April 26th, 2007 by Dr. Val Jones in Announcements
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What do you get when you confess on your blog to having a
love affair with food and a history of a GI disorder? You get invited to attend a really cool event,
a sort of Iron Chef meets Scrubs, right here in Washington DC!
Yes my friends, I’ve been invited to participate in a
gluten-free cook off hosted by the National Foundation for Celiac Awareness and
moderated by CNN’s news anchor Heidi Collins.
I’m going to be teamed up with a chef in a gluten-free cooking
contest. I’m not sure how the chef will
want me to participate – but I’m hoping that I get to do a little more than pot
stirring and taste testing. There will
be three teams, and 9 healthcare professionals – including 4 docs, 3
pharmacists, 1 nurse, and 1 dietician.
Given hospitals’ reputation for culinary mediocrity, I’m not sure that
we bring any credibility to the contest – but if anyone chokes, we’ll
resuscitate promptly.
The contest is on May 4th in the evening… maybe
you can catch us on a cable channel with a high number? All proceeds go to Celiac disease research
and awareness programs.This post originally appeared on Dr. Val’s blog at RevolutionHealth.com.
March 28th, 2007 by Dr. Val Jones in News
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This is one of the coolest David & Goliath stories I’ve heard of in a while. As part of a science experiment, two 14 year old girls from New Zealand set out to test the amount of vitamin C in a popular black currant drink. Ribena’s marketing campaign suggested that the black currants in Ribena syrup had four times the Vitamin C of oranges, but the teen girls discovered that the syrup actually had about ¼ the vitamin C of oranges, and that the ready to drink form of Ribena had no detectable Vitamin C content at all!
The Commerce Commission had pushed for a fine between $275,000 and $350,000 and corrective television advertising. Glaxosmithkline wanted a fine of about $60,000 and no corrective television advertising.
GSK has a worldwide turnover of more than $61 billion, second only to drug giant Pfizer.
Although it’s unclear what the ultimate fine will be, this high school science experiment led to ensuring honesty in advertising. A far cry from the usual volcano/dry ice project that most of us worked on!
And by the way, Ribena is quite delicious.This post originally appeared on Dr. Val’s blog at RevolutionHealth.com.
March 7th, 2007 by Dr. Val Jones in True Stories
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Girl scout cookie season is upon us, and recently our office was swarming with youngsters taking cookie orders. I wasn’t sure which girl I should order from (one can’t really order from each of them and expect to maintain any semblance of a normal BMI) and as I was considering how to choose, one energetic little girl simply walked right up to me and asked if I’d like some cookies.
She was slim and blonde, with bright eyes and an honest face. I knew the “sales pitch” didn’t come naturally to her, and I tried to make it easier by joking a bit. She was shy, but on a mission. I asked her which type of cookie she liked best, and if her daddy ate too many of them. She was innocently pleased with the interaction and disappeared down a hallway near some cubicles.
Many weeks later a large delivery of girl scout cookies arrived. There was a mass distribution strategy in place with moms and girls cutting open cardboard boxes of cookies and delivering them to buyers. I asked if my cookies were on the list. They told me that they didn’t sell me the cookies, so I’d need to wait for the specific little girl who sold them to me to stop by.
About a week later, when I had assumed that my little girl scout had forgotten about my order (and the rest of our staff had well and truly gorged themselves on thin mints), her dad came into my office with a pretty bag tied with a ribbon and a hand written card from his daughter. He told me she asked him to deliver it personally, because she wanted her service to be different than the other girls. Her dad joked that he was trying to train her about “differentiators” but I was quite touched by the effort she had made to make me feel like a special customer.
Later that afternoon I sat down to write a thank-you card to the girl. I wanted her to know that her efforts made a difference, and that I noticed her hard work in making my cookie purchase a personalized experience (not just part of a bulk delivery service). I put some stickers on the card, I used colorful paper, and a big red envelope.
A few days later I asked her dad if she liked the card. This is what he wrote to me:
“She loved it. She saw it at breakfast and came screaming upstairs to show it to everybody. Thanks!”
That really made my day. I hope in some way that I’ve encouraged this little girl to continue to reach for excellence, to stand out in the crowd, and to know that her work is appreciated. It is this sort of attitude toward life that will help her grow up to be… a revolutionary.
This post originally appeared on Dr. Val’s blog at RevolutionHealth.com.
March 4th, 2007 by Dr. Val Jones in News
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In a recent poll, 80% of consumers (along with the British Medical Association) preferred a simple “stop light” food label to a long list of percentage figures of recommended daily amounts. The stop light icon simply categorizes food as containing low (green), medium (yellow), or high (red) levels of the following ingredients:
- Fat
- Saturated Fats
- Sugar
- Salt
The guideline daily amounts (GDA – the rough equivalent of America’s RDA system) supporters argue that the stop light is an oversimplification, and does not effectively convey all the important nutritional value of food.
What do you think? Would you like to see this sort of labeling in the US?
This post originally appeared on Dr. Val’s blog at RevolutionHealth.com.
March 3rd, 2007 by Dr. Val Jones in Medblogger Shout Outs
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Well, twinkies are made of petroleum (among 38 other ingredients), and gasoline is also a type of petroleum product! This gives “food as fuel” a new meaning.
Dr. Charles, a young family physician, reviews the ingredients of twinkies in his recent blog post amusingly called “Reduce Twinkie Consumption and Dependence on Foreign Oil.”
This reminded me of the shock I felt when watching a documentary about America’s oldest citizens recently. I clearly remember them interviewing a man who was about 105 years old, who lived alone and used a golf cart to get around outdoors. The interviewer couldn’t resist asking the man why he thought he had lived so long in such good health.
The man said, “Well, I eat pretty good, get enough sleep, and I don’t worry about much.”
The interviewer then asked a probing question, “What do you eat?”
And I leaned in towards the TV screen, curious as could be.
And the elderly gentleman said, “Well, I eat a bowl of cornflakes for breakfast and then I usually eat a twinkie later on…”
Either the segment didn’t plan enough seconds for further investigation, or that was the sum total of his nutritional advice.
I was dumbfounded. For some people, it seems, good genes and good luck take them a long way.
But I’m still not going to eat petroleum products.
This post originally appeared on Dr. Val’s blog at RevolutionHealth.com.
