Agriculture Secretary Clears 6 More States to Ban Purchasing Soda With Food Stamps
'Since my confirmation, our department has encouraged states to think differently and creatively about how to solve the many health issues facing Americans. One way is by not allowing taxpayer-funded benefits to be used to purchase unhealthy items like soda, candy, and other junk food,' Rollins said.
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NBC News
25 minutes ago
- NBC News
A salty twist: Diabetes risk study says french fries are a culprit
Craving french fries? Dunking your spuds in a deep fryer might be a recipe for elevating your risk of Type 2 diabetes. According to a study published Wednesday in the journal BMJ, swapping out your weekly dose of frites for boiled, baked or mashed potatoes could lower your risk of this chronic condition. The authors examined the diets of more than 205,000 adults in the U.S. who responded to questionnaires about what they ate over nearly four decades. Among those who consumed potatoes, the authors looked at which people developed Type 2 diabetes, a disease that leads to persistently high blood sugar levels. Eating three weekly servings of french fries, they found, was associated with a 20% increased risk of Type 2 diabetes. But consuming the same amount of boiled, baked or mashed potatoes did not appear to be linked to the disease. The vast majority of the 1 in 10 people with diabetes in the U.S. have Type 2. The condition can increase the risk of heart attacks, strokes or kidney damage. The findings underscore that the way foods are prepared is key to their overall health risks or benefits, said Seyed Mohammad Mousavi, the study's lead author and a postdoctoral research fellow at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. 'Not all potatoes are created equal,' he said. 'Even a small amount of french fries, less than one serving in the week, is associated with a higher risk of Type 2 diabetes.' Unlike boiled or baked potatoes, french fries are deep-fried in oils that usually contain trans or saturated fats. The way the body metabolizes those fats can contribute to insulin resistance — when cells don't respond properly to insulin, a hormone that helps regulate blood sugar. Regular consumption of fried foods can also lead to obesity and inflammation, both of which raise the risk of Type 2 diabetes. 'When you fry the potatoes, the energy content — calories — increases because of the fat they absorb. If you eat many servings of french fries, it predisposes [people] to weight gain,' said Candida Rebello, the director of the nutrition and chronic disease program at Louisiana State University, who wasn't involved in the study. The study relied on data collected between 1984 and 2021, when several different frying methods were popular. Most fast-food chains today prepare fries using vegetable oils like canola, sunflower, soybean or peanut oil. But during the 1980s, beef tallow was common. And in the early 1990s, restaurants shifted to partially hydrogenated oils. (The oils were a major source of trans fat in the U.S. diet and were largely phased out of the food industry by 2018.) Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has said the seed oils used today are 'poisoning' Americans and contributing to high levels of obesity in children. He has advocated for restaurants to switch back to beef tallow, a recommendation that isn't backed by scientific research. 'Beef tallow is high in saturated fats and other harmful fats. We definitely don't recommend that,' Mousavi said. One limitation of Mousavi's study is that it did not account for people adding unhealthy ingredients to their boiled, baked or mashed potatoes. 'What do people add to baked potatoes? Butter, bacon, cheese, sour cream,' said Shannon Galyean, an assistant professor of nutritional sciences at Texas Tech University, who wasn't part of the research. 'Then we also don't know, did they eat it with the skins?' Galyean said potato skins contain nutrients such as fiber, which helps with blood sugar control. And potatoes, when they aren't deep-fried or slathered in butter, can be a useful source of potassium, which helps regulate blood pressure. 'Definitely, potatoes can be considered a healthy food when you don't fry it, or when you don't add lots of fat to it,' Galyean said. Mousavi said baking french fries at home with a healthier oil, such as olive or avocado oil, could help lower one's diabetes risk compared to eating them from fast-food restaurants. Swapping out potatoes with whole grains, such as farro or whole-grain bread or pasta, could make an even bigger difference. These foods have a lower glycemic index, meaning they're less likely to spike blood sugar levels. His study found that whole grains, when compared to all types of potatoes, were less likely to elevate one's diabetes risk. White rice, on the other hand, had a stronger association with Type 2 diabetes than either of these foods. Megan Mulcahy, the director of communications at Potatoes USA, a marketing and research organization that supports potato consumption, said fries can 'absolutely be part of a healthy eating pattern when enjoyed in moderation.' Galyean said it's important to consider a person's overall diet, which has a greater impact on their health than any individual food. Nutritionists generally recommend a colorful plate with a variety of fruits, vegetables, whole grains and healthy proteins such as fish, beans or nuts. 'People don't eat just one thing, they eat meals,' Galyean said.
UPI
25 minutes ago
- UPI
French fries, but not mashed potatoes, linked to type 2 diabetes
1 of 2 | Consumption of french fries, but not potatoes prepared in other ways, was linked to increased levels of type 2 diabetes in a Harvard study released Wednesday. File photo by Bill Greenblatt/UPI | License Photo ST. PAUL, Minn., Aug. 6 (UPI) -- French fries, but not mashed, baked or boiled potatoes, were linked Wednesday to type 2 diabetes in a study whose authors say food preparation, as well as the kinds of foods eaten, makes a difference in reducing health risks. Researchers at Harvard University's T.H. Chan School of Public Health also found that by swapping out French fries with whole grains, a person can reduce the risk for type 2 diabetes by 19%. The new paper, led by postdoctoral researcher Seyed Mohammad Mousavi and co-authored by prominent Harvard nutrition and epidemiology expert Walter Willett, was published in The British Medical Journal. After examining data about the diets and diabetes outcomes of more than 205,000 adults enrolled in a trio of major longitudinal U.S. studies spanning more than three decades, they determined that three servings weekly of french fries was associated with a 20% excess risk of developing type 2 diabetes, or T2D. Conversely, they saw no significant association between consumption of baked, boiled or mashed potatoes and risk of T2D, despite potatoes being "highly stigmatized" and dismissed as generally unhealthy by some in the nutrition world. The results led the authors to conclude that how foods are prepared matters just as much as what types of foods are eaten in the risk for diabetes, which last year affected 38.4 million Americans of all ages, some 11.6% of the population. The vast majority of cases are type 2 diabetes, which is highly associated with obesity and poor diet. "For consumers, the takeaway is simple: how you prepare a food can be just as important as what you eat," Mousavi told UPI in emailed comments. "A boiled or baked potato has a very different impact on health than the same potato deep-fried at high temperatures in unhealthy oils." He said he and his colleagues hope the results will help shift the conversation about healthy diets to into more "nuanced -- and useful" directions and away from blanket condemnations of certain foods, which usually are not "'good' or 'bad' in isolation -- it's always good or bad compared to what. "If you swap potatoes, especially fries, for whole grains, you gain health benefits; if you swap fries for another fried snack, you probably won't. Choosing cooking methods that minimize added fats, salt, and harmful compounds, and making thoughtful replacements, is key," Mousav said Deep frying is one of the unhealthiest ways to cook, according to the American Diabetes Association, which notes that frying creates trans fats that have been shown to cause heart disease and stroke. Often, frying requires the use of flour or breading, which also adds carbohydrates. The current study used a new kind of "meta-analytic" approach to estimate how swapping potatoes for whole grains could affect the risk of T2D. It involves two separate meta-analyses: one based on data from 13 cohorts examining potato intake and the other from 11 cohorts on whole grain intake, each involving more than 500,000 participants, including 43,000 with a T2D diagnoses, from across four continents. While french-fried potatoes and other types of deep-fried foods have long been suspected as a risk factor for T2D, the new study has deepened understanding of the link on several levels, such as by showing the risk is "dose-dependent" and begins at relatively low intakes -- even less than one serving of fries per week, Mousavi said. "Second, we confirm that not all potato preparations carry the same risk, highlighting that deep-frying is the key driver here," he added. "Third, we compared the effect of fries with other carbohydrate sources and found that, except for white rice, all other carb sources were healthier choices than fries. "By combining decades of detailed dietary data with a meta-analysis across multiple populations, we provide stronger evidence that it's not just the food itself, but also the frying process -- and what you choose to replace it with -- that matters for diabetes risk." Some other researchers have suggested that potatoes have gotten a bad rap when automatically lumped in with foods that are considered a risk for diabetes. Dr. Hana Kahleova, director of clinical research for the Physicians Committee For Responsible Medicine, a Washington-based nonprofit group that advocates for healthier foods, agreed it's wrong to dismiss potatoes as unhealthy without regard for how they're prepared. Rather, some studies "suggest that potatoes, particularly boiled potatoes, may have beneficial effects on body weight and reduce the risk of diabetes," she told UPI. "Potatoes can be consumed in many ways," Kahleova said. "The data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey show that french fries are the most consumed vegetable in the U.S. When Americans eat away from home, french fries make up almost two-thirds of all consumed potatoes. "At home, most potatoes are consumed as potato chips. The cooking method and the foods people consume potatoes with seem to be responsible for the bad rap of potatoes." Some research shows that potatoes can reduce the risk of diabetes and lead to weight loss, including a 2022 study on behalf of the Alliance for Potato Research and Education that found consuming baked white potatoes produced no harmful effects on measured health outcomes and actually provided some cardiometabolic health benefits when substituted for foods such as long-grain white rice. Similarly, Kahleova cited Finnish and Dutch cohort studies that span a 20-year follow-up period that reported a lower risk of T2D was associated with increased consumption of potatoes, along with an increase in vegetables and legumes. "In a cohort study conducted in almost 2,000 adults in Iran who were followed for six years, the risk for incident diabetes was 54% lower in people with higher intakes of total potatoes, and 53% lower for high intake of boiled potatoes, compared with those who had the lowest intakes," she said. The latest french-fry findings "contribute to the totality of the evidence on eating patterns and their association with health risk," concurred dietician Stacey Krawczyk, director of nutrition and wellness for the American Diabetes Association. "Eating patterns that have several weekly servings of fried foods, potatoes in this case, may also have other lifestyle and meal choices that could also contribute to a person's overall health," she told UPI. "We encourage people to choose a variety of foods when building ADA's Diabetes Plate," in which potatoes earn a spot on the dish as a "quality carbohydrate" along with starchy vegetables, legumes, whole grains, fruits, milk and yogurt. "We encourage people to use a foundation of whole and less-processed forms of foods as they build their balanced plate," Krawczyk added. "In general, using methods of cooking that do not involve frying are preferred." Study co-author Mousavi said his study underscores the need to "move beyond" the broad food categories now found in typical nutrition guidelines. "Lumping all potatoes -- or all grains, for that matter -- into a single group can hide important differences in health effects," he said. "Policy recommendations and public health messaging should highlight not just the food itself, but also its preparation and what it's replacing, as these factors can dramatically change its nutritional quality and long-term health impact."
2 hours ago
New SNAP rules explained: 6 more states restrict purchases of processed 'junk' foods
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced this week that six additional states had been granted waivers allowing them to prohibit Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits from being used on certain processed foods and drinks. Kennedy joined U.S. Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins on Monday as Rollins signed the six new waivers, which allow the states to amend what the food assistance benefits -- colloquially referred to as food stamps -- can be used for at the grocery store. "SNAP is a supplemental nutrition program meant to provide health food benefits to low-income families to supplement their grocery budget so they can afford the nutritious food essential to health and well-being," Rollins said. "That is the stated purpose of the SNAP program, the law states it and President Trump's USDA plans to deliver on it." In a statement, Kennedy added, "For years, SNAP has used taxpayer dollars to fund soda and candy -- products that fuel America's diabetes and chronic disease epidemics. These waivers help put real food back at the center of the program and empower states to lead the charge in protecting public health." The new waivers will restrict the purchase of so-called "junk food" with SNAP funds in Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Colorado, Florida and West Virginia starting in 2026. Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Nebraska and Utah were granted similar waivers for SNAP reform earlier this year. What is SNAP? The federally funded program, once known as food stamps, issues electronic benefits that can be used like cash to purchase food. It is run by the USDA Food and Nutrition Service, which administers federal food assistance programs. "SNAP helps low-income working people, senior citizens, the disabled and others feed their families," the USDA states on its website. "Eligibility and benefit levels are based on household size, income and other factors." On average, according to USDA data, SNAP served 42.1 million people per month in 2023, which accounts for more than 12.5% of the population. What foods and beverages are restricted by the waivers? Of the 12 states that have been granted SNAP waivers so far, most will restrict the use of SNAP funds on purchases of soft drinks or sodas, and at least eight restrict the use of SNAP funds on candy purchases. Some also prohibit food benefits from being used on purchases of energy drinks and, in Arkansas, the purchase of "fruit and vegetable drinks with less than 50% natural juice." Additionally, Florida will prohibit SNAP funds from being used on purchases of "prepared desserts," and Iowa will restrict the purchase of "all taxable food items as defined by the Iowa Department of Revenue except food producing plants and seeds for food producing plants." This includes items like candy, certain ready-to-eat snacks, soft drinks and gum. The new restrictions will go into effect in 2026. Click here for a full list of prohibited items and links for additional state information. While all of this is being done under the banner of "making America healthy again" and fighting chronic disease, ABC News medical correspondent Dr. Darien Sutton said "there's no evidence that taking away access to soda will actually fight these conditions." He noted however, that "sugar is one of those culprits that you always have to be mindful of" regardless. "The U.S. dietary guidelines recommend that men have no more than 35 grams and women no more than 25 grams per day," Sutton said.
