Americans Want Government’s Help Putting Healthy Foods On Their Dinner Table
New survey finds out what Americans are really paying attention to when choosing foods
Americans recognize things need to change in the grocery aisle, and they support Uncle Sam’s efforts to overhaul what is included in their food and on the packages. The majority also believe they are individually responsible for making the right food choices to avoid obesity, but will readily accept the government’s help to be successful, according to a new survey by FoodMinds.
“In light of all the recent attention around food labeling and nutrition guidance programs, we wanted to get a sense of what the consumer actually thought,” said Grant Prentice, FoodMinds’ director of Strategic Insights. “We heard clearly they believe things need to change – and that it makes sense for the government to lead that charge.”
Americans Want Uncle Sam…
…Involved in Food Labels
* Eighty-six percent of consumers are interested in the government implementing objective front-of-pack labeling that calls out calories and beneficial nutrients such as vitamin D or fiber
* Seventy-seven percent of shoppers are interested in front-of-package labels designed to warn them of products with high calories, low nutrients
- And, 64 percent said if their favorite food had a warning label on it, they would either eat less or stop buying the product entirely
…To Help Educate, Mitigate and Motivate
* Seventy-four percent favor government-sponsored nutrition education programs to help them better identify the “good” versus the “bad” foods
* Fifty-eight percent support the government banning advertising of “unhealthy” foods to children and young adults
* Half are in favor of the government allowing employers to reward healthier employees while levying higher costs or fines to punish those who engage in unhealthy behaviors
…But Not His Taxes
* Rejected by 65 percent of shoppers are proposed taxes on soft drinks and foods high in sugar and calories, but low in nutritional value
Just the (Nutrition) Facts, Ma’am
Consumers love food-related information – and want more of it, in particular basic, factual data.
* The Nutrition Facts panel ranks first with 93 percent of shoppers saying it’s a very or somewhat useful tool, followed by front-of-pack information (low fat, high in fiber, etc.) at 88 percent
* Not quite as popular are marketing-oriented claims such as “helps lose weight,” “helps build strong bones,” with 71 percent of shoppers finding them useful
* Three quarters of shoppers like seeing where their food comes from (“organic,” “natural” and “sustainable farming practices”)
Not It! Significant Minority Believes Others Responsible for Individuals’ Eating Habits
* When asked who holds the primary responsibility to make sure the public makes right food choices to avoid obesity, 38 percent chose: 14 percent said food companies, 12 percent said the government, nine percent said the health care system and three percent pointed to the educational systems
About the Food Temperance Survey
Created by the FoodMinds Strategic Insights department, the Food Temperance survey was conducted through Greenfield Online’s Omnibus service on January 18, 2010. The sample of 1045 adults is balanced on age, gender and region of the U.S. Sub-samples of 869 primary grocery shoppers and 182 Opinion Leader Shoppers were screened from the overall adult sample. The MOE is +/- 3% for primary grocery shoppers and +/- 7% for the opinion leader shoppers. redOrbit
Happiness Helps When It Comes To The Heart
You’ve heard it before: to avoid a heart attack don’t smoke, eat right and exercise. But it also may help to be happy, a new study says.
Even if you’re grumpy by nature, just try to be cheerful.
Researchers at Columbia University rated the happiness levels of more than 1,700 adults in Canada with no heart problems in 1995.
After a decade, they examined the 145 people who developed a heart problem and found happier people were less likely to have had one.
The study was published online Thursday in the European Heart Journal.
“If you aren’t naturally a happy person, just try acting like one,” said Dr. Karina Davidson of Columbia University Medical Center, the paper’s lead author. “It could help your heart.”
Davidson and colleagues used a five-point scale to measure people’s happiness. They then statistically adjusted to account for things like age, gender, and smoking.
For every point on the happiness scale, people were 22 percent less likely to have a heart problem. The study was paid for by the U.S. National Institutes of Health and others.
Davidson said happy people were more likely to have a healthier lifestyle.
It could also be there is an unknown genetic trait that predisposes people to be happy and have less heart disease.
Other experts said happiness itself could result in a healthier heart compared to other emotions such as stress or depression.
Stress often releases hormones that can damage heart muscle. Stress can also cause blood vessels to open too wide, allowing plaque buildups to break off and clog the arteries, according to Joep Perk, a professor of health sciences at Sweden’s Kalmar University and spokesman for the European Society of Cardiology. Perk was not linked to the study.
“I often tell my patients not to get too depressed because it’s bad for your heart,” Perk said. “You need time to recharge your batteries or else your heart won’t be able to take it.”
Depression has long been noted as a risk factor for heart problems. Davidson said it was premature to draft guidelines recommending patients boost their happiness levels just to protect their hearts, even if it might help, until broader studies now under way are completed. But she does recommend trying to be happy for other reasons, like better mental health.
“Anything that patients can do to increase the amount of (happiness) in their lives will be helpful,” she said, adding there was a slight proviso. “No smoking, eating unhealthy food, not exercising or anything potentially damaging,” she said. “That’s the only trick.” By Maria Cheng, The Press Democrat
Study Counts Benefits of Cutting Salt
A national program to reduce dietary salt could prevent tens of thousands of heart attacks, strokes and deaths and trim as much as $24 billion from the U.S. health-care tab, according to a study published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine.
The study, a computer simulation, suggests the impact would be similar to prevention strategies such as quitting smoking, lowering cholesterol or modest weight-loss.
But significant cuts in salt from the diet could be challenging for individuals without action from food manufacturers. Some 75% of dietary salt intake comes from processed foods, according to the researchers.
A salt-reduction program in the U.S. could save an estimated $10 billion to $24 billion in annual health costs.
Their findings add to a growing body of research suggesting that lowering dietary salt could be an effective weapon against high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease. “The time is right now to consider efforts to…achieve population wide reduction in salt” intake, says Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, first author of the study and an associate professor of medicine and epidemiology at the University of California, San Francisco.
Last week, the New York City Health Department said it would encourage packaged food makers and restaurants to cut salt by 25% over five years. Many food manufacturers have long sold “low sodium” versions of products, but generally they haven’t been popular with consumers. Some companies have recently begun cutting sodium content without highlighting it on product labels.
Morton Satin, technical director of the Salt Institute, a nonprofit group of salt producers, says few data exist linking salt intake and disease. He is skeptical that reducing salt will yield important health benefits.
Americans consume far more than the recommended daily salt intake. The average adult male consumes more than 10 grams of salt a day, according to the U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. On Wednesday, the American Heart Association published new guidelines calling for all Americans to reduce their daily intake of sodium—a key component of salt—to 1,500 milligrams, equivalent to 3.8 grams of salt. Previously, that was the recommended limit for higher risk individuals; the regular limit had been 2,300 milligrams of sodium, or 5.8 grams of salt.
A typical sandwich, with two slices of bread and meat or peanut butter, has about half the daily recommended amount of salt, Dr. Bibbins-Domingo says.
In the computer simulation, which included data from the U.S. Census, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other national studies, Dr. Bibbins-Domingo and her colleagues estimated the effect of lowering salt in the daily American diet by a small amount—up to three grams a day—in adults age 35 and older.
Based on other research, they assumed a three-gram reduction in salt would lower systolic blood pressure by 3.6 to 5.6 millimeters of mercury; a one-gram reduction would reduce the level by 1.2 to 1.9 millimeters. (Systolic is the higher number in a blood-pressure reading. People whose level is 140/90 or more are considered to have high blood pressure.) Such modest blood-pressure reductions are associated, in other studies, with significant lowering of risk of death, heart attack and stroke.
In the current study, researchers found that lowering salt intake by three grams a day would cut new cases of heart disease annually by a third—an estimated 60,000 to 120,000 cases per year—heart attacks by 54,000 to 99,000 cases and strokes by 32,000 to 66,000 cases. It would reduce about 100,000 deaths a year in the U.S.
Based on a cost of $1 a person for salt-reduction strategies projected by the World Health Organization, researchers estimated a U.S. program could save from $10 billion to $24 billion in annual health costs. Such projections can be imprecise because they are based on assumptions that may differ from disease that would develop in real life.
But even if these numbers are off, the results still indicate that sodium reduction is important, said Clyde Yancy, president of the American Heart Association and medical director of the Baylor Heart and Vascular Institute in Dallas. “We can go beyond saying that too much salt is a bad thing,” said Dr. Yancy. “We can say, yes, too much sodium is related to disease. By reducing sodium we can reduce disease.” By Shirley S. Wang, The Wall Street Journal
Focal Point
Your wedding invitations may be the first announcement of your engagement to many of your wedding guests, depending upon how large your ceremony will be. This first impression will need to let them know where to go, how to get there and where to stay if it’s out of town for them, what to wear and what to give you as a wedding gift. If having a green wedding is a high focal point of your day, then you may want to include some requests of your guests. This is where the InvitationConsultants.com has been creating style in print since 1999.
Nevertheless, their focus is providing you with a product which makes you excited in sending it to your family and friends. Though planning an event really takes time, and so ordering the much needed wedding invitations should be as easy as possible. All you have to do is just follow the easy steps and you are one step closer to your big day: 1. select your item, 2. enter your wording, 3. review and approve your proof, 4. they’ll print your items, 5. ship it to your doorstep, office or guests, 6. then sit back, relax and enjoy your event. Well, isn’t it amazing?
Obese Pregnant Women Should Gain Less Weight Than Currently Recommended
Saint Louis U. obstetrician criticizes new guidelines in medical journal Recent recommendations by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) call for women who are overweight or obese to gain more weight than they should, a Saint Louis University obstetrician wrote in a January commentary for Obstetrics & Gynecology.
Joined by several colleagues, Raul Artal, M.D., chair of the department of obstetrics, gynecology and women’s health at Saint Louis University, who has conducted extensive research on weight gain during pregnancy, did not endorse the IOM’s May 2009 recommendation. The IOM, a non-governmental, independent, nonprofit organization, provides advice that is designed to improve health to national decision makers and the public.
“The recently published IOM recommendations for gestational weight gain are virtually identical to those published in 1990 with one exception: obese women are now recommended to gain 11-20 pounds compared to the previous recommendations of at least 15 pounds,” Artal said.
“Recommending a single standard of weight gain for all obese classes is of concern since higher BMI levels are associated with more severe medical conditions and have long-term adverse health implications.”
Artal recommended obese women eat a nutrient-rich diet of between 2,000 and 2,500 calories a day, which would cause them to cap their weight gain at 10 pounds, and in some cases, lose weight.
Under a doctor’s guidance, he said, obese pregnant women can safely engage in physical activities and modify their diets to successfully limit their weight gain with no harmful effects on the fetus.
When obese women reduce the amount of weight they gain, they also cut their risk of developing complications such as gestational diabetes and preeclampsia. By contrast, obese women who gain too much weight increase their risk of developing these conditions who affect both mother and fetus.
Artal called excessive weight gain during pregnancy a significant contributor to the obesity epidemic.
“Excessive gestational weight gain has been implicated in an intergenerational vicious cycle of obesity as overweight and obese mothers give birth to big daughters who are more likely to become obese themselves and deliver large infants,” he said.
Pregnancy is an ideal time for women who are obese to exercise and watch what they eat, Artal said.
These lifestyle changes are safe and carry benefits that last long after they have given birth, Artal added.
“Similar to smoking cessation programs, pregnancy provides a unique and ideal opportunity for behavior modifications given high motivation and enhanced access to medical supervision,” he said.
“Limited weight gain in obese pregnant women has the added potential for setting the foundation for a healthier lifestyle over a woman’s lifespan.” redOrbit