Wrong and downright harmful

Government eating guidelines.

According to Scientific American, growing research into carbohydrate-based diets has demonstrated that the medical establishment may have harmed Americans by steering them toward carbs. Research by Meir Stampfer, a professor of nutrition and epidemiology at Harvard, concludes that diets rich in carbohydrates that are quickly digestible—that is, with a high glycemic index, like potatoes, white rice, and white bread—give people an insulin boost that increases the risk of diabetes and makes them far more likely to contract cardiovascular disease than those who eat moderate amounts of meat and fewer carbs. Though federal guidelines now emphasize eating more fiber-rich carbohydrates, which take longer to digest, the incessant message over the last 30 years to substitute carbs for meat appears to have done significant damage. And it doesn’t appear that the government will change its approach this time around. The preliminary recommendations of a panel advising the FDA on the new guidelines urge people to shift to “plant-based” diets and to consume “only moderate amounts of lean meats, poultry and eggs.”

Lose weight or lose your kids

Social workers in the UK have threatened to put six fat children into foster care if they don't lose weight.

Social workers have warned they will intervene if three of the youngsters – including a 12-year-old boy who weighs 16 stone – do not shed several pounds in three months.

The parents have been told they risk losing all their children if there is no improvement in the 12-year-old or two of his sisters aged 11 and three – who weigh 12 stone and four stone – by June.

The family have also been ordered to send their children to dance and football lessons to help them lose weight.

...

Ironically, the family, from Dundee, first came under scrutiny by the authorities when they called asking for help managing their children, including their three-year-old daughter, who suffers from developmental problems.

Good to know the Dundee City Council has solved all their other problems facing the city.

Keep your grasping paws away from my salt shaker

The latest from the food police: Regulating salt.

A consumer group prodded the Food and Drug Administration yesterday to regulate salt as a food additive, arguing that excessive salt consumption by Americans may be responsible for more than 100,000 deaths a year.

The government has long placed salt in a "generally recognized as safe" or GRAS category, which grandfathers in a huge list of familiar food ingredients. But in an FDA hearing yesterday, the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) urged the agency to enforce tougher regulations for sodium.

Doing so "lays the foundation for saving tens of thousands of lives per year," said CSPI Director Michael Jacobson in an interview after the hearing. It "just has tremendous potential to health and to cut health-care costs."

Newsflash: Preschoolers prefer McDonald's

The conclusion of a study which showed that kids preferred food wrapped in McDonald's packaging to the same food in generic packaging.

“You see a McDonald’s label and kids start salivating,” said Diane Levin, a childhood development specialist who campaigns against advertising to kids. She had no role in the research.

Levin said it was “the first study I know of that has shown so simply and clearly what’s going on with (marketing to) young children.”

Study author Dr. Tom Robinson said the kids’ perception of taste was “physically altered by the branding.” The Stanford University researcher said it was remarkable how children so young were already so influenced by advertising.

Remarkable. Here's a partial list of things preschoolers prefer:

• Staying up past their bedtime.
  
  
• Eating candy for breakfast.
  
  
• Pushing grocery carts around the store at high speed and without regard to fellow shoppers.
  
  
• Darting out into traffic.
  
  
• Picking up the family cat by its tail.
  
  
• Repeating the same joke over and over again ad nauseum.
  
  
• Not brushing their teeth.

Feel free to add to the list.