Soft drink makers target U.S. youth online: study

(Reuters) U.S. children and teenagers are seeing far more soda advertising than before, with blacks and Hispanics the major targets, as marketers have expanded online, according to a study released on Monday.

The report from the Yale University Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity also said many fruit and energy drinks, which are popular with teenagers, have as much added sugar and as many calories as regular soda.

“Our children are being assaulted by these drinks that are high in sugar and low in nutrition,” said Yale’s Kelly Brownell, co-author of the report. “The companies are marketing them in highly aggressive ways.”

Children’s and teens’ exposure to full-calorie soda ads on television doubled from 2008 to 2010, fueled by increases from Coca-Cola Co and Dr Pepper Snapple Group Inc, the report found.

Children were exposed to 22 percent fewer ads for sugary PepsiCo Inc drinks, it said.

Black children and teens saw 80 percent to 90 percent more ads than white children, including twice as many for the 5-Hour Energy drink and Coca-Cola’s vitamin water and Sprite.

Hispanic children saw 49 percent more ads for sugary drinks and energy drinks on Spanish-language television, and Hispanic teens saw 99 percent more ads.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says about 15 percent of children are overweight or obese. Children today are likely to have shorter life spans than their parents, which would affect their ability to work and pay taxes, while threatening to drive up healthcare costs.

When it comes to energy drinks such as Red Bull and Amp, the marketing is skewed toward young people, even though the American Academy of Pediatrics says such highly caffeinated beverages are not appropriate for children and adolescents, the report said.

In 2010, teens saw 18 percent more TV ads and heard 46 percent more radio ads for energy drinks than adults did.

The American Beverage Association, whose members include soft drink companies, disputed the study’s findings as it also battles proposed taxes on sugary drinks and public health campaigns aimed at reducing consumption.

“This report is another attack by known critics in an ongoing attempt to single out one product as the cause of obesity when both common sense and widely accepted science have shown that the reality is far more complicated,” the group’s Chief Executive Officer Susan Neely said in a statement.

Neely said member companies are “delivering on their commitment to advertise only water, juice and milk on programing for children under 12.”

She cited recent research conducted by Georgetown Economic Services, an economic consulting firm that is a subsidiary of law firm Kelley Drye & Warren, and sponsored by the Grocery Manufacturers Association and the Association of National Advertisers.

That research showed that between 2004 and 2010, advertisements for soft drinks decreased by 96 percent, while those for fruit and vegetable juices increased by 199 percent.

Brownell, an outspoken critic of the food and beverage industries, said there has been a lot of research on the issue of marketing unhealthy food to children, especially since U.S. First Lady Michelle Obama made fighting childhood obesity her signature issue.

Monday’s report, he said, is the first that analyzed data from several firms, including Nielsen Holdings NV, to measure the full picture of youth exposure to marketing and advertising.

Brownell said it is important to consider the online interaction children have with brands, especially since they tend to stay on computers longer than they watch TV commercials.

The report shows, for example, that 21 sugary drink brands had YouTube channels in 2010, with more than 229 million views by June 2011. Coca-Cola was the most popular brand on Facebook, with more than 30 million fans.

The most-visited websites operated by soft drink brands were MyCokeRewards.com and Capri Sun, which is owned by Kraft Foods Inc.

Coca-Cola said it has a policy of not marketing to children younger than 12.

“This means that we do not buy advertising directly targeted at audiences that are made up of more than 35 percent children under 12,” Coca-Cola said in a statement. “This policy applies to all of our beverage brands and to a wide range of media outlets, including television, radio and print, as well as cinema, the Internet, product placement and mobile phones.”

Other findings in the report include an analysis of the drinks themselves. For example, it said an 8-ounce (225-gram) serving of a full-calorie fruit drink has 110 calories and seven teaspoons of sugar — the same amount found in an 8-ounce serving of a soda or energy drink.

The full report is available at www.sugarydrinkfacts.org.

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/01/us-soda-idUSTRE79U62C20111101

Chronic health problems plague immigrants decades after move

Immigrants see more chronic health problems than their U.S.-born counterparts. (Mike Segar)

Source: http://www.latimes.com/health/boostershots/la-chronic-health-problems-plague-immigrants-decades-after-move-20111031,0,5006849.story

Wellness program shows drastic improvements in employee population

Employee Programs Teaching Health Care “Consumer” Skills May Also Produce Health Benefits

Release Date: October 31, 2011

By Carl Sherman, Contributing Writer
Research Source: American Journal of Health Promotion
Health Behavior News Service

A workplace program designed to teach employees to act more like consumers when they make health care decisions, for example, by finding and evaluating health information or choosing a benefit plan, also improved exercise, diet and other health habits, according to a new study in the latest issue of the American Journal of Health Promotion.

The study randomly assigned 631 employees of two large Midwestern companies to two programs and a control group. A traditional health education intervention program promoted better nutrition, physical activity, injury prevention, smoking cessation and stress management, while an “activated consumer” program taught participants to evaluate sources of health information, choose a health benefits plan, use preventive services and take medications properly.  A control group received no health education interventions.

High-risk employees in both intervention programs, those at risk for cardiovascular disease or premature death, were offered individualized coaching. Coaching for the “activated consumer” participants however, was less intensive than the traditional model with roughly half as many sessions and was designed to focus on building skills with using health care resources.

Two years later, 51 percent of participants completed a follow-up survey and screening. Participants were evaluated on a personal wellness profile, assessment of general health status, a Patient Activation Measure â„¢ score, productivity, and on their ability to recognize a reliable health website.

Both intervention groups saw improved self-reported health risk behaviors, such as reducing dietary fat and increasing exercise, although the overall effect “favored the traditional approach” said Paul Terry, Ph.D., first author of the paper, who was with the Park Nicollet Institute in Minneapolis at the time of the study. Terry is now CEO of StayWell Health Management, St. Paul.

While improvement in reducing risk-behaviors might have been expected in the traditional health education group, similar improvements within the group receiving consumer education suggest that “consumerism skills generalize into self-health management skills,” the authors noted.

Although all three groups of participants registered improvements in measures of health consumer activation, such as the ability to recognize reliable health web sites, only those in the activated consumer program did significantly better than control. Clinical health outcomes and productivity were not affected in the two year period following the survey.

“I think because activation results were positive, favorable and involved a lower overall investment, the lesson learned is not to give up on traditional approaches to health education but to layer in an emphasis on consumer skills, especially for clients who lack them and want to take advantage of new resources,” Terry said.

Sue Baldwin, Ph.D., of Buffalo State College, co-chair of the American Public Health Association’s working group on worksite health promotion, agreed that “the combination is key. Using both approaches, not just one” deserves further research, she said.  The finding that less intensive coaching worked as well as more frequent contact was of particular interest, she observed.

More generally, “if it’s not part of a company’s policy to have healthy employees, they will never support worksite wellness, and businesses will not implement such policies until they have research that proves it works. [The current study] does a great job in starting to look at that,” Baldwin said.

Source: http://www.cfah.org/hbns/archives/getDocument.cfm?documentID=22450

“The National Survey of Children’s Health (NSCH): The Health and Well-Being of Children in Rural Areas: A Portrait of the Nation in 2007,” which is published every four years, examined the overall health of rural children in the United States from birth to age 17. The report finds greater prevalence of certain physical, emotional, behavioral and developmental conditions in rural areas.

Among the findings, children living in rural areas are more likely to have public insurance, such as Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program, while urban children are more likely to be privately insured.

In addition, the percentage of children with chronic conditions such as obesity, asthma and diabetes is highest among teenagers living in small rural areas.

“This national survey demonstrates how children in rural areas face particular health risks,” HRSA Administrator Mary Wakefield, RN, PhD, said in a news release. “Using the information provided by parents about their children will give public health officials a more complete picture for how to improve these children’s health outcomes. HRSA’s programs in rural health policy, maternal and child health and across the agency will look to these findings to inform our work going forward.”

Based on a national survey of parents, the report presents information on children’s health status, and their access to and use of healthcare services as measured through their parents’ reports. It considers children’s body mass index, social skills and behaviors and the presence of one or more chronic conditions. Aspects of the environment that were assessed in the survey include family structure, poverty level, parental health and well-being and community surroundings.

The National Survey of Children’s Health is sponsored by HRSA’s Maternal and Child Health Bureau. Technical appendices at the end of the book present information about the survey methodology and sample. To see more in-depth information about the book and its findings, visit http://mchb.hrsa.gov/nsch/07rural.

Source:  http://news.nurse.com/article/20111030/NATIONAL02/110310036/1003

Mystery meat has met its aquatic match: mystery fish.

The world’s largest independent product-testing organization Friday will reveal that 22% of the seafood it tested at supermarkets, restaurants, fish markets, gourmet stores and big-box stores in three states was either mislabeled, incompletely labeled or misidentified by store or restaurant employees.

• STORY: Group seeks labels on genetically altered food

• STORY: Ads target food safety; thermometer is key

“Consumers are getting ripped off when they buy fish,” says Kim Kleman, editor-in-chief of Consumer Reports.

This is no small matter. Americans spent $80.2 billion on seafood last year, up $5 billion from 2009. Mislabeling can be a serious health issue. Some consumers have allergies to specific types of fish, and pregnant women can end up eating fish they shouldn’t — with high concentrations of mercury. Others trying to purchase more sustainable fish are being sold cheaper, unsustainable species.

The investigation, which took place in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, included 190 pieces of fresh and frozen seafood that were DNA tested by two outside labs. The findings, in the December issue of Consumer Reports, do not speculate about the reasons for the fraud. Some mislabeling snafus:

•Only four of the 14 different types of fish purchased — Chilean sea bass, coho salmon and bluefin and ahi tuna — were always identified correctly.

•Not one of the 10 lemon soles tested was lemon sole — but more common and cheaper flounder. And of 22 red snapper samples, not one was definitively red snapper, though eight couldn’t be ruled out.

•Some 18% of the samples didn’t match the names on placards, labels or menus. Another 4% were incompletely labeled or misidentified.

Consumers Union, the public policy division of Consumer Reports, is calling for legislation and standardized seafood labeling.

Officials at the Food and Drug Administration, which oversees food labeling, say they’re aware of the problem. “It’s illegal to mislabel food,” spokesman Doug Karas says. The agency recently supplied six labs with DNA-testing equipment for testing to begin in 2012, he says. But, he adds, “Primarily we look at food safety,” not fraud.

But, Kleman says, “I don’t think we should have to choose between safety and fraud.”

Source: http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/food/story/2011-10-27/bad-fish-labels/50962868/1

People might eat more to feel like big shots, researchers find

October 26, 2011 RSS Feed Print

WEDNESDAY, Oct. 26 (HealthDay News) — People who feel powerless may choose larger food portions in an attempt to boost their social status, a new study suggests.

Northwestern University researchers found that people equate larger food portions with higher social standing. For example, study participants believed that people who opted for a large coffee had more social status than those who chose a medium or small coffee, even when the price was the same.

The study also found that people who feel powerless (such as those in lower socioeconomic groups) selected larger pieces of bagels than others, and chose larger smoothies when they were at a social event than when they were alone.

The findings were released online in advance of publication in an upcoming print issue of the Journal of Consumer Research.

“An ongoing trend in food consumption is consumers’ tendency to eat more and more. Even more worrisome, the increase in food consumption is particularly prevalent among vulnerable populations such as lower socioeconomic status consumers,” study author David Dubois, of HEC Paris, and colleagues at Northwestern University wrote in a journal news release.

The team noted that it’s common for people to equate the size of a consumer product — such as a house, TV or vehicle — with social status.

The researchers also found that when powerless people were told that smaller hors d’oeuvres were served at prestigious events, they selected the smaller food items.

“Understanding and monitoring the size-to-status relationship of food options within an assortment is an important tool at the disposal of policy makers to effectively fight against overconsumption,” the study authors concluded.

Source:  http://health.usnews.com/health-news/family-health/brain-and-behavior/articles/2011/10/26/larger-food-portions-may-be-seen-as-status-symbols

Updated October 27, 2011 23:05:33

Photo: The study found children from wealthier households exercise more. (stock.xchng)

A study has used social media to track the activities of primary school-aged children and their mothers, finding that those from wealthier households exercise more.

Over a two-week period, 100 mothers from the Brisbane suburbs of Bardon and Inala checked in their locations via social media sites – Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare – and sent texts providing information on their activities within the area.

“We realised there were existing socioeconomic differences in the amount of physical activity that tends to get done between families, with higher socioeconomic families engaging in higher levels than their lower socioeconomic counterparts,” said Dr Julie-Anne Carroll, lecturer for the School of Public Health at the Queensland University of Technology.

“There’s been limited understanding so far in research as to why those differences exist and how they come about and the extent to which the demographic plays a role in producing those patterns and the extent to which the local environment plays a role.

“We wanted to trial new technologies to try and unearth those reasons more accurately and more objectively.”

The study revealed the daily routines of mothers between the two areas are similar; however, Bardon mothers and their families engaged in more physical activities than those in Inala.

Bardon mothers were found to be more active, with 18 per cent recording riding their bikes throughout the two weeks compared to Inala mothers who did not record even owning a bike.

The number of children participating in extra-curricular activities such as gymnastics, swimming and martial arts was also higher in Bardon.

A lack of desirable destinations to travel to, combined with Inala families being more inclined to use facilities closer to home, are believed to be contributing factors to the findings.

Ease of use

Fellow researcher Dr Orit Ben Harush says the study marks an important step in location-based studies because of the ease of use for participants.

“Up until now, researchers were counting on peoples’ perceptions about their location-based activities,” she said.

“The difference here is that people are actually recording quantitative data about exactly where [they are] with the exact coordinate, with the time and what they’re doing there.

“Most of the time this information is automatically recorded by the application (on their devices), so they don’t really have to know where they are; they just have to check in where they are and the rest is done automatically by the application.”

Dr Carroll says the data collected could benefit Brisbane City Council and future health promotions.

“We have been able to map it so successfully we can just show them maps about which demographics are using which facilities and recreational areas, so there is a lots of data there for parks and leisure and urban planners,” she said.

“We are hoping to move this into health promotion – having more successful and more realistic health promotion amongst lower socioeconomic areas, so that we’re not asking people to do things that they literally cannot do [because] they don’t have the facilities.”

Source:  http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-10-27/social-media-reveals-wealthier-kids-exercise-more/3604710

Wellness Begins at Home

“Doctors say it’s the most important thing parents can discuss with their kids. Yet both parents and kids would rather talk about anything else — including drugs and teen sex — than weight.” Says a recent article in WebMD

What??? Really?

Well, maybe I’m not as surprised as I should be. Being a mother myself to an 11-year-old boy — ANY of those talks stop me in my tracks! And yet saying nothing can have dire consequences. So what’s the answer?

Perhaps we need to take a step back and look at an organization’s desire for a “healthy” workforce. The realization that addressing such wellness issues as obesity can have a meaningful impact on their employees own health, reducing absenteeism, disabilities, presenteeism and lowering the healthcare costs of the organization.

But why stop there? Wellness programs are beginning to expand in many various ways including adding programs that help employees find balance in all aspects of life including physical, emotional, spiritual, intellectual and social. Expanding wellness programs to include these types of initiatives provide the employees with a resiliency in their ability to recover from adversities of life such as stress, illness and loss. I suggest that addressing some of these other aspects of “wellness” can free up employees even more to be better equipped to move to the next needed level of behavior modification that can truly create that desired change.

But let’s go back to the beginning of this blog. What about the children?

According to a recent U.S. Department of Health and Human Services report, childhood obesity has more than tripled since 1980

What employer offered wellness programs involve and extend their employee wellness programs to the family? Some do offer programs and health risk assessments to spouses and partners, but how many are extending some of these programs to the children? Clearly — they are our future employees and if we’re not addressing it now — they will surely bring it with them to the workplace.

So what about it? As annual enrollment season is upon us, now is a perfect time to consider programs and initiatives including appropriately aged resources for the children.

After all, October is National Work and Family month and what better way for organizations to celebrate both employees and their families than by considering this added benefit to their portfolio.

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rose-stanley/post_2536_b_1035156.html

Wellness: Use of incentives (and penalties) climbing – because they work

October 27, 2011 by Christian Schappel

Posted in: Health care, In this week’s e-newsletter – benefits, Incentives, Latest News & Views, Money, Pay and benefits

Between 2009 and 2011, the use of financial rewards in health management programs increased by 50%. Meanwhile, the use of penalties increased by more than 100%, according to a new study.

The numbers show employers are starting to quickly warm up to the idea of penalizing workers for not participating in wellness programs — or not meeting certain health goals.

The findings are from The Towers Watson/National Business Group on Health Staying@Work study of 248 U.S. companies.

A year from now, four in five companies expect to offer some type of financial reward for wellness/health management participation. But more surprising, the use of penalties is expected to double again (this time, in just one year) — with 38% of companies planning to use them in 2012, compared to 19% today.

What isn’t a surprise is why so many employers are using financial incentive/penalties to drive participation: They work!

Check out these stats:

• Among employers offering financial incentives to take health-risk appraisals, employee participation rates are 46% on average — compared to 19% at companies not offering incentives
• Participation in biometric screenings for those giving out cash to take them is 45% — compared to 25% for those keeping their wallets closed, and
• Participation rates are low for all disease management programs designed to deal chronic conditions at 14%, but providing financial incentives provide a slight bump in participation rates to 16%.

Source: http://www.hrmorning.com/wellness-use-of-incentives-and-penalties-climbing-%e2%80%93-because-they-work/