It all starts with diet

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Center for Family and Community Health
School of Public Health
University of California, Berkeley
http://cfch.berkeley.edu
A CDC Center for Chronic Disease Prevention
and Health Promotion Research
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It all starts with diet

Federal 'guidelines' are too fatty

T. Colin Campbell,Caldwell B. Esselstyn Jr., San Francisco Chronicle,
March 17, 2009

As scientific researchers who have spent our careers establishing the
link between diet and disease, we find President Obama's directive on
"restoring scientific integrity to government decision-making" very
welcome news.

We hope this will lead to health care policy that is informed by
America's most ignored scientific fact on health: That a whole-foods
plant-based diet can prevent and in many cases reverse heart disease,
diabetes, cancer and other chronic diseases.

Today's health care debate has very little to do with what makes us
sick. It is centered almost entirely on who gets covered and who
pays. Extending coverage to more people is a good thing. But
Americans who already are covered are suffering rising rates of
chronic disease. Lack of coverage is not causing their disease, and
expanding coverage won't cure these diseases in others. We have to do
more than increase coverage.

The No. 1 cause and cure of America's health care crisis is right
under your nose - it's what you put in your mouth.

Unfortunately, the scientific findings on diet and disease are
marginalized by the political power of huge, mutually reinforcing
commercial interests - meat, dairy, sugar, drugs and surgery.

These industries are desperate to sell a solution that obscures their
part in the problem. If they can convince people that the cause of
our health crisis has nothing to do with eating unhealthy food, and
everything to do with increasing access to drugs and surgery,
Americans will spend trillions more on health care without improving
their health. That's what happens when you leave science out of public policy.

If President Obama wants Americans to get the full benefit of
scientific research on health, then he should add three measures to
his health reforms.

One: Change the way government develops its dietary guidelines. Right
now, the U.S. government's most widely publicized dietary
recommendations are deadly. The Food and Nutrition Board's 2002
report says that to reduce degenerative diseases like heart disease
and cancer, we can consume up to 35 percent of our calories as fat,
up to 35 percent of our calories as protein and up to 25 percent of
calories as added sugars.

Here is a daily diet that meets those nutrition guidelines:
Breakfast: 1 cup Fruit Loops; 1 cup skim milk; 1 package M&M milk
chocolate candies; fiber and vitamin supplements. Lunch: Grilled
cheddar cheeseburger. Dinner: 3 slices pepperoni pizza, with a
16-ounce soda and 1 serving Archway sugar cookies.

This helps explain why 12-year-old schoolchildren develop thickening
of their carotid arteries to the brain, and 80 percent of 20-year-old
soldiers, dying in combat, are found to have coronary artery heart disease.

How could the government distribute this information and call it
science? Members of the committee had financial ties to industries
that benefit from higher protein and sugar allowances, and the panel
was partly funded by corporate money.

The Obama administration should establish a rule: No scientist with
financial ties to the food and drug industries should chair - or
choose the members of - panels that set dietary guidelines.

Two: President Obama should establish a new institute at the National
Institutes of Health dedicated exclusively to exploring the link
between diet, health and disease. Today, there are 27 institutes and
centers at the National Institutes of Health, but none devoted to
nutrition, despite the great public interest in the subject. For the
sake of the people who pay the bills, it's time for NIH to dedicate
an institute to studying the effect of nutrition on health.

Three: Congress should require that medical schools - as a condition
of receiving federal grants - offer residency programs on dietary
approaches to preventing and treating disease. Americans don't
understand the disease-fighting power of a good diet because their
doctors don't. Medical schools teach a drug-centered curriculum. They
do not learn about the many population-based studies that show the
connection between diet and disease. They do not review the
biochemical studies on disease formation that support the
population-based studies. And they do not study the results found in
treating disease with diet in clinical settings. Drugs and surgery
can offer miraculous benefits in certain cases. But it's
unconscionable for doctors not to know about - or tell their patients
about - the preventive and healing power of food.

These three proposals won't cost much, and they will pay back our
investment a million-fold by making people healthier and reducing
health care costs. Moreover, they reflect a commitment - expressed by
the White House last week - to finally let the public enjoy the
health benefits of scientific research.

T. Colin Campbell, Ph.D., is professor emeritus of nutritional
biochemistry at Cornell University. He is co-author of "The China
Study." Caldwell B. Esselstyn Jr., M.D., former president of the
American Association of Endocrine Surgeons, is a preventive medicine
consultant at the Cleveland Clinic. He is the author of "Prevent and
Reverse Heart Disease."

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/03/17/ED3K16FAI8.DTL

Soda Wars

MediaPost Pubications Coke Joins Pepsi in Move to Slow Soda Decline 01/22/2009

Ready for the return of the Cola Wars? On the heels of Pepsi's "Refresh Everything" campaign, which uses a redesigned logo similar to the one President Barack Obama used during his campaign, Coca-Cola has unveiled a new marketing effort and tagline, "Open Happiness."

" It's fascinating to me that both Coke and Pepsi at the same time are launching big new campaigns and big marketing blitzes behind their flagship colas," John Sicher, editor and publisher of Beverage Digest, tells Marketing Daily. "It's probably the most directly competitive I've seen these two companies over their big colas in over a decade."

Coke launched its new campaign this week with television advertising during broadcasts of "American Idol" on Fox. The beverage marketer will also hit other high-profile advertising events like the Super Bowl and the Academy Awards. The campaign will roll out globally over the coming weeks.

One of the new television commercials for the U.S. depicts people using their digital devices (computers, phones, etc.) and turning into their alter-ego online avatars. When one man--who has not turned into his avatar--reaches for a Coke at the same time as a scary-looking beast, the beast turns into a pretty woman and a real-life connection is made. Another ad humorously depicts what could occur if something happened to one of the two men who know Coke's secret formula ("Cookouts would be catastrophic." and "Santa would be sleepy.").

In addition to the television ads, the effort also includes new point-of-sale, promotions, outdoor, print and music components. One of the new commercials will feature a music track that will be released as a commercial music single. The music is billed as a collaboration between recording artists from Gnarls Barkley, Fall Out Boy, Panic at the Disco and Gym Class Heroes.

"Open Happiness is designed to work at every level--from national advertising all the way down to coolers and store shelves, with a clear call to action at the point of purchase," said Coca-Cola Chief Marketing Officer Joe Tripodi in a statement. "The combination of inspirational marketing and in-store execution in collaboration with our bottling partners worldwide will ensure we continue to reinvigorate the sparkling category."

Coke's launch comes only weeks after Pepsi introduced an effort tagged "Refresh Everything." As part of its campaign, Pepsi had a presence at Obama's inauguration on Tuesday, with headlines featuring "Yes you can" and a redesigned logo similar to the image Obama used during his presidential campaign. As part of the campaign, the company created a Web site through which people could upload a video message to Obama.

The timing of the two efforts is not coincidental, Sicher says. Sales of carbonated soft drinks have been declining, as sales of bottled water and energy drinks have grown. With the economy slowing and sales of bottled water and energy drinks softening, it's time for the two companies to focus on their core brands, he says.

"These two brands are so big relative to the rest of their companies' portfolios that if they don't do better than they've been doing, getting the strong beverage growth is going to be difficult," Sicher says. "These efforts by Coke and Pepsi won't return these brands to growth anytime soon, but could begin decreasing the rate of decline and maybe even get them back to break-even in terms of volume."

A diet rich in fat, sugar and cholesterol...

A diet rich in fat, sugar and cholesterol could lead to similar changes in substances in the brain which are also seen in the development of Alzheimers, according to a new study.

Mice that were fed for nine months on the diet, which represents the nutritional content of most fast food, developed abnormalities in the brain similar to those observed in the brains of Alzheimers patients, said the study published in a doctoral thesis from the Swedish medical university Karolinska Institutet (KI).

The research offers some indication of the role that diet could play in prevention of the disease which currently affects an estimated 5.2m Americans.

Researcher Susanne Akterin, a postgraduate at KI Alzheimers Disease Research Center, told FoodNavigator-USA.com: Several studies have been published during the last years linking diet with the development with Alzheimer's disease and dementia and especially too much cholesterol have been found to be particularly bad.

This is probably because the brain is an organ that is especially rich in cholesterol and where cholesterol has many functions, and therefore is tightly regulated.

When you eat too much cholesterol this regulation will be disturbed, leading to many negative effects.

All kinds of food that contain a lot of fat, sugar and cholesterol is likely to have the same bad consequences.

Considering the lack of effective medication for this dreadful disease, to prevent the disease from developing in the first place would be desirable.

Akterin said the most common risk factor in Alzheimers disease is a variant of a certain gene that governs the production of apolipoprotein E, which transport cholesterol. The gene variant is called apoE4 and is found in 15-20 percent of the population.

The research team studied mice that had been genetically modified to mimic the effects of apoE4 in humans for her doctoral thesis.

They noted an increase in phosphate groups attached to tau, a substance that forms the neurofibrillary tangles observed in Alzheimers patients, which prevent the cells from functioning normally and eventually leads to their death.

They also saw indications that cholesterol in food reduced levels of another brain substance, Arc, a protein involved in memory storage.

Akterin said: We now suspect that a high intake of fat and cholesterol in combination with genetic factors, such as apoE4, can adversely affect several brain substances, which can be a contributory factor in the development of Alzheimers.

All in all, the results give some indication of how Alzheimers can be prevented, but more research in this field needs to be done before proper advice can be passed on to the general public.

Previous research has shown that a phenomenon known as oxidative stress in the brain and a relatively low intake of dietary antioxidants can also increase the risk of Alzheimers.

Thesis: From cholesterol to oxidative stress in Alzheimers disease: A wide perspective on a multifactorial disease

Author: Susanne Akterin, Department of Neurobiology, Care Sciences and Society, KI Alzheimers Disease Research Center, Karolinska Institutet.

Burger King and the Simpsons

http://www.kidscreen.com/articles/news/20081110/simpsons.html

After 20 years on the air, The Simpsons is marking another first in the licensing and promo realm as Burger King rolls out its largest Kids Meal program based on a TV series today.

The Hang Out With The Simpsons! promo is rolling out simultaneously in the US and 58 other territories across the globe and is being supported by an extensive marketing campaign, including national TV advertising (the US, Turkey, Spain, Germany, Netherlands, Argentina and New Zealand) and in-restaurant promotions. The promo will also have a spot on the QSR's dedicated kids site www.ClubBK.com. The US version of the site is sporting a new Simpsons game and the campaign gets the spotlight in the company's Adventures Newsletter domestically.

Hang Out With the Simpsons! Kids Meal buyers will receive one of six new character-themed collector toys that join together so kids can put their own spin on the couch adventure, a.k.a. the iconic opening sequence of The Simpsons where Homer, Bart et. al. gather in front of the TV.

Affluent Consumers Eating More Fast Food

Affluent consumers increased their visits to fast-food burger restaurants, but cut back on visits to the more upscale chains within the family restaurants category in the months following the economic "meltdown" in early October.
Those are among the restaurant-related trends emerging from newly released Experian Simmons data from the latest three-month wave of the Simmons National Consumer Study (Fall 2008).

The preliminary data reflects week-by-week trends for the period spanning Aug. 18 to Dec. 8 last year. Because the data are not yet weighted (fully projected to the U.S. population), absolute percentages are not claimed to be exact; however, the relative percentages are indicative of trends across time.

Following the meltdown (pegged at Oct. 3), the data show a distinct uptick in reported recent (last 30 days) visits to fast-food burger chains among households with incomes of $75,000 and above.

Furthermore, the uptrend was more marked among the highest incomes levels. For example, the percentage of consumers with household incomes of $100,000+ having visited one (unnamed) burger chain jumped from 50.1% pre-meltdown to 57.3% post-meltdown, and the percentage reporting visiting a second unnamed burger chain rose from 25.7% to 31.3%.

Simmons Experian notes that a simultaneous downward trend post-meltdown in the numbers of consumers with a household income of $75,000+ indicating that they try to eat gourmet food as often as possible seems to corroborate that their eating patterns were affected by the onset of the economic crisis.

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=100216&passFuseAction=PublicationsSearch.showSearchReslts&art_searched=affluent&page_number=0