Back in October ‘06, I wrote an entry basically skewering Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt for a really stupid press release put out by his department. Click on the link if you missed it. Anyway, Mike and the geniuses at HHS have come up with some more brilliance.

This time around, HHS has decided to use Shrek as the spokesman (spokesogre?) in an ad campaign targeting childhood obesity, in which the obese character and his buddies urge kids to exercise at least an hour a day. The campaign, a joint effort of HHS, Shrek’s creator Dreamworks SKG, and the Ad Council’s Coalition for Healthy Children, is admirable in its goals. Who can argue that kids watch too much TV and spend too much time in front of the computer and need to get outside and run around more?

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I take an essential fatty acid supplement every day, because like most Americans, I probably don’t eat enough fish to get an adequate supply. (Okay, forget probably. I don’t eat enough fish.) The American Heart Association recommends eating fish (particularly fatty fish) at least two times per week. Fatty fish include mackerel, trout, salmon, sardines, herring, and albacore tuna, which are all high in two kinds of omega-3 fatty acids, eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA). I can’t pronounce them either.

According to the Mayo Clinic, “There is evidence from multiple large-scale population (epidemiologic) studies and randomized controlled trials that intake of recommended amounts of DHA and EPA in the form of dietary fish or fish oil supplements lowers triglycerides, reduces the risk of death, heart attack, dangerous abnormal heart rhythms, and strokes in people with known cardiovascular disease, slows the buildup of atherosclerotic plaques (“hardening of the arteries”), and lowers blood pressure slightly.”

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So I’m listening to the radio on my way to the training studio this morning. Don’t you hate when you hit it just right so that no matter how many stations you have preset on your dial, not one of them is playing music? I was in the middle of one of those airwave dead zones where you can choose between ridiculously bad commercials for local businesses, or ridiculously bad banter between the morning DJs.

I chose the latter and stumbled upon a conversation of how the female DJ in the group had been gaining weight. But, as she told the other talking heads, she had determined that since she was gaining her weight in her stomach area, and she wasn’t pregnant, that the only cause could be cortisol. She had seen a commercial that told her how cortisol is the “stress hormone” and causes one to accumulate belly fat.

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Regular readers will remember a post a little while back where I explained exactly what supplements I take, and why. I also included a comment that I thought most of the stuff in your typical GNC or other similar store was junk. I believe that even more today.

My clients know that I generally don’t recommend supplements, mainly because you don’t need most of the stuff in a GNC. Also, most of the supplement marketers make all kinds of false claims, and there really isn’t any way to know what is actually in the bottle. As I said in the previous post, all I take are a daily multivitamin, calcium, essential fatty acid, and protein powder.

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I find most clients who come to me looking for weight loss are generally not eating very much protein (unless they are Atkins victims, but that’s a whole other post). Most people that I work with have been getting the vast majority of their calories from carbohydrates, and often get little to no protein until dinner time. The following article on the subject is by Dr John Berardi, one of the most respected performance and nutrition experts out there. Enjoy.