What to Eat At the Movies
by Glamour Magazine, on Wed Jan 28, 2009
You want to see all the nominated films before the Oscars. Admirable goal. Just use our guide to find the smartest snacks at the Cineplex so you don’t gain 10 pounds doing it!
CANDY
Sweet ‘n’ sour stuff tends to be lower-fat than chocolate, but it’s still dessert. Size counts too!
Worst: Skittles (7.2 oz.) 826 calories, 9.7 grams fat
Better:Twizzlers (6 oz.) 606 calories, 3.8 grams fat
Best: Sour Patch Soft & Chewy Candy (3.5 oz.) 375 calories, 0 grams fat
POPCORN
Yes, it’s a whole grain, but a large has close to the number of calories many women need in a day!
Worst: Large buttered popcorn 1,640 calories, 126 grams fat (That’s almost two days’ worth of fat!)
Better: Small, no butter 400 calories, 27 grams fat
Best: Kid size, no butter 300 calories, 20 grams fat
COLD TREATS
Frozen fruit? Always a winner.
Worst: Toll House chocolate-chip cookie ice cream sandwich 490 calories, 23 grams fat
Better: Butterfinger Loaded ice cream bar 290 calories, 19 grams fat
Best: Edy’s strawberry iced-fruit bar 120 calories, 0 grams fat
CHOCOLATE
Unfortunately, most concession stands offer only one size (and who isn’t going to eat the whole box?). So go for something in a smaller package to keep portions in check.
Worst: Peanut M&M’s (5.3 oz.) 786 calories,39.3 grams fat
Better: Junior Mints (4.75 oz.) 595 calories,10.5 grams fat
Best: Milk Duds (3 oz.) 371 calories,13.1 grams fat
HOT SNACKS
In general, beware of anything with glow-in-the-dark cheese.
Worst: Nachos with cheese 894 calories, 52.5 grams fat
Better: Hot dog with ketchup 315 calories, 19 grams fat
Best: Soft pretzel 310 calories, 4 grams fat
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Thursday, February 5, 2009
In Kitchen, ‘Losers’ Start From Scratch
By JULIA MOSKIN
Published: February 3, 2009
NOTHING is off-limits on “The Biggest Loser,” the reality show that pits morbidly obese people against one another to see who can lose weight the fastest and win the $250,000 prize.
Contestants endure tearful, grueling workouts and submit to public weigh-ins wearing only bike shorts (and for the women, sports bras). They cry. They vomit. They backstab.
The one thing they almost never do on camera is eat.
“The food that you’re used to, you can’t have, and the food you can have, you do not want,” said Vicky Vilcan, a 5-foot-6-inch finalist from Houma, La., who weighed 246 pounds at the beginning of the last season. Now at 145 pounds, she eats broccoli and spinach but says she was “repulsed” by most vegetables when she was on the show. “I wouldn’t eat a string bean that wasn’t smothered in bacon and onions.”
Watch an episode of “The Biggest Loser,” now in its seventh season on NBC, and see the pitfalls of the American diet written extra-large: cheap, high-calorie snacks everywhere, days spent in cars and cubicles and a near disappearance of home cooking.
The contestants are avatars for every slothful viewer on the sofa, waging the epic battle between willpower and waffle fries. While exercising 6 to 10 hours a day and fighting off the doughnuts and pizza that diabolical producers put in their paths may be difficult, the biggest challenge, and the one that will determine whether they remain thinner, is to permanently change their relationship with food.
First, they literally redevelop the sense of taste. “The food that got them to this point is salty, sweet, fatty, crunchy,” said Bob Harper, a trainer on the show since the first season in 2004, describing the fast food and snacks that are the steady diet of most contestants. “They lose their taste buds, they lose their hunger cues and they want what they want when they want it.”
Second, they learn fundamental cooking skills that they — like many Americans — have lost, or never had.
“Most of them do not have the basic ability to cook a meal at home and very little understanding of how much fat and salt is in restaurant food,” said Cheryl Forberg, the show’s nutritionist, “even on the supposedly healthy part of the menu.” While the show has been criticized as presenting a dangerous and unsustainable level of weight loss, recipes from it are sensible enough and have been collected in two cookbooks. Given the program’s popularity, it’s not surprising that both are in the top 10 on the Amazon best-seller list for cookbooks. Together, “The Biggest Loser Cookbook” and “The Biggest Loser Family Cookbook” have sold more than two million copies.
Contestants climb a steep and brutal learning curve in the kitchen, since they have to do all their own cooking.
“There’s no chef whipping up spa cuisine,” Ed Brantley, a contestant from last season, said glumly.
While on their “ranch” — a luxurious house outside Malibu, Calif., — in the four months of taping, contestants are given a calorie budget, recipes and a list of forbidden foods: no white flour, white sugar, butter, or anything that contains them. From there, they have to learn to feed themselves.
“It wasn’t pretty,” said Mr. Brantley’s wife, Heba Salama, who began the show as the heaviest woman ever to compete, at 294 pounds. “The kitchen was full of weird ingredients like quinoa and kale. It was the blind leading the blind.”
On a recent episode, the guest chef, Curtis Stone, gently guided Dave Lee, a 23-year-old contestant in Raleigh, N.C., who weighed 396 pounds when filming began, into the produce section of a supermarket. “I don’t see a lot of things that look familiar here,” Mr. Lee said. He cautiously accepted a taste of cilantro and brightened when he was able to identify it as “something in salsa.”
“This,” Mr. Stone said, handing Mr. Lee a spice rack, “is going to save your life.”
Even if home cooking is of the fried-chicken-and-mashed-potatoes variety, it rarely produces extreme obesity, said Barry Popkin, a nutritional epidemiologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “Almost any kind of cooking you can produce in a kitchen is healthier than fast food.” The decline of home cooking worldwide, he said, is an underlying cause of obesity.
“People are eating more, and more often,” Dr. Popkin said. “And the foods that they are consuming almost always replace meals cooked in a kitchen and eaten at a table.” It is difficult to quantify a decline in cooking skills, but many studies show that time in the kitchen has declined steeply since 1965, when American women spent a weekly average of 13 hours cooking. Last month the government of Britain, where obesity is spreading rapidly, passed a law requiring all secondary-school students to attend cooking classes.
Today, women in the United States report spending an average of 30 minutes a day preparing meals. The percentage of women who are overweight has risen to about 65 percent from about 30 percent in the 1960s. Cooking and eating well is much harder than just eating less, “Biggest Loser” contestants said.
“The first two weeks, you’re throwing up so much from working out, you’re so tired, the last thing you want to do is eat,” said Mr. Brantley, a chef in Raleigh, who in the last season lost 139 pounds (more than 40 percent of his body weight).
Next, Ms. Salama said, you become ravenous. “You want to eat everything you see,” she said.
But soon, food becomes the devil they love to control. Every contestant is required to eat a minimum number of calories each day and is supposed to keep a daily food journal to prove it. But many of them actually eat less.
“It gets so you crave that feeling of going to bed with hunger pains in your stomach,” said Erik Chopin, a Long Island deli owner who won the show in 2006, going to 193 pounds from 407. Mr. Chopin said the absence of the foods he loves helped. “It’s not like you can go in the kitchen and make yourself a bacon, egg and cheese on a roll,” he said. “More oatmeal wasn’t very tempting.”
The 24-hour surveillance helped, too. “You’re accountable to your team, you’re accountable to your trainer and you’re accountable to the American people for what you eat,” Mr. Chopin said. “How stupid would you feel to sit there stuffing your face on national television?”
Most contestants say it is surprisingly easy to resist food in the throes of competition. “You learn to get over being hungry, like you get over the pain of the workouts,” Ms. Salama said. “The first temptation, it’s very hard to think clearly when you smell all that sugar, but you learn that you can say no.”
During scheduled “temptations,” contestants are bribed to eat junk food with prizes like cash and calls home, sometimes while locked in a dark room with mountains of candy. “We want to simulate the real world in there,” said Dave Broome, a co-creator of the show. “At home, there’s a McDonald’s on every corner, there’s a birthday cake at the office every afternoon, there are friends who will encourage them to eat.”
When the contestants return home to live like the rest of us, without personal trainers and cash prizes, how do they adjust to eating in the real world? Like Oprah Winfrey, who recently acknowledged that she once again weighs more than 200 pounds, the contestants say that the slide backward can be slow, but for some of them it may be inevitable.
Although Mr. Chopin sold his deli after his victory (“I was worried that the quality control alone would make me fat”), he has gained back more than 100 pounds. Most contestants say they did not expect to maintain their entire weight loss once at home. Many have gained back 50 pounds or more, some have continued to drop and all say they have abandoned the fasting, asparagus binges (asparagus, a mild diuretic, temporarily reduces weight) and all-coffee strategies they used while on the show.
What lessons can be learned from the blood, sweat and tears that pour freely on the ranch? Simple: count your calories, exercise and learn to cook.
“Twenty minutes in the kitchen will save you three hours on the StairMaster” said Devin Alexander, a chef in Los Angeles who developed the recipes for the cookbooks. “You can’t trust restaurant food to be low fat.”
Mr. Brantley says that after six days of salad, grilled chicken and air-popped popcorn, he allows himself one day to eat real ice cream, blue-cheese dressing and other foods he loves.
“There’s no such thing as low-fat foie gras,” he said.
Published: February 3, 2009
NOTHING is off-limits on “The Biggest Loser,” the reality show that pits morbidly obese people against one another to see who can lose weight the fastest and win the $250,000 prize.
Contestants endure tearful, grueling workouts and submit to public weigh-ins wearing only bike shorts (and for the women, sports bras). They cry. They vomit. They backstab.
The one thing they almost never do on camera is eat.
“The food that you’re used to, you can’t have, and the food you can have, you do not want,” said Vicky Vilcan, a 5-foot-6-inch finalist from Houma, La., who weighed 246 pounds at the beginning of the last season. Now at 145 pounds, she eats broccoli and spinach but says she was “repulsed” by most vegetables when she was on the show. “I wouldn’t eat a string bean that wasn’t smothered in bacon and onions.”
Watch an episode of “The Biggest Loser,” now in its seventh season on NBC, and see the pitfalls of the American diet written extra-large: cheap, high-calorie snacks everywhere, days spent in cars and cubicles and a near disappearance of home cooking.
The contestants are avatars for every slothful viewer on the sofa, waging the epic battle between willpower and waffle fries. While exercising 6 to 10 hours a day and fighting off the doughnuts and pizza that diabolical producers put in their paths may be difficult, the biggest challenge, and the one that will determine whether they remain thinner, is to permanently change their relationship with food.
First, they literally redevelop the sense of taste. “The food that got them to this point is salty, sweet, fatty, crunchy,” said Bob Harper, a trainer on the show since the first season in 2004, describing the fast food and snacks that are the steady diet of most contestants. “They lose their taste buds, they lose their hunger cues and they want what they want when they want it.”
Second, they learn fundamental cooking skills that they — like many Americans — have lost, or never had.
“Most of them do not have the basic ability to cook a meal at home and very little understanding of how much fat and salt is in restaurant food,” said Cheryl Forberg, the show’s nutritionist, “even on the supposedly healthy part of the menu.” While the show has been criticized as presenting a dangerous and unsustainable level of weight loss, recipes from it are sensible enough and have been collected in two cookbooks. Given the program’s popularity, it’s not surprising that both are in the top 10 on the Amazon best-seller list for cookbooks. Together, “The Biggest Loser Cookbook” and “The Biggest Loser Family Cookbook” have sold more than two million copies.
Contestants climb a steep and brutal learning curve in the kitchen, since they have to do all their own cooking.
“There’s no chef whipping up spa cuisine,” Ed Brantley, a contestant from last season, said glumly.
While on their “ranch” — a luxurious house outside Malibu, Calif., — in the four months of taping, contestants are given a calorie budget, recipes and a list of forbidden foods: no white flour, white sugar, butter, or anything that contains them. From there, they have to learn to feed themselves.
“It wasn’t pretty,” said Mr. Brantley’s wife, Heba Salama, who began the show as the heaviest woman ever to compete, at 294 pounds. “The kitchen was full of weird ingredients like quinoa and kale. It was the blind leading the blind.”
On a recent episode, the guest chef, Curtis Stone, gently guided Dave Lee, a 23-year-old contestant in Raleigh, N.C., who weighed 396 pounds when filming began, into the produce section of a supermarket. “I don’t see a lot of things that look familiar here,” Mr. Lee said. He cautiously accepted a taste of cilantro and brightened when he was able to identify it as “something in salsa.”
“This,” Mr. Stone said, handing Mr. Lee a spice rack, “is going to save your life.”
Even if home cooking is of the fried-chicken-and-mashed-potatoes variety, it rarely produces extreme obesity, said Barry Popkin, a nutritional epidemiologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “Almost any kind of cooking you can produce in a kitchen is healthier than fast food.” The decline of home cooking worldwide, he said, is an underlying cause of obesity.
“People are eating more, and more often,” Dr. Popkin said. “And the foods that they are consuming almost always replace meals cooked in a kitchen and eaten at a table.” It is difficult to quantify a decline in cooking skills, but many studies show that time in the kitchen has declined steeply since 1965, when American women spent a weekly average of 13 hours cooking. Last month the government of Britain, where obesity is spreading rapidly, passed a law requiring all secondary-school students to attend cooking classes.
Today, women in the United States report spending an average of 30 minutes a day preparing meals. The percentage of women who are overweight has risen to about 65 percent from about 30 percent in the 1960s. Cooking and eating well is much harder than just eating less, “Biggest Loser” contestants said.
“The first two weeks, you’re throwing up so much from working out, you’re so tired, the last thing you want to do is eat,” said Mr. Brantley, a chef in Raleigh, who in the last season lost 139 pounds (more than 40 percent of his body weight).
Next, Ms. Salama said, you become ravenous. “You want to eat everything you see,” she said.
But soon, food becomes the devil they love to control. Every contestant is required to eat a minimum number of calories each day and is supposed to keep a daily food journal to prove it. But many of them actually eat less.
“It gets so you crave that feeling of going to bed with hunger pains in your stomach,” said Erik Chopin, a Long Island deli owner who won the show in 2006, going to 193 pounds from 407. Mr. Chopin said the absence of the foods he loves helped. “It’s not like you can go in the kitchen and make yourself a bacon, egg and cheese on a roll,” he said. “More oatmeal wasn’t very tempting.”
The 24-hour surveillance helped, too. “You’re accountable to your team, you’re accountable to your trainer and you’re accountable to the American people for what you eat,” Mr. Chopin said. “How stupid would you feel to sit there stuffing your face on national television?”
Most contestants say it is surprisingly easy to resist food in the throes of competition. “You learn to get over being hungry, like you get over the pain of the workouts,” Ms. Salama said. “The first temptation, it’s very hard to think clearly when you smell all that sugar, but you learn that you can say no.”
During scheduled “temptations,” contestants are bribed to eat junk food with prizes like cash and calls home, sometimes while locked in a dark room with mountains of candy. “We want to simulate the real world in there,” said Dave Broome, a co-creator of the show. “At home, there’s a McDonald’s on every corner, there’s a birthday cake at the office every afternoon, there are friends who will encourage them to eat.”
When the contestants return home to live like the rest of us, without personal trainers and cash prizes, how do they adjust to eating in the real world? Like Oprah Winfrey, who recently acknowledged that she once again weighs more than 200 pounds, the contestants say that the slide backward can be slow, but for some of them it may be inevitable.
Although Mr. Chopin sold his deli after his victory (“I was worried that the quality control alone would make me fat”), he has gained back more than 100 pounds. Most contestants say they did not expect to maintain their entire weight loss once at home. Many have gained back 50 pounds or more, some have continued to drop and all say they have abandoned the fasting, asparagus binges (asparagus, a mild diuretic, temporarily reduces weight) and all-coffee strategies they used while on the show.
What lessons can be learned from the blood, sweat and tears that pour freely on the ranch? Simple: count your calories, exercise and learn to cook.
“Twenty minutes in the kitchen will save you three hours on the StairMaster” said Devin Alexander, a chef in Los Angeles who developed the recipes for the cookbooks. “You can’t trust restaurant food to be low fat.”
Mr. Brantley says that after six days of salad, grilled chicken and air-popped popcorn, he allows himself one day to eat real ice cream, blue-cheese dressing and other foods he loves.
“There’s no such thing as low-fat foie gras,” he said.
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Top chefs push Obama to improve food policy
By MARY CLARE JALONICK, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON – Visiting one of his favorite Chicago restaurants in November, Barack Obama was asked by an excited waitress if he wanted the restaurant's special margarita made with the finest ingredients, straight up and shaken at the table.
"You know that's the way I roll," Obama replied jokingly.
Rick Bayless, the chef of that restaurant, Topolobampo, says Obama's comfortable demeanor at the table — slumped contentedly in his chair, clearly there to enjoy himself — bodes well for the nation's food policy. While former President George W. Bush rarely visited restaurants and didn't often talk about what he ate, Obama dines out frequently and enjoys exploring different foods.
"He's the kind of diner who wants to taste all sorts of things," Bayless says. "What I'm hoping is that he's going to recognize that we need to do what we can in our country to encourage real food for everyone."
Phrases like "real food" and "farm-to-table" may sound like elitist jargon tossed around at upscale restaurants. But the country's top chefs, several of whom traveled to Washington for Obama's inauguration this week, hope that Obama's flair for good food will encourage people to expand their horizons when it comes to what they eat.
These chefs tout locally grown, environmentally friendly and — most importantly — nutritious food. They urge diners, even those who may never be able to afford to eat at their restaurants, to grow their own vegetables, shop at farmer's markets and pay attention to where their food comes from.
Dan Barber, chef at New York's popular Blue Hill restaurant and a frequent critic of the country's food policy, says a few small gestures from the president and first lady Michelle Obama could accomplish what many of the chefs have been working toward for years.
"I recognize that I'm an elitist guy," says Barber, who cooked a $500-a-plate meal for incoming Obama aides and other guests at a small charity fundraiser the night before the inauguration.
"Increasingly raise awareness, but don't do it through chefs like me. ... My advice would be more of a symbolic nature, and to not underestimate what can be done through the White House."
Barber said good food needs more publicity, and he hopes Obama and his wife will advertise what they are eating and what they are feeding their children, 10-year-old Malia and 7-year-old Sasha.
Many high-end chefs like Barber believe that most food in the United States is over-processed, over-subsidized and grown with no regard to the environment, making it harder for small farms to make a profit selling more natural, nutritious food.
Barber cooks with food grown at his farm, the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture in Pocantico Hills, N.Y. At the pre-inauguration fundraiser, organized along with several other dinners by food guru Alice Waters, passed hors d'oeuvres included carrots, lettuce and cauliflower — untarnished and raw, delicious in their natural form. Sweet beets had been recently chiseled from Stone Barns' frozen ground, and hog snouts left over from slaughter were used as a garnish on a plate of Maine sea scallops.
Most of the chefs say they realize food policy and government support for larger corporate farms won't change any time soon. Congress, with Obama's support, overwhelmingly enacted a $290 billion farm bill last year that directs many subsidies to the largest agricultural players.
But Obama has already given chefs like Barber a small reason to hope. At his confirmation hearing, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack made an overture to the growing number of food groups and experts who have criticized government subsidies for large corporate farms, saying he will seek to work "with those who seek programs and practices that lead to more nutritious food produced in a sustainable way."
"There's a lot of work that can be done in this area," Vilsack said after he was sworn in.
Other chefs in town for the inauguration and Waters' dinners had many suggestions to improve food policy. Daniel Boulud, the veteran New York chef of the restaurant Daniel who has cooked for at least five former presidents, said he thinks the Department of Agriculture should form an agency that exclusively oversees small farms. Lidia Bastianich, a New York-based Italian chef who has starred in several cooking shows on public television, says the government needs to encourage regulations and incentives to small farmers to give them the opportunity to compete against the "big giants."
Chef Tom Colicchio, the lead judge on the popular cable television series "Top Chef," agrees. He says foods that are genetically engineered should be labeled as such and fewer subsidies should go to corporate farms.
But despite loftier goals, Bayless, the Chicago chef, says the Obamas could make a world of difference if they just publish what they are eating every day.
"Everyone's going to want to be like the Obamas," he said.
WASHINGTON – Visiting one of his favorite Chicago restaurants in November, Barack Obama was asked by an excited waitress if he wanted the restaurant's special margarita made with the finest ingredients, straight up and shaken at the table.
"You know that's the way I roll," Obama replied jokingly.
Rick Bayless, the chef of that restaurant, Topolobampo, says Obama's comfortable demeanor at the table — slumped contentedly in his chair, clearly there to enjoy himself — bodes well for the nation's food policy. While former President George W. Bush rarely visited restaurants and didn't often talk about what he ate, Obama dines out frequently and enjoys exploring different foods.
"He's the kind of diner who wants to taste all sorts of things," Bayless says. "What I'm hoping is that he's going to recognize that we need to do what we can in our country to encourage real food for everyone."
Phrases like "real food" and "farm-to-table" may sound like elitist jargon tossed around at upscale restaurants. But the country's top chefs, several of whom traveled to Washington for Obama's inauguration this week, hope that Obama's flair for good food will encourage people to expand their horizons when it comes to what they eat.
These chefs tout locally grown, environmentally friendly and — most importantly — nutritious food. They urge diners, even those who may never be able to afford to eat at their restaurants, to grow their own vegetables, shop at farmer's markets and pay attention to where their food comes from.
Dan Barber, chef at New York's popular Blue Hill restaurant and a frequent critic of the country's food policy, says a few small gestures from the president and first lady Michelle Obama could accomplish what many of the chefs have been working toward for years.
"I recognize that I'm an elitist guy," says Barber, who cooked a $500-a-plate meal for incoming Obama aides and other guests at a small charity fundraiser the night before the inauguration.
"Increasingly raise awareness, but don't do it through chefs like me. ... My advice would be more of a symbolic nature, and to not underestimate what can be done through the White House."
Barber said good food needs more publicity, and he hopes Obama and his wife will advertise what they are eating and what they are feeding their children, 10-year-old Malia and 7-year-old Sasha.
Many high-end chefs like Barber believe that most food in the United States is over-processed, over-subsidized and grown with no regard to the environment, making it harder for small farms to make a profit selling more natural, nutritious food.
Barber cooks with food grown at his farm, the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture in Pocantico Hills, N.Y. At the pre-inauguration fundraiser, organized along with several other dinners by food guru Alice Waters, passed hors d'oeuvres included carrots, lettuce and cauliflower — untarnished and raw, delicious in their natural form. Sweet beets had been recently chiseled from Stone Barns' frozen ground, and hog snouts left over from slaughter were used as a garnish on a plate of Maine sea scallops.
Most of the chefs say they realize food policy and government support for larger corporate farms won't change any time soon. Congress, with Obama's support, overwhelmingly enacted a $290 billion farm bill last year that directs many subsidies to the largest agricultural players.
But Obama has already given chefs like Barber a small reason to hope. At his confirmation hearing, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack made an overture to the growing number of food groups and experts who have criticized government subsidies for large corporate farms, saying he will seek to work "with those who seek programs and practices that lead to more nutritious food produced in a sustainable way."
"There's a lot of work that can be done in this area," Vilsack said after he was sworn in.
Other chefs in town for the inauguration and Waters' dinners had many suggestions to improve food policy. Daniel Boulud, the veteran New York chef of the restaurant Daniel who has cooked for at least five former presidents, said he thinks the Department of Agriculture should form an agency that exclusively oversees small farms. Lidia Bastianich, a New York-based Italian chef who has starred in several cooking shows on public television, says the government needs to encourage regulations and incentives to small farmers to give them the opportunity to compete against the "big giants."
Chef Tom Colicchio, the lead judge on the popular cable television series "Top Chef," agrees. He says foods that are genetically engineered should be labeled as such and fewer subsidies should go to corporate farms.
But despite loftier goals, Bayless, the Chicago chef, says the Obamas could make a world of difference if they just publish what they are eating every day.
"Everyone's going to want to be like the Obamas," he said.
Friday, January 23, 2009
Only A Dietitian Would See the Irony
I said in another blog that I would rather eat 3 Thin Mints than 5 Sugar Free Chocolate Chip Cookies (before I even read the label). Looks like I was right! The Thin Mints have fewer calories per serving!
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Headlines: 2 get death in China milk scandal; furor continues
By Barbara Demick
7:56 AM PST, January 22, 2009
Reporting from Beijing -- A court sentenced two men to death today and handed out stiff sentences to others, but the sentencing seemed unlikely to quell the public furor in China's largest food-tampering scandal.
Parents of babies sickened by the formula vowed to continue a legal fight over compensation.
The sentences were given by a court in Shijiazhuang, in the Hebei province, to 21 people who stood trial last month. Those sentenced to death were Zhang Yujun and Geng Jinping, found guilty of endangering public security and selling poisonous foods. Another man was given a suspended death sentence, which effectively means life in prison.
The court gave a life sentence to Tian Wenhua, the 66-year-old chairwoman of Sanlu Group, the manufacturer of the baby formula involved in many of the deaths. Tian, a former Communist party official, was the highest ranking of those who stood trial.
Nearly 300,000 Chinese babies were sickened and six died after drinking a formula that had been spiked with melamine, an additive that allows watered-down milk to pass quality tests. It was widely sold under the name "protein powder" in Hebei province, a center of the dairy industry, despite the fact that it was known to cause kidney disease.
Teng Biao, a lawyer for some of the parents, said that the men given the death sentence were scapegoats in a failed product-safety system.
"This involved the whole political and social system. There were politicians and bureaucrats who should have taken more responsibility as well," Teng said today. .
Although footage from the trials was aired on Chinese state television, all but a few hand-picked journalists were banned from attending the trials. Parents also were kept out, and at least two were detained today in Beijing in an apparent attempt to prevent them from traveling to Shijiazhuang for the sentencing. Many parents also are unhappy about a compensation settlement that they say the Chinese government has forced them to accept.
Chen Li, a mother of one of the sickened babies, said today she hoped the death penalty sentencings would deter others from similar crimes.
"People have to pay for the evil things they have done," Chen said. "They have to execute at least one to warn the others. Otherwise, it will be a vicious cycle and things will never get better."
barbara.demick@latimes.com
Nicole Liu of the Beijing bureau contributed to this report.
7:56 AM PST, January 22, 2009
Reporting from Beijing -- A court sentenced two men to death today and handed out stiff sentences to others, but the sentencing seemed unlikely to quell the public furor in China's largest food-tampering scandal.
Parents of babies sickened by the formula vowed to continue a legal fight over compensation.
The sentences were given by a court in Shijiazhuang, in the Hebei province, to 21 people who stood trial last month. Those sentenced to death were Zhang Yujun and Geng Jinping, found guilty of endangering public security and selling poisonous foods. Another man was given a suspended death sentence, which effectively means life in prison.
The court gave a life sentence to Tian Wenhua, the 66-year-old chairwoman of Sanlu Group, the manufacturer of the baby formula involved in many of the deaths. Tian, a former Communist party official, was the highest ranking of those who stood trial.
Nearly 300,000 Chinese babies were sickened and six died after drinking a formula that had been spiked with melamine, an additive that allows watered-down milk to pass quality tests. It was widely sold under the name "protein powder" in Hebei province, a center of the dairy industry, despite the fact that it was known to cause kidney disease.
Teng Biao, a lawyer for some of the parents, said that the men given the death sentence were scapegoats in a failed product-safety system.
"This involved the whole political and social system. There were politicians and bureaucrats who should have taken more responsibility as well," Teng said today. .
Although footage from the trials was aired on Chinese state television, all but a few hand-picked journalists were banned from attending the trials. Parents also were kept out, and at least two were detained today in Beijing in an apparent attempt to prevent them from traveling to Shijiazhuang for the sentencing. Many parents also are unhappy about a compensation settlement that they say the Chinese government has forced them to accept.
Chen Li, a mother of one of the sickened babies, said today she hoped the death penalty sentencings would deter others from similar crimes.
"People have to pay for the evil things they have done," Chen said. "They have to execute at least one to warn the others. Otherwise, it will be a vicious cycle and things will never get better."
barbara.demick@latimes.com
Nicole Liu of the Beijing bureau contributed to this report.
Headlines: FDA: 125-plus products recalled in peanut outbreak
By RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR, Associated Press Writer Ricardo Alonso-zaldivar, Associated Press Writer – Wed Jan 21, 5:57 pm ET
WASHINGTON – More than 125 products have been recalled in a salmonella-and-peanuts investigation that keeps getting bigger, federal health officials said Wednesday.
The list ranges from goodies like cookies and ice cream to energy bars. Even food for pooches may not be entirely safe, with a national company recalling some of its dog treats.
On Tuesday, PetSmart recalled seven kinds of its Grreat Choice dog biscuits. On Wednesday, the weight loss company NutriSystem issued a recall for peanut butter granola bars. And some Asian foods made with peanut sauces are starting to turn up on the recalls list.
To help consumers, the Food and Drug Administration has set up on its Web site a searchable database of recalled peanut products. "We expect (the) number to continue to increase," said Stephen Sundlof, head of the FDA's food safety program. No major brands of peanut butter sold in jars are implicated.
Peanut butter is not normally thought of as a high-risk product for salmonella. The bacteria, a frequent source of food poisoning, is supposed to be killed off in the roasting process.
In this investigation, the common denominator is that all the products contain peanut paste or peanut butter made at a Peanut Corp. of America plant in Blakely, Ga.
Originally the problem appeared limited to peanut butter shipped in big tubs to institutional customers like nursing homes. But then peanut paste was implicated. Made from ground roasted peanuts, it is used as an ingredient in dozens of other products sold directly to consumers.
Last week, Kellogg recalled some of its Austin and Keebler brand peanut butter crackers. Salmonella was later confirmed in a package of Austin crackers.
At least 486 people in more than 40 states have gotten sick since the outbreak began in the fall. Six have died.
Investigators found salmonella contamination at the PCA plant, which has suspended production. In one of the curious twists in the investigation, the salmonella strain at the plant is not an exact match to the one that has gotten people sick, the FDA said. However, the outbreak strain has been positively identified in a sample from an unopened jar of peanut produced at the Georgia plant.
Sundlof suggested it doesn't much matter whether health authorities get a perfect match at the plant. "Having salmonella in the plant is not supposed to happen," he said. "Regardless of whether it's the outbreak strain or not, that represents a violation."
Salmonella has been found in a floor crack and on the floor near a wall where pallets are stored, he said.
The manufacturer said it is cooperating with the investigation, but has received nothing in writing from health investigators to document their findings. "We trust that at some point they will share this with us and PCA will respond accordingly," said a company statement.
Although PCA is a small company, it lists more than 70 food companies as its customers. "Peanut paste is used in a huge variety of other foods," said Dr. Robert Tauxe, who is directing the investigation for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
A noted food safety scientist said manufacturers have to be careful that peanuts don't get contaminated after roasting. That's partly because peanut butter itself can't be heated to kill the bacteria without making it unpalatable to eat.
"Once the salmonella gets into the peanut butter, you are not going to kill it," said Michael Doyle, head of the University of Georgia's food safety center. "What the processor has to rely on is the roasting process. That's a critical control point."
After roasting, peanuts can be contaminated if they somehow come into contact with tainted water, or if birds or rodents get into the plant. They can also be cross-contaminated by equipment that is used to handle raw ingredients. Raw peanuts can harbor salmonella, just like other agricultural products.
"If there are fork lifts in the raw ingredient area, they can't go into the other part of the plant, because they could be bringing in untreated material," Doyle said. Federal and state officials would not discuss details of the investigation at the Georgia plant.
The FDA's Sundlof said it's rare for dogs to get salmonella illness, but that their owners can pick up the bacteria by handling tainted biscuits. If people don't wash their hands after feeding the dog, they can transfer the bacteria to human foods.
FDA peanut products database
WASHINGTON – More than 125 products have been recalled in a salmonella-and-peanuts investigation that keeps getting bigger, federal health officials said Wednesday.
The list ranges from goodies like cookies and ice cream to energy bars. Even food for pooches may not be entirely safe, with a national company recalling some of its dog treats.
On Tuesday, PetSmart recalled seven kinds of its Grreat Choice dog biscuits. On Wednesday, the weight loss company NutriSystem issued a recall for peanut butter granola bars. And some Asian foods made with peanut sauces are starting to turn up on the recalls list.
To help consumers, the Food and Drug Administration has set up on its Web site a searchable database of recalled peanut products. "We expect (the) number to continue to increase," said Stephen Sundlof, head of the FDA's food safety program. No major brands of peanut butter sold in jars are implicated.
Peanut butter is not normally thought of as a high-risk product for salmonella. The bacteria, a frequent source of food poisoning, is supposed to be killed off in the roasting process.
In this investigation, the common denominator is that all the products contain peanut paste or peanut butter made at a Peanut Corp. of America plant in Blakely, Ga.
Originally the problem appeared limited to peanut butter shipped in big tubs to institutional customers like nursing homes. But then peanut paste was implicated. Made from ground roasted peanuts, it is used as an ingredient in dozens of other products sold directly to consumers.
Last week, Kellogg recalled some of its Austin and Keebler brand peanut butter crackers. Salmonella was later confirmed in a package of Austin crackers.
At least 486 people in more than 40 states have gotten sick since the outbreak began in the fall. Six have died.
Investigators found salmonella contamination at the PCA plant, which has suspended production. In one of the curious twists in the investigation, the salmonella strain at the plant is not an exact match to the one that has gotten people sick, the FDA said. However, the outbreak strain has been positively identified in a sample from an unopened jar of peanut produced at the Georgia plant.
Sundlof suggested it doesn't much matter whether health authorities get a perfect match at the plant. "Having salmonella in the plant is not supposed to happen," he said. "Regardless of whether it's the outbreak strain or not, that represents a violation."
Salmonella has been found in a floor crack and on the floor near a wall where pallets are stored, he said.
The manufacturer said it is cooperating with the investigation, but has received nothing in writing from health investigators to document their findings. "We trust that at some point they will share this with us and PCA will respond accordingly," said a company statement.
Although PCA is a small company, it lists more than 70 food companies as its customers. "Peanut paste is used in a huge variety of other foods," said Dr. Robert Tauxe, who is directing the investigation for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
A noted food safety scientist said manufacturers have to be careful that peanuts don't get contaminated after roasting. That's partly because peanut butter itself can't be heated to kill the bacteria without making it unpalatable to eat.
"Once the salmonella gets into the peanut butter, you are not going to kill it," said Michael Doyle, head of the University of Georgia's food safety center. "What the processor has to rely on is the roasting process. That's a critical control point."
After roasting, peanuts can be contaminated if they somehow come into contact with tainted water, or if birds or rodents get into the plant. They can also be cross-contaminated by equipment that is used to handle raw ingredients. Raw peanuts can harbor salmonella, just like other agricultural products.
"If there are fork lifts in the raw ingredient area, they can't go into the other part of the plant, because they could be bringing in untreated material," Doyle said. Federal and state officials would not discuss details of the investigation at the Georgia plant.
The FDA's Sundlof said it's rare for dogs to get salmonella illness, but that their owners can pick up the bacteria by handling tainted biscuits. If people don't wash their hands after feeding the dog, they can transfer the bacteria to human foods.
FDA peanut products database
Sunday, December 21, 2008
"WORST" DIET PROMOTIONS OF 2008
20th ANNUAL SLIM CHANCE AWARDS
HETTINGER, ND - Healthy Weight Network released its 20th annual Slim Chance
Awards today, highlighting both the hidden dangers of diets and the merely
ridiculous. Here are the "worst" weight loss promotions of 2008.
MOST OUTRAGEOUS CLAIM: Kevin Trudeau infomercials. Fined over $7 million for
deceptive infomercials on his weight loss book, Kevin Trudeau is banned for
three years from making infomercials.
WORST GIMMICK: Skineez jeans ($139). In the fight against cellulite,
Skineez jeans are impregnated with a so-called "medication" of retinol and
chitosan. Supposedly the substance is released through friction and absorbed
in the skin to reduce fat layers.
WORST CLAIM: AbGONE. Full-page ads in daily newspapers tout AbGONE as
"proven to promote pot belly loss." Drug-like claims are that it increases
"fat metabolism" and calorie burn, promotes appetite suppression and
inhibits future abdominal fat deposits.
WORST PRODUCT - Kimkins diet. Heidi "Kimmer" Diaz charged users access to
her Internet diet, claiming they could lose up to 5 percent of weight in 10
days safely and permanently. Essentially it is a starvation diet, and
members complained of chest pains, hair loss, heart palpitations and
menstrual irregularities. Eleven are now suing Diaz.
"Today's economic downturn can remind us how foolish it is to waste money on
unsafe, ineffective and energy-draining weight loss efforts," said Francie
M. Berg, a licensed nutritionist and adjunct professor at the University of
North Dakota School of Medicine, whose organization Healthy Weight Network
started the Slim Chance Awards 20 years ago.
With the New Year upon us, resolutions freshly on our minds, Berg is
advising people of all sizes to skip dieting and move ahead with healthy
habits. "Resolve to follow a healthy diet-free lifestyle through 2009. You
can get your life back on track, improve your health and move on with what's
really important to you." (Guidelines available at
www.healthyweight. net/handouts. htm.)
The National Council Against Health Fraud and Healthy Weight Network
co-sponsor the awards, which are part of the lead-up to Healthy Weight Week,
which falls from January 18 to 24 in 2009.
###
For more information see www.healthyweight.net/hww.htm
HETTINGER, ND - Healthy Weight Network released its 20th annual Slim Chance
Awards today, highlighting both the hidden dangers of diets and the merely
ridiculous. Here are the "worst" weight loss promotions of 2008.
MOST OUTRAGEOUS CLAIM: Kevin Trudeau infomercials. Fined over $7 million for
deceptive infomercials on his weight loss book, Kevin Trudeau is banned for
three years from making infomercials.
WORST GIMMICK: Skineez jeans ($139). In the fight against cellulite,
Skineez jeans are impregnated with a so-called "medication" of retinol and
chitosan. Supposedly the substance is released through friction and absorbed
in the skin to reduce fat layers.
WORST CLAIM: AbGONE. Full-page ads in daily newspapers tout AbGONE as
"proven to promote pot belly loss." Drug-like claims are that it increases
"fat metabolism" and calorie burn, promotes appetite suppression and
inhibits future abdominal fat deposits.
WORST PRODUCT - Kimkins diet. Heidi "Kimmer" Diaz charged users access to
her Internet diet, claiming they could lose up to 5 percent of weight in 10
days safely and permanently. Essentially it is a starvation diet, and
members complained of chest pains, hair loss, heart palpitations and
menstrual irregularities. Eleven are now suing Diaz.
"Today's economic downturn can remind us how foolish it is to waste money on
unsafe, ineffective and energy-draining weight loss efforts," said Francie
M. Berg, a licensed nutritionist and adjunct professor at the University of
North Dakota School of Medicine, whose organization Healthy Weight Network
started the Slim Chance Awards 20 years ago.
With the New Year upon us, resolutions freshly on our minds, Berg is
advising people of all sizes to skip dieting and move ahead with healthy
habits. "Resolve to follow a healthy diet-free lifestyle through 2009. You
can get your life back on track, improve your health and move on with what's
really important to you." (Guidelines available at
www.healthyweight. net/handouts. htm.)
The National Council Against Health Fraud and Healthy Weight Network
co-sponsor the awards, which are part of the lead-up to Healthy Weight Week,
which falls from January 18 to 24 in 2009.
###
For more information see www.healthyweight.net/hww.htm
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