Last time I checked, an adult male should consume 2,500 calories a day, and this shake nearly meets that requirement! The saturated fat present in that shake is over 3 times the RDA of 20 grams, which will put you on the fast track for heart disease. Of course, that's if the Type 2 diabetes caused by all 266 grams of that sugar doesn't get you first.

While I believe that people should be held responsible for what they consume, I think corporations need to share just a little responsibility too, and not sell piles of liquid sugar and fat like this. I'd be surprised if even 1 in 100 of the folks that consume that shake know just how bad it is.

On the plus side, it does provide 120% of the RDA for calcium. Oh, and about 1600% of the RDA for Heath candy bars.

(Our tipster, Doug, came up with "death shake.")

From the NY Sun:

While many prepared dishes at Whole Foods can be healthful, an analysis conducted by a laboratory on behalf of The New York Sun found that filling the containers can result in a single meal containing large percentages of the Food and Drug Administration's recommended daily allotment of calories, fat, and sodium.

"This is another variation of supersizing," a nutrition expert for the American Heart Association and a professor at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University, Judith Wylie-Rosett, said. "If you give someone a large container, they're going to fill it up."

...
In the analysis, the smaller-size containers from Whole Foods were filled halfway with salad bar items that could be considered to be healthful, including Chicken Provencal, Vegan Chicken Delight, Spinach Orzo Feta Salad, Southern Sweet Potato Salad, and Vegan Peach BBQ Tofu Salad. The salad samples were then sent to Microbac Laboratories Inc., based in Warrendale, Pa.

The lab found that some of the food choices were high in fat, calories, and sodium. For example, the Southern Sweet Potato Salad, which weighed about 15 ounces, contained 70% of the recommended daily allotment of sodium, and the Vegan Peach BBQ Tofu Salad, also at 15 ounces, contained nearly 54% of a person's daily allotment of fat.

Vegan Peach BBQ Tofu Salad? Is that a joke? Whole Foods issued a fairly logical response to this hysteria:

"It's a self-serve bar. You take as much or as little as you want," Mr. Shank said. "We give our shoppers the choice. We provide them with foods that are healthful foods, that adhere to our stringent quality standards."

The salad bar containers were also designed to appeal to many customer types. "They can be used for one person or multiple people," Mr. Shank said. "People should still control their serving sizes to maintain a healthy diet."

Um, we have to agree with Whole Foods here. Isn't there a scale right there so you can weigh your food?

Apparently, you, the average consumers, are totally unable to control yourselves when faced with mounds of delicious tofu:

Health experts, physicians, and nutritionists said it is difficult for people to sample appropriate-size portions, which they defined as one-half cup, or four ounces, of one prepared food item.

"Visually, you'd want to fill the space," a cardiac surgeon known for making frequent appearances on "The Oprah Winfrey Show," Dr. Mehmet Oz, said.

"The average person who is going to a salad bar is overeating," a registered dietician who is a spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association, Keri Gans, said.

Anyway, if you're looking for nutritional information for Whole Foods prepared food items, click here.

A New Kind of Supersizing Tempts at Healthy Salad Bars [NY Sun via Buzzfeed ]

For children between 4 and 8 years of age, the recommended amount of calories per meal, assuming three meals a day, is 430. If the child is active, the amount goes up to 565. Using these numbers as a guide, the CSPI looked at the biggest restaurant chains in the country, then whittled their list down to the ones that offer dedicated kids' menus and provide nutritional info. This meant the following were left out of the study because they won't provide nutritional info:

We don't need no stinkin' nutrition
• Applebee's
• T.G.I. Friday's
• Outback Steakhouse
• Olive Garden
• Red Lobster
• IHOP

Here's what the CSPI has to say about those restaurants that do provide nutritional info:

Chili's has 700 possible kids’ meal combinations, but 658, or 94 percent, of those are too high in calories, including one comprised of country-fried chicken crispers, cinnamon apples, and chocolate milk (1,020 calories) and another comprised of cheese pizza, homestyle fries, and lemonade (1,000 calories).

Burger King has a “Big Kids” meal with a double cheeseburger, fries, and chocolate milk (910 calories)

Sonic has a “Wacky Pack” with 830 calories worth of grilled cheese, fries, and a slushie.

KFC has a wide variety of side items, but there are few meal combinations that keep a reasonable ceiling on calories, according to the study. One example of a high-cal combo KFC kid’s meal (the chain calls them “Laptop Meals”) has popcorn chicken, baked beans, biscuit, Teddy Grahams, and fruit punch, which has 940 calories. (KFC has since dropped Baked Cheetos from its kids’ meals, and some outlets vary the number of chicken strips or sides.)

Most of the kids’meals (93 percent) at McDonald’s and Wendy’s are too high in calories, as are the possibilities at Burger King (92 percent), Dairy Queen (89 percent), Arby’s (69 percent), and Denny’s (60 percent—though its kids’ meals don’t include drinks). (Since CSPI’s study was completed, Burger King has introduced one new children’s meal with macaroni and cheese, apple “fries,” and 1 percent milk, which has a reasonable 420 calories.)

Subway’s kids’ meals came out on top. Only a third of its Fresh Fit for Kids meals, which include a mini-sub, juice box, and one of several healthful side items (apple slices, raisins, or yogurt), exceed the 430-calorie threshold. Subway is the only chain that doesn’t offer soft drinks with kids’ meals.

So how do you improve the nutrition of your kid's meal the next time you eat at a restaurant? A spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association gave the following advice:

"Don't be too alarmed even when [studies] come out and seem hopeless," said Dawn Jackson Blatner, an American Dietetic Ass>ociation spokeswoman. "With a few swaps and switches, people really can make healthier choices at these fast-food joints, especially when the decisions are made before going in.

"Many of these restaurants have the nutrition information online that you can print out and go over with your kids even before you go, so that everybody is on the same page before they pull up to the drive-through or [head] to the counter," Blatner said.

She also suggested that "instead of getting the fries, go with the apple slices. Many [restaurants] offer carrot sticks or apple slices or no-sugar-added applesauce or oranges, which make a big difference over deep-fried fries."

And pay attention to how food is cooked. "Instead of the deep-fried nuggets, go for something like the grilled chicken, and you will save fat grams and calories," Blatner said. You'll also save calories by switching the soda, she added: "You can't go wrong with unsweetened iced tea, water or a skim milk."

As for the restaurants that refuse to provide nutritional info, maybe you should just eat elsewhere.

Click here for some specific replacement suggestions from the Chicago Tribune.

You can download a copy of the full CSPI report here.
(Photo: Getty)

Makers Kraft deny any trickery and claim they are merely "harmonising triangle weights across the range".

Cadbury spokesman Tony Bilsborough said: "The sizes of the bars goes up and down all the time to suit the market. Dairy Milk comes in all different shapes and sizes and there are a range of cost factors involved."

[Pringles] Spokesman Garry Stephenson said: "We launched a new Pringle with a better crunch texture, better flavour and a significant reduction in total fat and saturates."

Alex Beckett, from The Grocer magazine, says food firms are facing financially tough times and sympathised with their plight.

He said: "This isn't about ripping consumers off - the cost of making these products has rocketed because of more expensive food ingredients and energy costs. It's such a competitive marketplace with each manufacturer bitterly fighting with the next one.

"Downsizing portions and maintaining the original price isn't sneaky. It is a way of cushioning the blow to the consumer. Bumping prices up would hit people much harder.

"And besides, smaller portion sizes are healthier for consumers, especially at a time when obesity is so widespread. It won't do us any harm to be eating a little bit less."

Bollocks.

Our favourite snacks are being quietly downsized... so why's the price the same? [Daily Mirror] (Thanks to Deborah!)

Graphic courtesy of CalorieLab:

Check out CalorieLab's full list of the fattest and the fittest states to see how your state stacks up.

Fattest States 2008 [CalorieLab] (Thanks to Mark!)

According to The Age in Australia,

The report, entitled Australia's Future Fat Bomb, was released ahead of the federal government's obesity inquiry.

It presents the results of height and weight checks carried out on 14,000 adult Australians nationwide in 2005, giving the most thorough picture of obesity since the AusDiab study in 1999.

The report reveals that nine million adults have a BMI over 25, making them overweight or obese, an increase from seven million.

Four million are obese, up from three million.

Middle-aged Australians are leading the way, with seven in 10 men and six in 10 women aged 45 to 64 now registering a BMI of 25 or more.

An analysis of the data shows that there will be an extra 700,000 heart-related hospital admissions in the next 20 years due to obesity alone.

Almost 125,000 people will die as a result, many prematurely.

Enjoy your heavyweight title while it lasts Australia, we'll see you next year.

Australia wins world heavyweight title [The Age]
Australia beats US to title of most obese nation, report finds [The Times]
(Photo: earth2kim)

At least one Starbucks barista cares, however, and he/she has written a serious manifesto against the new "skinny" label and is flatly refusing to use it in his/her store. He/She has many reasons, most of which are complaints that the label is confusing and meaningless (what if a customer wants 2% and no whip cream? What then, Starbucks?) and will make the barista's job harder. On top of that, He/She is offended by the idea of yelling "skinny" all day long.

Here's part 5:

5) Aside from customers who do not fit societies standards of "skinny," there are partners that are employed by Starbucks who are "overweight," and it is ridiculous to think otherwise. Imagine going to work for several hours at a time, and hearing the term "skinny" being called out countless times. It will undoubtedly have a negative affect on a person's self-esteem that may already be low from living in a society that is generally not accepting of people who do not fit the mold of a "beautiful" person. It creates an environment that people will not want to be in. It will exacerbate self-image issues that partners of ANY size may have. Why would ANYONE want to go into a store where they will hear potentially hurtful terms called out repeatedly with no regard as to how they may affect people?

A barista tells Starbucks corporate that she refuses to use the "Skinny" lingo [Starbucks Gossip]
(Photo:BILLBINNS)

Not anymore. Nowadays the boats frequently bottom out, overloaded with extra flesh, says CalorieLab:

The Small World ride now must accommodate adults who frequently weigh north of 200 pounds, which it often cannot do. Increasingly, overweighted boats get to certain points in the ride and bottom out, becoming stuck in the flume.

The ride monitors attempt to leave empty seats on many boats to compensate for the hefty, but this routinely antagonizes the hundreds of paying customers waiting in line. When a boat does bottom out, a long line of other boats backs up behind it, their passengers slowly going mad from listening to the ride's theme song.

The ride monitors must then track down the stuck boat and attempt tactfully to help a rider or two to exit at one of the emergency platforms, which the riders in question do not always deal with graciously.

Small World ride revamped for bigger passengers [CalorieLab]
(Photo:cokeisit7)

Actually, according to the article, "Higher gasoline prices can reduce obesity by leading people to walk or cycle instead of drive and eat leaner at home instead of rich food at restaurants." The study's author, health economist Charles Courtemanche, said he got the idea for the study one day while pumping gas—he was thinking that if it got much more expensive, he'd have to take public transportation, which would increase his daily exercise (via walking) by 30 minutes per day.

Gas hit a record high of $3.22 per gallon this past May.

"Higher gas prices seen trimming down Americans" [Reuters]
(Original photo: Joe Shlabotnik)

According to Adweek, most of the big companies that were subpoenaed were expecting it, and "had already taken steps they said would foster more responsible marketing to kids." This includes Kellog's announcement in June that it would stop marketing unhealthy foods to kids 12 and under, and last month's joint announcement from 11 companies that they will stop showing ads for junk food on children's shows (although this "commitment" turned out to be pure PR spin upon closer examination).

FTC Issues Subpoenas to Food Marketers [Adweek]

(Photo: Getty)

Tell us what you think in the comments. What has changed since 1985?

Obesity in the US [CNN via Digg]

It'll feature Shrek collectible glasses, Shrek Happy Meal toys and, uh, milk and apples. Other, less "healthy" options will also feature the big green guy, so... call us cynical. Cartoon character fast food marketing is cartoon character fast food marketing.

Incidentally, McDonald's idea of healthy food (according to its press release) includes "Chocolate Milk Jugs" and "Apple Dippers" with "optional low fat caramel dipping sauce." The chocolate milk has 170 calories and 25 grams of sugar. Regular milk has 100 calories. The apples have 35 calories, the dipping sauce? 70 calories and 9 grams of sugar. Healthier than the 250 calories in a package of small fries, yes. Healthy? Maybe stick to regular milk and plain apples. —MEGHANN MARCO

McDonald's Unveils Global 'Shrek' Movie Promotion [AdAge]
McDonald's Brings the Joy of Shrek to Customers Around the World [McDonalds]

"In a world where appetizers, entr es, and desserts at a chain restaurant can top 2,000 calories apiece, I'm pleased that T.G.I. Friday's is listening to their customers and recognizing that it can play a role in improving the public's health," said CSPI executive director Michael F. Jacobson. "Since Americans now get about one-third of their calories from restaurants, the increased availability of healthier, portion-controlled options is a real benefit to calorie-conscious diners."

TGIF claims that consumers are demanding smaller portions:

"This is a category issue stemming from consumer demand. The category needs to listen," said Richard Snead, president and chief executive officer of Carlson Restaurants Worldwide, parent of T.G.I. Friday's restaurants. "We are listening."

T.G.I. Friday's "Right Portion, Right Price" is Right Direction, Says CSPI (Press Release) [CPSI]
T.G.I. Friday's Restaurants Take Leadership Role with Portion Control(Press Release) [PRNewsire]
(Photo: Eric Martinnen)

Let's see, "someone" paid for the study, funded by Nestle, to appear in Obesity (undoubtedly to legitimize their claims by having publication in a scientific journal). Awesome.

Looks like we have no clue what we're talking about. Readers are chiming in to say paying for pages is pretty standard practice.

Castlecraver says:

Page charges are more the rule than the exception nowadays. You'll find the same disclaimer under articles in most renowned medical and research journals. Although I disagree with the claims in the article, the disclaimer in no way indicates someone paid for it to be published in the way you're implying....By submitting an article to a journal, you often have to agree to the charges pending acceptance of your manuscript.

Back a truckload of that into our mouth. If drinking a can of it as good as walking up a flight of stairs, as Coke's director of nutrition and health policy contended, 18-wheels of it should be as good as running the Boston Marathon.

Snapple, owned by Nestle Cadbury Schweppes, is also rolling out a new green tea line touting their EGCG benefits. Interesting how this ad for it also focuses climbing up a flight of stairs. These guys are really hooked on the climbing stairs equals calories burning connection. — BEN POPKEN

Related: 18 USC Section 1734
Previously: Enviga posts.

...provides evidence that consumption of a beverage containing green tea catechins, caffeine, and calcium increases 24-hour EE by 4.6%, but the contribution of the individual ingredients cannot be distinguished. Although this increase is modest, the results are discussed in relation to proposed public health goals, indicating that such modifications are sufficient to prevent weight gain. When consumed regularly as part of a healthy diet and exercise regime, such a beverage may provide benefits for weight control.

We're no scientists but this sounds like the same marketing speak that makes eating only Special K an effective diet strategy.

The best way to lose weight is to eat less, and exercise more, but that philosophy is much harder to package and sell than a consumable substance.

Full scans inside...

— BEN POPKEN

Download the study. [PDF]

Previously:
Enviga's Own Study Undermines Calorie Burning Claims
Coke & Nestle Sued Over Enviga's Bogus Calorie Burning Claims
Shocker: Enviga Doesn't Actually Burn Calories

An obesity specialist in Washington, Dr. Arthur Frank, said Alli had a safe track record and could help patients lose 5 to 10 percent of their weight. On the negative side, Alli can cause annoying side effects including diarrhea and oily stools.

Alli's marketing plan calls for a realistic approach that will emphasize the need to diet and exercise while taking the medication. In studies, about half of patients taking Alli in combination with a diet and exercise plan lost 5 percent or more of their body weight in six months.

Weight-Loss Drug To Be Sold Over The Counter [NYT]

According to the Washington Post:

A component of red wine recently shown to help lab mice live longer also protects animals from obesity and diabetes and boosts their physical endurance, researchers reported yesterday.

Excellent. As if we needed another excuse to Wine.Woot. —MEGHANN MARCO

A Second Pour of Good News About Substance in Red Wine [Washington Post]

From the study:

•In 1999 10.5% of children/teens had too much belly fat

•In 2004 17.4% of boys had too much belly fat

•In 2004 17.8% of girls had too much belly fat

We just love typing the words "belly fat." Anyway, your children are fat. And it's not just your children. Apparently, fat belly kids is a somewhat international phenomenon.

Hey, at least if everyone's kid is the fat kid, teasing will be evenly distributed. We suggest limiting the amount of fast food your child eats to none, but hey, like that's going to happen, right?

Belly Fat Of US Children Grew By Over 65% Since 1999 [MedicalNewsToday.com]

A soft drink that actually burns calories is like a burrito that makes your flatulence smell like bakery fresh cinnamon rolls: the holy grail of science. Every reasonable man is skeptical that it can be done; nevertheless, we fat-asses keep hoping.

Still, there's a good reason to believe that Coke's new Enviga drink, advertised as "The Calorie Burner," is a total scam, and Mouseprint has finely combed the small print to showcase the absurdity.

For one thing, the study that 'proved' that Enviga burned calories was only 32 people of normal weight. No one actually burned any fat, even when they were on placebos, but heck... "energy expenditure" was higher for Enviga drinkers. Whatever the hell that means.

Coke, of course, officially denies their drink burns calories, wandering around the wording of their fine print with a weasel-like slither. Heck, we're only marketing it as 'The Calorie Burner.' It's not like we're saying it burns calories or something!

Enviga from Coke: Burns More Calories Than it Contains* [Mouseprint]

"Researchers handed 470 women pictures of models of various sizes. Two-thirds gave a positive reaction towards the skinnier ones. Only one in three reacted positively when faced with a larger model. Those who preferred the skinnier models said they were "more elegant, interesting, likeable and pleasant". The survey comes after organisers banned "super-skinny" models from Madrid Fashion Week.

Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell backed the decision, and urged London Fashion Week bosses to do the same. But Professor Brett Martin, of Bath University, where the study was carried out, said its findings proved women would not respond better to models of "average" build. He said adverts featuring thin models were more likely to convince women to buy products."

What The Sun seems to be missing here is that emaciated "Fashion Week" models are not the same sort of "thin" as models you see in advertising. Still, if 470 British women are in partial agreement about something, it must be true.
[Thanks, JP!]

British slag girls love it. Meet Sally Cranham:

Like many women in Britain, I am a size 16 and sometimes my holiday photos are not as flattering as I would like. But the slimming button certainly trimmed a bit off where it counts. If it had airbrushed me down to a size eight then no one would have believed it, but it did just enough to hide some of the evidence of a few too many good nights out.

Present in the HP Photosmart R727, the slimcam setting squeezes the picture in the middle, so the main object in focus is automatically girdled. It is, perhaps unsurprisingly, being marketed to vain, rather appalling women.

Camera which comes with a slim-fast setting [Daily Mail]

Okay, everyone, hands up. Who's already eating a fourth meal? Fatties, shut up, you'll skew the results.

Fast food companies need to stop going on the defensive and offering forth as justification such weasely, semantic retorts for encouraging obesity in their customers. Instead, they should look detractors straight in the eye, maybe get a flag to wave patriotically behind them and say: "This is a free country. Health care is not socialized. People in this country are living longer, healthier lives than at any other time in the history of the earth. People can eat whatever the fuck they want, when they want and in any absurd volume they want, and there's nothing you anti-capitalist hippy pansies can do about it." Because at least that's all true, as opposed to the mythical 'fourth meal'.

"The 'Fourthmeal' Campaign Is Not Encouraging People to Eat a Literal Fourth Meal" [Media Orchard]

But it looks like eating too much chocolate might make my cousin depressed in more ways than one. Obviously, there's a bit of a contradiction in eating to medicate yourself against the depression of being morbidly obese, but it turns out that chocolate is actually a depressive to boot. A team of psychiatrists just discovered that any uplifting effects of chocolate are pretty much limited to the anticipation and the taste, but the carbohydrates in chocolate actually prolong depression.

So if you like to eat chocolate when you're depressed, better switch to booze like me. Stat!

Chocolate is Cold Comfort [Mind Hacks]

A reader is mad that many restaurants won't give you the dietary information about the menu. So she wrote a letter to Bertuccis, an Italian place, and sent it to us as well.

Dear Bertuccis,

Thank you for your time.
Megan G.

Plastic child safety seats exploding about their portly bellies like shrapnel bombs, the nation's fattest children are forced to commute to preschool in seats that do not adequately protect their squidgy cellulite from trauma in case of a car crash. Only two child safety seats on the market today accomodate today's morbidly obese toddler and both cost upwards of $250.

"While we await reductions in the childhood obesity epidemic, it is essential to develop child safety seats that can protect children of all shapes and sizes," said Lara Trifiletti, a safety seat researcher alarmed by the results of the study.

We're not sure why she's so concerned. Surely in a car crash, a fat child would be safer than the other passengers, as he imperviously bounced around the inside of the vehicle like a piece of Flubber.

Kids Getting Too Fat For Safety Seats, Study Finds

Really, although our quasi-journalistic duty is to cluck our tongues disparagingly at the fast food companies making India the first country in the world with both massive famine problems and massive obesity problems — it's just so hard when the food sounds so good. So read the article and fill in the tongue clucking noises yourself. It's actually highly entertaining. Here's the opening quote:

When K.K. Bhagat spotted his one-time classmate, he was not sure it was her. In the past 20 years, she had gained 70 pounds. He had put on 75.

"Oh, my God, she used to be this beautiful girl. She used to be perfect. I wondered if she was the same girl," Bhagat said as the woman frowned.

Smooooooooooooth, Bhagat.

Of course the real challenge is discovering what other upward trends we could also plot on the same points. Any takers?

Americans Grow To Fit Their Environment [Alchemic Spot]

Let's face it - within five pages, Kurtzman and Wood perfectly envisioned fat person utopia. And now, some consumers are finally puttering towards the fermement of their vision at 4 miles per hour:

For a growing swath of people in numbers, age and girth scooting is the new walking. Once solely the domain of the barely mobile, scooters are becoming more lifestyle accessory than medical necessity as obesity rates skyrocket and life-expectancy rates creep up. "Our market size will double in the next 15 years," says Dan Meuser, president of Pride Mobility, the leading scooter manufacturer. (The company sold about 150,000 scooters last year, at prices from $800 to several thousand.) With the number of obese adults over the age of 60 in the United States expected to reach nearly 21 million in 2010, a 43 percent jump from 2000, the appeal of the wheel is obvious. Add a generation of aging boomers used to doing what they want, when they want, and you just might have the next suburban status symbol.

Money quote!

"There's not a grocery store anywhere in Texas now that doesn't have one," hyperbolizes Doug Harrison, president of the Scooter Store, the nation's largest scooter retailer.