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Center for Consumer Freedom - Part 2

December 09, 2009 • Comments (0)

According to their website, the Center for Consumer Freedom is a nonprofit coalition of restaurants, food companies, and consumers working together to promote personal responsibility and protect consumer choices*. Their “Funny Lawyer Commercials” attack hypothetical situations in order to make a mockery of anyone who thinks High Fructose Corn Syrup isn’t okay for us to eat (in moderation).

Take a closer look at the judge in the commercial. He’s Rick Berman, the man behind the Center for Consumer Freedom and owner of the lobbying and consulting firm it employs. I wonder if he cast himself for the fun of it or if he’s trying to say something about who is making the decisions in this case. Let’s be real, the defense is not a girl scout. It’s Kellogs, Keebler, Interbake Food, and George Weston Limited—the companies that baked Girl Scout cookies in 2008—and companies like them who want the contracts in the future.

What if Girl Scouts changed gears and sold gardening seeds? What if they sold information? What if they sold anything but cookies? Cookies are old fashioned, sexist even. People are catching on. GS Cookies are crap food. Why not make your own Girl Scout Cookies at home? Because you’ll let down that little girl in your life. What a racket!

“Learn more about who is cashing in on obesity at Consumer Freedom dot com.”

Wait. Aren’t food companies cashing in on obesity? I don’t doubt that some people—lawyers and individuals alike—want to make a buck off of large corporations. It’s been happening for years. Recently a Florida woman sued tobacco companies and won millions of dollars in damages for her emphysema caused by smoking. Imagine that. Are the Consumer Freedom people worried that lawyers and the people that fund them are going to start suing the food industry for feeding people High Fructose Corn Syrup for all these years, even though they knew it wasn’t good for us?

The above mentioned tobacco lawsuit happened in 2009. Cigarettes now have warning labels and you’d have to be living on Mars your whole life to not know smoking is bad for you. Imagine if cigarette companies ran ads that claimed smoking was equally as bad as walking on the sidewalk of a busy city street or that having a cigarette once in a while was as dangerous for your lungs as watching fireworks on 4th of July. Everyone knows smoking should only be done in moderation. Soon the “smoke police” will ban smoking from restaurants in an unAmerican attempt to limit our freedoms. Then they’ll ban tobacco companies from advertising on television. Laws might even get passed to prevent kids from smoking. That’s crazy! It’s a parent’s responsibility to monitor their kids.

Sorry, I’m digressing from the topic. My point is that I’d love to see someone (from the Center for Consumer Freedom or sugarscam.com) live on HFCS for a month like Morgan Spurlock did in his Supersize Me documentary. Everyone knows McDonald’s is not good for us and none of us would attempt to live off it, but we all wondered what would happen it we did. Morgan put it to the test. Still, there are plenty of people out there who do live on junk food but hopefully the tides are shifting.

The Internet is getting information out to people. It’s changing things. We can easily research issues and communicate with each other. If you like sugar and how it makes you feel, keep eating it. For the rest of us, we can stop eating it. Because, no matter who tells me what, I don’t need a doctor or scientist to let me know that sugar always makes me feel lousy.

* Taken from the description in their website’s meta tag.

Posted on Dec 09, 2009 • Comments (0)

The Center for Consumer Freedom - Part 1

December 07, 2009 • Comments (0)

My Year Without recently turned me onto a website called SweetScam.com. It’s purpose is to teach people that High Fructose Corn Syrup is not the cause of obesity. Truth is, I have to agree with them. HFCS doesn’t make people fat. People who lead a sedentary lifestyle and eat too much junk food laced with HFCS make themselves fat. So, who’s to blame? According to this commercial, there’s no cause for a case.

Meanwhile, you can’t turn a corner without someone slapping the soda out of your hands on a hot day, smashing your food at a diner or stomping on your hot dog in the street.

Both ads came from the Center for Consumer Freedom. According to their about page, the center is a full non-profit organization dedicated to… something. I can’t tell what exactly. They say, “Consumer freedom is the right of adults and parents to choose how they live their lives, what they eat and drink, how they manage their finances, and how they enjoy themselves.”

Their YouTube page says, “The Center for Consumer Freedom is a nonprofit watchdog group, protecting consumer choices and promoting personal responsibility.”

What’s more, if you look at their YouTube page, one of their favorite video is a mean spirited parody of a video starring Paris Hilton and a tofu/alfa sprout sandwich. Kind of a strange pick for a large non-profit interested in helping me make the right food choices for me and my family. Wait—they never said they were going to help me make the right choice. They just said they would make me responsible for my choice as to what I feed myself and my family.

Personal responsibility. We, the consumers, are responsible for what we put in our mouths. If we want to buy a boat load of junk food and eat it, then so be it! We’re free to do so. However, I do feel that we should have a right to know everything that’s in our food and that includes the labeling of genetically modified foods. It doesn’t need to be a warning, just an indication.

Consumer freedom should include consumer education and transparency. However, the Center for Consumer Freedom says their funders are afraid of radical activists and that’s why they don’t disclose their list of funders. I, as a consumer who believes in freedom, would love to know who funds this organization. That would make a big difference in how I feel about them. So I did a search.

On the website Consumer Deception it says the following:

Rick Berman founded and runs a trio of shadowy tax-exempt food, tobacco, and beverage industry front groups. For a hefty fee, these nonprofit organizations hire Berman as executive director. Berman then uses his own privately owned public relations company to do work for the nonprofit organization. In this way, Berman channels between 49 and 79 percent of the donations given to these nonprofit groups into his own pocket. In 1998, this amounted to more than $1 million for just one of these groups.

The Center for Consumer Freedom is one of Rick Berman’s tax-excempt groups. (Check the Consumer Deception webpage for interesting quotes and source links about the Center for Consumer Freedom.)

We as consumers have freedom. What we need now is reliable information. The HFCS people are always reacting to accusations that their product promotes obesity. They do not advocate a SuperSize Me style diet. Moderation is their motto.

Let’s face it. EVERYONE KNOWS THAT TOO MUCH SUGAR IS BAD FOR US or else we’d eat nothing but junk all day everyday. Believe me, I’ve tried to live on sugar and it’s just not sustainable. I’m sure people have tried to live on cigarettes and found the same thing. No matter if you believe sugar is the devil or not, it always comes back to personal responsibility. What you put in your mouth is your choice. Make it a good one.

Center for Consumer Freedom: Part 2
High Fructose Corn Syrup Commercials Cause Controversy

Posted on Dec 07, 2009 • Comments (0)

Should You Keep Sweets At Home?

December 05, 2009 • Comments (5)

You made it through the day without candy. You didn’t have soda at lunch. You said no to sharing a chocolate bar with your friend. You get home from work and you’re tired from a long day.

Even though you’re not hungry, you still open the kitchen cupboard. There, on the shelf is a box of sweets. You don’t need them and you don’t want them but you know they’ll make a great end-of-the-day relaxation device.

“I made it through the whole day, I can have one thing at the end of the night,” you tell yourself.

Two hours later the whole box is gone, you’re about to go to bed and you feel awful.

The answer? Don’t keep sweets at home. The reason is because sweets are available to you all day every day. Everywhere you go sugar is there. Waiting. It’s there when you’re strong and it’s there when you’re weak. Not everyone is born strong. Some of us have to work at it.

Your willpower is like a muscle. You need to flex it. You start small and increase over time. Doing so makes you stronger.

With sugar, you have to remove the hardest stuff from your diet. So let’s say you remove all of the candy from your house. When you’re hungry you either have to go out to get candy or figure out something else to eat or do.

Next you go to work, or to wherever, and there’s candy. They have it in a bowl at the office. You can purchase it next to the cash register at nearly any large retail chain. Everywhere you go you are tempted to want to buy and eat candy. With each successfully refused temptation your are basically doing a repetition, just like curling a barbell. The more successful repetitions you do the stronger your willpower gets. But you must be careful!

You can overdo it when lifting weights. Go to any gym or read any fitness book and they’ll tell you to workout and then give your muscles a rest. That’s just what you’re doing when you take all of the junk food out of your house. You’re giving your willpower a rest. You’re allowing yourself to reflect on a day of no sweets. You’re not tempting yourself in your own home. And, most of all, you’re giving yourself a break form the relentlessly constant workout that is saying no to sweets.

Posted on Dec 05, 2009 • Comments (5)

What Can You Eat When You Stop Being Sweet?

December 02, 2009 • Comments (0)

Many people ask me what’s okay to eat. It is up to you to figure out where you draw the line. That’s what it means to Stop Being Sweet. It’s not a one-size-fits-all kind of thing. What works for me might not work for you.

There are many foods that people might be surprised to know I eat. For instance, I still eat bread. I eat bagels from time to time. I eat pasta and rice. I eat fruit and fruit smoothies. I do this because I chose to stop being sweet instead of trying to quit sugar. Quitting sugar might be impossible and I’ve never met anyone who really quit sugar—nobody.

For the record, I do not eat (but for once a year) candy, ice cream, cookies, cake, brownies, or any of the “fun” sweet stuff that I’d still-to-this-day get the desire to spend an afternoon consuming. I avoid refined sugar unless it comes as an ingredient in bread in which case I choose the healthiest bread I can find. In Portland we have Dave’s Killer Bread which is a favorite of many. I also like Vita Bee which Oregonians can find at Fred Meyer stores. Those are two decent sliced breads that do not contain High Fructose Corn Syrup.

So, to Stop Being Sweet is not all or nothing. It’s fundamentally about identifying and avoiding your trigger foods, breaking and replacing your negative behavior patterns.

Stop Being Sweet is not a diet, it’s a movement! If you want a prescribed diet, see a nutritionist or doctor. When you stop being sweet you learn about your behavior around food and YOU decide what you will or won’t eat of your own volition.

Posted on Dec 02, 2009 • Comments (0)

How to Stop Sugar Bingeing

November 30, 2009 • Comments (1)

I am no doctor and so I am offering my opinion from experience. I have managed to stop bingeing on sugar, but I still binge now and again (on sugar free foods).

Bingeing is a result of something. If you weren’t bingeing on sugar, you’d be doing it with something else. Gambling, gaming, sex, drugs, alcohol, knitting, etc. Obviously some things are better to binge on than others. However, knitting doesn’t have a chemical physical effect on your body the way ingesting sugar does. So yes, sugar can call out to you. It can wake you up in the middle of the night. It can sneak into your car with you on your way to work. It will sit in your pocket while you visit the dentist. And sugar will always be there waiting for you if you chose to abandon it. Sugar is everywhere and it’s calling your name. The trick is to figure out what is making you want to hear the call.

There are a thousand other things calling out to you right this minute—other industries and products that desperately want your time and money. Why is it that you can ignore them and you choose sugar?

Ask yourself:

1. What is it that makes you want to binge?

Next time you binge, write down everything that happened just prior to your binge. Are you celebrating? Beating yourself up? Bored? Take time and really examine why you are bingeing. Chances are—if you allow yourself to face facts—you know exactly why.

2. What is is that attracts you to sugar as opposed to any other substance or activity?

When you binge, why do you choose sugar? Is it because you’re sober and sugar is acceptable? Is it because you learned how to eat sweets when you were a kid? Why not go running instead? Binge-run ten miles! Take a walk. Binge-walk around the block twenty times. Binge-bike ride. Binge-knit a few sweaters. Does bingeing have to be something you do to your own body?

It’s not easy to change your ways but it’s also not impossible. If you want to stop bingeing you have to start examining. You’re not a bad person. Sugar isn’t bad. What is bad (for you) is the result of bingeing on sugar. If you manage to remove the sugar from bingeing but never figure out the origins of your binges, then you will transfer your binge. This may not be so bad if you manage to transfer your bingeing behavior to earning millions in stock market binges. But, chances are you’ll end up eating, smoking, drinking, playing video games or doing something worse.

Examine yourself and answer the questions above. And whatever you do, don’t forget that bingeing is your choice and you have control over it. Bring the issues back into your body, deal with them, and put the sugar outside of yourself. Good luck!

Posted on Nov 30, 2009 • Comments (1)

Sugar Does Not Equal Love

November 24, 2009 • Comments (0)

As we move into the holiday season I want to remind you of something.

Sugar is not love.

Love is an emotion. Love is not tangible. Love is free. Yet, for millions of people sugar represents love. Baking your sweetie something sweet is a popular way to say, “I love you.”

We give chocolate on Valentine’s Day and share sweets during the holidays. And there’s nothing wrong with that. But where we do go wrong is when we start to mistake sugar for love. Not everyone has this problem, but many sugar addicts do.

Sugar addicts tend to eat sweets as a result of wanting to connect with a loved one in person or from afar. Afar could mean the person is out of town, overseas, or has passed away. For instance, a daughter bakes and eats a particular cake recipe because she used to make that cake with her mother and it was her mother’s favorite. Or, a young man goes to get ice cream every time he feels that does something right because his father used to reward him with a chocolate chip mint sundae. Sound familiar?

As holiday madness takes control of your life in the coming weeks, keep in mind this simple rule:

Sugar does not equal love.

There are other ways to show your love besides eating and giving sugary foods. Find one that works for you.

Posted on Nov 24, 2009 • Comments (0)

Sugar is Addictive

November 20, 2009 • Comments (0)

A research project at Boston University points to sugar as an addictive food, perhaps as bad as drugs or alcohol.

Rats were fed “regular” rat food for seven days and then sugary-chocolately rat food for two. When the regular food returned the rats exhibited anxiety and refused to eat it. When the palatable rat food was reintroduced they overate it until their anxiety subsided.

Sound familiar?

The researchers also looked into the brain chemistry of the rats and found that, “during abstinence from palatable foods, the rats showed increased corticotropin-releasing factor (CRF) gene expression and peptide in the amygdala, an area of the brain involved in fear, anxiety and stress responses.”

Study co-author Valentina Sabino, PhD, an assistant professor and co-Director of the Laboratory of Addictive Disorders in the Department of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics at BUSM stated, “The stress experienced by frequent dieters in abstinence from palatable food has neurobiological similarities to the negative emotional state of drug and alcohol addicts.”

Meanwhile, Kathleen DesMaisons, author of Potatoes Not Prozac, has been noticing drug and alcohol addicts in recovery exhibit addictive eating patterns that mimic their drug or alcohol usage. She’s working on a new book that offers a diet for people to follow. Read more about it here.

Wasn’t there a time in history when opium was considered a good thing and it was given to kids?

Posted on Nov 20, 2009 • Comments (0)

Top 10 Excuses for Eating Sugar

November 19, 2009 • Comments (0)

1. I can’t control myself!

If addicts can get off heroine, you can stop eating sugar. What you eat is your choice. Sugar doesn’t jump into your mouth.

2. My family and friends force me.

Unless your loved ones completely hold you down and force cookies down your throat, you are using them to enable your sweet ways.

3. I don’t have a problem with sugar.

If you are reading this you probably have a problem with sugar. In fact, people in America and many other countries have problems with sugar.

4. I just can’t say no.

You don’t want to say no and you’re using the nice people in your life for your own sugary gain.

5. No really, I feel guilty if someone bakes dessert and I don’t eat it.

Then you need to stop being sweet and say no. If necessary, educate people about your choice to not eat sugar. There's no need to launch into a tirade, but issues with sugar can make for great after dinner discussion and you not eating it can be the conversation starter. It is just about you exercising your choice, not about you persuading the table that they are wrong.

6. Something really bad happened and so I was pushed/forced/had to eat a whole bag of cookies.

The problem is that you are using sugar like a drug and are of the mindset that when something bad happens it is a valid excuse to binge. It’s like those people who think that when something upsets them they have the right to walk around in a foul mood all day and treat everyone like dirt.

7. There was junk food in the house and I couldn’t avoid it.

Throw it out. Get other food. Eat something healthy. Go for a walk.

8. I didn’t know it had sugar in it.

Soup, crackers, cheese, bacon, bologna, bread, ham, mayonnaise, ketchup, cereal, rice milk, and a million other products that you eat on a daily basis have added sugars that you didn't even know were there. Start reading labels.

9. I am not fat.

Lucky for you. Wait until you pass 40! If you’re over the hill and still thin then congratulations, but sugar diabetes doesn’t care.

10. I didn’t eat sugar for two weeks once, nothing happened.

That’s like saying you exercised once for two weeks and nothing happened. Eating healthy is a practice and that doesn’t mean you deprive yourself. It means you change your current habits and create new ones. It means CHANGING how you identify yourself.