Patrick S

Is this good advice? Is it intended to help reduce calories or are there real nutritional issues at stake here? Low fat food products should be put under serious scrutiny for sugar content. ← I agree that low-fat foods are not necessarily "healthy" if they are too calorie-rich (though a lot of people seemed to think so at one point!), but the issue here is milk specifically. And according to the first source I found, full-fat milk, 2%, 1%, and 0% milk all have the same per-serving content of sugar, protein, Vitamin A, Vitamin C, Vitamin D, and Calcium. According to this source, the only significant differences between the milks are total calories, fat calories, saturated fat, and cholesterol, with higher-fat milks having higher amounts of these. Can anyone else confirm of refute that milks with different fat contents have very similar nutritional content, apart from fat, cholesterol and total calories?

Truly, you have to admire the precocious ability of the three-year who manages to find their own money, tip-toe out of the house, travel to the store, and buy their own cereal without any gaurdian supervision. I myself have never seen a three-year buying Lucky Charms. I bet Stewie Griffin could do it, though. To me that type of education makes SO much more sense than an outright ban on advertising. Its not just food advertising that kids need to learn to analyse, its all arguments and attempts at persuasion. Its scandalous how ill-prepared kids (and many adults) are to evaluate not only advertising but also things like political speech, product health claims and so on. Without a critical mind, life will be one continuous banana-peel experience no matter how hard the gov tried to shield you from self-interested persuaders.

Well its sure looks good to me. Caramel apple pie is my favorite pie. And the drippage is not a bad thing. Its. . . enticing. Nice cheesecake, Jmahl, and nice apple tart, James.

Good point, but after reading the entire pagethat quote comes from, I'm not convinced that advertising plays no role, only that television advertising may not be the only explanation for one of the diet-related health outcomes the report covers. ← Well, it should be utterly self-evident to everyone that media advertising "may not be the only explanation" for increasing obesity rates. While we don't have the conclusive evidence, according to the IOM, that advertising exposure plays any causal role in childhood obesity, we do have conclusive evidence with regard to other factors. Specifically, we know that there has been an emormous decrease in physical activity over the past several decades, and that levels of physical activity have a direct, causal relationship with adiposity.

But again, you don't need to be the perfect parent 24/7/365/18 to raise kids who arent obese. Obesity doesn't happen to your kids because you cave in on a happy meal every now and then. Kids don't just wake up one morning with a BMI of 40. Obesity happens when you allow your kids' calorie intake to exceed their calorie burning, in a consistent way, over a long period of time. I don't think you need any exceptional skill or wisdom to get your kids to eat reasonably (not perfectly) and exercise reasonably. I think for many parents of obese children, their problem is not that they happen to fall just a wee bit short of complete perfection, but that they don't take the problem serious at all, and thus put forth little or no effort to modify their kid's behavior. A lot of parents are not caving in occasionally to the happy meal and the Count Chocula, they are feeding their kids a steady diet of this junk, largely for their own convenience, and do not even see a problem with it. That is the central question, of course. The three other questions you ask have relatively uncontroversial, affirmative answers. Most pepople agree that the gov has some role in public health (e.g. FDA), and that obesity is a public health problem. The role of advertising in that problem is not at all uncontroversial. To again quote the IOM report itself: ". . .current evidence is not sufficient to arrive at any finding about a causal relationship from television advertising to adiposity among children and youth.” That's not from some industry PR firm, that's what the IOM report itself states. I'm no scientist, but I think that before you ban advertising in an effort to reduce childhood obesity that you should first, you know, actually establish that advertising plays a causal role in childhood obesity. The examples of Sweden and Quebec, which banned food advertising to kids but have obesity rates similar to populations that did not, sure seems to suggest that such a causal role, if it exists at all, is probably quite modest.

Nice. Is that a tiramisu on the right?

What kids can eat and drink at school is an entirely different issue, but I definitely think that restricting the types of foods that can be marketed in schools is fair and rational. I have complete control over what my kids eat for breakfast and dinner, but I can't be sure she doesn't spend her lunch money on doughnuts at school!

One interesting conclusion of the IOM report that hasn't been mentioned is that "the current evidence is not sufficient to arrive at any finding about a causal relationship from television advertising to adiposity." What would be really interesting is to have two populations, similar in most relevant respects except that one limits or bans food advertising to kids. If advertising has a causal role in obesity, then the nonexposed population should be less obese. And the magnitude of the difference in obesity rates between the two populations would be a measure of how strong an influence advertising has on obesity. According to some experts, such real-world test cases already exist, in the form of Sweden and Quebec. A 2004 BBC article says:

Are you positive about that? In every case? Aren't there examples of smokers who live healthy lives and die in their 90s? ← I wasnt very clear. I'm talking about risk, which of course is a probability. A stuntman may pull off a whole career with no broken bones, but jumping over schoolbuses still increased their risk of breaking a bone. We know that not everyone is equally susceptible to health effects from smoking, and yes some smokers will live to 100, not develop cancer, heart disease, or chronic obstructive breathing disorders. At the current time, we can't tell in advance who will get sick and who won't, but we can do is look at populations of smokers with different smoking habits, and compare them to a control population that is similar but doesn't smoke. When we look at populations who are very light smokers, we still find that risk of premature death and cancer is elevated compared to the nonsmoking controls (e.g. Bjartveit and Tverda, 2005). So I would say, yes every smoker is increasing their risk, even though many if not most smokers will not have a major bad health outcome. Bjartveit and Tverda, 2005. Health consequences of smoking 1–4 cigarettes per day. Tobacco Control 14:315-320.

If that type of thing happens occasionally, no you're not a bad parent. Just imperfect. But if you consistently allow yourself to be pressured into making bad choices for your child's health, then yes, you probably are a bad parent. ← Just want to get this straight: manufacturers and marketers, no matter how odious their product or methods, bear no responsibility whatsoever for the results of their actions? To be incorporated is to be without sin? ← I admit, I have no idea how you derived that summary of my position from anything that I actually wrote. Of course corporations have responsibilities. But making sure my kids eat right aint one of them.

I don't think anyone is advocating that the government take no role in public health, though there may be some disagreements about how and when in should intervene. And of course the smoking comparison is a little shaky, since even light smoking increases your risk of death significantly, which is not something you can say about the occasionaly snickers bar. ← I seem to recall something in the news about -- oh wait, it's coming back -- a childhood obesity epidemic and the emergence of obesity as the second leading cause of preventable death. ← The cigarette comparison is quite obviously strained. So far as we know, there is no way to smoke regularly without impacting your health and increasing your risk of death. Snickers bars, on the other hand, don't kill you if you eat them occasionally, as part of a diet that is reasonable.

If that type of thing happens occasionally, no you're not a bad parent. Just imperfect. But if you consistently allow yourself to be pressured into making bad choices for your child's health, then yes, you probably are a bad parent.

Learning about the way that propaganda is used in advertising, politics, etc. should be part of every child's education. Learning how to construct honest arguments that are not mere propaganda should also be part of every child's education. Many students think that ignoring any opposing view makes their essays stronger, rather than less believable. Perhaps exposure to advertising has something to do with that. But I think we can see that awareness of advertising methods is an issue that goes way beyond food... ← These are four-year-olds. They believe in Santa Clause. They're not quite ready for rhetorical training. They just want to eat what that cool kid ate on TV. ← Right. They also want to stick tweezers in light sockets, ram M&Ms up their nose, and play with matches. That's where mom and dad come in.

I don't think anyone is advocating that the government take no role in public health, though there may be some disagreements about how and when in should intervene. And of course the smoking comparison is a little shaky, since even light smoking increases your risk of death significantly, which is not something you can say about the occasionaly snickers bar.

More knowledge is always, always, always to the good. And to the extent that the IOM report adds to our knowledge, its a good thing. But the bottom line for me is that it always has and always will be parental/caregiver responsibility, not industry's responsibility, to make sure my children make the right food choices. I expect them to produce stuff and try to sell me that stuff, rather than act as dieticians.

A long time ago, when I first started baking, I was also turned off by some store-brand artificial vanilla that I tried. I assumed that all artificial extract tasted that way, and didn't try it again for a long time. It was only years later, after I read that in blind comparisons people can't even tell the difference and do not express a preference for real extract, that I tried other brands of the artificial stuff and found that some of it tasted just fine.

Herme's still my favorite, even though other recipes give what I think are better looking macaroons.

I should have specified "good vanilla beans." The Tahitensis beans from New Guinea that I bought for a similar price on Ebay were absolute garbage, fragrant and plump and . . . practically devoid of vanilla flavor. Are you getting Planifolia beans for this price? If so, thats a very good deal and I'm very interested.

Just as a personal observation, I don't think food advertising has 1/1000 the effect on my own child's eating habits that I as a parent have. My daughter may ask for marshmallow "cereal" or whatever at the store as a result of advertising exposure, but I decide whether to get it or not. There is a problem here with unhealthy eating, but I think that since only parents, schools and caregivers have real control over what kids eat, you really got to focus efforts there. That's just MHO.

Where have you people been? No one is responsible for their own choices anymore. At least, it seems that way sometimes. I looked through the report's section on recommendations, and the recommendations to the food industry basically boil down to: develop healthier foods and market healthier foods.

I tried another chocolate macaroon recipe. This one is from David Lebovitz. Interestingly, these did not need to rest at all to form feet. They can go into the oven right after piping. A couple of observations: Baking for the specified time and temp (15-18@375F) makes the cookies too dry and crispy. 11-12 minutes was better, but still a little too crisp. I'll want to try some more variation on time and temp to see what happens. As others have reported with various recipes, these macaroons developed large voids. I like this recipe well enough, it pipes well and looks pretty good, but I must say that texture and flavor-wise, PH's recipe is still my favorite at this point.

More macaroons. Recipe is from David Lebovitz. They're filled with chocolate-caramel ganache.

That's true, but I would go even further and say that its not at all clear that natural or synthetic vanilla have any advantage in terms of environmental impact. One or the other may have the edge, but I don't think you can just assume that it is the natural product. Consider the assertion that benzene is a byproduct of artificial vanillan production. Well, benzene is also generated by the combustion of fossil fuels, and you'll need to burn plenty of fossil fuels to transport those beans by boat or plane from Mexico and Tahiti and New Guinea to their destinations all over the world. And I don't necessarily think its a bad thing that vanillan is made from byproducts of other industrial processes, as opposed to starting from precursor ingredients that require more processing, and hence more energy. Again, I'm not saying that one is superior to the other in terms of environmental impact, just that I don't know!

I think that's why most people are so sure that artificial vanilla can't be as good as natural vanilla -- because its all artificial-ly.

But I do believe that there are compounds in a cured seedpod of V. planifolia which are not present in artificial vanilla. ← Yes, and this raises an interesting question that, so far as I know, has not been answered: Why do good beans gives a flavor that is so much better than extract made from the same type of beans? I know from my own experiments that I can detect no difference between natural and artificial extracts, but that I can detect a difference between good beans and an extract. Either alcohol vanilla extraction does not capture all of the flavors that are in the bean, or the flavor compounds are somehow broken down once they are extracted.