Grocery Shopping Advice from a Nutrition Expert – National Consumers League

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by Sally Greenberg, NCL Executive Director

Last month the TransAtlantic Consumer Dialogue or TACD convened for its 9th annual meeting in Washington DC. TACD is a forum of US and EU consumer organizations that develops and agrees on joint consumer policy recommendations to the US government and European Union to promote the consumer interest in EU and US policy making.

The last day of this lively gathering included a day long meeting: “Generation Excess III conference on obesity and diet-related disease.” The featured speaker, Marion Nestle, was a professor at New York University in the Department of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health and a national expert on the societal impacts of food and nutrition policy.

Nestle’s work is focused on how food marketing influences what children eat. Her slide show presentation is full of enticing photos of food products – many of them that have sugar as their main ingredient – which are offered to children as “healthy” snacks or meals. The more health and nutrition claims the food makes, Nestle says, the more calories the food probably has.

Nestle described how food companies lobby officials, co-opt experts, and expand sales by marketing to children, members of minority groups, and people in developing countries.

The sad truth is that our food policy is influenced more by our big food conglomerates racking up billions in sales than concerns about the health of Americans. The easy availability of high calorie, high fat, high sugar foods means greater obesity, diabetes, heart disease, stroke, cancer –the leading causes of death and disability in the United States. This is having serious consequences in cities and towns across the United States.

Recently, the Washington Post featured a story from Radford, Virginia, a rural area where there’s been a sharp drop in life expectancy for women. In 1983, the life expectancy in the Radford area was 84 years. By 1999, it had dropped to 78 years. A local doctor described the risk factors for women as the “Five F’s: female, forty, fertile, fair, and fat.”

Several of the women interviewed for the story suffer from serious obesity, and diseases related to poor diet and smoking. One of the women had a younger sister who died at age 56 weighing 350 pounds.

Which brings us back to Marion Nestle’s work on obesity and the costs of overweight to the society as a whole. The estimated figure is $117 billion a year. The cost of type 2 diabetes alone is simply staggering to contemplate. And as Nestle points out, we’re seeing type 2 diabetes in young children, where it has rarely been seen before.

Her advice to consumers who want to shop healthy:

  • Shop the perimeters of the market. That’s where the real foods are — the meat, produce, dairy.
  • Don’t go into the center aisles. But if you have to, don’t buy anything with more than five ingredients, not counting vitamins.
  • If you can’t pronounce an ingredient, don’t buy the product.
  • Don’t buy anything with a health claim — they’re misleading.
  • Don’t buy artificial anything.
  • Don’t buy anything with a cartoon on it — these people are marketing directly to your child.

Win-win: Heath, Labor Advocates Have Something to Celebrate this Weekend – National Consumers League

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By Reid Maki, NCL staff

Healthcare consumers and child labor advocates are celebrating a shared victory in the U.S. Congress this week. When the House passed the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act on May 1 — a week after it passed the Senate — advocates for patients with genetic risk factors for many common diseases like diabetes, breast cancer, and colon cancer breathed a sigh of relief. The bill makes it illegal to discriminate against patients because of information gathered through genetic testing. Insurance companies will no longer be able to deny patients insurance or raise their insurance premiums because of their increased risk based on genetics.

An amendment in the bill, authored by Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.), also added some teeth to the nation’s child labor laws. The amendment gives the Department of Labor the ability to increase fines in cases in which children working on the job are killed or seriously injured.  In labor violations that cause death or serious injury, the penalties would be increased from $11,000 to $50,000. The fines could also be doubled if investigators find that the safety violation was either willful or repeated. The legislative language allows penalties to be assessed for each violation (e.g., if two or more working children are injured in the same accident).

Unfortunately, the bill could have gone a bit further: the language does not make penalties mandatory. And it does not set minimum fines as the language proposed by Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) would have. In talking about the child labor language last year, Rep. Woolsey said, “There is much that must be done to strengthen our child labor laws.” The new provisions, she added, are “a small beginning.”

President Bush has indicated that he will sign the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act into law when it reaches his desk.

Don’t fall for the pitch! Avoid investment scams – National Consumers League

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May 1, 2008

Contact: 202-835-3323, media@nclnet.org

Washington, DC – Free seminars are a popular way to promote investment and insurance products. After the meal, the so-called “experts” urge folks to trade in their current investments for the product being pitched. Testimonials are glowing; the charts and handouts are impressive. But don’t fall for the pitch! This month, the National Consumers League is helping consumers differentiate between legitimate and fraudulent offers of investment opportunities this month in the National Consumers League’s “2008 Consumer Calendar: Do We Have Tips for You!”

NCL offers a listing of red-flag pitches that should cause a consumer to take the money and run from the seminar, including:

  • “Your profit is guaranteed!”
  • “Your money is always 100% available!”
  • “This offer is only available today!”

The nation’s oldest consumer advocacy organization, NCL works to educate people about how to make wise decisions in today’s marketplace. Each month, NCL’s Web site, www.nclnet.org, will feature the calendar and tips for the month. Covering a range of subjects from medication safety, to avoiding scams, the tips are sponsored by major companies, government agencies, and organizations. The May tips about debit cards were sponsored by AARP.

The print version of the calendar was distributed to consumers free of charge through agencies and organizations around the country. There are no printed copies of the calendar remaining.

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About the National Consumers League
Founded in 1899, the National Consumers League is America’s pioneer consumer organization. Its mission is to protect and promote social and economic justice for consumers and workers in the United States and abroad. NCL is a private, nonprofit membership organization. For more information, visit www.nclnet.org.

Don’t fall for the pitch! Avoid investment scams – National Consumers League

/in /by

May 1, 2008

Contact: 202-835-3323, media@nclnet.org

Washington, DC – Free seminars are a popular way to promote investment and insurance products. After the meal, the so-called “experts” urge folks to trade in their current investments for the product being pitched. Testimonials are glowing; the charts and handouts are impressive. But don’t fall for the pitch! This month, the National Consumers League is helping consumers differentiate between legitimate and fraudulent offers of investment opportunities this month in the National Consumers League’s “2008 Consumer Calendar: Do We Have Tips for You!”

NCL offers a listing of red-flag pitches that should cause a consumer to take the money and run from the seminar, including:

  • “Your profit is guaranteed!”
  • “Your money is always 100% available!”
  • “This offer is only available today!”

The nation’s oldest consumer advocacy organization, NCL works to educate people about how to make wise decisions in today’s marketplace. Each month, NCL’s Web site, www.nclnet.org, will feature the calendar and tips for the month. Covering a range of subjects from medication safety, to avoiding scams, the tips are sponsored by major companies, government agencies, and organizations. The May tips about debit cards were sponsored by AARP.

The print version of the calendar was distributed to consumers free of charge through agencies and organizations around the country. There are no printed copies of the calendar remaining.

###

About the National Consumers League
Founded in 1899, the National Consumers League is America’s pioneer consumer organization. Its mission is to protect and promote social and economic justice for consumers and workers in the United States and abroad. NCL is a private, nonprofit membership organization. For more information, visit www.nclnet.org.

Feds, Orgs, Biz Collaborating against Phishing Scams – National Consumers League

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by Sally Greenberg

Recently, the Federal Trade Commission brought together experts from government, nonprofit, and industry in Washington to talk about “Phishing.” The National Consumers League, which has long worked to help and protect consumers from fraud, came equipped with our latest intelligence on Phishing scams brought to our attention by our Fraud Center.

What is Phishing? If you’ve ever received a pop-up box on your computer screen with requests like this, you’ve been a target of a phishing scam:

  • “We suspect an unauthorized transaction on your account. To ensure that your account has not been compromised, please click below and confirm your identity.”

or this:

  • “During our regular course of verifying accounts, we couldn’t verify your information. Please click here to update and provide us with your account information”

These email pitches are sent out by the millions from Internet fraudsters who trick consumers into giving out bank account, social security passwords, or other sensitive personal information. This information enables these crooks to get into your accounts and steal money from you.

I got a phishing request myself several months ago in a pop-up that appeared on my computer – could I just quickly verify some personal information? The language was very similar to what you see above. I didn’t recognize the company asking for my “account” information, so I looked up the company and called them to ask why they had contacted me. The woman on the other line confirmed what I suspected: “Sorry, we’ve been the victim of a phishing scam.”

That was simple enough. We don’t want you to take the bait either, so, remember:

  • don’t respond to pop up windows asking for personal information
  • don’t ever give out passwords to anyone
  • the IRS doesn’t ask for information through the Internet, they will mail you a letter, so don’t fall for a tax scam either

Too many consumers don’t heed these warnings as the numbers below demonstrate:

  • More than 3.5 million Americans lost money to phishing schemes and online identify theft over a 12 month period ending in August 2007.
  • Total amount lost is $3.2 billion
  • The Anti Phisihing Working Group found that in November 2007 that 178 corporate identifies and brands were hijacked and used for phishing scams, – when we did our report the numbers were much smaller – in 2003 28 brands had been attacked– in Oct 2004 44 brands – October 2005 – 96 brands. Now we’re at 178 brands hijacked.

NCL recently met with the staff of Senator Olympia Snowe (R-ME) who has introduced legislation, co-sponsored by Senators Bill Nelson (D-FL) and Ted Stevens (D-AK), to make criminal phishing schemes illegal and to create funding for prevention efforts. NCL will be working with these members of Congress and the FTC to heighten awareness among consumers about phishing scams and increase penalties on the perpetrators.