands of Pepsi's insidious branding -- but even more importantly, Americans should start demanding that our government regulate Big Food. In many European countries celebrities are forbidden from advertising for junk foods; not coincidentally, these countries have lower rates of obesity and diabetes, especially among children. If we hope to see more good news in the form of declining childhood obesity rates in this country, we need to work to make sure this Pepsi and Beyoncé "mutually beneficial collaboration" doesn't portend a new trend.

Originally published on The Huffington Post

If we knew that there was epidemic among our children that would cause them to die at increasingly younger ages and if we also knew that this disease was entirely preventable, wouldn't we do everything in our power to eradicate it?

In fact, we do have an epidemic and it's largely driven by our reliance on highly processed, cheap convenience foods. The United States is hardly alone on this front, but our food culture is distinct from most other industrialized nations in a crucially important way -- we have virtually no regulation for advertising food and drink and we require very little in the way of labeling.

In a few weeks, Californians will decide if genetically modified foods (GMOs) should be labeled. Labeling GMOs will force greater transparency on the part of food producers and it represents a potential shift for consumers to regain a measure of control over their own food. But the US will still lag far behind many European countries, which not only have been labeling GMO foods for years but in some cases, also require warning labels for junk foods and have strict regulations on the types of foods and beverages advertised, particularly to children.

There's good reason for this. Studies show that Big Food corporations aggressively market unhealthy foods to children and in some cases children exhibit "brand recognition" and brand loyalty before they can even speak. A forthcoming study in the journal Social, Cognitive, and Affective Neuroscience, found that toddlers identify the golden arches for McDonald's before they even know the letter M. After looking at more than 100 brands, researchers at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and University of Kansas Medical Center study found that children are more likely to choose foods with familiar logos and that the majority of these foods are high in sugars, fat and sodium. Even more alarming, researchers found that seeing an advertised logo trips the pleasure and reward regions of children's brains -- areas of the brain that are also implicated in obesity and various types of addiction, including drug abuse, researcher Dr. Amanda Bruce said.

Another recent study suggests that highly processed foods are addictive. Researchers in the journal Current Biology report that when they fed M&M candies to hungry rats, their levels of enkephalin (an opiod with similar effects to other drugs in this class) increased. The more the rats' enkephalin went up, the faster they ate the M&Ms. The researchers reported that the rats would not stop eating the M&Ms until the candies were taken away.

But that's not all -- the food industry is actively shaping the palates of our children. While the food industry insists that it only advertises to children "to influence brand preference," a study published in the journal Appetite found that the industry works to "fundamentally change children's taste palates to increase their liking of highly processed and less nutritious foods." This study dovetails with Dr. Bruce's findings since researchers found that the awareness of fast food brands was a significant predictor of what they call the "Sugar-Fat-Salty" palate preference in children.

Data is also surfacing that obese children are less sensitive to taste. Researchers in Germany found that on the intensity scale, obese children rated all flavor concentrations lower than did those in the normal-weight group. They believe this may be due to the fact that leptin, the hormone that regulates appetite and makes us feel full, might also affect the sensitivity of taste buds. It is suspected that people who are obese or overweight are resistant to leptin, making them feel hungrier and driving them to eat more.

Not only does obesity or overweight affect taste, but it also affects memory and learning. A study in Pediatrics found that teenagers with metabolic syndrome (a precursor to diabetes, which includes having high blood levels of glucose, low levels of "good" cholesterol, high triglycerides, abdominal obesity and high blood pressure) had lower scores on tests of mental ability and significantly lower academic performance in reading and arithmetic. MRI scans of these children also showed reduced volume in the hippocampus, a part of the brain involved in forming and storing memories.

The picture emerging from these recent findings is that children are becoming hooked on highly processed foods at a very young age. This changes their palate preferences for salty, fatty, sweet foods, leads to weight gain and metabolic syndrome, affects brain processes -- and ultimately, perpetuates a vicious cycle.

So what is to be done? European countries, which have lower rates of obesity and diet-related disease, provide some answers. In 2007, the French government ordered all food advertisements to carry warning labels urging consumers to stop snacking, exercise, and eat more fruits and vegetables. The warning label also reads, "Consuming these foods may be harmful to your health." In Sweden and Norway, all food and beverage advertising to children is forbidden. In Ireland, there is a ban on TV ads for candy and fast food and the ban prohibits using celebrities to promote junk food to kids.

It's time for American politicians to address the lack of regulation for Big Food and the advertising industry. We now have the science to prove that the content of highly processed foods coupled with the marketing of them to children and toddlers is amounting to a national health crisis.

Over the past 15 years, the percentage of new cases of Type 2 diabetes, formerly known as adult-onset, has skyrocketed among children -- from three to 50 percent. Approximately 12.5 million of children and adolescents aged two to 9 years are obese and since 1980, obesity prevalence among children and adolescents has almost tripled.

Diabetes, along with high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and heart disease are becoming shockingly common in children and adolescents. We know these conditions arise primarily from poor diets and are driven by our consumption of ultra-processed foods.

A startling USDA report from 2006 states that since the percentage of children who are overweight has doubled and the percentage of adolescents who are overweight has more than tripled, "If we do not stem this tide, many children in this generation of children will not outlive their parents." To put that another way: If trends don't change, the surge in diet related disease among children means that many parents will watch their children die. That was the prediction from experts six years ago and we have yet to see any substantive action from Washington.

Our leaders must get tough on these corporations and stop insisting that it comes down to choice and personal responsibility. This is a myth perpetuated by the food and advertising industries so they can continue to harm our children and threaten the health of our nation with impunity. In what other circumstance would we allow an epidemic of such grave proportions debilitate our children unchecked? We've long been looking for the smoking gun — it seems we've found it.

Originally published on The Huffington Post

Image: FastFoodHealth.org via Babble.com

There was a time when corpulence was a sign of wealth and luxury. But in modern day Western countries, quite the opposite is true. In fact, a recent study found that fully one third of homeless people living in Boston are obese. “This study suggests that obesity may be the new malnutrition of the homeless in the United States,” wrote the researchers, led by Harvard Medical School student Katherine Koh, whose study is forthcoming in the  Journal of Urban Health.

And it’s not just the U.S. that is reporting these kinds of findings, a New Zealand study of preschoolers found that 82 percent did not get enough dietary fiber and 68 percent did not have enough long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids, which are found in fish and nuts. Despite these nutritional deficiencies, the researchers also found that fully one-third of preschoolers are overweight or obese.

These findings highlight an interesting contradiction—obesity correlates with malnourishment. Research indicates that lack of proper nutrition—even when people over consume calories—is at the root of obesity. Part of the reason this seems contradictory is because nutrition science has long held that all calories are created equal and that with the right amount of caloric intake, it would be difficult to also be malnourished. Coincidentally, this is also what the food industry would have us believe. In a recent interview in USAToday, Katie Bayne, president and general manager at Coca-Cola said in response to Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s proposed ban on large size sugary drinks, “A calorie is a calorie. What our drinks offer is hydration. That’s essential to the human body. We offer great taste and benefits whether it’s an uplift or carbohydrates or energy. We don’t believe in empty calories. We believe in hydration.”

I asked senior research scientist at MIT and author of several papers on the subject, Stephanie Seneff, for a response to Bayne’s comments. “I hate this calorie is a calorie message,” Seneff said in a telephone interview. “It’s completely wrong. When you eat a high carbohydrate diet, especially a processed foods diet, you’re getting way too much fuel compared to all those other things you need. And this imbalance is what leads to the obesity profile.”

For comparison’s sake, eight ounces of milk provides about 150 calories, along with calcium, magnesium, vitamins A and D, protein, fatty acids, and many other nutrients (largely dependent on what the cows ate and the quality of the milk with organic and grass-fed being the most nutritious). An eight-ounce can of Coke with 100 calories provides virtually no nutrients (the label reads: Not a significant source of fat calories, saturated fat, trans fat, cholesterol, fiber, vitamin A, vitamin C, calcium and iron) but it does contain 27 grams of sugar in the form of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS).

Seneff said that she blames the soda industry in particular because this is where children are consuming large amounts of sugar. “If we did just one simple thing and had school children switch from drinking Coke to drinking whole milk this would have a huge difference,” she said.

Unfortunately, this will never be simple in part because the American Beverage Association lobbies hard to prevent any type of regulation for soda or for marketing it to children. In addition, the USDA’s MyPlate recommends low-fat and fat-free milks, which is what’s served in school cafeterias across the country. Seneff emphasized the importance of whole milk versus low-fat and fat-free milk because she believes the emphasis on low-fat foods in the American diet is largely responsible for our obesity epidemic, among other illnesses. “Children in particular need the fat desperately to develop their brains,” she said. “And this is why we have ADHD and autism. I think these problems are very much a consequence of our obsession with a low fat diet.”

But it’s not just brains that suffer as a result of our low fat diet, Seneff says, and she is not the first to attribute our low fat diet to our increasing obesity rates. The science writer Gary Taubes has been saying so for over a decade. The stigma against fats, particularly saturated fats appears to be waning (I wrote about this last year here on Civil Eats).

Seneff believes the major factors contributing to obesity are a deficiency in consuming fats, particularly animal fats and all of the nutrients that come with those fats; our overly-processed food diet (and specifically our consumption of HFCS); and our lack of exposure to sunlight. What’s more, according to her research, all three of these components amount to the perfect storm of metabolic dysfunction.

Carbohydrates and sugars in our diets compound the problem of our cell’s inability to digest and regulate the amount of sugar in our blood. “The key problem is the highly processed foods Americans eat, which have enormous amounts of carbohydrates, and carbohydrates that are already partially digested so that they move into the blood very quickly as sugar,”  Seneff said.

Seneff is working on a new theory that isolates one nutrient deficiency in particular that manifests as a result of the Standard American Diet. “In my studies, sulfate deficiency is everywhere,” she said. She believes this is at the root of many modern diseases as well as obesity. Where is sulfur found? In foods that are also high in cholesterol, like animal proteins and fish. Certain vegetables, like broccoli, cauliflower, garlic, and onions are also high in sulfate but as Seneff points out, these are often deficient in sulfate and other nutrients as a result of poor soil management and degradation of soil quality.

Finally, Seneff is concerned with our lack of exposure to sunlight, which coincidentally also produces cholesterol sulfate in our bodies. “It’s specifically a deficiency in sunlight exposure to the skin, which is much more than just taking a vitamin D supplement,” she said. “Cholesterol sulfate and vitamin D sulfate are both synthesized in the skin in exposure to sunlight, which is a wonderful way to deliver sulfate and cholesterol to all the tissues. Really, most Americans suffer from a cholesterol deficiency problem rather than a cholesterol excess problem but it’s demonized everywhere and it’s the exact wrong message.”

Another widely disseminated message from the food industry—it’s all about personal responsibility— appears rather faulty when we look at the findings from the study of obese preschoolers. Taylor, the lead researcher in the study, said that regulation had to be part of the answer. “There hasn’t been a massive decrease in the willpower of two year olds,” she said in a recent article. Instead, as the studies have found, it is about the poor quality of highly processed foods.

The study of the homeless in Boston confirms the fact that one can be food insecure while consuming an abundance of calories that lead to obesity. In fact, the term food insecure was coined to indicate that many people now experience access to plenty of calories but a dearth in real nutrition.

If these two studies and Seneff’s new research are any indication, it may not be long before the food industry will be proven wrong: All calories are not created equal, nor is it all about personal responsibility. Until then, pressuring Big Food to properly regulate and label foods might be the only way to curb our nation’s addiction to cheap, nutritionally void products. But time is of the essence—by current estimates one in three Americans will be diabetic by 2050 if things don’t drastically change.