MD and I stopped in a Whole Foods the other day to load up, and I came across this bottle of tea while I was looking for something cold and carb-free to drink.

The manufacturer of this product (and I’m sorry, but I can’t remember what it was, and, unfortunately, I didn’t take a picture of the other side) is either ignorant or thinks that its customers are ignorant. I’m sure the ‘brains’ of this outfit either read or heard that high-fructose corn syrup was a substance that is not healthful. I suppose that they came to the conclusion that it was the corn syrup that was the villain, but it’s the fructose in the corn syrup that’s the problem. The other component of corn syrup is glucose, which is much less harmful than fructose.

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I stumbled onto a great YouTube video of a 2004 report on obesity by the late ABC news anchor, Peter Jennings. In it Mr. Jennings blames the unholy alliance between government and the food industry for making us all fat.

There are many amazing things about this video, not the least of which is that both Michael Jacobson and Marion Nestle come off looking like they have good sense. Even Michael Jacobson, and that’s a real feat. Both give answers to Jennings’ questions that are reasonable and even sensible. Jacobson even goes so far as to say that exercise doesn’t bring about weight loss.

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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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