Eating Disorders Blog

A new study by researchers at Yale University found that the least healthy breakfast cereals are also the ones that are most aggressively marketed directly to children as young as age 2.

Researchers found that cereals marketed directly to children have, on average, 85 percent more sugar, 65 percent less fiber, and 60 percent more sodium than cereals marketed to adults. Only 8 percent of cereals marketed directly to children had low enough sugar content to qualify for inclusion in the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program.

The study, which evaluated 115 cereal brands and 277 individual cereal varieties, found extremely high sugar content in such well-known cereals as Cocoa Puffs (44 percent sugar), Cap'n Crunch (44 percent sugar), Fruit Loops (41 percent sugar), Lucky Charms (41 percent sugar) and Cinnamon Toast Crunch (32 percent sugar). In addition, researchers found that 42 percent of children's cereals contain artificial food dyes, compared with 26 percent of family cereals and only 5 percent of cereals that specifically target adults.

(Source: www.cbc.ca)

Labels: childhood-obesity, food industry

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According to an article appearing this week in the San Francisco Chronicle, individuals working in the food industry often have eating issues. In recent weeks, at least three preeminent food figures, including Frank Bruni, restaurant critic for The New York Times, have published books about their personal struggles with eating disorders.

This pattern doesn't surprise therapists. Dr. David Kessler, author of a new book titled The End of Overeating, comments: "Food becomes a preoccupation. ... We're all wired to focus on the most salient stimuli. For some of us it can be sex, alcohol or gambling."

Dr. Debra Safer, a psychiatrist at Stanford Medical Center, comments: My belief is that you would have to have a proclivity toward overeating in the first place. ...Then the field might act as a magnet. ... One of the ways to deal with the preoccupation of food, but not allow yourself to eat, is to go into the food industry."
Dr. Safer bases her theories on an experiment performed during World War II in Minnesota. In the Minnesota Starvation Experiment, conducted by renowned scientist Ancel Keys at the University of Minnesota, 36 conscientious objectors volunteered to go hungry so scientists could gain insight into civilians who had been starved during the war.

Study participants became obsessed with watching others eat, immersed themselves in food literature and even took to collecting kitchen utensils. Currently, eating disorders experts believe that these reactions were physiological and the same as behavior exhibited by many anorexics.

(Source: www.sfgate.com)

Labels: eating disorder, food industry, food

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