Fast Food Under Fire

Fast food restaurants have been taking fire from all sides recently. KFC was recently sued by the Center for Science in the Public Interest for using trans fats to cook its chicken. After months of negotiation, KFC announced they would switch away from trans fat, prompting nutritionist Heidi Sklonick to predict that "It won't be long before other fast food chains make the change, too."

It didn't take long for that prediction to come true, when two weeks later Taco Bell announced that they would trade trans fats for canola oil.

Adding insult to injury is the recent launch of the movie "Fast Food Nation". The movie is an adaptation of the book by Eric Schlosser, about which the New York Times said:

"Not only will it make you think twice before eating your next hamburger … it will also make you think about the fallout that the fast food industry has had on the social and cultural landscape."

And fast food is most definitely part of the cultural landscape. According to Juliet Schor, an economist and professor of sociology at Boston College, the average child is exposed to 27 advertisements for food per day, the vast majority of them for nutritionally weak foods that are high in fats, oils, sugar and calories.

Some are saying that children are increasingly suffering from an epidemic of "marketing-related diseases" - notably obesity. McDonald's alone spent $528.8 million on advertising in 2004, according to the New England Journal of Medicine, with an estimated 40 per cent of that targeted to children.

In Australia, McDonald's is fighting back with its hefty wallet, recently launching an ad campaign called "Make Up Your Own Mind", featuring attractive, thin, healthy-looking young people showing you around a McDonald's kitchen and extolling the virtues of their ingredients. The "Menu" section of the site gives you all the info on items featured in McDonald's "Healthy Choice" menu, but no info on the high-fat culprits you'd expect.

Are these the signs of a fast food industry under siege? It's possible. And the world's health might be better for it.

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If You're Happy and You Know it, Take a Pill

Before I go onto my little rant I would like to state that I am NOT a doctor. Further, I do not have a medical background. I am an average Joe, typical American, and though I am learning more and more everyday about health information by working at Healthline, I speak mostly from the heart.

Remember when being happy was about waking up on Saturday morning to the mild songs of bluebirds, the sun casting a soft light across you as you lay comfortably in your bed feeling the slow breeze in the spring? Maybe enjoy the company and conversation of friends and family?? If you do, you’re dated. As CNN reports, in this week’s special report on ‘Happiness and your Health’, Troy Dayton’s got a different idea about happiness, and I don’t think he is the only one. “Troy Dayton pops a little white pill every morning. He's one of the 10 million Americans taking a daily antidepressant. But in his case, he says he was never depressed in the first place.” Troy states “However someone can sustain a certain level of happiness without hurting someone else, should be celebrated and not questioned.” Troy seems like a great guy.

Did anyone else read A Brave New World?

Troy goes on to tell us that “Wellbutrin makes me feel great. Wellbutrin made me feel clear-headed, much more able to focus. I don't think it means that I don't ever experience any sadness, but I think it makes me experience sadness in a very healthy way.” I reckon it would be in the same healthy way that localized anesthesia would make me feel if I was trapped in an ice cave experiencing frostbite.

Apart from being an extremely lame version of the Electric Kool Aid Test, the problem I have with this Merry Prankster and his desire to be double happy is that it avoids the question ‘What does it mean to be happy/sad?’ which is, essentially, avoiding the idea knowing oneself and what you like/dislike. The human condition is such that we feel elated during positive moments, sad during moments of heartache and fear in moments of danger; this happens for a reason. It's the same reason that we feel pain when we put our hands on a heated stove top – so we learn boundaries and how to survive. There is a lesson to be learned from our sadness (in relationships for instance) and numbing ourselves to this is akin to missing the point.

Further, do we have any idea of the side effects of long-term/sustained use of antidepressants? As Doctor Peter Kramer points out “These medicines are NOT harmless.” Let’s be clear, there are individuals suffering from depression (I have friends that are clinically depressed) and need this medication. The advances in this area have definitely cleared minds and saved some lives. But most of these medicines are means to an end, a way of balancing an unbalanced mind; they are not meant to be the end result or to be a recreational drug. Like the ecstasy that Troy takes “about once a year” we may find out that the sustained use of drugs like Wellbutrin (which apparently helps to quit smoking) have massive negative impacts on the body and mind.

I think that most people in the world want to be happy but I think following in Troy’s footsteps where “if you’re happy and you know, you take a pill” is a dangerous path to tread.

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CDC Encourages Late-Season Flu Vaccinations

U.S. health authorities are preparing for a post-Thanksgiving flu shot push, at the recommendation of the Centers for Disease Control. Despite a record 110 million doses scheduled to be produced, disribution delays have deprived many state health departments and private physicians from as much as half their order.

CDC officials are promoting Nov. 27-Dec. 3 as "National Influenza Vaccination Week." The CDC is encouraging a "late season" vaccination drive, as consumer demand often drops off sharply in late November, due to a mistaken belief that the only time to get vaccinated is before Thanksgiving, and even though flu season often doesn't peak until February.

The worry is that a large amount of unused vaccine would cause manufacturers to decrease production in the future.

"It's very important to maximize our production, not only to control seasonal influenza, but so we can be prepared to handle the production of vaccine if an influenza pandemic emerges," said Dr. Howard Baker, chief of the Immunization Branch for the California Department of Health Services.

These concerns come amid an avian flu outbreak that has killed 56 people in Malaysia, and fears that it could mututate and become more easily transmittable in humans.

Said CDC Director Dr. Julie Gerberding:

"It is never too late to get your flu shot. People should go to their holiday gatherings with good food, gifts and good cheer, but not with the flu virus."

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Low Carb Diets Don't Raise Risk of Heart Disease

A recent Harvard University study investigated the impact of low carbohydrate and low fat diets on heart disease. The study found that the rate of heart disease was no greater for those following a low-carb diet than for those following a low-fat, high carbohydrate diet.

"It's not that the two diets are equally good," Harvard's Thomas Halton. "In fact, they're both equally bad."

"The way Americans are going low-fat is very unhealthy," Halton said. "They have a very high glycemic load. They're taking sugar. They're taking white bread. They're taking white rice and pasta. That certainly isn't the answer." Glycemic load is a combination of a food's glycemic index (a measure of how much a particular food raises blood sugar), and the amount of food eaten.

The study found one type of diet that reduced the risk of heart disease dramatically - by approximately 30% over 20 years. Women showed this much lower rate of heart attacks when they got their protein and fat from vegetable sources. These "good" protein sources included whole grains, beans, legumes, oatmeal and tofu. "Good" fat sources included olive oil, nuts and canola oil.

The study followed 82,802 female nurses for 20 years. The subjects were not dieting to lose weight, and in fact increased their Body Mass Index by 10% on average over the course of the study. "We didn't really design the study to look at weight loss," said Harvard's Frank Hu. But after looking at 20 years worth of data, the research team concluded that eating a moderately low-carb diet had "no long-term effect on bodyweight."

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Is Red Wine the Secret to Anti-Aging?

Over at CNN, the AP reports that red wine could hold the secret to longevity & may give humans the ability to eat high fat diets without risk. This landmark “study by the Harvard Medical School and the National Institute of Aging shows that heavy doses of red wine extract lowers the rate of diabetes, liver problems and other fat-related ill effects in obese mice.

Fat-related deaths dropped 31 percent for obese mice on the supplement, compared to untreated obese mice, and the treated mice also lived long after they should have, the study said.”

Even more amazing, the obese mice were as energetic, agile and performed as well on skill tests as the lean mice.

A substance, known as resveratrol, is found on the skin of grapes and preliminary test on mice have shown that very large dose of resveratrol could offset an unhealthy, high-fat, diet. The studies on mice have been so promising that the National Institute of Aging is making a strong push for repeating the experiment on rhesus monkeys.

"We've been looking for something like this for the last 100,000 years, and maybe it's right around the corner -- a molecule that could be taken in a single pill to delay the diseases of aging and keep you healthier as you grow old," said David A. Sinclair, a Harvard University molecular biologist who led the study. "The potential impact would be huge."

As a devote hedonist (I’m a ‘7’ after all) and a lover of all things creamy and delicious, this study is music to my ears. If the study results hold, not only will I be able to have my cake and eat it too BUT I can have my blue cheese, bacon and black pudding. As long as I have my 20 bottles of wine (which is the amount of wine you would have to drink to get the proper dosage of resveratrol), I should be able to consume to my heart’s desire, then go for a run or play some ultimate Frisbee at the local park where I will be able to out perform my friends who have wasted their day living in moderation and eating healthy.

Seriously, though - while the study sounds exciting (who doesn’t want a Fountain of Youth at the bottom of wine bottle?), I think we should all take caution. I don’t think the study is encouraging overeating or overdrinking [red wine], though some may read into the message of the study this way, especially when the Washington Post states that this may be “why French people tend to get fewer heart attacks and why severely restricting the amount of calories animals ingest makes them live longer.” For now I think we should take the advice of Dr. Ronald Kahn, President of the Joslin Diabetes Center who says to “have another glass of pinot noir — that's as far as I'd take it right now.”

I just hope I don’t walk into my local wine seller to find that all of the prices have increased because of wine’s new anti-aging sediments!

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