TED: Jamie Oliver Speaks On Our Diets & Child Obesity

Jamie Oliver spoke at TED earlier this month talking about obesity in our society and the lack of proper nutrition and poor diet. It is evident throughout this talk that Jamie is extremely passionate about teaching and informing others on the importance of healthy living.

During a recent trip to an elementary school, Jamie asked the kids to identify vegetables and the scary part? Most of them couldn't!
I found his talk to be very informative and hope it is a wake up call to us all. Do you think he was able to get his message across?

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A Quarter Pounder Hamburger: How Much Oil Is In It Really?

26 ounces of oil are required to produced a quarter pounder. That is 13 pounds of CO2 emissions for one hamburger and more emissions than burning 7 pounds of coal in a power plant or from driving your car 13 miles!

Earth 2017 reports:

Michael Pollan explains that in the 1950’s it took our agricultural system one calorie of oil (calorie is a measurement of energy) to produce one calorie of food. Today it takes TEN calories of oil to produce one calorie of food. As Pollan explains, our agricultural system and its fast food customers are now “eating oil, emitting green house gases.”

One of the problems is, a quarter pounder is usually cheaper than its non-red meat counterparts. This is one of the reasons why most food stamps recipients are heavier than those who do not rely on food stamps.

Unfortunately this costs an increase in individual obesity and national health care costs. There is also the unsustainable levels of emissions.

One example of the magnitude of these hidden costs is a CDC on the $2 trillion we spend annually on health care, TWO-THIRDS (approximately $1.3 trillion) is spent addressing PREVENTABLE chronic diseases tied to our smoking, alcohol and DIET.

Pollan is suggesting the following public solutions:

1. Government funding of agriculture not corn
2. Increased focuse upon local agriculture serving local markets
3. Awareness/behavioral change by our own culture. Today we are subsidizing farmers not to grow alternative crops to corn. Pollan’s alternative is government incentives promoting the number of days a field is “green” so farmers are producing a diversity of crops that are consuming more CO2.

Pollan ended his presentation with this sobering question: Can we successfully change from our agricultural addiction to oil? The answer is unclear with 6+ billion people now consuming oil rather than healthy food.

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"Fat Camp" Introduced For Britain's Overweight Children

A Government plan to tackle obesity is planning on sending hundreds of thousands of Britain's overweight children to a "fat camp". Some of these children as young as four years old!

School students who are labeled as overweight will be offered a place in this state funded camp. Parents can refuse at any time, however the ministers are hoping most will attend. Children who are obese could be sent to specialists for treatment, drugs or surgery.

Parent groups said the Government had moved ''beyond a nanny state, to a dictatorship''.

Experts said the public branding of children as fat could damage their confidence, expose them to bullying and trigger eating disorders. But pediatricians welcomed the move.

Under existing regulations, children are weighed when they start primary school and again as they leave. Parents receive a letter saying whether their children are healthy, overweight, underweight or very overweight. The latest figures show that by the time they leave primary school, one in three children is overweight.

Margaret Morrissey, the founder of the family lobby group Parents Outloud, said it was ''unforgivable'' to promote schemes that would encourage humiliation to be heaped on those children sent to fat camps. ''This has gone beyond a nanny state, beyond Big Brother,'' she said.

''To label young children as overweight because they are carrying a few extra pounds makes them so vulnerable to bullying and increases the risk of developing eating disorders, especially among the girls.

''Obviously it is unfortunate if parents feed their children badly, but this Government appears to have forgotten that we do not live in a dictatorship.''

However, the pediatricians don't agree and said that because of the scale of this crisis, drastic action was necessary.

Dr David Vickers, from the Royal College of Pediatrics and Child Health, said: ''It seems to me that it is more outrageous to tell parents that their child is overweight then do nothing about it, than to … offer some support.''

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New ad campaign asks New Yorkers if they are "Pouring on the pounds"

The New York City Health Department is facing New Yorkers with a bold question: Are you pouring on the pounds? This new campaign which includes multilingual Health bulletin and posters being put up in the subway system is set to run for three months.

The image shown above is a reminder on how sugary drinks such as soda, sweetened ice tea and sports drinks can turn into fat, leading into obesity and other health related issues. A 20 oz bottle of soda contains 16 1/2 teaspoons of sugar and zero nutrients whatsoever. It is truly liquid fat.

On average, Americans now consume 200 to 300 more calories each day than we did 30 years ago. Nearly half of these extra calories come from sugar-sweetened drinks.

Below is a chart from the campaign showing the amounts of sugar in various drinks.


So now the question is, Are you pouring on the pounds?

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Thank you to Lisa for sharing this information!

European Union clamps down on cereal's health claims

Various cereal manufacturers in the UK are going to be forced to remove their many health claims, used for advertising unless they can be scientifically proven.

Kellogg's could be one of the biggest companies affected.

Sugar Puffs has claims on their packaging that it helps boost digestive and nervous systems while helping to grow and maintain healthy skin and eyes. What many people aren't realizing is there is 35% sugar in the product! Weetabix Weetos contains 23.5% sugar while boasting "wholegrain goodness fortified with vitamins and iron".

Corinne Vaughan, deputy head of nutrition at the Food Standards Agency, said: “Cereal manufacturers make a variety of health claims. Some are genuine, but other foods are heavily promoted on the basis of health claims for one ingredient, while unhealthy levels of sugar, fat and salt hardly get a mention.”

“We need more clarity in the science behind the claims and in the labelling,” said Susan Jebb, head of the Medical Research Council’s human nutrition unit.

There are two facets to the Brussels crackdown. First, the European Food Safety Authority (Efsa) is conducting a scientific review of 4,000 health claims made by food producers, including cereal manufacturers. Most of the 60-plus rulings published so far for foods, including pro-biotic drinks and yoghurts, have been dismissive of industry health claims.

Kellogg's Optivita is endorsed by Heart UK, a medical charity. It claims to lower blood cholesterol based on the fact that oat bran (one of the ingredients in the cereal) has been shown to lower cholesterol if several grams are eaten regularly every day. What is interesting however is that Optivita contains only 1 gram of active bran per bowl!

Kellogg’s, which admits making a “five-figure” donation to Heart UK, accepts there is no published scientific evidence to show that eating a daily bowl of Optivita lowers cholesterol.

A spokesman said: “We do have evidence of our own to show it reduces cholesterol, but we have not published it as it is proprietary and confidential. All our claims are backed by good science.”

And we wonder why with all this sugar intake, the obesity levels are rising in the UK. I would love to see what the sugar levels are like in our boxed cereal here in America!

Check out the Daily Mail for a breakdown of various cereals. It is quite the eye opener!
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An interesting look at KFC's shocking new sandwich courtesy of ZeitGeist

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I honestly don't understand why this type of thing continues to shock me. Huge companies are producing products in which there is absolutely zero nutrition whatsoever, and yet here we are eating this garbage! KFC's bowl mentioned in the video above has over 720 calories and contains 1 1/2 times your daily fat allowance. Grease in a bowl! I can't comprehend why we continuously insist upon killing ourselves by pouring this so called "food" down our throats, while complaining about our health. It is one of life's great mysteries.

U.S. health system spends $147 billion dollars a year on obesity

The U.S. health care system spends an estimated $147 billion every year on obesity related diseases.

The United State's obesity rate has risen 37 percent from 1998 to 2006. The 89 percent increase is being spent obesity related illnesses and diseases such as heart disease, arthritis, diabetes and various other conditions.

"It is critical that we take effective steps to contain and reduce the enormous burden of obesity on our nation," CDC Director Dr. Thomas Frieden said in a statement."

"What we found was the total cost of obesity increased from $74 billion to maybe as high as $147 billion today, so roughly double over that time period," Finkelstein said in a telephone interview.

Obesity accounts for 8.5 percent of health costs among people on Medicare, the federal program for the elderly and disabled, and 11.8 percent of costs from Medicaid, the joint state-federal program for the poor.

An obese Medicare beneficiary spends an $600 more per year on drug costs than a normal weight person on Medicare, the team found.

Diabetes alone counts for $180 billion dollars being spent each year. There is evidence that most of the diabetes in the U.S. is caused by excess weight," Finkelstein said.

The CDC has devised 24 obesity prevention plans that are currently being tested in Massachusetts and Minnesota. Environmental issues, sedentary lifestyles and the lack of healthy food in poor neighborhoods are some of the issues that will be addressed as those contributing to the nation's problem.

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Leading causes of death

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