A reader sent me a link to the CSPI (Center for Science in the Public Interest) Scam site, which is great. It will become a part of my daily read.

In the particular link she sent, there was a video of Michael Jacobson, the director of CSPI, making an appearance on Steven Colbert’s show. Colbert, of course, made Jacobson look like a fool, which he pretty much does with everyone who ventures onto his show. But his making a fool of his guests only works if the guests don’t go along with the joke and try to remain on their message and stay the pompous windbags that most of them are.

Jacobson didn’t disappoint. In fact, he played right into Colberts hands. I’m sure Jacobson had a media consultant tell him to try to be light and upbeat and go with the flow, which, in Jacobson’s mind translated into hunching over the table while maintaining a Cheshire cat rictus throughout the interview. Pompous windbag that he is, Jacobson couldn’t resist trying to stay on message, which made him look all that much more ridiculous. I’ll have to admit to experiencing more than a little schadenfreude as I watched.

What I found most interesting about the interview comes at the end. Under Colbert’s prompting Jacobson spirals off into a discourse about the dangers of trans fats and how they’re slowly but surely being removed from the food supply, saving thousands of lives in the process. What Jacobson doesn’t elaborate on – and what I wish Colbert had known and injected into the dialog – is that CSPI, Jacobson’s own group, is largely responsible for putting trans fats in the food supply in the first place. I guess it’s a great gig if you can get it. First, you militate to replace a harmless substance with a harmful one (replacing saturated fat with trans fat in this case), then you get traction and publicity by militating to remove the harmful substance that you were greatly responsible for putting in place. And look like the hero in both cases.

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Scientists at the University of Liverpool are presenting data this week at the European Congress on Obesity demonstrating that children are indeed influenced mightily by food ads they see on television.

The researchers had 60 kids (aged 9-11) watch various TV ads followed by a cartoon show followed by a presentation of food. Some of the ads were for toys, others wre for food products. After the ads and the cartoons, the children increased their food intake substantially with the overweight increasing theirs the most. Normal weight kids upped their intake by 84 percent whereas the obese kids increased theirs by 134 percent. The merely overweight fell in the middle with a consumption of 101 percent of their normal intake. These figures are pretty significant since even the normal weight kids ate almost double their normal amount and the obese almost triple. (I’ve read only the press release, which doesn’t tell how much is ‘normal’ for these kids. I would assume that the researchers had the kids fast for a given period of time, then let them watch the cartoons, then provided them with food and measured consumption. But I don’t know this for sure.)

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If you don’t think McDonald’s branding works – at least with young children – read on.

Researchers at Stanford studied 63 children aged from 3.5 to 5.4 years to see if these kids would prefer foods that came in McDonald’s packaging. The children were presented with identical McDonald’s foods in either a plain wrapper or in a wrapper with the McDonald’s logo, then asked which one tasted better.

The foods were (1) one-quarter of a McDonald’s hamburger, one partially wrapped in a white McDonald’s wrapper showing the McDonald’s logos and the word Hamburger in brown and the other wrapped identically in a matched plain white wrapper of the same size and material; (2) a Chicken McNugget in a white McDonald’s bag with a red arches logo and the phrase Chicken McNuggets in blue and the other in a matched plain white bag; (3) 3 McDonald’s french fries in a white bag with a McDonald’s yellow arches and smile logo on a red background and the words “We love to see you smile” in blue on yellow along the edge and 3 fries in a matched plain white bag; (4) about 3 ounces of 1% fat milk (or apple juice for 1 child who was not allowed to drink milk) in a white McDonald’s cup with lid and straw and in a matched plain white cup with lid and straw; and (5) 2 “baby” carrots placed on top of a McDonald’s french fries bag and on top of a matched plain white bag. Hamburgers, chicken nuggets, and french fries were all purchased from a local McDonald’s. Carrots were not available or marketed by McDonald’s at the time of the study. Only unused (not previously in contact with food) McDonald’s and plain wrappings, bags, and cups were used so there would be no residual smell or taste. Only the most basic available McDonald’s packaging was used, without any additional promotional markings (eg, additional graphics, Ronald McDonald image, or images of movie characters). Each food in the McDonald’s packaging was taken out of a McDonald’s brown paper bag with a yellow, blue, and red arches logo, and each food in plain packaging was taken out of a matched plain brown paper bag. The order of foods presented and placement of the McDonald’s wrapped food on the left or right followed a predetermined random order for each child and each food.

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A few months back I posted on how the Kellogg Company had been elevated into the pantheon of the “world’s most ethical companies,’ at least according to Ethisphere Magazine, a rag dedicated to rating such things. I noted at the time that I thought it strange that a company devoted to the provisioning of children with sugar-laden junk foods of one sort or another would be deemed ‘ethical’ by anyone. In my view it was kind of like saying the Gestapo were ethical because they took good care of their employees.

A month or so after I posted my comments the New York Times came out with a piece about how the Kellogg Company was trying to clean up its act by stopping its television advertising many of its most sugar and crap laden products to children. Read more »

Just read through the August issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, which was chocked full of good articles. I’ll be kept in blogging fodder for several days just from the contents of this one issue.

The paper I want to discuss today is one that I find hilarious. It’s a report of the Hamburg Burger Trial and I find it hilarious because the results were so different than what the researchers expected. In fact, they mention how surprised they were to get these results. The only reason they should have been surprised is that they are either ignorant or stupid – or both.

If I gave most readers of this blog the same data the authors of the study had, the blog readers would not have been surprised. They would have expected exactly the outcome that resulted. Which makes the readers of this blog a whole lot smarter than the long list of scientists who authored this paper.

Here’s the setup.

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