Rudd Sound Bites

An Unwelcome Weight Loss

by Becca Krukowski

An inmate in Bentonville, Arkansas has lost more than 100 pounds in eight months, while awaiting trial for murder. He reportedly weighed 413 pounds when he was arrested. That’s a dramatic weight loss and, I imagine, would be considered a welcome health improvement for many people; however, this individual is suing the county for insufficient quantity of food served in the jail. Apparently, the meals at the jail provide the inmates with about 3,000 calories per day, which is about 1,000 calories more than the USDA recommends for average daily intake. The plaintiff is also asking for hot meals, rather than the cold meals that the jail has served for years.

Indiana Jones and the Burger of Doom

by Michael Long

The Rudd Center has consistently opposed marketing junk food to children.  I’d like to call our readers’ attention to a recent open letter from a physician and movie fan to George Lucas and Steven Spielberg published by Salon.com. 

The letter’s author, Dr. Rahul K. Parikh, notes that he has long been a fan of Star Wars and Indiana Jones, and as a child appreciated the marketing tie-ins to fast food and candy.  Today, as a pediatrician who frequently treats overweight children, Dr. Parikh calls on the film directors to cease promotion of junk food in their movies, citing Disney’s termination of their contract with McDonald’s as a model of good behavior.

USDA Launches New Website on Commodity Foods

by Rob Friedman

For those of you interested in learning more about the government's commodity foods program, the USDA Commodity Food Network has a new website. The network is part of the Food and Nutrition Service. Commodities are surplus foods purchased by the government which are then delivered to a variety of food distribution programs, including the National School Breakfast and Lunch Programs, the Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations, the Emergency Food Assistance Program, and the Child and Adult Care Food Programs.

Obesity and Climate Change: Framing is Everything

by Carly Keidel

In a letter that will be published in the next issue of the medical journal the Lancet, British researchers Dr. Phil Edwards and Dr. Ian Roberts from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine suggest that obese people are significantly contributing to world oil demands and global food insecurity. Their letter states that obese persons use 18 percent more food energy than thinner persons, which in turn leads to a greater global demand for food.

“These data are interesting, but how they are framed will make a big difference,” states Dr. Kelly Brownell, Director of the Rudd Center. “Saying that obese people are contributing to climate change is highly stigmatizing and assigns blame to the individuals who are obese rather than the conditions driving the obesity in the first place.”

Portion Sizes: Maybe the Metric System Would Help?

by Becca Krukowski

A friend of mine returned from a business trip recently with a food-related nugget that he thought would horrify me. While out of town, he went with some of his colleagues to a local favorite restaurant known for their steak dinners. The menu states that the steaks are served “family-style” and depending on the cut, come in 2-6 pound servings. The steaks are all priced “per pound” and, according to my friend, the menu helpfully recommended one pound per person (see picture), and so all of these men complied and ordered a pound of steak. Nonetheless, my friend was surprised to see hunks of meat arrive at the table. He had not realized that a pound was equivalent to 13 ounces (in fact, I told him, a pound actually contains 16 ounces).

Junk Food City

by Michael Long

Forbes magazine recently released a list of the 20 cities with the highest per capita junk food consumption.  The magazine used data from Nielsen ScanTrack to analyze per capita junk food sales in 52 markets in the U.S., finding that Oklahoma City had the highest consumption of junk food products, followed by Pittsburgh, Memphis, Little Rock and St. Louis.  Most of the cities on the list are in the Midwest or the South, which the magazine notes coincides with higher regional rates of obesity.

Obesity and the 2008 Presidential Race

by Carly Keidel

Does the need for obesity treatment and prevention have the momentum to become a reigning political issue in the 2008 presidential election? What are the sponsorship records of Senators Clinton, McCain and Obama on bills related to nutrition, healthy food access, and community wellness? Answers to these questions and more can be found in a comprehensive report by Corporations and Health Watch, a non-profit organization that tracks the effects of corporate practices on public health. The report examines the extent to which food and beverage companies serve as top political donors, and the positions taken by the 2008 presidential candidates about junk food marketing, nutrition education, family farms, and personal responsibility for diet and exercise.

Meal Dumb-Down

by Kathryn Henderson

The May issue of Parenting magazine recently arrived on my doorstep. I was initially excited by the article “Two-way dinners: Make it for kids, then tweak it for adults – and everybody’s happy!” This seemed like a great idea – after all, I spend a lot of time encouraging parents to put one meal on the table each night rather than making a different meal for each family member. The latter is time-consuming, reinforces the “eat what I want any time I want” mentality, and caters to pickiness. So I eagerly flipped to the article and was suitably…disappointed.