Big Food cashing in on “health at every size”

SHAMING is over used. Pointing out flaws or areas that need improvment is not SHAMING. We really need to get over this FEAR of being judged. Our brains take in information every second of every day and it evaluates it against a set of core beliefs held by that soul. My opinion that students should not eat a large bag of Taki's for breakfast each morning is mine to have. Pointing it out I may feel is my duty to share with them. They don't have to take it or even like it. "STICKS AND STONES MAY BREAK MY BONES BUT WORDS WILL NEVER HURT ME." Another thing Kindergarten doesn't seem to be teaching anymore!!!

Reminds me of the hotels jumping in on the eco friendly movement. Yes, I believe in it but Im sure the hotels were more interested the savings more that really caring.

I know, I’m cynical.

I can’t imagine a true dietician pushing those sugary cereals.

However, a bowl of cereal as a snack might be better than candy or chips.

Reminds me of the recent embarassment over the Kellogg's CEO suggesting 'cereal for dinner' as a way of coping with rising food costs...

This, just as the US diet gurus stop blaming basics like whole milk and eggs and point their fingers at highly processed foods and sugar.

Anti-diet? As in anti-food? Lol. That is even worse than the way we screw the word diet into a dirty restriction or meal planning extremes. The way some terms are thrown around :( A person eating whatever, whenever isn't anti-diet. They have a whatever, whenever diet. It's true that there aren't really bad foods for the most part- but consuming copious quantities of anything can be unwise to ones health. That's a whole rant.

Food producers have long fought on food labeling they don't like. For many reasons. Also, they were their own original influencers. We didn't want cereal for breakfast till a company told us some docs said it was a good idea. Currently, folks don't take to that so much. Now it's what are influencers saying, so the company gets some influencers to say it's a good idea. Another rant here.

Our whole body image, body shaming, unhealth glorification, eating disorders, health issues, and fiscal/societal issues related to food across many vectors is many more paragraphs of rant.

Words can definitely hurt - and even children know this and need to be taught not to use hurtful words. In fact, words can kill. One young woman is in jail for taunting her ex-boyfriend to commit suicide. Words can hurt more than sticks and stones.

Well said, Lars.

Reminds me of this quote: "Stick and stones can break my bones, but words will never hurt me - is a LIE."

Words hurt people all the time.

All companies push their products and services. That's what they do. Not always thoughtfully or done using common sense. After realizing that truism, is this something more than an Emily Litella moment?

Well, some of you know I'm ”anti-diet” too—as in anti-diet industry, paying others to withhold food. People who are otherwise pretty healthy can put their money towards whole foods, sustainably produced. Balance includes approximately equal amounts of protein, carbs and fats, with a little more going to carbs, and the current recommendation for 5-9 cups of mostly-non-sweet fruits and vegetables daily. It's no shame to put a moderate serving of Lucky Charms in there, if that's your special pleasure, so long as it's balanced with lean proteins, lots of colored veggies, esp. dark leafy greens, and ”good fats” like olive oil. It just uses up your carbs in a nutritionally questionable way. You could have berries and an apple and more... Sometimes satisfaction is worth it. Feeling deprived can lead to bad choices. So pick your poison, ;)

Shaming people for eating cereal is wrong. Shaming cereal companies for pushing dreck seems just fine. Oats are good for you. If you add tasty, nutritious things, like seeds and berries, they taste better than anything prepared you can buy in a box.

I recently discovered Better Oats (brand) Organic Old Fashioned Oats. They're delicious!

beesneeds - I’m not sure if I’m reading too much into your first paragraph because it’s reminding me of a silly argument that my late father used to make, but while the noun diet means what we eat, a second meaning of the noun and the exclusive meaning of the verb referring to restrictive eating is common, accepted usage that predates any of us by several hundred years. So if a regimen of certain foods with certain restrictions for the sake of weight loss or health benefit is a diet, I see nothing wrong with calling the eschewing of such restrictions anti-diet.

While it’s no big surprise that food manufacturers advertise and lobby in support of their business in order to promote and sell their food, I found it noteworthy to learn that they go so far as to influence the cultural response to the negative impacts of their foods.

Lastly, the matra of ”everything in moderation” is fine for those who are maintaining good health with a healthy diet, but for those needing to make a change, a lot of that moderation stuff is far better to be left out of their diets altogether,. Lest they become part of the 95% that can’t maintain and end up right back where they started. Food is sustenance for some, full of addictions for others.

" I found it noteworthy to learn that they go so far as to influence the cultural response to the negative impacts of their foods. "

Sure, but after seeing the conduct of tobacco companies decades ago, and even what they do even to this day, nothing surprises me. Think of what happened with that industry - people got so fed up with their conduct that their advertising was banned.

(Maybe something similar is needed these days for drug ads?)

FOAS, you make some great points! But re "addiction", that's why I said "pretty healthy". A drive stronger than the will to tell it no is not "healthy". There are bacteria which are known to create really strong cravings for sugar and simple carbs that feel like strong hunger pangs. I've had that. Knowing that that's what it is was enough to make me want to kill it by ignoring its entreaties and just waiting it out, rather than feeding it, but it's pretty wild, and some people can't gut it out. (::hee:: Another good thing I did was aggressively reestablish gut health.) I don't know how many other things are like that, and there are dependencies where a person is used to some food, or compound in food, to adjust the body, whether it's caffeine, sugar, alcohol, or even basics, like protein. There are idiosyncratic psychological patterns where "comfort food" isn't just about binding stress hormones with fat, but soothing triggers and memories with particular foods that put the brain back into a productive mode. And more and more different things that need to be addressed on the way to healthy.

My point, is that you can pay thousands of dollars for premade dreck that isn't satisfying, or pay it for better quality, tastier, better for you, real food, and if you get addicted to Swiss chard, nobody will say you nay. And if an adult doesn't know that the people pushing Lucky Charms are trying to get you to trade your health for sugar frosted crunch with sugar pillows, if said adult is so soft in the head to use "a 'dietician' on the internet said I could eat them every day and be healthy" as an excuse to indulge indiscriminately, if they are so out of tune with the meaning of the label that they think is is from the "food" category rather than the "candy" category, said adult has lots bigger problems than a spinach salad can overcome.

Do I understand that the new weight loss meds do not act on the gut, as intended, but the brain? That they can be/are being used to stop cravings other than for food?

Sometimes weevils who like whole grains in bread and will pass by the white stuff to get to them ... are smarter than many people (carrying, as they do, much more complex brains).

ole joyful

@chisue - I don’t quite know what you mean. I don’t think they were ever intended or thought to magically melt pounds from your gut but rather, to reduce your eating. That sounds like brain to me, but I don’t know a thing about the mechanics. (edit - I recall there was some recent news about it working differently than how they orifinally thought, I did not take the time to try to understand it.) But yes, it has been found to affect other cravings. I have a friend who has a certain amount of issues with both drinking and weight, and from what I can tell wegovy has had a bigger impact on his drinking. More so than naltrexone.

To tie this back to fat acceptance, it somewhat amuses me that part of this movement is to bring awareness that we all just all have different bodies. Which is certainly true but I’ve always wondered how that explains our skyrocketing weight,.And wouldn’t ya know, a tremendous amount of people are now losing weight by, you guessed it, eating less.

Well, I've always been a "focus on health, not weight" person, but that's probably because I'm an outlier who's been generally quite healthy and quite overweight my entire life. But now, over 60, I no longer care what anyone else thinks about my body or my weight.

Regarding the new class of weight loss drugs: One of the ways they work is slowing stomach emptying, which is why one of the common side effects is frequent nausea, and one of the very unfortunate side effects is frequent and sometimes near-constant vomiting. There's also a response that lowers blood glucose levels, which is what it was originally formulated for (Type 2 diabetics).

They are starting studies on if and how these drugs also lessen cravings for drugs and alcohol. "So why would a weight-loss drug do this? Turns out, these drugs (as well as the GLP-1 hormone) don't just work on blood sugar. "They also work in your brain," says Dr. Lorenzo Leggio, who's the clinical director of the National Institute of Drug Abuse....."The mechanism in the brain that regulates overeating overlaps with those responsible for the development and maintenance of addiction, including alcohol disorder," he says." https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/08/28/1194526119/ozempic-wegovy-drinking-alcohol-cravings-semaglutide

Thanks, TV. I think I got that! <grin>

Is it good or bad that the drug has no permanent effect? Stop the med, and the brain reverts to the desired reward?

Ads for one diet plan (Noom?) appear to alter behavior by raising consciousness. This reminds me of something I learned when I quit smoking. In addition to not realizing I was addicted, I had not realized how I used smoking -- how it rewarded me. (Fortunately, the addiction was only mild, as I was a very light smoker -- but still *addicted*.)

A major breakthrough was realizing that I used smoking as an excuse to 'take a break'. If I was occupied with a cigarette, I couldn't be doing much else. Ah, but I could skip the 'excuse' and just take the break I needed!

😡

Thanks for those details, TV, I guess it’s multifaceted.

Chisue, yes, temporary effects. And as far as I know it doesn’t teach you to eat healthier. Dealing with both the physical and psychological of addiction is important. While I’ve never looked much into noom, the high level approach sounds reasonable to me. Over the past week I’ve had a setback in my own diet; fortunately it hasn’t been enough to add back pounds but it was heading in that direction. Recognizing it, acknowledging it, and addressing it is all part of the process as I see it, to help set a course for life. I imagine you’d miss part of that with quick fix drugs. Personally I’m quite skeptical about this approach.

I didn't see the Oprah program about it, but did see a bit of promo interview. She said she also hikes five miles a day in the hills, and something I think meant followed a healthy diet. Everything I've ever seen about weight loss supplements or gizmos has at the core eat a healthy diet and get sufficient exercise--for which good advice one need not buy what they're selling. Five miles in hills daily is excessive, but so long as stress injuries aren't forming, sunscreen and hat are worn and the air is clean, it's a harmless to beneficial excess. I get why for people with imminent risks or whose work requires them to look their best, this medication is good. The potential side effects are pretty gruesome. The side effects of a colorful plant forward diet, with moderation in all types (too much greens or orange color can create problems, but those go away with vacations from the offenders), are a healthy gut and birthday cards from the vendors at the farmers' markets.

I had a personal experience with a family member who was put on Ozempic for his pre-diabetes. He is over weight and a chain smoker. He gets his medical care thru the VA and they were giving him shots and he lost weight. He also became suicidal.

This was my first experience with someone actively putting their affairs in order and talking about circling the drain. It was scary. He reached out to me more than usual during this period. While I was researching what to do, I tripped over an article about a country in Europe doing a study about suicidal ideation on this drug. Then I went to the Ozempic website itself and saw it listed as a possible side effect. I begged him not to take action and to get off that drug ASAP. The VA told him, you can stop the shot at any time but you will gain the weight back. So he stopped the shot, gained a little weight back and is no longer suicidal.

Heads up on this class of drugs! This was real!

How lucky your family member was for you to care enough to help him to the extent of likely saving his life! Good for you.

Now that he owes you, you may want to remind him that chain smoking can lead to the same horrible consequence, death at one's own hand. I hope he'll listen.

You know, I could have sworn I found info about the possible suicidal ideation on Ozempics website. It turns out it was drugs.com and the other brand Wegovy. Ozempic is currently in full denial making as much as they can while they can. Discussing this has pointed me to an FDA site medwatch, where you can report stuff like this. I will check into reporting it. Since this was the first suicide intervention I was ever involved in, I feel like I should speak up. So many people are using this as a quickie diet drug now. I hope people are paying attention.

side effects from drugs dot com

Very scary. There other drugs that list suicidal thoughts as well.

Joan, good thing he listened to you.

"The company has also enlisted a team of lobbyists and pushed back against federal policies that would add health information to food labels."

Excuse me?? What about informed consent? I think we should be able to make decisions on what we eat without information on said food being withheld.

My father used to mock health nuts mercilessly until he developed an autoimmune condition in his 30s that only a "health nut" way of life holds at bay, keeping it in remission. Now he mercilessly mocks processed food eaters 😂

“It turns out it was drugs.com and the other brand Wegovy.”

@JoanM - Just saw a Wegovy commercial and they listed it as a possible side effext.