Dairy Still Doesn't Help with Weight Loss

Not a magazine goes by it seems without a dairy ad extolling milk's (or another dairy product's) role in weight loss - this of course despite the fact that Big Milk in the US admitted that there was insufficient evidence to suggest or refute that milk has any weight-related benefits after being confronted by the FTC.

Well guess what? A new meta-analysis came to a different conclusion - it came to the conclusion that dairy products do not help with weight,

"Of 49 randomized trials assessing the effect of dairy products or calcium supplementation on body weight, 41 showed no effect, two demonstrated weight gain, one showed a lower rate of gain, and five showed weight loss. Four of 24 trials report differential fat loss. Consequently, the majority of the current evidence from clinical trials does not support the hypothesis that calcium or dairy consumption aids in weight or fat loss."

So back to the FTC - if Big Dairy admits there's not enough evidence, and if the evidence suggests in fact there's enough evidence to prove dairy is not a magic food covered in pixie dust that disobeys the laws of thermodynamics without affecting dietary consumption, why then are there still so many ads from Big Milk tied to weight?

Big Milk's new slogan by the way?

"Milk your Diet"

It's part of their,

"Campaign for Healthy Weight"

I've got to ask again, did Big Milk lie to the FTC?

Big Milk's Mouthful of Foot

For those of you who may be new subscribers one of my recurring features is something I call, "Quobesities".

I define a quobesity as,

"quotes that in one way or another embody what's wrong and hopefully, occasionally, what's right with relation to our attitudes and knowledge about weight and weight related matters."

Yesterday there was a beauty in the New York Times. This one was from Bruce W. Krupke, the executive vice president of New York State Dairy Foods, a trade organization paid for by milk producers. He was writing the Times to complain about their December 10th editorial piece, Junking Fat Food in Schools which detailed an amendment to the farm bill that called for the limitation of milk in schools to be low-calorie milk.

Why would milk be considered "junk food"?

Because frankly in some cases it is, like for instance the 3 Musketeers Slammers that I detailed in a previous post that at 340 calories provides your children with over 10 teaspoons of sugar and more than double the Calories of a can of Coca Cola.

So what did Mr. Krupke have to say?

"Senator Harkin has included in his amendment provisions to limit container sizes (the 16-ounce container sold in vending machines is outlawed), to eliminate whole and 2 percent milk, and to impose serving-size calorie restrictions. In his quest to dictate what can be sold in schools, milk has been caught up in his net.

Drinking milk is not contributing to children's obesity. Milk has essential vitamins and nutrients essential for good growth and health."

Damn that Senator Harkin and his evil "net", doesn't he know milk has nutrients!

Unfortunately in many cases vending machine milk also has added sugars, chocolate and insanely large serving sizes (like the 14oz, 340 calorie, 10+ teaspoons of sugar Slammers in the picture above that Mr. Krupke would apparently love to see increase in size by 2oz).

So can Mr. Krupke really believe that providing children with 16oz servings of sugar sweetened candy-milk is a healthy choice and one that doesn't contribute to childhood obesity?

Well, here is another quote from Mr. Krupke that probably does a better job at explaining his objections. This quote is from his article in the New York State Dairy Food Inc.'s September newsletter,

"Another example of policy shift was with the introduction of bills aimed at creating “healthier” food choices for kids in schools by mandating package size restrictions while tying them all into calorie and sugar limitations. These bills if passed would be a disaster for milk and ice cream companies. Fortunately our lobbying efforts combined with other groups kept the bill at bay."

Mr. Krupke, your touching concern for our children is duly noted.

Canada's Cheese Plan Stinks

Rosie Schwartz, nutritional columnist for the National Post, author and RD has exposed yet another instance where our government is bending over for Canada's dairy industry.

To explain let me take you back to the 80s, when the first low-fat cheeses began to hit the market.

They tasted terrible didn't they?

Nowadays though they don't taste half bad. In fact in some cases, it's almost impossible to distinguish the low-fat version from the regular.

The reason low-fat cheeses taste better nowadays is that over the years the cheese making industry has found ways to improve taste while still keeping the saturated fat levels low. They've been adding milk solids and whey and other foods that affect the "mouthfeel" of cheese.

By lowering fat content, calories are lowered and saturated fat levels are lowered.

Those are good things, right? Lowering calories and saturated fat in our diets is supposed to be healthy, right? Health Canada and our government in general would want that, right?

You'd sure think so. You'd think that the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA), an agency who Rosie points out's mandate is to,

"protect Canadians from preventable health risks"

would want and encourage Canadians to consume less saturated fat and calories and in so doing help protect Canadians from chronic conditions like heart disease and the number one preventable cause of death in Canada, obesity.

You'd sure think so.

But of course you'd be dead wrong.

The CFIA actually wants to limit the amount of whey that cheese makers use to make their cheese, thereby requiring cheese makers to utilize more fluid milk, increasing the saturated fat content of cheese, the calories of cheese, the price of cheese and decreasing the palatability of low-fat cheeses.

So why would they want to do that?

Perhaps because the CFIA doesn't work for Health Canada, the CFIA works directly for the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Agriculture works directly for our farmers. You see, by limiting the whey that cheese makers are "allowed" to use they will require cheese makers to buy more liquid milk from Canada's dairy farmers.

So what does Health Canada have to say on the matter? Health Canada who as I mentioned yesterday quite literally launched the Food Guide while basically holding hands with the Secretary of State for Agriculture?

Rosie managed to contact Renee Bergeron a Happy Corporations spokesperson who had this to say,

"Based on our initial review, Health Canada considers that the proposed changes to cheese standards would not be expected to compromise the nutritional quality of cheeses and cheese products."

I wonder which corporate shill in Health Canada had the honour of signing their name to a paper that stated that raising the saturated fat content and calories in cheeses wouldn't compromise their nutritional quality.

Health Canada and CFIA, please stop cutting the cheese.

Did Big Milk Lie to the FTC?

"You don't have to be a hero to feel invincible. That's why I drink milk. The protein helps build muscle and some studies suggest teens who choose it tend to be leaner. Cheers to that"

So I don't know if you remember, but I sure do - the FTC challenged Big Milk to prove their weight loss claims and of course since the studies Big Milk based their claims off of were all pretty much relegated to very small experiments done out of a lab funded by Big Milk where the professor involved has an actual patent on weight loss claims related to milk consumption, Big Milk reported that they would back off the weight loss advertising until the claims were in fact more substantiated.

That was back in May and then Lydia Parnes, the Director of the Federal Trade Commission's Bureau of Consumer Protection reported milk producers and processors had agreed to change the advertisements,

"until further research provides stronger, more conclusive evidence of an association between dairy consumption and weight loss."

Now I suppose the word "leaner" may be a means to circumvent the FTC's concerns, but frankly to me the word leaner certainly still implies weight loss.

I read the medical literature pretty carefully and milk is no where near being proven to be a helpful weight loss aid and furthermore no where near being proven to possess any magical lean body mass increasing properties.

Once again, shame on you Big Milk.

FTC, where the heck are you guys in terms of following up on these ridiculously misleading and scientifically unfounded claims and advertisments - advertisements that now directly target children and teens?

Big Milk Hasn't Backed off Weight Loss Claims

Big Milk is still promoting the ridiculous concept that drinking 24 ounces of milk (the caloric equivalent of 27lbs a year of skim, 37lbs a year of 2% or 43lbs a year of chocolate milk) will magically help you lose weight.

If you remember, back in May Big Milk (specifically the National Dairy Council in the States), admitted that there was insufficient evidence to suggest that milk consumption has any benefit in weight control, and in response to pressure from the Federal Trade Commission agreed to back off on those advertisements.

Well it's now two months later and their obscene website is still up and running and going strong. The entire site is dedicated to the premise that milk causes weight loss as they state,

"The current body of research supporting dairy's role in weight management includes randomized clinical trials (considered the "gold standard" of science), observational, animal and cellular studies conducted by leading research institutions throughout the country."

This post is for the benefit of my American readers - if you'd like to petition the FTC to actually do something, please complain.

Click here to be linked to the FTC's online complaint form.

Big Milk - Fastest Spin Doctors in the West

That sure didn't take much time.

Just last week a study was published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition that looked at vitamin D and calcium supplementation and risk of cancer. The study was fairly short at 4 years and somewhat small with only 1,179 total subjects. Subjects were randomized to receive either a calcium supplement or a calcium supplement plus vitamin D or a placebo. The results suggested that calcium and vitamin D supplementation in post menopausal women slightly lowered the incidence of cancer.

So fantastic let's all drink milk right?

But wait a second here, the study didn't look at milk did it? This small, short study looked at vitamin D and calcium supplementation.

And wait another second, weren't there in fact studies that looked specifically at dairy consumption and cancer risk (rather than calcium and vitamin d supplementation and cancer risk)?

If I remember correctly, didn't those studies actually show increased risk of cancer development with increased dairy consumption? There was the meta-analysis that suggested higher dairy consumption was actually associated with increased risk of aggressive prostate cancer and another showing that consuming the equivalent of 3 glasses of milk daily led to a 25% increase in the risk of ovarian cancer.

Did that stop the Big Milk spin machine? Absolutely not.

Yesterday there was a Big Milk press release that originated from the global PR firm Weber Shandwick. In it their press release entitled, "Boosting key milk nutrients may protect against cancer" Big Milk suggests, guess what, that you should drink more milk to get more vitamin D to prevent cancer.

The press release explicitly recommends that you drink 3 cups daily which even if it were skim milk would provide you with 24lbs worth of skim milk Calories a year and lead you to consume a beverage linked to prostate cancer, ovarian cancer, and if you remember from a recent post, Parkinson's disease.

Don't you think it might be smarter to just take a zero calorie 1000IU Vitamin D supplement instead?

Big Milk Backs Off the Weight Claims

(From the ad above)

"To keep the crowd on their feet, I keep my body in tune. With milk. Studies suggest that the nutrients in milk can play an important role in weight loss. So if you're trying to lose weight or maintain a healthy weight, try drinking 24 ounces of low fat or fat free milk every 24 hours as part of your reduced calorie diet. To learn more visit 2424milk.com. It's a change that'll do you good."

Really?

In response to an investigation by the Federal Trade Commission in the States, Big Milk over there has reported that they will end their asinine campaigns linking dairy consumption with weight loss.

Lydia Parnes, the Director of the Federal Trade Commission's Bureau of Consumer Protection reported that milk producers and processors had agreed to change the advertisements,

"until further research provides stronger, more conclusive evidence of an association between dairy consumption and weight loss."

What that might as well read is until someone other than Michael Zemel, a researcher for Big Milk whose specialty seems to be small underpowered studies with over-reaching conclusions, a researcher who believe it or not somehow managed to patent the claim that dairy consumption and weight loss were linked, actually puts together a paper that can refute the more than a dozen studies that show no link whatsoever.

[To read more about milk and dairy and Zemel, the CSPI put out a great piece you can read here.]

Score one for the good guys, but apparently this development doesn't apply to countries outside of the US or the internet because as of the typing of this post, 2424milk.com is still live and still promotes the consumption of almost 300 daily calories of milk to help with weight loss.

Does Milk Increase Risk of Parkinson's?

Looking for another reason to consider reducing your milk and dairy consumption?

I've blogged before about how diets higher in dairy seem to be associated with increased risk of ovarian cancer and fatal and aggressive prostate cancer while not demonstrating themselves to be protective versus osteoporotic fractures.

Well now research has linked diets higher in dairy, especially in men, with increased risk of Parkinson's disease.

The study, published a week or so ago in the American Journal of Epidemiology, looked at 57,689 men and 73,175 women from the American Cancer Society's Cancer Prevention Study II Nutrition Cohort. 250 men and 138 women with Parkinson's disease were identified during the ten years of follow-up. Diets higher in dairy were associated with increased risks of Parkinson's development with men having an 80% increased risk and women 30% in the highest dairy intake grouping.

While by no means a slam dunk that ties dairy forever to Parkinson's, it's just another thing to ponder when watching the does a body good and think about your drink messages paid for by the enormously deep pockets of Big Milk.

In an reflex quobesity, Big Milk in the UK (the UK Dairy Council) had this to say regarding the study,

"In reality there is no definitive link between dairy/milk, or any other food group, and any chronic disease."

Um, doesn't that also mean there's no definitive link between dairy consumption and osteoporosis prevention (a chronic disease)?

Of course if pressed this Big Milk spokesperson certainly would point out that....no no, milk does decrease risk of osteoporosis (even though it doesn't), it's just that nothing bad could ever be linked to dairy.

Milk and Hormones

Frankly I don't really have an educated opinion on rGBH (the hormone given to dairy cows to increase their milk production) as to whether or not it's safe.

I do however have an opinion on The Colbert Report as to whether or not it's funny.

It most certainly is!

Here for Funny Friday's is Stephen's take on rGBH.

Have a great weekend!

Chocolate Milk, it Does a Body Bad

I cut this absolutely obscene ad out of this month's Chatelaine magazine (click it to get a larger image).

It depicts a toddler with a jackhammer and implies that for the sake of his health his parents should give him the two daily glasses of chocolate milk that the Canada's Food Guide directly espouses.

"As a parent you want to do all that you can to prepare them for the future. And that includes giving them plenty of milk. Canada's Food Guide to Healthy Eating recommends kids get at least two servings of milk, chocolate milk, or milk products every single day"

As many of you know I testified before the House of Commons Standing Committee on health regarding the Food Guide and childhood obesity and you probably also know that the Committee two weeks ago released their damning report on the state of childhood obesity in Canada.

Canada has the 5th heaviest children in the developed world, with 26% of young adults aged 2-17 overweight or obese and hence the dire implication therein that this generation of children won't outlive their parents.

Unfortunately the Committee was silent on the issue of Canada's Food Guide.

Not so silent were the Heart and Stroke Foundation, the Canadian Diabetes Association and the Dietitians of Canada, all of whom gloriously praised the virtues of this guide.

Perhaps they're hoping that it will help build their respective businesses?

Who cares if long term epidemiological studies fail to tie in high levels of milk consumption with lower levels of osteoporotic fractures? Who cares if higher levels of dairy consumption have been shown to be associated with increased incidences of ovarian cancer and fatal and aggressive prostate cancers?

For goodness sakes people, it came from a cow so it has to be healthy! Didn't you know, God put cows on earth as magical, majestic, nutritional miracles? Why they provide us with milk and red meat the two healthiest substances known to man....at least according to the folks who farm them.

Yup, give your toddlers 2 glasses of chocolate milk a day. It's almost the Caloric equivalent of 1 Litre of Coca Cola. That's smart! That's good for our country! That won't raise rates of diabetes or heart disease!

Once again, I can't blame the milk industry, they're just trying to hawk their wares, but I sure hope Health Canada gets a big commission - it'll need one to help pay for the rapid increase in diseases like diabetes if in fact Canadian parents pay heed to the very unwise recommendation to feed their children two glasses of chocolate milk daily and help their children gain as much as 36lbs per year from the liquid Calories therein.

Once again, shame on you Health Canada, you're failing our nation and our children, and shame on any registered dietitian or health professional affiliated with the milk industry who isn't speaking out about this outrageous advertising campaign.

Big Milk's Dietitians are Easy

My wife and I were cleaning the house this past weekend in preparation of showing our house. She came across this handy fridge magnet that was given to her at the hospital following the birth of our now 2 month old daughter. It's entitled, "How to Build a Better Baby".

It was developed by the registered dietitians of the Dairy Farmers of Canada as evidenced by the seal at the bottom and by this seal on the back:


It is meant to guide pregnant and breast feeding women to healthier choices in order to "build better babies".

According to the back of the magnet,

"Your diet is essential to you and your baby. Until birth and during breast feeding your baby depends on you to supply everything needed for growth and development. What you eat during pregnancy and during breast feeding will help you be healthy and give your baby a healthy start in life"

Want to know what the registered dietitians of the Dairy Farmers of Canada feel women should eat in order to make "better" babies and help mom "be healthy" and give baby, "a healthy start in life"?

Apparently whole milk, chocolate milk, ice cream, milk desserts, milkshakes, hot dogs and french fries.

I kid you not.

Take a look at these enlargements. They're from the bottom of the chart and they summarize the registered dietitians of the Dairy Farmers of Canada's guidance and examples as to what constitute "healthy" milk, meat and vegetable choices and servings.







When I showed this to our dietitian at BMI, she sighed sadly.

I can't imagine how the dietitians from the Dairy Farmers of Canada go to bed at night. If I was as big a sellout as them, I'd be too ashamed to sleep, but I suppose that'd be ok because if I was prostituting my degree and training out as much as they apparently are, nighttime would be for working.

Big Milk's Dietitians Just Plain Lie

Don't trust this symbol!

By way of illustrating why I'm going to ask you a few simple question.

1. Do you think that a registered dietitian, a highly educated nutrition professional, would recommend that you feed preschool children, 36lbs worth of liquid Calories a year?

2. Do you think that a registered dietitian, a highly educated nutrition professional, would lie and tell you that chocolate milk only has 1/3 more Calories than "white" milk when in fact it has double the Calories of skim milk and 80% more Calories drop per drop than Coca Cola?

3. Do you think that a registered dietitian, a highly educated nutrition professional, would state that chocolate milk helped the body build and repair muscle?

I've been in this business for a while and so while I know that the answer to all of the above questions sadly are emphatic YESes, perhaps you'd be surprised at how apparently easy it is to buy a registered dietitian's good name.

In yet another quobesity goldmine I bring you the Chocolate Milk brochure from the Dairy Farmer of Canada's website. Smack on the back of the brochure is the following endoresement,

"Developed by the Registered Dietitians at the Dairy Farmer's of Canada"

So without further ado, I bring you the answers of the Registered Dietitians of the Dairy Farmer's of Canada to my aforementioned questions.

1. "Preschoolers should drink at least 500mls (2 cups) of chocolate or white milk to ensure they're getting enough vitamin D."

2. "Chocolate milk has only one third more Calories than white milk...which isn't much."

3. "After activity chocolate milk helps to replenish your body's energy stores, and build and repair muscle."

If you think this is bad, wait until you see tomorrow's post.

Shame on them.

Who Won the Food Guide Sweepstakes?

Since clearly this Food Guide didn't bother to utilize science as its only underpinning, the question arises, who were the winners? Who managed to best advocate for their industry and get the biggest bang out of this "revision" process?

Which "stakeholders" won?

It's an easy question, this Food Guide had two clear winners and both sat on the Food Guide's 12 member Advisory Board.

In second place, wearing the slightly oily yellow trunks, representing over 95,000 Canadian oilseed growers, oilseed producers and makers of oilseed-based food products, stands Mr. Sean McPhee!

If you remember back from my post on Big Food and it's invited entrenchment in the Food Guide's revision, Mr. McPhee's organization, the Vegetable Oil Industry of Canada, put out a press release celebrating his appointment to the Food Guide Revision's Advisory Board.

After all the congratulations, the press release stated,

"VOIC is calling on Health Canada to acknowledge and place a greater emphasis in Canada’s Food Guide on promoting consumption of healthy plant-based fats which include liquid vegetable oils such as canola, soy, sunflower, corn, olive and peanut"

Well Mr. McPhee, Monday was your lucky day! Of the two most explicit directive statements of this Food Guide, the first was,

"Include a small amount - 30 - 45 mL (2-3 Tbsp) - of unsaturated fat each day. This includes oil used for cooking, salad dressings, margarine and mayonnaise. Use vegetable oils such as canola, olive and soybean. Choose soft margarines that are low in saturated and trans fats."

While there is indeed science that suggests we include healthy oils in our diets, this completely ignorant of Calories and obesity directive, encourages over consumption and weight gain.

Remember that this Food Guide doesn't have a "Fat Group" therefore the consumption of edible oils would add Calories above and beyond those accounted for in the Food Guide. Adding 3 Tbsp of Olive Oil per day would add over 35lbs of Calories per year to an individual's diet.

It is important also to note that in the wording of this directive, use soft margarines low in trans fats, Health Canada has contradicted its own trans-fat task force which calls for the elimination of trans-fat from our food supply.

Why it didn't read, "Choose soft margarines that are free of trans fats" is likely not beyond Mr. McPhee as he well knows that it costs more money to make margarines trans-fat free.

In first place, wearing smooth, white, bubbly trunks, representing the BC Dairy Foundation, blanket denier of the possibility that the consumption of her product could lead to any harm, a woman who seems to think the International Journal of Cancer is written by a bunch of hacks, stands Ms. Sydney Massey!

You remember Ms. Massey, she's the nutritional manager for the BC Dairy Federation who when asked by the CBC about the study in the International Journal of Cancer that analyzed 21 separate studies and concluded that increased dairy consumption was associated with an increased risk of ovarian cancer, flippantly remarked,

"Well, you can show an association between wearing skirts and breast cancer, but it doesn't mean that wearing skirts causes breast cancer. It just means that there's something here we have to take a look at."

Don't you think it's great that Health Canada requested her clearly conflicted of interest point of view for the Food Guide's advisory board?

What conflict of interest?

If you remember, Ms. Massey's employer, the BC Dairy Foundation's stated mandate is,

"increasing consumption of milk in British Columbia"

while their homepage has a section entitled,

"Don't tell Mom, but chocolate milk is good for you"

Well way to aim high Ms. Massey, because this new Food Guide not only agrees that chocolate milk is good for you, but so too is 2% milk, whole milk, buttermilk, pudding made with milk, powdered milk, goat milk, etc. Basically if it has the word "milk" in it, the Food Guide says it's good!

But wait there's more.

This Food Guide has an astoundingly straight shooting directive with regards to milk. The Guide states,

"Drink skim, 1% or 2% milk each day (you only get the Chocolate Milk in the fantabulous online only My Food Guide). Have 500mls (2 cups) of milk every day for adequate vitamin D"

Um, but wait a second, doesn't the Guide also say that children between the ages of 2-9 and adults between the ages of 19-50 should only have 2 servings of dairy per day, and that a serving is 250mL of milk.

I guess that means that the only dairy Canadians between the ages of 2-9 and 19-50 are allowed to have is milk!

I can only imagine the party over at the BC Dairy Foundation.

Good thing the Guide lets me give myself and my children Chocolate Milk, 'cause like the BC Dairy Foundation says, "it's good for you" - 38lbs per year worth of Calories and gobs of sugar good for you!

In a country where it is now abnormal to have a healthy body weight and where children younger than 10 are developing type II diabetes, why bother recommending a Calorie free vitamin D supplement when instead you can recommend ice cold, "good for you", chocolate milk?

I bet she wins employee of the year!

Those folks both deserve a raise.

Think About Your Drink - a New Milk Info-Udy

If you haven't heard it yet, you'll hear it soon, the new mantra of milk ads, "Think about your drink". They have a website, a "study", and already ample media attention.

So why did I put the word study in quotations?

Because this report is to studies what infomercials are to commercials. I'll call it an info-udy

The info-udy is called, "What America Drinks: How Beverages Relate to Nutrient Intakes and Body Weight".

The first tip-off that something's up is the fact that this info-udy was not actually published in a medical journal but rather was,

"commissioned by the Milk Processor Education Program. What America Drinks is a component of an education campaign called Think About Your Drink."

The rest of the tip-offs come from the content. How's this line for objective empirical conclusions?

"The results of this study show that beverages make significant contributions to calorie and nutrient intakes of Americans. Milk provided Americans with a substantial portion of essential nutrients, while other types of beverages tended to contribute substantially to calories and added sugar intakes but provided few nutrients other than vitamin C, potassium and some folate"

Looking at their data, depending on the age group, milk actually is the second highest contributor of liquid calories to most diets, but of course, it's not spun that way.

Here's another oddity. The info-udy did something I've never seen before. They took their data, divided folks by age and sex and then subdivided by beverage intake, with two categories. The first category was "High Milk/Low Sweetened Beverage" consumers and the second was, "Low Milk/High Sweetened Beverage Consumers". They then drew conclusions from the body mass indices of these groups and concluded that folks who drank more milk weighed less that folks who drank more sugared beverages. Big problem here - they didn't bother controlling for anything else!

What if the folks who drank more milk did so because they were trying to live what they thought were healthier lifestyles (after all, milk's done a bang up job of marketing itself as a healthy choice)? Perhaps they were more active? Perhaps their dietary choices as a whole were lower in calories? The info-udy tries to suggest that they controlled for calorie intake, but with a dietary recall study, that's pretty much impossible.

Bottom line, when you hear the call to action, "Think About What you Drink", I'd advise you to, "Think About Where you Heard it".

So what's not in the report? How about the fact that higher dairy consumption has been shown to be linked with increased risks of ovarian cancer and increased severity of prostate cancer? How about the fact that higher dairy consumption has not been shown to minimize the risk of osteoperosis?

Oh, and if this type of info-udy and its reporting bothers you, if you feel that there's an obvious lack of objectivity, if you feel that the scientists involve should not be selling their good names for such clearly spun data, it might also bother you to learn that Susan Barr, the scientist who according to the report itself, "provided invaluable input on the design of the study and the analysis of the results" is a member of the 12-member advisory board to the revisions to the Canada's Food Guide - interestingly her official Food Guide bio doesn't mention her ties with Big Milk (she's a member of the medical advisory board for the International Dairy Foods Association)

No, our upcoming Food Guide couldn't possibly be influenced by conflicts of interest (please note the non-veiled sarcasm).

Chalk up another win for the marketing machine that is Big Milk!

Drink Lots and Lots of Milk!

Dairy is big business in Canada.

Last year's Canadian farm receipts from dairy totaled $4.8 billion which means as an industry, it likely contributes $15-20 billion dollars to the Canadian economy which definitely means we can refer to them as Big Dairy.

As noted in a prior post, Big Dairy takes their marketing very seriously and there's no disputing the fact that they're very good at it. Certainly if you were to ask folks on the street if milk was good for you, I imagine they would almost certainly say "Yes", that is unless you happen upon the chair of Nutrition at Harvard, Dr. Walter Willett.

Dr. Willett, when asked to review the draft Canada's Food Guide, seemed quite taken aback by its dairy recommendations. Here are his thoughts (I've added hyperlinks to pertinent research):

"Like the US Guideline, the draft Canadian guidelines advocate large amounts of dairy products. There is really not a credible scientific basis for this. The usual justification is that this will reduce osteoporosis and fractures, but large prospective studies (Study #1, Study #2), consistently show no benefit of high dairy consumption on fracture incidence.

The high dairy intake would not be a major issue if it were clearly safe. However, the US Guidelines completely ignored a very substantial body of data showing increased risks of aggressive and fatal prostate cancer with high dairy consumption (review article). Also, many studies have found increased risks of ovarian cancer with high dairy consumption. Although the findings for ovarian cancer have not been entirely consistent, a recent meta-analysis of prospective studies found about a 25% increase in ovarian cancer with lactose intake equivalent to three glasses of milk per day (in fact two meta-analyses concluded risk with high dairy intake, you can find the other study here).

Thus, there is actually more evidence to suggest harm than benefit from high dairy consumption. The exact amount that might be consumed with little risk is still not clear, but suggestion of three or four servings per day seem excessive given what we do know."

Health Canada was questioned in the House of Commons on Dr. Willett's Dairy comments. Here's what Health Canada officials had to say,

"We actually had somebody go through to do a review this morning, based on those quick notes that came to us. I feel very confident that the pattern we're putting forward absolutely does not create a risk for either of those diseases."

Fastest researcher in the West!

Let me ask you, which would you rather trust, the quick notes of a researcher with a clear conflict on interest (Here the Health Canada researcher has a clear conflict of interest because he or she would not want to report Health Canada's recommendations as being wrong the day Health Canada was summoned to the House of Commons to defend themselves), or the word of the man who actually conducted the studies, the second most cited scientist in the history of clinical medicine, arguably the world's leading nutritional epidemiologist and a man who has no vested interest whatsoever in what Health Canada recommends?

So why does the Food Guide love dairy so much? It's a strange love affair given the medical evidence showing more evidence of risk than benefit. It's a strange love affair given that dairy contributes over one third of the total amount of saturated fat in our diets. It's also a strange love affair given that roughly 10% of the population is lactose intolerant.

Good thing for Big Dairy that to counter the wealth of evidence that suggests we're recommending too much dairy, they've got representatives on virtually every level of the Food Guide's decision making process including the Guide's 12 member advisory committee. Imagine what might have happened to the recommendations if they didn't!

Monday: A Match NOT Made in Heaven - The 1997 Nutrient File and Canada's Food Guide working together to increase obesity

Yesterday: Eat Less Fruit and Vegetables - Amazingly that's part of Health Canada's new recommendations

Big Food Has a Seat

On January 20th, 2004 Health Canada kicked off the start to the 1992 Food Guide's revision with what I can gather from the photo on the left (from Health Canada's January 20th Meeting Page), a gala affair. It was in fact a by-invitation only meeting of "stakeholders".

Want to know who was invited?

A full 1/3 of all of the attendees represented the Food Industry, including:

Brewers of Canada

The Canadian Meat Council

The Canadian Sugar Institute

The Canola Council of Canada

The Confectionery Manufacturers Association of Canada

Dairy Farmers of Canada

Edible Oil Foods Association of Canada

Food and Consumer Products Manufacturers of Canada

Kellogg Canada Inc.

Refreshments Canada

Weston Bakeries Limited

The Beef Information Centre

[November 4th, 2007 - interesting, Health Canada has removed the list that was once online detailing the various "stakeholders", and in its place is the following paragraph:

"Invitees to the meeting included representatives from a broad range of national stakeholder organizations, such as health professional associations, non-governmental organizations, consumer groups, universities/academics, food industry and trade organizations and federal, provincial, territorial and municipal governments. Approximately 200 stakeholders were invited; about 110 stakeholders attended the meeting."

It's a shame I didn't save the list - I'll scrounge through my records and see if I printed it up)]

Now you might say to me that I'm being overly critical, that indeed the Food Industry are stakeholders and therefore should be told about the fact that the Food Guide's about to be revised. Surely the Food Guide is big business for the Food Industry. If the Guide changes its recommendations on what we should be eating, over time that will certainly be reflected in what Canadians purchase. That reflection might well enter into tens or hundreds of millions of dollars of either lost or earned revenues to the industries involved.

Fair enough, Big Food needs to know that the Food Guide's being revised....but do they really need to be involved in the revisions?

Shouldn't Health Canada's Food Guide's recommendations solely reflect what science and medicine understand to be the healthiest way for us to eat?

Shouldn't Big Food simply be advised as to what the recommendations are going to be?

Health Canada doesn't think so.

The Food Guide Advisory Committee, one of the top tiers of the revision process is a 12 member Committee where a full 25% of the members purely serve Big Food.

Here are some alternatives to the Big Food members' biographies on Health Canada's website:

1. Sydney Massey is the Nutrition Education Manager and Spokesperson for the BC Dairy Foundation.
   
   The same BC Dairy Foundation whose homepage right now has a link to a section entitled,

   "Don't tell Mom, but Chocolate Milk is good for you".

   The same BC Dairy Foundation whose stated mandate is,

   "BC Dairy Foundation (BCDF) is a not-for-profit organization with the mandate of increasing consumption of milk in British Columbia".

   The same Sydney Massey who when interviewed by the CBC regarding the meta-analysis that concluded that increased milk consumption was linked to increased risk of ovarian cancer said,

   "Well, you can show an association between wearing skirts and breast cancer, but it doesn't mean that wearing skirts causes breast cancer. It just means that there's something here we have to take a look at."

   Yeah, that darned International Journal of Cancer. Who do they think they are summarizing over 21 different studies to come to their conclusion.
   
   Do you think she can be objective about the Dairy recommendations of the Guide?
   
   
2. Sean McPhee leads an industry group representing 95,000 oilseed growers, oilseed producers and makers of oilseed-based food products. This is the same Sean McPhee who has his own website and company Sean McPhee & Associates. Here's what his website says he and his company are really good at,

   "Sean McPhee & Associates has an accomplished track record in using communication skills to help clients successfully manage issues that impact their business including genetic modification of foods, workers’ compensation reform, endocrine modulating substances, emerging environmental imperatives such as global warming, and international global trade negotiations. We have successfully capitalized on external issue developments, protecting market share and enabling clients to include astute issue management strategies into business plans."

   According to his website, it's not just the oilseed growers that Health Canada mentions that he represents. From his homepage,

   "We have helped clients successfully launch products in cutting edge new categories, build public support for high profile regulatory challenges, negotiate complex issues like global warming and genetically modified organisms, and manage communications for a number of sensitive mergers, acquisitions and divestitures.
   
   Our client experience includes consumer packaged goods, trade associations, financial services, professional services, food and beverage, biotechnology, chemicals, not-for-profit, environment and government."

   Sean is the Executive Director of the Vegetable Oil Industry of Canada (VOIC). They put out a press release expressing their joy when Sean was appointed to the advisory board. In that press release VOIC's position on the revisions is made very clear,

   "VOIC is calling on Health Canada to acknowledge and place a greater emphasis in Canada’s Food Guide on (a) promoting consumption of healthy plant-based fats which include liquid vegetable oils such as canola, soy, sunflower, corn, olive and peanut and (b) the inclusion of additional foods high in calcium such as fortified soy beverage and fortified margarine, a product that should be available to consumers."

   Does he sound objective to you?
   
   
3. Carolyn O'Brien at the time of her appointment to the advisory committee was the Director of Scientific & Regulatory Affairs at the Food and Consumer Products Manufacturers of Canada (FCPMC).
   
   According to the FCPMC, they are,

   "the largest industry association in Canada representing the food and consumer products industry."

   Interestingly on the FCPMC website, if you want to have a look at their Public Policy Initiatives you get asked for a username and password. Guess their public policy initiatives aren't meant to be seen by the public.
   
   I found their mandate on Agriculture and Agri-Foods Canada's website,

   "To enhance growth and competitiveness of the food and consumer products manufacturing industry."

   Wanna know who she represented? To see the complete list of FCPMC member companies, scroll to page 5 of the linked pdf. Highlights include Cadbury, Pepsi-Cola, The Canadian Salt Company, Coca-Cola, Con-Agra (KFC), Frito Lay, Breyers, Heinz, Humpty Dumpty Snack Foods, McCain, Minute Maid, Nestle, Redpath Sugars, Sara Lee and Voortman Cookies.
   
   I suppose it is safe to assume that Ms. O'Brien was very pleased that Health Canada wanted to ensure that Frito Lay and Coca-Cola have representation on the Food Guide Advisory Committee....after all, they are member corporations...umm, I mean"stakeholders".

In fact, the Food Industry is a stakeholder, but I think that its role as a stakeholder is to be informed of the decisions that Health Canada makes, not inform the decisions themselves.

I certainly can't blame the Food Industry for accepting their bizarre invitations to the table, nor would I blame them for a moment if during their involvement, they tried to protect their products and promote their sales - that's what industry does.

I can however blame Health Canada.

Canada's Food Guide is for all intents and purposes, something that we would call in medicine, a clinical practice guideline. It's supposed to be our best recommendations as to what people should eat to protect or improve their health. In order to ensure that bias doesn't enter into the development of a clinical practice guideline, the folks drawing up the guidelines must be free from conflict of interest lest their conflicts of interest impact on their recommendations.

I can't think of anyone with greater conflicts of interest in the creation of a Food Guide than the folks who sell and promote the food.

There is an irrefutable body of evidence that has taught us that what we eat affects how long we live and how well we live, and while I empathize with those companies where new recommendations may cause a decrease in sales, that's not even remotely a good enough excuse not to make those recommendations.

We're talking about people's lives here.

Frito-Lay should not have any say in what Canadians should eat.

Tomorrow: Broken from the Get Go - Get this, the new Food Guide is based off of current Canadian dietary patterns....where 40% of all vegetables consumed are potatoes with over half of the potatoes being consumed coming from french fries or potato chips. That seems smart.

Yesterday: Canada's Food Guide to Unhealthy Eating - An Overview

Big Milk

The milk industry is completely unscrupulous. Their claims range from of course, osteoporosis prevention, to weight loss, to PMS treatment and more.

Dr. Willett, in a critique of Canada's pending Food Guide (next week will be all Food Guide, all week and will highlight many of Dr. Willett's concerns on the nutritional deficiencies of the Food Guide and mine on the fact that it will almost certainly, if followed, lead you to gain weight) stated,

"the draft Canadian guidelines advocate large amounts of dairy products. There is really not a credible scientific basis for this. The usual justification is that this will reduce osteoporosis and fractures, but large prospective studies consistently show no benefit of high dairy consumption on fracture incidence."

and,

"The high dairy intake would not be a major issue if it were clearly safe. However, the US Guidelines completely ignored a very substantial body of data showing increased risks of aggressive and fatal prostate cancer with high dairy consumption. Also, many studies have found increased risks of ovarian cancer with high dairy consumption. Although the findings for ovarian cancer have not been entirely consistent, a recent meta-analysis of prospective studies found about a 25% increase in ovarian cancer with lactose intake equivalent to three glasses of milk per day."

But we'll get into all of this next week. Today's Funny Friday (I realize that's tough to see so far in this post)!

Today for your viewing pleasure I'm featuring milk commercials and their outrageous claims. One thing I can definitely say positively about the milk industry, they sure do make great ads.

1. Osteoporosis Prevention (from the California Fluid Milk Products Advisory Board)

2. PMS Prevention (from the Got Milk campaign)

3. Grow muscles and a giant balloon head (from the Milk, It Does a Body Good campaign)

4. Be "Big" and stop worrying about bullies (from the Milk, It Does a Body Good campaign)

They're even more unscrupulous in Japan....

5. Grow very tall.

6. Enhance your bust


Lastly, here's how the folks from the Family Guy perceive where milk ads are going.