I Want you ….to get fat

By Suz Redfearn Men’s Health Magazine

It's amazing what you'll find in presidential impeachment testimony. On Presidents' Day 1996, Monica Lewinsky was standing in the Oval Office, listening to President Bill Clinton explain why he didn't think their relationship was such a good idea, when the phone rang. The person on the line was Alfonso Fanjul, a prominent sugar grower in Florida. Clinton stopped trying to let Lewinsky down easy and went on to speak with Fanjul for about 20 minutes. The reported subject? Vice President Al Gore's recently announced plan to tax Florida growers of sugar crops and use the revenue to help restore parts of the Everglades polluted by agricultural runoff. Needless to say, Clinton and Lewinsky's relationship lingered on long after that day. The proposed sugar tax, on the other hand, did not. That the U.S. food industry is in bed with the government--almost literally, in this case--shouldn't surprise anyone. Whether through soft-money contributions or hard-nosed lobbyists, nearly every major business interest in America attempts to pull political strings. So why not the folks whose business it is to sell food? What troubles many nutritionists is the reach of organizations like the American Sugar Cane League, especially since such groups' ability to manipulate the masses into consuming more "product" is measured most accurately with a bathroom scale. And nowhere, critics argue, is the potential for politically engineered harm to our waistlines (and our hearts) more evident than in the Dietary Guidelines for Americans. The guidelines, which are issued every 5 years by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), are supposed to represent the summit of scientifically backed advice on eating for optimal health. But instead, the newest set, released on January 12, 2005, may represent something else entirely: how enmeshed our government is with an industry whose sole goal is to keep Americans eating.
Don't let Uncle Sam shove this down your throat
Until 1977, no one really cared what Americans ate, as long as they ate enough to survive and didn't develop nutrient-deficiency diseases, like scurvy. But that year, Senator George McGovern issued a report stating that nutrition had a major impact on health, a concept that, though common sense today, was a pioneering idea at the time. Three years later, the Carter administration produced the nation's first Dietary Guidelines, which told Americans exactly what to eat every day. (Among the plainspoken recommendations: "Avoid too much sugar.") As the government's interest in our diets grew, so did the presence of food-industry lobbying groups in Washington. They swelled from just a handful in 1950 to about 80 in 1984. And although the 1985 sugar guideline remained the same, the 1990 version showed signs that the lobbyists were hammering away at its hard-line stance: The committee softened the language to "Use sugars only in moderation." By 1995, the guidelines even went so far as to adopt a slightly positive tone, advising consumers to "choose a diet moderate in sugars." " 'Eat less sugar' sent sugar producers right to Congress," says Marion Nestle, Ph.D., a professor of public health at New York University and the author of Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health. "But that industry could live with 'choose a diet moderate in sugars.' " That is, until 2000, the year the guidelines underwent their fourth revision. This time, exactly what you'd imagine might happen to an enemy of the sugar industry befell the recommendation: It lost all its teeth. Each person was now urged to "choose beverages and foods to moderate your intake of sugar." Apparently, the decision makers at HHS had a simple rationalization for this seeming sellout. "The mantra that's constantly repeated is 'All foods are good,' " says Carlos Camargo, M.D., D.P.H., an associate professor of medicine and epidemiology at Harvard medical school and a member of the 2005 Dietary Guidelines committee. "You know that's driven by economic and political interest. Nobody wants to say that a company's product is unhealthy." And the people who do choose to speak out? They may find themselves under the same kind of government gag order Nestle says she experienced in 1986. That year, she left her faculty position at the University of California at San Francisco school of medicine and moved to Washington, D.C., to manage editorial production of the first Surgeon General's Report on Nutrition and Health. It was an ambitious government effort to summarize all the research linking diet to chronic diseases. On the first day, recalls Nestle, her superiors instructed her that no matter what the studies showed, the report could not say "eat less meat," "eat less sugar," or eat "less" of anything. Turns out the agency she was toiling for, the Public Health Service, was nervous that food producers would complain to Congress and attempt to block the publication of future reports. And thus, when the report came out in 1988, the offensive four-letter word was absent. It was also the only Surgeon General's Report on Nutrition and Health ever issued, despite a congressional mandate that one be composed every 2 years. "The government abandoned the project, ostensibly because the science base had become increasingly complex," Nestle says. "Since then, I've become convinced that many of the nutritional problems of Americans--not the least of which is obesity--can be traced to the food industry's imperative to encourage people to eat more in order to generate sales and increase income." Comments such as these have made Nestle a favorite target of the Center for Consumer Freedom, a nonprofit organization whose Web site proclaims "Promoting Personal Responsibility and Protecting Personal Choice." Its spokesmen describe her as, among other things, a "food cop" and "queen of the food scolds." Of course, you have to consider the source (of the center's funding): "restaurants, food companies, and more than 1,000 concerned individuals."

The Food-Industry FraternityAs far as we know, the fraternity of food-industry lobbyists doesn't have a secret oath. But if it did, Jeff Nedelman, a former lobbyist for the Grocery Manufacturers of America, one of the country's largest food-industry trade groups, would say it goes something like this: "The goal of every single [food-industry] association, large or small, is to maintain the status quo," he says, "to delay, to fight, to lobby to obscure the facts until its member companies have found a competitive way to reposition their products or to bring out new products to compete for new consumer demand." Money, of course, is the primary means to these political ends. The Center for Responsive Politics (CRP), a nonpartisan watchdog group that follows money trails around Washington, estimates that in 2004, representatives of food and agriculture groups spent more than $48 million lobbying politicians (and that figure doesn't include other agricultural concerns, such as tobacco and forestry). (continued below...) Specifically, the CRP's ledger shows that lobbyists for the Altria Group (owner of Kraft Foods) spent $1,142,997, while PepsiCo dropped $426,380 and American Crystal Sugar and the American Sugar Cane League sweetened the pot with $846,164 and $402,750, respectively. And that was just the money they were required to reveal. Much more is given anonymously to individual members of Congress through political action committees, soft-money contributions, and gifts. When dollars don't work, the food industry employs less-subtle methods of persuasion. "You break arms," says Nedelman. The United Nations-sponsored World Health Organization (WHO) bore the full brunt of food-industry muscle in 2003, just as the U.S. Dietary Guidelines committee's work was getting under way. In response to the growing worldwide obesity epidemic, WHO assembled an independent panel of academics and medical professionals to review the scientific literature and develop recommendations for people to eat more healthfully and lose weight. One of those ways included limiting sugar consumption to 10 percent of daily calorie intake. The Sugar Association, a consortium of sugar producers whose aim is to "promote the consumption of sugar," poured resources into fighting the report, demanding that WHO undertake another scientific review. The association also vowed to "use every avenue available to expose the dubious nature" of the report, including asking members of Congress to challenge the $406 million in U.S. contributions to WHO. The funding remained intact, but the cochairmen of the Senate Sweetener Caucus, senators John Breaux (whose home state of Louisiana is the nation's second-largest producer of sugarcane) and Larry Craig (of Idaho, the second-largest producer of beet sugar), asked Health and Human Services to quash the report. HHS, in turn, produced a 28-page critique calling into question the studies that WHO had used to support its recommendations, even though the research was carried out by internationally known scientists. The result: WHO leaders appear to have shelved the report, which has yet to be implemented. "What the United States did was unambiguously shameful," says Nestle. "But there's been a steady history of this." When we contacted Breaux to determine why he felt so strongly that sugar consumption was not connected to weight gain, he declined to comment. And, actually, it's now former Senator Breaux: He currently works as senior counsel for Patton Boggs, one of Washington's largest lobbying firms, whose clients include Dole Food and Mars. The Spirit of PartnershipIf anyone in the USDA or HHS feels at all self-conscious about the food industry's involvement in the creation of the 2005 Dietary Guidelines, you'd never know it from the sound bites. "The food industry has spent a great deal of time and money appearing at and observing all of the negotiations that went into compiling the guidelines" is what Tommy Thompson, then-secretary of HHS, told a roomful of journalists, nutritionists, and policy makers when introducing the new guidelines earlier this year. In fact, he said, industry representatives met with him and secretary of the USDA Ann Veneman regularly during the 2-year-long process to determine what Americans should eat. "Our president believes in partnerships," says Cristina Beato, Ph.D., HHS's acting assistant secretary of health. "Two-thirds of Americans are overweight or obese. The role of government? To turn it around. We really need to bring in the power of those individuals who know how to sell food, those individuals who make the food, those individuals who know what American consumers choose and who help educate those consumers every day." It was with this spirit of partnership, says Beato, that HHS approached the development of the new Dietary Guidelines, which began in September 2003 with the selection of a 13-member committee of academics and research scientists. "The charge to the committee was very specific," Beato recalls. "It was 'Your job as experts of science is to stick to the sciences. Do not venture into communications, and do not venture into policy--that is the job of this department.' " And yet, despite this directive, HHS did little to insulate committee members from the influence of food-industry representatives, who apparently did consider policy their job. "At some level, throughout the process, you're constantly made aware of the food industry, the beverage industry, and the economic impact of decisions," says Dr. Camargo. One frequent strategy was for industry reps to send boxes of publicity materials and reams of point-by-point responses to minutes of the committee's meetings. "Almost weekly, we'd get a big FedEx box of materials to review," says Russell Pate, Ph.D., a professor of exercise science at the University of South Carolina school of public health, who served on the committee. Another food-industry tactic was simply to show up. "Anytime more than half of the members of the committee met, those needed to be public meetings," says Pate. "They were announced in advance and available to the media and whoever else wanted to sit in. They took place in large rooms where there were 200 or 300 seats available for non-committee members." Not surprisingly, few in the general public could take time to attend these meetings, whereas groups like the National Food Processors Association made sure they filled as many seats as possible and eagerly approached committee members during breaks. "If there's a food group in America that was not represented, I'd be surprised," says Dr. Camargo. "Every single little element of the American diet had an advocate." While both Dr. Camargo and Pate feel confident that the committee remained above the influence of outside interests, the same can't be said for the recommendations their work produced. The committee doesn't write the Dietary Guidelines that are released to the public; it merely suggests what these guidelines should be. The final decision rests with the politically appointed HHS and USDA secretaries, i.e., the "partners" of industry. "The committee is impaneled, does its thing, and finalizes a report, and we all sign off," says Pate. "Then it's turned over to the two agency heads, and we're decommissioned. As a committee, we're not privy to the conversations that took place in the agencies after we finished our jobs." In this case, the final published guidelines differed from the committee's report in several ways. For example, the committee unanimously voted to reduce trans fat intake to 1 percent or less of total calories, but the final guidelines removed that figure. "I think it was just too big a step for the federal government," says Dr. Camargo. "Putting a number on it would have been such an earthquake in the food industry that I just don't think there was the will to do that." Think about it: Assigning a number would have resulted in a Daily Value percentage posted on the Nutrition Facts panel of every single packaged food. When trans fat figures finally begin appearing on labels next year, what consumer would knowingly buy a pack of cookies that will exceed his daily intake of trans fat by 300 percent? But the first bite out of the food industry's bottom line would probably come from school cafeterias. Because the nation's school-lunch programs are federally funded--to the tune of $7.1 billion annually--they're required to meet the current Dietary Guidelines, which means that a concrete figure for daily trans fat consumption would immediately force food manufacturers to modify their existing product lines. If not for the timely publication in the Journal of the American Medical Association of a Harvard study that strongly linked consumption of sweetened beverages to weight gain and an increased risk of diabetes in women, added sugar might not have been mentioned at all, says Dr. Camargo. He recalls a May meeting of the committee during which the preliminary recommendations for carbohydrates were reviewed. "It was 'grains, grains, grains,' but no mention of sugar," he says. Although the debate about linking added sugar to weight gain was vociferous (some committee members didn't feel that the published scientific evidence was strong enough), the Harvard study helped tip the balance, resulting in a recommendation to "reduce intake of added sugars." Although this conclusion wasn't quashed outright, HHS and the USDA don't give it much play. The "key" finding about carbohydrates simply encourages consumers to "choose [them] wisely." Learning how to do so requires more reading. Only in the chapter on carbohydrates do consumers learn more about how to reduce their sugar intake--by avoiding sweetened beverages, for example. But, as with trans fats, the guidelines don't provide a measure for ideal intake, even though the brochure developed to introduce the guidelines to the public bafflingly states, "know the limits on fats, salt, and sugars." "The guidelines are not very explicit about the 'how-to,' " says David Katz, M.D., a professor of medicine, epidemiology, and public health at the Yale University school of medicine and the author of The Way to Eat. "Most authorities recommend that added sugars make up less than 10 percent of total daily calories. And the agreement on trans fat is even more robust: It should be as close to zero as possible. No trans fat, period." That lack of specificity is crucial when dealing with consumers, who may not be able to tell the difference between a food that will help clear their arteries and one that will help clog them. "Most people don't go to the supermarket and look for the trans fat aisle," says Dr. Camargo. "We reduce foods to nutrients, then we study the nutrients and how they relate to health. But we need to put [the process] in reverse and go back to people and say, 'These are the foods that have more or less of these nutrients.' But that piece is always the one that is so hard for the government to do."
"Most-Improved" Nutrition GuidelinesIt's been several months since the release of the 2005 Dietary Guidelines, and by now, most of the major nutrition associations and organizations have had a chance to weigh in. And if you think you can guess what their collective opinion is, you'd probably guess wrong. The American Dietetic Association, which states that it "serves the public by promoting optimal health, nutrition, and well-being," quickly endorsed the new guidelines. Even the ordinarily hypercritical Center for Science in the Public Interest, a nutrition-policy watchdog group, was pleased, calling them "the most health-oriented ever." The logic behind lauding the guidelines is simple, though far from sound: They're better than any other guidelines that preceded them. In other words, HHS and the USDA are being praised for producing the "most-improved" nutrition guidelines, when their charge was to produce the best. Sure, the new guidelines do recommend daily exercise for the first time. And it's
true that they mince no words in recommending whole grains, fruit, vegetables, and reduced-fat dairy foods. But we also know that HHS and the USDA could have helped control two of the biggest dietary demons facing Americans, and yet chose not to. Will the guidelines ever go from good to great? Some experts suggest that if the experiences of another big industry during the past decade are any indication, things won't get better until consumers get fed up. "Tobacco-industry change occurred only once public opinion had become so galvanized, the politicians could no longer side with the industry that was paying them," says Kelly Brownell, Ph.D., a professor of psychology at Yale University and coauthor of Food Fight: The Inside Story of the Food Industry, America's Obesity Crisis, and What We Can Do about It. In the meantime, if you can make a meal out of crumbs, then by all means dive into the new Dietary Guidelines. But if you want the whole cake--no trans fat, very little sugar, thank you--then you'll want to take your appetite for honesty somewhere else.

Foreseeing by Sharon Bryan

Middle age refers more
to landscape than to time:
it's as if you'd reached

the top of a hill
and could see all the way
to the end of your life,

so you know without a doubt
that it has an end—
not that it will have,

but that it does have,
if only in outline—
so for the first time

you can see your life whole,
beginning and end not far
from where you stand,

the horizon in the distance—
the view makes you weep,
but it also has the beauty

of symmetry, like the earth
seen from space: you can't help
but admire it from afar,

especially now, while it's simple
to re-enter whenever you choose,
lying down in your life,

waking up to it
just as you always have—
except that the details resonate

by virtue of being contained,
as your own words
coming back to you

define the landscape,
remind you that it won't go on
like this forever.

A Gathering of Swans

From the journal of a Mr. Patrick Conway, aged seventeen, during the course of a visit to Bruges in the year 1800: “Sat on the stone wall and observed a gathering of swans, an aloof armada, coast around the curves of the canal and merge with the twilight, their feathers floating away over the water like the trailing hems of snowy ball-gowns. I was reminded of beautiful women; I thought of Mill. De V., and experienced a cold exquisite spasm, a chill as though a had heard a poem spoken, fine music rendered. A beautiful woman, beautifully elegant, impresses us as art does, changes the weather of our spirit, and that, is that a frivolous matter? I think not.”

The intercontinental covey of swans drifting across our pages boasts a pair of cygnets, fledglings of the prettiest promise who may one day lead the flock. However, as is generally conceded, a beautiful girl of twelve or twenty, while she may merit attention, does not deserve admiration. Reserve that laurel for decades hence when, if she has kept buoyant the weight of her gifts, been faithful to the vows a swan must , she will have earned an audience all-kneeling for her achievement represents discipline, has required the patience of a hippopotamus, the objectivity of a physician combined with the involvement of an artist, one whose sole creation is her perishable self. Moreover, the area of accomplishment must extend much beyond the external. Of first importance is voice, its timbre, how and what it pronounces; if stupid, a swan must seek to conceal it , not necessarily from men (a dash of dumbness seldom diminishes masculine respect, though it rarely, regardless of myth, enhances it); rather from clever women, those witch-eyed brilliants who are simultaneously the swan’s mortal enemy and most convinced adorer. Of course the perfect Giselle, she of calmest purity, is herself a clever woman. The cleverest are easily told; and not by any discourse on politics or Proust, any smartly placed banderillas of wit; not, indeed, buy the presence of any positive factor, but the absence of one; self-appreciation. The very nature of her attainment presupposes a certain personal absorption; nonetheless, if one can remark on her face or in her attitude an awareness of the impression she makes, it is a though , attending a banquet, one had the misfortune to glimpse the kitchen.

To pedal realistic chord--- and it must be sounded, if only out of justice to their cousins of coarser plumage—authentic swans are almost never women that nature and the world has deprived. God gave them good bones; some lesser personage, a father, a husband, blessed them with the best of beauty emollients, a splendid bank account. Being a great beauty, and remaining one, is, at the altitude flown here, expensive: a fairly accurate estimate of the annual upkeep could be made—but really, why spark a revolution? And if expenditure were all, a sizable population of sparrows would swiftly be swans.

It may be that the enduring swan glides upon waters of liquefied lucre; but that cannot account for the creature herself—her talent, like all talent, is composed of unpurchasable substances. For a swan is invariably the result of adherence to some aesthetic system of thought, a code transposed into a self-portrait; what we see is the imaginary portrait precisely projected. This is why certain women, while not truly beautiful but triumphs over plainness, can occasionally provide the swan-illusion: their inner vision of themselves is so fixed, decorated with such clever outer artifice, that we surrender to their claim, even stand convinced of its genuineness: and it is genuine; in a way the manque’ swan (our portfolio contains two excellent examples) is more beguiling than the natural (of which, among present company, the classic specimens are Mme. Agnelli, the European swan numero uno, and American’s superb unsurpassable Mrs. William S., Paley): after all , a creation wrought by human nature is of subtler human interest, of finer fascination, than one nature alone has evolved.

A final word: the advent of a swan into a room starts stirring in some persons a decided sense of discomfort. If one is to believe these swan “allergics,” their hostility does not derive from envy, but, so they suggest, from a shadow of “coldness” and “unreality” the swan casts. Yet isn’t it true that an impression of coldness, usually false, accompanies perfection? And might it not be that what the critics actually feel is fear? In the presence of the very beautiful, as in the presence of the immensely intelligent, terror contributes to our over-all reaction, and it is as much fright as appreciation which caused the stabbed-by-an-icicle chill that for a moment murders us when a swan swims into view.



By Truman Capote

We’re #1

Before we can be #1, we have to work as a team, striving for the best. Being one unified group thinking in the same way. So rather than seeing it this way maybe it should look like this

We’re 1

We’re the one to do it.
We’re the one that can be thoughtful.
We’re one of the people in the place of business that can make a difference.
We’re one group of employees in Minnesota.
We’re one that treat everyone as you wish to be treated.
We’re one that strives to the best in whatever we do.
We’re one that stand for the highest in quality and service.
We’re one that can be in harmony with all of our fellow workers.
We’re one because we can help teach new employees do their job to the best of their ability.




The other night at the opening night of the Wild hockey team, the new owner Bob Neagle, showed how important the number one is. On that great night he told the crowd of 18,500 how important all of them were to the team. On that night he retired the hockey jersey with the number 1 on it, symbolizing that the Wild fans were #1 to making the team so special. There is no NHL team in the country that has the number 1 fan jersey hanging from the top of their arena.

All of St. Paul is #1. We are all part of what makes this a special place to live. We all make it #1. Would it be even more special if everyone in the city felt that they were all part of what make it so special. We are all one together. Are we one? Just think about it everytime you look at the skyline of the city. The highest point in our city has the number 1 on it.

The First Time

You never can live a first time again. That's what's so special about it. Nothing has come before, so you can’t judge it. It's always the best. How can you ever compare that special feeling you have for that person? You get over the person but you can never get over those deep feelings you had. Every situation that you were in has a memory of how good it was.
Now you must move on, not just living without that person but with the memory of that love. Vivid pictures of how it was are etched in your mind for years to come.
The death of her is complete. Even though the memories of her live on, who she is now, does not. My attraction and feelings toward her are so different. No doubt the time that has passed has caused this change. We could never be the same again. That what happens with time. We change. Either you adapt to each other's change or you move apart. To continue to live I've had to move apart.
She has had a part in making the life I've lead much more. As in every good thing, you never forget. That will live on in my memories.