Weight Loss News
Taxing Sodas Won’t Spur Much Weight Loss, Study Says
MONDAY, Dec. 13 (HealthDay News) — Taxing sodas and other sweetened drinks would result in only minimal weight loss, although the revenues generated could be used to promote obesity control programs, new research suggests.
Adding to a spate of recent studies examining the impact of soda taxes on obesity, researchers from Duke-National University of Singapore (NUS) Graduate Medical School looked at the impact of 20 percent and 40 percent taxes on sales of carbonated and non-carbonated beverages, which also included sports and fruit drinks, among different income groups.
Because these taxes would simply cause many consumers to switch to other calorie-laden drinks, however, even a 40 percent tax would cut only 12.5 daily calories out of the average diet and result in a 1.3 pound weight loss per person per year, researchers said.
A 20 percent tax would equate to a daily 6.9 calorie intake reduction, adding up to no more than 0.7 pounds lost per person per year, according to the statistical model developed by the researchers.
“The taxes proposed as a remedy are largely on the grounds of preventing obesity, and we wanted to see if this would hold true,” said study author Eric Finkelstein, an associate professor of health services at Duke-NUS. “It’s certainly a salient issue. I assumed the effects would be modest in weight loss, and they were.”
“I believe that any single measure aimed at reducing weight is going [to be small],” Finkelstein added. “But combined with other measures, it’s going to add up. If higher taxes get people to lose weight, then good.”
As part of a growing movement to treat unhealthy foods as vices such as tobacco and liquor, several states in recent years have pushed to extend sales taxes to the purchase of soda and other sweetened beverages, which, like other groceries, are usually exempt from state sales taxes.
Other motions have seemed to target the poor, such as New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s proposal earlier this year to ban sugared drinks from groceries that could be purchased by residents on food stamps.
Finkelstein’s study, reported online Dec. 13 in the Archives of Internal Medicine, showed that high soda taxes wouldn’t impact weight among consumers in the highest and lowest income groups. Using in-home scanners that tracked households’ store-bought food and beverage purchases over the course of a year, the data included information on the cost and number of items purchased by brand and UPC code among different population groups.
Researchers estimated that a 20 percent soda tax would generate about $1.5 billion in annual revenue in the United States, while a 40 percent tax would generate about $2.5 billion. The average household cost would be $28.
Finkelstein explained that wealthier households seemed impervious to the tax because they can afford to pay it, while poorer income groups weren’t as affected because they tend to buy lower-priced generic products or buy in bulk.
“It’s largely very cheap calories for them,” he said, adding that store brands such as Wal-Mart cola also contain more calories than the name-brand Coke.
Dr. Stephen Cook, an assistant professor of pediatrics at Golisano Children’s Hospital at the University of Rochester Medical Center (URMC), said the study is valuable because it echoes the results of others similar to it.
“It’s good to see an amount of replication in the findings,” said Cook, also an assistant professor of URMC’s Center for Community Health. “It brings up an important point of how we should address obesity, as a disease or a public health threat.”
Despite the modest weight loss resulting from the soda taxes, both Finkelstein and Cook support such a measure as one of many possible ways to attack obesity, which affects one-third of Americans.
As for the revenue generated, it can also tackle obesity if it’s funneled toward weight-control programs and not other government initiatives, Cook said.
“The other side of the taxing coin is what we do with the money,” Cook said. “We need to take the revenue and use it for interventional programs instead of it being used as a money grab. I think it’s good when it’s properly done and the money is used for those strategies.”
Cook added that future measures could include taxing foods with added sugars as well as lowering the prices of healthy foods such as fruits, vegetables and skim milk.
Imagining Eating Sweets Helps With Weight Loss
If you’re trying to lose weight, satisfying your sweet tooth — at least in your mind — could help.
Imagining that you’re eating a sugary snack or other specific food you love could actually help you stick to your diet and stop consuming the treat you’re picturing, say researchers at Carnegie Mellon University.
The study, published in the journal Science, debunks the common wisdom that thinking about a particular food will fuel your craving for it even more and ultimately drive you to eat it.
“These findings suggest that trying to suppress one’s thoughts of desired foods in order to curb cravings for those foods is a fundamentally flawed strategy,” lead author Carey Morewedge, an assistant professor of social and decision sciences, said in a statement.
University of Pennsylvania psychiatrist Dr. Christos Ballas said the research demonstrates the power of visualization.
“It is counterintuitive, but when you dig a little deeper, it does make sense,” he told AOL Health. “You have to imagine the process of eating M&Ms. It’s similar to other studies where people practice visualizing.”
One such study found that people who play violin and didn’t practice but did picture practicing were better off than those who didn’t visualize playing or practicing at all. Another study found that people suffering from psychological pain felt better after taking a Tylenol, according to Ballas.
“Your mind takes the word and whatever associations go with that word — i.e. pain — and puts them together,” he told AOL Health. “The mind makes unconscious associations.”
Morewedge’s team tested the impact of repeatedly picturing eating a certain food on the consumption of that food. They learned that imagining eating the food seemed to lower the person’s appetite for it.
“People who repeatedly imagined the consumption of a morsel of food — such as an M&M or cube of cheese — subsequently consumed less of that food than did people who imagined consuming the food a few times or performed a different but similarly engaging task,” he said.
The researchers did five experiments designed to gauge the link between thinking about eating something and actually eating it.
In the first, participants were asked to imagine doing 33 repetitive tasks one at a time. One group was told to picture putting 33 quarters into a washing machine, another imagined inserting 30 quarters into the machine and then eating 3 M&Ms and a third group pictured feeding 3 quarters into the machine and then eating 30 M&Ms.
After the mental imagery exercise, the subjects were given access to a bowl of M&Ms. Those who had pictured eating 30 of them ate significantly fewer than those in the other two groups who imagined eating only three or none at all.
Another variation of the same test was performed, with similar results. The other three experiments were designed to measure whether imagining eating the specific food — not just thinking a lot about the food or thinking about eating a different snack — was what caused people to subsequently consume less of it. The researchers found that it was only the act of picturing the consumption of a certain food that led to a reduction in the actual consumption of it.
“To some extent, merely imagining an experience is a substitute for actual experience,” another study author, assistant professor of marketing Joachim Vosgerau, said in a statement. “The difference between imagining and experiencing may be smaller than previously assumed.”
The research teams says it hopes the study will help in the creation of products that stop unhealthy cravings, like those for cigarettes, junk food or drugs.
“We think these findings will help develop future interventions to reduce cravings for things such as unhealthy food, drugs and cigarettes, and hope they will help us learn how to help people make healthier food choices,” said Morewedge.
Avoid Depression for Successful Weight Loss, Omega-3 Fats Can Help
Clinical depression rates are rising in America almost as quickly as the number of overweight and obese individuals. It makes sense that people who may be depressed are less likely to be concerned over weight issues as they become less involved with physical health issues and their external environment.
While researchers are unable to say whether depression leads to excess weight or if the extra pounds contribute as an underlying cause of depression, those individuals who fall into the obese classification (BMI above 30) are 50 to 150% more likely to suffer from depression than normal weight individuals. Clearly there is a close relationship between the physical and psychological manifestations that contribute to excess weight and clinical depression.
Depression Closely Linked to Body Weight
Depression is a devastating condition that can have a detrimental effect on many aspects of a person’s life. Depressed people are more likely to eat a poor diet of processed junk foods and become less physically active. The results of a study conducted at the University of Washington and reported in the journal General Hospital Psychology demonstrates that treating obese individuals for depression can have a significant impact on their weight loss efforts.
Study Confirms That Treating Depression Leads to Weight Loss
The study involved 203 obese women for a period of 12 months who had been diagnosed with clinical depression. All participants were placed on a reduced calorie diet and broken into 2 groups. Both groups were monitored for caloric intake with food questionnaires and physical activity. Half of the participants were also treated for their depression and their progress was marked using a traditional symptom checklist.
Women who demonstrated the most marked improvement of their depression symptoms were able to lose the most weight. Researchers found that 38% of the women who experienced improved mood lost 5% of their body weight, compared with only 21% in the non-treated group. The study found that depression is closely linked to decreased physical activity, and most of the weight loss was due to an increased level of exercise.