From “Fast Food Nation” to “Super Size Me,” McDonald’s has become the go-to villain in the United States’ obesity drama.
Not willing to become the de facto whipping boy, the company best known for its indulgent burgers and greasy fries has already added salads, fruits and other new menu options. Now, it’s defending the rest of its food lineup as well.
The “what we’re made of” campaign includes TV commercials, in-store promotions and a Web site boasting about its beef, chicken and other basic ingredients. In the coming weeks, the company also plans to add billboards and expand the Web site to include more information about cooking methods, suppliers and other practices. Molly Starmann, McDonald’s director of U.S. marketing, said the company hasn’t changed the farming or preparation methods that have drawn so much criticism. The point of the campaign, she said, is simply to provide more information about what the company already does.
“Our customers love the taste of our food and they just had some questions about how it’s created,” she said.
The most striking thing about the campaign is that it exposes what the company is up against. Click on lettuce, and McDonald’s will tell you that it washes its lettuce “at least twice.” Under eggs, it notes that they are delivered to stores twice a week.
Forget quality or taste -- if a company has to dispel the myth that it doesn’t follow basic hygiene practices, it’s obviously in for an uphill battle.
Still, some of McDonald’s attempts to inform are strikingly uninformative. Click on “potatoes,” and you’ll get a blurb about why fries have salt on them. That’s not exactly going to answer burning questions about food production, healthfulness and what exactly is meant by the ingredient “natural beef flavor (wheat and milk derivatives).” Under tomatoes, the company only discloses what kind it likes to use in salads.
Elsewhere on the site, McDonald’s lets you build a meal and see its nutritional value and ingredients. Nutrition information also can now be found on the back of the company’s tray liners and on other packaging.
McDonald’s deserves credit for having the guts to make such information easily accessible, even if eaters may well cringe at the high fat content – including trans fats - and unpronounceable ingredients.
For example, parents may not be too pleased to realize that six pieces of Chicken McNuggets contain 15 grams of fat and include the ingredient “dimethylpolysiloxane added as an antifoaming agent.” The visual images conjured by the words “antifoaming” in food are plentiful, and none are pretty.
Click here to see the “what we’re made of” Web site. Click here to view one of the ads.
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Cultural differences found in pee
Pee from more than 4,000 volunteers shows that people from different nations often have spectacularly different metabolisms.
The finding could point to new ways to deal with obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure and other health problems, researchers said.
After guts break down food and drink, chemicals left in their urine can reveal a lot about peoples' bodies and lifestyles. Urine samples were analyzed from some 4,630 volunteers from the United States, China, Japan and the United Kingdom. More than 1,000 different molecules were looked at.
Each country turned out very different, metabolically.
"For instance, Chinese and Japanese people are almost identical genetically, which isn't surprising, since they diverged culturally only a few thousand years ago — but they are very different metabolically," said researcher Jeremy Nicholson, a biological chemist at Imperial College London.
"We know there's a huge difference in the diseases that different nations risk — broadly speaking, the Japanese tend to die of strokes, the Chinese of heart attacks — and we see those differences reflected in their urine," he added. "Of course they're different in terms of lifestyle — the Japanese tend to eat more fish than the Chinese as a whole do — but their gut bacteria are also very distinct as well."
Gut microbes help us get energy from our food.
"In your guts, you have about 3.3 pounds of 1,000 different species of bacteria," Nicholson explained. "If you include all the genes from bacteria along with your own, only about 1 to 2 percent of the genes in your body are human, with the rest from the gut microbes. And what bacteria you have can be quite different from person to person."
Within countries, there are big differences metabolically also — for instance, between the north and south United States, and between northern and southern China. At least some of this may be due to cuisine — for instance, wheat is the staple grain in northern China, while rice is the standard in southern China.
"You can even pick out different cities — you can see the differences between Chicago and Corpus Christi," Nicholson said.
In terms of cardiovascular or heart health, southern China fared the best while Texas did worst.
"Honolulu was right in the middle — that's ironic, given how Honolulu is also roughly in the middle geographically between Asia and America," Nicholson said.
The investigation not only looked at chemicals known to be linked with certain disorders, but also discovered hitherto unknown links between certain molecules and diseases.
For example, no one had known that a compound known as formate was connected with any disease, "and formate turned out to be strongly linked with blood pressure," Nicholson said. "So this approach might lead to ways to predict or prevent high blood pressure based off formate."
In the future, urine might help shed light on diabetes, atherosclerosis, obesity and even cancer, he added.
The finding could point to new ways to deal with obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure and other health problems, researchers said.
After guts break down food and drink, chemicals left in their urine can reveal a lot about peoples' bodies and lifestyles. Urine samples were analyzed from some 4,630 volunteers from the United States, China, Japan and the United Kingdom. More than 1,000 different molecules were looked at.
Each country turned out very different, metabolically.
"For instance, Chinese and Japanese people are almost identical genetically, which isn't surprising, since they diverged culturally only a few thousand years ago — but they are very different metabolically," said researcher Jeremy Nicholson, a biological chemist at Imperial College London.
"We know there's a huge difference in the diseases that different nations risk — broadly speaking, the Japanese tend to die of strokes, the Chinese of heart attacks — and we see those differences reflected in their urine," he added. "Of course they're different in terms of lifestyle — the Japanese tend to eat more fish than the Chinese as a whole do — but their gut bacteria are also very distinct as well."
Gut microbes help us get energy from our food.
"In your guts, you have about 3.3 pounds of 1,000 different species of bacteria," Nicholson explained. "If you include all the genes from bacteria along with your own, only about 1 to 2 percent of the genes in your body are human, with the rest from the gut microbes. And what bacteria you have can be quite different from person to person."
Within countries, there are big differences metabolically also — for instance, between the north and south United States, and between northern and southern China. At least some of this may be due to cuisine — for instance, wheat is the staple grain in northern China, while rice is the standard in southern China.
"You can even pick out different cities — you can see the differences between Chicago and Corpus Christi," Nicholson said.
In terms of cardiovascular or heart health, southern China fared the best while Texas did worst.
"Honolulu was right in the middle — that's ironic, given how Honolulu is also roughly in the middle geographically between Asia and America," Nicholson said.
The investigation not only looked at chemicals known to be linked with certain disorders, but also discovered hitherto unknown links between certain molecules and diseases.
For example, no one had known that a compound known as formate was connected with any disease, "and formate turned out to be strongly linked with blood pressure," Nicholson said. "So this approach might lead to ways to predict or prevent high blood pressure based off formate."
In the future, urine might help shed light on diabetes, atherosclerosis, obesity and even cancer, he added.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
