Labour would ban junk food adverts during TV popular with children

Adverts for junk food and sweets will be banned from hit TV shows including The X Factor, Hollyoaks and Britain’s Got Talent under Labour plans to tackle childhood obesity.

A £250m-a-year fund aimed at making UK youngsters the healthiest in the world would also see investment in school nurses.

In an effort to tackle child mental health problems, the plan would support counselling services in primary and secondary schools. Adverts for unhealthy products high in fat, salt or sugar are already banned on children’s television. Labour’s plans would extend the prohibition to cover all programmes before the 9pm watershed.

Campaigners have argued that the existing ban does not cover TV programmes popular with youngsters but not specifically aimed at them.

Labour highlighted figures suggesting the move would reduce children’s viewing of junk food adverts by 82%. The move is part of a strategy to halve the number of overweight children within 10 years in an effort to curb the £6bn annual cost to the NHS of obesity.

The shadow health secretary, Jonathan Ashworth, said: “The scandal of child ill-health is a long-standing, growing and urgent challenge. It should be a matter of shame that a child’s health is so closely linked to poverty and that where and in what circumstances you grow up can dramatically affect your life chances.

“Evidence shows the link between deprivation and poor health in childhood, so with child poverty on the rise, the need for action becomes more acute. The UK has one of the worst childhood obesity rates in western Europe. Tooth decay is the single most common reason why children aged five to nine require admission to hospital. Around 13% of boys and 10% of girls aged 11-15 have mental health problems.

“When it comes to our children we should be ambitious. It’s time we invested properly in the health of the next generation. That means the sort of bold action we are outlining today to tackle obesity and invest in mental health provision. Labour will put children at the heart of our health strategy and put measures in place to make Britain’s children the healthiest in the world.”

The £250m child health fund would be paid for by halving the amount the NHS spends on management consultants each year, Labour claimed. The money would be used to expand the public health workforce and help with promotional schemes. The opposition said England has lost 8% of its health visitors since January 2016, and 15% of school nurses since 2010.

Within 100 days of a victory for Jeremy Corbyn on 8 June, Labour would produce a plan to halve childhood obesity within a decade. A new child health bill would write into law the ambition for the UK’s children to be the healthiest in the world and require all government departments to have a strategy in place.

An index of child health would measure progress against international standards and report annually on four key indicators: obesity, dental health, under-fives – including breastfeeding, immunisation and childhood mortality – and mental health.

Labour would ban junk food adverts during TV popular with children

Your Body Needs These Minerals if You Crave These Kinds of Junk Food

Your Body Needs These Minerals if You Crave These Kinds of Junk Food

Curbs on junk food ads No 1 priority in fighting childhood obesity, says study

Dramatic curbs on the advertising of junk food and drink to children is the policy measure that will be most effective in reducing the growing epidemic of childhood obesity, according to a group of more than 70 health experts.

The Food Foundation group calls for a ban on TV advertising of unhealthy food and drink up to the 9pm watershed and on sponsorship deals between companies that produce them and sports events like the Olympics. The recommendations come after complaints the government’s recently published childhood obesity strategy did not go far enough.

Anna Taylor, executive director of Food Foundation, a thinktank which led the year-long study, said: “While it is good to see concerted action by the government on reformulation of processed foods, we must, at the same time, take action to help our children eat fewer processed foods.

“Parents are fighting a losing battle if their children are being constantly bombarded with advertising which idealises fast food. Other countries have managed to control this. Why can’t we?”

Children are targeted in front of family TV programmes like The X-Factor and in their bedrooms and outside with friends via cyber games and Facebook ads on their smartphones, say experts.

Modern digital technology allows customised advertising, so that ads for snacks pop up at moments of heightened excitement for a child playing an online game, while McDonalds restaurants feature as important locations in Pokemon Go in Japan.

The 73 leading health and obesity experts from 41 organisations will say in a report to be launched in parliament next week that greater control of advertising and sponsorship by companies selling unhealthy food and drinks is the No 1 priority if the UK is to bring down the soaring obesity rate.

At present, advertising of foods described as high in fat, salt or sugar are banned in programmes predominately watched by children. But the experts will argue for greater restrictions, including a ban on all forms of non-broadcast advertising of these food and drinks to children.

The latest figures from the school measurement programme shows that one in five children in England is obese in year 6, the last year of primary school. One in three is either overweight or obese.

Experts are blaming high levels of advertising for soaring rates of childhood obesity. Photograph: McCrickard/REX Shutterstock

The experts have assessed the evidence for a large array of policies from around the world to develop England’s first food environment policy index, a measure of the effectiveness of the actions governments are taking. A similar index has already been published for other countries.

The next priority on the experts’ list is the nationwide implementation of the sugar tax by 2018. The third priority is an ongoing effort to reduce the sugar, fat and salt in processed food. Britain gets credit for the sugar tax, which is the number two policy on the experts’ list and will be brought in across the UK in 2018, and also for the work to reduce the sugar, fat and salt content of processed foods, which is third on their list.

But controls on advertising and sponsorship are even more urgently needed, say the experts, who include academics such as Profs Susan Jebb and Mike Rayner from the University of Oxford, Simon Capewell from the University of Liverpool, Corinna Hawkes and Geof Rayner from City, University of London, and Harry Rutter from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

Dr Tim Lobstein of the World Obesity Federation, a member of the expert panel, said food companies and advertisers would put up strong resistance to the changes, adding: “We know they will use any means to weaken and undermine such measures.

“We need stronger regulation to prevent secret lobbying, private political funding and pro-business bias at the heart of government”.

The Obesity Health Alliance, a coalition of more than 30 organisations, said: “The food and drink industry wouldn’t spend billions of pounds each year on advertising and marketing if it didn’t work. We know that the pester power of younger children and the spending power of teenagers is influenced by what they see on TV, the internet and on their phone.

“Failing to tackle junk food advertising is a failure to acknowledge the very real effect the environment has on our children’s habits and ultimately, obesity rates.”

Public Health England, which was commissioned by the government to review the evidence to inform its obesity strategy, found that in 2014, the food industry spent £256m promoting “unhealthy” products sold in retail alone. One of its key recommendations was to “significantly reduce opportunities to market and advertise high sugar food and drink products to children and adults across all media including digital platforms and through sponsorship”.

But the government ignored PHE’s advice. The childhood obesity strategy, launched after much delay this summer, omitted any mention of advertising or sponsorship by the fast food industry, such as occurred in the UK Olympics with Coca Cola and McDonalds.

At a childhood obesity summit last week, Richard Dobbs, a senior partner at the management consultancy firm McKinsey’s, which produced a major report on the interventions that are likely to help reduce obesity in November 2014, said broadcasters had lobbied against advertising curbs on junk food to children being included in the government’s obesity strategy. “Media restrictions were going to cost ITV £500m,” he told the meeting. “It is not surprising ITV fought this quite hard.”

The World Health Organisation’s Europe office recently warned of the increasing sophistication of digital advertising and called on all countries to take action to block the promotion of unhealthy food and drinks to children. Its report described the use of smartphone games and social media platforms to access children.

“Taken together, the creative tactics and analytics … equate to a brand appointing a personal marketer to each child, locating and identifying those who are most susceptible to their messages, encouraging them to send marketing messages to their friends, and following them throughout the day, at moments of happiness, frustration, hunger and intent, delivering advertising with the maximum impact, and directing them to the nearest place to buy foods to ‘fix’ their current emotional state.”

The Committee of Advertising Practice launched a consultation on restrictions on the non-broadcasting advertising of food and drink to children, including online, in May and is expected to report next month.

How others are tackling obesity

Other rich countries have taken bold measures to face up to the obesity challenge.

Canadian province of Quebec took a tough line on advertising to children as early as 1980. All ads for food products as well as toys aimed at under-13s were banned from all types of media, including radio, television, the web, mobile phones, printed materials, signage and promotional material.

Experts think it paid off. French speaking families in Quebec were 19% less likely to eat fast food compared with those living in Ontario and spent 46% less on fast food, according to a household expenditure survey in 2007. Quebec has the lowest rates of childhood obesity in Canada.

France opted for a “soda tax” which, despite lobbying from industry,was imposed on drinks with added sugar and also with artificial sweeteners in January 2012. The tax of around 11 cents per 1.5 litres of drink, raises around €400m (£344m) a year. Soft drink sales dropped by 3.3% in 2012 and 3.4% in 2013. The French treasury is now considering whether to introduce a tax on fatty foods.

Sweden has taken action on school meals, with legislation in 2011 requiring them to be nutritious and free. The nutritional quality of the meals, calorie content and portion sizes are laid down for each age group. Water and milk are the only permitted drinks.

Schools and local authorities can evaluate the meals through a website called SkolmatSverige (School Food Sweden), where there are also questionnaires for the pupils and staff who eat the lunches.

Scotland is planning to introduce a good food nation bill, with a consultation in 2017. It promises to address procurement, waste, health, education and social justice. Groups are lobbying for farming and fishing to be included too.

Curbs on junk food ads No 1 priority in fighting childhood obesity, says study

Junk food shortening lives of children worldwide, data shows

Junk food and sugary drinks are taking an enormous toll on children around the world, with soaring numbers who are obese and millions developing conditions such as type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure previously seen only in adults, data has revealed.

Children were facing crippling illnesses and shortened lives because of the spread of the heavily marketed fast-food culture, experts said, and health services around the world would struggle to cope. They predicted that the UN target to stop the rise of childhood obesity by 2025 would be missed.

Among the countries facing the worst scenarios were Egypt – where more than a third (35.5%_ of children aged five to 17 were overweight or obese in 2013 – Greece (31.4%), Saudi Arabia (30.5%), the United States (29.3%), Mexico (28.9%) and the UK (27.7%).

More than 3.5 million children now had type 2 diabetes, which was once unknown in this age group and can lead to horrible complications in later life, such as amputations and blindness. The World Obesity Federation, which compiled the data, predicted that number would rise to 4.1 million by 2025.

About 13.5 million children have impaired glucose tolerance, which is a precursor to diabetes. Around 24 million have high blood pressure and more than 33 million have fatty liver disease as a result of obesity, which is more often associated with alcoholism and can lead to cirrhosis and liver cancer.

If anything, the experts said, the figures were an under-estimate because they were based on the numbers of obese children, and some who were classified as overweight would also have the diseases.

The figures are alarming for rich and poor countries alike, signalling soaring medical bills to treat the coming epidemic of disease. But the WOF experts who compiled the data said that, while rich countries were struggling, poorer countries were ill-equipped to cope.

Child obesity incidences

“These forecasts should sound an alarm bell for health service managers and health professionals,” said Tim Lobstein, policy director of the World Obesity Federation. “They will have to deal with this rising tide of ill health following the obesity epidemic.

“In a sense we hope these forecasts are wrong: they assume current trends continue but we are urging governments to take strong measures to reduce childhood obesity, and meet their agreed target of getting the levels of childhood obesity down to 2010 levels before we get to 2025.”

By 2025, say the experts whose findings are published in the journal Pediatric Obesity, 49 million more children will be obese or overweight than in 2010, the year from which the UN said there should be no further increase in obesity – a total of 268 million worldwide. By then, 91 million of these children will be obese.

Lobstein, one of the authors of the paper published ahead of World Obesity Day next Tuesday , said the food children are now eating is at the heart of the problem and that in poor countries, obesity and stunting go hand in hand.

“We find that the large majority of children suffering excess bodyweight are in low- and middle-income countries. Following the recent evidence from the World Bank on the continuing high levels of stunting in children in underdeveloped regions of the world, it is obvious that something is severely wrong with the way our food supplies are developing,” said Lobstein.

“You cannot replace contaminated water with Coca-Cola or Chocolate Nesquik, or a lack of good meals with a pack of fortified noodles, and still expect children to grow healthily. Breastfeeding is rapidly giving way to infant formula in large areas of Asia where markets have tripled in value in a decade – an area where we have seen some of the most rapid increases in overweight and obesity.

“Stunting and obesity are part of a continuum of poor nutrition, and can be found together in the same communities, the same families, and even the same individual children. Health is a key factor in sustainable development, and healthy food supplies are essential for economic development. Healthy food supplies are also a basic human right for this and the next generation.”

In the past 10 years, consumption of sugary drinks worldwide increased by a third. More than half of the world’s population now live in urban environments, while 80% of young people aged 11-17 fail to get sufficient physical activity.

The President of the World Obesity Federation, Professor Ian Caterson called for governments to take tough regulatory action to stop junk food companies targeting children.

“The obesity epidemic has reached virtually every country in the world, and overweight and obesity levels are continuing to rise in most places,” he said. “Common risk factors, such as soft drink consumption and sedentary environments, have increased. Fast food advertising continues to really influence food choices and what is eaten, and increasing numbers of families live in urban environments without access to space to exercise or time to exercise.

“If governments hope to achieve the WHO target of keeping child obesity at 2010 levels, then the time to act is now. Governments can take a number of actions to help prevent obesity, including introducing tough regulations to protect children from the marketing of unhealthy food, ensuring schools promote healthy eating and physical activity, strengthening planning and building rules to provide safe neighbourhoods, and monitoring the impact of these policies.”

Additional reporting by Pamela Duncan

Junk food shortening lives of children worldwide, data shows

Kids" school packed lunches still full of junk food, research finds

Parents are still packing their children’s school lunchboxes with junk food, despite high-profile awareness campaigns on childhood obesity and guidance provided by consumer groups, research has found.

The Leeds University study published on Tuesday found just 1.6% of packed lunches for primary school children met tough nutritional standards set for their classmates eating in the school canteen.

About half of all primary school pupils take a packed lunch to school. Researchers found that only 1 in 5 lunchboxes contained any vegetables or salad, while 52%-60% contained too many sweet and savoury snacks, or sugary drinks (42%), leading to high levels of saturated fat, sugar and salt and not enough minerals and vitamins.

The study, described as “eye opening” by lead researcher Dr Charlotte Evans, saw only a fractional improvement from a decade ago, when 1.1% of lunches passed the standard set for school meals. The minority of children (17%) who eat vegetables and salad had not altered since 2006, it found.

The report found some progress: for instance the majority of packed lunches examined by researchers passed the standards for protein (95%) and vitamin C (75%). There was also a significant reduction in sugary drinks, 46% in 2016 compared with 61%, and a reduction in chocolate-based snacks. But there was no improvement for savoury snacks, such as crisps, found in 60% of packed lunches.

Three out of the 300-odd lunchboxes examined by researchers, in 12 different English primary schools, scored zero – a similar proportion to that found in 2006. One contained blackcurrant squash, a packet of hula hoops and a chocolate roll.

The first statutory school meal standard was introduced in 2006 due to growing evidence linking poor health in adults with obesity or poor diet in children. They limit the amount of foods high in salt, sugar and fats and stipulate that school meals should provide a third of a child’s nutritional requirements. However, although Ofsted says schools must have a policy on packed lunches, there is no law requiring them to abide by the same standards.

Evans, a nutritional epidemiologist, said that she believed the wealth of information on sugar in sweetened drinks may have had an impact on the reduction in the numbers in lunchboxes. But she added that more needed to be done by retailers, food manufacturers and schools if improvements are to be made overall.

Evans said: “I hope the results of the study are an eye-opener, highlighting that more stringent policies need to be introduced if we want to see real change in the nutritional value of children’s packed lunches. New policies for schools, food manufacturers and retailers are needed, which will require strong support from government and stakeholders if progress is to be made.”

The report recommends that primary schools introduce a policy restricting sweetened drinks and encouraging water, salad and fruit. It also suggested parents pack smaller portions of the unhealthy snacks, such as packets of crisps that are around 15g rather than 26g and chocolate cakes and biscuits of 20g. More choices of snacks low in saturated fats and sugars and higher in fibre were needed, it said.

The children’s lunches that met the standard all contained sandwiches with a protein filling and some salad.

Evans said: “Parents struggle, and there are many reasons why children don’t have better quality lunches – cost, peer pressure, convenience, time. Providing information to parents is a start.

“However, we do need to do more than provide information to parents to see a greater impact, such as improving school policies, reformulating products and reducing portions of snacks given to young children. For example, providing a small portion of crisps in a sealed container rather than the full bag.”

Few packed lunches met the standards for energy (12%), vitamin A (17 %), iron (26%) or zinc (16%), due to the lack of fresh salad and vegetables, the dearth of non-processed meat or fish as well as the lack of whole-grain bread.

Sharon Hodgson MP, chair of the all-party parliamentary group for school food, said: “The research highlights the need for more action to be taken on food put in children’s packed lunches, something which the school food APPG has recently called for. Despite positive moves with regards to the food provided as part of a school meal, food brought in by children in their packed lunches is lagging behind. Therefore we need more action to be taken if we want to see positive changes.”

Flora, which commissioned the research, is calling on the government to raise awareness and to do more to ensure the national standards for school food are being met in packed lunches. It has distributed 631,000 lunchboxes containing a healthy lunch planner and made available tips online.

Kids" school packed lunches still full of junk food, research finds

Failure to curb junk food ads ‘will hinder parents’ in fight against obesity

A failure to limit the way the junk food industry promotes itself to young people will make life far harder for parents trying to give children a nutritious diet, according to the royal society set up to improve public health.

Related: Theresa May’s climbdown on obesity is her first big mistake | Jackie Ashley

Experts in child health had hoped that the government’s long-awaited plan for fighting childhood obesity would include a comprehensive commitment to rein in the power of the food industry to advertise its more unhealthy products to children.

But, while the Department of Health is understood to have been supportive of the commitment, it was omitted from the plan unveiled last week during the summer recess following intervention by No 10. The decision dismayed many in the public health sector.

The watered-down plan, nine months in the making, was seen as a major victory for the fast food and fizzy drinks industries which have lobbied vigorously against measures that would stop them advertising at key times. Originally due to be unveiled by David Cameron, the revised plan under Theresa May’s new government has been savaged by TV chef Jamie Oliver and health bodies for not going nearly far enough.

Public Health England had produced a large body of evidence that suggested tackling the way the food and drinks companies target children was vital if the plan was to have an impact. But the government’s decision to ignore the evidence represents a huge missed opportunity, according to Shirley Cramer, chief executive of the Royal Society for Public Health (RSPH), which conducted interviews with children and their parents on what needed to be done.

“Everybody was advocating very hard for a ban on advertising junk food before the watershed and for family-based programmes like The X Factor,” Cramer said. “We’ve done quite a lot of research talking to young people who tell us that this – the stuff they see online, on bus tickets on posters near their school – makes an enormous difference. People are worried about the promotions, about the advertising. It’s all about pester power – 75% of parents we spoke to said their kids had seen an ad and they’d give in after half an hour of pestering.”

Cramer described the government plan as a good one but with “some big bits missing”. Only if a range of relevant government departments were to commit to preventative measures could the mounting problem of childhood obesity be adequately tackled, she suggested.

“If you look at teen pregnancies, that was a committed, longstanding strategy that went on for 10 years and now we’ve got the outcomes that are much better than predicted. If you really mean to do something about childhood obesity you can, but you need to get all these things working at the same time.”

The failure to constrain the advertising power of the fast food industry would make the job of councils trying to fight obesity all the more difficult, Cramer said. “For a local authority trying to take action against child obesity it doesn’t make their life easier. Junk food will still be advertised everywhere. It means the fight against childhood obesity will be much harder.”

She also echoed concerns expressed by some supermarket chains that voluntary plans to reduce sugar amounts in food would fail. “If you make it mandatory then, in a competitive sense, everyone knows where they stand. If it’s voluntary then the companies who do something will feel, ‘well the other guys aren’t doing it’. It needs to be a level playing field. We’ve got to do what we did with salt. The evidence is clear: most kids who are overweight or obese get their calories from sugar-sweetened beverages.”

Nearly 10% of all four- to five-year-olds and almost 20% of 10- to 11-year-olds are obese ,according to official figures. Obesity-related health issues now cost the NHS almost £5bn a year. The RSPH reports that half of all adults are predicted to be obese by 2050, more than doubling NHS costs to £10bn a year and with wider economic costs to the nation of almost £50bn.

“If we can reduce the number of children who are obese and therefore the number of adults who are obese we will not only be saving lives but saving the NHS money,” Cramer said.

Failure to curb junk food ads ‘will hinder parents’ in fight against obesity

Olympics are a carnival of junk food marketing, say campaigners

Campaigners have attacked junk food marketing by sponsors of the Olympic Games in Rio, claiming that companies are once more using the sporting event to promote unhealthy high-fat and sugar products.

Sponsorship of the London Olympics by Coca-Cola and McDonald’s was fiercely criticised four years ago. In Brazil, Team GB is sponsored by Kellogg’s, whose Olympics marketing theme is “Great Starts”. But many of the breakfast cereals it is promoting, such as Frosties and Coco Pops, are high in sugar, said the Children’s Food Campaign.

“We know first hand from London 2012 what a carnival of junk food marketing the Olympics are,” said Malcolm Clark, coordinator of the campaign.

South Africa’s Olympic champion swimmer Chad le Clos launching a Coca-Cola campaign. Photograph: Mirco Toniolo/Rex Shutterstock

“And we are seeing it again this time, with almost all Kellogg’s Games-related marketing currently promoting high-sugar, less healthy products; with Coca-Cola’s global #thatsgold ad giving twice as much screen time to red, full-sugar Coke as to Coke Life and Coke Zero Sugar combined; and with the emergence of limited edition Brazilian flag-coloured M&M’s and other sugary products which associate themselves with the Games.

“Only Aldi supermarket’s advertising campaign, with its focus on British produce, including fresh fruit and vegetables, seems to buck the trend and promote demonstrably healthier products.”

The campaign has complained to the Advertising Standards Authority over what it says are unsubstantiated health claims by Kellogg’s and its use of the word “nutritious” on its Olympics promotional website.

It has also taken issue with the director general of the Food and Drink Federation (FDF), Ian Wright, who said in an interview that Coca-Cola and McDonald’s, sponsors of the 2012 Olympics, were very responsible companies and that any controversy emanated from western countries. “Asian and Latin American countries have no problem with companies that behave responsibly,” he said in an article in Campaign magazine.

Public health experts from around the world took issue with Wright.

Members of the Turkmenistan team eat McDonald’s food inside the Rio Olympic village. Photograph: Kai Pfaffenbach/Reuters

“The Food and Drink Federation’s statement is outrageous, and wrong,” said Dr Fabio Gomes, a Brazilian public health nutritionist and World Health Organisation regional adviser on nutrition. “If these companies did indeed act responsibly they would not advertise to children, they would not send their licensed clowns to Brazilian schools to hook children on their brands and products and they would not promote sugary drinks and energy-dense products that are not recommended by Brazil’s official food-based dietary guidelines.”

“We find the UK Food and Drink Federation’s comments to be offensive,” said Alejandro Calvillo Unna, the spokesperson for the Mexican NGO El Poder del Consumidor (Consumer Power).

Related: Junk food TV ads make children hungry and tempted, charity finds

“In Latin America, these two companies – Coca-Cola and McDonald’s – represent one of the main vectors of the obesity and diabetes epidemic in our region. They deny the scientific evidence about the harm their products generate, they manipulate children, use misleading advertising and invest millions of dollars in lobbying to impede the development of policy measures in countries that are working to combat obesity and chronic disease.”

Tim Lobstein, the policy director at the World Obesity Federation, said: “Child obesity is rising rapidly in developing economies and the last thing the children need are inducements to consume more junk food. The Olympic Games should be a beacon of human progress and ability, not a place where poor nutrition is given a halo of gold.”

Wright stood by his comments, the FDF said. “The recent, groundbreaking McKinsey report ranked the most effective interventions to tackle obesity worldwide – portion control and reformulation of foods came out top, with restrictions on sports sponsorship nowhere on the list.

“At a time when public health budgets are shrinking, restricting sports sponsorship from food and drink companies – whether of grassroots sport or international competitions – would result in less physical activity, not more.”

Swimmers in the Serpentine in London’s Hyde Park pass a Kellogg’s-branded sculpture of the British swimmer Rebecca Adlington. Photograph: Rex Shutterstock

A Kellogg’s spokesperson said: “Kellogg’s products can be found in eight out of 10 British households and many athletes eat breakfast cereal as part of a balanced diet and that’s why we are proud to be an official sponsor of Team GB.

“We offer a wide range of breakfast cereals and cereal snacks with varying amounts of sugar all of which are clearly labelled; our cereals provide 3% to 10% of the recommended daily allowance of sugar while our snacks 5% to 20%.

“We strongly believe an all-encompassing approach is needed to tackle obesity. That’s why we are playing our part by listening to our shoppers and launching new foods and adapting the recipes of our existing products to give people more of what they want and less of what they don’t want.”

Olympics are a carnival of junk food marketing, say campaigners

Which junk foods can you eat for only 250 calories?

^{Double the burger to double the calories (ALAMY)}

A total Mcdonalds hamburger is 250 calories. Although in Burger King a hamburger contains 274 calories. Nevertheless, plump for a Big Mac burger at Macdonalds and the calorie count practically doubles, to 490. Similarly a Double Whopper burger at Burger King contains practically 900 calories.

Two bags of crisps

^{The king of crisps Monster Munch (ALAMY)}

You can eat two bags of Monster Munch for 250 calories – a typical bag contains 108 calories. And virtually three bags of Wotsits, as a typical bag contains just 95 calories. You can consume a bag and a half of Walkers salt and vinegar crisps before you attain 250 calories. A single bag includes 181 calories.

A portion of chips

_{The humble chip (ALAMY)}

You can consume your way by way of a full serving of McCain oven cooked chips for less than 250 calories. A typical 60 gram serving consists of roughly 120 calories. Meanwhile a little portion of chips at MacDonalds consists of 230 calories, even though a normal ‘medium’ dimension, includes 330 calories. Burger King and KFC’s standard chip portions are slightly reduced in calories, at 277 and 308 calories respectively.

5 Jaffa Cakes

^{Five Jaffa Cakes is never ever enough (PAUL COOPER)}

Jaffa cakes contain 46 calories so you could eat far more than 5 of them prior to you hit 250 calories. Milk chocolate digestive biscuits are higher in their calorie material – each and every biscuit contains 84 calories so you could have just significantly less than 3 biscuits. The very same applies to Jammy Dodgers. While could only have two milk chocolate HobNobs – every biscuit is made up of 92 calories.

12 Jelly Babies

_{A 20 calorie Jelly Little one (ALAMY)}

Every Jelly Baby is made up of 20 calories so you could consume 12. Or Percy Pig sweets – as every a single has 25 calories. Approximately half a normal size bag of Haribo Sweets is 250 calories. Every bag is 160 grams, and one hundred grams of Haribo includes 344 calories. There are 352 calories in one hundred grams of Jelly Babies – so you could consume roughly 3 quarters of a pack.

Two slices of pizza

^{Pizza (Rii Schroer)}

There are 151 calories in every slice of Domino’s massive cheese and tomato pizza so you would only be in a position to consume just beneath two slices. The very same applies to pizzas from Pizza Hut.
A classic Margherita pizza at Pizza Express includes roughly 680 calories – so you could eat nearly a third of it.
Alternatively, you could eat far more than half a shop-bought Margherita pizza – Tesco’s each day cheese and tomato pizza includes 423 calories.

Six scoops of ice cream

Every single scoop of Wall’s soft scoop vanilla ice cream contains around 40 calories – so you could consume far more than six ahead of you attain 250 calories.Carte D’or’s vanilla ice cream has a equivalent about of calories in it.
You could have nearly 3 scoops of Ben and Jerry’s chocolate fudge brownie ice cream – with each and every scoop containing approximately a hundred calories. And could practically consume a complete Magnum ice cream – a single contains 260 calories.

Half a slice of birthday cake

^{Did you mean half a birthday cake or half a slice? (ALAMY)}

Tesco’s big chocolate birthday cake is made up of a lot more than 3,780 calories so you could have significantly less than one particular slice, or one/15th of the cake. Sainsbury’s ‘seriously chocolatey cake’ consists of 331 calories a slice. Their Satisfied Birthday Madeira cake includes 279 calories in a slice – related in calorie content to Waitrose’s ‘Happy Birthday’ chocolate cake which consists of 287 calories a slice. Sainsbury’s chocolate tray bake will give you a slice for 223 calories.

Which junk foods can you eat for only 250 calories?

Preview clip: Harry Wallop investigates junk meals advertising for Channel 4 Dispatches

The forthcoming episode of Dispatches on Channel four seems at how junk food items are marketed to shoppers in the Uk.

Presented by The Telegraph’s Harry Wallop, Tricks of the Junk Meals Company sees Harry and his colleagues invent a fake brand of large-sugar drink aimed at young children.

Armed with a bottle of the luridly-coloured Orange Beast, the programme makers go undercover and offer marketing companies the likelihood to industry the solution to children.

‘Secrets of the Junk Food Business’ on Channel 4 at 8pm on Monday 2 June

Preview clip: Harry Wallop investigates junk meals advertising for Channel 4 Dispatches

Junk food apps to entice kids "must be banned"

Dr Haiming Hang, of the University of Bath, called for regulation to manage the games, which are legal.

“There are basic ethical queries to be addressed,” he explained. “The Government needs to enforce labelling and introduce regulation on a par with television advertising. Organizations are manipulating youngsters into wanting foods and drinks that are substantial in salt, sugar and excess fat.”

They have been developed by a quantity of firms, such as McDonald’s and Coca-Cola.

Because 2007, businesses have been banned from advertising meals higher in unwanted fat, salt and sugar throughout children’s television programmes.

The regulation was brought in by Ofcom, the media regulator, but the ban does not lengthen to the internet.

Coca-Cola, which created games with McDonald’s, mentioned they had been aimed at young children aged 13 or over. McDonald’s said only its brand was noticeable in the game.

Junk food apps to entice kids "must be banned"

Junk foods prior to falling pregnant raises premature birth chance: research

Researchers at Robinson Study Institute investigated the dietary patterns of much more than 300 South Australian in the twelve months just before they conceived.

The outcomes were published in The Journal of Nutrition.

Dr Jessica Grieger, Posdoctoral Analysis Fellow with the Robinson Analysis Institute, based at the Lyell McEwin Hospital, and lead writer explained: “Preterm birth is a top result in of infant ailment and death and occurs in approximately 1 in 10 pregnancies globally.

“Anything at all we can do to greater understand the conditions that lead to preterm birth will be important in helping to improve survival and lengthy-term wellness outcomes for youngsters.

“In our examine, women who ate protein-wealthy meals like lean meats, fish and chicken, as properly as fruit, whole grains and veggies, had significantly lower risk of preterm birth.

“On the other hand, females who consumed mainly discretionary foods, such as takeaway, potato chips, cakes, biscuits, and other foods substantial in saturated fat and sugar had been far more likely to have infants born preterm.

“It is critical to consume a healthful diet ahead of as well as during pregnancy to assistance the best outcomes for the mum and child.

“Diet is an important danger issue that can be modified. It is in no way too late to make a positive modify. We hope our function will help advertise a healthy diet prior to and in the course of pregnancy. This will aid to reduce the quantity of neonatal deaths and increase the general overall health of young children.”

Infants born prematurely are at better risk of cerebral palsy, breathing difficultites, deafness and blindess, even so most of these issues are linked with severely prematurity of much less than 30 weeks gestation.

So-named late premature babies, born 32 to 38 weeks gestation are still at danger of needing antibiotics, having breathing troubles, struggling minimal blood sugar and could demand admission to intensive care, other studies have identified.

Late pre-phrase infants are more likely to develop asthma later in childhood than infants born at total-term.

Cathy Warwick, common secretary of the Royal University of Midwives, said the analysis proves the significance of giving women and girls wellness info when even they are not pregnant.

“It is essential that we get these messages out to schools and colleges and females at each opportunity in anticipation of pregnancy.

“The Royal College of Midwives along with the Royal University of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists have prolonged talked about the need for pre-conception overall health solutions but the is a dilemma with resources. If we can invest in these preventive measures and prevent preterm labour then there will be large price savings later on on.”

Dr Grieger will current her research findings at the upcoming SA Yearly Scientific Meeting of the Australian Society for Health-related Investigation throughout ASMR Medical Analysis Week on Wednesday.

Junk foods prior to falling pregnant raises premature birth chance: research

Junk meals is today"s gruel, physicians warn

Junk meals has become the modern day equivalent of gruel, public health professionals have explained as they urge David Cameron to act on the rising numbers of kids struggling from hunger and malnutrition.

Medical professionals mentioned the “spectre of Oliver Twist” was now looming over the United kingdom with far more households getting low-cost processed food items because they could not afford to acquire and cook healthful fare for their kids.

In the letter published in The Lancet, 170 public wellness pros contact for the creation of a functioning group to monitor nutrition and hunger, stating: “The reality is that several hardworking households in the Uk are residing in poverty and do not have ample cash flow for a good diet program.”

The authors, led by Prof John Ashton, President of the Faculty of Public Health, say escalating numbers of poor families are stuck in a “vicious cycle” of poor diets and bad overall health, which is fuelling worrying rises in illnesses this kind of as obesity and diabetes.

“We have to encounter an uncomfortable reality: we may be facing a public well being emergency in the United kingdom,” mentioned Prof John Ashton. “The spectre of Oliver Twist is back. Kids are going hungry in the Uk: they may possibly not be eating gruel but their parents are obtaining to choosing low cost meals that is filling but not nutritious.”

The authors, who incorporate Dr Tony Jewell, former chief healthcare officer of Wales, Dr Adam Bryson former health-related director NHS companies Scotland, and Dr Alan Maryon-Davis, Hononary Professor of Public Wellness at Kings School College of Medication, say growing food expenses are increasing pressures on the poorest families.

The letter says: “During the past five many years, food has been one particular of the three top variables in price tag inflation, enough to fear even greater-income shoppers. This inflation has translated into households cutting back on fresh fruit and vegetables and getting inexpensive, sweet, fatty, salty, or processed meals that require little cooking. A vicious circle is set in movement, with poorer men and women possessing worse diets and contributing to the worrying rise in obesity, diabetes, and other dietary-connected illnesses.”

Junk meals is today"s gruel, physicians warn

Jamie Oliver calls for crackdown on junk meals being offered close to colleges

Jamie’s School Dinners in 2005 exposed how a lot unhealthy meals pupils had been served at school at lunchtimes. Photograph: Joerg Carstensen/DPA/Corbis

Campaigning chef Jamie Oliver has demanded a crackdown on the “crazy” policy of fast meals premises opening close to schools, as element of a renewed drive to tackle childhood weight problems.

Outlets currently being licensed to commence offering unhealthy items near colleges was completely at odds with the government’s investment in foods schooling and school lunches, Oliver said.

“I do find it entirely crazy that we do all this tough function in a single part of government while at the exact same time you’ve received other parts of government locally and nationally which are still permitting any old junk meals operator to open up inside of spitting distance of a school,” said Oliver. “That, to me, is madness.”

He also urged ministers to draw up a hard new blueprint to reverse the trend of growing weight problems and to appoint a figurehead to drive via changes.

“Optimistic social change is not that far away and I consider it truly is not that difficult but what demands to be done is for about 50 or 60 separate decisions and initiatives to happen at when, all followed by a 5-year strategy. The one particular point that will make a change is tons of changes.”

In an appeal for “leadership and vision” from all political events on what he known as “the shocking rise in diet-connected diseases and weight problems”, Oliver added: “Let’s see if we have one particular pioneer, one particular visionary who’s going to place prevention [of childhood weight problems] at the heart of its campaign”.

Oliver’s Channel four series Jamie’s School Dinners in 2005, which exposed how considerably unhealthy meals pupils have been served at college at lunchtimes, prompted the Labour government to introduce much more nutritious school meals in England.

Jamie Oliver calls for crackdown on junk meals being offered close to colleges

Young children are currently being "bombarded" by junk food ads, study has found

Campaigners want a ban on junk meals ads to be extended to the whole broadcast output shown ahead of the 9pm watershed. Photograph: Jean Michel Foujols/Corbis

Children are getting “bombarded” with as a lot of as eleven advertisements for junk meals during an hour’s viewing of family-orientated television shows this kind of as X-Factor, The Simpsons and Hollyoaks, study has located.

Campaigners are calling for the ban on the marketing of items higher in sugar, salt or unwanted fat – which at the moment only applies in the course of children’s programmes – to be extended to the whole broadcast output shown before the 9pm watershed. An alliance of organisations, Action on Junk Food Marketing, is urging ministers to near what it calls “a glaring loophole in junk meals advertising and marketing”.

The findings stem from an analysis of 784 adverts on well-liked ITV and Channel four displays throughout 20.75 hours of programming amongst October and December 2013 by Rosa Whalen and Emma Boyland of Liverpool University’s psychological sciences department. KFC, Lindt, Haribo, Coca-Cola and Cadbury, as well as the Aldi and Morrisons supermarket chains, have been amongst the manufacturers marketing their products.

“Parents will not assume their children to be bombarded with advertisements for unhealthy meals during primetime tv, but which is specifically what transpires,” explained Simon Gillespie, chief executive of the British Heart Basis.

A government spokesman said the principles had been becoming kept below overview and it recognised the calls for improved restrictions on junk foods promoting.

Young children are currently being "bombarded" by junk food ads, study has found

Our Favorite Junk Meals are Modifying

Our favorite junk foods are modifying.  Thanks to government mandates, foods activists, and buyer pressures, big organizations like, Kraft, PepsiCo, Subway, Chick-fill-A, Pizza Hut, and Starbucks are removing some of the artificial ingredients found in the junk foods they market place.  Some of the ingredients currently being eliminated from our favourite junk meals are higher-fructose corn syrup, trans fats, artificial preservatives, sugars, and salt.

Our favourite junk meals are changing

A variety of main foods companies are working at modifying the ingredients of the junk meals they promote due to customer demands, governmental intervention, and response to criticism by foods activists.  The following are some of the modifications companies have made to their foods merchandise:

• At some locations, Pizza Hut is getting rid of an ingredient from their dinner rolls an ingredient also recognized to be utilized in yoga mats.
  


• Chick-fill-A will no longer serve chicken raised on antibiotics.


• Kraft Foods is getting rid of sorbic acid, an artificial ingredient utilized in White American Single and American slices of cheese.


• PepsiCo got rid of the flame retardant, brominated vegetable oil from Gatorade.


• Starbucks will no longer have bug-based mostly dye, cochineal extract on their menu.


• Close to two dozen foods firms, like Butterball and Heinz cut down on the sodium material of their items.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is focusing on processed meals made with trans fat.  Final 12 months, the FDA posted a consumer update.  They stated the following about trans body fat:

“Trans body fat has been linked to an improved threat of coronary heart illness, in which plaque builds up within the arteries and might result in a heart assault.  The Centers for Illness Management and Prevention estimates that a more reduction of trans excess fat in the food supply can stop an additional seven,000 deaths from heart condition each and every year and up to 20,000 heart attacks each year.”

Bloggers and customers increase awareness

Our favourite junk foods are modifying nonetheless, when and why?  In accordance to nutritionist, Ashley Koff, RD, organizations are reformulating the substances in the junk meals they industry in order to sell more rather than altruistic reasons.  Here’s what Ashley has to say about the new modifications:

“I fundamentally really do not believe a firm will reformulate unless of course they can promote a lot more merchandise.  What we’re seeing is due to the fact of a increasing contingency of concern by buyers, supported by bloggers and professionals raising awareness.  We need to have to shell out interest to that portion, and look at the time frame.  Subway has explained they’ll get rid of [azodicarbonamide], but they really don’t provide a date by which they are performing it, and they’re not saying they’ll supply meat raised with out antibiotics.  They could be undertaking so a lot far more.”

Hold in mind, even though Kraft Foods is generating some minor alterations to the elements in their foods, they nonetheless have a big quantity of items they industry that are not all-natural.

Read through a lot more of George Zapo’s articles pertaining to public, international, and environmental overall health at his web site: georgezapo.com.

Our Favorite Junk Meals are Modifying

The Problems With "Scientific" Investigation These days: A Lot Which is Published Is Junk

(Photograph credit score: Wikipedia)

By Henry I. Miller and S. Stanley Young

Many non-scientists are puzzled and dismayed by the continually changing tips that comes from medical and other researchers on numerous problems.  One week, coffee causes cancer the subsequent, it prevents it. Where should we set the LDL threshold for taking statins to avert cardiovascular illness?  Does the radiation from cell phones cause brain tumors?

Some of that confusion is due to the top quality of the evidence, which is dependent on a number of factors, although some is due to the nature of science itself: We form hypotheses and then complete experiments to check them as the information accumulate and different hypotheses are rejected, we grow to be more confident about what we think we know.

But it may possibly also be due to present state of science.   Scientists themselves are turning out to be increasingly concerned about the unreliability – that is, the lack of reproducibility — of many experimental or observational final results.

Investigators who execute analysis in the laboratory have a higher degree of handle over the situations and variables of their experiments, an integral part of the scientific strategy.  If there is significant doubt about the final results, they can repeat the experiment.  In standard, the much more iterations, the much more self confidence about the accuracy of the results.  Finally, if the final results are sufficiently novel and intriguing, the researchers submit a description of the experiments to a trustworthy journal, exactly where, after assessment by editors and expert referees, it is published.

Hence, researchers do the perform and, in theory at least, they are topic to oversight by journal editors (and whoever funds the research, which is typically a government company).

It is important to know how nicely this method works.  In part, the response depends on the design of the study.  Laboratory studies are “experimental,” that means that usually they decide the results of only a single variable, this kind of as various doses of a drug offered to rats (although the control group gets a placebo).  By contrast, “observational studies,” in which individuals are queried and certain outcomes are recorded, do not attempt to have an effect on the outcome with an intervention.

In observational scientific studies, tens of 1000′s of individuals may be asked by epidemiologists which food items they eat, what medication they get, or even in which zip code they reside.  These people are followed for some length of time and numerous wellness outcomes are recorded.  Finally, the “data mining” of massive data sets like this searches for patterns of association — for instance, the consumption of particular meals or medicines correlated with overall health outcomes.  A conclusion of this kind of a examine might be, “the use of hormone replacement treatment in girls in excess of 50 is associated with a decrease incidence of heart attacks,” or “people who consider massive quantities of vitamin C get fewer colds.”

Observational studies have both useful and theoretical limitations they might be suggestive but they are not able to show result in and effect.  There is a essential difference between plausibility and provability, and a lot of this kind of studies are subsequently found to be misleading.  For instance, in spite of early observational research that concluded the opposite, it is now clear that “Type A” personality does not lead to heart attacks.  The original declare could not be replicated in two properly-carried out follow up trials.  In fact, of about 50 claims discovered or suggested from observational research, none replicated when tested in randomized clinical trials.

How do we get so numerous erroneous conclusions from observational research?  In most of them, from dozens to hundreds or even thousands of inquiries are asked.  Statistical significance will occur by possibility about five% of the time, yielding false-optimistic results. Researchers might exploit this phenomenon by asking tons of inquiries and then producing a story all around what are most likely random, or opportunity, events.

If designed and performed properly, lab-primarily based experiments need to be more trustworthy than observational research.  However, recent proof signifies that frequently they are flawed: Researchers may possibly tinker with their experimental layout until they get the end result they want and then rush to publish with out replicating their own perform, for instance.  Investigations have discovered systematic deficiencies of methodology in specified complete sectors of lab investigation.  One such spot is experiments in animals randomization and blinding are not a part of researchers’ culture, whereas the arbitrary dropping of animals from the benefits of a study is.  In a spectacular recent article in the journal Science, one investigator associated what frequently occurs: “You appear at your information, there are no rules…People exclude animals at their whim, they just do it and they don’t report it.”  The result of such practices is that interventions to cure or benefit animals frequently fail to replicate in humans.

Such failures to replicate experiments have essential implications, because drug companies and foundations with targeted interests frequently try to apply the final results of experimental biology to the advancement of products for therapeutic interventions, the creation of dietary tips and other applications.

After a series of failed attempts to lengthen basic investigation findings (from academic labs), two large drug firms, Bayer and Amgen, very carefully reviewed their personal knowledge and located that only 25 and eleven percent, respectively, of the claims in the scientific literature could be replicated in a way that was sufficiently robust to be helpful as the basis for drug improvement projects.  Astonishingly, even when they asked the original researchers to replicate their very own perform, for the most part they could not.  This might describe why scientists’ capacity to translate cancer investigation in the laboratory to clinical good results has been shockingly poor.

The extremely respected journal Nature Biotechnology recently ran an editorial on this subject.  It appeared in the identical concern as a report of the inability of a team of scientists to replicate an earlier mouse experiment (which had supposedly identified that a certain class of RNAs in foods plants could be absorbed into the bloodstream of animals and trigger an effect on gene expression) by a various investigation group that had been published in the journal Cell Study.  The latter journal should have published the second post which, in effect, repudiated the earlier report, but the editors declined to do so.  Therefore, it fell to Nature Biotechnology to stage up, because, stated the editorial, “When an first report prompts this level of concern and involves a significant investment of time, energy and assets from both researchers and regulators in evaluating its findings and comprehending its implications, then a carefully controlled and executed replication examine plainly warrants publication.”  Kudos to Andrew Marshall, the journal’s editor.

A number of empirical scientific studies display that 80-90% of the claims coming from supposedly scientific studies in significant journals fail to replicate.  This is scandalous, and the issue is only probably to turn into worse with the proliferation of “predatory publishers” of several open-access journals.  According to an expose of these practices by Gina Kolata in the New York Occasions, the journals published by some of the worst offenders are practically nothing a lot more than income-generating machines that eagerly, uncritically accept essentially any submitted paper.

The Problems With "Scientific" Investigation These days: A Lot Which is Published Is Junk