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Has
obesity's 'smoking gun' been found?
Feb 02, 09
Suzanne Havala Hobbs
The
biggest enemy of your waistline may be sitting on your desk.
Or waiting for you in the drink holder.
It’s the sweet tea you order at lunch, the soft drink
you sip all day, the sports drink you guzzle after a run or
that margarita you enjoy when you go out to eat.
“Caloric beverages are the smoking gun in the obesity
epidemic.” That was the takeaway message from my visit
with Barry Popkin, author of the new book, The World is Fat
(Avery, 2009). Popkin is a distinguished professor of global
nutrition at UNC-Chapel Hill where he directs the Interdisciplinary
Center for Obesity.
In his book, Popkin explains how the combined effects of technology,
globalization, government policies and food industry practices
conspire against human biology to make us pack on the pounds.
Willpower isn’t enough to fight this force.
We gaze at computers all day, we don’t move enough,
and we have 24-hour access to cheap, calorie-dense junk foods
that the advertisements we’re bombarded with trigger
us to buy.
But that’s not what interests Popkin most.
He’s most passionate about the element that gets the
least attention in the battle of the bulge: The calories we
drink.
“Our thirst mechanism is different than our food and
hunger mechanism,” says Popkin. “There is clear
consensus that when you consume beverages, you don’t
decrease food calories.”
That’s our biology in action.
We’d die after two or three days without water. Our
bodies ensure we get what we need by keeping our internal
fluid and food counters separate.
That wasn’t a problem until relatively recently.
Until about 50 years ago, we didn’t get many calories
from fluids. Our main beverages were milk and water, with
the occasional beer or glass of wine. Most people got no more
than about 100 calories each day from the things they drank.
That has changed.
Technology gave us processed foods and the ability to eat
more while we worked less. Through the 1950s and 1960s, people
gradually became overweight, and the prevalence of coronary
artery disease increased.
But it wasn’t until the 1980s that soft drinks and other
caloric beverages – sports drinks, beer and wine, fruit
juice and other juice drinks – saturated society. Industry
poured money into marketing, vending machine sales, and wide
distribution of sweet drinks.
“Consumption exploded,” said Popkin. And so did
our seams.
Especially troubling to Popkin is the epidemic of overweight
and obesity among children. He outlined several steps parents
should take:
* Limit beverages to skim milk or water for children one year
of age and older. Lowfat and whole milk contain too many calories
(and too much saturated fat.) No other beverages. Period.
* Do this from the beginning. Don’t let kids become
accustomed to the taste of sweet drinks.
“Southern sweet tea is very caloric,” said Popkin.
If you must have something sweet, choose a diet drink. It’s
not ideal to consume artificially sweetened drinks, but it’s
better than the alternative.
* No fruit juice. Opt for fiber-rich fresh fruit instead.
If you must drink fruit juice, hold it to a maximum of 4 ounces
per day.
* Ditch the vitamin waters and other caloric designer waters.
“They’re all equally bad, with no benefit,”
says Popkin.
The problem is a global issue. In France, no caloric beverages
are sold in schools. In fact, the country has banned all vending
machines from school premises in middle and secondary schools.
Similar discussions are taking place in the U.S., but measures
taken have been less substantial.
“When it comes to food and drink, we’re the last
to change,” says Popkin.
It’s time to try.
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