(02-02-12) Cheese Makes You Fat, Says New Ad Campaign

Cheese eating is under attack. The nonprofit Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) has launched a shock campaign aimed at raising awareness about the role cheese plays in obesity.
Posted in Albany, New York, in a region home to a number of dairy farms, one billboard shows a man?s overweight belly beside the words, ?Your Abs on Cheese,? while the other pairs a woman?s ample bottom with: ?Your Thighs on Cheese.?
More than 59% of New York State residents and nearly 63% of Albany?s adult residents are overweight or obese, PCRM said in a statement. ?The New York State Department of Health has said that the state faces a childhood obesity crisis, as one in four New Yorkers under the age of 18 is obese,? it continued, ?and the obesity rate for children between 6 and 11 years of age has quadrupled over 30 years.?
It went on to note that Albany school lunches are abundant in cheesy foods, like pizzas and triple-cheese lasagnas, and that cheese is the number-one source of saturated fat in the American diet.
It seems odd that PCRM should choose to go after cheese, when sugar, soda and meat seem perhaps more likely targets. But as mine is a cheese-loving household ? and if you?re reading this on Jan. 20, happy National Cheese Lover?s Day ? the billboards, as intended, gave me pause.
?The ads come from an organization devoted to a vegan lifestyle so the underlying message is really about telling people to avoid eating animal products,? Marion Nestle, the Paulette Goddard Professor in the Department of Nutrition, Food Studies and Public Health at New York University, said in an email, when I reached out.
?Obesity is about eating too much of anything, not just cheese,? she continued. ?What troubles me about these ads, aside from their offensiveness (pornography?), is that they focus on personal responsibility without saying anything about the food marketing environment that makes it so difficult for so many people to eat healthfully.?
In her best-selling ?What to Eat,? Nestle writes that softer cheeses have more water and therefore fewer calories, but generally a slice or a few one-inch cubes of a hard cheese, such as cheddar, has about 10 grams of fat, 6 of them saturated, and 120 calories, making cheese something to eat in moderation. There are alternatives, like low-fat cheeses and skim-milk ricotta. But, she adds:
?I say: Why bother? They do not taste nearly as good. I much prefer to save my calorie and fat budgets for really good cheeses and just not eat too much of them at any one time.?
Certainly, my cheese intake warrants some reigning in, which I?m slightly grateful to those billboard images for ? as pointed out by this recent study on how the size of plates affects portions, eating 50 extra calories a day can lead to a gain of 5 pounds each year.
But what about that of my toddler, who for the time being has her pediatrician?s blessing to consume whole milk and whole-fat yogurt?
The Guardian addressed this a few years ago, when the U.K.?s Food Standards Agency tapped cheese as a food ? along with chocolate, certain cereals and chicken nuggets ? being irresponsibly advertised to children.
Bridget Aisbitt, a nutrition scientist at the British Nutrition Foundation, told the Guardian at the time, when asked how much cheese children can eat: ?It depends on the child. If a child is healthy and does a lot of exercise, eating cheese every other day is fine. For a child who is overweight and not very active, I would say no more than once a week.?

Source: forbes.com

News

---

In evidenza

"L'informazione presente nel sito serve a migliorare, e non a sostituire, il rapporto medico-paziente."

Per coloro che hanno problemi di salute si consiglia di consultare sempre il proprio medico curante.