Hostess: I am not going to let you forget my new tag line - "obesity prevention through informed eating". I am most interested in point of purchase food content information and it's proliferation (grocery, restaurant and school). Some of the manufacturers of the foods I purchase have been putting information on the front of the label for some time - i.e. Morning Star Farms vegetarian products.
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| note calorie info on front of package |
Most companies highlight their labels if they are selling 100 calorie packs. Some cereal boxes have fiber and sugar content on the front. We do not as of yet have a uniform system. This week I noticed that Hostess is putting some information on the front of dessert cake packages that are not 100 calorie packs. They are 150 calorie cakes and I can see this without picking up the box. Pretty exciting.
Abilify: I was surprised to hear a commercial for this medication on my computer. I must have been watching a TV show on line for free (w/ads). Abilify is a psychotropic. It is a medicine that can alter ones mood by effecting neurotransmitters and or the secondary chemicals they trigger. It was originally approved for use in people with schizophrenia (as an antipsychotic), and then for people having manic episodes who are diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and THEN for treatment of depression that isn't responding to other medicines and most recently for use in children with autism related problems. It is also approved for use in children with the above other conditions. You can confirm this by visiting the FDA website here. Abilify is not approved for treatment of agitation in elderly patients with dementia. Every time the drug receives approval for another indication, the company that makes it can advertise it as such. But we know which one gets the most air play - depression. I haven't looked this up, but I imagine that more people are diagnosed with depression than schizoprenia and/or are more likely to tell their doctor they are depressed and want this drug. (schizophrenics are often out of touch with reality and do not seek treatment themselves). The drug company that makes Abilify stands to make a lot of money from all these approved uses (YES?). When I listened to the commercial earlier this week, the side effects associated with the medicine clearly freaked me out. What we don't hear on the TV is results of research studies that often show the same benefits without the risks that exercise can provide in the treatment of depression specifically.
Natural Fries: Speaking of marketing, what do you suppose is the goal behind Wendy's new commercial for natural cut french fries. Are we to assume that this french fry would be better for us than one that was an artificially cut french fry? Either way, it IS fried.
Soft: I feel ambiguous about this observation. It was unusual enough to consider mentioning here, though I wondered if I were hyper critical (NO - really, me?). I mentioned it to a friend and she confirmed that she had noticed the same thing when she attended a dance performance at this venue, so I will say it. I went to a student/faculty winter dance concert and the dancers seemed soft. Not heavy and soft, though some were heavier than is common and very few were that too thin waif size, but soft - undefined. I am used to athletic dancers with toned even sculpted muscles. Rather odd that they were soft.
BMI in the News: Most people add books to their must read lists and I add research articles/studies. My next must read is the NCI's BMI and All-Cause Mortality Pooling Project. Very briefly, and without review of validity (i.e. this is not a controlled lab experiment), persons with BMIs that are over 25 are more likely to die (in a given time period) then persons similar to them with BMIs from 18 to 24. The information is specific to NON SMOKERS only. Smoking ups the risk of death from all causes at any given time, period. In quick review, this looks like a good study so I am going to punt it for a full blog post next week. Stay tuned :)
Social Norming and the Environment: I tend to listen to World Have Your Say or On Point when I am falling asleep. A recent discussion topic for World... was climate change and social norming. Social norming is a strategy for health educators/promoters to use when seeking behavior change. For example, if most people do not smoke and I make it a point to tell people not the percent of tobacco users, but number of people who do not use - I am using social norming to make 'not using tobacco' the thing to do - "Your peers are not smoking. Smoking is not cool. Don't Smoke." Social norming is often effective. On this recent show, researchers used social norming to increase the percent of hotel guests who reuse their towels. (you do, don't you?) If you have been to a hotel in the last year or so, you might have seen a little table tent in the bathroom that encourages you to save water by reusing your towel. The researchers in this study simply added to that card. I WAS falling asleep so I didn't catch any numbers, so I am making this one up. The card might have said, "75% of people reuse their towels". The scientists compared towel reuse between guests whose room cards did and did not have that extra sentence. When we think everyone is doing something - well, we want to do it too!
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