Nutrition

1
Nutrition

• The best diet
• Eat less, move more, eat lots and a
  variety of
• fruit and vegetables
  
• 
  AND
• Go easy of junk
  foods
• Do you know of a food marketer who is telling you
  to eat less?
• What industry or professional organization will
  benefit if you eat healthy?
• Who benefits if you are confused about nutrition
  and health?

2
Benefits

• Fresh fruit and vegetables contain nutrients that
  are very hard to get from other foods
• Vitamin C
• Folate (folic acid)
• Beta carotene (precursor of vitamin A)
• Minerals
• Phyto-nutrients (antioxidants and other
  biologically active substances)
• Fiber
• Food is low in calories

3
Benefits cont.

• This is the best prevention and best medicine for
  most diseases of modern society
• Coronary heart disease
• Many cancers
• Diabetes
• Stroke
• Osteoporosis
• By keeping your weight down, you reduce these
  risk factors
• Obesity
• High blood pressure
• High blood cholesterol
• High blood sugar

4
What To Do?

• Overall balance of diet is what is important
• Single choices have only a small effect
• Eating a particular fruit is not going to protect
  you, and eating a food with sugar or trans-fat is
  not going to kill you on the spot
• Marketers try to convince you that their food
  will make the big difference
• Less cooked and processed food
• Physical activity
• 30 min.- 1 hr every day (or at least 1 hr / 3
  times a week - absolute minimum to have effect)
• Burns calories
• Builds bones and muscle
• Regulates metabolism
• Strengthens immune system
• More new brain cells

5
Food Pyramid

• USDAs Food Pyramid Guide (2005) recommends
• 4 daily servings of fruit
• 5 servings of vegetables
• These standard servings are actually very small
  half cup (1 cup for salad greens)
• 1 banana 2 servings
• recommended minimum costs less than 1 (there are
  a lot of servings in 1 pound)
• 1 pound of green beans costs about 1, produces 9
  half-cup servings, at 11c each
• French fries and potato chips do not count
• Fresh fruit and vegetables cost less than the
  canned or frozen ones!
• Fruit juices are good when NOT from concentrate
  (and preferably without preservatives and sugars)

6
Food Industry

• Farming Issues
• Corporate farming and elimination of family farms
• Consolidation of agribusiness corporations
• Only 4 companies control most of the food
  production in the US
• Vertical integration from seed production
  (including GM), through chemicals (fertilizers,
  herbicides, pesticides) to food processing and
  distribution
• Patenting of life
• Farmers no longer allowed to save seed for
  planting
• The dangers of monocultures
• Goal increase efficiency higher yield, cheaper
  product, more profit
• Decrease of biodiversity and extinction of
  varieties
• Less food variety, freshness, flavor, taste
• Increased susceptibility to diseases and
  catastrophes

7
Farm Subsidies

• Proposed Benefits
• Helping the hard-working poor farmers
• but most farmer owners are not poor
• richest farmers get most of the funding, which is
  used to buy out the smaller farms
• Preserve traditional way of life
• Would it really disappear? What is wrong with
  change?
• Independence and reduce vulnerability to trade
  pressure
• What happened to free market?
• Help competition with imports and international
  trade
• What happened to free market?

8
Farm Subsidies

• Proposed Benefits (cont.)
• Increase production
• Is more always better? What do we do with
  overproduction?
• Reduce production costs
• Artificial, since taxes paid for the reduction
• Cheap food for the developing countries
• Why not help them be independent?
• Mitigate unpredictable local weather or market
  prices
• Free market? Insurance?

9
Farm Subsidies

• Criticisms
• Against free and fair market
• Others do not receive subsidies (for ex. poor
  store owners)
• Insurance works well to mitigate unfavorable
  conditions in other economic areas
• Promote poverty in undeveloped countries
• Artificially low prices drive farmers out of
  business
• Eliminate the main source of income for many
  countries
• Make countries dependent on the developed world
• In the US ¾ of subsidies go to the top 10
  largest farms, who need it the least
• Discourage variety 90 of money goes to staple
  crops (corn, wheat, soybeans, rice) while growers
  of other crops are shut out
• Encourage more land exploitation and environment
  destruction

10
Food Industry

• The industry produces 3,900 calories per day per
  person
• Adult female needs 1500 calories
• Adult male 2000
• Children 1000
• Company strategies
• Convenience
• Ubiquity
• Proximity
• Frequency
• Variety
• Larger portions
• Low prices
• Companies do not ask How can we make our
  customers fat?
• They ask How can we sell more of our foods?

11
Food Industry

• Marketing
• Marketing is meant to be invisible and to slip
  beneath the radar of critical thinking
• Marketers try to convince you that their food
  will make the big difference
• 320,000 edible products are offered in the US
• 40,000 products displayed at a large supermarket
• Food companies are unlikely to change marketing
  practices on their own !

12
Supermarkets

• Say are in the business of offering choice, but
  make everything possible to make that choice
  theirs, not yours.
• Stores decide which products to sell and
  therefore what you will buy
• Their jobs is to sell food, and more of it. From
  their perspective, it is your problem if what you
  buy makes you eat more food than you need, and
  more of the wrong foods in particular.
• Employ social scientists and research on consumer
  behavior and emotions
• Their strategies are very efficient
• 70 of people bring shopping lists but only 10
  adhere to them
• most shoppers buy 2 additional items for every
  item on their list

13
Supermarket Strategies

• Use different measurement units to confuse
  customers and play with packaging and pricing
• Offer overwhelming variety to confuse you and
  force you to browse and buy more (masked as
  offering more choice, and the more you see, the
  more you buy)
• Often reorganized to force customers to browse
  more
• Play slow music to make you move more slowly and
  browse more
• Highest-selling food is in the periphery, with
  most traffic and meat and milk in the back of
  store to force to walk through the isles or
  periphery
• Place attractive and aromatic items that sell on
  impulse near entrances (freshly baked bread,
  flowers, produce)

14
Supermarket Strategies (cont.)

• End of isles are for high-profit, heavily
  advertised items (to be bought on impulse)
• High-profit items are on eye-level
• Highest-selling brands take more space to sell
  more
• Store brands put immediately to the right of name
  brands (we read left to right)
• Long islands with no gaps to force people to walk
  past them and browse
• Have a good-looking and nice-smelling bakeries,
  prepared food and deli sections to entice you to
  stay more and buy
• Give away taste samples
• Kid play areas the longer they are there, the
  more you will shop

15
Supermarket Economics

• Discount shoppers clubs track your purchases
• Stores rent their shelf space food companies
  pay supermarkets slotting fees with higher
  prices for premium space
• Stores demand trade allowances guarantees
  that company will advertise locally (incl.
  coupons, discounts)

16
Supermarket Economics

• That is why junk foods (sodas, salty snacks,
  cereals, sweets), take so much space
• cheap to produce (have a lot of subsidized
  products such as sugar, corn, corn syrup,
  hydrogenated oils)
• most profitable for both food companies and
  supermarkets
• more space more sales
• The slotting fees system is very corrupt
• Congress held hearings in 1999
• the testifying people from industry were so
  afraid of retribution, they wore hoods and used
  gadgets to prevent voice recognition

17
Supermarket Economics

• The Government Accountability Office was asked to
  investigate but got nowhere because the retail
  food industry refused to cooperate
• Customers pay for this system in 3 ways
• higher prices at the supermarket
• taxes that compensate food companies for the
  slotting fees
• costs of treating illnesses resulting from poor
  food choices
• Low prices encourage people to buy more food in
  larger packages, and eat more
• Larger packages are cheaper (less material) and
  more profitable
• Retail companies complain that profit margins are
  1-3, but that is 3.5 billion/year from 350
  billion in sales

18
Fresh Fruit and Vegetables

• In supermarket terms, it means foods that spoil
  faster than others, NOT that they have been
  picked earlier that day, or even that week.
• NOT fresh most have been transported for 7-10
  days and for great distances, mostly by truck
  (and taste may change a lot)
• Many are picked green (tomatoes, bananas are
  chilled, warmed and treated with gases to ripen)
• Some have preservatives (esp. bagged) or wax
  added
• Look at the mold / algae growing on sprinklers
• Offered in overwhelming variety

19
Fresh Fruit and Vegetables

• Country of origin labeling (COOL) problem
• in EU they have to be labeled, but not in US
  only Whole Foods labels them voluntarily
• Labeling law was to take place in 2004, then
  postponed under pressure from companies to
  October 2008 for other foods US food industry
  (especially meat) is universally opposed
• Grocery Manufacturers of America called the 2002
  bill a nasty, snarly beast of a bill industry
  tried unsuccessfully to make labeling voluntary
• Will allow you to consider the safety or politics
  of a country of origin
• Will show if food of different origin is mixed
  (which is often the case now)
• Out of season produce has costs in flavor,
  texture and may be nutritional value
• Packaged / precut produce cost more(4x more),
  and washing is questionable
• Store brands are of same quality as name brands,
  (for which you pay brand tax)

20

• Varieties sold in stores are selected for
• Price of production
• Looks (size, shape, color)
• Firmness and durability
• Resistance to pests and spoiling
• And then for taste or nutritional value
• Costs of production
• Pollution of soil, water and air
• Exhaustion of water supplies
• Soil erosion
• Health care of farm workers
• Depletion of oil (for fuel)

21
Organic Foods

• What does it mean
• No chemicals (synthetic pesticides, herbicides,
  synthetic fertilizers, antibiotics, growth
  hormones)
• No sewage sludge fertilizer
• No GM (genetically modified) seeds
• No seed treatment with irradiation
• All records are kept and checked by inspectors
• The Organic Standards are hundreds of pages in
  the Federal Register and are open to the public

22
Organic Foods Benefits

• Reduces pollution (no chemicals - fertilizers,
  herbicides, pesticides, antibiotics, growth
  hormones) in
• Soil
• Water
• Food
• Your body
• conserves natural resources (for example less
  fuel use)
• seem to have more minerals and vitamins
• taste better (even when they may not look as good
  as the conventionally grown)
• Pesticides are poisons and have been shown to be
  harmful to people (for example farm workers) and
  to nontarget wildlife, and accumulate in the
  soils for long time

23
Organic Foods cont.

• Conclusions
• So far it is a very reliable standard for
  high-quality food
• However, it is under increasing pressure from
  industry
• to allow for cost-saving practices to allow
  use of chemicals, antibiotics, growth hormones,
  GM, sewer sludge, etc.
• If successful, it will make the organic
  standard and label meaningless, which is probably
  their goal then people will be buying more
  conventionally grown products which are cheaper
  to produce and have higher profit margins

24
The Politics of Organic Foods

• Conflict of interest the job of the USDA is
  actually to promote conventional agriculture, not
  healthy eating
• Conventional growers are eager to make sure that
  nothing about organic foods even slightly
  suggests that organics might be better
• Opponents of organics work hard to make you doubt
  the reliability of organic certification, to
  weaken the Organic Standards (so you really will
  have something to doubt), and to make you wonder
  if they are better.
• Just before issuing the Organic Standards, the
  USDA (under pressure from political appointees)
  said it would be fine for farmers to use GM
  seeds, irradiation and sewer sludge and still
  call their crops organic. After a barrage of
  275,000 outraged letters, the agency backed off
  this peculiar idea

25
The Politics of Organic Foods

• In 2004 the USDA without consulting its own
  organics advisory board ruled that organic
  farmers can use pesticides that might contain
  ingredients prohibited by the Environmental
  Protection Agency. Under protest, the USDA again
  backed down.
• In 2005, a federal court in Maine ruled in favor
  of protecting the Organic Standards. It refused
  to allow the use of non-organic ingredients when
  organic ingredients were not available, unless
  those ingredients have been approved by the
  National Organic Board. It also denied exceptions
  to rules for converting dairy herds to organic
  production. Under pressure from large corporate
  producers of organic foods, the Organic Trade
  Association induced Republican leaders of
  Congress to attach a rider to the 2006
  Agricultural Appropriations bill that would
  cancel the court decision. Despite more than
  300,000 letters and phone calls from consumers
  who objected to this profoundly undemocratic
  sneak attack on the Organic Standards, the rider
  remained. If such attacks continue, Certified
  Organic will lose its meaning and its ability
  to command a premium price.

26
Typical arguments against organics

• Dennis Avery from the Hudson Institute
  (conservative think tank that receives funding
  from agribusiness corporations) has argued that
• Organic methods are unreliable and decrease
  productivity (not true)
• Cause higher prices, and therefore
• Threaten the food security of the worlds most
  vulnerable populations
• To the finding that people eating organic foods
  have less pesticides in their bodies answered So
  what? Pesticides are safe. What is the
  evidence? Nobody has died from eating small
  amounts of pesticides.
• The dangers for agribusiness from the Organic
  Standards
• Makers of chemical fertilizers, herbicides, and
  pesticides would suffer
• People will buy less conventionally grown foods
• People may demand that subsidies are given to
  organics instead of conventional corn and
  soybeans
• Studies have shown that with organic agriculture
• There is only a small decline in organic
  productivity, offset by decreased fuel costs
• Farmers are equally profitable
• Soil is in better shape
• Energy is used more efficiently

27
Diary

• A lot of variety which confuses people
• Dairy milk is a complex product that contains
  hundreds of substances, some good, but some not
  so good
• High in saturated fat (60) and fat in general,
  and cholesterol
• High-calcium diet has questionable benefits new
  research shows it does NOT increase bone
  strength but DOES increase kidney stones
• The production of high-fat dairy products has
  increased cream ice cream, especially
  super-premium cheeses (triple-cream brie)
• Lose Weight ad campaign
• Most people (especially non-white) cannot digest
  lactose and yet it is being recommended to
  everybody
• Milk is NOT part of the diet of many other
  nations, which are in better health than the US
  population nevertheless
• In 2004 the recommendation was increased from 2
  to 3 servings of dairy products under the
  influence of a committee tied financially to the
  dairy industry

28
How to fix the problem?

• Food companies are unlikely to change marketing
  practices on their own, so pressure is needed
  from people and governments
• Most important personal responsibility
• Of dieters who manage to lose 10 or more of
  their body mass in studies, 80-95 will regain
  that weight within two to five years
• VOTE WITH YOUR WALLET!
• Once you recognize the vested interests
  behind food marketing, you can choose and decide
  for yourself whether to accept, ignore, or oppose
  what marketers are trying to get you to do
• Need to change the social and business
  environment so that it becomes easier to make
  healthier choices
• Therefore there needs to be a discussion of
• Government regulations
• Government and state subsidies to companies
• File lawsuits against companies or government
• Change taxes
• New and clear labeling requirements
• Bans on junk foods? (for example in schools)

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• Drinks
• water, coffee, tea, milk, juice, soda, power
  drinks
• Breakfast
• cereals, granola bars, nuts, yogurt, fruit, PB
• Lunch Dinner
• Carbs - whole grain bread, brown rice, oatmeal,
  pasta, pizza
• lipids
• 2 essential fatty acids polyunsaturated omega-3
  and omega-6
• plant oils olive oil, canola, sunflower
• proteins beans, whole grains
• Limit fast food restaurants
• Limit
• dairy products milk, yogurt, cheese, cream, ice
  cream
• sweets sodas