Pat Hartman | Childhood Obesity News

Coronavirus Chronicles — What’s Up With Those Food Guidelines?

Pat Hartman October 29, 2020 1 Comment

In the previous post, we shook our heads in disappointment over the employment, by the Department of Agriculture, of lobbyist extraordinaire Kailee Tkacz. Many people believe that someone with that kind of resume should not be in a position to influence the government’s Dietary Guidelines.

Why is this a big deal? Apparently, one-quarter of Americans are fed by federal programs — be they in school, prison, or the military. Food stamp policies are also impacted.

The stakes are high. First, there is, at least in theory, the basic precept of attempting to provide the most nutritious food. Also, billions of taxpayer dollars are in play. There are integrity issues. People in the department are well-placed to sway decisions that can lavishly line the pockets of their former colleagues in the food industry. And perhaps to collect kickbacks, in the form of cash, favors, or even more prestigious jobs when they exit government through the “revolving door” and return home to Big Food.

It’s not as if this process has traditionally been pure as the driven snow. Health and science journalist Andrew Jacobs writes,

The fears that politics could overshadow science are not entirely unfounded. In 2018, Secretary Perdue sought to ease Obama-era nutrition standards for sodium and whole grains in school lunch programs, a move that infuriated nutritionist experts.

A judge put a stop to that.

The guidelines are renewed every five years, and last time around, well, let Jacobs tell it:

The panel that year had for the first time addressed the impact of American eating habits on climate change and the environment, but the section was omitted from the final report following an outcry from the livestock industry unhappy over the panel’s suggestion that a plant-based diet was both healthier and more sustainable.

In the past, objectivity among the panelists has been questioned by government watchdog groups. The recent political climate has made it even more difficult to assure that unbiased advice is given.

Pam Miller, the agency’s Food and Nutrition Service Administrator, says the decisions about the guidelines are made by some of the nation’s leading dietary experts. Last June, 20 nutrition scientists had a videoconference to hash out the questions involved in creating the latest guidelines. How did they get on the panel? Jacobs writes that panel members were nominated by the public, and…

[…] those chosen were required to submit financial disclosure forms that were reviewed by agency staff members for possible conflicts of interest…

More than half of this year’s panel has ties to the food industry, and the scientists leading newly created subcommittees on pregnant women, lactating mothers and toddlers have ties to the baby food industry.

But see, here’s the thing. None of this ultimately matters because the Agriculture Secretary has the final cut. The expert panel’s recommendations can be vetoed by the staff, and the staff’s suggestions can be vetoed by Sonny Perdue, a man who “spent much of his career in the agribusiness sector.”

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Scientific Panel on New Dietary Guidelines Draws Criticism From Health Advocates,” NYTimes.com, 06/17/20
Image by Ron Mader/CC BY-SA 2.0

Coronavirus Chronicles — A Mob of Two

Pat Hartman October 28, 2020 1 Comment

The global plague of obesity and the plague caused by SARS-CoV-2 were destined to form a mutual aid society, which is a polite way of saying, a deadly partnership. By combining forces, they can do so much more damage. The virus finds that overweight humans are easy pickings. Obesity finds that people immobilized and demoralized by quarantine conditions are soft targets. Of course, the pandemic has reached into every corner of everyone’s life. Because everyone eats, or tries to, on a daily basis, food is an area where the intrusion is nearly inescapable.

Some people have a very hard time getting enough to eat, and are in no position to be fussy. A growling stomach does not stop to read the label for calorie and nutrient information. Some know very well what they should be eating and feeding to their families. They also have to weigh the benefit of going to the grocery store against the risk of bringing home something they didn’t intend to, like a batch of deadly organisms.

School food programs are in shambles. People with eating disorders are going off the deep end. People who never had eating disorders before are developing them. Parents are subjected to whining by their kids who have been deprived of so many of life’s joys. Giving in to the demand for treats can seem like a good idea. With our minds fully occupied by problems we can do very little about, the Dreadful Duo has engaged in another team effort. Distracted by current events, we forget to pay attention to some of the nuances, like government policies that affect many millions of lives, and who makes them.

The long con

In 2009, the president made an executive order to keep lobbyists from being hired by any government agency they had lobbied in the last two years. The next president changed that, wrote Alex Kotch, by…

[…] allowing lobbyists to join agencies they recently lobbied so long as they recused themselves from working on specific issues on which they had lobbied within the previous two years.

If there is a former lobbyist whom some federal bureaucracy really, really wants to hire, even that weak barrier can be swept aside with a magical piece of paper called a waiver. Actually, everybody can pretty much ignore all the rules, and one of the reasons they get away with it is because COVID-19 soaks up a lot of the available mental bandwidth right now.

One of those ethics waivers was drawn up in 2017 to benefit one Kailee Tkacz, director of food policy for the Corn Refiners Association, who had worked for the industry right up until she left for a government post. It’s not that Tkacz was inexperienced, having previously also lobbied for the National Grocers Association and the Snack Food Association. It’s just that she was experienced in the wrong things. As a tool of Big Food, she had hobnobbed with government employees from both houses of Congress, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Environmental Protection Agency. Then, she became one of them — an official whose job is to help write the Dietary Guidelines.

Why is it a problem that Ms. Tkacz went to work for the Office of the Secretary of Agriculture, with a paycheck 40% higher than other government employees with the same job description, and 76% higher than the average government worker at Agriculture? We don’t know, but could it have something to do with her still knowing all those nice people in the food industry? Next time, we look into why this might not be the best practice.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Corn Syrup Lobbyist Is Helping Set USDA Dietary Guidelines,” IBTimes.com, 02/02/18
Source: “Kailee Marie Tkacz,” FederalPay.org, undated
Images by w.silver and kingtycoon/CC BY 2.0

Energy Balance and Exercise

Pat Hartman October 27, 2020 1 Comment

Science Advances is a journal run by a nonprofit group, which recoups its publication costs from authors. It is peer-reviewed, but authors are allowed to suggest reviewers. Would-be authors have made quite a few complaints about “editorial handling,” or the amount of time it takes to even have their submissions rejected. This may be a negative character trait for a publication to have, or it might just show that the publication has stringent standards.

StudyFinds.org is a site where more colloquial writers interpret and explain the sometimes incomprehensible scientific papers to ordinary people. In this context, Ben Renner wrote about a study that seems to throw a monkey wrench into some theories. For one thing, it implies that we don’t need to worry much about how the children have been getting no exercise in pandemic quarantine conditions. Because a lack of exercise isn’t the problem; poor diet is.

Also, the human immune system faces many challenges when people live out in nature, and it has to work overtime, which burns a lot of calories. Baylor University researchers studied members of tribal groups living in the Amazon region, described as forager-horticulturist children. Renner writes:

[D]espite Shuar children being about 25 percent more physically active, the total number of calories spent every day is indistinguishable from American children. Shuar children also have a 20 percent greater resting energy expenditure, mostly because of higher immune system activity.

But just to illustrate how confusing the entire issue is, here is a quotation from Harvard Health Publishing:

Regular exercise increases the amount of energy you burn while you are exercising. But it also boosts your resting energy expenditure… Because resting energy expenditure accounts for 60% to 75% of the calories you burn each day, any increase in resting energy expenditure is extremely important to your weight-loss effort.

What does Baylor say about its own study? “Constraint and Tradeoffs Regulate Energy Expenditure During Childhood” explains how the received wisdom is that “exercise and other metabolic tasks increase total daily energy expenditure,” which certainly seems to make sense, until it doesn’t. The press release says,

However, that model has been increasingly challenged by studies suggesting that total daily energy expenditure is “constrained” within a relatively narrow human range. Consistently exercise more, spend fewer calories on other metabolic tasks and no extra calories overall.

In other words, the Amazonian children don’t spend more calories but spend them differently. This paper is said to represent the first effort to directly test two opposing models of energy use. It appears to show that it is not a sedentary and germ-free lifestyle making American kids fat, because the forest children who are much more active and whose systems cope with a lot more germs, don’t burn any more calories.

Many people who study the human body suspect that the energy balance paradigm is not the whole story. Calories come in, in the form of food, and they go out, in the form of fuel usage. Apparently, other things happen that are not fully understood. Important to remember is that the study authors do not intend to denigrate the importance of physical activity. Dr. Samuel Urlacher says,

Exercise remains critically important for health and for weight management given its effects on appetite, muscle mass, cardiopulmonary function and many other factors. Our results don’t suggest otherwise. Everyone should meet recommended daily physical activity levels.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Children, Diet, Exercise, Health & Medical, Weight Loss,” StudyFinds.org, 08/25/20
Source: “Exercise and weight loss: the importance of resting energy expenditure,” Health.Harvard.edu, Jan 2015
Source: “Eating Too Much — Not Exercising Too Little…,” Baylor.edu, 12/18/19
Image by geya garcia/CC BY 2.0

Coronavirus Chronicles — Partners in Crime

Pat Hartman October 26, 2020 No Comments

In all the flurry that attends a national crisis, it is easy to overlook an event like the issuance of the 9th edition of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans Report. The new batch of guidelines is expected to be good through 2025. That is, at any rate, the date of the next planned edition. The document offers guidelines that are blameless but maybe futile, as we will see.

Familiarly known as the DGA, this publication comes from the United States Department of Agriculture, an agency with a lot of clout. The USDA decides, for instance, what foods the taxpayers will buy to be served in the nation’s schools and other institutions.

An estimated five million American children are now obese, and obesity prevention needs to start immediately, before birth, if possible. Yet, here is a detail that some find odd. In this iteration, the guidelines for the first time include recommendations for children younger than two years. So, what’s up with that? Plenty of two-year-olds already have a significant head start on becoming obese.

And the official policy hasn’t given it a thought? But that is about to change. One item of advice is,

[A]void foods and beverages with added sugars during the first 2 years of life.

Yes!!! That may not sound like a revolutionary slogan, but it is amazing that the corporate overlords did not quash it. Katie Marks-Cogan, M.D., notes that…

[…] high rates of obesity are not only public health concerns, but they also drive diet-related chronic diseases, such as “cardiovascular disease (CVD), type 2 diabetes, and some types of cancer.”

Does COVID-19 count as a chronic disease? The conditions named there tend to be chronic for years or decades, and then become acute. But the virus is a contrarian. It starts as an acute disease and then, in many cases, becomes chronic. A chronically ill person can grow careless and unmotivated about maintaining a healthy weight, and then can possibly graduate to obesity. Once again, the two plagues work hand in hand. They are a pair of corrupt businesses that survive by perpetually referring customers to each other.

A worrisome suggestion

Dr. Marks-Cogan also recommends that parents start as early as four months to feed children eggs, peanuts, and other potential allergens. This is said to prevent severe food allergies from developing. The study and treatment of allergies is an entire medical specialty, and it seems like carrying out informal tests is a project that could be complicated and/or expensive for parents to manage.

As if that were not enough, along comes a pandemic that turns everything upside down. When the hospital emergency room is full of people waiting to find out if they have caught the virus, who wants to risk a trying food experiment that could send a child into anaphylactic shock?

Food insecurity

You don’t want to feed the baby the stuff in the jars with the additives. But what if there is no other kind of baby food at the food bank, or in your local store? Any dietary guide takes for granted that untampered-with fresh food products are best for babies. To follow through on that idea is one of those “easier said than done” propositions. What if you don’t have a food processor to make your own pure baby food, or even a blender?

What if you can’t get to a store for either fresh produce or a nice electric kitchen device? Sure, big companies are standing by, waiting to ship customers anything they want. But what if you don’t have credit or a bank account? What if you can’t afford the stuff you need to be a good parent in this situation? Your child is at risk of becoming unhealthy, allergic, and obese. Once again, COVID-19 aids and abets obesity, knowing that one day, all those obese people will be perfect hosts for it to colonize.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “What Parents Should Know About the New USDA Dietary Guidelines Report,” TheDoctorWeighsIn.com, 10/17/20
Images by Kandukuru Nagarjun and Michael Coghlan/CC BY-SA 2.0

Coronavirus Chronicles — Hand in Hand, Obesity and COVID-19

Pat Hartman October 23, 2020 1 Comment

Obesity and COVID-19 are very compatible with each other, as Childhood Obesity News has pointed out before. Reports keep piling up that describe the simpatico relationship between the two plagues. One thing the coronavirus does is force people to eat highly processed, nutritionally impoverished junk, even when they know better and don’t want to.

A lot of families with children are currently fed by food bank donations, a problem described by the title of a recent article: “Ultra-Processed Food Consumption among the Paediatric Population: An Overview and Call to Action from the European Childhood Obesity Group.” Of course our whole society should be grateful that generous people and businesses contribute to food banks, especially in places where the need is so great that the waiting lines are incredibly long. Part of the problem here is that the donated goods need to have “shelf life,” and to get that, there has to be a lot of processing, with the consequent loss of nutrients and their replacement with placeholders and additives.

People who have a choice, who still have a thing called a food budget, and access to a grocery store, do not always exercise the best judgment. They have a lot on their minds, and anything that reminds them of normalcy is welcome, even if it isn’t particularly healthful.

Most of all, they have children who are deprived of a lot — their school routines, their friends, the ability to play at neighborhood playgrounds. Parents must cope with having the kids around all the time, and trying to homeschool them, or to figure out the technical requirements to participate in distance learning.

If they are lucky enough to still have a job, they are either doing it from home or scrambling to find safe and affordable child care. Niceties like a proper diet somehow slide down to the bottom of the priorities list. As far back as April, New York Times reporter Anahad O’Connor remarked that “sales of ultra-processed comfort foods like Oreo cookies, potato chips and macaroni and cheese have soared.”

Around that same time, a Tufts University study looked at the eating habits of children in the time of coronavirus. Epidemiologist Junxiu Liu told The New York Times that the researchers found “small but encouraging improvements.” Kids’ consumption of whole fruits and whole grains had increased, and according to their sources, they were drinking fewer sugar-sweetened beverages.

But there’s been little progress in curbing unwholesome consumption of processed meats, refined grains and salt… There’s still a lot of added sugars in breakfast cereals, cookies, cakes and candy in children’s diets.

Personal health columnist Jane E. Brody wrote,

Snacks represent yet another deterrent to improving the quality of children’s diets, the experts said. It is the rare child in a stroller without a packet of a commercial snack that, even if not sweet or salty, is usually a refined carbohydrate. A whole generation is being raised with a perpetual need for oral gratification that bodes ill for current and future efforts to curb the obesity epidemic.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Action from the European Childhood Obesity Group,” Karger.com, 04/28/20
Source: “Endless Summer Puts Homebound Kids at Risk for Weight Gain,” NYTimes.com, 04/30/20
Source: “Using Shelter-in-Place Time to Foster Better Family Food Habits,” NYTimes.com, 04/06/20
Images by Quinn Dombrowski and Kristal Kraft CC BY-SA 2.0

Coronavirus Chronicles — Collusion in Low Places

Pat Hartman October 22, 2020 No Comments

The exigencies of living in a pandemic put all kinds of strain on people, and one thing people under stress are bound to do is — EAT!

New York Times reporter Emma Goldberg notes that about one out of every 10 Americans has some kind of eating disorder, and the pandemic has certainly not made things easier. People sheltering in place either are lucky enough to have food, which sits there staring them in the face all day calling out “Eat me!” in a seductive voice, or they are food insecure, which brings its own set of problems. Goldberg says,

In March and April, the National Eating Disorders Association, or NEDA, saw a 78 percent increase in people messaging its help line compared with the same period last year. Crisis Text Line, a nonprofit organization that provides mental health support by text, saw a 75 percent increase in conversations about eating disorders in the two months since March 16…

Although it is possible that men have just as many issues, most of these support-seeking texters have been women. Goldberg spoke with psychiatrist Dr. Jessica Gold, who points out that when people lose control over the external circumstances of life, they tend to fall back on an aspect they can control, namely, when and how much to eat. For parents, she suggests that they encourage talk about the restrictions and fears posed by the pandemic.

Corporate Accountability is a watchdog group whose attitude toward Big Food is negative at the best of times. But the pandemic has really spotlighted the damage done by the industry because it fosters obesity, and obesity puts people in worse danger from the virus. The accusation is,

The surge of diet-related disease behind one in five deaths annually, is putting hundreds of millions of people at high risk of severe illness from COVID19.

Corporate Accountability’s Deputy Campaigns Director, John Stewart, piles on the blame. It is bad enough that the industry spends millions to advertise unwholesome products that indirectly contribute to the numbers of coronavirus patients. Their penchant for sneaky interference in political matters has the same effect. They fund junk science, engage in dishonest “greenwashing” public relations campaigns to fool the consumers, and lobby (read: bribe) politicians.

Stewart says that Big Food and Big Soda…

[…] are quite diligently trying to convince governments across the world to position their products as ‘essential services’ during the pandemic — the same junk food products that have fueled a global epidemic of diet-related diseases for decades, contributing to unprecedented rates of diabetes and obesity globally.

But wait, that is still not the totality of their crimes. As Childhood Obesity News has also mentioned, the beverage industry, which does so much to cause obesity, has also massively misappropriated the water that people need to fight COVID-19. Hand-washing is one of the main rules to prevent the spread of the disease, and on the individual level, adequate interior hydration is one of the main rules of health. Without clean water, neither defense is available to the victims of the corporate thieves.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Disordered Eating in a Disordered Time,” NYTimes.com, 06/05/20
Source: “Report: Group funded by Coke, Big Food looms large in U.S. dietary guidelines,” CorporateAccountability.org, 04/21/20
Source: “Demanding answers from Big Soda,” CorporateAccountability.org, 05/15/12
Source: “Corporate campaigning during the COVID-19 pandemic, part 2,” CorporateAccountability.org, 04/22/20
Image by Hugo Karpinski/CC BY-SA 2.0

Upsetting the Energy Balance Paradigm

Pat Hartman October 21, 2020 No Comments

Some concerned parties, like nutritionist and nutrition science writer Maria Cross MSc, are unable to get behind the energy balance thing, or at least not the part where all calories are created equal. There is nothing wrong with the “eat less and move more” philosophy, but eating less and moving more are just the bare minimum starting points.

Cross explains how this mindset assumes that obesity is an energy-balance disorder, and that an energy surplus causes the body to store the excess energy as fat. An energy deficit should result in loss of fat. So, why does “dieting” inevitably lead to long-term weight gain? Cross describes what sounds very much like the set point theory:

This apparent paradox is attributed to a decrease in resting energy expenditure and “adaptive thermogenesis”, as the body (the thyroid gland) adjusts its metabolic rate to match the reduction in calorie intake.

The human body, unlike an internal combustion engine, is a complex living organism, driven by ancient survival mechanisms. When you reduce your fat and calorie intake, you engage in a battle with your body, one that you cannot win.

A lot of things need three legs to stand. If an arrow is shot from a bow, how far and fast will it fly? Velocity and distance don’t tell the whole story. Gravity has something to do with it, too, because what if gravity was suddenly taken away? The energy balance equation, in the minds of many researchers, does not stand on two legs but includes a third factor that might be as big as gravity: the human psyche.

Parents, it’s on you

Apparently, the psychological element can no more be ignored than gravity. We have heard many times that the foundation of childhood obesity treatment is lifestyle modification. But then comes the Catch-22. In many cases, lifestyle cannot be modified until the mental/emotional state of a person is attended to. This is particularly the case with children. Children can be told, and parents can be told, that the snacking lifestyle is inimical to energy balance adjustment, because when snacks are in the picture, the caloric intake part of the equation goes off the rails.

Parents say, “Yes, we understand. We want what’s best for our child.” They nod their heads, say “Thank you,” and go home with the best intentions. But what is lurking at home? Their same old psychological style, which is not compatible with the kind of lifestyle modification that can really make a difference. Their old, ingrained psychological style says, when the child is sad, you give out a treat so she or he will feel better. Until that mechanism is modified, nothing changes.

And it’s not up to the kid. A child does not have the wherewithal to say, “Mom, Dad, it would be better if you don’t give me treats when I feel bad.” Generally, a child is not equipped to initiate lifestyle modification. It all falls on the parents.

Fun fact

This is only one of many Childhood Obesity News posts about the pros and cons of sticking to particular menus and eating plans. To really get immersed in the subject, see “The Long Strange History of Dieting Fads” for such knowledge as:

In 1558, Italian nobleman Luigi Cornaro restricted himself daily to 12 ounces of food and 14 ounces of wine. Rumor has it he lived to a ripe 102 years of age, earning his approach the nickname The Immortality Diet.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Why ‘eat less, move more’ doesn’t work for weight loss,” Medium.com, 11/21/19
Source: “The long, strange history of dieting fads,” TheConversation.com, 11/06/17
Image by franchise opportunities/CC BY-SA 2.0

Teal Is the New Orange

Pat Hartman October 20, 2020 No Comments

This post was originally conceived as a pre-Halloween public service announcement, and then the pandemic came along to throw a big scare into everybody, and the October festivities will be severely curtailed this year. So, do we need warnings about how Halloween treats can affect kids with allergies?

As it turns out, yes, we do, because, as food blogger and entrepreneur Vani Hari points out in discussing the Holiday Death Isle, the treats for sale around Christmas, Valentine’s Day and Easter are made from the identical ingredients, poured into differently shaped molds and disguised with different colored dyes. Basically, it’s a case of “Same stuff, different day.” So, what is some of that — uh — stuff?

There are the common and widespread sensitivities that most of the general public has some awareness of: wheat, soy, milk, eggs, peanuts, sesame. A frightening variety of food additives and environmental toxins cause adverse reactions in people’s bodies, and plenty of them are also linked to obesity in complicated ways. And the big culprit, sugar, is of course associated with not only obesity but diabetes.

For complicated reasons (and there are many theories around this subject) more people are allergic to more substances than ever before. This problem sends ill-fated Americans to the emergency room on an average of every three minutes. Apparently, one child in 13 suffers from a life-affecting food allergy. Food allergies can kill, and even though Halloween is all about cozying up to terror and reminders of death, actual fatality is no laughing matter.

Activists on the case

FoodAllergy.org originated the Teal Pumpkin Project, a parent-driven initiative to raise awareness about the threat posed by allergens, to children who just want to dress up and collect candy. The astonishingly comprehensive program offers a ton of information and inspiration for alternative Halloween treats and activities. Rather than strain to identify edibles with harm potential, the program suggests giving out other treats instead. Various participants have suggested plastic tarantulas, Halloween pencils, temporary tattoos, stickers, glow-in-the-dark items, pinwheels, rubber balls, and little jars of bubble-blowing soap.

One participant even swears that socks are a big hit. Plenty of Halloween-themed socks are available in the marketplace, and while they might be a bit pricey for distribution at the door, it could turn out that family members love them.

During a recent spook season, journalist Deke Farrow reported,

The Teal Pumpkin Project seems to be really taking off. FARE first promoted it nationwide in 2014, according to a USA Today article. “In 2015, about 1 million people visited the group’s website to get information, and about 10,000 of them — probably a fraction of participants — put their homes on the interactive map.

The Teal Pumpkin Project’s merch page displays a mind-boggling array of items, many of which can simply be copied at home by thrifty parents and their artistically talented kids. Anybody can paint a pumpkin blue! Any online neighborhood group can promote the Teal Pumpkin concept and even create an interactive map to guide families to other participants.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “The Grocery Stores that Get Food Allergies for Halloween,” RobynObrien.com, undated
Source: “Cousins’ food allergies turn high school student teal for Halloween,” ModBee.com, 10/27/16
Images by Dan Ruscoe and Jen Reeves/CC BY 2.0

Coronavirus Chronicles: The Demise of Halloween As We Know It?

Pat Hartman October 19, 2020 No Comments

Word association test: The cue is “Halloween.” The first thing that comes to mind for most Americans is candy, right? Candy is made from sugar. Evidence strongly connects sugar with a weak and suppressed immune system. A feeble immune system is not a particularly good thing to have in the midst of a pandemic, even one that a bunch of people want to pretend doesn’t exist.

Of course, this year, the spookyscape will be very different in many communities. Children may not be traipsing from house to house. Residents may not want just anybody coughing on their porches. While mourning the probable loss of the neighborhood trick-or-treat custom, we tend to forget another tradition that thrives in some places. Grownups organize events at senior centers and assisted living facilities, where kids can parade around the common area in their costumes, and maybe even collect some treats. The custom is unlikely to be widely observed this year, or perhaps ever again.

Go haunt yourself

The usual sources of much seasonal enjoyment will be gone. Schools and other institutions will not be having parties unless they don’t care much about lawsuits or human life. Haunted houses are not advised. If any parents are incautious enough to throw a party for the kids, surely they will not be bobbing for apples. Anyone who has the technology would probably be smart to skip the party and organize a virtual costume contest instead.

If there must be a group activity, let it be outdoors, distanced, and masked. Under the right circumstances, jack-o-lantern carving is said to be pretty safe. (For little kids, little pumpkins and markers.) Some experts say that visiting a pumpkin patch could be okay. An outdoor costume parade might be pretty low-risk. We spoke recently of some not-recommended, high-risk activities. Some parents are under extreme pressure to cave in and relax their isolation standards. Much compassion should be extended toward them.

The mole people

The safest of all is staying at home. Have a scary movie night with popcorn. Some parents are lucky enough to be in control of how much candy comes through the doors this season. To add a little pizzazz to the evening, they might borrow from the Easter egg hunt tradition and somehow divert the kids’ attention while they hide treats all around the living space.

A person might expect that all previous Childhood Obesity News posts about this holiday are devoted to emphasizing how disgusting it is to allow children a candy feast. But a person would be mistaken! Many, many articles from this collection are about candy avoidance, and a big part of that topic is alternate activities. Lots of people have made very inspired suggestions about how to do things that are so much fun, the kids forget to miss the sugar orgy. Type “Halloween” into the search box on this website, and have a creativity festival instead.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Image by Pat Hartman

Are Parents Monsters in Disguise?

Pat Hartman October 16, 2020 No Comments

Moms and dads who buy and distribute Halloween candy — are they really monsters in disguise? Well, who else would poison children? Calm down, we know that parents who want their kids to have nice holiday memories are not really horrible people. But they sometimes lack awareness, and that’s never good. So we are going to highlight the hiding places of some of those poisons, as revealed by Food Babe, also known as Vani Hari, mentioned recently by Childhood Obesity News as the inventor of the term Holiday Death Aisle.

This is because, no matter how that notorious section of the supermarket is decorated, it always contains the same stuff. Sure, for Christmas, we see a lot of red and green packaging, whereas the run-up to Valentine’s Day features more bags and boxes in the red and pink range. Easter brings out the pastel shades. And Halloween of course is largely the orange segment of the palette. The point being, no matter what colors they dress it up in, the product inside is virtually identical.

Cheap ingredients are processed to a fare-thee-well, pretty much extinguishing any actual value the alleged food might have contained before the ingredients are pressed into the appropriate shape for the upcoming celebratory occasion. Whether shaped like hearts, corn kernels, eggs, or jack-o-lanterns, every piece of brightly-dyed holiday fare, no matter what its disguise, contains toxins, which is of course how the term Holiday Death Aisle originated.

Hidden Horrors

So we note some of the problems mentioned by Vani Hari, along with the interesting information that many of these substances are banned in other countries. In the good old USA, apparently, we’ll eat anything. Our holiday goodies are packed with corn syrup, hydrogenated palm kernel oil, soybean oil, monoglycerides, TBHQ, PGPR, and several other alphabetical mystery substances. Hari says about partially hydrogenated oils that they are:

The main source of trans fat in our food that contributes to heart disease. It’s so harmful to our health that even the FDA has stepped in and is requiring companies to remove this ingredient within 3 years — but until then you can still find it in Halloween candy!

Speaking of trans fat, it might, under the guise of DATEM, be an ingredient of dough conditioner. Caramel coloring is made from ammonia! So is a chemical with the charming moniker 4-MEI, a suspected carcinogen.

Then, there are the petrochemicals, derived from the same stuff that makes engines run. Chemicals made from what is, essentially, motor oil can be found in artificial flavors and artificial colors, solvents, preservatives, and emulsifiers. Some of these witches’ brew ingredients have been linked to hyperactivity, which annoys adults, especially when a family is attempting at least partial withdrawal from the public world during a pandemic.

One preservative, with the charming name of tertiary butylhydroquinone, is suspected of causing asthma, allergies, and dermatitis. A type of artificial vanilla flavor is derived from oil. Another kind comes from wood, which at least starts out as a living substance.

It is not only the petrochemicals that are suspected of causing cancers. Oh no, you’ve also got your preservative, BHT, and your growth hormones that are found in chocolate. Apparently, most of the sweetness in candy comes from sugar beets, which are specifically bred to be compatible with the herbicide Roundup, which is seriously on the list of suspected carcinogens.

Hari supplies a big list of Halloween alternatives that, while not exactly good for children, are preferable to the contents of the Holiday Death Aisle.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “How To Stop Poisoning The Neighborhood Children On Halloween,” FoodBabe.com, undated
Image by Robert Couse-Baker/CC BY 2.0

Coronavirus Chronicles — What’s Up With Those Food Guidelines?

Coronavirus Chronicles — A Mob of Two

The long con

Energy Balance and Exercise

Coronavirus Chronicles — Partners in Crime

A worrisome suggestion

Food insecurity

Coronavirus Chronicles — Hand in Hand, Obesity and COVID-19

Coronavirus Chronicles — Collusion in Low Places

Upsetting the Energy Balance Paradigm

Parents, it’s on you

Fun fact

Teal Is the New Orange

Activists on the case

Coronavirus Chronicles: The Demise of Halloween As We Know It?

Go haunt yourself

The mole people

Are Parents Monsters in Disguise?

Hidden Horrors

Profiles: Kids Struggling with Weight

The Book

About Dr. Robert A. Pretlow

Presentations

Food & Health Resources