Nutrition

The joint House-Senate agriculture spending bill unveiled Monday night blocks stringent school meal standards, following intense lobbying from the pizza and French fry industries.

The bill bars the Department of Agriculture from putting in place tough new standards that are scheduled to go into effect next year. The spending bill would classify tomato paste on pizzas as a vegetable, eliminate limitations which keep potatoes and other starchy vegetables to two servings per week and weaken restrictions on sodium.

The trade group American Frozen Food Institute immediately released a statement that "commends" appropriators for their "balanced approach to implementing new school meal standards."

Four consumer protection groups on Wednesday asked federal regulators to investigate PepsiCo and its Frito-Lay brand for what they call "deceptive" and "unfair" digital marketing practices aimed at children and adolescents.

The complaint to the Federal Trade Commission alleges that PepsiCo broke the law with its Doritos campaign by "disguising" its marketing efforts through video games and social media. The plaintiffs — the Center for Digital Democracy, Consumer Action, Consumer Watchdog and The Praxis Project — urge the FTC to bring action against the company.

PepsiCo did not immediately respond to a call for comment.

The Senate voted late Tuesday to adopt more flexible — some would say weaker — nutrition standards for school meals following intense lobbying by the potato and frozen-food industries.

New federal nutrition standards scheduled to kick in next September would have limited servings of potatoes and other starchy vegetables to 1 cup per week, the equivalent of two servings. An amendment to the Agriculture spending bill from Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Mark Udall (D-Colo.) that prohibits limits on vegetable servings passed by voice vote.

The top Democrat on the Energy and Commerce Committee on Wednesday compared Republican defenders of unbridled food marketing to children to past champions of the tobacco industry.

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) drew parallels between Wednesday's hearing on proposed voluntary marketing restrictions and a 2003 hearing during which some Republicans promoted the safety of smokeless tobacco.

"I just find this an amazing hearing," Waxman said. "The only thing I can analogize it to is after all the tobacco issues we discussed for many years, Republicans took charge and we never heard anything more about tobacco. Then, suddenly we had a hearing about tobacco. And the hearing was about how smokeless tobacco should be encouraged as a way for smokers to give up smoking. It was geared to promoting an industry that no doubt supported financially many of the members. I wonder if this hearing is about the same subject."

Anti-obesity advocates are putting pressure on federal officials to follow through with tough voluntary guidelines for food marketing to children.

Seven advocacy groups, including the American Heart Association, are sponsoring an ad in Capitol Hill publications Thursday urging the Obama administration to "stand by kids and release strong marketing guidelines." Four agencies proposed stringent voluntary guidelines in April but have gotten strong pushback from the food and marketing industries who argue that the guidelines would infringe on their freedom of speech rights - even though they're voluntary.

Advocates say the final guidelines are expected within the next few weeks, and they're worried the administration will water them down under pressure. The Prevention Institute is holding a tele-briefing with reporters Thursday to draw attention to the issue. And the Center for Science in the Public Interest has a form letter for people to write to the president. Read more...

The food industry was cautiously optimistic Wednesday after the Obama administration appeared ready to scale back voluntary guidelines for marketing food to children.

The group working on the issue "anticipates making significant changes to both the marketing and nutrition principles" that have raised industry's ire, administration officials wrote to House Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.). The letter also praised a new industry self-regulation effort as complementing the group's work.

"We intend to take this significant development into account, as well as the other [29,0000] stakeholder comments, when developing our final recommendations," the letter reads.

Seventy-five experts in nutrition, marketing, medicine and public health wrote to President Obama on Tuesday to urge him to fight for restrictions on food advertising for children as the issue comes to a head in Congress.

Republicans and the food and marketing industries have assailed proposed voluntary guidelines aimed at curbing childhood obesity, and the House included a rider in its financial services spending bill blocking the recommendations. Senate Democrats, on the other hand, reiterated their support for the agencies' work in their spending bill.

"While numerous factors contribute to obesity and children's poor diets, food marketing plays a key role," reads the letter to the president. "The Institute of Medicine's comprehensive study of 30 years of research concluded that food marketing affects children's food choices, food preferences, diets, and health. The $2 billion a year that food companies spend marketing to children is testament to the fact that food marketing works."

The No. 1 children's television station is hosting a $10 million party on D.C.'s Ellipse Saturday afternoon.

"We lobbied for resolutions in the Congress and Senate to declare Saturday a Worldwide Day of Play," Marva Smalls, executive vice president of Global Inclusion Strategy for MTV Networks, told The Washington Scene at a lunchtime roundtable discussion. "Many [members] who will be home in their districts Saturday are going to be involved in their hometowns in some capacity."

In an effort to get kids off their couches, Nickelodeon will "go dark" from noon to 3 p.m. Saturday on their television stations and Internet. Smalls and Cyma Zarghami, president of Nickelodeon, call the move a "huge investment."

Expect Dora the Explorer, SpongeBob Squarepants and others to be on hand. There will also be an NFL 60 booth with wide receiver Terrell Owens promoting a healthy lifestyle for children. (Owens is still looking to play this season, but hasn't been signed by a team yet.)

The event will be co-sponsored by the President's Council on Fitness, Sports and Nutrition.

The financial services spending bill that cleared the Senate Appropriations Committee late Thursday urges regulators to quickly finish their work on voluntary restrictions for foods marketed to children.

A 2009 spending bill created an Interagency Working Group to develop voluntary standards and marketing definitions for foods marketed to children as part of the government's efforts to combat childhood obesity. The proposals have come under attack from both Republicans and the food industry, which say they would violate free-speech rights and do little for children's health.

"The committee recognizes the IWG's careful review of existing science, nutrition and marketing standards as it developed the proposed voluntary marketing principles," the committee report says. "The committee encourages the IWG to thoroughly consider the comments submitted by stakeholders. The committee further directs the IWG to submit the voluntary marketing principles in a final report to the committee by Dec. 15, 2011."

The language was championed by consumer advocacy groups, which hope it will counterbalance a rider in the House spending bill that would block the working group's recommendations.

"Our hope moving forward is that the supportive language in the Senate bill will balance out the negative language from the House bill," said Margo Wootan of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, "and that the final bill that goes to the president will allow the agencies to continue their important work of finalizing reasonable, voluntary nutrition guidelines for food marketing to children unencumbered."

Olive Garden and Red Lobster are cutting calories and resizing portions after Darden Restaurants struck a deal with the first lady's "Let's Move!" anti-obesity initiative, NPR reports.

Presidential candidate Mitt Romney's Massachusetts healthcare law cost the state more than 18,000 jobs, says a new conservative study reviewed by the Boston Herald.

The study is available here.

The Food and Drug Administration calls Dr. Mehmet Oz's report on arsenic in apple juice "irresponsible and misleading," MedPage Today reports.

Medical reporting critic Gary Schwitzer blasts Oz's alarmism and rips into Fox's Manny Alvarez while he's at it.

Federal regulators agree "in principle" with Texas's proposed Medicaid overhaul, Kaiser Health News scoops.

A Tacoma News Tribune op-ed blasts Washington state's new restrictive list of emergencies covered by Medicaid.

Princeton economist Uwe Reinhardt analyzes the role of prices in healthcare spending at The New York Times.

Massachusetts hospital operator Steward Health Care System will launch a new insurance plan that requires consumers to use it for nearly all routine healthcare needs, reports The Wall Street Journal.

Forbes applauds a challenge to patent protections for abstract ideas, including on "what amounts to facts about the human body."

Meet William Halsted, cocaine addict and father of modern U.S. surgery, courtesy of the New York Review of Books.