Sunday House Call, #404, July 8, 2012: Fizzy Sugar Water for the Masses

Last month, Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced his intention to introduce a restriction on soda pop (sugary drinks) cup sizes to no greater than 16 ounces that would affect locales such as city restaurants, stadiums, food carts and movie theatres.

This proposal has generated commentary ranged from total support to outright rejection by some groups. The debate has been framed by some as a health issue and that there must be a starting point to reverse the tide of calorie glut; the opposite of a death by a thousand cuts to better health by a thousand changes.

Others frame it as an assault on the freedom to choose what we want to eat and the government has no place restricting individual food choices.

But we do have a serious problem in society. Our environment is obesogenic, that is, it is designed to promote overconsumption of food: The location of fast food restaurants to the design of food aisles in grocery stores to the fact that in 2009 a study conducted by Yale University’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity found that we underestimate the extent of our exposure to junk food advertising and overestimate the degree to which health food is advertised.

The study reported in Timothy Caufield’s  new book,  The Cure for Everything: Untangling The Twisted Messages About Health, Fitness And Happiness that “carbonated beverages, fast food restaurants and breakfast cereals spent 18,182 times as much marketing to youth ($1.2 billion) compared to dairy, fruits and vegetables ($66,000 in total). Survey participants thought the average kid saw one to 3 junk food television advertisements a day. The actual number? Almost 15. That equals approximately 5500 yearly television messages about the yummy qualities of salt, sugar, and fat.

Joining us today is

Dan Gardner, Ottawa Citizen journalist and author of Risk: The Science and Politics of Fear and Future Babble Why Expert Predictions Fail – and Why We Believe Them Anyway

Dr. Yoni Freedhoff, Medical Director of the Bariatric Medical Institute in Ottawa and Assistant Professor in the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Ottawa

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Sunday House Call, #386, February 26, 2012 Special guest: Dr Yoni Freedhoff, Assistant Professor of Family Medicine, University of Ottawa, and Medical Director of the Bariatric Medical Institute

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Original broadcast date: February 22, 2009 You have heard the advertisements ad nauseum. Promises of shedding weight made easy and safely. There are testimonials about the efficacy of the various weight-loss approaches and how it can change your life. It is a multibillion-dollar industry that according to two physicians authoring this week’s Canadian Medical Association [...]

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Original broadcast date: January 18, 2009 The number of bariatric surgeries (also known as gastric bypass) performed each year is increasing. There are numerous approaches with the end goal being substantial weight loss for the patient. Some of the surgical approaches are more invasive than others and each has its own set of risks and [...]

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The casual observer devoid of emotional attachment can make the distinction between a child that is of normal weight versus one that is not. However, parents often fail to make such a clear-cut distinction as borne out from recent studies of weight perception. Although more education about the problem is increasing awareness of childhood obesity, [...]

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Original broadcast date: April 6, 2008 A study published in the January 2008 edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association demonstrated that obese type 2 diabetics who underwentL compared to those who used diet and exercise. Dr. Amish Parikh, MD, FRCPC, endocrinologist with the Diabetes Management Centre, Staff Endocrinologist at the Trillium Health [...]

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In a keynote speech delivering the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada Lecture at the Canadian Cardiovascular Congress 2007, obesity expert Dr. Jean-Pierre Després stated that we need to change how we look at obesity, stop obsessing on weight and BMI and, above all, redefine the proper clinical use of weight loss drugs. “Some obese [...]

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Food science is a major topic for discussion on Sunday House Call. To me, there was one seminal interview that beautifully encapsulated the exciting science and discovery of the biochemistry of foods and the role they play in fighting cancer.

The interview in June 2006 featured Dr. Richard Beliveau, author of Foods That Fight Cancer: Preventing Cancer through Diet. To date, 200,000 copies of the book have sold in Canada, an incredible number given that 5,000 is considered a best-seller.

As we discussed in our last interview of June 25, 2006, phytochemicals in the foods we eat can play a significant role in cancer prevention and overall health; literally a non-toxic version of chemotherapy. Our current Western diets seem to have weakened our body’s ability to fend off certain types of cancer among other diseases. In short, our society’s food choices have become divorced from reality and from our biology and physiology.

It seems the next logical step was to expand on the science and, at the same time, produce a book on how to incorporate these foods into our diet. With that in mind sprung his next book, Cooking with Foods that Fight Cancer.

• Dr. Richard Beliveau, author of Foods That Fight Cancer: Preventing Cancer Through Diet and Cooking with Foods that Fight Cancer, Biochemistry professor and Chair in the Prevention and Treatment of Cancer at the University of Quebec at Montreal and director of the Molecular Medicine Laboratory at Sainte Justine Hospital. He is also professor of Surgery at the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Montreal.
  

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Dr. Yoni Freedhoff comments about issues dealing with obesity, salt content of food, his recent appearance on CBC’s Marketplace talking about the lack of nutritional information provided by restaurants, diet, and recent studies linking obesity and cancer. He will discuss the Heart and Stroke Foundation’s Heart Check program, with which he takes issue with some [...]

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Cardiovascular disease risk research continues to forward our understanding about how we can prevent the progression of heart disease and stroke by keeping tabs on various reversible risk factors. With that goal in mind, the first-ever Canadian Clinical Practice Guidelines (CPG) on the Management and Prevention of Obesity in Adults and Children recommends that waist [...]

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Despite rapidly increasing rates of type 2 diabetes and the fact that heart disease remains the leading cause of death, the majority of Canadians are still unaware of many of the risk factors that put them at increased risk of developing these diseases. According to the Canadian results of the second annual Shape of the [...]

What is cardiometabolic risk Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Is being overweight or obese harmful to your health? Although the answer may seem obvious; the recommendations to lose weight, two new dissertations from Lund University in Sweden are challenging conventional wisdom. It contends that being fat in itself poses no significant risk. And for overweight patients who have already suffered a heart attack, losing [...]

Is being overweight or obese harmful to your health? Play Now | Play in Popup | Download