Rudd Sound Bites

Help Choose the Most Influential Childhood Obesity Research

by Andrea Wilson

It's been two years since the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation announced that they would award $500 million in grants to reverse the childhood obesity epidemic by 2015, including the Rudd Center’s two Healthy Eating Research grants as well as a grant to examine food marketing practices directed at youth. To accomplish their goal, they have been building the evidence about the problem and what interventions work, as well as turning the evidence into action.

Now, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation wants to know what you think. After conducting a thorough literature search and consulting with childhood obesity experts, they selected 20 recently published articles that they believe have the potential to influence the field in the coming years. They would like you to nominate the five you think are the most influential.

View the nominees and vote.

Voting ends July 10, so vote now, and feel free to pass this link along to your colleagues and encourage them to vote.

Youth Weight Stigma, In Print

By Rebecca Puhl

Last month, a story appeared in the headlines about a 15-year-old student who was a target of weight-based victimization by her peers at school. The student, Marie Gray, who is a freshman honor roll student (and also happens to be obese) opened her high school year book to find that derogatory remarks (e.g., “fat-ass”) had been printed under her name, a prank that had not been caught by teachers prior to the yearbooks being printed and distributed.

While the experience of weight-based teasing is extremely common for most overweight or obese adolescents, this story provides a clear example of the kinds of torment that students face because of their weight, and the potentially lasting impact of such negative peer cruelty and hurtful remarks.

Unfortunately, teasing and bullying are expanding in new ways in today’s high-tech world, providing even more outlets for students to be targeted and humiliated. No longer is bullying and teasing limited to fights in the school yard or taunts on the school bus. Now, students face cyber-bullying, false rumors being spread about them through online social media networks, derogatory text messages on cell phones, and even negative photos posted on the internet. The sky is the limit for ways to humiliate and victimize peers.

Malnutrition in the Age of Obama

by Meredith St John

Last week I attended the “Food: Pleasure, Policy, and Public Health” lecture, one of many events part of this year’s International Festival of Arts & Ideas in New Haven, Connecticut. The Rudd Center’s Director, Kelly Brownell, spoke alongside Chantal Line Carpentier, United Nations Sustainable Development Officer and 2006 Yale World Fellow, and Josh Viertel, President of Slow Food USA and former Co-Director of the Yale Sustainable Food Project.

Josh’s introduction was particularly striking. “When FDR took office one in three children in the United States was malnourished. Today, Obama has inherited an America in which one in three children is overweight or obese.”

In drawing this seemingly sharp contrast, Josh was able to discuss how dramatically our food habits and agricultural practices have changed in the past 80 years. Indeed, there have been significant changes on a global scale, yet the statistic remains: One in three children in the United States is malnourished.

The way we use language shapes how we think about issues. For many, the word “malnourished” evokes images of sickly, starving children, but it’s also an appropriate term to use when referring to overweight and obesity.

Would You Like Globalization With That? A Food Culture Comparison

by Jackie Thompson

When did the USA stop being the fast-food poster child? I used to think that scourges such as obesity, over-commercialization, and incessant marketing of unhealthful food-like substances were uniquely American. However, since beginning my work at the Rudd Center, I have constantly been disquieted by what I’ve learned about the increasingly international nature of food marketing. Countries that have traditionally been associated with undernutrition are now facing obesity, diabetes, and other metabolic diseases in staggering rates that now trump those in the U.S., and it seems pretty rich to deny that companies such as Coke, Pepsi, and McDonalds have played a significant role. Sure, call me over-dramatic, but it is difficult for me not to envision this horrific spread of food-related ill-health as a complacent monster reclining in its North American lair, inexorably winding its garishly-colored, greasy, sugary tentacles across oceans to ensnare other continents. 

Menu Labeling - It Has Potential!

by Amir Goren 

Mandatory calorie labeling on chain restaurant menus and menu boards has been implemented or is under consideration at both state (Maine, Oregon, California, Massachusetts, and others) and national levels. We’re allowed to know how many calories or grams of fat or vitamins we’re ingesting when buying prepackaged foods at the grocery store (see Figure 1), so it makes sense to have menu labeling: a simple, inexpensive change that gives us some of the same transparency with restaurant foods. This is especially important as people are eating out more than ever, and fast food is making a killing due to the slow economy.

A great advantage of menu labeling is increased transparency, a crucial ingredient for a healthy, functioning free market system. How can people watch their calories, reduce sugar, or monitor sodium intake when they have no idea what’s in their food… or if they have to look hard to find the information?

Branding Bananas is Still Branding...

by Camille Lizarribar

Because our world now seems unable to spin without an affixed logo, Disney has become a regular presence in your local supermarket’s produce aisle. The Washington Post recently wrote on Disney’s successful move from being an advocate of unhealthy foods (its McDonald’s Happy Meal’s contract ended in 2006) to its recent and increasing association with healthy ones. Disney gets to play the good guy, build brand recognition and relationships, and make a great profit.

“The backlash Disney had felt from tempting kids with french fries was replaced by a pat on the back for advertising on oranges. Now, there are more than 250 offerings in the Disney Garden line, at least one of which is available in 18 of the top 20 mass and grocery retailers in the United States. Sales grew 70 percent in 2008 over the previous year, thanks to expanding offerings.”

Is It Worth a Fling?

by Camille Lizarribar

Mars has launched its first new chocolate bar in 20 years. Known as the Fling and wrapped in shiny pink and silver wrapping, this ‘chocolate finger’ is being marketed to women as a low-cal substitute for sex, or more explicitly masturbation with chocolate. With only 85 calories, a tag line that says “Naughty, but not that naughty,” and invitations to “Pleasure yourself”, the sexual exhortations are anything but subtle. A quick romp through the requisite website reveals a chock-full-o-stereotypes campaign in the pseudo-liberated style of Sex and the City. The Product section encourages women to:

Try it in Public

You never know when you will need a FLING™, and at under 85 calories per finger, anytime is the right time. Keep things interesting and try a FLING™ Chocolate Finger in all three flavors – Milk Chocolate, Dark Chocolate, and Hazelnut – a ménage of flavors. Variety is the spice of life, so tear it open and sneak in a quickie.

On Politics and Personal Attacks

by Meredith St John

Fat jokes aren’t that funny.

"They say that Rush Limbaugh is the 800-pound gorilla in the Republican Party, but I think that's mean-spirited to say that, because I think he's down to 650 pounds."

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger recently made this disparaging remark during an online chat with CNN. Schwarzenegger and Limbaugh have sparred verbally in the past, but this ad hominem argument marks new, dangerous territory. Maybe Schwarzenegger was striving for comic relief, but in doing so he simply highlighted how deeply entrenched weight bias and discrimination are in Western society.

How does weight status affect someone’s ability to lead a political party? Provide creative policy direction? Or contribute to the national conversation? It doesn’t.                                                                                                         

Big Baby, Big Lesson

by Meghan O'Connell

“That’s a big baby!”
“He’s never missed a meal!”
“What are you feeding him?”
“What a bruiser!”

These are just some of the many comments I have heard from strangers, family members, acquaintances, and even a doctor, about my 18-month old son. I have always felt that an individual’s weight is a personal health issue, and is none of my business. It is generally understood in American society that it is rude to comment on a person’s weight. However, there doesn’t seem to be the same taboo when it comes to small children. These comments come from well meaning people who find “chubby” babies, “husky” toddlers and “plump” preschoolers adorable, and are certainly not meant to offend.  Yet these comments tend to get under my skin.

Label Libel: Nutrition Fact or Fiction?

by Megan Weinberg

Jones-ing for a less guilt-inducing sweet snack the other day, I mindlessly grabbed the Klondike “100 Calorie” ice cream bars on sale without paying attention to the nutrition labeling on the back. The pictures of ice cream enrobed in chocolate with the low-cal promise were good enough for me (see Exhibit A). Later that night, I dashed to the freezer to enjoy a treat. Now, since I had more time, I turned over the box to see what I was about to consume. What I saw perplexed me greatly, and fueled my growing frustration over misleading and confusing labeling.