Organic Connections May-June 2010 by Natural Vitality

Organic

Connections MAY–JUNE 2010

The magazine of Peter Gillham’s Natural Vitality

Chef Ann Cooper Renegade School-Lunch Lady Robyn O’Brien Fighting for Allergy Children David S. Ludwig, MD, PhD Ending the Childhood Obesity Epidemic

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The exploitation of our future

he word exploitation means “use (of a situation or person) in an unfair or selfish way.” Much to our collective shame, we have permitted our children to be exploited as a market niche. Under the advertised benefits of convenience and lower cost, this experiment in free-market capitalism has resulted in the enrichment of mega food corporations and a disaster for our future generation. The cost in real terms? We now have the first generation with a projected shorter life span than their parents and an epidemic of obesity and diabetes (23 million children are overweight or obese). I’m all for making an honest buck as long as it’s honest and not at someone else’s expense. Exploitive capitalism has, sadly, been part of our history, but there are times that we, as a nation, have put prudence over profit. You don’t see television advertising or even hear radio spots for distilled spirits or cigarettes. And yet it’s open season for fast-food and junk-food ads aimed at children and parents. But, after smoking, obesity is the number one cause of premature death in America. The simple fact is that you can’t build a healthy body or mind with a diet of candy, soda, high-calorie snacks and low-nutrient sweet, salty and fatty foods, sugared cereals and flavored milk. It’s estimated that children are eating 19 to 29 teaspoons of added sugar every day! And we’re just talking about processed food, without even touching on the effects on children of chemical additives, toxic residues, GMOs, antibiotics and growth hormones. The problem isn’t that complex. It actually surrenders rather easily to common sense. What’s the purpose of eating in the first place? It’s to obtain nutrients the body requires in order to run properly. So, what if there are less nutrients in our foods than there should be? We’re living in a world where many things are not what they appear to be. How much real, nutritious food do you get in a diet of hot dogs, hamburgers, pizza, pancakes, chicken nuggets, fish fingers, ice cream, chips and soda? The answer is clear—far too many of our children are getting fat and sick on cheap “convenience” food. The good news is that there is a grassroots revolution of conscience among Americans. People are speaking out and taking action and connecting with each other. No less than the health and happiness of our children depend on it.

Ken Whitman publisher

Organic Connections™ is published by Peter Gillham’s Natural Vitality 2530 N. Ontario Street, Burbank, CA 91504-2512 Editorial Office 818.333.2171 • www.petergillham.com For a free e-subscription, visit www.organicconnectmag.com Product sales and information 800.446.7462

In this issue

or•gan•ic |ôr ganʹik| denoting a relation between elements of something such that they fit together harmoniously as necessary parts of a whole: the organic unity of the integral work of art • characterized by continuous or natural development: companies expand as much by acquisition as by organic growth.

4 Chef Ann Cooper Celebrity chef Ann Cooper, the Renegade Lunch Lady, talks about her over-10-year crusade to improve the non-nutritious culinary nightmares many children are served in school lunchrooms across America.

Robyn O’Brien We look at Robyn O’Brien’s tireless campaign to expose the horrifying correlation between the explosive growth in America’s child allergies and our chemicalized food.

10 David S. Ludwig, MD, PhD Pediatrician and endocrinologist and director of the Optimal Weight for Life Program at Children’s Hospital Boston, Dr. Ludwig shares his experience in successfully addressing childhood obesity.

14 David Wallinga, MD, MPA Director of the Food and Health Program at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, Dr. Wallinga discusses the very real role that today’s agricultural policies play in the current childhood obesity epidemic.

Free subscription to Organic Connections weekly web features—www.organicconnectmag.com

Chef Ann Cooper Renegade School-Lunch Lady

Line, Radisson Hotels and Telluride Ski Resort and as Executive Chef at the renowned Putney Inn in Vermont. With such a résumé, one might wonder what brought her to fight for nutritious school lunches for kids. “I’m about as unlikely a candidate to be a school food advocate as you could find,” Chef Ann told Organic Connections. “I never knew It’s a worry to many parents: what kind of nu- what kids ate and never cared what they ate. trition are their kids getting in school lunches? The short answer is, not much. They’re getting processed food, trans fats, drinks with highfructose corn syrup, and any number of other evils that contribute to low nutrition and childhood obesity. If you’ve asked anyone who has gone in and tried to solve this problem, you’ll have found that solutions don’t come easily. It’s a selfsustaining problem: The school systems have very limited budgets for lunches, and the only food affordable is cheap, non-nutritious, and laden with chemicals and fats. There are plenty of local farmers, organic food producers and the like who are more than willing to provide healthy foods for schools—but they can’t afford to do so at the rates schools are forced to pay. It was recently announced that President Obama’s new proposed budget includes an additional $1 billion for 10 years for school lunches. But if you do the math, you’ll discover that this amounts to an extra 10 to 15 cents per lunch, which hardly makes a difference, and if adjusted for inflation over time will likely make no difference at all. Not long ago, a celebrity chef named Ann Cooper actually confronted the nutritional issues facing our children in school. Not only has she taken the entire problem to heart, she is now fully dedicated to bringing healthy lunches to our schoolchildren. Meet Chef Ann

A graduate of the Culinary Institute of America, Hyde Park, New York, Ann Cooper has been a chef for more than 30 years. She has held positions with Holland America 4 organic connections

I was a white-tablecloth ‘celebrity chef.’ The worst thing that could happen was on a Saturday night the host would come running in and say, ‘Chef, Chef, we have screaming children on table 19. What should we do?’ And I’d be likely to say, ‘What are they doing in my restaurant? Don’t they know better?’” The story of how Ann became involved in children’s nutrition actually began before she

had the idea to do so. In 2000, Ann published job of Executive Chef and Director of Well- was wellness. In listening to her, Ann became a book entitled Bitter Harvest: A Chef’s Per- ness and Nutrition. Her response was, at first, enamored with the idea and decided it was spective on the Hidden Dangers in the Foods less than enthusiastic. “I literally looked at the time to make a difference. We Eat and What You Can Do About It. The phone and said, ‘What do you want? You’ve “If you’re in fine dining, you’re feeding the book was the culmination of her own inves- got to be kidding!’” Ann related. “But they upper 5 or 10 percent of the financial demotigation into modern food processing and said, ‘Come down and see what we’re doing.’ ” graphic of the world,” Ann said. “I got to wonthe benefits of locally and sustainably grown Ann did go over to the school, where dering why it was that everybody didn’t get food, to which she had committed herself. she met with Courtney Ross, the school’s this great food. I decided to do as a number of After she had completed the book, but founder and widow of Steve Ross, former my colleagues had done in different ways and before it was released, she got an unexpected CEO of Time Warner. One of Ms. Ross’s firm follow my heart. In the end I said to myself, phone call from Ross School in East Hamp- missions was to change the way American ‘Okay, I’m going to drop out. I’m done being ton, New York, and was asked to apply for the children were fed, and one of her core values a celebrity chef and I’m going to be a lunch organic connections

lady.’ That was in 1999 and it’s been more than a decade now.” Taking It to the Parents and the Government

Over the next 10 years, Ann’s activity base widened as she vigilantly fought for school lunches for children. She has taken her message far and wide and has been featured in the New Yorker, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Chicago Tribune, Newsweek and Time magazine, as well as having a healthy list of television and major conference appearances. In 2006, Ann (along with co-author Lisa Holmes) published an award-winning book entitled Lunch Lessons: Changing the Way We Feed Our Children. Now, with a broad network of parents and food activists, Ann’s work has culminated in a remarkable website called Chef Ann Cooper: Renegade Lunch Lady. Why, one might reasonably ask, would serving healthy and nutritious food to children be considered “renegade”? Ann laughs in response and says, “What is that? What is it about serving fresh broccoli that would be seen as renegade? You know, it’s because it sort of flies in the face of agribusiness. It flies in the face of Kraft and the American Beverage Association and, frankly, in the face of the National Dairy Council with their chocolate milk campaign. There is so much money to be made in these 5.4 billion lunches we’re serving every year that big business stands to lose money if we serve healthy food.” But Ann is determined. On her site, parents can find tools to assist them in changing children’s diets both within their areas and in their homes. There are recipes and fun items for kids and parents, such as the Healthy Kids Nutrition Report Card and Meal Wheel, as well as detailed guides to the nutrition children really need. This site also makes it easy for parents to write their members of Congress to inform them that standards need to be raised for the school lunch program. A subscriber can remain informed through Ann Alerts, and by taking the School Food Challenge can make his or her activity count toward the overall goal. A separate site, The Lunch Box, is designed to directly assist schools in making their meals more nutritious. “After working on the project for some time, I got a planning grant from Kellogg Foundation, and then subsequent to that I started my own 6 organic connections

foundation and decided to build this Web 15 cents per lunch per day. That’s less than portal TheLunchBox.org,” Ann said. “In May half an apple. Further, they’re talking about of this year I partnered with Whole Foods implementing the Institute of Medicine StanMarket and four other foundations, and dards in three to five years.” The standards she is talking about were rewe raised a million dollars in 100 days. We are now hard at work building the site and cently proposed by the Institute of Medicine, a getting it out of beta testing. Our objective non-profit group that advises the government is to put out there in the public domain, free and consumers on health issues. Companies of charge, all the tools, resources, menus and that supply a majority of school lunches have recipes that a school district would need in pledged to meet these standards in the next order to change their food. In that way we’re three to five years by including more grains, fruits and vegetables and to also meet stantaking away some of their roadblocks.” In addition to food preparation directions, dards for fat, sugar, sodium and whole grains. But, understandably, three to five years is there will also be a Technical Tools section providing budget management models not fast enough. “The current guidelines for and procurement resources; a Resource & nutrition are so low that chicken nuggets, Education section containing case studies of Tater Tots, chocolate milk, high-fructose corn syrup, trans fats, popsicles, Pop-Tarts and corn dogs can all be fed to our children on a daily basis, and then we wonder why we There is so much have a problem,” said Ann. “The Institute of Medicine Standards may not be the be-all money To be made and end-all, but they are so far above what we have today that we ought to adopt them right in These 5.4 billion now. I mean, if it were your child who had high blood pressure, who had diabetes or was obese or had hypertension, and the doctor lunches we’re said it was critical, you wouldn’t say, ‘I think I’ll start dealing with this in three to five years.’ serving every year You would say, ‘We’re going to start dealing with this in three to five minutes.’ And the ThaT big business reason we’re not willing and we don’t have the political will to adopt these things sooner sTands To lose is because big business doesn’t want to have to make changes that fast. If we pull soda or money if we serve flavored water out of schools, then how are they going to make money? If it were their healThy food. kid, they’d do something today. The idea that they’re not going to do something for three to five years is just unconscionable.” Ann concludes with a request for parents schools that have already made a transition, and communication techniques to inform everywhere. “I would hope that all the readparents and students about the new lunch ers would check out TheLunchBox.org and program as well as other food, health and nu- use it as a tool to help their schools change, trition programs; a Community section that because schools need all the help they can get. acts as a meeting place for parents, schools, We need public/private partnerships; we need parents helping; and I know The Lunch Box is students and advocates; and much more. also one more tool to help schools overcome Let’s Get It Done the barriers to their being able to make the positive changes our children all need.” As can be seen, a great deal of Ann’s effort is being spent bypassing the less-than-adequate To learn more about Chef Ann and discover measures currently being taken by the gov- additional ways to help, visit her website at ernment to raise school lunch standards. www.chefann.com. “If the president’s budget is approved for a billion dollars over the next 10 years, it is To preview The Lunch Box test site, visit a real sad attempt at doing anything,” Ann www.thelunchbox.org. remarked. “If we get that billion dollars, it will only end up being somewhere around 10 to

Robyn O’Brien Fighting for Allergy Children by Bruce Boyers

Living what would seem to most a charmed life, Robyn and her husband decided to relocate to Colorado after the birth of their first child, when her husband accepted a position with a tech firm there. “We settled into parenthood with kind of the same energy that I’d always thrown at life,” Robyn related. “We had four kids in five years.”

Robyn jumped in and began studying the subject of allergies in earnest. She hadn’t known any children herself who had food allergies, so she began examining statistics. She learned that from 1997 to 2002 there had been a doubling of the peanut allergy, that one out of seventeen children under the age of three now had a food allergy, and that

She’s been called “food’s Erin Brockovich.” In case you don’t remember who Erin Brockovich is, she’s the very unlikely heroine who, as a single mother living hand to mouth, came to work as a clerk in a law firm and ended up leading that firm to magnificent glory bringing down Pacific Gas and Electric for their poisoning of the ground water in a small California town—to the tune of $333 million. Although in quite a different manner, Robyn O’Brien is just as improbable a heroine. “I am an unlikely crusader,” she told Organic Connections. “I wasn’t a foodie. I was born and raised in Houston on Twinkies and Po’ Boys. I trusted that if it was on grocery store shelves it was safe.” This is the same woman who, just a few short years later, after being threatened with a cease-and-desist letter from a vested interest, said to her children one morning, “Mommy is going to have to fight for this. I have learned Then came the morning that was to be the according to the Centers for Disease Control that kids around the world don’t have the catalyst that changed the rest of her life. “We there had been a 265 percent increase in the same chemicals in their foods that you guys had kids who liked peanut butter and jelly, rate of hospitalizations related to food allerhave been eating, and I want to help protect and I didn’t really want anyone telling me gies. “Those are just jaw-dropping statistics,” the health of the children.” what to feed my kids,” Robyn said. “Then one said Robyn. “With a background in finance How she got there is quite an amazing story. morning over breakfast, my fourth child had and statistics, I couldn’t understand what was an allergic reaction. I was so flat-footed, I had going on.” From Mom to Crusader no idea what was going on; I honestly thought She began reaching out to various organimaybe the older three had put something in zations to help create awareness on these A major achiever, Robyn graduated from her face. I raced her to the pediatrician and issues. She didn’t get much response, so she business school with an MBA, the top woman she asked what I had served my daughter for talked her husband into taking some of their in her class. She received a Fulbright grant to breakfast. I told her, but she said, ‘The aller- kids’ college money and investing it into an study in France. With all that behind her, she gens are eggs, dairy, wheat, soy, peanuts and organization that could help identify and went to work as a Wall Street analyst on a nuts, so she could have been allergic to any protect these children. On Mother’s Day team that managed billions in assets during of those things. We don’t know what she’s 2006 AllergyKids was launched, and it was the dot-com craze. allergic to.’” met with great initial reception and press organic connections

coverage. A month after launch, Robyn appeared on CNN. It looked like things were going well—but almost immediately following the broadcast she started getting negative reactions from organizations that should have been her allies. “As I started to get national recognition, some of the larger food allergy non-profits sort of had an allergic reaction to me,” Robyn recounted. “I thought that perhaps I wasn’t conveying the mission right; that they just needed to understand that I was trying to support, fund and advance their research. But they got pretty aggressive in their dismissiveness of me, and one of them actually ended up sending me a cease-and-desist letter. I took it to my attorney, and he said that it was an intimidation tactic and told me I should do certain things. I told him no, that I needed him to back off because I first wanted to know why they were trying to intimidate or push out a mother of four who’s trying to protect children. “With that, I decided to pull their financial statements. I learned that this food allergy non-profit based in Washington, DC, was actually funded by Kraft and Monsanto.” Shades of Erin Brockovich indeed.

into their milk because of concerns of how it made animals sick, resulting in increased use of antibiotics in the animals. Additionally, a 1996 medical journal article reported that milk with rBGH has up to ten times the amount of a hormone known as IGF-1 that regular milk has (more recent studies put the figure even higher). Relatively small increases of this hormone were reported in a 1998 article in the prestigious British medical journal the Lancet to make breast cancer seven times more likely in premenopausal women. Despite the mounting controversy, the US still allows rBGH to be injected into cows. I then wondered if the US had higher rates of cancer than other developed countries. I went

Researching the Truth

deregulaTed The

At the time, Robyn had never heard of Monsanto, and Kraft was the company that made the macaroni and cheese her children were so fond of. So, she continued her research into allergies and their explosive growth. “I learned that a food allergy is when your body sees food as a foreign protein,” Robyn explained. “Your body launches an inflammatory response to drive out that foreign invader. I went down the list of allergens and found that milk allergy, according to CNN and the Wall Street Journal, is the top allergy in the United States. I wondered if there was something foreign in the milk that hadn’t been there years earlier. And I was absolutely stunned when I learned that in 1994, in order to enhance profitability for the dairy industry, they began to inject cows with a growth hormone called rBGH to make the cows produce more milk. “As an analyst, I understood that such a move would drive profit and enhance revenue. But, at the same time, I was learning that governments around the world were pointing out that rBGH had never been proven safe. Canada, the European Union, Japan, Australia and New Zealand had decided not to allow it into their cheese or

food sysTem and

8 organic connections

we deregulaTed our financial sysTem and we ended up wiTh Toxic asseTs. we

we’ve ended up wiTh Toxic asseTs. iT’s Time To seT iT sTraighT.

to the American Cancer Society and learned that the US has the highest rate of cancer of any country in the world, and that migration studies showed that if you were to move here from somewhere like Japan, your likelihood of developing cancer would increase fourfold. “At that point there were nights when I was putting my kids to bed and I thought, ‘How many sippy cups have I filled with this stuff? And how many bowls of cereal have I poured?’ And I wasn’t told what moms around the world, in countries other than the US, had already been told. “I then continued on down the list of allergies and came to soy: had we done

something to soy? I discovered that in the 1990s, again in order to drive profitability for the livestock industry (soy is one of the feeds used to fatten cattle), it was engineered to have a high sugar content.” Next on the list: allergy to corn, which Robyn had also seen many concerns about. She learned that, due to growing concern on the spraying of insecticide in cornfields, scientists had genetically engineered an insecticidal protein into the DNA of a corn seed so that as the plant grew it could release its own insecticide. As a result it was no longer regulated under the FDA but, as an insecticide, was now under the EPA. Robyn found that other countries had either not allowed genetically modified corn into the food supply or, at the very least, insisted on it being labeled so that consumers could make an informed choice. Building a Team

While her research continued, Robyn went looking for friends, allies and team members other than her own family, as she knew she’d need them. When she checked into who had publicly expressed serious concern regarding genetically modified crops, the first person Robyn came upon was Nell Newman, daughter of Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward and founder of Newman’s Own Organics. She reached out to Nell, who responded and eventually became an advisor, friend and member of Robyn’s “Inspiration Team.” As she had already been compared to Erin Brockovich, it was recommended that she also reach out to Ms. Brockovich. “I don’t know if I expected to really hear back from Erin, but like Nell she replied, and it was so inspiring. This is such an enormous story—the scope of the problem, the lack of transparency, the lack of full disclosure, and the fact that we simply hadn’t been told what many eaters around the world had already been told. We weren’t given the opportunity to make an informed choice. So to then have people like Nell and Erin get in my corner was just amazing.” It didn’t stop there. She received the support of Bobby Kennedy, Jr., plus several other notable names. And she now has an executive director in Seleyn DeYarus, former Development Director for The Organic Center, a nonprofit organization dedicated to furthering scientific research on the health benefits of reducing our exposure to the chemicals and synthetic ingredients in our food supply. AllergyKids also has a highly qualified medical advisory team, which includes

Dr. Bob Sears, noted author and one of the most trusted names in pediatrics; pediatric neurotoxicologist Dr. Kenneth Bock, who has conducted critical and highly recognized research into asthma, ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder), autism and allergies; Dr. Joel Fuhrman, whose research on diet and health is relied upon by corporations around the country; and Dr. Roy Steinbock, a family pediatrician who focuses on the root cause of problems and aims to support his patients’ natural ability to heal. AllergyKids Today

Today, AllergyKids Foundation is moving full steam ahead and much of their plentiful research can be found on their excellent website. There, parents can learn the latest news on allergies, vaccinations and much more. Last year Robyn published a book entitled The Unhealthy Truth, in which she details the alarming relationship between the manipulation of our food and the increase in dangerous allergies in our children and cancers in our families, and offers a straightforward road map to healthy living. Through her book and her research Robyn continues to document the startling rise in allergies, which parallels toxins introduced into our food and environment. But it goes beyond allergies—she has discovered that one in three children has either allergies, asthma, autism or symptoms of ADHD. “There is too much evidence in support of the coincidence of these factors,” Robyn said. “We’re surrounded by these environmental insults that weren’t part of the environment 30 years ago, and the debate’s still out. Is it the vaccines? Is it the food? Is it the environment? There are so many theories, I feel to dismiss any of them is irresponsible—particularly to not address the toxins that are in the food supply here in the US, given that the World Cancer Report recently stated that 85 percent of cancers are environmentally triggered.” One interesting factor that has turned up in her research deals with ADHD—the subject of much controversy and questionable drug treatments. “There’s a study out of the UK called the Southampton Study, first conducted about eight years ago,” Robyn explained. “It was very conclusive. It was a double-blind study showing how synthetic ingredients—artificial colors like yellow number 5, sodium benzoate and some other ingredients—contribute to hyperactivity in kids. They did a follow-on study seven years later that was so compelling that Kraft,

Walmart and Coca-Cola decided to voluntarily remove the ingredients that were cited in that study from the products that they sold overseas. Kraft and Coca-Cola made different products for eaters overseas, and in my own research I highlight how the Kraft spokesman in the UK said that Kraft UK does not have a lunchable product line that contains any of these ingredients. “What’s stunning to me is to see these corporations move voluntarily ahead of any legislation on the overwhelming strength of these studies and the response that consumers had to them. It’s kind of depressing that our American corporations are reformulating their products overseas and not here. But at the same time, it’s really an education campaign so that they can know that we know. “We deregulated our financial system and we ended up with toxic assets,” Robyn concluded. “We deregulated the food system and we’ve ended up with toxic assets. It’s time to

set it straight. If governments around the world are actually doing a better job, using this precautionary approach to try to prevent illness, to try to prevent onset of diseases in their countries, we don’t have to wait to implement that here in the US; we can do the same thing. Unfortunately, it’s going to have to start with the public themselves getting educated. You can learn about the hazardous elements, wean your kids off them, and before you know it you’ll have really started to clear a lot of these chemicals out of your family’s diet.” To tap into Robyn’s research and learn more, visit the AllergyKids website at www.allergykids.com. You can order Robyn’s book, The Unhealthy Truth, from the Organic Connections bookstore: www.organicconnectmag.com/wp/bookstore. organic connections

David S. Ludwig, MD, PhD Ending the Childhood Obesity Epidemic

Association showed that the dramatic increase in childhood obesity since 1980 seems to have plateaued. In one sense this is very good news, but in another sense, rates are stabilizing at an unacceptably high level. Even without further increases in prevalence, the toll of childhood obesity will continue to increase for years to come, because it can take many years for excessive body weight in childhood to translate into chronic disease and increased mortality in adulthood.” In 2007, Dr. Ludwig put his program for handling issues with overweight children into a book, Ending the Food Fight: Guide Your Child to a Healthy Weight in a Fast Food/ Fake Food World, which has been acclaimed by peers and reviewers alike. With this book (also published in paperback in 2008), famiDr. David Ludwig certainly has his finger lies can implement many of the recommenon the pulse of childhood obesity—and its dations he makes in his practice. causes. He is a pediatrician and endocrinologist at Children’s Hospital Boston and holds the position of Associate Professor in PediatIsolating the Causes rics at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Ludwig is the founding director of the Optimal Weight In his present work Dr. Ludwig targets for Life (OWL) Program, described by Child environmental factors in a child’s life, includmagazine as one of the most comprehensive ing diet, but it didn’t start out that way. “I

A ChILd TOdAy SEES AN ESTIMATEd 10,000 FOR juNk

course, our genes haven’t changed much in the last 30 years as the obesity epidemic has taken off. So I made a transition to nutrition research and became more interested in the environmental factors affecting body weight; specifically how diet affects hormones, metabolism and body weight. As Hippocrates said more than two thousand years ago, ‘Let food be thy medicine and let thy medicine be food.’ Food is capable of exerting many of the same effects on the body as drugs do, but without the side effects.” During the course of Dr. Ludwig’s research, he took in an ever widening view of the causal factors for childhood obesity. He now considers them painfully obvious. “We just have to turn on the TV to see the main causes,” he said. “One is the TV itself, which promotes a sedentary lifestyle. Then there are the commercials that promote consumption of the highest calorie, poorest quality foods imaginable. A child today sees an estimated 10,000 food commercials a year, mostly for junk food. And of course junk foods have invaded every walk of life, including school vending machines. At

fOOD COMMErCiAls A yEAr, MOSTLy

fOOD. ANd OF COURSE jUNk FOOdS hAVE INVAdEd EVERy wALk OF LIFE,

INCLUdING sCHOOl

VENDiNG MACHiNEs. AT ThE SAME TIME, OPPORTUNITIES FOR

PhySICAL ACTIVITy hAVE dECLINEd EVERywhERE. PhySICAL EdUCATION CLASS USEd TO BE REGULAR ANd MANdATORy, BUT NOw IT’S SPORAdIC ANd SOMETIMES EVEN VOLUNTARy. pediatric obesity programs in the country. originally did basic research in the laboratory, Since the early 1990s, he has provided medi- looking for genes that affect body weight,” cal care for several thousand overweight Dr. Ludwig said. “While the work was intelchildren and their families. lectually interesting, I came to realize that “Today, fully one in three children is sub- the identification of a new gene—added stantially overweight or obese,” Dr. Ludwig to the dozens of other genes that likely intold Organic Connections. “Statistics published fluence body weight—would probably not recently in the Journal of the American Medical be the answer to the obesity epidemic. Of 10 o r g a n i c c o n n e c t i o n s

the same time, opportunities for physical activity have declined everywhere. Physical Education class used to be regular and mandatory, but now it’s sporadic and sometimes even voluntary. After-school recreation opportunities have also been cut back to save money—but these cost savings pale in comparison to the costs of caring

for an increasingly obese population with lifethreatening complications, like type 2 diabetes.” A Confused Public

Are average parents simply uncaring and feeding their children junk? Hardly. It can be difficult for parents to make informed decisions when the information they’re receiving day in and day out, from sources that they trust, is misleading or wrong. Even “studies” conducted to discover the danger levels of fast and junk food can be slanted. “We examined how the funding of nutrition research studies affects study outcomes, focusing specifically on three beverages: milk, fruit juice and sugar-sweetened drinks,” Dr. Ludwig related. “We found that when a food company sponsors a research study, the findings are four to eight times more likely to be favorable to the financial interests of that company. This suggests that it is not just the marketing but the actual conduct of research that may be undermining nutritional health.” One example Dr. Ludwig uncovered was a study sponsored by the beverage industry showing that soft drinks were a good way to prevent dehydration. “Last time I checked, so was water,” remarked Dr. Ludwig. “And dehydration isn’t exactly a major public health crisis in America.” There is also the driving force of competition in the food industry. “The problem is that without better regulation, food industry marketing practices tend to fall to the lowest common denominator, especially with regard to children’s diets,” Dr. Ludwig said. “Your competitor is advertising sugary cereal directly to kids on Saturday morning cartoons; if you don’t do the same, as a food company you’ll be at a competitive disadvantage. I think what this calls for is comprehensive national regulation to protect children from food advertising, consistent with the recommendations of the American Academy of Pediatrics and other professional organizations.”

100 percent control. The key to this approach He also points out that the right kind of is providing foods and physical activities physical activity, rather than “exercise,” is that support a child’s biology, and age- vital. “Young kids aren’t designed to spend 20 appropriate parenting practices that support minutes on a treadmill,” he said. “We need to the child’s psychology.” make physical activities fun again.”

I dON’T ThINk wE NEEd TO AIM FOR AN IdEAL ENVIRONMENT— wE jUST NEEd TO AIM FOR A bETTEr

ENVirONMENT,

ONE whERE ChILdREN hAVE ACCESS TO NATurAl

wHOlE

fOODs MUCh OF ThE TIME, ANd whERE ThEy hAVE AN Another major factor that affects consumers—even though many of them may not be aware of it—is that crops, such as corn and soy, that are key components of cheap processed foods are made cheaper by government farm subsidies. “I think that farm subsidies are one of the low-hanging fruit in the battle against obesity in this country,” said Dr. Ludwig. “In an era when obesity is not just the most common nutritional disease but the most common disease of any kind, we shouldn’t be making high-calorie poorquality foods even cheaper than they already are by farm subsidies targeting commodities. Instead farm subsidies, if they are to exist, should make the higher quality, inherently more expensive foods more accessible, especially to low-income people. That would involve shifting support from the grain-based commodities to vegetables, fruits, legumes and other natural whole foods.” A Bastion of Protection

Dr. Ludwig has commented that if we could return to the environmental conditions of the 1960s, the obesity epidemic would largely vanish. It makes sense when you think about it: television was limited to a few channels and more regulated by parents; high-fructose corn syrup and other components that greatly contribute to childhood obesity had yet to be invented; nutritional value of produce was higher; diets in general were more nutritious; and children exercised a great deal more. But Dr. Ludwig isn’t recommending a time machine, handy as that might be. “The premise of our book, Ending the Food Fight, is that ultimately we want to create a world that is healthier for children to live in,” he said. “But in the meantime we have to create a bastion of protection for children at home—and that is an environment over which parents have 12 o r g a n i c c o n n e c t i o n s

OPPORTUNITy TO ExErCisE ThEIR BOdIES, NOT jUST ThEIR MINdS, IN SChOOL; ONE IN whICh AdVERTISING INFLUENCES ARE suPPOrTiVE ANd NOT UNdERMINING OF PARENTAL RESPONSIBILITy; whERE hEALThFUL FOOdS ARE LESS ExPENSIVE ANd jUNk FOOdS ARE RELATIVELy MORE ExPENSIVE; ANd ONE IN whICh wE hAVE POLITICAL LEAdERShIP ThAT CREATES A COMPrEHENsiVE

NATiONAl sTrATEGy

TO suPPOrT A HEAlTHful lifEsTylE. In terms of guiding behavior, Dr. Ludwig points out what can and often does go wrong. “All too often parents try to manage their kids with coercive measures,” he said. “Approaches like nagging, pressuring the kids to eat certain foods or excessively restricting other foods may succeed in the short term but rarely do so over the long term. Instead, we encourage more powerful, constructive parenting practices that produce long-term behavior change.” Dr. Ludwig provides an example from his own home. “What you do is more important than what you say,” he said. “I have a 16-month-old who loves to eat tofu, fish, brown rice, and all sorts of fruits and vegetables, just because he sees us eating these things and he doesn’t see us eating junk food. That’s not to say that we never have a treat or a sweet—we do; but we make sure that the main things he sees us eating are healthy, natural whole foods. Because he sees us eating these, he wants to eat them too. This is a key developmental opportunity to prevent problems from coming into being from the first, and it’s a shame to lose that opportunity.”

Dr. Ludwig concludes by summing up the actions that can be taken now to bring an end to the out-of-control growth of childhood obesity. “I don’t think we need to aim for an ideal environment—we just need to aim for a better environment,” he said, “one where children have access to natural whole foods much of the time, and where they have an opportunity to exercise their bodies, not just their minds, in school; one in which advertising influences are supportive and not undermining of parental responsibility; where healthful foods are less expensive and junk foods are relatively more expensive; and one in which we have political leadership that creates a comprehensive national strategy to support a healthful lifestyle.” To find out more about or to purchase Dr. Ludwig’s book, Ending the Food Fight: Guide Your Child to a Healthy Weight in a Fast Food/Fake Food World, please visit the book’s website at www.endingthefoodfight.com.

The Obesity Epidemic Increase in childhood

2.3- to 3.3-fold

obesity in the past 25 years:

Estimated increase, in the past 20 years, in the prevalence of childhood diabetes: 10-fold

Increase in per capita consumption 1950s to today: 500%

of soft drinks,

Amount that one additional soft drink per increases a child’s risk for obesity: 60%

day

Percentage of school districts that have contracts with soft-drink companies, allowing them to sell soft drinks on school premises: 50%

Number of food ads viewed by the average child each year: 10,000 Percentage of these that advertise fast or sugared cereals: 95%

food, soft drinks, candy,

Estimated annual amount spent on food US children: $10 billion

advertising aimed at

Increase in risk for childhood obesity per hour of daily television viewing: 12% Decrease in risk for childhood obesity per hour of exercise: 10%

Average charge for coronary bypass surgery: $60,853 Estimated average cost of three one-hour sessions with a dietitian at an obesity clinic: $180

Annual direct costs of obesity to the American economy: $70 billion Statistical source: Dream magazine, Winter 2004, published by Children’s Hospital Boston. Children’s Hospital Boston is the primary pediatric teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School.

“Farm policy for a long time has been focused not on health concerns but rather on just overproducing certain crops,” Dr. David Wallinga, Director of the Food and Health Program at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, told Organic Connections. He recently authored a very interesting article entitled “The Role of Agriculture Policy in Reducing Childhood Obesity,” which appeared in Health Affairs journal, and he sat down with us to discuss the very real role that today’s agricultural policies play in the current childhood obesity epidemic. “Especially in the last 35 years or so, what we’ve focused on as a country is producing great amounts of just a few crops that generate a lot of calories—namely corn and soybeans and a few other commodity crops,” Dr. Wallinga continued. “What we at IATP argue, and can find quite a bit of evidence for, is that this superabundance of calories is helping to create an obesegenic [obesitycausing] food environment for kids; in other words, a food environment that encourages an overconsumption of calories particularly from food ingredients that we know to be unhealthy and which happen to be derived from these same commodity crops that farm policy most encourages.” How did this harmful scenario come about? “I think the stated original rationale was that by overproducing these particular crops, American farmers would seize the global markets by being the low-cost producers of those crops,” Dr. Wallinga said. “The sad fact is that none of this panned out. Instead, the flooding of the global market with these crops drove prices down for US farmers, and then in the ’80s and ’90s those 14 o r g a n i c c o n n e c t i o n s

David Wallinga, MD, MPA Encouraging Healthy Food Production

farmers started going out of business. They food policy,” said Dr. Wallinga, “which is were really quite desperate, so by the time basically what’s happened in the past. At the the 1996 farm bill rolled around, farmers least it’s been very limited; there has been were clamoring to stay in business and ask- some input in terms of the nutrition proing for help from the federal government grams in the farm bill, but there haven’t been to do so. There were then some temporary any health experts, obesity experts, public payments to these same corn and soybean health experts or researchers talking about farmers—but by 2002 the payments had commodity crop policies. We can’t afford to do that anymore. We’re simply at too big of a crisis point, where the policies we have aren’t benefiting Americans but are actually hurting healthcare by helping to drive this huge epidemic of obesity and all the expensive diseases that come from it. “The other thing is that farmers need to be actively engaged as part of this conversation about how to produce healthy food, in a way that keeps farmers on the land, because right now they’re disappearing. And the farmers that are disappearing are exactly the ones that would be best suited for increasing things like fruits and vegetables; they’re small- or medium-scale farmers who become permanent. That is how we ended still have control over their own operations. up with these subsidy payments today; they They’re farmers who are open to new ideas came 15 or 20 years after the policies began to and growing new things.” promote overproduction of these few crops.” In the end, what has to change is that Dr. Wallinga went on to explain that the healthy foods need production encouragegovernment also did away with policies that ment, from the top down. “We could have were effective in limiting overproduction of policies that support farmers in producing these crops and thereby ensured that prices healthy foods, but we’ve done just the opwere fair to the farmer and kept market costs posite,” Dr. Wallinga pointed out. “We’ve stable for the consumer. These policies were got policies that discourage farmers from replaced by new ones that didn’t work well for producing healthy foods. the farmer or consumer but were highly ben“The work that IATP has been doing, and eficial to meat-producing companies utilizing the conferences we’ve been co-hosting, is all corn and soybeans as feed. They also worked about finding a win-win where we create an well for companies such as soft-drink manu- agriculture that produces not only food that facturers that used low-cost corn sweeteners. people need to eat but food grown in ways that nourish long-term health both of the Turning It Around population and of the environment and are also sustainable.” Dr. Wallinga sees several needed measures. The first of these would be the inclusion of To find out more about Dr. Wallinga and the health professionals at a legislative level. work of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade “We can’t afford any longer to exclude Policy, visit www.iatp.org. health professionals from the making of

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