No no, it’s accept the Icelanders. They’re morons, that wont be changed, accept it and move on.
I suppose, but I’m wondering what group would find a bag of sugar to be a healthy snack?
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A cancer patient who can’t keep anything else down? It certainly wouldn’t be unheard of. The kinds of taste changes cancer patients get makes what they’ll eat unpredictable. Some people are on tube feeding because they just don’t get the calories they need, let alone regular food. Tubefeeding and TPN are generally considered inferior to normal eating habits unless someone is physically incapable of eating normally. There are people who, honestly, we were desperate to get eating anything by mouth. My bias is people with chronic conditions, because in my experience, they’re the ones who really look for these kinds of labels.
But it’s all neither here nor there. It’s like I said, they probably have some universal standards that this passes. It’s like if you see a bag of sugar labelled “FAT FREE!”. Well duh, but it is true. Most “heart healthy” labeling is just an indication of saturated fat content and sodium or potassium. Which makes sense because something that has calories but doesn’t have fat or a lot of protein is going to be making up for it in carbohydrates. A two-slice serving of wonderbread is comparable to a lot of “unhealthy” snacks (whole grain is where it’s at people). Meanwhile diet jello is heart healthy because it’s nothing despite having zero nutritional value (less than one gram of protein is basically no protein). I’m sorry, but if you apply standards evenly across the board weird things start happening. Organizations like this are trying to make choices like this easier, and coming up with a complicated decision tree doesn’t help with that. For a non-diabetic heart patient, this really isn’t the worst thing they could be eating. It’s a damn sight better than some Entenmann’s donuts sitting next to them on a display.
Here’s the One Big Thing about nutrition: Diet is intensely complicated and the professionals are discovering new things all the time. Most of the problems we have with diet out in the world have to do with things you wouldn’t expect: people with heart disease that worsens not because they don’t keep track of what they eat, but because they have poor vision and can’t read the numbers on a bathroom scale well enough to know if they’re gaining or losing weight. Meanwhile, the very sodium standards which are part of most “heart-healthy” labels is being questioned by the CDC. The way gut flora interact with metabolism is becoming a fascinating new field. Oh, and by the way, carbs get a bad rap since Atkins, but there’s no scientific basis to avoid them unless you’re diabetic.
I’m not saying that the doc is wrong, but there are all kinds of issues that don’t crop up at first blush that may merit some extra consideration.
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Sheesh - no wonder you guys have a rep for leaving it all in the rink!
Charley Sheen, he ain’t.
Seriously, I’ve never known too many kids who couldn’t snarf down that entire basket of strawberries and still have room left for some gummies for dessert…I mean, unless parents actually think their kids are major candidates for heart attacks and strokes?
They aren’t gummies. They’re processed fruit. the company claims they’re 100% fruit and I have no reason to doubt them.
I have accepted Iceland into my heart and repented.
Repent.all of you who have not accepted Iceland. Repent!
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I don’t think either Ted or I were very serious…
No, gummies on top of dessert as a regular thing isn’t necessarily heart or stroke territory - Type II diabetes later in life, quite possibly, though. Alice, our healthcare dollars are spent on preventative measures more than is the wont in your country, and, to a great extent, it pays off: per capita healthcare expenditures are roughly half; rates of obesity are lower; and the average lifespan is about 3 years longer (which is significant).
Anecdotally, I used to work for Compaq/HP as part of a team that straddled the border, part in Ottawa, part in Houston (and, after the takeover, part in Colorado Springs), There were three of us up here, males, mid-30s to late-40s (me). I was probably the heaviest at 180 lbs; I was also the tallest (6’1") and oldest, although the other lads were not short (5’ 10", 6’ even). When we first caught sight of the Houston team, we were sort of… flabbergasted? There were more people in the team (Compaq HQ, eh?), and all around our age range, but they were all big people - not tall; big. These weren’t uneducated or ill-paid people, but the difference between the teams was noticeable (and we up here weren’t unrepresentative of the personnel in Ottawa). Make of that what you will, but I don’t think anecdote diverges too far from the actual state of affairs.
Perhaps, but the nutritional facts advertised are exactly as the good doctor stated, so they’ve processed the piss out of the fruit - dried fruit would have a helluva lot more fiber than that. Actually, with the amount of sugar left as a percentage of weight, and the addition of pectin, they’re gummies - they just start from fruit sugars.
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Uhm, it looks like a reasonable amount given it’s a mix. c.f. dried strawberries.
Half the fibre of dried, 20+% more sugar by weight. Those things are almost 90% sugar, and look at them on the package - they’re gummies. It doesn’t matter much how you get the sugar for them.
Contrast that with fresh, which have less than half the sugar (10 g) in a serving >4x the size (140 g) - over 80% water. A helluva lot more vitamins and minerals too, and frankly, they taste better, especially wild ones (although the little sons of guns are a pain in the arse to pick).
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Would you believe it was done ironically?
I wasn’t exactly being serious at first. Well, serious - but in a snarky way.
We spent hundreds of millions here every year on the activities of the Public Health Service., and have for many years now. All told, it covers about 100,000 federals.
However - the ‘obesity epidemic’ here was vastly overplayed, and got the usual page 6 retractions, which got a whole lot less notice. In fact, the largest Surveillance system in country was taken over by the guy who invented it, and who told me TO MY FACE that the only reason he grabbed the gig was to have ‘his’ obesity epidemic. True story.
Thus, my endless snark and cynicism. Is there any truth to it? Sure. Some. But only some.
And, no, you can’t tell much by spending time around a few people in Houston. I have tons of relatives there, and very many as rail thin, as I am, no matter what we eat. The added weight particular to the southern states here has more to do with the style of cooking - which doesn’t involve huge amounts of sugar, but does involve huge amounts of fat and carbs from grain. It was a style originating in large part to keep people fed when cash was not in great circulation and there were a whole lot of mouths to feed. Many people continue that tradition - especially, including the poor (not that food stamps will allow one to eat much better!).
So. Many, many exaggerations of data and failures to provide workable alternatives, but lots of preach - as our Canadian ‘celeb spokesperson’ demonstrates. It has little to do with the realities of most people, and appears to benefit government agencies and various non-profits better than actual human beings. So - dollars spent is really a very poor measure - at least in the US.
And now you also know whence cometh my public health campaign snark.
Yes, they are processed fruit. But they are also gummies. Let’s look at the ingredients:
Apple and/or pear puree concentrate=SUGAR
Apple/grape/pear and elderberry/strawberry/lemon juice concentrates=SUGAR
Citrus pectin= NATURAL THICKENING AGENT (GUMMIES!)
If you take fruit and remove the healthy parts through heat and processing, you are left with sugar.
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Intrestingly enough, these things (previous link was to the bar, not to the bites) aren’t much worse than other mass market dried fruit snacks. These are about 80% sugar (29g/40g serving), 5% (2g/40g serving) fiber by weight. Sunmaid Raisins (no added sugar according to them), by comparison, are 72.5% sugar, 5% fiber by weight. And Craisins fall into roughly the same range at 72.5% sugar, 7.5% fiber by weight. At least Craisins come in a reduced sugar version.
And hey, while we’re at it, let’s compare to a simple dried strawberry product… No nutritional information on their website that I could find, but a couple different sites put them at identical sugar/fibre levels.
Dried fruit, in general, can be pretty bad for sugars if you’re not being smart about your portioning. What makes these a little bit worse, though, is the gummification of them, because they DO seem more like candy (particularly to kids), which will make them more tempting to eat in unhealthy portions. Of course, the funny thing is, many kids would be perfectly happy to eat actual strawberries as if they were candy. I know my almost-2-year-old would easily eat her body weight in strawberries if we’d let her.
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Plenty (random nationality) eat well. Plenty (random nationality) eat badly. Poutine and crullers are not diet choices I would make, and though I’m American, don’t eat much in the way of burgers, fries or hot dogs. I make a mean apple pie, though.
They may need to revise their guidelines…
Eggs Don’t Cause Heart Attacks — Sugar Does | Dr. Mark HymanDr. Mark Hyman
Haven’t read it carefully, probably BS – I became aware of the article because someone on a professional email list was making fun of his math.
Read to the bottom of the article…
Two big red flags “new book” “Detox Diet”
In my new book, The Blood Sugar Solution 10-Day Detox Diet
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The doctor is also Canadian, so I’m not sure which anecdote you are using to generalize about us.
This doctor is heavily involved in the population health community (in which my wife works). She describes his as very fierce in his criticism of hypocrisy and BS, though she doesn’t always agree with his positions. I am seeing that in this post.
Bottom line - there is nothing healthy in that bag of gummies. Eat them instead of fruit and you or your kids will not be healthy. It isn’t a variation in populations thing, it is a simple health position. And no way should Heart & Stroke be giving them the stamp of approval.
Sometimes a little compromise to get funding completely kneecaps your whole position and credibility. It would be like David Suzuki accepting a donation from Exxon - not going to happen.
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I agree – Icelanders should be accepted in any establishment, or in any home. They’re fine people, as you say.
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