Childhood Obesity

 This is sort of a blog request from @WineePamela after some tweets I wrote about how to fight Obesity.  I've written about weight loss before, but I really feel weird about doing it because I'm a pretty big guy.  I guess I'm like a coach, where I know all about the game but I wasn't the greatest player.


If you are really concerned that kids are too fat, then you have to approach things from a more pragmatic standpoint and stop with all the slogans, easy answers, and non-expert speculation. So to fight childhood obesity...


1. Parents:


When kids are little, all parents ever do is tell kids to stop running around, slow down, sit still... and finish your dinner.  I thought all the hoopla over Kids meal toys at McDonald's was silly because most kids I've ever seen eat there waste more than half of their food.


So maybe be glad when the kids are doing winds sprints while giggling and if the kids don't finish their dinner... give them a little less.


2. Coaches:


What I remember the most about playing sports in middle and high school was all the punishment exercise and yelling.  I got horrible anxieties before practices.  Coaches do more to limit physical activity later in life than any video game console.  When one guy screws around, the football/basketball/wrestling coach has everyone run wind sprints, do laps, or do some form of calisthenics as punishment.  This is a horrible message to send.


3. Teachers:


Coming from a food science background, I naturally think it's an ideal subject for high school students to tie together chemistry, biology, and chemistry, but it also gives you a great background in nutrition.  Kids should know what a calorie is, how to calculate the number of calories they need to maintain/lose/gain weight, and how to track their caloric intake.  it's also a great way to learn which foods are the best sources of protein/iron/vitamins/calcium/potassium.  This is very practical knowledge that also reinforces what the kids have already learned in school, while also reinforcing scientific method and critical thinking skills.


4.  Other Kids:

Kids are mean and being fat seems to be one of the last socially acceptable forms of discrimination in this country.  This is a tragic combination.  Fat people in general get very little sympathy because they are just seen as sloth-like lazy buffoons.  Other kids can help by not shaming or being cruel to obese kids.  Furthermore, they can make friends with obese kids and include them in their physical activities.  Shame does not work.  If your feeling down on yourself, you slow down, stay out of view... you don't go for a walk or go exercise.

5.  Food Activists:

I know you think everything is all a big conspiracy and that all processed foods are poison... but seriously, knock it off.  Misinformation serves only to confuse people and prevents them from reaching a solid, science based understanding of food.  Misinformation also allows people to peddle their ridiculous weight loss schemes and bilk the public for billions of dollars a years.  Please stop.

6. Fashion Industry:

Pencil thin models give people an unrealistic yard stick to judge themselves and others by.  We no longer think hometown girls are cute because they don't look nearly as hot as the model.  This also creates a much bigger gap bewteen the beautiful people and the obese.  

If you are a big kid, your clothes aren't only bigger, but they're completely different.  Why?  Why can't you get big sizes from Gap, Adidas, Champion, and Nike.  How easy is it to get active wear in big sizes in the same style as the smaller sizes?  And while I'm at it, stop putting flames or dragons... or flaming dragons on big & tall clothing.  What is that?  So not only do fat people feel ostracized, they have special fat clothes that look completely different.

PayPal

You should see a PayPal Donation button in this blog post and on the side of this page.  I'm currently out of work and behind on rent.  I've done this blog for two and a half years and have many great, informative posts.  If you can spare anything... even $5, it would be greatly appreciated. The donations are anonymous, so you don't have to worry about getting an awkward half sobbing thank you from me or me pledging a life debt to you.  Rent is overdue and I hope to get hired on somewhere... for something, sometime soon.  So if you've read and liked my writing over the past couple years, please send a dollar or two my way.  Even if you think I'm a tool, give me a buck so I can keep writing and giving you more to complain about.

Why We Need To Fund The FDA.

Food Manufacturing posted a story this morning about a seafood company having it's products seized due to non-conformance with HACCP.  I looked up the warning letter and was amazed at how horrible their HACCP plan was.  They had critical control points for holding raw fish that didn't include a temperature and a ccp for thawing frozen seafood that also had no temperature controls.

Incredible.

Then imagine my surprise when I found out they received another FDA warning letter way back in 1998.  It was then that I was even more disturbed to learn that this wasn't, Meiko, the seafood company whose products were seized... this was Schneider's Fish & Seafood Company.

I looked into it and a search for "seafood HACCP" of the FDA's Warning Letter's site yielded 997 results since 1998.  For those unaware, the FDA issued a final rule on Seafood HACCP in 1995.  40 companies were repeat offenders, many of which went 4 years or more between warning letters.  

I find a couple things troubling about this. First, it's unclear if these places were inspected during those 4+ year gaps.  Second, these are only warning letters that pertain to their HACCP plans either being inadequate or plans not being followed.

The fact that there are companies that lack complete seafood HACCP plans in 2011 is insane and points out a glaring hole in our food safety system... Inspectors.  These guys aren't consistently inspecting these facilities because they're stretched way too thin.  We didn't need the the new regulations that were passed earlier in the year.  What we needed and still need is the staffing to enforce the laws we already have.

This would have several benefits, the most obvious being jobs.  We need several thousand more inspectors in both the FDA and the FSIS(USDA).  The result of this could mean that more recent college grads with food backgrounds can get a solid position and they can start paying back student loans.  The money they'll get paid will go right back into the economy.  Increased inspections mean more hotel and airline bookings, more eating out at restaurants, which puts more money in the pockets of the service industry workers.  Government work means government benefits, which also means there will be more people insured in this country.

But even more than that is the growth this will spur in the food industry.  Many companies, while concerned about food safety, may not be too worried about an inspector showing up anytime soon.  This means that they get a little more lax on the cleaning and some of the upkeep.  With the promise of more inspections, capital projects are more likely to be invested in, which means more hiring and more overtime, more millwrights will be employed and processing lines will get updated.  As much as industry likes to complain about regulation, they also hate when a similar company has a major food safety issue because it makes them look bad by proxy.  Also, it's good for timely inspections to weed out the bad seeds, and give all the other players in the industry a chance to gain market share.

It's unfortunate that political ideology has gotten in the way of sound economic and domestic policy.  This, along with infrastructure spending, seems like a complete no-brainer to me.

Total Recall: Food Safety Hysteria Gives Rise To Unnecessary Demands.

People are upset about a food safety bill that is currently stalled in the Senate.  The bill mandates regular inspections of food plants, which I also support.  But one of the strange things to come out of the recent salmonella outbreak and this bill stalling, is people's continued claim that the FDA is powerless to do any enforcement.

The New York Times ran a story about the bill and mentioned the egg recall, stating the following:

"...the F.D.A. never inspected the Iowa egg facilities at the center of the recalls. Even if it had, the agency would not have had the power to order that their eggs be recalled despite conditions it later found to be filthy."

I find this to be very misleading.  First off, the FDA absolutely has the power to order the eggs be recalled.  There are two things here.  Number one, the FDA can ask the company to institute a recall and as soon as they do, the FDA assists them and provides guidance to ensure the proper steps are being taken.  Yes, all recalls are voluntary, but I will challenge anyone reading this to find instances where a food company refused to issue a recall.  That brings me to number two and the reason why recall requests are always granted - seizure.

Under 21 U.S.C. 334 the FDA has the authority to seize food it believes to be contaminated or adulterated in some way.  Food companies absolutely do not want this to happen... ever.  Just on a P.R. level, any company would much rather look like they caught a mistake and are trying to make it right by recalling the adulterated product.  This is where the New York Times' story is so misleading.  No food company in their right mind, or with credible evidence that proves they are being unfairly treated, would ever risk an FDA seizure.  Under a recall, the FDA helps.  Under a seizure, the FDA takes over, in some instances keeping you from running production by clotting your supply lines and warehouse storage.  A seizure is like a crazy cat lady having her cats taken away because they're emaciated/diseased/abused... it's an indictment on the party involved.  Some companies didn't survive massive recalls because of the negative impact it had on their sales.  Under a seizure, you give up all ability to say you are trying to make thing's right.  This is why the New York Times article is so intellectually dishonest.

The power to demand a recall is unnecessary and in my opinion, does more harm than good.  Even to good facilities, bad things can happen.  A worker can fail to notify their supervisor they are ill and work their shift, contaminating food.  Temperature anomalies can occur in between regular temperature checks, preventing some of the product from reaching a proper kill temp for bacteria.  A packaging employee may grab a spindle of identical looking labels that don't have the allergen statement.  The voluntary recall gives the company a chance to own the problem and make it right.  Believe it or not, most people do give a damn about their jobs and the safety of their products.  A seizure is a last resort action meant to stop a rogue company from harming the public.  By harming a business that just made a careless mistake, you potentially put thousands of people out of work.

What I want to see happen...

The FDA has roughly 51,229 facilities to inspect but inspected fewer than 1,000 in 2008.  This is a big problem and this is the reason:

We simply need more Consumer Safety Officers, the boots on the ground that actually go to these facilities and carry out the inspections.  Specialists are the people that are technical writers, researchers, and food microbiologists that process samples.

We need to have close to 5,000 inspectors, but until recently, the FDA had been underfunded.  This is the biggest problem.  The next big problem that must be tackled is the hiring process. 


On USAJobs.com there are no entry level Consumer Safety Officer positions to apply for.  None.  There are only GS-7 Through GS-13, which are PhD's and upper management positions, on up to director level.  The USDA's Food Safety & Inspection Service, which inspects meat facilities, does have a GS-5 entry level Food Inspector position open, but this leads me to the next part of the problem.  The process for getting hired involves filling out a lengthy application and meeting certain educational requirements, which is understandable for a government position.  They also take at least 6 - 8 weeks after the posted job's closing date to get back to the candidates that applied.  This position's closing date?  01/31/2011  You won't even know if you made it to the first round of phone interviews nearly 6 months.  What food safety/food science talent(myself, for example) can afford to wait that long just to start the interview process?

So we need more people and the speed at which we hire those people needs to increase exponentially.  Notice that my solutions didn't involve any new laws other than requiring timely inspections.  It isn't the laws that are flawed, it's the execution.


The truth is, instances of food borne illnesses have been decreasing since the end of the last century.  That doesn't mean we can't do way better, but it does mean there is a fair amount of hysteria out there.  Hopefully, someone with the USDA and FDA addresses these human resource issues.  If so, I'll be the first to apply.

Many Works of Fiction and Hysteria...

Hello blog world, haters, and curious eavesdroppers.  It's been a while since I posted, so I thought I would toss together a tolerable hodgepodge of food things...

Cloned meat has reportedly been found in the UK...  cue the music... dun dun duuuuunnnn!  Oh no!  Run everybody, ruuuun!  Cloned cows!  Holy cow!  Panic!  Freak out!

Don't worry... don't panic... and don't freak out.  There is no science that I am aware of that supports any theories about meat coming from cloned animals being anything less than safe.  Seriously, it's cool.  It's just more panic from the Food Hysterics that I think stems from a lack of fundamental science knowledge.  

Remember these simple rules when wading through these stories:

1.  Just because someone puts it in a book, doesn't make it true.

2.  Established science, and a consensus of credible, peer reviewed scientific studies can never be undone by one study.  Never.

3. Always pay close attention to the Expert's area of expertise before you consider what they're talking about.  Don't take medical advice from a food scientist, don't take environmental science info from a doctor, and certainly don't give much credence to what an environmental scientist says about food.

4. Chef's have almost zero food science knowledge.  Same goes for journalism professors.

5. Beware of percentages in the absence of hard numbers. Percentages often sound worse than they really are. i.e.  Grass fed cows have 60% more omega-3 fatty acids than grain fed cows....  but the grain fed has 1.2 and the grass fed has 1.92. When you see actual data, the percentages get less scary.

Hooter's update...

For those unaware of my writings about Hooter's, please read this as well as this.

I met someone that was going to train to be a Hooter's manager several months back.  I caught up with him recently and asked how it was going.  He quit the training and made several complaints about the company and told one interesting anecdote.  He says he went to get some raw wings to bread and fry from the cooler and noticed some had a greenish tint and smelled foul.  As any good kitchen worker does, he immediately alerted the manager in charge.  The manager took a look and advised him to go ahead and cook them.  For those concerned for their health, the training location was North of Columbus in the Polaris area and the store is located on Sancus Blvd.  I advise nobody to eat there.  Hooter's never got in touch with me and their training continues to be ignorant of the most basic food safety logic.  If anyone from Hooter's is reading this... I can help you.  You need to seek help from someone before your food kills someone, especially since more families and children are eating there.

School lunch...

I'm all for nutritious school lunches, but aside from the money needed to increases the free lunche program, it shouldn't cost more per person.  The school lunch bill being considered now is confusing.  It aims to simultaneously reduce childhood hunger while fighting childhood obesity.  The bill includes an increase in the number of kids eligible for free lunches, and also includes stricter controls on fat and sodium.  

Here is what Mrs. Obama has not considered... the other 18 hrs that the kid isn't in school.  They assume that kids blow their diets at school, which I'm not so sure of.  Kids get 1 meal at school in most cases, and while they may go for higher sugar, higher fat foods, are they eating more calories than they do at home?  Also, the law states that they must get a full 1/3 of the minimum daily calories from the school lunch... shouldn't calories be cut to reduce obesity?  I've heard they have provisions aimed at encouraging schools to go local and organic, so they'd be paying a premium for the same food without any health benefits.  

Who does this benefit other than organic farmers?  Here's a plan: offer a tax break to families that brown bag it.  That way, the parents have only themselves to blame for fat kids.  Secondly, simplify the menu with lunch meats, and fruits/veggies.  Less to cook means lowered energy costs and these foods are already lower in fat/calories.  You don't need to increase the spending on this, aside from what you spend to increase free lunches.  This seems to be another bill based on more emotion/opinion than logic, reason, and science.