Baby's first junk food: How companies prey on new parents



Almost two-thirds of supermarket baby food is unhealthy while nearly all baby food labels contain misleading marketing claims designed to "trick" parents.

Those are the conclusions of an eyebrow-raising study in which researchers at Australia's George Institute for Global Health analyzed 651 foods marketed for children ages 6 months to 36 months at 10 supermarket chains in the United States.

The study, published in the peer-reviewed journal Nutrients on Wednesday, found that 60% of the foods failed to meet nutritional standards set by the World Health Organization.

'Our findings highlight the urgent need for better regulation and guidance in the infant and toddler foods market in the United States - the health of future generations depends on it.'

In addition, 70% of the baby food failed to meet protein requirements, 44% exceeded total sugar recommendations, 25% failed to meet calorie recommendations, and 20% exceeded recommended sodium limits set by the WHO.

The study said the most concerning products were snack foods and pouches.

"Research shows 50% of the sugar consumed from infant foods comes from pouches, and we found those were some of the worst offenders,” said Dr. Elizabeth Dunford, senior study author and an adjunct assistant professor of nutrition at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Sales of such convenient baby food pouches soared 900% in the U.S.in the past 13 years, according to the study.

"These pouches are very worrisome. Children have to learn to chew, so they should be eating regular fruits, not pureed, sweetened things in a pouch. Often, these blends are not natural and much sweeter than real fruit, so the child’s being taught to only like super sweet things," said Dr. Mark Corkins, a University of Tennessee gastroenterologist and a chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Nutrition.

Corkins noted that children not exposed to a variety of textures of food can "develop a texture aversion and will refuse anything but smooth, pureed types of foods."

According to the study, "Snack and finger foods, such as fruit bars, cereal bars, and puffed snacks, made up nearly 20% of products available for purchase in 2023, yet had some of the lowest compliance rates across the WHO's nutrition and promotional criteria. These foods contained low levels of protein and high levels of energy, sodium, and sugar and frequently contained added free sugars and sweeteners."

Dunford noted that consumption of processed foods in early childhood can set lifelong habits of poor eating that could lead to obesity, diabetes, and some cancers.

She continued, "Time-poor parents are increasingly choosing convenience foods, unaware that many of these products lack key nutrients needed for their child’s development and tricked into believing they are healthier than they really are."

The study also found that 99.4% of the baby food analyzed had misleading marketing claims on the labels that violated the WHO's promotional guidelines. On average, products contained four misleading marketing claims; some had as many as eleven.

The authors of the study wrote, "Common claims included ‘non genetically modified (GM)’ (70 percent), ‘organic’ (59 percent), ‘no BPA’ (37 percent), and ‘no artificial colors/flavors’ (25 percent)."

Dunford said these types of marketing advertisements can lead consumers to believe the product is more nutritious than it actually is.

Dr. Daisy Coyle — a research fellow at the George Institute and one of the authors of the study — said these marketing claims create a "health halo" around these products.

"The lack of regulation in this area leaves the door wide open for the food industry to deceive busy parents," Coyle explained. "We saw this not only in the use of misleading claims but also in the use of misleading names, where the product name did not reflect the main ingredients found on the ingredient list."

Childhood obesity has more than doubled in children and tripled in adolescents in the past three decades. There are nearly 15 million U.S. youths aged 2-19 years who have obesity, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Dunford declared, "Our findings highlight the urgent need for better regulation and guidance in the infant and toddler foods market in the United States – the health of future generations depends on it."

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New study finds most scientists in UK universities believe sex is binary



A new poll found that most British scientists hold that sex is binary and that gender is fluid, according to the Telegraph. The debate between sex and gender has quickly devolved into a topic of political leveraging, which has large implications for future policy.

The survey featured 200 scientists from universities throughout the U.K., and the findings indicate that 58% of those polled believe sex is binary. One of the only exceptions to this position is when someone is born intersex — those who are born with both male and female biological attributes.

Just 29% of those polled agreed with the statement "sex is not binary," and the remaining 13% either had no views or preferred not to answer the question, per the New York Post.

However, the numbers flipped when scientists were asked whether gender was fluid or binary. The majority, 64%, said gender is fluid, while just 22% said gender is binary. And the remaining 14% provided no answer.

Wolfgang Goymann — a professor of behavioral biology at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Intelligence — told the Telegraph that "this just means that at least 29% of the academics that filled out this questionnaire do not understand the biological concept of sex, and at least 22% of them do not know what gender means."

While sex is a biological classification, gender refers to societal norms for a given sex, such as roles and relationships between males and females. Goymann published a paper for BioEssays in 2023, writing, "Biomedical and social scientists are increasingly calling the biological sex into question, arguing that sex is a graded spectrum rather than a binary trait. Leading science journals have been adopting this relativist view, thereby opposing fundamental biological facts. While we fully endorse efforts to create a more inclusive environment for gender-diverse people, this does not require denying biological sex."

"On the contrary, the rejection of biological sex seems to be based on a lack of knowledge about evolution and it champions species chauvinism, inasmuch as it imposes human identity notions on millions of other species."

More than half of the scientists who took part in the poll reportedly have doctoral degrees. Among those who participated, 18% are faculty of the social sciences, 13% are involved in medicine, and another 12% work in the life sciences.

Helen Joyce, director of advocacy at the human rights group Sex Matters, said, "This survey has two remarkable findings. The first is that 29% of academics are apparently unaware of the obvious fact that sex is binary."

“The second is that nearly two-thirds of academics say that ‘gender is fluid.’ That is a strikingly confident statement about a nebulous concept,” she added.

“Most ordinary people think ‘gender’ is just a polite alternative to ‘sex,’ so are these academics talking about personal style — masculinity or femininity, or assertions about ‘identity’ — that is, states of mind?” she concluded.

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Progressives poll Latino voters on 'dog-whistle' GOP talking points, shocked to find approval for 'Trump-style rhetoric'



Former Vice President and Democratic nominee Joe Biden is struggling to reach Latino voters. That statement is not pro-Trump wish-casting about the 2020 election, it's mainstream analysis reported by CNN, the Financial Times, The Atlantic, and even The Daily Beast, hardly Trump-friendly publications.

When it comes to the question of "why" Biden is underperforming with Hispanics, two progressive researchers sought to find out and in an op-ed published Friday they characterized the results of their research as "sobering."

As it turns out, so-called "dog-whistle" messaging based on Republican campaign talking points on immigration as well as other issues resonated with Latino and other minority voters. In fact, Latino voters found such messaging more convincing than even white and black voters. The standard-packaged Democratic talking points condemning President Donald Trump as a bigot and criticizing structural racism were less-effective with these voters.

Writing in the New York Times, researchers Ian Haney López, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and Tory Gavito, founder of the left-wing Texas Future Project, cite recent polling from Quinnipiac and Monmouth that found 38% of registered Hispanic voters in 10 battleground states may be "ambivalent about even voting," arguing that Latinos will be "a key component of the swing voters in this election."

Knowing the Latino vote will be crucial for Biden to beat Trump, López and Gavito commissioned liberal pollsters to conduct 15 focus groups with Hispanics, whites, and African Americans from across America. You can find their research here.

They began by asking these focus groups whether a "dog-whistle message lifted from Republican talking points" was convincing. The study refers to this message as the "opposition message" and part of it condemns "illegal immigration from places overrun with drugs and criminal gangs" and calls for "fully funding the police so our communities are not threatened by people who refuse to follow our laws."

In full, the "opposition message" reads:

Our leaders must prioritize keeping us safe and ensuring that hardworking Americans have the freedom to prosper. Leaders who built a strong economy once can do it again after COVID-19.

Taking a second look at China, or illegal immigration from places overrun with drugs and criminal gangs, is just common sense. And so is fully funding the police, so our communities are not threatened by people who refuse to follow our laws.

We need to make sure we can take care of our own people first, especially the people who politicians have cast aside for too long to cater to whatever special interest groups yell the loudest or riot in the street.

According to López and Gavito, three out of five whites polled found this message convincing. And so did three out of five black voters, and even more Latino voters.

"These numbers do not translate directly into support for the Republican Party," the researchers explain. "Nevertheless, the results tell us something important: a majority across the groups we surveyed did not repudiate Trump-style rhetoric as obviously racist and divisive, but instead agreed with it."

Translation: Majorities of white, black, and Latino voters responded positively to a pro-market, pro-sovereignty, pro-law and order message about caring for Americans forgotten by politicians and special interest groups and antagonized by rioters. That is, essentially, Trump's re-election message.

Now, for full context, the study characterized this message as code for "business leaders should run the country," people of color are "dangerous and undeserving," and hating "liberal government" because "it coddles criminals and welfare recipients — and thus betrays whites by favoring people of color." This is what they mean by "dog-whistle," that when supposedly racist and bigoted Trump supporters hear things like "Taking a second look at China," and "fully funding the police," they know that what Republicans are really talking about is using government to protect whites by oppressing minorities.

Naturally, these progressives are distressed that such a supposedly evil message resonates with the voters they need to win the election. And this is where the analysis from López and Gavito becomes fascinating, as they try to understand why this message works with Latinos.

"Hispanics, of course, are no more monolithic than any other group, and internal differences influenced how individuals reacted," they write. "The single biggest factor was how respondents thought about Hispanic racial identity. More than whether the individual was Mexican-American or from Cuba, young or old, male or female, from Texas, Florida or California, how the person perceived the racial identity of Latinos as a group shaped his or her receptivity to a message stoking racial division."

They continue (bolded for emphasis):

Progressives commonly categorize Latinos as people of color, no doubt partly because
progressive Latinos see the group that way and encourage others to do so as well. Certainly, we both once took that perspective for granted. Yet in our survey, only one in four Hispanics saw the group as people of color.

In contrast, the majority rejected this designation. They preferred to see Hispanics as a group integrating into the American mainstream, one not overly bound by racial constraints but instead able to get ahead through hard work.

The minority of Latinos who saw the group as people of color were more liberal in their views regarding government and the economy, and strongly preferred Democratic messages to the dog-whistle message. For the majority of Latinos, however, the standard Democratic frames tied or lost to the racial fear message. In other words, Mr. Trump's competitiveness among Latinos is real.

In other words, most Hispanic voters do not see themselves as part of an oppressed racial class. They have a Hispanic heritage and are proud of it, but they want to be Americans too. They want to assimilate, and they believe that with hard work they can achieve the American dream.

"Even more than whites and Blacks, Hispanics emphasize the importance of hard work and favor government creating opportunities for advancement," the study says.

Most Latinos do not believe there is systematic racism in American institutions standing as an obstacle to their success. And that's why they're receptive to "Trump-style rhetoric."

This is a problem for Joe Biden, and López and Gavito offer a simple solution: Change the message.

"The key is to link racism and class conflict," they say. And also to stop blaming white people as a group for everything wrong in America.

"Democrats should call for Americans to unite against the strategic racism of powerful elites who stoke division and then run the country for their own benefit. This is not to deny the reality of pervasive societal racism. But it does direct attention away from whites in general and toward the powerful elites who benefit from divide-and-conquer politics."

This focus-tested "race-class approach ... fuses issues of racial division and class inequality, and by doing so shifts the basic 'us versus them' story — the staple of most political messaging — away from 'whites versus people of color' to 'us all against the powerful elites pushing division.'"

That message looks like this:

We had come so far, but now Covid-19 threatens our families — for instance with health
risks, record unemployment and losing the businesses we worked hard to build. To
overcome these challenges, we need to pull together no matter our race or ethnicity. But
instead of uniting us, certain politicians make divisions worse, insulting and blaming
different groups. When they divide us, they can more easily rig our government and the
economy for their wealthy campaign donors. When we come together by rejecting racism
against anyone, we can elect new leaders who support proven solutions that help all
working families.

The focus groups polled reacted much more strongly in favor of this message than the "opposition message" or traditional Democratic Party talking points accusing Republicans of "xenophobia, racism, and division" or taking a "color-blind" approach. Messages similarly framed on immigration and criminal justice reform issues also found more support.

López and Gavito advise Biden and Democratic Party strategists to view Hispanics "not as a monolith but as America in microcosm." The study they put forward urges Democrats to make cross-racial appeals to voters, uniting Latinos, whites, and blacks in solidarity by framing their issues as a struggle against unresponsive elites ignoring their needs and pushing division.

Ironically, this closely resembles the populist messaging President Trump used in the 2016 election to win the White House. Trump ran a "drain the swamp" campaign focused on criticizing establishment politicians. As he promised in his victory speech, "the forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer."

Despite what progressives claim, the "forgotten" American does not have one race or creed. Trump's message attempted to appeal to all Americans who felt disenfranchised by politicians who did not keep their promises and a government that over decades grew too large to be in touch with their needs.

The Trump campaign and Republicans have just as much to learn from this study as the left. The lesson is Latino Americans, like all Americans, do not want to be divided. They still believe the elites are out of touch. They want to feel like someone is fighting for their interests, not special interests.

The challenge for President Trump as an incumbent is to argue he hasn't forgotten the Americans who put him in power and to show how he has unified the country. The challenge for Biden is to credibly craft a unifying message while the assorted victim-classes in his base compete against each other to be the most oppressed and publicly declare their contempt for America.