Posts

If You Think Kids Are Eating Mostly Junk Food, A New Study Finds You’re Right

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NPR 

Two-thirds — or 67% — of calories consumed by children and adolescents in 2018 came from ultra-processed foods, a jump from 61% in 1999, according to a peer-reviewed study published in the medical journal JAMA. Read more 

 

Skipping a trip to the grocery store may lead to fewer junk food purchases

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CNN 

Study participants who ordered their groceries online spent less money on junk food compared to when they shopped in person, according to a study in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior. Lead study author Laura Zatz, a senior adviser at The Behavioural Insights Team, said “Online shopping allows shoppers to avoid abundant in-store marketing and enticing food stimuli, which encourages us to add items to our basket that we didn’t plan to purchase,” she said. Read more…

What is driving Australians’ unhealthy food habits

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Medical Xpress

A new online tool brings together the best available data to describe Australia’s food environments, providing a clear picture of the ways that environment drives people, including children, to consume too many of the wrong types of foods. Australian children see more than twice as many ads for unhealthy food compared to healthy food on TV. And when kids are on their mobile devices, they are hit with as many as ten unhealthy foods and drink ads every hour. Read more

You can find the dashboard at https://foodenvironmentdashboard.com.au

Fears junk food regulation chilled by free trade agreements

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Stuff NZ 

International free-trade agreements threaten to put a “chill” on junk food regulations, experts in NZ say as efforts to combat child obesity have stalled. Global obesity expert Boyd Swinburn, a professor of population nutrition and global health at the University of Auckland, said the trade agreements came through a “very undemocratic, non-transparent process”, and that the law needed to be strengthened so that public health was not badly affected by free-trade agreements. Read more

Why we should think about junk food like cigarettes

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GQ Magazine 

In his new book Hooked, Pulitzer-winning author Michael Moss looked at Big Food through the lens of addiction science. In this GQ interview, he makes the comparison between junk food and cigarettes, discusses health-washing – which makes it harder to tell the good stuff in the store from the bad stuff, and the omnipresence of food advertising in our environments. Read the interview

Covid 19 coronavirus: Junk food companies accused of ‘Covid-washing’ during lockdown

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NZ Herald 
20 of the biggest junk and fast food brands in New Zealand have been accused of “Covid-washing” by pushing their products on the back of the nation’s lockdown according to a study from the University of Auckland. The study analyzed nearly 1400 social media posts and found about 27 per cent of the posts related to Covid-19 themes, of which more than a third linked a brand with community spirit. The study’s lead author, Dr Sarah Gerritsen, said Covid-washing portrayed a company as empathetic and contributing in a meaningful way to the pandemic response.”When, in reality, it was just another strategy to promote products and choices that are detrimental to health.” Read more

Raiding your cupboards like a vending machine? Big Food is feeding our snack addiction

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USA Today  
Big Food is using our deepest human instincts against us to make their products more addictive than ever, and then maneuvering to exploit our efforts to regain control of our health. In the early days of COVID-19, manufacturers of cookies, crackers and chips saw sales jump nearly 30% as people loaded up on items they hadn’t had since childhood. And now, the companies aren’t about to let us go. Read the article

Opinion  – Why Your New Years Diet is Doomed

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New York Times
The playbook for much of the junk-food marketing is similar to what the tobacco industry used for decades: advertising strategies focused on young people, a shirking of responsibility for poisoning entire populations, and an emphasis on individuals’ responsibility for their own health. Read more

Fast food makes an unhealthy comeback among kids

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Web MD 

After a period of improvement, U.S. kids are eating as much fast food as they were in the early 2000s, new government figures show. Researchers found that between 2003 and 2010, there was a decline in U.S. kids’ intake of fast-food calories — dipping from an average of 14% of daily calories, to just under 11%. By 2018, that figure was back up to 14%.  Read the article here

 

Mexico state bans sale of sugary drinks and junk food to children

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The Guardian 

The southern Mexican state of Oaxaca has banned the sale of sugary drinks and high-calorie snack foods to children – a measure aimed at curbing obesity. The bill puts sugary items into the same category as cigarettes and alcohol. “It’s important to finally put the brakes on this industry, which has already sickened our country and our children,” said Magaly López Domínguez, the Oaxaca lawmaker who presented the bill. “[The industry] gets into the most remote corners of the state” – known for its mountainous topography – “where there’s often not even medicines, but there’s Coca-Cola.” Read the article here