Day 87 – The Home Stretch

“In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, ‘Make us your slaves, but feed us’”.

~ Fyodor Dostoevsky

187.2 lbs

It’s official. I’m in the final 2 weeks of this phase of the project.

Some of the email coming in is telling me “dude – people already know starvation is bad. Thanks Captain Obvious.”

When it comes to, say, internment camp or desert island starvation, yes. Yes they do. But with people actively going “pro ana” and defending undernourishment as a desirable lifestyle, I still think demonstrating how bad it is on your body first-hand was worthwhile. Plus if you’re reading this (and hopefully other articles on this blog) the stunt worked: it got you here and reading about nutrition. Zing!

Speaking of obviousness though, recently I read about the “as seen on TV” diet. Researchers actually took the time to see if food advertised on TV was good for you. Because most food advertised on TV is fast food, pizza delivery, etc. I’m frankly amazed this research got funding. But sometimes results of checking what “everyone knows” are surprising, and add a welcome and important piece to our understanding of the world around us.

This wasn’t one of those times.

The new study, published in the June issue of the Journal of the American Dietetic Association, checked the nutritional content of TV advertised foods against nutritional guidelines. The result? A 2,000 Calorie diet (average optimum intake for an adult female) made up entirely of food advertised on TV would have 25 times the recommended sugars and 20 times the recommended of fat, but less than half of the recommended veggies, dairy, and fruits.

The extra sugars and fat are so over the top that, on average, eating one of the advertised foods would give you more than three times the recommended daily servings (RDS) of sugars and two and a half times the RDS for fat for the whole day.

Uh? Good thing we have Michael Mink, PhD, Assistant Professor and MPH Program Coordinator at the Armstrong Atlantic State University of Savannah, Georgia to interpret the results of  the study he lead. “The results of this study suggest the foods advertised on television tend to oversupply nutrients associated with chronic illness (eg, saturated fat, cholesterol, and sodium) and undersupply nutrients that help protect against illness (eg, fiber, vitamins A, E, and D, calcium, and potassium).”

Um… thanks Mike. I think you get to wear the Captain Obvious cape for a while. Don’t get any Big Mac sauce stains on it – I hate washing that crushed velvet.

Apparently Mike and his team watched 84 hours of prime time and 12 hours of Saturday morning TV. While I used to do that in a week, they took 28 days to do so. Maybe because they were writing notes as they went. ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC were watched on a rotating basis and the Saturday morning cartoon bit was included to so they’d see food advertisements marketed mainly at kids. The report calls “Saturday morning cartoons” 8am to 11am – when I was knee high to a grasshopper we’d start that up at 7 or even 6am. Kids these days. Slackers

They videotaped (Tivo’ed?) the 96 hours of TV and played it back later to pick out the food ads and the specific foods being advertised. Only foods that were clearly being “sold” in an ad were included.

When I was your age, I played this on an Apple IIe with a monochrome green screen. Hours of fun. Of course, we also thought acid wash jeans and Chip & Pepper shirts looked good.

In addition to too much sugar and fat and not enough fruit, veggies, and dairy there was also too much protein, selenium, sodium, niacin, total fat, saturated fat, thiamin and cholesterol and not enough iron, phosphorus, vitamin A, carbohydrates, calcium, vitamin E, magnesium, copper, potassium, pantothenic acid, fiber, and vitamin D. of course, some cholesterol and fat is good so a more detailed breakdown would have been helpful.

The researchers would like to see disclaimers on ads for crappy food similar to those on American drug ads. Really? Do we want rapid voiceovers telling us that KFC contains fat and salt, and that Taco Bell food may cause flatulence?

“First, the public should be informed about the nature and extent of the bias in televised food advertisements. Educational efforts should identify the specific nutrients that tend to be oversupplied and undersupplied in advertised foods and should specify the single food items that surpass an entire day’s worth of sugar and fat servings. Second, educational efforts should also provide consumers with skills for distinguishing balanced food selections from imbalanced food selections. For example, interactive websites could be developed that test a participant’s ability to identify imbalanced food selections from a list of options. This type of game-based approach would likely appeal to youth and adults. Third, the public should be directed to established nutritional guidelines and other credible resources for making healthful food choices.”

Um – educational games like that have been tried. Kids would much rather play video games in which they blow things away or run over hookers, it seems. Maybe if they brought back Burger time, but updated it to explain why it was a bad thing when the anthropomorphic fried egg caught you?