A weekly roundup of EcoSalon’s top stories.

Anything But Shorts, Please is a fun look at a summer trend we simply cannot embrace unless hiking, biking or post surf: shorts. Instead, we give you a nice round-up of some great skirts that will love you for who you are and add a little more style when cruising about town.

EcoSalon Editor-in-Chief Sara Ost writes that DailyWorth is a “fuss-free, no-nonsense, wouldn’t-even-think-about-patronizing financial tips, guides and advice for women. From growing your savings, making your money work for you (instead of the credit card company), and ensuring you negotiate a pay raise on par with the guys, DailyWorth takes women and money seriously. Because we’ve come a long way, baby, and so have our bank accounts.” Don’t you owe it to yourself to know more about what your money can do? Read the article here to find out more.

Fast furniture retailers show no sign of slowing down, but the essence of slow furniture is something we can settle into. In Slow, Meet Furniture. Furniture, Meet Your Maker, Shelter Editor K. Emily Bond writes: “Like the slow food movement, the slow furniture movement is sweeping cities from Los Angeles to Toronto and is a reaction against mass-produced, cataloged, assemble-it-yourself, “disposable” furniture. Slower also denotes organic, as in the fabrication process is completed with human hands using sustainable materials. Slow food advocates seek a connection to the origin of each meal; slow furniture makers identify with their raw materials.”

You might have seen the headline, All We Are Saying Is Give Peas A Chance, and thought columnist Susan Goldberg was really into The Beatles – but no, she’s really into not tricking kids into eating veggies. Goldberg writes: “Besides the inherent ethical issues of deceiving one’s offspring, the problem with tricking children into eating vegetables is that they will grow up completely unaware that they have ever eaten or enjoyed a vegetable. If you steam, strain and puree spinach only to hide it in brownies, your kid will have no idea that he likes spinach – he will only know that he likes brownies. With childhood obesity at epidemic levels, do we really want to push more desserts on impressionable young people?”

In this week’s Sex By Numbers: Taking You For Granted, writer Abigail Wick encourages us to stop wasting time being so self-conscious and instead, live life to the fullest. She writes: “It’s this disproportionate focus on perceived lack that has really started to rub me the wrong way. Rather than celebrating their abundant gifts, there is a systematic zeroing-in on self-doubt. It frustrates me to see lovely, lovable female friends mired in such petty preoccupations. ‘Wake up!’ I want to scream. ‘Stop taking it for granted, stop thinking about yourself so much, stop this self-indulgence. Don’t wake up 30 years hence and rue the potential and pleasure you frittered away in a misery of your own making.’”

ColumnNews worth eating.

Once a month, The Green Plate will harvest the most interesting, biggest, weirdest, and puzzling recent news stories on food politics, the food industry, eating trends, and edible discoveries from around the web, and share them with you.

In this, our first installment, learn how Whole Foods is helping us drink while we shop, the sugar industry is putting the smack-down on corn syrup, and everyone’s buzzing about ex-Gourmet editor Ruth Reichl’s new job.

No such thing as innocuous protein.

If tuna is the chicken of the sea then tilapia are widgets churned out in the shape of fishes. Highlighting the complications of sustainability in aquaculture, the New York Times delves into the details around tilapia’s production – showing how the one farmed fish we’ve been told is sustainable, isn’t always the case. Like any form of food production, there are good ways to do it and not such good ways.

Eat more fat and still lose weight with this new virus!

A Johns Hopkins study finds that, at least in mice, it may be possible to turn bad fat into good fat, and thus lessen the incidence of obesity, regardless of diet. Just inject a handy-dandy virus into the hypothalamus.

Sugar calls foul on corn syrup.

In a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black, the sugar industry sues the corn syrup industry. Apparently, in an effort to improve its reputation, corn syrup has taken to calling itself sugar, which, with all the bad news about sugar lately, is sort of like Ted Haggard trying to rebrand himself as George Rekers .

Whole Foods gives new meaning to the term “shop till you drop.”

You’ve got to hand it to Whole Foods for turning the chore of grocery shopping into a fun way to drop loads of cash. Drinking may be great social lubrication, but for the new Whole Foods stores with bars, it could now be economic lube too. Will the shopping carts come with breathalyzers?

Expect fewer poetic tweets from Ruth Reichl.

Gilt Groupe, the online marketer that sells designer fashion items at deeply discounted prices to members, is entering the food world with Gilt Taste. Ruth Reichl, author and former editor of Gourmet Magazine will lead editorial efforts, promising quality content for hordes of hungry, bargain seeking gourmands.

This is the latest installment in Vanessa Barrington’s weekly column, The Green Plate, on the environmental, social, and political issues related to what and how we eat.

Image: That Other Paper via Flickr

Nutrition fads draw attention, but the real harm is in common, processed foods.

Food myths abound, but whether or not you try to cure a hangover with food from the greasy spoon or lose a few pounds with a maple syrup fast, you’re probably not doing a significant amount of damage to your body in the long term. There, is however, a whole lot that we don’t know about our standard diet that is causing a problem. Studies show most Americans know very little about what they’re eating, and in a society seduced by labels like “low fat,” “sugar free,” and “reduced sodium,” we are very trusting. How many of us really take the time to know what we’re eating? We’re not all chemists and nutritionists, but there are laymen’s terms when understanding food that we should focus on.

According to a report by U.S. News Health, 76 percent of 1,000 Americans polled, agreed with the statement: “Wine can be good for your heart.” Partly true, it turns out that only 30 percent of those polled actually knew what the American Heart Association (AHA) recommends as a daily limit for consumption. Think you know how many? It’s two glasses per day for men and one glass per day for women. Exceed that, saysthe AHA, and you’re at increased risk for a handful of serious health issues like heart disease, cancer, and obesity.

That same report found that we know very little about the sodium in our food choices. 46 percent of those polled said that table salt is the primary source of sodium in American diets, when in fact, processed foods like canned foods and condiments make up almost 75 percent of sodium consumption in the U.S.

This brings me back to a recent Michael Pollan lecture I attended. We’re stuck in a vicious cycle of focusing on all of the various “health” labels, and yet we have totally forgotten about what foods are really good for us. In our quest for finding quick fixes to our health problems, we have totally lost touch with epicurean reality.

Forget the organic, gluten-free vegetarian fusion dishes; when it comes to our national food culture, we have to get back to basics, and with that, an understanding of what we’re putting into our bodies.

Some common misunderstandings:

Fat free means calorie free

As a society, we’re way too focused on fats, and anything that screams “fat free” is probably compensating with ample amounts of sugar, an ingredient that as of late, is much discussed as a food toxin.

If you’re not eating meat, you’re not getting enough iron

You don’t need a portion meat a day or even a month to keep up your iron levels, and in fact, most Americans are getting too much iron. Green vegetables, beans and lentils will supply plenty of iron for your body, and are less absorbent when you’re already at your iron intake maximum.

Fats and oils are bad

We don’t need to be dousing our plates in olive oil and butter, but if you’re swapping natural fats for synthetic replacements in the hopes of canceling out the negative effects, you’ve gone a step too far. Our understanding of fat’s role in health and weight has evolved since the 90s fat phobia that gripped the country and left us collectively fatter and sicker. Monosaturated and polyunsaturated fats are vital, according to the Mayo Clinic. Even butter can be healthy in reasonable amounts. Opt for what’s minimally-processed over what’s “free,” and trust what Mother Nature provides.

While we each have to find the balance of nutrients that works for our own bodies, that should be built on a foundation of unprocessed, unbleached, unrefined whole foods. Heidi Swanson of 101 Cookbooks seems to have a good grip on that idea. Her Super Natural Cooking cookbook is a frequently skimmed-through publication in my own kitchen.

Over the last several decades we’ve made it acceptable to eat unhealthy food, to the extent that simply seeking out fresh produce from the farmers’ market makes one a foodie. When did it become snobby to choose broccoli over a microwaveable pasta dish with processed alfredo sauce?

We obsess over crash diets and cleanses, miracle nutrients and superfoods, and argue about the risks and benefits of them all. But it’s not fad diets that hurt us so much as the diet.

Editor’s note: Our Foodie Underground column will resume next week, including a special announcement. Stay tuned!

Images: stevendepolo

ColumnWhy is it that America is only known for hamburgers and hot dogs when we have a burgeoning foodie culture?

A surprising discovery when I lived in France was L’Americain. In the land of gourmet cheeses and perfected baguettes, food is more than something that you just consume for nourishment; it’s art. Which is why I was a little shell-shocked the first time I came across L’Americain, a late night favorite, post-pop music dance party, made up of a baguette stuffed with hamburger meat, french fries and ketchup.

If the French vision of American food had been unclear before, after this particular sandwich run in, it was very clear. For the French, there was no point in glorifying this version of junk street food, when they could just call it what they thought it represented: America.

As a nation, we have often been at the bottom of the list of culinary tradition. Sure, at home we’ve created a foodie culture and mastered combining dishes from around the world, but abroad, there remains a view that we’re all about pizza, hot dogs and chips. Our global foodie reputation is defined more by sugar and fat than by local ingredients with a cosmopolitan twist.

In fact, enter any “American” food store in another country and you’ll get a handful of classic ingredients. I’ve seen everything from swirled jars of peanut butter and jelly to marshmallow cream (things my American counterparts would never dream of buying at home), and much less abroad. But the international crowd loves this stuff. One of my best Swedish friends has specifically requested that next time I come visit she wants Reese’s Miniatures and several bags of Sour Patch Kids.

What is it that has made the rest of the world crave some of our most terrible exports and glaze over our more respectable creations? You don’t see Alice Waters shrines or bookshelves stocked with Mark Bittman translations abroad, but you’ll most certainly come across a sampling of the following.

Hamburgers

McDonald’s has swept the world like a virus, but it’s not just Big Macs that have made their way around the world. Grab an “American” menu in Southeast Asia and you’re sure to find some version of a meat patty wrapped in a bun. For some reason this American classic has other people hooked, albeit poor spellings on menus and misconceptions of what a bun should look like.

Pringles

It’s not just chips in general, but there’s something about “once you pop you can’t stop,” that has seduced the international consumer. Turns out they’re marketed in at least a hundred countries and bring in $1 billion in sales. Sure, in other countries the packaging is often smaller,  because other places know better than to serve up ten servings in one container that we’re sure to down in a single sitting — but those brightly colored canisters with the goofy, mustached man are all over the place.

Mediocre – yet complicated – coffee drinks

Leave it to the global coffee chain Starbucks to make it perfectly acceptable to order a caramel machiatto in countries where coffee consumption is holy. The result is, well, abhorrent. Thanks to the chain it’s trendy to cruise the streets of Paris with a disposable cup and you can now buy Frappacinos in Guatemala. The company’s new instant product alone was responsible for $100 million in global sales last year.

Peanut Butter

It seems like such a staple product and yet for many it’s a luxury. Some love it and some hate it, but peanut butter to Europeans is just as exotic as caviar and foie gras are to many Americans. Try tracking it down outside of the U.S. and you’ll have a difficult time, and yet somehow, everyone knows about it. A former, very typical French roommate of mine (he wouldn’t dream of keeping his smelly cheeses in the refrigerator), thought there was nothing better on his weekend brioche than some good old Jiffy, imported by friends of course.

But forget our foodie reputation for a second.

Although it would be great to be known for all the fantastic, organic and healthy items that many American chefs whip up on a daily basis, wanting to be respected for our food culture is almost a little vain. What we should be more concerned with is how we’re physically impacting the rest of the world.

With obesity rates skyrocketing around the world, and often attributed to imported food, maybe it’s time we took a step back and asked ourselves what we want our global food influence to be.

Hot dogs and high fructose corn syrup? Changing what’s on our plates at home has a larger influence than we may think.

This is the latest installment of Anna Brones’s column at EcoSalon, Foodie Underground, taking a conscious look at what’s bubbling in the underground food movement, from supper clubs to mini markets to the culinary avant garde.

Images: USDA China, permanently scatterbrained, Brett L., Like_the_Grand_Canyon, Alaivani, egarc2

Last week, the USDA released its Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2010. Published every five years, the guidelines are meant to reflect the most current scientific knowledge about nutrition and exercise, and to provide Americans with dietary tools to promote good health and prevent chronic disease.

Since 2005, when the last guidelines were published, an alarming number of Americans continue to die of diet-related diseases. Everyone from the First Lady to Jamie Oliver wants to save us from ourselves. At least school lunch advocates are linking hands to get bad foods out of schools and offer better choices to children.

For us adults, it comes down to a combination of personal responsibility, economics, and politics.

Yes, we need to take responsibility for eating well. But unless you know how to shop for, and cook, healthy whole foods, it’s cheaper to eat processed food. And in many neighborhoods processed food is the only thing available, a result of economics (and politics).

Speaking of politics, the USDA is a government agency with a schizophrenic mandate. It’s supposed to serve as both a consumer agency and a marketing agency for the food industry. Often this leads to watered down or contradictory recommendations. Read Food Politics expert Marion Nestle’s take on the politics behind the new guidelines here.

The Green Plate took a look at the guidelines and put together a summary of the main tenets.

The most basic general recommendations are theoretically sound and helpfully located in the front of the report. The tools to help Americans eat better in practice are in the body of the report, which includes a number of graphs and charts. There’s even an entire section on proper storage, separation, cooking, and cooling to prevent foodborne illness.

Broad Recommendations:

1. Decrease calories and increase exercise.

2. Focus on nutrient dense foods, i.e. real whole foods, not processed foods.

3. Get your nutrients from foods not pills – supplements are sometimes good and needed, but try to get most of your nutrients from food.

Specific Recommendations:

Sodium: Recommended amount is 2,300 mg for healthy people – that’s only 1 teaspoon (!) – and 1,500 mg (or a little more than a half teaspoon) for children, African Americans and anyone over 51, or suffering from chronic disease. It would be difficult for most people to meet this, but certainly anyone who relies on processed foods or even canned foods. For people who cook from scratch, salt adds flavor. I’m sure I eat more salt than this on a daily basis.

Fats: Derive less than 10% of calories from saturated fats – this includes animal fats and some vegetable fats like coconut oil.

Cholesterol: Consume less than 300 calories a day from cholesterol.

Trans fats: The recommendations say to limit them, but in reality, other experts say no amount of chemically produced trans fats are okay. This would require eschewing all processed food.

Milk Products: The recommendations say to increase the consumption of (low fat) milk products and soy products. Not everyone would agree that low fat dairy is better than full fat, and others would argue with the soy recommendations.

Seafood: The guidelines recommend increasing seafood consumption by replacing some meats and poultry with seafood. I have a problem with this one. How can our overstressed oceans possibly survive if every American increases seafood consumption from the current average of 3 1/2 oz of seafood to the recommended 8 oz? Not a word is said about seeking sustainable sources of seafood. Without guidance, people will continue to eat the most endangered species or the badly farmed species like salmon and shrimp, to the detriment of their health and that of the environment. The only health caution is the usual mercury warning for pregnant women and children. There is a chart that estimates mercury as well as omega-3s and DHA for various types of seafood, but there are endangered species, like bluefin, included on the chart.

Other than the seafood and salt recommendations, which are difficult to adhere to for most people, it’s hard to have a quibble with the remaining recommendations. They include paying attention to what you are eating (I’m all for mindful eating); increasing whole grains, vegetables, and fruits; reducing sugar sweetened beverages and monitoring alcohol consumption (I didn’t know alcohol is a huge source of calories for most adults); looking at nutrients, not just calories; and distinguishing between natural and manufactured fats.

The charts that show sources of calories for the majority of Americans are tough to look at, acknowledging as they do how much of the typical American diet is made up of fats and sugars.

Another progressive inclusion is the acknowledgment that a vegetarian diet is associated with good health. There is some talk of veganism, but not much, though there is a chart that shows a vegan adaptation of a good diet. The vegan/vegetarian diet charts do emphasize beans and peas as sources of protein over processed soy products, which is a step in the right direction.

Other sections of the report acknowledge that many Americans face access issues for good foods, and also mention that the way we plan our cities and towns contributes to unhealthy sedentary lifestyle. There’s a great section on label reading and a chart on how to recognize added sugar and processed grains.

I especially like the chart that includes standard portions and calorie counts of common whole foods. The sad fact is, it’s easier to count calories if you eat processed food!

All in all, other than the huge omission of seafood sustainability, I think the 2010 guidelines are helpful and sound. The challenge will be getting the information out of the report and into American kitchens.

This is the latest installment in Vanessa Barrington’s weekly column, The Green Plate, on the environmental, social, and political issues related to what and how we eat.

Images: USDAGOV via Flickr

For Thanksgiving I found myself staying in a yurt near Jackson Hole, Wyoming. There was a small propane stove and no running water, but Thanksgiving is Thanksgiving and so we made a concerted effort to eat well.

The stuffing used locally baked pumpkin bread, the sweet potatoes were organic and made without a Cuisinart in sight, and I hand-chopped a cranberry relish. After not finding anything but absurdly cheap, huge frozen birds that surely came from the mass farms of nightmares, we accepted the fact that we would be without the Thanksgiving staple. Fine in our books, as no one was interested in eating “a depressed, fake bird,” as one friend put it. Fortunately, an organic, free-range, local bird was scored at the last minute.

Sitting in our woodstove-outfitted yurt filling ourselves with the bounty of a day of cooking felt perfectly normal. We were, after all, celebrating the most traditional of American holidays.

But apparently the scene was far from normal. In a weekend op-ed piece in The Washington Post, Brent Cunningham and Jane Black pose that the latest of culture wars is being fought in the culinary world, and that “many in this country who have access to good food and can afford it simply don’t think it’s important.” In other words, canned cranberry sauce over orange-infused reductions and Butterball turkeys over hand-plucked birds from the fair the next county over aren’t what the general population is making sure to put on the platter.

If you’ve determined that you’re concerned with good, healthy food it turns out that only might you be criticized for sticking your nose in the air, but you might just be plain old abnormal.

Even the queen of conventional tradition, Mrs. Sarah Palin herself, has taken it upon herself to give the finger to campaigns that would provide for healthier school food policies. If you don’t want your kids eating sweets at school you’re clearly bonkers.

In response to First Lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move program, which aims to reduce childhood obesity, Palin put it simply:

“Just leave us alone, get off our back and allow us as individuals to exercise our own God-given rights to make our own decisions and then our country gets back on the right track.”

I, too, like to make my own choices. Fresh over processed, local over trucked across a country, small farms over agribusiness. In other words, against the current cultural norm. However, when a large percentage of the population uses Palin’s self-described “rights” to buy government-subsidized food products predominantly made with high fructose corn syrup and proven to cause weight gain, maybe the idea of being “abnormal” isn’t so bad at all.

As Cunningham points out in his op-ed, “access to and the cost of ‘elite’ food isn’t beyond the budgets of many, perhaps most, Americans.”

So what will it take to make a cultural shift towards better food? Start by accepting the fact that abnormal isn’t necessarily a bad thing. And make sure your kids know it, too.

Editor’s note: This is the latest installment of Anna Brones’s column at EcoSalon, Foodie Underground. Each week, Anna will be taking a look at something new and different that’s taking place in the underground food movement, from supper clubs to mini markets to culinary avant garde.

I live in a foodie-centric town. Portland is known for its coffee snobbery, its food cart fetish and its farmers’ market obsession; most of us pride ourselves on eating well. That doesn’t mean that every meal is a well-planned feast of locally grown, freshly picked ingredients, but everyone seems to have a favorite food hot spot or quirky dish that they’re more than excited to talk about. So there has been a bit of local outrage in response to a recently published “Non-foodies Food Guide,” that appeared in the local daily the Oregonian, in which the first lines were pretty spiteful:

I am not a foodie.

To me, food is what you eat, not what you pray to.

Call them gourmands, connoisseurs, picky eaters, or just plain old snobs. Foodies blog, write and chat about pet restaurants, trends and chefs. They leave little room on their plates or in their hearts for fast food, family dining and the untrendy. And they can be pretty mean to some places we love.

The article goes on to mention a laundry list of local chains, from the 24-hour pie place Sharis to good ole family joint The Ole Spaghetti Factory, all of which the author cites as examples of un-hip, foodie turnoffs. This raises the questions: what exactly is a foodie?

Let’s start with the definition. Urban dictionary defines it as:

A person that spends a keen amount of attention and energy on knowing the ingredients of food, the proper preparation of food, and finds great enjoyment in top-notch ingredients and exemplary preparation. A foodie is not necessarily a food snob, only enjoying delicacies and/or food items difficult to obtain and/or expensive foods; though, that is a variety of foodie.

For the sake of this argument, keep in mind that it’s just the obscure, edgy websites that define the term. The word is even listed in Merriam-Webster as a person having “an avid interest in the latest food fads.”

Despite the recent inclination to team the term “foodie” with “snob” there are a whole group of foodies out there that are simply concerned with where their food came from, how it was raised, and what’s being added to it to make the end product. In fact, if there’s one thing the underground food movement has taught us, it’s that local, sustainable, fresh fare is desirable, not just because it’s trendy but because it’s healthy and better for the environment.

Is being a foodie being a snob?

There’s an ongoing debate right now about food democracy. Los Angeles, one of the nation’s most abundant agricultural regions, is now taking a serious look at creating a regional food system that not only produces local, healthy food, but ensures that all residents get to take advantage of it.

The word “organic” has long been associated with higher prices, so much that the national media still questions whether it’s “worth the splurge.” As green blogger Mike Lieberman eloquently put it, “Organic Isn’t a Splurge, It’s My Healthcare.” In his well worded post he points out that questions like these highlight “how disconnected we have become from associating real food with health.” All you have to do is take a look at obesity rates from the CDC to understand the negative physical effect that this disconnect is having.

So is it snobbery or simply understanding what’s at stake when it comes to our health? Only consuming coffee from a particular cafe might seem like putting your nose in the air, but if you frequent the place because the owners are committed to selling fair trade coffee, the pastries are baked locally and they don’t give you plastic lids to your disposable cup unless you ask for one, then you’re probably there for a good reason.

Think about where your money goes

A common argument is “I don’t have the budget to eat that way.” Think being a foodie is reserved for the elite? Think again. In fact take a moment to reflect on all the luxury items that we have deemed necessary in our everyday lives. Flavor Magazine took on this exact question this summer and listed out the following:

Tobacco products, $100 designer jeans with holes already in the knees, KFC, soft drinks made with high fructose corn syrup, Disney vacations, large-screen TVs, jarred baby food? America spends more on veterinary care for pets than the entire continent of Africa spends on medical care for humans.

And yet we don’t have enough money to make sure that we’re putting food into our bodies that’s not only going to sustain us but is also going to protect us from future illness? At the end of the day, there’s simply no excuse for eating well, it’s just all about choices and values. Is the new big screen tv more important to you than a weekly delivery of CSA produce? Fine, but don’t call me a snob because I don’t feel the same way. To quote Joel Salatin of Polyface Farms (yes, the one of Omnivore’s Dilemma fame), ”To suggest that advocating for such a change makes me an elitist is to disparage positive decision making and behavior. Indeed, if that’s elitism, I want it.”

What kind of society do we want to live in?

We’ve got a long way to go if we want to be sure that our country has good food available to the masses. Until consciously produced food doesn’t have to compete with subsidies and the quick and cheap petrochemical industry, food will continue to be unhealthier, externalizing the real costs in exchange for a lower price tag. We need personal and infrastructural change to ensure that we’re all eating well.

But in the meantime, we have to change how we think. Being committed to good food isn’t about status, it’s about health, both personal and environmental. If we stop promoting underground food movements, like urban gardens, bike powered compost pick up, and food carts that source all their food in a 100 mile radius, what kind of a world will we live in? One dominated by chain restaurants, high fructose corn syrup and obesity. Do you call that snobbery or sanity?

Editor’s note: This is the latest installment of Anna Brones’s column at EcoSalon, Foodie Underground. Each week, Anna will be taking a look at something new and different that’s taking place in the underground food movement, from supper clubs to mini markets to culinary avant garde.

Image: Anna Brones

I have a friend who refers to the Standard American Diet by the acronym SAD.

This is an apt description indeed. Think about it. We have more colorfully packaged choices on the shelves of our supermarkets, more new flavors of cereal, crackers, and chips than we know what to do with, more fortified, functional foods than ever. Yet, as a nation, we get sicker every year. Diet related diseases are epidemic, especially among young people. In fact, children today are the first generation expected to have a shorter life expectancy than their parents. And it’s all related to our SAD. With all of our medical knowledge and wealth, how did this come to pass?

According to Marion Nestle, Professor and Chair of the Department of Nutrition and Food Studies at NYU and author of the classic book, Food Politics, the problem is that our heavily subsidized, highly efficient food industry produces too many calories – twice as many as we need. Because of this surplus, food companies must work hard to get us to EAT MORE. Hence the millions of dollars in advertising spent every year to get us to Supersize It.

Though Food Politics was published back in 2002, it’s just as relevant today. Besides advertising, the Food Industry influences our diets in many ways that most of us are not even aware of.

1. Food industry lobbyists influence USDA’s food guidelines.

Chapter 2 of Food Politics provides readers with an instructive history of the development of the USDA Food Pyramid and how food industry lobbyists influenced the final product. For example, meat and dairy producers did not like the implication inherent in the pyramid design that some foods were better than others. They preferred a design that presented each food group as visually equal. The food industry spent over a year fighting the design and wording. In the end, the pyramid won out, but the meat and dairy industries succeeded in getting many minor changes made. The biggest change was that, instead of recommending a straight number of servings (2-3), the wording was changed to “at least 2-3 servings” to encourage people to eat more.

2. Food industry sponsorships

The food industry regularly sponsors research studies, nutritional journals and conferences, and sometimes, entire university departments. How much does this corporate money influence the findings and recommendations of research? Surveys cited in Food Politics show that researchers often have financial or professional ties to the companies they are researching, which certainly creates the impression of bias. And when food companies use the findings of a study in its advertising, as a way to sell more product, the appearance of bias is even harder to ignore. Also, when a corporation has an exclusive partnership with a university research department, as is becoming more common, there is a very real concern that these partnerships will interfere with academic freedom.

3. Endorsements and labeling rackets

When professional societies develop partnerships with food companies in order to provide nutritional information to consumers or develop labeling schemes for certain foods, the net outcome is not always good for consumers. Food Politics offers many examples of this phenomenon, including one in which the American Heart Association charged food companies enormous fees to be a part of its Heart Check labeling program. The program resulted in the labeling of foods like pop-tarts as heart healthy. Such labeling schemes that isolate one aspect of a food product, such as cholesterol, while ignoring sugar content and other less healthy aspects of the food in question, only confuse consumers. The program was eventually discontinued and fees returned.

4. Revolving doors

When industry executives get jobs in government things tend to go the way industry wants them to. This happens in every sector (think banking!) and the food industry is not an exception. Two recent examples of revolving door appointees in the Obama administration include Dr. Islam Siddiqui, chief agricultural negotiator and former lobbyist and vice president for science and regulatory affairs at CropLife America, a US trade association representing the major manufacturers, formulators and distributors of crop protection and pest control products. In September Catherine Woteki was named Under Secretary for Research, Education, and Economics at the USDA. Previously she served as global director of scientific affairs for Mars, Inc., where she managed the company’s scientific policy and research on matters of health, nutrition, and food safety.

5. PR

Remember the Smart Choices labeling scheme, an industry-driven label designed to make consumers think that Froot Loops are healthy? An earlier example given in Food Politics is that of Nestle’s efforts to convince women in developing countries that formula is better for babies than breast milk. When its reputation in the US suffered as a result of these efforts, the company hired a well-known PR firm to help it out of the mess. The book includes a chart that outlines the company’s actions including issuing opinion papers on the subject, sponsoring conferences, and urging journalists to write favorable articles on the subject of formula feeding.

6. Lawsuits against critics

Remember Oprah vs. The National Cattleman’s Association? Have you heard of the veggie libel laws that exist in 13 states? The prospect of an expensive lawsuit can really have a chilling effect on anyone considering speaking out against a specific food or production practice.

7. Marketing to children and in schools

Not only do packaged and fast food companies spend millions to target children through advertising on television, in magazines, on the Internet, through movie product placements, and toy campaigns, they also have an incredible grip on the visual space inside schools. Food Politics outlines how companies use advertisements in hallways, on buses, and in teaching materials to reach children. And also how club and sports teams sponsorships, contests, school meal programs, and “pouring rights” contracts get company logos and products in front of children. If you don’t know what a pouring rights contract is, it’s a program in which a packaged good or soft drink company gives cash-strapped schools money for sports and other programs in exchange for an exclusive right to sell their products in the school.

I caught up with Marion Nestle, author of Food Politics, over email and asked her a couple of questions about the current landscape of food politics.

Q: How have things changed for better or worse since you wrote Food Politics?

A: “The Food Movement!  When I wrote the first edition of Food Politics, all people talked about was personal responsibility. Now just about everyone understands that the food environment discourages healthful eating.”

Q: What do you think of the USDA and FDA under the Obama administration?

A: “The USDA has a complicated job. Historically it has favored industrial agriculture. That has not changed, but Vilsack has introduced new initiatives that favor organic and local producers. That’s a start. USDA’s work is governed by the Farm Bill and advocates for sustainable agriculture need to start working now to get that bill to do a better job.”

Q: What is the biggest hot button issue emerging today in food politics?

A: “It depends on what concerns you, I suppose. Mine is election campaign laws, the root of corruption in our political system.”

To keep up on developments in food politics, check in on Marion’s blog.

This is the latest installment in Vanessa Barrington’s weekly column, The Green Plate, on the environmental, social, and political issues related to what and how we eat.

Image: Ben McLeod

This is Part 1 of 2 posts of in-depth analysis into the breakthrough work on high-fructose corn syrup and weight gain by Princeton researchers.

I have to admit that I was fascinated to watch the fallout over the Princeton HFCS study. What I thought would generate a “oh, look, another great reason to avoid HFCS!” reaction swiftly turned into “that study doesn’t prove a thing!” – a sentiment that nutritionists, food business columnists and the Corn Refiners Association all, remarkably, shared.

Still, several questions raised by critics are worth addressing. We contacted the lead author of the Princeton study, Bart Hoebel, to see if he could shed some light on general questions surrounding the work as well as particular objections raised by physiologist Karen Teff, Ph.D, of the Monell Chemical Senses Center in a blog post by Nicci Micco on Eating Well‘s website.

The full email transcript appears below. One clarification in particular that I found interesting has to do with claims that the researchers didn’t directly compare HFCS consumption to table sugar consumption in a key experiment and thus are not able to conclude that HFCS causes more and worse weight gain over table sugar. In the experiment in question, researchers gave rats access to a 10% HFCS “drink” in addition to their normal feed. The rats gained excess weight in their abdomens (which is associated with metabolic disorders) and their triglyceride levels increased (also a symptom of metabolic disorders).

Dr. Hoebel points out that previous research has firmly established that if you give rats access to a 10% table sugar “drink” in addition to their normal feed, they do not gain additional fat. In other words, their bodies are able to metabolize the extra calories without creating more weight. This previous research is referenced in the study–but was apparently overlooked by critics. In other words, while the researchers didn’t compare HFCS to sugar directly in that particular experiment, we already know what happens to rats when you feed them small amounts of additional table sugar.

I understand that his answers to this and other criticisms won’t convince everyone, but I hope people will read the commentary below and think about just what level of “proof” we need before questioning the wisdom of making HFCS ubiquitous in our food system. For more thoughts on why the debate over HFCS has become so contentious, see Part 2 of this analysis.

The first two questions we had for Dr. Hoebel came from Grist Food Editor Tom Philpott:

Q: Do you have any particular comments on the issue of “statistical significance”? Is it true that the results in experiments 1 and 3 both lacked statistical significance, as some have claimed?

Hoebel: No, this is not true as a general statement. We reported results that are statistically significant as stated in the article. In Experiment 1, rats with 12-or 24-hour access to HFCS gained significantly more weight than the group with 12-hour access to sucrose. In Experiment 3, the main finding is that females rats with 24-hour access to HFCS weighed the most after 7 months , and this was overall (Repeated Measures Analysis of Variance) statistically different than the sucrose and chow fed controls.

This is important and meaningful because the 24-hour HFCS females had significantly heavier fat pads in the abdominal and uterine areas. They also had higher blood triglyceride levels than the other groups, which may have contributed to the body weight and body fat.

Q: Why did “Experiment 2″ in your study, which compared rats’ access to HFCS over 12 and 24 hour time periods, not include sucrose? What are the clearest conclusions that can be drawn from its results as constructed? [Note to reader: this question is also addressed above--the bit about access to table sugar solution not seeming to show weight gain in rats.]

Hoebel: The goal of this paper was not exclusively to compare HFCS to sucrose. Rather, we were interested in assessing 1) limited vs. continuous access to HFCS, as our previous research has focused on binge eating of sugars, 2) differences in body weight gain as a results of access to HFCS that might result in males vs. females, and 3) the effects of long term access to HFCS on parameters such as triglyceride levels and fat accrual.

The vision of the paper was to study the effects of HFCS on body weight and obesity, not just to pit it against sucrose. The clearest conclusions that can be drawn from Experiment 2 are that, in male rats, long term consumption of HFCS increases triglyceride levels and fat accrual. To us, this is an important finding. It shows that not only will HFCS increase body fat, but it will also increase these obesogenic parameters

Next, we asked Dr. Hoebel to respond to criticisms of his work leveled by Dr. Karen Teff of the Monell Chemical Senses Center:

Comment #1: The solutions of HFCS and sucrose used in all the studies-there were a few-in the Princeton report provided different levels of calories. (The HFCS, in fact, was lower in calories.)

Hoebel: It is true that the solutions of HFCS and sucrose were not offered as calorically equivalent. We note this in the Methods section of the paper. However, it is important to note that the HFCS consuming rats in Experiment 1, the short-term (2-month) study, showed greater gains in body weight while taking in fewer calories of sugar compared to the groups consuming sucrose. This led us to hypothesize that there might be something different about the way HFCS affects the body. Thus, we conducted Experiment 2, the long-term (6 month) study, and measurements showed that increased triglyceride levels and increased body fat were seen in the rats will access to HCFS, but not sucrose.

Comment #2: In one of the studies, the authors reported that male rats had a higher body weight after being exposed to 12 hours of access to the HFCS plus their typical rat chow compared to 1) standard chow alone, 2) 12 hours of access to sucrose with chow, and 3) 24 hours of access to sucrose with chow. However, they did not report or do the statistics on the change in weight. Thus, this is meaningless and poorly controlled.

Hoebel: One of the groups listed above is cited incorrectly; group 3 had 24 hours of HFCS and chow access (no sucrose access). As stated in the Methods section, the males in the three groups of Experiment 1 were “weight-matched”. That means the average (mean) weight of the rats in each group started out the same. Therefore the end-point body weights reported are in fact accurate representations of the mean body weight change. Ergo, the statistics were done on the appropriate measure. The result is meaningful and well controlled, given the use of not one but three comparison groups.

Comment #3: In a second experiment, they compared chow to chow-plus-HFCS for 24 hours and chow-plus-HFCS for 12 hours and found that access to the HFCS increased body weight. So what? Again, meaningless. This is like taking two groups of people, giving them the same diet but allowing one group to drink sweetened soda whenever they liked. Of course, they will gain weight because they are ingesting more calories. These findings have nothing to do with the controversy between sucrose and high-fructose corn syrup.

Hoebel: The result is, in fact, meaningful. As cited in the Discussion section, we have previously shown that the rats are able to compensate for the excess calories obtained when drinking 10% sucrose by taking fewer calories of chow and thereby maintaining a normal body weight. Therefore, we thought it was interesting and important to report that long-term access to HFCS causes rats to become overweight, whereas access to 10% sucrose does not. While comparisons were made to sucrose in some of the studies, this was not the sole focus of the paper. Rather, we were interested in seeing the effects of HFCS on body weight and obesogenic characteristics, and there were other variables of interest that were studied (as described in the response to the next comment).

Comment #4: Finally, in a third study, they show body weight as a percent of baseline (this is appropriate) and show that rats who had free access to both chow and HFCS gained a tiny bit more weight than chow alone, 12 hours of HFCS or 12 hours of sucrose. They did not compare it to the control of 24 hours of access to sucrose.

Hoebel: The statistical test (Repeated Measures Analysis of Variance) did show an overall significant difference between female rats with HFCS to drink 24-hr per day and the groups with chow alone or 12-hr access to sucrose, as described in the Results section. We did not compare 24-hr HFCS vs. 24-hr sucrose in this study because 1) in our previous studies (with both male and female rats) we have noted that rats with 24-hr access to 10% sucrose do not gain significantly more weight than chow-fed controls, and 2) in addition to comparing HFCS to sucrose, we were interested in the effects of limited (12-h) access to HFCS to see if it would cause binging that might enhance HFCS intake or body weight. Further, we chose to focus on assessing 12-h access as a variable because we did not know the effect of 12-hr vs. 24-hr HFCS access in female rats. This was of interest to us in light of the findings in Experiment 1 in males where we made that comparison, and because our laboratory has a long-standing interest in the effects of binge eating of palatable food. We explain and give the rationale for the choice of these variables in the Methods section.

So yes, the females drinking 24-hr HFCS showed a statistically significant increase in body weight. It is important and meaningful because these females had significantly heavier fat pads in the abdominal and uterine areas. They also had higher blood triglyceride levels than the other groups, which may have contributed to the body weight and body fat characteristics of obesity.

Our study in laboratory rats complements the growing body of literature suggesting that HFCS affects body weight and some obesogenic parameters. We cite in our paper additional evidence reported by other groups that supports our findings, and also acknowledge studies that suggest that HFCS does not affect body weight in ways different than that of sucrose. We acknowledge in the paper that at higher concentrations (e.g. 32%) sucrose has been shown to increase body weight. We are claiming, however, that at the concentrations we compared in this study, HFCS causes characteristics of obesity. The data show that both male and female rats are (1) overweight, (2) have heavier fat pads, particularly in the abdominal area and (3) have elevated circulating triglyceride levels.

For more information and references on this topic, as studied in both animals and humans, see a review published this year by George Bray, Curr Opin Lipidol. 2010 Feb; 21(1):51-7. “Soft drink consumption and obesity: it is all about fructose”.

Editor’s note: Article by Tom Laskawy. Originally published by our friends at Grist.org. Grist is a media organization that has been dishing out environmental news and commentary with a humorous twist since 1999. Be sure to visit them and say hi, and follow Grist on Twitter, too!

Image: JonathanCohen

A perfect media storm blew in for the week of Fat Tuesday.

First came an impassioned TED speech by Jamie Oliver challenging Americans to solve our obesity epidemic through food and nutrition education and more excellent cooking.

Then came New York City’s Fashion Week with its requisite news of models getting fired from runway gigs for allegedly “being fat” at size puny.

In parallel, there was a huge debate around the emotional outbursts, each in 140-character Twitter format, by Kevin Smith the actor and filmmaker who was kicked off of a Southwest airlines flight this week for being too large and a “safety” concern.

One of the milder tweets he offered: “Wanna tell me I’m too wide for the sky? Totally cool. But fair warning, folks: IF YOU LOOK LIKE ME, YOU MAY BE EJECTED FROM @SOUTHWESTAIR.”

Obesity-haters on Twitter and comment boards web-wide suggested it was fair for airlines like Southwest to kick Smith (a.k.a. Silent Bob) off a flight if, in their estimation, a passenger was too large to fit in a single seat, and no other seat was available. Others sided with Kevin Smith but wondered if a “fat tax,” which essentially punishes people who stress the healthcare system and food supply, is worth considering.

An informal survey on Hunch.com of 12,000 site visitors showed that – rather unsympathetically – people who aren’t fat are more likely to support airlines’ charging fat people for two tickets, if they can’t fit into one seat as opposed to offering a wider seat, or two for the price of one.

If you’re fit, would you pass the buck to the obese? If you’re fat, would the tax help motivate you to lose weight by eating less, or healthier (and presumably more sustainable) foods?

Study up on all sides of the argument for and against fat taxes on everything from plane tickets to sugary foods with the links and resources here.

BASIC READING:

“Daniel Engber has likened fat to height. ‘How fat you are has a lot more to do with your genes than with your behavior,’ he argue[s]. ‘As much as 80 percent of the variation in human body weight can be explained by differences in our DNA. (Your height is similarly heritable.)’…Instances of radical, lasting weight loss are exceedingly rare. Diet and exercise schemes tend to yield only minor effects over the long term…” – A post by William Saletan for Slate comparing the tall to the fat.

“The idea of a special tax on soda, similar to those on tobacco, gasoline and alcoholic beverages, is attracting more interest. Advocates of a tax note that sugared beverages are the No. 1 source of calories in the American diet, representing 7 percent of the average person’s caloric intake, according to government surveys, and up to 10 percent for children and teenagers. ‘What you want,’ says Kelly Brownell, director of Yale’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity, ‘is to reverse the fact that healthy food is too expensive and unhealthy food is too cheap, and the soda tax is a start. Unless food marketing changes, it’s hard to believe that anything else can work.’” – A feature by Mark Bittman in the New York Times

“In Canada, the Supreme Court has ruled that obese and disabled people cannot be forced to buy a second seat on flights….Bill Fabrey, a director at the Council on Size and Weight Discrimination, a non-profit group that advocates for larger people said airlines should provide some bigger seats to accommodate people of size, just as many cinemas and theatres had increased their seats. ‘People come in all shapes and sizes,’ he said. ‘Judging someone by the size of their body, not health level, comes down to discrimination against a class of people.’” – A feature story in The National

FURTHER RESOURCES:

A post by BigFatDeal Blog that aggregates Kevin Smith’s Tweets about “flying while fat.”

A Web M.D. article about a new survey that says 8 of 10 adult males will be fat, not of healthy weight, by 2020

A story in the Syracuse Post-Standard about New Yorkers’ support of a “fat tax” of a kind, on sugary sodas.

A News-Herald story about curbing childhood obesity through more environmentally sound nutrition and standards for food in schools, which is one alternative to levying a fat tax against the obese.

A story by Tom Fudge for KPBS about new research that shows obesity is partly determined by the place where you live.

Editor’s note: This is the latest installment of EcoMeme, a column featuring eco trends, and tech highlights by Lora Kolodny.

Image: Alan Cleaver