Mega-Brands Have Mega Influence on Dietary Behavior

Diet and Nutrition

Mega-brands, those popular food products that dominate the supermarket shelves and dinner plates of mainstream America, are often under siege by consumer groups because of their ingredients, labeling, and marketing practices. Yet, mega-brands continue to rack up billions of dollars in sales each year. What is the secret to their success? According to James Tillotson, PhD, MBA, professor at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University, "mega-brands maintain their strong grip on our diet because consumers, food companies, and supermarkets are intertwined in a symbiotic relationship that yields great benefits for all three."
In a two-part series in his Business and Nutrition column in Nutrition Today, Tillotson refers to mega-brands as "fortress brands" because of their durability in defending their market share against rivals. He explains how these products maintain their strong foothold in the market despite often being at odds with the USDA Dietary Guidelines for Americans with respect to sugars, fats, salt, calories, and lack of fiber. "In spite of a deluge of popular press coverage in recent years about pros and cons of following the Dietary Guideline recommendations, consumer surveys continue to report that taste still trumps all other rationales in motivating food purchases by catering to our strong liking for sweets, fats and oils, and salt," Tillotson writes.
Tillotson describes the role that supermarkets play in perpetuating the dominance of mega-brands in consumers' diets. "In the razor-thin profit business of supermarkets," says Tillotson, "profitability depends on high sales per unit of shelf space. With a finite amount of shelf space and thousands of brands available, the chains favor the strongly consumer-wanted, high-volume selling products." Tillotson also points out that, "it is more efficient to stock one or two mega-brands with their high sales velocity off the shelf than a number of lesser brands that are slow sellers. In this Darwinian process, mega-brands are the winners."
"Their greater profitability (versus the lesser brands) is the result not only of their commanding market shares and higher sales volumes, but also their larger profit margins," adds Tillotson. "Mega-brands are inherently the most-wanted by consumers, so supermarkets must have them to sell. Brand preferences are often passed from grandparents to parents to children and are deeply ingrained in our eating culture."
Why not just develop new, healthier mega-brands? Tillotson says that companies try, but "most market categories already have long established category leaders which are very difficult, if not impossible to dislodge." "Food companies--particularly the larger ones--have increased, or are attempting to increase, their mega-brand numbers by way of mergers and acquisitions as well as trying to develop new ones. This motivation to acquire stronger brands has been one of the driving factors of the industry's ongoing consolidation into fewer, but larger companies."
Tillotson concludes, "Mega-brands offer consumers a time-proven guarantee to deliver repeated satisfaction and quality, and importantly even more than the sum of great taste, convenience, and price, they offer compelling associations, emotional and psychological product inducements. These products are marketed by well-funded, highly professional organizations. The Dietary Guidelines are long on lecturing what to eat, but short on telling how and limiting in their motivation," writes Tillotson. "Without the same marketing attributes, strategy and budget, how can the Dietary Guidelines compete?"

Health Canada Advises To Avoid Certain Weight Loss Products

Health Canada is advising consumers not to use Karntien, Karntien Easy to Slim, Armstrong Natural Herbal Supplement, Enhanix New Extra Men’s Formula, Power 58 Extra and Platinum Power 58 Extra due to concerns about possible side-effects.
Product Description: Karntien and Karntien Easy to Slim are promoted for weight loss. The other four products – Armstrong Natural Herbal Supplement, Enhanix New Extra Men’s Formula, Power 58 Extra, and Platinum Power 58 Extra – are marketed for sexual enhancement and the treatment of erectile dysfunction.
Reason for Warning: The Hong Kong Department of Health warned consumers not to buy or use the six products listed above because they were found to contain undeclared pharmaceutical ingredients.
Karntien and Karntien Easy to Slim were adulterated with sibutramine and a compound that is similar in structure to sibutramine (N-desmethylsibutramine). Sibutramine is a prescription drug used in the treatment of obesity and should only be used under the supervision of a health care professional.
Armstrong Natural Herbal Supplement, Enhanix New Extra Men’s Formula, Power 58 Extra, and Platinum Power 58 Extra were adulterated with tadalafil or unapproved substances with structures similar to tadalafil and vardenafil.
Tadalafil and vardenafil are prescription drugs used for the treatment of erectile dysfunction, and should only be used under the supervision of a health care professional.
Possible Side-Effects: Unsupervised use of sibutramine may cause headaches, increased heart rate and blood pressure, chest pain and stroke.
Unsupervised use of tadalafil and vardenafil by patients with heart disease can result in serious cardiovascular side-effects such as sudden cardiac death, heart attack, stroke, hypertension, chest pain and abnormal heartbeat.
Use of tadalafil and vardenafil may also beassociated with other side-effects including temporary vision loss, seizure, prolonged erection, headache, flushing, nasal congestion and abdominal pain. Tadalafil and vardenafil should not be used by individuals taking any type of nitrate drug (e.g., nitroglycerine) due to the risk of developing potentially life-threatening low blood pressure.

Diet pill switches on gene that tells cells to burn fat

Fat Burning with diet pill

Makes normal mice resistant to weight gain on high-fat diet
By giving ordinary adult mice a drug - a synthetic designed to mimic fat - Salk Institute scientist Dr. Ronald M. Evans is now able to chemically switch on PPAR-d, the master regulator that controls the ability of cells to burn fat. Even when the mice are not active, turning on the chemical switch activates the same fat-burning process that occurs during exercise. The resulting shift in energy balance (calories in, calories burned) makes the mice resistant to weight gain on a high fat diet.

The hope, Dr. Evans told scientists attending Experimental Biology 2007 in Washington, DC, is that such metabolic trickery will lead to a new approach to new treatment and prevention of human metabolic syndrome. Sometimes called syndrome X, this consists of obesity and the often dire health consequences of obesity: high blood pressure, high levels of fat in the blood, heart disease, and resistance to insulin and diabetes.
Dr. Evan� � �,, s Experimental Biology presentation on April 30 is part of the scientific program of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.
This chemical switch is not the first success Dr. Evan� � �,, s laboratory has had in being able to turn on the PPAR-d switch in adipose or fat cells, activating local metabolism and increasing the amount of calories burned. As a Howard Hughes Medical Investigator at The Salk Institute� � �,, s Gene Expression Laboratory, Dr. Evans discovered the role of the gene for PPAR-d, the master regulator of fat metabolism. By permanently turning on this delta switch in mice through genetic engineering, he was able to create a mouse with an innate resistance to weight gain and twice the physical endurance of normal mice. Because they were able to run an hour longer than a normal mouse, they were dubbed "marathon mice."
Subsequent work in the Evans laboratory found that activation of PPAR-d in these mice also suppresses the inflammatory response associated with arthrosclerosis.
But the genetic metabolic engineering that created the marathon mouse is permanent, turned on before birth. While a dramatic proof of concept that metabolic engineering is a potentially viable approach, it offers no help to an adult whose muscles are already formed and who now would benefit greatly from having more active, fat-burning muscles.
That is why the potential of chemical metabolic engineering - possibly a one-a-day pill as opposed to permanent genetic metabolic engineering - is so exciting, says Dr. Evans. In today� � �,, s society, too few people get an ideal amount of exercise, some because of medical problems or excess weight that makes exercise difficult. Having access to an "exercise pill" would improve the quality of muscles, since muscles like to be exercised, and increase the burning of energy or excess fat in the body. And that would result in less fatty tissue, lower amounts of fat circulating in the blood, lower blood glucose levels and less resistance to insulin, lowering the risks of heart disease and diabetes.
The ability to chemically engineer changes in metabolism also has given the researchers more insight into how the PPAR-d switch works, says Dr. Evans. Genetically engineering changes in metabolism in the marathon mice triggers both increased fat burning and increased endurance. Adult normal mice that receive the drug to switch on PPAR-d show increased fat burning and resistance to weight gain, but they do not show increased endurance. Dr. Evans says this suggests the delta switch can operate in different modes, and the laboratory is in the process of figuring out exactly how. He hopes his strategy will make it possible.