17 April 2006 - Make this winter the Winter of Soup

In my January `Snacks' I announced the Summer of Salad, which promoted the appetite suppressing benefits of consuming a big salad for lunch. Salad is a high-bulk, low-energy food that helps you cut calories at summer-time lunches. Now it's winter in Australia and time to `soup it up'.

A broth or low-fat soup at lunch, or as a first course at dinner, helps to fill your stomach without expanding your waistline and there's solid research to back this up. Professor Barbara Rolls from Penn State University, fed alternate preloads of chicken rice casserole and chicken rice soup to 24 lean women as a first course at lunch. She then measured how many calories they consumed overall for that meal. When the subjects consumed soup they ate 95 Cal (400 kJ) less for lunch than when they consumed the casserole.

In another study, Rolls instructed 200 overweight and obese subjects to follow an energy-restricted diet for a year. The group that was asked to consume two servings of low energy density soup daily lost 50% more weight than the group consuming the same amount of energy as high energy density snack foods.

Get your thermos ready. It's the Winter of Soup!

To learn more science behind your food choices and practical meal timing strategies, attend my `Meal Timing - Science to Success Workshops' in Sydney, Adelaide and Brisbane from June 2006.

Source: 1 The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition and 2 Obesity Research.

17 April 2006 - Airport adds incidental exercise

On the way home from my New Zealand Weight Loss Coaching Workshop, I noticed something interesting at Auckland Airport - there was an absence of travelators (those long human conveyor belts) in a section of the new terminal. With the growing presence of machines and devices that reduce our daily movement, it's nice to see that people will need to walk up to five minutes to get to their departure gate.

It may not seem like much, but adding five minutes walking to your daily routine can help counteract the decline in physical activity levels caused by modern life. Survey data from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare shows that on average, between the years 1997 and 1999, we reduced our weekly walking time by 30 minutes. And that's only in a two year period! How can you move yourself more today?

17 April 2006 - Lose weight or wear the bikini on TV

Would the threat of having photos of you posing in a bikini plastered on national television and on the internet motivate you to lose 15 pounds (7 kg) in two months? This is exactly what five would-be dieters volunteered for in an experiment for the US ABC Primetime program last month.

It sounds harsh, but the immediate consequences of not taking action caused the volunteers to take immediate action to trim down. One participant said, “You can be damn sure that no one will see me in a bathing suit on national television - no way!”

The theory behind this small but very public study was to employ the credible-threat theory to motivate behaviour change. The theory here is that immediate consequences can seem far more threatening than longer-term consequences of remaining overweight, such as developing heart disease or diabetes.

All but one volunteer lost the required weight without any diet or exercise advice. Primetime proved its point and returned the photos to participants, including the very nervous volunteer who fell short of the 15 pound target.

The take-home message here for successful weight management is to establish a credible threat for yourself. Keep it top-of-mind and take immediate action to watch what you eat and become more active. If you can convince yourself that you will definitely experience diabetes, muscle pain or find it hard to keep up with the kids as you get older, then you'll be more likely to act now.

Remember that old saying…“If you don't make time for health now, you'll need to make time for ill health later.”

Source: ABC News Primetime (US)

17 April 2006 - Want to eat less? Turn off the TV

For the first time, researchers have been able to put a figure on the calorie consumption impact of watching television. A team at Harvard University discovered that each hour of TV viewing added an additional 167 Cal (700 kJ) to the daily energy intake of children.

In the 20-month study of over 500 children, average age 12 years, researchers correlated television viewing with food intake. They found that an increased calorie intake was associated with the consumption of calorie-dense, low-nutrient foods advertised on TV.

They suggested that watching TV while eating may distract viewers to an extent that fullness signals from the stomach go unnoticed. The same hunger management problem may present for adults who overeat in front of the TV.

The take home message here is to switch off the television and switch on to your internal fullness signals to eat less calories.

Source: 1 Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. 2006;160:436-442

17 April 2006 - Who will be the first to ban food ads during kid's TV - the UK or Australia?

With the above study in mind, here's an update on the debate over food advertising to children.

It's been a decade since I was working at the Australian Consumers' Association (ACA) calling for a ban on food advertising during children's television. In 1996, Consumers' International released its Spoonful of Sugar Report revealing that Australia topped the 13-country study for volume of food advertisements during children's television.

Australia averaged 12 ads per hour with a total of 231 ads for the 20 hours studied. At the time, health ministers said we needed more proof that food advertising affected kid's food choices and could be implicated in contributing to obesity.

Since then childhood obesity rates have escalated but our Federal Health Minister, Tony Abbot, is still resisting tough action on advertising food to children. Following this month's health minister's meeting, the Sydney Morning Herald (8 April) reported Mr Abbott's statement, “we agree to disagree on TV advertising because there is not enough evidence and more research is needed to determine its effectiveness.”

The ACA is still convinced there's enough evidence. In a media release on 11 November 2005, Senior Food Policy Officer Clare Hughes said, “Industry groups opposing an ad ban claim that there is no evidence that food ads contribute to obesity or that a ban would help to reduce obesity. Yet countries that already have ad bans in place do have lower levels of obesity, and surely manufacturers wouldn't spend so much money on advertising if it wasn't going to influence what we buy.”

The food advertising-obesity link is inherently obvious, but incredibly difficult to prove. State health ministers may have recognized this when they decided to take action without Federal Government support by developing `options for action' for consideration at the next health ministers meeting in July.

Options for a ban are currently being considered in the UK by the Office of Communications. They include:

• Timing restrictions on specific food and drink products
• Timing restrictions on all food and drink advertising
• Volume based restrictions on all food and drink products

The study authors concluded, “Foods most advertised during children's viewing hours are not those foods that contribute to a healthy diet for children. Confectionery and fast food restaurant advertising appears to target children. Australian children need protection from the targeted promotion of unhealthy foods on television, but currently little exists.”

I'll update you on this hot issue after the July health ministers meeting. In the meantime, here are some links to Australian action groups pushing for bans on food advertising to children:

Coalition for Food Advertising to Children
CFAC aims to enhance the health of Australian children by calling for a ban on all television food advertising during programs where children (aged 0-12 years) make up a substantial proportion of the viewing audience. This will not preclude the promotion of healthy eating messages via Community Service Announcements.

Parents Jury
The Parents Jury is a web-based network of parents who wish to improve the food and physical activity environments for children in Australia.

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