The Enemy: Cheese

I've blogged several times about the problem of Americans' increasing weight and waists. This is a national medical problem of epidemic proportions, partly because overweight is correlated with increased risk for diabetes and other diseases.

Nutritionists and other medical experts have, naturally, been looking for causes and a lot of candidates have been proposed. And doubtless what is going on is more than one cause working at the same time.

A few causes of increasing overweight and obesity in America (and other countries) which I find plausible are as follows (not in any particular order):

• Our increasingly sedentary lives (e.g., more time spent with TV, computers, video games).
  
• Increasing size of the portions served in restaurants.
• Advertising for food (especially for fast-food chains) on TV. When food items are shown to us, it makes us want to get up and grab a snack.
• Increasing consumption of soft drinks which, with their high content of sugar (or high fructose corn syrup) are known to contribute an increasing number of calories to our diets.
• People eating more of their meals in fast-food restaurants, where the food is high in fat, sodium, and calories.

Now, I have another trend in our diets to propose as promoting weight gain: cheese. Cheese is mostly fat (from the milk it's made from), and fat is much higher in calories than the other nutrients (protein, carbohydrate, and fiber) or constituents of our food.

More and more of what we eat seems to have cheese in it or on it. Nowadays you almost can't get any sandwich with meat or poultry that does not also have cheese in it. On some restaurant menus, it's difficult to find dishes that haven't got cheese. Statistics show that cheese consumption has been increasing in America. (According to Wikipedia, US cheese consumption has nearly tripled between 1970 and 2003.)

Cheese added to a dish adds much more fat and calories than you might think. Those multilayer hamburgers, with several beef patties and several slices of cheese as well, have calorie and fat values that are almost beyond belief—like a day's worth (or more!) of fat and sodium.

So we are tempted by these restaurant offerings, and—guess what! We don't resist. Maybe we need to start to think twice when we're ordering our food.

Update, July 23, 2011
I recently read an item in Nutrition Action HealthLetter, the publication of the Center for Science in the Public Interest (the people who periodically make the news with, for example, their exposés of movie-theater popcorn) that said precisely the same thing, about the prevalence of cheese in restaurant menu offerings. But remember, you heard it here first. They also say that the dairy industry persuaded restaurants to add cheese to their menu offerings.
And I want to confess, I love cheese--but maybe not in or on everything. I like to snack on cheese by itself, or eat it in a sandwich. Once in a while I'll sprinkle grated cheese on my pasta or use cheese in cooking. But I have cut way, way down, and also I sometimes buy reduced-fat cheese. (Some of them are pretty good.) But maybe I should be worrying about the sodium in cheese as much as the fat.

Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein

Should You Listen to Food Gurus?

There's a lot of advice on food and eating and nutrition, these days: on the Internet, on TV, in magazines and books. A lot of it is mainstream, is well-established and backed by medical research, and has been around for a while. This type of stuff is what I think we should be paying attention to.

Some other sorts of advice are a challenge to the intelligent and well-informed consumer. It's not always obvious when we really should ignore what we're being told, either because the person giving the advice is not disinterested (meaning he stands to gain financially, either by blatantly selling you something, or more subtlety, he may be advocating a product such as a supplement that's made by a company he owns); or because it's a bit extreme and not practical for most of us. Or even simply nonsensical. (Note: Just because something is recommended as "natural," that should not automatically recommend it. Remember, poisonous mushroom are "natural." Snake venom is "natural.")

So, what are some examples of what we ought to be listening to? Well, the government tells us to reduce the sodium (salt) and fat in our diets (particularly, avoid trans fat and cut saturated fat). And eat more whole grains and fruits and vegetables.

Okay, that's all very sound advice. It should guide our shopping and make us eat less fast food. (Read those nutrition labels!) Even the big food processors have begun to adjust their products to be healthier in these respects.

But one person—I think I heard this on TV—said, "Don't eat anything with a label on it." Okay, it would be nice if we ate more stuff made from scratch, so we could avoid chemical ingredients like artificial colors and flavors and so forth. But this is not going to be practical for most people. With many wives and mothers having careers outside of the home, the trend has been for more and more of what we eat to come ready-to-eat or ready-to-heat. That trend has its downside, I'm sure, but that guy is definitely spitting into the wind.

I don't know how far that guy's dictum was meant to be carried. Does he mean to include things like eggs, milk, and even produce from the supermarket, that has those little adhesive labels on it? It's probably true that we'd get more nutritious eggs if we kept our own chickens and let them wander around. And we'd get tomatoes that would taste better (and might or might not be more nourishing) if we grew our own.

But isn't that a bit extreme for the majority of Americans who are urban or suburban? Do I need to avoid buying yogurt, and make my own? Even if I said, Okay, I'll make my own yogurt (actually, no way), then where would the milk come from? If not from a bottle or carton with a label, then I'd have to keep my own cow, right? I'm pretty sure cows, or even chickens, are not allowed by my condo homeowners' association.

One or two little asides: First, some people think that sea salt is better, or less unhealthful, than regular salt. This is simply untrue. With the very minor exception that sea salt contains very small amounts of some of the minerals found in sea water, it's still just salt: it's very close to 100% sodium chloride, which is what ordinary salt is.

Second, many people try to avoid sugar, and doing so may be a good thing--but that would be another subject. Fact is, they're too easily tricked by the food makers. I recently saw, as a food ingredient, "evaporated sugar cane juice crystals." Hey, if you know how sugar is made, that translates into nothing more nor less than ordinary sugar! Add that to my comments, in other postings, on deceiving the consumer!

Third, a common sweetener--so ubiquitous as to be unavoidable in store-bought food--is high fructose corn syrup. It's gotten a bad rap, but most likely it's not bad for you. It contains two kinds of sugars which are both naturally found in food; so it's no worse than any sugar.

Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein