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Tag: Junk food

  • Eating different snacks could lower your cholesterol

    Eating different snacks could lower your cholesterol

    MedPage Today reports on a new study, reported in the Journal of Nutrition, revealing that people who ate certain snacks instead of other snacks, including junk food, saw their cholesterol levels fall, even though they did not change anything else they ate.

    The theory behind the experiment is that food is a type of medicine.  The right food can lower your LDL cholesterol and possibly your risk of death. In this experiment, the snack food was a substitute for a statin.

    The patients in the experiment were not on statins. They could not take them or they did not want to take them. They had no chronic conditions and did not smoke.

    The snack substitution worked well, with almost everyone adhering to their new diet. That is not always the case! A lot of people are hard-pressed to give up junk food and other snacks that are unhealthy.

    So what are foods with cholesterol-lowering ingredients? They are pretty yummy, as it turn out: Oatmeal, smoothies, granola, chocolate bars. These foods replaced snack bars, oreos, goldfish, potato chips and other junk foods, they would have eaten.

    To keep your cholesterol down, you can also eat hummus and whole grain foods, including crackers with cucumbers, carrots, or celery.  These foods are cholesterol free. They also provide soluble fiber, one way to lower cholesterol. In the vegetable category, eggplant, okra, beans are great. In the fruit category, apples, grapes, strawberries and citrus fruits are good.

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  • Eat better, spend less on health care

    Eat better, spend less on health care

    So long as the US population is aging, health care costs will continue to increase no matter what happens with health care reform. An op-ed in the New York Times, by Dariush Mozzafarian and Dan Glickman, argues that the food we eat drives up health care costs. If Americans ate better and became healthier, we would spend far less on health care.

    Today, tens of millions of Americans suffer from one or more chronic conditions. Close to one third of the US population, more than 100 million adults, have pre-diabetes or diabetes. More than one third of the population, more than 120 million adults, have cardiovascular disease. And three quarters of the adult population is obese. These chronic conditions are responsible for hundreds of billions of dollars in health care spending, as well as lost productivity. (Note: Medicare covers a diabetes prevention program, weight-loss counseling and nutrition counseling.)

    We know that people who eat healthy diets feel better and have lower health care costs. But, that’s different from knowing how to change people’s diets so that they eat better, especially when the food industry giants invest heavily in getting people to eat unhealthy diets. What would it take to improve population health through better nutrition?

    The authors suggest a number of ways to improve people’s diets. They propose that electronic health records include nutrition; health care providers could focus more on eating well and prescribe people fruits and vegetables; health care providers also could design healthy meals for people in poor health. One recent study shows that, for each person in poor health, these healthy meals alone would save $9,000 a year in health care costs.

    Of course, behavior change, whether for a health care provider or a patient, is challenging. And, the food industry will do what it can to make change in people’s eating habits difficult. The food industry has done a great job of keeping sugary beverages and junk food from being taxed more, even though these foods have no health benefits and drive up health costs.

    The authors also suggest that the government subsidize the cost of healthy foods, such as vegetables, fruits, nuts, beans, whole grains and fish. They suggest government regulatory safety standards for processed foods to reduce sugar, sodium and transfats, if not voluntary action by industry. And, SNAP, which helps about 12 percent of Americans with the cost of food, could focus more on a healthy diet.

    Government has a big role to play in helping people to eat healthy diets. But, no presidential candidates are talking about food policy and few journalists are asking about it.  Government action in this area may be a long time coming.

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  • Are you eating too much junk food?

    Are you eating too much junk food?

    Julia Belluz reports for Vox that it might be time for the government to step in, tax junk food, and help address the obesity epidemic in the United States. A tax on unhealthy and high-calorie food might deter people from eating too much junk food and encourage them instead to eat a healthy balanced diet. Some experts even recommend avoiding nutritional supplements like Ensure and Boost, because of their high sugar, low-protein content, and eating Greek yogurt and other protein and calorie-rich foods instead.

    The value of a tax on sugary drinks and other junk food seems pretty clear. The tax increases the cost of junk food, which not only keeps people from buying junk food, it raises money for health promotion. And, it may sway companies to manufacture less junk food and more healthy food. Finally, the tax helps educate people more about the health risks of junk food.

    A federal tax on junk food would be similar to a federal tax on cigarettes or alcoholic drinks. And, the US already has both federal and state taxes on cigarettes to deter Americans from smoking. Since 2009, the federal tax alone is $1.01 a pack. While there is no federal tax on alcoholic drinks, most states impose a tax on beer, wine and spirits. In addition, in the last several years eight cities in the US have imposed a tax on soft drinks.

    Berkeley, California’s one cent tax per ounce on soda, energy drinks, sports drinks and sweetened ice teas was shown to decrease soda consumption by 26 percent. A separate study showed that, after the tax was imposed, sales of sugary drinks declined and sales of healthier drinks increased with no overall increase in grocery bills.

    The United States could benefit from a federal excise tax on unhealthy drinks and snacks with no nutritional value. Both the United Kingdom and Mexico have enacted a soft drink tax. The data suggests that the tax is working in those countries to reduce purchases of sugary drinks.

    Jennifer Pomeranz and others report in the American Journal for Public Health that making junk food more costly would promote public health. The US could tax chocolate and other processed snack foods that are “non-essential.” They propose imposing an excise tax on the companies that manufacture non-essential foods, driving up the price of those foods.

    According to the Centers for Disease Control, more than one in three children between the ages of two and 19 in America eat junk food each day. Adults eat less junk food than children; about 10 percent of their caloric intake. But, hospitals and nursing homes often feed older people sugary drinks, nutritional supplements, which arguably should be avoided.

    Dr. Dave Lieberman writes in the New York Times that sugary nutritional supplements should not be what the doctor orders, even for older people who need to increase their calorie intake. He says that Boost and Ensure, two of the biggest selling nutritional supplements, have water and corn syrup as their two primary ingredients and very little protein content. These ingredients can promote diabetes, heart disease and fatty liver disease. He recommends full fat Greek yogurt, which is high in calories and high in protein and is also a probiotic. Almond and soy-based drinks are also recommended.

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