Last week, Slate published an article claiming that -- counter to popular assumptions -- the pesticide levels on most of the produce we eat are nothing to worry about. The title says it all: "Organic Shmorganic: Conventional Fruits and Vegetables are Perfectly Healthy for Kids."

In one sensational, simplistic article, author Melinda Wenner Moyer appears ready to undermine the 50-year battle that organic food advocates have waged against an increasingly monolithic industry to provide healthy, uncontaminated food. In the piece, Moyer concludes that conventionally grown produce that harbor pesticide residue are not harmful for kids and are not much worse than their organic counterparts.

Moyer points to the fact that organic farms often use pesticides of their own. However, she also admits that most organic pesticides break down in the environment more easily and are less likely to contaminate the soil and water. That alone is a good enough reason to support organics since runoff from agriculture is the number one polluter of America's waterways. Also, by Moyer's own admission, pesticides are used in organic agriculture as a last resort, limiting our exposure even further.

Moyer asserts that since synthetic pesticides are engineered to be used in smaller quantities, that might also somehow make conventional food less toxic overall than organic. But this sounds like the industry talking -- why wouldn't we seek to further regulate all toxic substances on our foods, whether organic or not, rather than concluding we might as well eat the conventional foods?

Beyond Residue

When Moyer says that pesticides are "perfectly healthy for kids," she doesn't specify whose kids. It's clear that she hasn't considered farmworkers' families and those who live near agricultural fields. These populations are routinely exposed to large quantities of pesticides and are greatly impacted.

Moyer claims she is focusing primarily on the heath effects of consumers. But the logic of separating our own health from environmental health and worker health is specious. Just ask farmers.

Kira Kinney, an organic farmer in New Paltz, New York, finds Moyer's compartmentalized argument especially troubling. "The author says she is only looking at this narrow window of residue on produce, but I do not understand, as a grower, how one can break apart the farm process to only look at things in such narrow focus," says Kinney.

Kinney sees Methyl bromide -- a fumigant that is being phased out in produce production, but is still in use on some farms -- as a good example. "It is applied to the soils of most conventional strawberry farms -- and other produce [farms] as well. It basically kills everything living in the soil, and makes lots of people sick in areas where this gas is being pumped into the soil," she says.

Even if we focus strictly on the direct health effects for consumers eating produce grown with pesticides, Moyer makes gross oversights. She starts the article off by saying, "I can't help but wonder whether giving my son organic food really makes a difference to his health, considering that he's been known to lick the bottom of his shoes, kiss my poop-sniffing dog, and eat crackers -- someone else's -- off of the preschool floor."

In fact, these are two completely different issues. Recent science on the microbiome, or bacteria in and on our bodies, shows that kids who grow up with dogs have a healthier microbiome and exposure to a variety of bacteria likely helps to improve our immune systems. But this has absolutely nothing to do with pesticides.

Or perhaps it does. There is evidence to suggest that one pesticide, glyphosate, the ingredient used in the ubiquitous Roundup may disrupt and kill beneficial bacteria in our guts leading to impaired immune function and a cascade of ill health effects.

This shouldn't come as a big surprise since pesticides, insecticides, and fungicides work to kill organisms indiscriminately. There are also numerous studies that show use of these various "cides" disrupts soil microflora, so why not our own as well?

Dose: Not as Straightforward as You Think

The basis of Moyer's argument is that "the dose makes the poison" when it comes to the toxicity of pesticides. This concept is the cornerstone of toxicology and many toxicologists will tell you that's all there is to it: Ill effects occur along a linear curve depending on how much of the toxin one is exposed to. However, much of the conventional thinking on this matter is being overturned.

I asked Dr. Bruce Blumberg, a professor of developmental and cell biology and pharmaceutical sciences at the University of California, Irvine, about this theory. Blumberg works with endocrine disrupting chemicals and many pesticides fall into this category.

"Endocrine disrupting chemicals most assuredly work at low doses that produce what we call "non-monotonic," or nonlinear, dose responses," Blumberg says. "There are many cases where a low dose of a chemical has one effect, whereas a higher dose either has no effect, or an opposite effect."

The idea that the dose makes the poison, says Blumberg, "makes the assumption that the dose-response curve must be linear. As even laymen know, there are precious few responses in nature that are linear."

Since toxicologists assume the linear dose response, the EPA rarely, if ever, tests for what exposure at lower levels may mean. But in Blumberg's research, he routinely finds effects on the development of fat cells and the prevalence of obesity at levels near to or below what's known as the "no observed adverse affect level" (or NOAELs) and sometimes at or below the EPA-established tolerable daily intake.

In one study Blumberg found that the fungicide triflumizole caused changes to fat cells, and increased fat cell size at levels 400 times below the EPA approved NOAEL and four times lower than the tolerable daily intake.

Furthermore, Moyer relies on the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) data to back up her claim that pesticide residues are harmless. This is a huge oversight since the process by which pesticides receive EPA approval is riddled with conflicts of interest. Blumberg described the process like this: The EPA asks companies that are introducing new chemicals to perform basic tests, including tests for carcinogenesis and reproductive harm, for example. The company then performs these tests in-house or asks a contract laboratory to do them and shows the data to the EPA.

"Despite this clear conflict of interest, the EPA says, 'thank you very much,' talks about the issue for a while, and then either approves, or disapproves the chemical for use based on the industry supplied data, which may or may not be complete," says Blumberg.

Very Little Human Data

Another key point is that the EPA makes its safety determinations without any human data. Thomas Zoeller, a biology professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, says that, "Because humans are exposed to lots of things, you can't get a cause-effect sense for a single pesticide. So, when they make a 'safety' determination, it is without the benefit of human data."

Blumberg added that the EPA rarely tests these chemicals directly, nor conducts an independent investigation. Instead, the agency often performs computer modeling studies that estimate what an average person might consume based on assumptions about the residues on food. (These models are what Moyer refers to in the Slate article.)

However, the EPA does not ever test the exposure levels actually found in consumers. Nor does it look at levels in those applying the pesticide, nor their families, nor those who live close to where these pesticides are applied. In other words, Blumberg says, "Populations are never sampled to assess whether exposure falls within the range predicted by the modeling studies."

Zoeller says that the EPA's capabilities are severely limited due to built-in industry protections. "[The EPA] have been given the task of evaluating whether a chemical is harmful, not if it is safe. The statute protects the industry, not the consumer. EPA is caught in the middle."

Zoeller added that Moyer's article makes the mistake of claiming "safe levels" of pesticides. "I doubt seriously that EPA risk assessors would say it like that. They would say that according to the data they have, 'levels of exposure below X should not produce adverse effects.' There's a big difference," he says.

Pesticides' Combined Effects

Moyer seems to be arguing that since we are exposed to so many toxins on a daily basis, pesticide residue makes little difference. That's a dangerous assumption. In fact, limiting our exposure to pesticide residue on food, whenever possible, is smart precisely because it's one factor we can control.

What's more, Moyer's article makes no mention of the combined effects of these toxins. One 2011 study found that the widespread decline in male reproductive health may be linked to increased exposure to a combination of pesticides, which have not been adequately tested.

Another 2012 study found that the combined effects of widely used pesticides exceed the effects of individual pesticides. To date, there is not nearly enough data on these combined effects, even though the average American is exposed to 10 or more pesticides every day, through food and drinking water.

These dangers are especially worrisome for children and pregnant women. In fact, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists recently warned about the dangers of exposure to pesticides and other toxins, as the average woman is exposed to an estimated 163 unique chemicals per day, according to the Environmental Working Group.

The bottom line is that most data that suggests pesticide residue is safe is the result of a deeply conflicted regulatory system. Under our current system, we rely on the companies manufacturing these chemical to find them dangerous, rather than an independent entity to prove them safe. As such, these chemicals have never been deemed safe for children, expectant mothers, or anyone else at the doses most Americans are currently being exposed to.

We now know that low levels of these toxins can adversely effect our microbiomes and our reproductive health, while increasing the risk of obesity. So why not err on the side of caution?

Indeed, as Blumberg puts it, "If we wait for such proof [in humans], despite numerous animal studies that should have alerted us to the potential dangers of specific chemical exposure, we have utterly failed to protect the public."

A version of this article first appeared on Civil Eats.

Last week I did two interviews both relating to how the industrial food system loves to tell us how its products will help us lose weight and be healthier. Tuesday, I was on Chef Erica Wides' show Let's Get Real on the Heritage Radio Network to talk about vegan and vegetarian "foodiness" products, as she calls them. Wides defines foodiness as fake food, made to look like real food that often makes some kind of (false) health claim. When it comes to vegan and vegetarian foods, people often think they are eating better simply because they don't eat meat. The trouble is, people often resort to the packaged and processed versions of vegan or vegetarian food. As an example of how these foodiness products are worse than the read thing, take a look at the ingredients for two products we discussed on the show:

Toffutti Pizza:

WHEAT FLOUR (UNBLEACHED), CRUSHED TOMATOES, WATER, SOYBEAN OIL, SUGAR, SALT, YEAST, FOOD STARCH-MODIFIED (CORN), OREGANO, BLACK PEPPER, GARLIC. The dairy-free cheese contains the following: WATER, EXPELLER PRESSED PALM OIL, MALTODEXTRIN, NON-GMO (TOFU, SOY PROTEIN) NON-DAIRY LACTIC ACID BLEND OF NATURAL GUMS (LOCUST BEAN, GUAR, CELLULOSE, XANTHAN AND CARRAGEENAN), ORGANIC SUGAR, POTATO FLAKES, VEGETABLE MONO AND DIGLYCERIDES, SALT.

Veja-Links:

Click here to listen to the full half hour episode.

On Friday I went on Huff Post Live for a segment called "Myths and Facts about Weight Loss." I am sometimes reluctant to do these types of interviews because the focus on weight loss and obesity is a bit misguided. I think we need to focus on the consolidation of the food supply and the way in which the industrial food system is at the root of our collective health and weight problems. Which is why I always emphasize that the solution to weight loss is to eliminate industrial foods from your diet as much as possible. This perspective shifts the blame from the people stuck in an industrial food paradigm to the horribly skewed food system pumping out terrible products. The best way to do this is to emphasize the important of eating real, whole foods. So, what are real, whole foods?

• Fresh vegetables and fruits (preferably organically grown)
• Fresh meats like beef, poultry, pork (preferably pasture-raised, if possible)
• Dairy products like milk, yogurt, cheese, butter (preferably from grass-fed animals)
• Beans and legumes
• Nuts and seeds
• Whole grains
• Herbs and spices
• Plenty of filtered water

What's the rest of what you see on grocery store shelves, in fast-food restaurants, and on TV? Packaged and processed foods. If you eliminate these foods from your diet, I guarantee you will lose weight. But even more importantly, you are refusing to participate in an industrial food system that has proven to make people sick, devastate the environment, and exploit people, animals, and natural resources. Once you commit to taking a stand against that, the weight loss seems like an added bonus. For more, you can watch the whole interview here and the two minute version here.

[ted id=1774] In this compelling TED talk, Dr. Peter Attia says that insulin resistance and diabetes cause obesity — not the other way around as the conventional wisdom holds. More importantly, he says it's the refined grains, starches, and sugars in our diets that cause insulin resistance in the first place. Meaning, it's not how much we eat but what we eat -- more proof for the argument that all calories are not the same, contrary to what the food industry wants us to believe. It won't be long before Big Food will have to acknowledge the science and take responsibility for its poor quality food products, rather than insisting that all calories are the same and scolding Americans to simply "eat less and exercise more." Dr. Attia says that obesity is really just a proxy for the underlying illness that is insulin resistance. He says that by blaming the obese, we are blaming the victims in a food system gone awry. Our processed food supply — which is heavily reliant on refined grains and sugars — is the real culprit here.

The Bloomberg administration is back in court three months after a state court judge barred New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s proposal to create a city-wide ban on sugary beverages over 16 ounces. Reports of the latest court proceedings say that the judges were more sympathetic to lawyers from the American Beverage Association than to those from the Department of Health. Marion Nestle agrees and writes that, “the judges were much tougher on the DOH attorney than on the one from the ABA.”

Perhaps this is because the ABA has swayed public opinion so thoroughly in its opposition of the soda ban with its insidious and seemingly grassroots campaign, “New Yorkers for Beverage Choices.” This organization says it represents New Yorkers, businesses, and community organizers but is in fact a creation of the beverage industry itself. By using the language of “choice” the industry has persuaded many New Yorkers that by defending the billion-dollar beverage industry, they are in fact, standing up to elites like Bloomberg as well as protecting their civil liberties. Last July, paid canvassers hired by the beverage industry stopped New Yorkers on the street to sign petitions. So far, more than half a million people and businesses have signed on to protect New Yorker’s freedom to choose what size sugary beverage to buy.

Public opinion was also swayed back in January, when the NAACP and the Hispanic Federation sided with the beverage industry and opposed Mayor Bloomberg’s ban. This move brought the issues of race, class, choice, and agency to the fore in a debate seemingly about the prevalence of sugary drinks and their connection to the rates of diet-related disease and obesity. The ensuing conversation has shed light on the vast chasms across racial and class lines when it comes to reforming our food system and regulating our food industry.

The proposed soda ban highlights one crucial tenet about Americans: We do not like being told what to do. Rather, we prefer to be seduced by slick marketing and sexy ad campaigns. This way, it’s as if we have chosen one particular product based on a sense of self-identification — the ultimate goal of advertisers and corporations. The most obvious recent example of this is the marketing confluence of Beyoncé and Pepsi. Here we have the glamorous (svelte and healthy) mega pop star hawking a product that we know leads to obesity, diabetes, and a host of other health issues.

Of course, Beyoncé is only one in a long list of celebrities that shill for these beverage corporations: Elton John, Britney Spears, Mariah Carey, Madonna, LeBron James and Sofía Vergara are among the many others. Our American obsession with fame and wealth is partially why these endorsements work so well; the other part has to do with this concept of choice; after all, Pepsi’s tag line has long been, “The choice of a new generation.”

The question of choice is a sticky one in this soda ban debate since the billion dollar advertising industry has led Americans to believe they have unlimited choices when it comes to food and drink. Most Americans scoff at the idea of their “choices” actually being dictated to them by some outside force; but the reality is that we actually don’t have unlimited choices when it comes to our food. In fact, most options on grocery store shelves boil down to choosing products from roughly a handful of large corporations, often made using the same ingredients — corn and soy. Four companies make 75 percent of breakfast cereals and snacks, 60 percent of cookies, and 50 percent of all ice cream. Four companies slaughter 81 percent of all beef and control 70 percent of all milk sales.

Bloomberg can certainly wield great power with the soda ban, causing critics to cry overreach and nanny-state — but what about these corporations? And the billion dollar advertising industry? The difference is in the presentation: Bloomberg is no Beyoncé. When Beyoncé tells us what to drink we listen; when Bloomberg does, there’s outrage.

It’s worth asking the NAACP and Hispanic Federation why they don’t oppose Beyoncé’s marketing of Pepsi when we know that diabetes rates are 77 percent higher among African Americans and 66 percent higher among Latinos than their white peers. It’s been widely reported that both organizations receive funding from Big Beverage corporations, and thus opposing them has become too risky. As Michael F. Jacobson, executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, said in a New York Times article, “Their opposition makes the battles harder. It gives credibility to the industry’s arguments, which are typically self-serving.”

These organizations argue that the ban will unfairly harm bodega or other small business owners, which has validity since the ban seems arbitrary in its application. Why is a 20-ounce Frappuccino from Starbucks, with a whopping 79 grams of sugar, exempt from this ban simply because it contains dairy? By comparison, a 20-ounce bottle of Coke contains 65 grams of sugar and is not exempt. This example highlights two key contradictions: Large corporate stores won’t suffer financially from the ban; and there is an air of class discrimination between the people who typically buy these beverages.

Ben Jealous, NAACP President and CEO, has said that the organization would support a comprehensive ban. “This is the troubling part: this ‘ban’ wouldn’t have been a ban at all, in that it would have stopped it from the mom and pop shops, it wouldn’t have stopped it at 7-Eleven,” Jealous said on the Chris Hayes show. “How are you banning soda if you’re not banning ‘Big Gulps’?”

Bloomberg’s soda ban, while perhaps a step in the right direction, is akin to a band-aid on the big gaping wound that is our inequitable food system. The opposition to the ban by the NAACP and the Hispanic Federation shines a spotlight on that wound.

Public opinion is a powerful tool and the beverage industry is pushing all the right buttons to sway New Yorkers into siding with an industry that causes demonstrable harm to our health. If the judges agree that the ban is encroaching on our “freedom to choose,” then they too are missing the bigger picture.

But perhaps the most salient lesson to come out of this debate is just how limited changes to the food system will be if we do not address class and racial inequality. The claims of paternalism against Bloomberg’s ban are valid — the very concept of the ban implies that certain people are not capable of making good decisions on their own and strips them of agency. The trick is that the corporations are playing the same game. They aren’t giving consumers any more credit than Bloomberg is — they just make it so that when they tell us what to do, it’s a whole lot more sexy.

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

My latest radio interview with Dr. Robert Zieve on Healthy Medicine Radio. We discuss deceptive marketing by Big Food corporations, how a 'calorie isn't a calorie' and how obesity could be caused by malnutrition.

Healthy Medicine #143: New Thinking on Weight Control

Dr Zieve talks with author Kristin Wartman about how much obesity could be caused by malnutrition and her article "The Obesity Paradox."

http://healthymedicine.org/html/popups/hmr1-143.html

Also published in The Atlantic

What is the most heart-healthy diet? The answer to this much-debated question just became more controversial after a study in the forthcoming issue of Atherosclerosis reported that egg yolks are nearly as bad for your arteries as cigarette smoke. After years relegated to the do-not-eat list for fear of cholesterol-raising effects, the humble egg was finally making its way back into mainstream acceptance as a heart-healthy food full of healthy fats and protein. But it appears this latest study may indeed send us back to the days of egg-white omelets and Egg Beaters.

The study's authors surveyed more than 1,200 men and women, with an average age of 61.5, who were attending vascular prevention clinics. The author's claim that regular consumption of egg yolks is about two-thirds as bad as smoking when it comes to increased build-up of carotid plaque, a risk factor for stroke and heart attack.

But many believe there are issues with this study's methodology as well as the way the authors drew their conclusion. First, the study was based on recall questionnaires, which are notoriously unreliable. More importantly, the authors singled out one food from the patients' diets and determined this caused the trend towards atherosclerosis. They could have picked another food at random -- say the toast eaten with the eggs -- and drawn an associative relationship between toast and atherosclerosis.

"I think it's dangerous to look at just one food and deduce that the trend you see is caused by that food," MIT researcher and senior scientist Stephanie Seneff wrote to me in an email regarding the study.

Dr. Frank Hu, professor of nutrition and epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health, also wrote to me in an email, "[The study] did not measure or control other aspects of diet such as intakes of meats, fruits, or vegetables and did not control for lifestyle factors such as physical inactivity. The data could be useful for generating some hypotheses, but it is difficult to draw any causal conclusions."

Despite these flaws, the damage to the reputation of egg yolks may already be done. "It's very worrisome that these authors of the egg-yolk-is-bad article have managed to come up with a fairly simple and relatively compelling story which will scare a lot of people away from eating egg yolks," Seneff said.

The study has potentially serious consequences for people trying to improve their health and reduce their risk of stroke and heart disease -- and that's because most people should be eating more eggs, and particularly the yolks, not fewer. That's what Seneff told me in a recent phone interview. She and her team at MIT are working on some compelling new research about the role of dietary fat and cholesterol and our health. Her research is so counter to the current dietary dogma that it sounds shocking at first: Seneff believes that Americans are actually suffering from a cholesterol deficiency rather than excess. She's concerned that studies like these only serve to confuse the public more about the role of dietary cholesterol. Seneff believes that cholesterol has been wrongly vilified and in fact, foods that contain high amounts of cholesterol -- like egg yolks and other animal proteins -- are key to improving heart health, maintaining a healthy weight, and staving off many diet-related diseases.

Of course, not everyone agrees. There are conflicting studies to show that dietary cholesterol both does and does not affect our blood levels of cholesterol. "Much of the cholesterol in the blood is produced endogenously," Hu wrote. "However, dietary factors (fats and cholesterol) can influence serum cholesterol levels." An article about eggs on the Harvard School of Public Health's website reads, "While it's true that egg yolks have a lot of cholesterol -- and so may weakly affect blood cholesterol levels -- eggs also contain nutrients that may help lower the risk for heart disease, including protein, vitamins B12 and D, riboflavin, and folate."

The picture becomes even more complicated because elevated cholesterol levels do not necessarily mean one is at greater risk for a heart attack. More than 60 percent of all heart attacks occur in people with normal cholesterol levels and the majority of people with high cholesterol never suffer heart attacks. Many studies now show that high LDL (the so-called "bad cholesterol") and heart disease are not linked. In 2005, the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons reported that as many as half of the people who have heart disease have normal or desirable levels of LDL. Also in 2005, researchers found that older men and women with high LDL live longer.

Dr. J. David Spence, the first author of the egg yolk study and professor of neurology and clinical pharmacology at Western University, told me in an interview that serum cholesterol is "not the be all, end all of vascular risk." He's more concerned about what happens to our cholesterol levels after we consume cholesterol-containing foods, rather than our fasting cholesterol levels, which is what's checked at the doctor's office. "Egg yolks only raise fasting cholesterol by about ten percent," he said. "But four hours after you eat a high cholesterol meal you get inflammation in the arteries, there's increased oxidative stress, the increase in oxidized LDL cholesterol--which is the most harmful form or cholesterol -- is almost 40 percent, and you have impairment of the function of the artery lining."

Spence is concerned that people do not know just how much cholesterol is in one egg yolk. "For people who are at high risk for heart attacks and strokes the recommended amount of cholesterol is below 200 mg a day and one large egg yolk has 210 mg of cholesterol--there is more cholesterol in one egg yolk than the total recommended daily intake of cholesterol," he said. "To put that in perspective, one egg yolk has more cholesterol than a Hardee's Monster Thickburger which contains 12 ounces of beef, three slices of cheese, and four slices of bacon. I know the burger is worse than the egg because it also has saturated fat but the cholesterol per se is harmful and in fact, cholesterol is permissive of the harmful effects of saturated fats."

As such, Spence recommends switching to egg whites or to egg-substitutes and eating a diet that is low in animal fats and low in cholesterol. "I tell my patients to learn how to make a nice tasty omelet or frittata with egg whites, or--what I like even better--is a carton of scrambled eggs with no cholesterol. They're called Egg Beaters, or Better-n-Eggs," Spence said.

Better-n-Eggs is an egg substitute product that contains 98 percent egg whites and includes these additional ingredients: corn oil, water, natural flavors, sodium hexametaphosphate, guar gum, xanthan gum, color (includes beta carotene).

Is Spence concerned about the various additives and the processing that goes into these types of products? "No. I'm more concerned about the cholesterol in eggs."

It's worth pointing out that many of the nutrients found in eggs are found in the yolk. Among many other nutrients, egg yolk contains lecithin, which helps the body digest fat and metabolize cholesterol; betaine and choline which lower homocysteine levels; glutathione, which helps fight cancer and prevents oxidation of LDL; lutein and zeaxanthin, which have been shown to prevent colon cancer; and biotin, a B vitamin crucial for healthy hair, skin, and nerves.

I asked Spence what he thought about the various nutrients found in egg yolks -- if we eliminate eggs from our diets won't we be missing out on these nutrients? "Oh come on," he said. "You can get those nutrients a lot safer if you eat them in other foods that aren't loaded with cholesterol. There are no nutrients in the egg yolk that you need."

The MIT researcher Stephanie Seneff would beg to differ. In fact, research she is currently working on shows that one crucial nutrient -- sulfur, which egg yolks contain in very high amounts -- may be the underlying deficiency to our collective problems with cholesterol and heart disease. "The key to everything may just be sulfur," Seneff says.

Sulfur is a mineral found in several foods, including vegetables like broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, garlic, and kale. It is also found in very large amounts in animal proteins -- one of the best-known sources is egg yolk. When sulfur combines with four oxygen molecules, it becomes sulfate. Sulfate is combined with cholesterol to produce cholesterol sulfate in large amounts when our skin is exposed to sunlight as well. Sulfation is important to enable cholesterol transport to all the tissues.

The research Seneff and her team are working on is a complete reevaluation of our understanding of cholesterol and its role. It's a fairly complex biological process but put simply, Seneff believes that the build up doctors find in arteries is "cholesterol trapped in the wrong place," or cholesterol trapped in the plaque. The reason it's trapped in the plaque is because the LDL is damaged from excess sugar in the blood. As a result of our highly processed, starchy, sugary diets, many Americans have excess blood sugar. Once the sugar has damaged the LDL it cannot go back to the liver where the cholesterol would be processed and recycled back into the body. The plaque then builds up in the arteries, where it "waits for the opportunity to become cholesterol sulfate, which all of the body's systems need," Seneff says. "The bottleneck is the sulfate. Cholesterol needs sulfate to be mobile. The damage then is a consequence of lack of cholesterol and lack of sulfate."

This may be why a much larger study in The Journal of the American Medical Association found "no overall significant association between egg consumption and heart disease." In fact, the study of 118,000 people found that those who ate five or six eggs per week had significantly lower mean serum cholesterol levels than those who ate one egg per week. Plus, the daily nutrient intake of people who ate eggs was much higher than the non-egg eaters.

In the public imagination, cholesterol is the villain whose only function is to clog up arteries. "This is the complete wrong picture," Seneff says. "It's very easy to imagine plaque build up -- but it's not the correct picture. Cholesterol is vital -- it is a precious substance in our bodies. Cholesterol is to animals what chlorophyll is to plants."

Are we to increase our consumption of egg yolks as Seneff suggests or completely eliminate them as Spence advises? What we need are clear guidelines, not influenced by industry, that present a straightforward approach to weight loss and a healthy body. The simplest answer currently available is to eliminate processed foods from our diets -- the saturation of processed foods into our diets tracks most closely with the rise in obesity and diet-related disease in this country. So when presented with confusing dietary advice or questions while food shopping ask yourself this simple question: What's my least processed option? Take that one.

Recently, I wrote here on Civil Eats that it may not be long before the food industry will be proven wrong about their two favorite messages: All calories are created equal, and it’s all about personal responsibility. Well, it appears that science may be one step closer to proving at least half of that equation wrong and that in fact; all calories are not created equal. The latest study, published in The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) this week, found that when it came to weight loss and maintaining weight loss, those who ate a low carbohydrate, high fat diet kept more weight off than those who were on either a low glycemic diet or a low fat, high carbohydrate diet.

While all participants in the study ate the same number of calories, the types consumed varied. The low fat diet contained 60 percent carbohydrates, 20 percent protein, and 20 percent fat. The low glycemic diet contained 40 percent carbs, 40 percent fat, and 20 percent protein (with a focus on minimally processed foods). The low carb diet had 10 percent of calories from carbs, 60 percent from fat, and 30 percent from protein.

Compared to those on the low fat diet, those following the low carb diet burned 350 calories more per day and those on the low glycemic diet burned 150 calories more per day.

The most compelling part of this study is that it calls into question the long-held belief in the scientific and medical communities that all calories are created equal. This is a message the food industry has also seized on since it means they can continue to pump out ultra processed nutritionally void foods and tell Americans to “eat them in moderation.” If all calories are created equal, the food industry says, then there are no bad foods.

But this message doesn’t just come from the food industry, Marion Nestle, a long-time critic of Big Food, has spoken about calories in a similar way. She wrote on her blog that the JAMA study was too small (it had 21 participants) and that more research was needed outside of a controlled setting. She’s quoted in USA Today saying:

Longer studies conducted among people in their own environments, not with such controlled meals, have shown “little difference in weight loss and maintenance between one kind of diet and another.” More research is needed to show that interesting results like these are applicable in real life, she says. “In the meantime, if you want to lose weight, eat less.”

I disagree. As a nutrition educator, I think that telling people to “eat less” is largely ineffective and continues to place the burden on the consumer as part of the personal responsibility credo. On the other hand, telling people to eliminate processed, refined carbohydrates and sugars, while eating plenty of high quality fats, proteins, and vegetables seems to be a more workable solution to stimulating weight loss. Part of the reason this may be so effective is because simple carbohydrates and sugars actually stimulate appetite and cravings, while fats, proteins, and complex carbohydrates like vegetables, beans, and legumes satiate and stabilize blood sugar.

A recent report put out by the World Public Health Nutrition Association found that processing does matter, noting that ultra processed foods are “habit-forming and some would say often at least quasi-addictive. They do displace healthy meals, dishes and foods and thus are liable to cause obesity or else at least mild malnutrition.”

The addictive factor of these foods is highly problematic and there’s evidence to suggest that eating sugar makes you crave and consume more sugar starting with our experiences as babies and even in utero (see a recent article on Gilt Taste for more on this).

And according to Robert Lustig, a professor of clinical pediatrics at UC San Francisco, a low carb diet or a low glycemic diet is what helps keep our insulin levels low, he believes that elevated insulin levels are at the root of obesity. “To borrow a phrase from Bill Clinton: It’s the insulin, stupid. The reason any diet will work is because it lowers insulin. And a diet that doesn’t, like the traditional low-fat diet, won’t work,” he said in a recent Los Angeles Times article.

Anecdotally, I’ve noticed that once my clients cut sugar and simple carbohydrates from their diets their cravings for these kinds of foods quickly dissipate. It’s only observational, but I see it repeatedly and so do other nutritionists and doctors I know.

Over online at The New York Times, Mark Bittman wrote about the JAMA study with a conclusive evaluation, “The message is pretty simple: unprocessed foods give you a better chance of idealizing your weight—and your health. Because all calories are not created equal.”

But there’s still no consensus among doctors, nutritionists, researchers, or writers.

The implications for coming to a scientific consensus about whether or not types of calories do matter cannot be understated since it could effect regulation for Big Food as well as the dietary recommendations from the government which translates to (among other things) what children eat in school every day. Right now, MyPlate recommends that Americans eat an average of 6.3 servings of grains a day. Even the American Diabetes Association recommends a high carbohydrate and low fat diet. But if the results from this latest study are accurate, all of these recommendations may ultimately prove harmful. Acknowledging that all calories are not created equal and that ultra processed foods are detrimental to everyone would go a long way in changing our crash course with diet related disease and death.

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.

A version of this post first appeared in The Atlantic

Conventional wisdom says that weight gain or loss is based on the energy balance model of "calories in, calories out," which is often reduced to the simple refrain, "eat less, and exercise more." But new research reveals a far more complex equation that appears to rest on several other important factors affecting weight gain. Researchers in a relatively new field are looking at the role of industrial chemicals and non-caloric aspects of foods -- called obesogens -- in weight gain. Scientists conducting this research believe that these substances that are now prevalent in our food supply may be altering the way our bodies store fat and regulate our metabolism. But not everyone agrees. Many scientists, nutritionists, and doctors are still firm believers in the energy balance model. A debate has ensued, leaving a rather unclear picture as to what's really at work behind our nation's spike in obesity.

Bruce Blumberg, professor of developmental and cell biology and pharmaceutical sciences at the University of California, Irvine, who coined the term "obesogen," studies the effect that organotins -- a class of persistent organic pollutants that are widely used in the manufacture of polyvinylchloride plastics, as fungicides and pesticides on crops, as slimicides in industrial water systems, as wood preservatives, and as marine antifouling agents -- have on the body's metabolism. Organotins, which he considers to be obesogens, "change how your body responds to calories," he says. "So the ones we study, tributyltin and triphenyltin, actually cause exposed animals to have more and bigger fat cells. The animals that we treat with these chemicals don't eat a different diet than the ones who don't get fat. They eat the same diet -- we're not challenging them with a high-fat or a high-carbohydrate diet. They're eating normal food, and they're getting fatter."

A widely reported study that came out in January in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (AJCN) would seem to dispute this finding: it confirms the belief in the energy balance model, and has been cited as proof by many researchers working in the field. I asked an author of the study, Dr. George Bray, professor of medicine at Louisiana State University, about the myriad of additives and industrial ingredients in our food that were not accounted for in this study. "It doesn't make any difference," he said in a telephone interview. "Calories count. If you can show me that it doesn't work, I'd love to see it. Or anybody else who says it doesn't -- there ain't no data the other way around."

The participants in the AJCN study were given low, normal, and high amounts of protein and 1,000 more calories than needed. The study does not take into account the content and form of calories, how they were processed, or with what additives or industrial chemicals.

Bray doesn't believe that additives or how foods are processed or produced will ultimately affect the outcome of studies. In fact, he completed research in 2007 that he refers to as his "Big Mac study," which fed participants three meals a day for three days giving one group fast-food items like Big Macs and the other group foods made "from scratch." Bray says the results showed that the type of food made no difference: "At least in an acute study measuring glucose tolerance, insulin, and things -- they don't make any difference. Now, if you fed them over a longer time period, it's clearly going to be the quantity that matters, largely."

One study conducted at Princeton University indicates that types of calories do matter. Researchers found that rats drinking high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) gained significantly more weight than rats drinking sugar water, even though the amount of calories consumed was the same. The rats drinking HFCS also exhibited signs of metabolic syndrome, including abnormal weight gain, especially visceral fat around the belly, and significant increases in circulating triglycerides.

Miriam Bocarsly, the lead author of the Princeton study and a Ph.D. candidate there, said in a phone interview: "The question of calories in, calories out is a very good one and is highly debated in the field. You have traditional nutritionists who say 'energy in energy out,' but we have this result and at this point all we can really say is that this is what is happening in the rat model. Something is obviously different between HFCS and table sugar, and the next question is, What is that difference?"

Blumberg says that fructose itself is an obesogen. "Crystalline fructose doesn't exist in nature, we're making that," he says. "Fructose is not a food. People think fructose comes from fruit but it doesn't. The fructose that we eat is synthesized. Yes, it's derived from food. But cyanide is derived from food, too. Would you call it a food?"

Robert H. Lustig, a pediatric neuroendocrinologist and a professor of pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco, also believes that fructose is an obesogen. "I personally do lump fructose in with [obesogens]," he told me in an email. "There are those who don't, because fructose is a nutrient, and they want to think of an obesogen as a foreign chemical. But because fructose tricks the brain into eating more in a free-range situation, it has some properties consistent with an obesogen."

Lustig is another researcher and doctor who finds fault in the calories in, calories out model. "I don't believe in the energy balance model, which is calorie-centric," he says. "I believe in the fat deposition model, which is insulin-centric. The reason is that by altering insulin dynamics, you can alter both caloric consumption and physical activity behavior. This has been my research for the past 16 years." What Lustig means is that by increasing circulating insulin -- often as a result of consuming too much fructose -- people become hungrier and more fatigued, which results in overeating and little motivation to exercise.

Another possible obesogen that has made headlines recently is bisphenol-A (BPA), which is found in an overwhelming number of food items and packaging material. Frederick S. vom Saal, curators' professor at the University of Missouri-Columbia, receives funding the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences for his research on BPA. "We do animal experiments with chemicals like BPA, and we dramatically alter the way fat is regulated in those animals," vom Saal said in a phone interview. "And they're not changing their food intake."

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that "nearly all" Americans tested have BPA in their urine, "which indicates widespread exposure to BPA in the U.S. population." The American Chemistry Council has called for a ban on BPA in baby bottles and sippy cups (which California and several other states have already done), and some food manufacturers are already moving away from using BPA in their packaging. On Monday, Campbell's Soup announced it will stop using BPA in the lining of its cans. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is scheduled to decide by the end of March whether to ban the chemical's use in all food and beverage packaging.

Vom Saal believes that BPA is only the most prominent example of many substances in our food supply and environment that functions as an obesogen. "If people really want to solve the obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease epidemics," he says, "it isn't a wise thing to be ignoring any contributor to this. And we're not obese just because of HFCS, or because of BPA. I also know that nicotine and PCBs and other chemicals are implicated in diabetes and metabolic disease as well."

The energy balance model diverts responsibility back to the consumer because conventional wisdom says the spike in obesity is the result of people consuming more foods than ever before.

Lustig echoes vom Saal's belief that a wide range of substances in our food supply and our environment are likely leading to obesity and metabolic disease based on hosts of studies of various substances. These include soy-based infant formula, phthalates (used in many plastics), PCBs (found in coolant and electrical equipment), DDE (a type of pesticide), fungicides, and atrazine (a common pesticide).

If the obesogen theory comes to be accepted and casts doubt on the energy balance model, the food industry will be in trouble. It would be harder to keep promoting diet and "health" foods that may be low in calories but that also contain an array of substances that may actually prove to contribute to weight gain.

The emphasis that industry places on personal choice puts the onus back on the individual and leaves the consumer with tough decisions to make about industrial food products and additives. The food industry does not disclose what kinds of potential obesogens, like certain organotins or BPA, are in its products, because these substances are not required to be listed on labels and are difficult for the FDA to regulate. With an emerging debate in the scientific community and an absence of information on labels, consumers are left making their best guess on the safety and health of foods.

"People say to me all the time, 'What do I do?'" vom Saal says. "And the answer is, there's not much we can do, because industry has no legal mandate to tell you, and so they refuse to tell you the way they're using these chemicals. How do you avoid something you are blind to?"

The energy balance model also diverts responsibility back to the consumer because conventional wisdom says that the spike in obesity and diet-related disease is the result of people consuming more foods than ever before. But a review of the literature in The Obesity Epidemic: Science, Morality, and Ideology by Michael Gard and Jan Wright asserts that there is no evidence that food intake levels have increased in industrialized countries, or that activity levels have declined. According to Gard and Wright, some studies even suggest a reduction in energy intake over the past several decades.

Julie Guthman, a professor of community studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, points out in her new book, Weighing In, that the amount of calories consumed across racial lines and income levels varies little, according to a study by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). This is despite the fact that obesity and overweight do vary across racial lines and income levels: Poorer people tend to be more obese, and African Americans and Latinos have higher rates of obesity than do whites. This means there must be some other mechanism, Guthman says, besides excess calories, in the varying levels of obesity. In her book, she refers to the possible role of environmental factors like exposure to obesogens and other toxins, stress, and non-nutritional aspects of food.

Guthman would like to see stronger regulation on the part of the government, and a discussion that focuses more on how food is produced and not just on how much is eaten. "I think people would like to say that weight loss is simple and that it's all about changing personal behavior," Guthman says. "So there's an emphasis on trying to make people have better lifestyles or on changing the built environment."

This seems to fit with Marion Nestle's approach to educating people on weight loss. Nestle is the co-author of a new book on the subject, Why Calories Count. "BPA, PCBs, and other such contaminating chemicals can't possibly be good for health," she said in an email. "But it's really hard to prove that they cause demonstrable harm. They might have something to do with obesity -- I suppose it's not impossible -- but why invoke complicated explanations when the evidence for calories is so strong? Let's say obesogens affect a body weight regulatory factor, which they very well might do. But so what? Weight is regulated by more than a hundred biological factors, and these are redundant, which means that if something goes wrong with one of them the others fill in the deficit."

The "so what," Guthman says, is that "We really don't understand the science enough, and there's new evidence in the science that completely re-shifts how we think about these things."

According to Blumberg, the food industry would like to discredit emerging research on obesogens. "What industry typically does is fund studies that produce the opposite conclusions, thereby shedding doubt on the science," he says. "If you take BPA as an example, the vast majority of studies performed by independent government and academic scientists show that it has numerous deleterious effects on health. In contrast, not a single industry-funded or -conducted study has found any hazard associated with BPA."

Can we afford to continue to frame the discussion simply in terms of calories in and calories out? Or by looking only at conventional categories like fat, protein, and carbohydrates and diary, meat, grains, and vegetables? Given the proliferation of industrial pollutants and the ultra-processing of foods in our current food systems, it seems that we can't.

“What new scientific paradigms like this do is shake up the existing science,” Guthman says. “People are resistant to it because so much is embedded in the old paradigm — once you open that up, the science is open to all sorts of other claims.”

Erin Fairbanks of the Farm Report interviewed me last Thursday on Heritage Radio Network. We talked about nutrition, food, and the corporate control of the food supply. Here's the link to the full interview and the write up the station wrote: The Farm Report - Episode 98 - Nutrition with Kristin Wartman

Certified Holistic Nutritionist Kristin Wartman joins the Farm Report with Erin Fairbanks today to bust some food myths and expose some of the evils of big industry agriculture and food. Find out what makes a healthy diet and hear about some of the common mistakes people make in trying to get healthy. Hear why Kristin thinks food and democracy go hand in hand and why all concerned foodies should be occupying Wall Street and making their voice heard!

One in four children goes without breakfast each morning, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, a tragedy to be sure—but are Kellogg’s breakfast products the solution? Last week Kellogg announced its new project called Share Your Breakfast, part of a national advertising campaign. The project asks Americans to upload their breakfast photos to the Web site shareyourbreakfast.com, and for each breakfast photo shared, Kellogg Company will donate up to $200,000—the equivalent of one million school breakfasts to help feed children from food-insecure households. Feeding hungry children sure sounds nice, but filling hungry bellies with highly-processed junk foods is hardly the answer.

Let’s take a look at some of the products Kellogg is promoting as part of this endeavor.

Frosted Flakes—one of the products represented by Tony the Tiger at a National Breakfast Day event in New York last Tuesday—contains 11 grams of sugar per three-fourths cup serving. After the first ingredient of milled corn, the next three read: Sugar, malt flavoring, and high-fructose-corn-syrup—three forms of sugar by different names.

Nutri-Grain bars—a product promoted as healthy—contain more than 30 ingredients (minus the synthetic vitamins) and include high-fructose-corn syrup, artificial flavors, red #40, TBHQ, and host of other chemicals. Meanwhile, the front of the package reads: “More of the whole grains your body needs,” “Good source of fiber,” and “Made with real fruit.” The only “real fruit” I could find is “strawberry puree concentrate” and it’s listed after high-fructose-corn syrup and corn syrup. Each bar contains 11 grams of sugar and 3 grams of fiber.

Even Corn Flakes contain sugar, malt flavoring, and high-fructose-corn-syrup, listed as its second, third, and fourth ingredients. Kellogg is also offering promotions on Rice Krispies, Mini-Wheats, and Eggo Waffles—the waffles contain partially-hydrogenated oils in addition to high-fructose-corn syrup.

But Kellogg Company knows that people are concerned about feeding their kids sugar and chemicals for breakfast every morning, so it has dedicated whole sections of its Web site to “correcting” false nutrition information. In one section, Kellogg refers to sugar as the “misunderstood nutrient.” According to the Web site, “Sugar does not cause obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart disease or hyperactivity.” This statement flies in the face of the most recent research and a host of mainstream studies that say the exact opposite.

One of the most recent studies, reported in TIME Magazine last year, found that consuming added sugars raises the risk for heart disease by raising cholesterol and triglycerides. The American Heart Association’s (AHA) Web site states, “High intake of added sugars is implicated in numerous poor health conditions, including obesity, high blood pressure and other risk factors for heart disease and stroke.” The AHA is so concerned about the amount of added sugars in the American diet that in 2009 it established upper limits for adults (none exist yet for children, oddly enough). The AHA says that women should get no more than six teaspoons a day and men no more than nine.

Most of the Kellogg products I researched contained an average of 11 grams of sugar per serving, which is close to three teaspoons of sugar. If we assume that the average child weighs about half what the average woman weighs, then three teaspoons is the upper limit of how much a child should safely consume in one day, according to the AHA. That means the child couldn’t eat any other added sugars for the rest of the day (not likely) and that he or she could only eat the single three-fourths cup serving (also, not likely). The AHA says the average American eats an alarming 22 teaspoons of added sugar a day.

According to research by the Yale Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity, children will eat cereal with less sugar if the option is made available. The report found that the industry strives to reinforce the myth that children will not eat low-sugar cereals. “The industry has funded a number of studies that find that highly-sweetened cereal is good for children, especially when compared to having no breakfast at all,” the report noted.

Nutrition information based on these studies is exactly what Kellogg has laced throughout its Web site. In the section on sugar, you’ll find, “Keep in mind that a little sugar in foods can help the nutrition go down. For instance, picky kids might be more likely to eat presweetened cereal or drink chocolate milk. They’ll love the taste and you’ll love the nutrients they get from these foods.” This may well be true, but a “little sugar” is a lot different than the 11 grams found in a three-fourths cup serving of Frosted Flakes.

The Rudd Center’s 2009 report also found that some rather insidious advertising techniques appeared to be on the horizon. “What was once a simple marketing landscape—television advertising during cartoons—has morphed into a complex web of persuasive messages even adults may not perceive as marketing. Internet games and marketing through social media such as Facebook are just the beginning and do not capture digital advances that will occur in the future,” it stated. With this new Kellogg campaign it appears that day has arrived.

Make no mistake, Share Your Breakfast is an advertising campaign above all else. According to a New York Times article, the campaign is the largest integrated marketing effort, with ads in broadcast, print, digital, print, and social media. The campaign asks users to upload pictures to Twitter and Facebook, in addition to posting them on Kellogg’s Web site. And while Kellogg has agreed to donate up to $200,000 towards feeding hungry school children, this pales in comparison to the amount the company spends on advertising overall. The Times reports that Kellogg spent $464.9 million on advertising from January through September 2010 and $454 million from January 2009 through September 2009.

Meanwhile, the company is painting a rather rosy picture as to its motivations. “We find there’s a lot of people who don’t have access to breakfast,” Doug VanDeVelde, Senior Vice President for marketing and innovation at Kellogg told the Times. “We just felt like as the breakfast leader, we should do something about that.”

He’s right, Kellogg and every other food industry giant certainly should do something about the hunger problem, but they shouldn’t be filling already undernourished children with food products that are nutritionally void at best.

How about providing funds to feed kids real food for breakfast? Eggs, plain yogurt with fresh fruit, oatmeal, a fresh fruit smoothie with yogurt, milk, or nut milk, a slice of real, whole-grain bread with almond or peanut butter (skip the Skippy!). All of these breakfasts can be made in five to 10 minutes without the added sugar or hype.

Or better yet, why not apply some of that creative talent along with that large advertising budget and produce breakfasts that are nutritious enough to qualify as real foods? Then we could believe them when they say, “The best to you each morning.”

The low-fat trend finally appears to be on its way out. The notion that saturated fats are detrimental to our health is deeply embedded in our Zeitgeist—but shockingly, the opposite just might be true. For over 50 years the medical establishment, public health officials, nutritionists, and dieticians have been telling the American people to eat a low-fat diet, and in particular, to avoid saturated fats. Only recently, have nutrition experts begun to encourage people to eat “healthy fats.” This past December, the Los Angeles Times reported that excess carbohydrates and sugar, not fat, are responsible for America’s obesity and diabetes epidemics. One of the lead researchers in this field, Dr. Frank Hu, professor of nutrition and epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health, said, “The country’s big low-fat message backfired. The overemphasis on reducing fat caused the consumption of carbohydrates and sugar in our diets to soar. That shift may be linked to the biggest health problems in America today.” Another expert, Dr. Walter Willett, chairman of the department of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health, said, “Fat is not the problem.”

Last month, Martha Rose Shulman of the New York Times Recipes for Health section, wrote that she’s taken the “no low-fat pledge.” Shulman writes, “I took a pledge the other day that will surprise my longtime followers. It even surprised me. I pledged to drop the term ‘low-fat’ from my vocabulary.”

Shulman, an influential food and recipe writer with over 25 books to her name, has long promoted low-fat and light cooking, but now writes, “There are many recipes in my cookbooks from the 90s that now look and taste dated to me. I’ve put back some of the oil and cheese that I took out when editors were telling me to keep total fat at 30 percent of total calories–a concept that is now obsolete even among policymakers.”

She and a room full of “nutrition scientists, dietitians, doctors, chefs and food service titans” recently listened to experts on nutrition debunk some of the common fat myths. Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, who co-directs the program in cardiovascular epidemiology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School and is an assistant professor at the Harvard School of Public Health, was also there and said, “No randomized trial looking at weight change has shown that people did better on a low-fat diet. For many people, low-fat diets are even worse than moderate or high-fat diets because they’re often high in carbohydrates from rapidly digested foods such as white flour, white rice, potatoes, refined snacks and sugary drinks.”

These are clear indications that an important tipping point in the mainstream understanding of fat and nutrition is underway. But it did take some time. Back in 2002, Gary Taubes wrote about it in the New York Times magazine, laying out a fine deconstruction of the low-fat premise presented to the American people. He pointed out that the science behind this recommendation was never proven and was actually based on “a leap of faith” (more on this here).

In 2001, Dr. Hu, writing in the Journal of the American College of Nutrition, noted, “It is now increasingly recognized that the low-fat campaign has been based on little scientific evidence and may have caused unintended health problems.” Or, as Michael Pollan pithily puts it in his In Defense of Food, “The amount of saturated fat in the diet may have little if any bearing on the risk of heart disease, and the evidence that increasing polyunsaturated fats in the diet will reduce risk is slim to nil.”

This brings up several important issues in the fat debate. It is still widely held that what matters are the types of fat we consume. Even in Shulman’s article on her fat re-education, there are contradictions—it’s clear she just can’t get her head around the idea that saturated fats may indeed be healthy. She writes, “Saturated fat—the kind found in animals and dairy products, as well as in any hydrogenated fat—is also regarded as a less healthy fat because it raises L.D.L cholesterol, or ‘bad’ cholesterol in the blood, and this kind of cholesterol is related to heart disease. But even saturated fat is not so bad compared to refined carbohydrates, the doctors say, and if we were to eliminate it from our diet we would also be eliminating many foods that are also rich in healthy fats, like fish, whose omega-3 fatty acids are vital to good health.”

But as Pollan points out, the idea that saturated fats are a less healthy fat just isn’t true, as the picture is fairly complex. Indeed, most foods are composed of a many different types of fats. For example, half the fat found in beef is unsaturated and most of that fat is the same monounsaturated fat found in olive oil. Lard is 60 percent unsaturated and most of the fat in chicken fat is unsaturated as well, according to Taubes 2008 book Good Calories, Bad Calories.  In his New York Times article he writes, “Even saturated fats–AKA, the bad fats—are not nearly as deleterious as you would think. True, they will elevate your bad cholesterol, but they will also elevate your good cholesterol. In other words, it’s a virtual wash.” Taubes continues, “Foods considered more or less deadly under the low-fat dogma turn out to be comparatively benign if you actually look at their fat content. More than two-thirds of the fat in a porterhouse steak, for instance, will definitively improve your cholesterol profile (at least in comparison with the baked potato next to it); it’s true that the remainder will raise your L.D.L., the bad stuff, but it will also boost your H.D.L. The same is true for lard. If you work out the numbers, you come to the surreal conclusion that you can eat lard straight from the can and conceivably reduce your risk of heart disease.”

Nearly every day new research and studies come out debunking popular fat myths; despite this, misinformation persists. On the Mayo Clinic’s Web site, saturated fats are lumped in with trans-fats under the banner “harmful dietary fat” and the site claims that saturated fat can increase your risk of cardiovascular disease and Type 2 diabetes.

The link to cardiovascular disease is tenuous at best—the idea being that saturated fats raise your cholesterol and triglyceride levels which in turn leads to cardiovascular disease. But according to the most recent studies, including one reported in the Los Angeles Times article, this is not true. “Contrary to what many expect—dietary fat intake is not directly related to blood fat. Rather, the amount of carbohydrates in the diet appears to be a potent contributor,” Marni Jameson writes.

And during a symposium called “The Great Fat Debate: Is There Validity In the Age-Old Dietary Guidance?” at the American Dietetic Association’s Food and Nutrition Conference and Expo, four leading experts agreed that replacing saturated fat with carbohydrates is likely to raise the risk of cardiovascular disease. Dr. Walter Willett said, “If anything, the literature shows a slight advantage of the high fat diet.”

And as for diabetes, there is no data to support the notion that a high-fat diet increases the risk for diabetes. Again, if anything, the opposite appears to be true. In a 2008 study reported in the Los Angeles Times article, obese men and women with metabolic syndrome (a precursor to diabetes) that went on a high saturated-fat, low-carb diet saw their triglycerides drop by 50 percent and their levels of good H.D.L. cholesterol increase by 15 percent.

But old dietary habits die hard and convincing people that what they’ve been told for the past 50 years is just plain wrong, is a hard sell. Not only that, but the continued recommendations to eat low-fat versions of foods (as in the USDA’s latest dietary guidelines and on the Mayo Clinic’s Web site) don’t help. Americans are confused about nutrition and disease and it’s only getting more complex with corporations claiming to make healthier foods (see Mark Bittman’s take on McDonald’s oatmeal and my take on Wal-Mart’s health washing).

Keep in mind, there is one type of fat that is implicated in high cholesterol, atherosclerosis, heart disease, and diabetes: Trans-fat. Trans-fats raise bad cholesterol, lower good cholesterol, and increase triglycerides, they also promotes inflammation and insulin resistance, according to a 2000 article in the Journal of the American College of Nutrition. This points to the one basic axiom that always hold true: Eat real, whole foods and nothing else—now, if we could only just all agree on what those are.

Once again, the Tea Party heavyweights are using food to cast First Lady Michelle Obama as a proponent for an all-controlling nanny state. Last month, the first lady's efforts to rein in the junk-food industry drew the ire of right-wing scolds. More recently, her promotion of breast-feeding, particularly among African-American women, drew controversy. At around the same time, the Internal Revenue Service announced that breast pumps would be eligible for tax breaks. Strangely enough, some conservatives leapt to attack the simple notion of encouraging breast-feeding -- which has been shown in many studies to reduce the incidence of childhood obesity. Tea Party star and Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann (R) accused the first lady of pushing a leftist agenda intent on making "government the answer to everything." On Laura Ingram's radio show last week, Bachmann said: "To think that government has to go out and buy my breast pump ... You want to talk about nanny state, I think we just got a new definition."

Bachmann's claim that the government is buying breast pumps is nonsense. The IRS simply announced it would allow people to deduct breast-feeding expenses from their taxes. And since breast pumps can be costly (I found them online in the range of $75 to $350), the tax break would be a relief to many working mothers. But for Bachmann and her ilk, any government intervention to support healthier options is fodder for harsh criticism.

Last month, I wrote about America's vexed relationship with fast food and Sarah Palin's attempts to discredit the work Obama is doing with her Let's Move campaign. Last year on the Laura Ingram show, Palin came out swinging against the first lady saying, "Instead of a government thinking that they need to take over and make decisions for us according to some politician or politician's wife priorities, just leave us alone, get off our back, and allow us as individuals to exercise our own God-given rights."

Palin made a contentious remark of her own about Obama's breast-feeding statements, saying, "No wonder Michelle Obama's telling everybody, 'you'd better breast-feed your baby.' Yeah, you'd better, because the price of milk is so high right now!"

It's unclear why Bachmann or Palin wouldn't want to foster an environment that makes it easier for mothers to breast-feed their babies. Bachman's implication that this is unpatriotic and an infringement on American rights is baffling given the fact that all politicians at least pay lip service to the importance of motherhood -- to attack breast-feeding, as Bachmann and Palin have, is to attack healthy mothers and babies.

There are a host of studies to show just how important breast-feeding is. The Centers for Disease Control has an entire section on its website dedicated to explaining the benefits of breast-feeding. Just this past January, the surgeon general issued The Call to Action to Support Breastfeeding and lists a myriad of benefits when it comes to breast-feeding on her website. The benefits include: Protecting babies from infections and illnesses such as diarrhea, ear infections, and pneumonia; preventing the development of asthma; preventing obesity; reducing the risk of sudden infant death syndrome; and a decreased risk of breast and ovarian cancers in mothers.

These are substantial health benefits and they are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to all that breast-feeding does for both mother and baby. Obama's focus is that nursing prevents obesity and diabetes because breast milk contains the protein adiponectin, which lowers blood sugar. Low levels of adiponectin are linked to obesity, diabetes, insulin resistance, and heart disease. (For more detailed information on the benefits of breast-feeding I recommend Nina Planck's book, Real Food for Mother and Baby.)

The surgeon general also lists the economic benefits of breast-feeding; something you'd think might pique Palin and Bachman's interest. According to the website, a study published last year in the journal Pediatrics estimated that if 90 percent of U.S. families followed guidelines to breast-feed exclusively for six months, the U.S. would save $13 billion annually in reduced medical and other costs. The site also says that for both employers and employees, better infant health means fewer health insurance claims, less employee time off to care for sick children, and higher productivity.

And finally, Mutual of Omaha found that health care costs for newborns are three times lower for babies whose mothers participate in the company's employee maternity and lactation program. Add to this the fact that the federal government is one of the biggest buyers of baby formula through its nutritional programs for women and infant children, and as the New York Times article rightly points out, a tax break for breast-feeding could reduce government spending -- something Bachmann and Palin both advocate.

While neither Bachmann nor Palin have come out against breast-feeding (Bachmann says she breast-fed her five children), to imply that Obama's campaign to encourage women to nurse is somehow akin to a nanny state is harmful to the health of our nation's babies and mothers. We currently face a national health crisis largely fueled by a toxic food supply that does not support easy access to healthy options. On the other hand, breast milk is the perfect food for newborns -- and given the proper guidance and support, access is not a problem for most women.

Every politician should back an idea that makes breast-feeding easier and more affordable than it already is. According to the CDC, 75 percent of mothers in the U.S. start out breast-feeding but those rates fall to only 43 percent by six months and only 13 percent of babies are exclusively breast-fed. Among African-Americans, the rates are much lower -- 58 percent of mothers start out breast-feeding but the rate falls to 28 percent by six months and only 8 percent are exclusively breast-fed.

One of the more startling statistics I've come across is the fact that one out of five 4-year-olds is obese and children of color are at higher risk. The magnitude of the health crisis we currently face is unprecedented and strong measures must be taken in order to reverse these trends. Michelle Obama is right to follow up on the surgeon general's call for greater awareness on breast-feeding. Anything to help reduce the surging obesity rates in this country is a step in the right direction.

Published on Grist and on Civil Eats.

As shocking as the news is that the United States Department of Agriculture facilitated a cheese bailout with a $12 million marketing campaign to help sell Domino’s Pizza, I believe there is much more to the New York Times story as it affects average Americans and their ever-expanding waist lines. The story makes a strong case for the correlation between saturated fat consumption and obesity. Michael Moss nails the issue of the USDA’s two-sided policy: promoting cheese consumption in the form of Domino’s Pizza, while simultaneously working to fight obesity by discouraging some of these very same foods.

But as I see it, cheese in itself is not the problem—the issues are deeper and more complex than that. Conventional wisdom says that saturated fat is bad and at the root of the American obesity and diabetes epidemics. The Times article says, “[O]ne slice contains as much as two-thirds of the day’s maximum recommended amount of saturated fat, which has been linked to heart disease.” But let’s look a little deeper at this claim.

Animal products, the primary sources of saturated fats, are foods that human beings have eaten since our beginnings. In fact, often times these were the only foods around in the form of wild game or fish and seafood. Our hunter-gatherer ancestors thrived on these animals as well as foraged vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds and other plant materials.

These foods were unadulterated and in their full-fat form.

More recently, Americans ate animal products in their full-fat and whole form up until the turn of the century. In the 1950s the lipid hypothesis was developed, which claimed that saturated fats were the cause of heart disease. This prompted government and medical establishments to promote low-fat alternatives to traditional fats—like using margarine instead of butter, or soybean oil instead of lard.

Well-meaning scientists in the 1950s were trying to determine what could account for the steep rise in heart disease, which at the turn of the century, accounted for less than 10 percent of all deaths but by 1950 rose to 30 percent. Heart disease is now the leading cause of death in the U.S. and claims more than 600,000 lives every year.

But if saturated fats were the cause of heart disease, wouldn’t the rates be steadily declining as Americans obediently switched to low-fat and fat free products? What accounts for this disconnect? While natural animal fats were disappearing from the American diet, highly processed and refined foods were replacing them. The use of margarine quadrupled, the use of vegetable oils tripled, and egg consumption declined by half between 1900 and 1950. And after World War II, hydrogenated oils or trans-fats became commonplace.

There is a body of research now that suggests the lipid hypothesis is faulty and that the addition of processed oils, refined flour, sugar, and chemical additives to the food supply is really what accounts for obesity and its related risks of heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and a host of other health problems. A study completed this year and reported in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that, “There is no significant evidence for concluding that dietary saturated fat is associated with an increased risk of coronary heart disease or coronary vascular disease.” And in the current issue of the Journal of the World Public Health Nutrition Association, there is a report attributing the rise in obesity and diabetes to the “ultra-processing” of foods rather than the food items themselves. The author, Professor Carlos Monteir, writes, “The most important factor now, when considering food, nutrition and public health, is not nutrients, and is not foods, so much as what is done to foodstuffs and the nutrients originally contained in them, before they are purchased and consumed. That is to say, the big issue is food processing—or, to be more precise, the nature, extent and purpose of processing, and what happens to food and to us as a result of processing.”

Prior to the 1900s, humans were not eating much of what is commonly eaten now simply because it didn’t exist. Human beings have never eaten the combination of refined carbohydrates, refined sugars, trans-fats, additives, chemicals, antibiotics or artificial bovine growth hormones that most Americans are eating today. And as for that Domino’s Pizza—it contains all of the above.

According to the Domino’s website, there are about 60 ingredients in a deep dish pepperoni and cheese pizza, including refined wheat flour, poor quality oils, trans-fats, sugar, preservatives, artificial flavors and a myriad of chemical additives. In addition to the listed ingredients, add the antibiotics and bovine growth hormones that are regularly administered to dairy cattle and end up in the cheese on your pizza. Artificial bovine growth hormones are known endocrine disruptors (which I wrote about two weeks ago on Civil Eats) and are being studied now for their role in contributing to obesity, diabetes, and other health problems. Mysterious ingredients like “natural flavor” or “artificial flavor” as well as “modified food starch” “butter flavor” and “carrageenan” are often sources of MSG—another known endocrine disruptor. One preservative listed, BHT, is a petrochemically derived substance with a wide range of toxic effects and is a suspected carcinogen.

To be sure, eating too much cheese (or too much of anything for that matter) will amount to weight gain, but this is only part of a larger, more troubling problem as Americans continue to eat large quantities of unnatural, processed ingredients, endocrine disrupting chemicals, and hormones. There are no studies to date that evaluate this combination of ingredients and what they do to our bodies when ingested on a daily basis. But there are statistics—and given that two-thirds of the U.S. population is obese or overweight, and that the leading causes of death are all correlated to poor diet—it’s not too hard to connect the dots. Unfortunately for the American people, the U.S. government is working in the interest of the dairy industry and corporations like Domino’s Pizza and sending a clear message that their welfare is far more important than the health of its citizens.

Originally published on Civil Eats