It’s Sodi-licious

A recent post observed that, rather than decreasing, the amounts of fat, sodium, and sugar in manufactured breakfast cereals have only continued to increase. Over the past decade, journalists in the health field have unrelentingly noted that such products — especially those aimed at children — inevitably include more and more sugar, sodium, and fat. It is almost as if attentive reporting on the topic has perversely led the situation to become even worse.

Plenty of information appears printed on food packaging, and an abundance of articles about the contents of those packages are published through various media. Regarding the boxes, cans, bottles, and other food packages, along with the journalism about what is inside them, why don’t all these information sources just go ahead and say, “Salt”? Is someone just showing off with fancy words, or what? Sodium and salt, aren’t they the same?

As it turns out…

After consulting Sharon Small, a dietitian who specializes in counseling patients about their cardiovascular health, journalist Wendy Bazilian reported:

Sodium is a mineral and a key component of salt. Salt is actually called sodium chloride because it is made up of 40% sodium and 60% chloride… [W]hile your body needs sodium to function properly, too much (typically consumed as salt) can increase the risk of certain health issues.

There can be sodium without salt, but not salt without sodium. A food or drink may contain sodium but no salt. Sodium is an element and a metal. Salt is made of two things, sodium and chlorine, and is not as bad for the body as sodium alone. Sodium does vital things for the body, but unaccompanied and in too large a quantity, it can damage the kidneys and can lead to high blood pressure and stroke risk.

The two main sources, and an additive

Sea salt comes from the ocean and is less processed than table salt. Table salt comes not from tables, but from mines, and is more processed. For many years, sellers of salt have included iodine with their product. Because salt is consumed almost universally, it was seen as the ideal vehicle through which to slip in enough iodine to prevent a massive public health crisis.

If a human thyroid gland is to function effectively, it needs iodine. Without it, the thyroid is unable to properly do its job regarding “metabolic rate, heart and digestive functions, muscle control, brain development, and bone health.” If a fetus does not get enough iodine, the results can include physical deformities and cognitive impairment.

Even with salt vendors doing their best, it is estimated that around two billion members of the earth’s human population experience health issues due to iodine insufficiency.

The food industry

In the USA, the average adult absorbs about 3,400 milligrams per day of sodium, but 2,300 mg (about a teaspoonful) is widely acknowledged to be quite enough. The stodgy old American Heart Association, however, would actually prefer no more than 1,500 mg per day, or less than half the amount actually consumed by the average grownup.

Most of the incoming sodium uses packaged foods and restaurant meals for its delivery system, concentrating on 10 main popular products. Few of those choices contain any form of vegetation, unless you count the sauce on pizza.

Even a responsible eater who never even picks up a salt shaker most likely absorbs way too much sodium. This causes the professionals who spend their lives studying these matters to mention such topics as hypertension, heart disease, and stroke. Oh, and kidney stones. Often, the effects do not manifest until the window of opportunity for redemption has passed.

A question that a reasonable person might ask is, “If sodium is problematic, why don’t the manufacturers just leave it out, and let people salt their food according to taste?” Apparently, because some other, less civic-minded manufacturer will go ahead and include salt, and consequently sell more product.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “ Salt vs. Sodium: What’s the Difference? Health Experts Explain,” EatingWell.com, 12/31/25
Source: “Why Does Salt Have Iodine Added To It?,” SeaSalt.com, undated
Image by Couleur/Pixabay

It’s the Newsiest — Breakfast, Cereal, and Kids

A particular news story appeared almost exactly a year ago, in response to a major journal’s publication of “Nutritional Content of Ready-to-Eat Breakfast Cereals Marketed to Children.” That all-too-typical piece announced that breakfast cereals are “filled with increasing amounts of sugar, fat and sodium,” a statement equally true at this very moment in time.

Does anyone out there believe that the situation has improved since then? If so, we have a very attractive bridge to sell you. Sorry, but no, the shameful trend has not reversed. Oh, and guess what? “The study also found that cereals’ protein and fiber content — nutrients essential for a healthy diet — have been in decline.” That sobering fact is just as true today as it was 12 months ago, and we feel confident in betting that it will be even more true a year in the future.

The original article concerned the analysis of 1,200 new or reformulated cereal products that had appeared on the market over the previous decade and a half. Most of them were products that had already existed, with a few minor tweaks thrown into the mix. Not improvements, just inconsequential changes. Study co-author Shuoli Zhao mentioned the existence of “evolving consumer awareness about the links between excess consumption of sugar, salt and saturated fat and chronic conditions like diabetes, hypertension and cancer.”

And yet…

But somehow, marketing strategy has not reflected any awareness of increasing customer intelligence, or of elevated industrial integrity. Professor Zhao is quoted as saying,

What’s most surprising to me is that the healthy claims made on the front of these products and the nutritional facts on the back are actually going in the opposite direction.

The study found that the total fat content per serving of newly launched breakfast cereals increased nearly 34% between 2010 and 2023, and sodium content climbed by 32%. Sugar content in the newly introduced products rose by nearly 11%, according to the analysis. Kellogg Company, General Mills and Post Holdings, the three largest makers of breakfast cereals in the United States, did not respond to requests for comment.

Well, what remains to be said? Do we really want them to speak aloud the painful truth? “Hey, you virtuous protectors of the consumer have insisted that all information be revealed. Full disclosure has been duly made. We are as revealing as a striptease artist. The public knows everything about our measurements, and ya know what? The public doesn’t give a tinker’s dam.”

There was some talk of attempting to remove some artificial dyes from the U.S. food supply, but whether any serious attempt will be made to back up the notion with legislation is unclear. Speaking of law, no statute anywhere insists that breakfast cereal must be moistened with milk. Try wetting it down with fruit juice and see what happens.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest, a nutrition advocacy group not involved in the study, published some words from its executive director, Peter Lurie, who was surprised to learn that “large food companies have not made a more concerted effort to reduce the sugar, salt and fat content of their breakfast cereals.”

Well, why should they? If there is a word that describes an attitude more apathetic than apathy, that word would describe the industry’s mental state regarding this issue.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “American Breakfast Cereals Are Becoming Less Healthy, Study Finds,” NYTimes.com, 05/21/25
Source: “Nutritional Content of Ready-to-Eat Breakfast Cereals Marketed to Children,” JAMNetwork.com, 05/21/25
Image by Picdream/Pixabay

Ultra-Processed Foods Cover-up? Part 2

Recommended at this point is to catch up by reviewing Part 1, “Is There an Ultra-Processed Foods Coverup?” What makes information about Dr. Dhruv Khullar’s controversial article even more interesting and relevant is this quotation published less than four months previously:

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who may soon lead the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, has made common cause with some lawmakers by railing against ultra-processed food, pledging to remove it from public schools and limit the use of pesticides, artificial dyes, and, perhaps more dubiously, seed oils.

So apparently, Kennedy underwent some changes of opinion about the matter during the few weeks between that publication and his being made head of the Department of Health and Human Services.

Meanwhile, National Institutes of Health investigator Kevin Hall was recalibrating some of his theories based on the advanced work that he had been doing with volunteers, testing four different diets in turn. Dr. Khullar explains:

When the team served ultra-processed foods that were neither calorie-dense nor hyper-palatable — for example, liquid eggs, flavored yogurt and oatmeal, turkey bacon, and burrito bowls with beans — people ate essentially as much as they did on the minimally processed diet. They even lost weight.

Hall had no choice but to conclude that “Weight gain is not a necessary component of a highly ultra-processed diet,” to which Dr. Khullar appended, “He had, in a sense, refuted his hypothesis again.” And that is exactly what any genuine and honest scientist is delighted to do — to discover that he or she had guessed wrong, or drawn conclusions from incomplete data. A true scientist does not care how many times research has to start over, or how often his or her theories need to be revised, as long as truth is reached in the end.

Dr. Khullar also spoke with the venerable Marion Nestle, and introduces her to readers with this description:

[…] a molecular biologist and nutritionist who started the country’s first academic food-studies program, at N.Y.U., helping to bring attention to the roles that culture, capitalism, and politics play in what and how much we eat.

That apparently is exactly the crux of the whole food policy problem: the role being played by factors politely termed culture, capitalism, and politics, when the clashes of opinion are worthy of cruder but more accurate terms for controversy, that some critics would prefer to use. Dr. Khullar recounts how Nestle reminded him of a historical fact:

During the Second World War, U.S. military leaders were alarmed that many recruits, having grown up during the Great Depression, couldn’t join the war effort because of conditions caused by a lack of nutrients, such as rickets, scurvy, anemia, and tooth decay. “That came as a shock, and the military became heavily concerned with nutrition.”

This is very significant in the light of today’s situation, which includes the ineligibility of many young Americans to join the military because they are simply too fat.

At any rate, Nestle is not entirely on board with heaping blame upon ultra-processed food; but is not a big fan of it, either. (She is, incidentally, enthusiastic about Shredded Wheat, and even dusts it with a bit of sugar — to celebrate the fact that she, and not some corporation, is in charge of deciding the amount.)

Together, the two visited some places where food is produced, learning incidental facts, like how giant blocks of cheese should only be grated at the last minute, because “Pre-shredded cheese spoils faster. This way we can avoid preservatives.” This is exactly the sort of knowledge that leaves in the grim landscape some space for hope.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Why Is the American Diet So Deadly?”, Archive.is, 01/06/25
Source: “RFK Jr. aides accused of censoring NIH’s top ultra-processed food scientist,” CBSNews.com, 04/17/25
Image by DanielaElenaTentis/Pixabay

The Case of the Politically Incorrect Teacher

There is more to know about the incident in which a high school teacher caused quite a stir by inserting questions that referenced obesity into an exam that the students were, of course, required to take. An understandable first reaction might be, “Just a moment, are we to understand that the gent educates young people about an obesity-related field, like nutrition or exercise? Is he perhaps the gym teacher?” But no: Tom Chan teaches math.

To digress for a moment from that odd discrepancy, it should be noted that the entire San Francisco United School District, where Lowell High School is located, enjoys an apparently well-functioning mechanism for conscientiously feeding children of all ages, several times per day if necessary. The menus, published via a special website, include such details as the calorie content of upcoming meals.

The financial details are unclear, but it seems to be free for most or all students. That is a topic for another day.

The intriguing question that comes to mind, the real head-scratcher, is, “How and why would a teacher of mathematics insert material, whether intended as humorous or not, about obesity, into a compulsory test?” Learning more about the circumstances of the accusation of wrongdoing and its consequences does little to clear up that question.

The status quo

All along, in the course of a more than 20-year teaching career, most of Mr. Chan’s kids have rated him highly, to the point where…

For many of us, Mr. Chan was not just a teacher; he was a source of encouragement and someone who genuinely believed in our success.

A former student wrote to the San Francisco Chronicle that Chan “went above and beyond in ways that are rare.” A report from SFist.com noted that many students “brushed his humor off as being ‘bad dad jokes,’ which the students interpreted as Chan’s way of making math more fun.” (Just to be clear, the phrase “bad dad jokes” denotes corny humor, not abusive fathers.)

Recently, for some reason, talk was going around about particular test questions that bothered some students, and consequently some parents, and the authorities. Two items were of particular concern, problems that involved “a ‘fat kid’ punted into the air and the cost of dating girls based on their weight.” As more individuals within the system became aware of the disturbance, more of them agreed that Chan’s language and behavior were perceived and received as fat-shaming, and also sexist.

When the press informed the public, the feathers hit the fan. Some students had never been comfortable with their math teacher’s style all along, and the ensuing publicity encouraged them to speak up. With public attention focused on the matter, the authorities had no choice but to suspend him pending further investigation.

Meanwhile, additional evidence was brought forward. Both teens and adults who had previously not felt that they needed to strictly follow the “See Something, Say Something” policy hardened their attitudes and added their observations and experiences to the pile. One report mentioned a 9th-grade algebra quiz question that had something to do with giving candy to a “fat kid.”

But then word got around, not only about this particular test, but earlier ones, as well as language that had been used in the classroom and elsewhere. A citizen remarked in an online forum that Chan had been known to “make gross generalizations about people who speak Cantonese,” which is not a positive quality.

Yet at the same time,

Hundreds of former and current students immediately defended Chan after the Chronicle’s coverage, signing a petition and urging officials to reinstate him.

A parent named Caimán Dorado wrote to SFist.com,

My kids, 2 girls!! …remember Mr Chan’s quirky jokes and say WAS NOT A BIG DEAL. He was popular to the kids boys and girls, a good creative teacher… These almost adult high schoolers who spend their lives online, understood Mr Chan was just trying to make calculus more creative interesting and fun.

Another parent wrote,

To be fair, when my kids were going to Lowell, the math and science teachers used a lot of goofy examples like that to keep the students engaged, although that was more in Physics and Calculus, as I recall.

But some current and former students went the other way, recalling additional details that made them uncomfortable, and sharing them with the student newspaper. Worse yet, the school authorities also cited as a reason for the suspension “other behaviors,” which various publications have mentioned, hinted at, or confirmed as fact.

It was common knowledge to anyone who frequented the same social media sites that Chan commented on some female students’ posts and sent them direct messages. (The journalist did not mention whether any male students received the same extracurricular attention.) Apparently, he had been heard to say, “Girls are either pretty, or they can do math,” which sounds pretty sexist, or at the very least, unnecessary and inappropriate.

This item does not sound good at all. As stated by SFist.com,

Some parents are also unhappy that he posted “Grades vs. Dignity” videos on YouTube of students dancing in exchange for extra credit.

At any rate, the authorities placed Chan on “indefinite leave,” and by March 25, he had resigned.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Find Your Menu,” SFUSD.edu, undated
Source: “S.F. teacher accused of sexist quizzes quits,” PressReader.com, 03/27/26
Source: “Lowell High School Teacher on Leave After Giving Students Quizzes Demeaning Girls, ‘Fat Kids’,” SFist.com, 03/03/26
Source: “Lowell High math teacher resigns amid probe into sexist, fat-shaming quiz questions,” Yahoo.com, 03/25/26
Image by Mohamed_hassan/Pixabay

Other Expenses, Like Shame and Blame

We have been discussing the fiscal costs to society (namely, us) of obesity. But what are the psychological costs of shame and blame, and who should bear those costs? Who should be held responsible for the friction — the administrators of a particular school, the parents, the voters, the students, or all or none of them?

Psychology is a tricky subject, because definitions of responsibility and of psychological damage vary from place to place and even within a single community. Furthermore, every related expanse, to whatever degree it originates in the mind, contains the possibility of costing real dollars eventually, especially when a publicity-attracting event like a lawsuit or the firing of an administrator comes along.

When the “shame and blame” bills come due — as they inevitably will — dollars will be demanded, and paid. First in line to empty their wallets are parents, who might pay for “fat camp;” for the services of a mental health professional in person or online; for two entire sets of clothing for a child whose weight fluctuates wildly; for pricey “health foods” in hopes that a change of diet will do the trick; or who entertain the mistaken belief that a child’s away-from-home food consumption can be controlled.

On the public stage

The example might be cited of an obese child soaking up public money in order to try losing weight, and what a disgrace it is, because the funds could have been used instead for some other child who is fighting a serious infection. How unacceptable it would be for one to suffer because limited resources are being used for the other! A crudely unsympathetic adult might wonder why a kid who got fat by greedily eating everything he could get his hands on should receive help, to the detriment of a poor, innocent child who suffers an illness that she or he was not responsible for contracting.

Is that fair? Aren’t the wrong sort of people depleting public resources that more rightfully belong to the more deserving? (Apologies to the reader, but some folks do see it this way.) But to mention that view is an effective segue into the topic of blame and shame, and how much those impulses influence the entire field of obesity in myriad ways.

West Coast discontent

This issue was recently the cause of public censure when a teacher’s actions were investigated because of exam questions that some critics deemed “inappropriate.”

Lowell High School, part of the San Francisco Unified School District, is known in one context
“one of the highest performing public high schools” in California. Math teacher Tom Chan composed some exam questions that were deemed “inappropriate” because of content that struck critics as being sexist and fat-shaming. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, students were tasked with calculating “[…] how much it would cost to pay for dinner for girls who weigh 120 versus 220 pounds.”

Worse yet, another quiz question was said to be titled “Mr. Chan vs. The Fat Kid (part 2).”
The entire school system has an anonymous system known as “See Something, Say Something,” through which concerned participants can bring questionable actions to the attention of trusted adults.

Judging by its informative website, Lowell High appears to be an outstanding institution. Its language department encompasses eight languages, and the Visual and Performing Arts Department is said to be exceptional. Whopping 27 sports are practiced by 32 teams; 100 clubs and service organizations are active; and the institution boasts programs that specialize in Wellness, Peer Resources, and CSF Tutoring.

Most importantly,

Lowell endeavors to create a just and equitable society where individual responsibilities are clearly defined and personal rights guaranteed. It endorses the concept of an integrated school where cultural and social diversity enrich the lives of all students.

(To be continued…)

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Lowell teacher investigated due to reported ‘inappropriate’ exam questions,” SFGate.com, 03/03/26
Source: “Lowell High School,” sfusd.edu, undated
Image by tanrica/Pixabay