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Tyre, Peg, Sally Abrahms, and Jennifer Lin. "FIGHTING 'BIG FAT'." __Newsweek__ 140.6 (05 Aug. 2002): 38. __MasterFILE Premier__. EBSCO. [Library name], [City], [State abbreviation]. 5 Mar. 2009 .

**Fighting 'Big Fat'**
**Section:** Justice When physician and author Don Colbert steps up to the altar at large evangelical congregations in the South, he looks out and sees churchgoers who are, to put it bluntly, too fat. Colbert, energetic with a mane of blond hair, tells the faithful that God has a nutritional plan. Break your **//junk//**-**//food//** addiction, he exhorts. Eat what Jesus ate: fish, whole grains and vegetables. "Do it for yourself and for your children," thunders Colbert, the author of a best-selling book, "What Would Jesus Eat?" "Do it for God!" Colbert is a soldier in a growing army of lawyers, doctors and otherwise ordinary citizens who are taking on the sprawling and powerful **//junk//**-**//food//** industry. They're charging that somewhere along the line, America's long romance with fast **//food//**, soda and **//junk//** has morphed into an abusive relationship. And they've set out to change the finger-lickin' eating habits that have made obesity, particularly in children, a national concern. On the front lines of this grass-roots movement are suburban moms fighting to get healthier fare in cafeterias and lawmakers around the country who are trying to pass laws to limit the **//junk//** **//food//** sold in schools. Behind the scenes, doctors are trying to figure out how **//junk//** **//food//** affects our metabolism and just how much is too much. Now lawyers are filing class-action lawsuits against fast-**//food//** makers, charging that deceptive marketing practices encourage obesity. "For years I ate fast **//food//** because it was efficient and cheap," says Caesar Barber, 56, a maintenance worker with heart disease and the lead plaintiff in an anti-fast-**//food//** lawsuit filed in New York last week. "I had no idea I could be damaging my **//health//**." This fall, Northeastern University law professor Richard Daynard is holding a closed-door strategy session for nearly 100 lawyers interested in pressing similar claims against Big Fat, or what--in reference to "Big Tobacco"--they're calling "Big **//Food//**." "Five years ago, when we said we'd take **//junk//**-**//food//** makers to court," says Daynard, "people laughed." Fast-**//food//** makers call the obesity lawsuits "absurd," and the **//junk//**-**//food//** industry is battling any efforts to curb its sales. For years it has argued--and most Americans agree--that individual self-control, not lawsuits or legislation, is the cure for adult obesity. Instead of demonizing particular foods, says Richard Berman, executive director of the Center for Consumer Freedom, a trade group for soda and chain restaurants, "people should prevent obesity by getting regular exercise." But with the sudden, dramatic up-tick in childhood obesity, its blame-the-fatso argument is beginning to have a hollow ring. Diseases that used to be associated with retirement homes--atherosclerosis and type II diabetes--are now commonly diagnosed by pediatricians. "Fat kids are to the **//junk//**-**//food//** industry what secondhand smoke was in the war against tobacco," says Yale University psychology professor Kelly Brownell. "Everyone can agree on personal responsibility until they realize there are passive victims here." Activist parents say schoolkids aren't sophisticated enough to understand that a fruit-flavored soft drink doesn't have the nutritional benefits of, say, real fruit. In the war against **//junk//** **//food//**, the overweight children crowded into Dr. David Ludwig's drab waiting room could be considered collateral damage. Ludwig, a pediatric endocrinologist, has dedicated his career to determining exactly which foods make his young patients fat. Researchers like Ludwig provide lawmakers, public-**//health//** officials and parents with something that is in drastically short supply--a scientifically tested model of what kids should and shouldn't eat. "What changes have you made?" booms Ludwig, as a 226-pound 10-year-old squeezes into his small examining room. The boy proudly describes how he's stopped eating cookies and slowed down on chips since his last visit. Three years ago Ludwig demonstrated how consumption of high glycemic foods like sugary breakfast cereal and hamburger buns leads to overeating (sidebar). Last year Ludwig published a study tying soda consumption with obesity. Anyone with the raw intelligence to decipher a nutrition label might call Ludwig's soda study common sense, but the powerful soda-industry lobby was outraged that its products were being singled out for blame. Within a month the National Soft Drink Association released its own soda-industry-sponsored study refuting Ludwig's conclusion. The NSDA also paid the influential American Dietetic Association, which licenses the country's 70,000 dietitians, to issue a fact sheet asserting that carbonated soft drinks--which contain no vitamins, minerals or fiber--are part of a well-balanced diet. "We don't think Ludwig's studies are legitimate," says NSDA spokesman Sean McBride. Undeterred, Ludwig believes that rigorous scientific inquiry will do more to sway public opinion than expensive PR campaigns. He's getting ready to launch another study tracking the effects of fast **//food//** on kids. Barber and the other plaintiffs in the recently filed class-action suit say they already know the effect of too many Big Macs and Whoppers: obesity, heart disease and high cholesterol. And they think they can convince a jury that fast **//food//** made them sick. Their lawsuit charges that McDonald's, Burger King, Kentucky Fried Chicken and Wendy's failed to disclose the **//health//** effects of eating their sugary, high-fat products. They're pressing for monetary damages, of course, but they also want the companies to put cigarette-style warning labels on their **//food//**. Saralyn Myers doesn't need a warning label to know **//junk//** **//food//** is bad for her kids. Three years ago the mother of two launched a movement in her town to provide healthy alternatives to the hot dogs, Domino's pizza and vending-machine snacks that the elementary-school kids were being served for lunch. Like parents at hundreds of other schools around the country, Myers found that the school menu in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., didn't make sense. "We insist on high academic standards," says Myers. "Why not have high standards for the kind of **//food//** we eat?" So Myers founded a committee, sent out a survey and set up "taste tests" to find out what elementary schoolers would eat. Similar parent committees in Oakland and Berkeley, Calif., recently converted their schools to an all-vegetarian, all-organic menu. In Wisconsin and Florida, they replaced soda with flavored milks, but Myers's team was satisfied with more modest changes. They substituted whole-wheat bread for white bread and added chickpeas and sunflower seeds to the salad bar. Although some days Domino's pizza is on the menu, other days kids are offered veggie burgers, along with beef patties on white buns. For every kindergartner choosing whole-wheat bread instead of white, there are many more who eat lunch from the cafeteria vending machines. In this country, 43 percent of elementary schools and nearly all high schools have machines that sell soda, sugary drinks, candy and chips to hungry kids. The **//junk//**-**//food//** trade in schools has become so brisk that state lawmakers and public-**//health//** departments are stepping in. West Virginia has banned **//junk//** **//food//** in school vending machines. Texas, California, Oklahoma and Maryland have legislation pending. Last year Kentucky's Lt. Gov. Stephen Henry, who is also a physician, found himself in a bare-knuckled legislative battle after he championed a bill that put minimum nutritional standards on foods sold in school vending machines. It was hardly the Ornish diet. Rice Krispie Treats, Doritos and Pop-Tarts would pass muster, but Fritos and candy would be banned. Still, school administrators, afraid to jeopardize the income they get from vending-machine purchases, opposed the bill. Incensed, Henry began to canvas the state, asking for, and getting, support from parents and fellow physicians. As the bill picked up speed, soda and **//junk//**-**//food//** lobbyists swarmed into Kentucky. Last spring the bill died before it reached a final vote. "I've amputated the legs of diabetics, and I can clearly see the road that leads from the school cafeteria to the operating room," says Henry. He's preparing to reintroduce the bill next year. As more states and districts try to limit kids' access to **//junk//**, the debate over vending machines, which has been simmering for years, may be reaching a boiling point. **//Junk//**-**//food//** makers are resolute: they need to appeal to kids in order to sell their products. "They've got no choice, " says Dan DeRose, who negotiates soda contracts for schools nationwide. "They need to create their core consumer." But their presence in the schools places corporate interests on a collision course with public-**//health//** concerns and prompts some rather unpalatable rationalizations. Testifying before a Senate subcommittee last spring, a nutritionist from the Grocery Manufacturers of America suggested that without vending machines in schools, children "don't have the right tools to navigate the **//food//** environment as they get older." And cash-strapped public schools can't afford to turn down easy money. School administrators use those funds for extras like band uniforms and after-school sports. Last spring, two years after Myers modified the lunchroom menu at her local school, PepsiCo. offered to pay her district for the right to put vending machines in the schools. She was demoralized. "Everyone was excited about the money the school might get," says Myers. "No one asked whether this was good for the children." Hard questions with no easy answers.
 * An army is mobilizing in a war against** //junk// //food//**. The combatants: doctors, lawyers, preachers and moms.**

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__BLANCHE CLARK. "Growing concern."__ Herald Sun (Melbourne) __(27 Feb. 2009): 64-64.__ Newspaper Source__. EBSCO. [Library name], [City], [State abbreviation]. 5 Mar. 2009 .__

__**Growing concern**__
Healthy eating needs to start when you're young to help you resist the temptation of **__//junk//__** **__//food//__**, writes Blanche Clark
 * __Section: HEALTHYHAB Edition: 1 - FIRST__**

CHILDREN are more likely to eat healthy foods if their parents do as well, US research shows. The California Health Interview Survey, by the University of California Los Angeles, found that 42 per cent of adolescents whose parents consume at least five servings of fruits or vegetables a day also eat five servings daily, compared with 35 per cent of teens whose parents ate fewer than five servings. Nearly half of adolescents (48 per cent) whose parents drink soft drinks every day eat fast **//food//** at least once a day, while only 39 per cent of teens whose parents do not drink soft drinks eat fast **//food//** at least once daily. The researchers say more needs to be done to promote access to nutritious foods in schools and communities. We face similar issues in Australia. The increase in overweight and obese children has become one of our nation's biggest health threats. In 2004, 26 per cent of boys and 24 per cent of girls aged 5-16 were overweight or obese, compared with 11 per cent of 7-16-year-olds in 1985. Nutritionist Melanie McGrice says the Australian Dietary Guidelines have been changed in response to the obesity problem. "Children should have full-fat diary products until the age of two, then once they turn three they can have low-fat products," she says. Processed foods and take-away foods are making it harder for Australins to stay healthy. The Parents Jury believes that banning television advertisements of **//junk//** **//food//** during children's viewing hours could help. Royal Children's Hospital chief dietitian Kay Gibbons says children do influence what their parents buy. "They buy chips because kids go to the supermarket and say, 'I want it'," she says. "But that can be just as powerful if they say, 'buy me bananas or buy me kiwifruit'. Changing the behaviour of adolescents is harder, therefore it is important to get those healthy messages across when they are young, Gibbons says. "Even if they go off track as an adolescent, if they've had that experience of healthy eating as a child, they generally will go back to it." But concern about body image can drive some teenagers to extreme measures. The Royal Children's Hospital says a Victorian study of 562 high school students found that 47.9 per cent of girls and 26 per cent of boys occasionally used at least an extreme weight-loss measure and 13.2 per cent of girls and 8.8 per cent of boys used such a measure weekly. The Victorian Centre of Excellence in Eating Disorders, based at the RCH, says dieting to control weight in adolescence is not only ineffective, it may actually promote weight gain. A study of adolescents showed that after three years of follow-up, regular adolescent dieters gained more weight than non-dieters. Research also shows that about one in 100 adolescent girls develop anorexia nervosa. But for most young people it's a matter of trying to balance the amount of energy coming in and going out, to meeting their changing needs as they grow. Some teenagers, girls in particular, like to become vegetarians. "If you've come from meat-eating background you need to think differently," Gibbons says. "Eating a healthy vegetarian meal includes tofu, chickpeas, lentils, eggs, diary foods and cheese," she says. "It's not OK to say, 'I don't like them', and fill up on bread and pasta."

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__Holland, Megan. "New study puts school kids on scales."__ Anchorage Daily News (AK) __(23 Feb. 2009).__ Newspaper Source__. EBSCO. [Library name], [City], [State abbreviation]. 5 Mar. 2009 .__

**New study puts school kids on scales**
12362666961236266696 Megan Holland Feb. 23--The bad news: One in three Anchorage School District students is overweight. The good news: The number of overweight kids plateaued five years ago and is remaining steady. New data compiled by the Alaska Division of Public Health in collaboration with the School District released today calls the problem of overweight kids in the city's public schools significant but also says the steadying of the trend is hopeful. The study took a look at a decade's worth of School District data on body mass indexes. It classified kids into categories of underweight, normal weight, overweight and obese. Among the findings: * 18 percent of Anchorage students are overweight; and another 18 percent are obese. The study also broke down the data by race/ethnicity and found Pacific Islanders, who make up 3 to 4 percent of the district's 50,000 students, are significantly more likely to be overweight or obese compared to other ethnic groups. Three quarters of them are above normal weight. The School District has passed measures in recent years to combat the problem, which is not just local. In 2006, the district banned the sale of soda and junk food in school vending machines. Last school year, it increased health instruction in elementary schools by half an hour a week. And, this year, it's increased gym time for elementary school kids by half an hour. The study didn't look at whether the new policies have made a difference, but said they are the kinds of strategies that have an impact. The study says the problem starts early, even before kids enter school. Of the children entering kindergarten or first grade in the 2007-2008 school year, 32 percent were overweight. While the percentage of overweight kids has leveled over recent years, the same cannot be said for their parents. Three year averages show that from 2005 to 2007, 56 percent of Alaskan women were overweight, or obese, while 72 percent of Alaskan men were. The Anchorage School Board is scheduled to discuss this study at its meeting tonight. Check back later for details.
 * Boys have higher rates of obesity than girls.
 * Older students are more likely to be fat than younger students.
 * Children overweight in elementary school were more likely to remain overweight into their teens.

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"EDITORIAL: Trim obesity problem with variety of attacks." Beaufort Gazette, The (SC) __(20 Feb. 2009).__ Newspaper Source__. EBSCO. [Library name], [City], [State abbreviation]. 5 Mar. 2009 .

**EDITORIAL: Trim obesity problem with variety of attacks**
Feb. 20--Beaufort County's childhood obesity problem remains severe, even as the junk food children are offered at public schools comes under greater scrutiny. New state laws have demanded more physical activity and healthier meals for children at school. Local efforts also have helped make the weight issue a higher priority, right down to principals who insist on water on campus rather than soft drinks. But we still have miles and miles to go, according to local school nurses. Since 2006, school nurses have collected body mass index data on all third-, fifth- and eighth-graders. During that period, the percentage of obese or overweight students has dropped by the slimmest of margins. The percentages still are way too high, with roughly four of 10 students having a weight problem. The good news is that things are not getting worse, according to the most recent data. Now we must get behind a lot of new ideas to make children's lives healthier. School board member Joan Deery of Hilton Head Island wants all soda removed from schools. She wants a listing of the glucose levels in school foods so the adults know how much sugar they are pumping into the children. She and others want local school lunches to exceed the nutrition standards required by state and federal programs. None of that is excessive. In fact, it is common sense. A helpful bill in the state House of Representatives was dealt a blow Tuesday when it got sent back to subcommittee. The bill would ban high-fat, high-sugar food from being sold to students in vending machines and cafeterias. The state School Boards Association opposes it, even though the beverage industry and other former opponents do not. Go figure. The school boards group says local officials should decide what students can buy. Maybe so, but look how far that has gotten us. The state has recently earned good grades for addressing the obesity problem early, but the state still has an adult obesity rate that ranks it eighth heaviest in the nation. Another bill in the Statehouse would help both schools and farms. The Farm to School Act would encourage school districts to purchase locally and regionally produced foods, with nutrition and the local economy the beneficiaries. The bill deserves support. It gained widespread support in both chambers last year but did not gain final approval. Schools play an important role in child nutrition because some students get two meals a day at school. But the local Eat Smart Move More-SC coalition is quick to say the schools cannot do it alone. Reducing the obesity numbers will require help from local government, schools, families and health professionals. Personal responsibility has to come first. Eat Smart Move More offers these seven simple tips to help individuals and families: -- Rethink your drink. Think about the options of water, milk or 100-percent fruit juice. -- Right size your portions. Bigger is not always better. -- Tame the tube. Turn off the television to reduce the risk of your child becoming overweight. -- Move more every day. It's simple: Move your body. -- Eat more healthy meals at home. This can even save time and money. -- Eat more fruits and vegetables. Go for five servings per day. -- Breast-feed your baby. This offers countless benefits to mom and newborn. When it comes to reversing obesity, no idea is a cure-all. But with a variety of efforts at home and school, the issue can remain a priority and the children can get healthier.

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Garfield, Bob. "Junk-food ads that promote 'random acts' are irresponsible." __Advertising Age__ 26 May 2008: 34+. __MasterFILE Premier__. EBSCO. [Library name], [City], [State abbreviation]. 5 Mar. 2009 .

****//Junk//**-**//food//** ads that promote 'random acts' are irresponsible**
**Section:** GARFIELD'S ADREVIEWRemember the acronym "RAoC." It will be useful when the lawsuits start coming in. That should begin presently, if the "Orange Underground" campaign for Cheetos from Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, San Francisco, works at all. RAoC stands for "Random Acts of Cheetos," and the idea is to recruit users to perpetrate Cheetos-centric pranks against those who deserve comeuppance-like tossing a handful in somebody's dryer load of whites at the Laundromat. Ha ha! As the (unbelievably amateurish) 20-something orangeunderground.com presenter says, pointing to an outsize Cheeto in a glass case, "The third rule of RAoC is to stick it to The Man, preferably with one of these." Get it? Alienated teenagers and young men chafe against authority. So frustrated and resentful are they about their humiliating powerlessness, they tend to lash out-or at least fantasize about lashing out-at the powers that be. That would be mainly parents, teachers, principals and bosses, but anyone and anything will do-which explains the tens of thousands of mailboxes destroyed each year by baseball bats, with a trail of Mike's Hard Lemonade bottles littered along the curb. The perpetrators don't necessarily harbor animus toward the U.S. Postal Service. They just harbor animus in general. Adolescent angst. This is powerful psychology and therefore fertile ground for someone wishing to cultivate that demographic. Ask any tattoo artist or death-metal performer or drug dealer or anyone else in the rebellion industry. But here's a question: What should we think when a leading national advertiser borrows a marketing strategy from the drug trade? Here's an answer: It's cynical and disgusting. Not quite as disgusting as the 1994 Nintendo campaign that encouraged teenagers to defy adults and "Hock a loogie at life," but plenty disgraceful in its own right, because there is another word for Random Acts of Cheetos: vandalism. The Cheetos Underground explicitly incites its shadowy network of crap eaters not only to perpetrate mischief but to document their petty crimes on video for the Cheetos website. One (admittedly (perversely) funny) example, in a video spot titled "Mr. Clean," is about a Cheetos-scarfing office messenger distributing reports from cubicle to cubicle and encountering the work space of a neat-freak colleague. Everything in the cube is arranged at absolute right angles, including the surgical tools he uses to manicure his Bonsai maple. So, egged on by Chester-Cheetos's devil-on-the-shoulder mascot-our antihero uses his snack **//food//** to defile the cube. He smashes a Cheetos inside the guy's laptop. He coats the guy's iPod ear buds with orange powder and so on. Later, when the (vaguely effeminate, hmmm) victim encounters the crime scene while talking on his cellphone, he stops cold and says, in his wound-too-tight, anal-retentive way, "There's been an incident. I have to go." Another spot is about an obnoxious, pretentious yuppie showing off some expensive, abstract inkblot of a painting to his friend. When he leaves the room, the friend smears Cheetos dust all over it. Can you see how this is all destined to lead to litigation? Or worse? Can you see how ethically bankrupt it is-Frito-Lay in the role of Ken Lay? But it's not just that this campaign is mean-spirited and reckless and generally contemptible. It also ultimately makes no sense. Where does a multibillion-dollar division of PepsiCo come off dissing The Man? Dude, PepsiCo is The Man. You like crunchy snacks and want to join a real Orange Underground? Sweet. Boycott Cheetos and eat carrots.