We need to remember that the UK health service was devolved in 1999, with England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland managed separately from this point forth. Hence, this Department of Health announcement was for England only.

On 15 March 2011, the Department of Health issued a press release on what they call “The responsibility deal.” The government believes that  partnering with the food and drink industry “can be the most effective way of tackling some public health objectives.” The purpose of the food and drink industry is to sell as much food and drink as possible. The government believes that we need to be consuming less food and drink to lose weight. How these aims can be compatible, therefore, baffles me.

The pledges announced in the March press release include:

- Calories on menus from September this year;
– Reducing salt in food so people eat 1g less per day by the end of 2012;
– Removal of artificial trans-fats by the end of this year;
– Achieving clear unit labelling on more than 80 per cent of alcohol by 2013;
– Increasing physical activity through the workplace; and
– Improving workplace health.

We know that putting “Smoking kills” and “Smoking will harm your unborn child” on cigarette packets makes no difference, so why would putting a calorie number on food make any difference? It won’t and we know already that it won’t – here is an article about a study done in the British Medical Journal to prove this.

The October ‘new’ news

Health secretary, Andrew Lansley, and England’s Chief Medical Officer, Professor Dame Sally Davies, launched the ‘new’ proposals, but there really was only one thing new:

1) Davies called for everyone to be more  honest about their eating and drinking habits – so, not only are we greedy and lazy, we are now liars too!

2) We have been told to “slash” five billion calories a day. If the population of England approximates to 50 million people, that’s 100 fewer calories per person per day. No knowledge whatsoever of the difference between calories has been demonstrated with this headline grabbing number.

3) Astonishingly – this was the only new bit – the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition (SACN) – advised that the recommended daily calorie intakes for both men and women should be raised. We are told to eat less, but our intake guidelines should go up? Davies tried to explain this by saying – our daily intake should be raised but we are still eating more than this, so we still need to cut back. This is confusing at best and ludicrous at worst. I do not think that we should be raising calorie recommendations in the midst of an obesity epidemic. Not because the obesity epidemic is about calories (because it isn’t), but because it sends the wrong message. If health were going to suffer by not raising these calorie limits then raise them – but at a completely different time, so as not to confuse the public. However, I am far from convinced that anyone’s health would suffer if we did not raise calorie limits – health is about what we eat and the vital nutrients that we consume – not the amount of petrol we put in our tank. Putting petrol in a diesel car is the worst thing we can do to a vehicle. Putting sugar, transfats and empty calories in a human body is equally harmful.

The calorie intakes, just for the record, have been increased from 2,550 to 2,605 for men and a whopping 1,940 to 2,079 for women.

The chair of the SACN working group, Alan Jackson, has declared interests in Nutricia (a specialised unit of Danone food company) and Baxter Healthcare (see page 32). The full list of members of the energy requirements sub committee is on p19 of that link. Ian Macdonald has declared interests with Mars Inc, Mars Europe, Unilever, Nestle and Coca-Cola – just what we want on a Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition! Andrew Prentice, also on the group, ‘only’ has connections to Tanita Scales and Danone. His wife, however, (see p34) has the most extraordinary list of declared interests: Beveridge Institute for Health and Wellness, Diabetes UK, Institute of Brewers & Distillers, Milk Development Council, Optimal Performance Ltd, The Rank Prize Funds, Tanita UK Ltd, World Cancer Research Ltd, Weight Watchers UK Ltd, B Kassardjian Fund – Zurich, Dee Caffari Ltd, Mars, BBC, Rosemary Conley Diet & Fitness Club, National Trust, Coca Cola, Outsights, Nestle, Emap, Kelloggs, Almond Board California, Nunwood Consulting, Pepsico, GlaxoSmithKline, British Institute of Sport, The Pelican Buying Co, National Institute of Nutrition and J Sainsbury. Go girl!

The bottom line

The bottom line is that the English government thinks that people just need to eat less and do more and they will lose weight. As I detail at length in my book The Obesity Epidemic this has been Plan A for more than three decades and we have continued to get more and more obese. We have known since Benedict’s 1917 study that eating less leads to short term weight loss and then regain to beyond the starting weight. This was confirmed in the definitive eat less experiment – the Minnesota Starvation Experiment - initial weight loss, followed by regain plus 10%. At least 9 out of 10, if not 19 out of 20, of the personal consultations that I do start with the explanation “I didn’t really have a weight problem until I went on my first diet. I lost weight, regained and more. I went on another diet, lost weight, regained and more.” When they say ‘diet’, my clients mean a calorie deficit diet – the eat less/do more that the government thinks will get us out of this mess.

Here’s an interesting statistic for you:

The MAFF (Ministry of Agriculture Fisheries & Food) National Food Survey tells us that we were eating 2,290 calories per person per day in 1975 and, by 1999, this had fallen to 1,690 calories per person per day. If we apply the 3,500 calorie formula (notwithstanding that this formula is also wrong, but it’s the one that government and all calorie advisors rely upon), to the change in annual average calorie intake, all other things being equal, we should have lost an average of 62.6 pounds per person during this period. Instead obesity rose nearly ten fold during this time.[i]

The DEFRA (Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs) report notes the continual decline in calorie intake. The Family Food Survey for 2001-02 comments on the short term: “Energy content of the household food supply has decreased considerably over the last 5 years.” The Family Food Survey for 2002-03 notes the same trend over the longer term: “Average energy intake per person in the UK is unchanged in 2002-03 compared with the previous year, although it has been declining since 1964.”[ii]

The Food Standards Agency (FSA) web site also acknowledges the above conundrum, “Since the 60s we’ve been consuming fewer calories from household food (this doesn’t include eating out). However, there are an increasing number of people who are overweight or obese. The reasons for this are not clear.”[iii]

We need to eat better, not less. We need to return to eating real food, not the empty calories dominating the eatbadly plate. We need to eat naturally produced meat, fish, eggs, dairy products, vegetables and salads to ensure that our bodies can use the calories that we eat for our basal metabolic needs. We absolutely cannot afford to eat the empty sugar and flour calories, which we are eating.

World Health Organisation data tells us that the average UK citizen consumes 38 kilograms of sugar per year.[iv] Statistics from the Flour Advisory Bureau note that UK per capita flour consumption reached 74 kilograms in 2008/9.[v] This represents a few calories short of 1,150 per person per day from those two ingredients – when did that become a healthy balanced diet?

What the government should have done

I set out in Chapter 16 of The Obesity Epidemic what should be done to reverse the obesity epidemic. Here are the headlines:

1) Tear down the eatbadly plate from every surgery, hospital and school in the country and never allow it to be shown again. Tell people to eat real food from now on and nothing but real food. If nature provides it – eat it; if food manufacturers provide it – don’t. That’s the only healthy eating food message that the government needs to have  to start to reverse the obesity epidemic.

2) Ban trans fats. In the unlikely event that we were bold enough to ban sugar, trans fats and sweeteners, this one step would be sufficient to reverse the obesity epidemic (whether such bans are necessary is a matter for debate). Trans fats should be singled out for an immediate ban (as has happened in Denmark and Switzerland). The National Heart Forum summed up their position on trans fats in the opening to their paper calling for a ban on these substances: “Industrially produced Trans fats (IPTFAs) are harmful to health, they have no nutritional benefits and there is no known safe level of consumption.”[vi]

3) Fiscal policy (taxation). I cannot conceive of any government having the courage to ban sugar, trans fats and sweeteners. Hence, if we lack the leadership qualities to ban nutritionally void substances, the minimum that we need is a deterring and punitive tax on each of them. We need to be very specific about the targets. In May 2009 Dr. Tim Lobstein called for a ‘fat tax’,[vii] while talking about junk food and pizza. The reiteration of the notion that ‘fat is bad’ is incessant. We must stop this forthwith. Here is a blog on the October 2011 Denmark fat tax and how misguided this is. The target of fiscal measures needs to be processed foods and no real food should ever be demonised again. Again, although this step may not be necessary, it would be sufficient and we are almost expecting the impossible from our populations to tell them to avoid processed food while the food manufacturers are simultaneously promoting BOGOF’s (Buy One, Get One Free) on biscuits, cakes, confectionery and all the things that we need help to resist. David Kessler’s book, The end of overeating, gives full details of what humans are up against in terms of food industry tactics.[viii]

Taxation would merely be a return to previous public policy, albeit from centuries ago. Adam’s Smith’s The Wealth of Nations (1776) noted “Sugar, rum, and tobacco are commodities which are nowhere necessaries of life, which are become objects of almost universal consumption, and which are therefore extremely proper subjects of taxation.” Just under one hundred years later, the sugar tax was repealed. If sugar is not banned, the tax needs to be reinstated.

The objective of such taxation should primarily be to reduce consumption, but any revenue generated can have an added benefit of subsidising real food and/or the health services that are impacted by such consumption. Using sugar as an example, I would put a minimum 100% (double the price of the product) tax on any product containing non naturally occurring sugar (any added ‘ose’).[1] This would immediately discourage food manufacturers from adding sugar, completely unnecessarily, to ham, cottage cheese, tins of chick peas, kidney beans and other healthy products. I would put at least a 200% tax on any product where all sugars added together are the majority of the composition of the product. For any product (e.g. children’s sweets) where the entire product is essentially sugars (with a bit of crushed animal innards, gelatine, for bonding), we should multiply the current price by four or five fold. The proceeds from taxes on sugar, trans fats and sweeteners should subsidise real food for people who are currently least able to afford it. We cannot hope to solve an obesity epidemic when we can buy ten doughnuts or one cucumber for the same price.

Other fiscal measures should be considered. Corporation tax can be raised on companies that make processed food and lowered, or eliminated, on companies that provide completely unadulterated natural food. The local butcher must become the provider of choice for meat, not McDonald’s. Today, I can buy one pound (454 grams) of grass fed steak for the same price as a regular cheeseburger and medium fries and mayo chicken and a McFlurry original and a medium drink and a double cheeseburger.[ix] This is not conducive to healthy eating – particularly in the sections of our population who can least afford, and most need, real food. Kessler details some of the most contemptuous examples of fast food: “One of the signature hamburgers at Hardee’s is called the Monster Thickburger, which famously contains 1,420 calories and 108 grams of fat.” “Yet even that pales in comparison to a slice of Claim Jumper’s Chocolate Motherlode Cake … 2,150 calories a slice”. (Note the use of the word ‘mother’ to imply approval). Such inhumanity to man should be met with an “Inhumanity Tax”. It’s not far away from manslaughter, if you are familiar with the legal definition.

If this sounds extreme, how does “90% of today’s children being overweight or obese by 2050” sound?[x] And, why would this be considered extreme? I am merely suggesting that we return to eating what we used to eat before we got too obese to function as human beings.

England has one of the worst obesity epidemics in the world. Thanks to the conflict of interest and ignorance of the English government, they now have one of the worst obesity strategies in the world. Relying on the profit motivated organisations that want us to eat ‘fake’ food instead of real food, to lead a return to the real food that would signal their demise, is naive at best and fatal at worst.

[1] As an example, fructose in a whole apple is fine, as this is the form in which nature intended us to eat fructose. Fructose added to sweeten other products is not necessary.

[i] I calculated this mathematically year on year and analysed the average calorie intake for 1975 and then that for 1976 and used the 3,500 calorie formula to work out what the average person should have gained/lost between these two years and repeated this for each year between 1975 and 1999 to calculate the overall number of pounds that should have been lost on average. The overall number was calculated cumulatively, as some years people should have gained weight and most should have produced weight loss – all according to the calorie theory.

[ii] http://www.defra.gov.uk/evidence/statistics/foodfarm/food/familyfood/index.htm

[iii] http://www.eatwell.gov.uk/healthydiet/seasonsandcelebrations/howweusedtoeat/ changingtastes/

[iv] http://www.whocollab.od.mah.se/expl/globalsugar.html

[v] http://www.fabflour.co.uk/content/1/31/facts-about-bread-in-the-uk.html

[vi] http://www.heartforum.org.uk/Policy_Consultations_2093.aspx

[vii] http://www.medindia.net/news/British-Expert-Calls-for-Fat-Tax-on-Unhealthy-Foods-to-Save-Children-51144-1.htm

[viii] David Kessler, The end of overeating, published by Rodale, (2009).

[ix] Rump steak was £14 per kilo (£6.36 per pound) and McDonald’s had the first five items listed for 99p and the double cheeseburger listed at £1.29 (June 2010). http://www.mcdonalds.co.uk/food/saver-menu/saver-menu.mcdj?dnPos=0

[x] One of the forecasts of the Foresight Report: “Tackling Obesities: Future Choices” (October 2007).

I also did a circular to some journalists recently and used a phrase that I have often used to make a point: “we can eat in one minute what can take an hour to burn off”. I gave the example that I could spend an hour in the gym and then have a cappuccino in the cafe and, in terms of calories, I would have not used up as many as I consumed. “Really?” said one journalist. It is meant to be an estimation to make a point, but I thought I’d try it out on my own stats…

This is a good site to use for calories burned doing different things. I find it quite easy to use, it has many activities listed and it helpfully will retain the last activity you put in, so that you can build up a few, as desired. That last bit was particularly helpful for this analysis:

For me – weight 110lbs, I would do the following in an hour in a gym (trying to remember what I did when I last went to a gym about 10-15 years ago!)
– 5 mins stretching
– 10 minutes on the exercise bike
– 10 mins power walking on the treadmill
– 30 mins on the various machines/free weights etc around the gym
– 5 mins stretching
(No time allowed for chatting, drinking and trying to lip read Sky News!)

This would add up to 195 calories (heavier people would clock up more).
A cappuccino (proper milk, chocolate on top) can easily be 200 cals and hence I would not even use up the drink.

PLUS – here’s the killer point that I only worked out last year (and which was the purpose of the original “Exercise – personal experience” blog) – all calculations on calorie burn calculators take into account BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate) – what your body would burn anyway if you were lying in bed all day dying of swine flu. Hence exercise has to be viewed as the difference (the extra) between what you would have been doing anyway and what you did do.

If I wrote at the PC for an hour, I would burn 90 calories. Hence I would burn an extra 105 by going to the gym and drink almost double this afterwards and then people think they’ve earned a 300-400 calorie muffin – forget it!

Don’t worry – none of this has much to do with weight loss. Weight loss is about breaking down triglyceride (body fat), which has everything to do with glucose (and hence carbs) and not much to do with calories (unless those calories are empty processed food calories – especially processed carbs).

Eat real food, stay low enough in carb/glucose/glycogen to let you body burn it’s own fat for fuel and then give it no reason not to. That’s what weight loss is about.

Why do we say “eat less/do more”? Does it work? What do the laws of thermodynamics actually say? (because it isn’t “eat less/do more”)

Why do we say “to lose 1lb of fat, we need to create a deficit of 3,500 calories”? Is any part of this equation correct? Do the 7 leading public health authorities in the UK know why they say this? Does anyone?

What is human fat tissue? How do we lose it? i.e. how do we lose weight? (because it isn’t “eat less/do more”)

And much more.

Hope you enjoy it!
Very best wishes – Zoe

Or you can listen to the talk and download it for listening later…

Or you can listen to the talk and download it for listening later…

And you can download the presentation slides here

Let’s just have a quick look at what happened. Worst case is that you could have been over indulging for some time and gained a few pounds and, more seriously, regained the taste for processed food. This blog on Thanksgiving shows how the festive season starting early can be particularly problematic for North Americans. It doesn’t take long to reacquire the taste for processed food – sugar can be particularly addictive, as I discovered Christmas 2009.

You can gain pounds – even in 1 day. When we eat carbs, which we don’t need for energy, the body has to get the glucose from the carbs out of the blood stream. It does this by releasing insulin from the pancreas which turns the glucose into glycogen – the body’s storage form of glucose. The body can store about 100 grams of glycogen in the liver and 250-400 grams in the muscles. (The glycogen in the muscles can only be used by the muscles, but the glycogen in the liver can be used wherever energy is needed by the body). There is some debate as to how much water is stored with glycogen, but four parts water to one part glycogen is often quoted. This means we can gain 500g in glycogen weight and 2kg in water weight in a day. That’s 5-6 pounds in one day! The good news is that it can be lost as quickly as it was gained, but beware if you were planning to get into a particular outfit on Boxing Day.

Phase 1 of The Harcombe Diet is designed to attack both problems – 1) the need to lose a few pounds quickly and 2) the need to get rid of any food cravings/addictions that may have taken hold.

If you are not familiar with the diet, for full details – check out the book “Stop Counting Calories & Start Losing Weight” or register with The Harcombe Diet Club and you’ll get a free download with a 10 day plan and headlines on the three conditions that are causing your food cravings.

Phase 1 is only 5 days long – even doing it for a day or two between Christmas and New Year can make a huge difference and help you get into your favourite outfit for New Year’s Eve. You can eat unlimited real (not processed) meat, fish, eggs, vegetables (not potatoes), salads, Natural Live (Bio) yoghurt and only brown rice is limited in quantity at 50g dry weight per day.

Weight loss is often spectacular and I’m personally disappointed if people lose less than 3-5lbs in 5 days. The current record stands at 19lb in 5 days. A large part of that is water – because two of the three conditions cause severe water retention – but that’s water that your body should not have been holding on to and it can cause elevated blood pressure, aside from the puffy face, ankles and fingers that make you feel bloated. You can drop a clothes size, or two, in a few days – that’s got to be welcome!

Give it a go – especially those who have been counting calories for what seems like for ever. You need never count calories or go hungry again. Calorie counting drives people down the route of eating more of the macro nutrient that makes us fat – carbs! The secret to weight loss is eating food – real food – and managing carb intake. Make 2011 different and Stop Counting Calories & Start Losing Weight!

Great programme spot from one of our super fans – Melissa. This is worth the 47 mins to watch. I just wanted to draw your attention to yet another example of the calorie myth being completely absurdly applied…

The programme features 4 morbidly obese people:
Paul is 45 years old and he weighs 48 stone and consumes an estimated 36,902 calories a day.
Larry is 38 years old and he weighs 50 stone and consumes an estimated 14,349 calories a day.
Lisa is 39 years old and she weighs 45 stone and consumes an estimated 9,277 calories a day.
Jacqui is 40 years old and she weighs 26 stone and consumes an estimated 15,880 calories a day.

Quick couple of observations:
1)     Where on earth do they get the 2 calories at the end of Paul’s estimate?! The calories in 1 gram of fat/carb/protein are not even accurate – how do they think that they can estimate a day’s consumption to that level of accuracy.
2)    Why is Paul not massively heavier than Larry? He’s eating 2.5 times the number of calories and can’t move around (as Larry proved he could when food was put in the other room!)

Ian Campbell (former head of National Obesity Forum) is the main expert speaker on the programme.

With reference to Paul – Ian says it is physically and physiologically impossible for Paul to burn off the calories he consumes. I agree – this is a factual statement using hours in the day and maximum activity rates possible – notwithstanding the fact that Paul is bedridden. However – I would like to see what would happen if Paul’s intake were changed from predominantly processed carbs to real fat/protein. He would be unable to store fat in the absence of carbs and insulin and he would be unable to consume anywhere near that intake of real food.

With reference to Larry (I made a note of the time for this one – so see how they do this for Larry at c. 12 minutes) – the narrator (Samantha Bond) quotes the usual statement that the average man needs 2,500 calories a day. Ian Campbell estimates that Larry needs about 4-4,500 calories a day “and so that extra 10,000 calories a day would equate to 3lbs of weight gain on a daily basis.” Did you spot that use of the unproven calorie formula – applied directly as if fact – without even being quoted? Ian has divided 10,000 by 3500 to get 3lbs and has assumed that every excess of 3500 will gain 1lb (in fat alone – we are forgetting water and lean tissue for now), just as Ian assumes that every deficit of 3500 will lose 1lb. Neither surplus or deficit works with this formula – I have yet to find even one study to prove this formula and would be astonished if I ever did.

Let’s apply some common sense here – Ian is saying that Larry will be gaining weight at the rate of 3lbs a day – that’s 1095lbs EACH & EVERY year. That is 78 stone and 3lbs EACH & EVERY year. Let’s forget water and lean tissue and assume he is the first person in the world only to gain fat. So – if the programme checks in on Larry next year – he should be 128 stone.

With reference to Lisa (they do this for Lisa at c. 44 minutes) – the narrator again says that the Recommended Daily Intake for an average woman is just 2000 calories. They obviously allow 3000 calories a day, for Lisa being larger and then the narrator says “If she continues to eat this daily excess of over 6000 calories, Lisa will gain almost 2lbs every day.”

Ditto on the common sense – Lisa is supposed to gain 52 stone, 2lbs each & every year she continues to eat in this way.

With reference to Jacqui – Ian says that Jacqui is having “perhaps seven times the number of calories she needs just to keep her body healthy.” The narrator then says “To burn off what Jacqui eats in a day she’d have to walk briskly non-stop for almost two days.”

The last point is interesting because so many government officials and dietary advisors continue to think that our ‘sedentary behaviour’ is to blame for the obesity epidemic. Ian Campbell makes the point that Olympic rowers could not need this number of calories (my comment – and they would eat their intake in a hugely healthier way). Surely it is vastly more important to NOT put something in one’s mouth in the first place than it is to think we can burn off that fuel in some way. Aside from the fact that we can only ‘burn fat’ when there is no glucose or glycogen more readily available for the body. These four are eating carbs continuously every waking minute (Lisa in the middle of the night also) and therefore are continually storing fat and are never in a physiological environment in which they can burn fat.

Check also – around 40 mins into the programme – the serious issue about fat cell number and size, which has become more widely accepted in recent years. It is estimated that Lisa’s fat cells will have multiplied from a ‘normal’ number of 40 billion to 100 billion. If she loses weight, these fat cells do not disappear – she will still have 100 billion – they just shrink in size.

p.s. daftest thought of all – if Ian Campbell estimates that Larry needs 4-4,500 calories a day, let’s assume that Paul needs the same. Paul is therefore eating 32,000 calories a day more than he needs.  I bet Ian Campbell did the maths – that’s a gain of 9lbs EVERY DAY; 2 stone every 3 days; so Paul should gain 238 stone over the coming year – and then thought “no, that’s mad!” Then he would have thought – let’s stick to using the 3,500 calorie theory for Larry and Lisa – it seems daft for Paul. It’s daft for all of them Ian! (And everyone else who uses this formula on a daily basis – NHS, Dept of Health, NICE, dieticians, nutritionists …..)

p.s. Jan 2011 update – please note that I am sadly simply unable to keep up with comments on blogs/youtube/facebook and all the wonders of the web. Please feel free to leave a comment to have your say & for others to read. If you have any questions our forum is the best place to have them answered. Your question may well have been answered already so you can read the thousands of questions already there if you don’t want to join. Many thanks for your understanding. Very best wishes – Zoe

How to get every word possible to tempt a dieter to eat stuff that they should be avoiding?! And, of course, as people who eat Special K are Queens of calorie counting, the 99 calories a bag is going to appeal.  99 calories of what, however? This is the full ingredients list from the Kellogg’s web site:

Cereals (Rice, Wheat Flour, Whole Oats, Wholewheat, Rice Flour), Sugar, Vegetable Oil, Chocolate (5%)(Sugar, Cocoa Mass, Cocoa Powder), Wheat Gluten, Glucose Syrup, Defatted Wheatgerm, Dried Skimmed Milk, Partially Inverted Sugar Syrup, Salt, Oat Fibre, Barley Malt Flavouring, Raising Agents (E500, E450a), Flavourings, Emulsifier (Soy Lecithin), Antioxidant (E320), Vitamin C, Niacin, Iron, Vitamin B6, Riboflavin (B2), Thiamin (B1), Folic Acid, Vitamin B12.

Ignore the vitamins added to give this product a false impression of containing nutrients and you have sugar in the form of sugar (twice), glucose syrup, partially inverted sugar syrup and the flavourings are no doubt sweet ones. Then you have wheat flour, whole wheat, wheat gluten and defatted wheat germ. Ever wondered how we end up eating more sugar and wheat than any other ingredients out there?!

- 100g of this product is 72g of carbohydrate and 414 calories.

- 100g of pork chop is 0g of carbohydrate and 123 calories!

- 100 of apple is 14g of carbohydrate and 52 calories.

- 100g of porridge oats (dry oats, no water) is 69g carbohydrate and 379 calories.

Even if you care about calories – there are far better ways to consume calories than to eat 100g of this frightening selection of ingredients.

I had an eating disorder once, so I know what it is like to binge and starve and be horrible to oneself. I truly believe that putting this product in your mouth is being horrible to yourself. Be nice to yourself and eat real food! Nature makes the healthiest food – not Kellogg’s.

1)  I subscribe to the Children’s Food Campaign newsletter and support their campaigns.

The CFC got a great article in The Independent, which can be seen here.

2) This was an extract from the Children’s Food Campaign January newsletter: “Ever thought of avoiding Coco Pops after school?”

“A new advertising campaign from Kelloggs, suggesting to children “ever thought of Coco Pops after school?” has been eliciting outrage from parents on forums such as Netmums and Twitter. We think it’s shocking that Kelloggs, who are partners of the Government’s Change4Life health campaign, are encouraging children to eat more sugary cereals (Coco Pops are 35% sugar) when one of the key messages of the Change4Life campaign is “sugar swaps”, encouraging families to swap snacks with added sugar for low sugar or sugar-free alternatives. If you’d like to complain, you can email Kelloggs at corporateresponsibility@kellogg.com. You might also like to copy the Department of Health into your email to make them aware of your concerns: dhmail@dh.gsi.gov.uk .”

3) So, of course, I emailed Kelloggs Corporate responsibility and the Department of Health as follows:

Dear Department of Health and Kellogg’s (30/1/2010)
I am writing to complain about the advert encouraging children to eat Coca Pops after school. It is bad enough that our young people start the day with a bowl of sugary cereal (coca pops being 34% sugar). It is even worse to think that children are being encouraged to have another bowl after school. We are fighting an obesity epidemic and any sugar (empty calories) either displaces other nutritional food, which adversely impacts health, or it is eaten on top of other nutritional needs, which adversely impacts weight. There is no room for sugar in a healthy diet – let alone this amount being pushed on parents and children alike as a fun thing to do with cartoon animation etc.
That Kellogg’s does this is not a surprise – it’s a private company looking to maximise brand profitability for shareholders. That the Department of Health has Kellogg’s as a Change for Life ‘partner’ is a disgrace. Department of Health – you lose all credibility as an advisor to UK citizens having such blatant affiliations with the food manufacturers.
I look forward to your response
Kind regards – Zoe Harcombe , Obesity researcher

4) You then get an auto reply from the Department of Health saying they will reply within 20 days,  but I did get a letter back from Kellogg’s on 3/2/2010 – fair do’s – pretty speedy. Here is the response (I’ve put in my comments along side each ‘defence’):

Dear Zoe

Re: COMPLAINT TO KELLOGG’s ABOUT COCO POPS ADVERTISING

I wanted to contact you following your recent email to Kellogg’s about us promoting our Coco Pops cereal as an after school snack.

The reason for recommending Kellogg’s Coco Pops with milk as an after-school snack is no different from recommending it for breakfast – it’s a nutritionally sound product that is suitable as part of a healthy balanced diet.

The fact is Kellogg’s Coco Pops is a low fat, low saturated fat food, containing just 175 calories per serving with semi-skimmed milk.  It provides 25% of the RDA (recommended daily allowance) for six B vitamins and 17% of the RDA for iron and calcium, as well as encouraging the consumption of milk which is normally eaten with our products.  In fact, 40% of milk consumed in Britain is with cereals. , and breakfast cereals are the leading source of iron in the diet of UK children . (Zoe comment: Coco Pops are low fat because they are a cereal and cereals are predominantly carbohydrate! Coco Pops have vitamins because they are ‘fortified ‘ because they would be nutritionally lacking if they weren’t and even more vitamins are added when people drink milk  – so give your child a glass of milk when they get home).

When it comes to sugar, one portion of Kellogg’s Coco Pops has just 10.5g – approximately two teaspoons.  To put this into context: a portion of fruit yoghurt contains 20g of sugar and toast and jam has 13g . (Zoe comment: sugary yoghurts and jam are also full of sugar  – this doesn’t make our product good, but we’ll compare it to other bad stuff to try to make it look good).

Breakfast cereals provide only 5% of the adult daily intake of added sugars in the diet – compared to 37% from drinks, 32% from sugar, preserves and confectionary and 14% from other cereal products such as cakes .  Breakfast cereals contribute 6% of the average daily intake of sugar in children yet up to 30% of some micronutrients such a B vitamins and iron. (Zoe comment: so let’s double the intake of sugar from cereals, by getting kids to eat them after school, as well as before school, as cereal manufacturers are missing out on their share of the ‘junk’ market. Check spelling of confectionEry also).

Sugar adds to the enjoyment of food with no detrimental effect to health – there is no scientific evidence showing a link between sugar and obesity, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, hyperactivity or cancer. (Zoe comment: I love this one! I didn’t actually suggest that sugar is behind the major killer diseases of the modern day, but, now you mention it… See Warburg, see Yudkin… what was my quote again? “If we have been eating food as nature intended for 24 hours then agriculture, which gave us large scale access to carbohydrates, started 4 minutes ago and our consumption of sugar has increased 20 fold in the past 5 seconds. I wonder which substance is more likely to be responsible for obesity, diabetes, or indeed any modern disease…”)

What I hope we can agree on is there’s an established link between excess calorie consumption and weight gain.  So – given the obesity challenge we all face – it seems prudent to compare the amount of calories in Kellogg’s Coco Pops and milk to many typical post school snacks. A serving of Kellogg’s Coco Pops with milk contains around 10% of a child’s calorie GDA, a suitable amount for a snack. A typical milk chocolate bar is 255 calories; a 4 finger chocolate and wafer bar is 213 calories and a bag of chewy fruit flavoured sweets is 222 calories. Kellogg’s Coco Pops with milk have noticeably fewer calories and less sugar then most of these options and provide many positive nutrients the other snacks do not. (Zoe comment: No. We can’t agree on this. I actually don’t care about calories – they are just fuel. I care about empty calories – sugar – which deliver fuel with no nutrition. This is what an obese society cannot afford to consume).

As a mum of two I understand the need for kids to have a quick snack when they got home hungry from school.  But, we don’t see any evidence that encouraging Kellogg’s Coco Pops as an after school snack prevents children from snacking on fruit. (Zoe comment: Are they eating both?! Not much room left for a good dinner eh?)

Independent research shows 90% of mums  give their children a snack after school, therefore we are not encouraging an eating occasion that would not normally happen.  The top six foods eaten being crisps, fruit, sweets, yoghurt, chocolate and biscuits.  Those who said that they would choose Kellogg’s Coco Pops with milk as an alternative said it would replace (in descending order) crisps, chocolate, sweets and biscuits – not fruit or yoghurt. (Zoe comment: So parents who give their kids junk now have another option. The parents that give fruit will still do so. This is the argument used by cigarette manufacturers – we don’t increase the size of the market – we just encourage people to swap brands).

Therefore, having Kellogg’s Coco Pops with milk as an after school snack does not discourage the selection of fresh fruit, and also encourages the consumption of milk and provides essential micronutrients – an accepted dietary recommendation.

It’s for these reasons we don’t see promoting Coco Pops as an after school snack as being counter to our involvement with Change4Life. (Zoe comment: see what else Kellogg’s sponsor below…)

I’d like to assure you that at Kellogg’s we ensure all of our marketing and advertising is rigorously reviewed so that it complies with the relevant CAP broadcast and non-broadcast advertising codes.  (Zoe comment: None of this matters much because we comply with the advertising standards code, so we can do what we want!) I’d also like to advise you the current Coco Pops outdoor advertising campaign comes to its natural end this Friday.

I appreciate dialogue via a letter isn’t always the most productive.  So, I or a member of my team of nutritionists would be more than happy to meet with you and discuss your concerns in person.

Yours sincerely

(Zoe: I’ve left out the name and contact numbers for privacy, but after the job title is “State Registered Dietitian”) (Zoe comment: why am I not surprised?! The Kellogg’s Senior Manager for nutrition is a dietitian. The head of the Sugar Bureau is a dietitian. The British Dietetic Association (BDA) is “delighted” (their word) to be ‘in bed with’ the sugar and flour organisations. Kellogg’s are the sponsors of the British Dietetic Association’s annual conference on obesity. The American Dietetic Association is sponsored by Mars, PepsiCo, Kellogg’s, Unilever, General Mills and Coco-Cola. The BDA won’t tell me their sponsors – can’t think why. And then the dietitian primary slogan is “Trust a dietitian to know about nutrition”. Not when every dietitian I have met defends sugar I won’t!)

Finally – check out the Children’s Food Campaign competition for a new Coco Pops slogan - great fun! x

The last in the series aired on Thursday 14th January and the final weight loss was impressive: Bev lost 12lbs; Lissy lost 9lbs; Gail lost 8lbs; Pam lost 7lbs, Debbie and Josie lost 6lbs and Anna lost 5lbs over 2 weeks. They could each have lost that in 5 days doing Phase 1 of The Harcombe Diet, but that was a good weight loss for a low calorie diet. It did reflect what had been eaten before and moving from cakes, pies and takeaways to 1200 calories a day has to work in the short term.

The interesting thing about weight loss on low calorie diets is (as it says in the first blog on this programme) is that it is not sustainable. The body will adjust as soon as it can to the shock of the insufficient fuel intake and reduce the body’s need for fuel, conserve energy and so on (all detailed in “Stop Counting Calories & Start Losing Weight…”

The other thing that is so great about programmes like this (and Britain’s Biggest Loser 2009) is that they single handedly blow apart the calorie theory. In fact every calorie deficit study ever done blows apart this theory and yet we still assert “To lose 1lb of fat we need to create a deficit of 3500 calories.” If this were the case, then Gail (the lightest starting weight in the group) should be able to keep this up until New Year 2010 and she should be under 2 stone by then. And that would only account for fat loss. Gail would also lose lean tissue and water and probably therefore would be weightless after a year. This is totally ridiculous, but that is what the theory asserts.

There should also be hardly any variation in weight loss. If the women all had a similar calorie requirement (the average 2000 per woman, which is so often used), then a 1200 calorie a day diet should result in 800*14/3500 = 3.2lbs as a FAT loss over 2 weeks – that’s what formulae are all about. Then there should be more on top for lean tissue and water loss – an estimated 13% (Bozenraad 1911 journal). That’s 3.6lbs. So for Bev to lose 12lbs and Anna to lose 5lbs makes a mockery of the formula in just 14 days. Yes the women will have different calorie requirements and not all have an average need of 2000, but this won’t be able to explain the 7lb difference between highest and lowest weight loss. Take Debbie (12.8 starting weight) and Bev (11.10 starting weight) – Debbie should have had a slightly higher calorie need (size is one of the best indicators, as a rule of thumb), but their weight loss should have been very similar – maybe Debbie’s slightly higher. But Bev’s was double that of Debbie!

There was a lovely bit when the dietician, Ursula, was talking to the coca-cola addict and she used this 3500 formula the other way (it has to hold both ways to be valid) and she said that him drinking 800 calories of coca-cola a day should lead to him gaining 6 stone a year. The maths here is 800 calories ‘extra’ per day x 365 days = 292,000 calories ‘not needed’. This should have turned into 292,000/3500 pounds of fat i.e. 83.4 lbs of fat – which is 6 stone. As he had been drinking this amount of cola for 25 years, he should have gained 150 stone during that time (he would have been in the Guinness Book of Records over 10 years ago!) Oh, and all of this is just fat remember – given that the body is approximately 50% water, he should have gained 50-75 stone of water in that time also. How can anyone still believe this urban myth formula?! The bit that made me smile was Ursula’s face when she said this – she almost looked baffled as if to say “you should be gaining 6 stone a year, but that can’t be right and/or I don’t know why you’re not”)!

A great show – for the calorie theory assassination alone. But there were also some great guests – Dr David Kessler, former head of the USA Food & Drug Administration was a joy to listen to. The analysis of Pringles (one of the labels I most often quote) was fascinating. I skipped through all the games placing 5 foods in different calorie order – who cares! We need to pay infinitely more attention to the nutritional quality of food and be far more aware of the foods that facilitate fat storage (carbs) and the foods that disturb fat burning (carbs again!) The trouble is low calorie = high carb and you can see why 30 years of calorie obsession and telling people to eat carbs has resulted in an obesity epidemic.

Do another one next year Channel 4 – but manage carbs, not calories. Have people eating real food (meat, fish, eggs, veg, salad, dairy products, fruit & whole grains) and no empty calories (sugar and low value flour calories) and then see what happens. You’ll be able to follow up with this group two months down the line also, as they won’t be hungry and are more likely to have made a lifestyle change.

Professor Chris Hawkey, of the British Society of Gastroenterology was speaking at the “Gastro 2009″ conference in London. He claimed that promotion of unhealthy foods and diets has fostered over-eating and an obsession with eating only ‘good’ foods. He was set to tell the conference “the problem facing society is not the content of our diet but the quantity we are consuming.”

Please can the Professor explain this then? I have analysed the UK National Food survey for every year between 1974 and the year 2000 (the survey became the responsibility of the Food Standards Agency in 2000 and we have not had a survey since. You may understand why when you see what the survey tells us…) In 1975 we were consuming 2290 calories per person per day in the UK. In 1999 we were eating 1690 calories per person per day. Analysing the change in calories year on year, I calculated that if the 3500 calorie formula were correct (which it isn’t) we should have LOST an average 62.6lbs per person over this period of time (that’s over half of me)! Instead the average Brit gained approximately 20lbs.

What did change, however, was the content of what we ate. Down went meat, eggs, butter, milk, real potatoes, real vegetables. Up went confectionery, processed meats, processed potatoes, ice cream, flour, cereals, soft drinks, processed vegetables.

So Prof – are you sure it’s the quantity and not the content of our diet that is the problem?!

Fad diets are not the cause of the obesity epidemic. The Eatwell Plate and the basic advice given by dieticians and public health advisors are the cause of the obesity epidemic. They have told us to avoid meat/eggs/butter/milk (fats) and to base our meals on starchy foods (flour, cereals, cereal products, processed vegetables and potatoes etc). We have followed their advice (the survey confirms this) and we have paid a very high price – a six fold increase in obesity.

Strategy number 1 (out of 8 ) in the book was “Just ten extra calories a day – one stick of gum or three jelly beans – will make you a pound heavier in a year.” As this is nearly Panto season, I can say “Oh no it won’t“! This is the single biggest dieting of myth of all. It comes from the idea that a) 1lb = 3500 calories (it doesn’t) and b) if you eat 3500 more calories you will gain a pound (you won’t) and if you eat 3500 fewer calories you will lose a pound (you won’t).

I will be blowing this apart in a forthcoming book. In the meantime, if this worked, dear readers, an average woman surviving on weight watchers 20 points, would lose 104lbs each and every year (that’s 7 stone, 6 lbs). The formula makes no allowance for how much anyone has to lose (it also ignores fat vs lean tissue vs water, but we’ll keep it simple for now). So, the formula says that I could start doing weight watchers (20 points) weighing 8 stone and I will weigh 8lbs this time next year. I don’t think so!

Whatever you believe about dieting, please throw away the idea that, to lose 1lb of fat you need to create a deficit of 3500 calories. Stop Counting Calories & Start Losing Weight explains what will happen instead and how you will be transformed into a hungry, food addict, with a slower metabolism and lost lean tissue in no time.