Food for Thought on Healthy Eating Guidelines

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A2 | Saturday/Sunday, March 7 - 8, 2015
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.
* * * *
U.S. NEWS
Food for Thought on Healthy Eating Guidelines
A
merican consumers have
been confused by the
concept of serving sizes
for decades, and the federal
government is partly to blame.
Is a serving of pasta 1
ounce or 2? Is a helping of
peanut butter 1 tablespoon or
twice that amount?
The answers
depend on
whether you are
reading the dietary guidelines
published by the
Department of
THE
Health and HuNUMBERS
JO CRAVEN man Services
MCGINTY
and the Department of Agriculture online and
on educational posters, or the
Food and Drug Administration
labels printed on food packages. They don’t match up.
If that isn’t frustrating
enough, the government keeps
changing its mind about what
constitutes healthy eating.
The latest turnabout took
place last month, when the Dietary Guidelines Advisory
Committee declared that cholesterol and certain fats—once
considered the bane of a
healthy diet—aren’t so bad after all. Coffee and alcohol in
moderate doses are also OK,
according to the committee,
whose recommendations will
contribute to the 2015 Dietary
Guidelines for Americans to be
completed this year.
Here’s a primer on what the
government’s dueling servingsize numbers actually try to
communicate, and why.
The USDA and HHS dietary
guidelines, as the name implies,
aim to give consumers advice
on what they should eat. They
are revised every five years
based on a review of the latest
medical and scientific research
by an advisory committee of
outside experts. The resulting
guidelines tell consumers how
much to eat from each food
group in a day to meet nutritional needs for good health.
The FDA serving sizes
printed on packaged foods, by
contrast, are supposed to reflect how much consumers really eat, but the amounts are
based on survey data collected
in the late 1980s. Americans eat
more than they used to, and
the labels no longer accurately
reflect consumer behavior.
Here’s how this situation
came about. Until the 1950s,
USDA and HHS dietary guidelines didn’t clearly define serving sizes. In response to criticism, they developed
measurements, defining a serving of fruit or vegetables as
half a cup, a serving of grains
as 1 ounce, and a serving of
meat as 2 to 3 ounces.
But visual guides published
for consumers continued to express most of the recommendations as daily servings. In 1992,
for example, the Food Pyramid
recommended 6 to 11 servings or
bread, grain or pasta each day.
The problem was, people
identified a serving as the
amount of food on their plates,
and it wasn’t clear from the
pyramid that 1 serving was intended to equal 1 ounce. By that
measure, about 3 cups of pasta
would total 6 servings—the entire daily recommendation for
many people. A half cup of
pasta weighs about 1 ounce.
I
n 2005, the USDA and HHS
dietary guidelines, seeking
to end the confusion
caused by the word “serving,”
published new daily recommendations according to specific measurements, including
ounces, cups and teaspoons,
depending on the food. With
this approach, the daily recommendation for bread, grain and
pasta, was recorded as 6
ounces rather than 6 servings
for a 2,000 calorie diet.
“One muffin the size of
your head, one bagel or one
bowl of pasta is a 6-ounce
equivalent,” said Lisa R. Young,
a nutritionist and professor at
New York University who stud-
On Bread Alone
The USDA considers 1 ounce of grain a serving—about a slice of bread—and
recommends 6 ounces daily, preferably whole grain. FDA food labels allow
consumers to compare the size and nutrition of slices, which vary greatly.
Arnold 12-grain
Weight
Calories
Fat
Carbs
Sugars
Fiber
Protein
(grams)
43
110
2
19
2
3
5
Levy's seeded
rye
Weight
Calories
Fat
Carbs
Sugars
Fiber
Protein
America's Choice
white bread
Weight
Calories
Fat
Carbs
Sugars
Fiber
Protein
23.5
60
0.5
12
1
<1
1.5
Pepperidge Farm
light 7-grain
32
80
1.5
16
1
<1
2
Weight
Calories
Fat
Carbs
Sugars
Fiber
Protein
19
45
0
9
1
1
2
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.
Source: Food and Drug Administration
ies portion sizes. “No one understands this stuff.”
The current USDA and HHS
dietary guidelines augmented
this information by abandoning
the pyramid in favor of a portrayal of a dinner plate, divided
among the major food groups to
emphasize the recommended
quantities in relationship to
each other. Fruits and vegeta-
bles together cover half the
plate. Protein—meat and poultry for most people—occupies
less than a quarter of the space.
“The plate was a huge step
forward in really giving people
education on what proportions
are expected to come from
fruit and vegetables, whole
grains, and animal protein
sources,” said Rafael Pérez-Es-
OUTPUT
Jacqueline Gonzalez of Pantropic Power recruits U.S. military veterans looking for work during a jobs fair in Miami last month.
Monthly U.S. unemployment rate
Change in hourly wages from a
year earlier
10%
4%
February
5.5%
8
February
+2.0%
3
6
2
4
1
Recession
Recession
0
2
’08 ’09 ’10
’11
’12
’13
’14
’08 ’09 ’10
’11
’12
’13
’14
Civilian labor-force participation
rate, age 16 and older
Major sectors, as a share of total
nonfarm payrolls
70%
80%
Service sector 70.6%
68
60
66
40
64
Government 15.5%
20
62
February 62.8%
60
Goods producing 13.9%
0
1980s
’90s
2000s
’10s
Note: All figures are seasonally adjusted.
Source: Labor Department
the tightening labor market to
eventually deliver stronger pay
gains and lift overall inflation.
“Wages are a lagging indicator
of the business cycle,” Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco President John Williams said before
Friday’s report. As the unemployment rate falls, “we’re going to
see a labor market that’s much
stronger, which will spur wage
and price growth.”
The jobs figures showed Americans’ average workweek held
steady at 34.6 hours for the fifth
straight month. The number of
hours worked is up slightly from
a year ago.
The job market has averaged
275,000 new jobs each month
over the past year, the most since
March 2000.
The pace of hiring accelerated
Composite
Continued from Page One
caveats: Wage growth remains
tepid. The share of Americans
working is near the lowest level
since the 1970s. And more previously unemployed Americans left
the labor market in February than
found jobs.
“There is a lot of slack left in
the labor market,” said Megan
Greene, chief economist at John
Hancock Asset Management. “As
long as you don’t have upward
pressure on wages, you won’t
have upward pressure on inflation.”
The report showed few signs
of a pickup in wages, one of the
biggest missing pieces of the economic expansion. Average hourly
earnings among private-sector
workers last month rose 2% from
a year earlier, a slightly slower
year-over-year advance than January’s annual gain of 2.2%. The
figure is at odds with robust hiring, but matches with strong
growth in low-paid restaurant
and retail jobs.
Columbus Castings, an Ohio
steel foundry, hired 175 workers
in recent months to meet increased demand for the railway
equipment it produces. The firm’s
chairman, Joseph Haviv, said it
has been a challenge to find
workers in the Columbus region,
which has an unemployment rate
below 4%. But wages aren’t rising, in part because the company
has expanded its search for employees to include those with
criminal records and those on extended spells of unemployment,
who often can’t command strong
wages.
“Our traditional process of hiring wasn’t working,” he said. “Our
retention rate was very low.” The
physically demanding foundry
jobs, which start at $14 an hour,
were unattractive for skilled
workers. Mr. Haviv found inexperienced hires could do the job
with some basic training. And by
adding so many jobs at the bottom of the company’s pay scale,
Columbus Castings’ average
hourly wage has fallen this year.
Many economists, including
some Fed policy makers, expect
While the overall job picture is solid, wage gains have failed to accelerate,
labor-force participation remains near a three-decade low and the share of
historically better-paying manufacturing jobs is sinking.
1980s
’90s
2000s
’10s
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.
through most of last year, with
the gains generally coinciding
with better economic growth. The
U.S. economy approached a 5%
annual-growth pace in the second
and third quarters of 2014. But
output slowed to a 2.2% advance
in the final three months of the
year. Many economists forecast
growth to have eased further
early in 2015, but hiring persists.
The broadly improving labor
market has changed the type of
job applicants seen by the Medical Weight Loss Clinic in Southfield, Mich. “People are changing
jobs,” said Nick Welham, vice
president at the chain of 33 clinics. He views that as a sign that
workers have more leeway to look
for the job they want.
Hiring was strong across most
industries, but particularly so in
lower-paying fields. The leisure
and hospitality sector added
66,000 jobs last month and retailers added 32,000 positions to
payrolls.
But better-paying professional
and business-services firms
added 51,000 jobs, despite a decline in temporary-help jobs, a
typically low-paying category in
the field.
Manufacturers added just
8,000 jobs, the smallest seasonally adjusted gain in more than a
year. That could show factories
are facing headwinds from global
economic turmoil and a stronger
dollar. The mining category,
which includes oil-and-gas extraction and related services, fell by
9,300.
“The new jobs aren’t as good
as the old jobs in terms of
wages,” said Gary Chaison, an industrial-relations professor at
Clark University in Massachusetts. “Manufacturing workers
have become hamburger flippers.”
The irony? Wage gains have
been strongest in the lowest-paying fields. The leisure and hospitality industry, with average earnings of $14.23 an hour, saw wages
grow 3.2% from a year earlier in
February. Retail wages advanced
2.8%. In contrast, manufacturing
pay rose just 1.3%.
Those gains could support
stronger consumer spending and
cushion the economy from international risks. As well, a steep
drop in oil prices has boosted
consumers’ spending power despite modest wage gains.
Evette Rowe’s hourly wage has
nearly doubled to $13 an hour
since she took a job in 2011 at Atwater’s, a Maryland chain of bakery cafés. She started as a dishwasher, a minimum-wage job she
took after two years of unemployment. Now she’s handling invoices for the company’s production kitchen, a similar role to the
office-manager job she lost at
nonprofit during the recession.
The additional income allowed
her to purchase a used Oldsmobile and fix a leaky bathtub in her
home. “I have a little more now,”
the 42-year-old Baltimore resident said. “I can go to the hairdresser again and get that shirt I
see in the window.”
Trade Gap
Shrinks Amid
Cheaper Oil
BY JEFFREY SPARSHOTT
WASHINGTON—Cheaper U.S.
energy prices and lower demand
for foreign oil helped narrow the
U.S. trade gap in January.
The trade deficit shrank to a
seasonally adjusted $41.75 billion in January, the Commerce
Department said Friday, as crude
imports fell. Overall, exports decreased 2.9% from December to
$189.41 billion, and imports also
fell 3.9% to $231.16 billion.
The drop-off in both imports
and exports reflects an array of
factors, primarily the steep drop
in crude prices, but also disruptions related to a West Coast
port labor dispute, a firming dollar and the relative strength of
the U.S. economy.
Last month, the trade deficit
for petroleum products fell to
$10.69 billion, its lowest level
since November 2003.
Nonpetroleum imports registered at $168.99 billion on a seasonally adjusted basis, down
from December’s $172.27 billion
and the highest level on record.
P2JW066000-4-A00200-1--------XA
JOBS
Under the Hood
Continued from Page One
ing standard of living. The more
a worker produces, the more the
employer can afford to pay. Over
time, real wages—those adjusted
for inflation—are determined by
productivity.
Hourly wages have grown by
an annual average of just 2%
since the expansion began. In
February, they rose just 0.1%
from January, and 2% from a
year earlier.
Real wage growth has generally lagged behind productivity
growth during the expansion.
That has confounded economists
and Federal Reserve officials.
Most blame slack in the labor
market that isn’t captured in the
unemployment rate, such as the
many people working part time
who would like to work full time.
Still, even if real wages do
catch up with productivity, the
scope for significant gains will
be limited if productivity itself
doesn’t pick up.
Why has productivity performed so poorly?
Faulty data may be partly to
blame. Chris Varvares of Macroeconomic Advisers, a consulting
firm, contends that data on
workers’ hours are more accurate than data on how much they
produce, and that revisions
should boost both recent output
and productivity. Productivity
data are notoriously volatile.
Both productivity and GDP were
revised upward for 2013. Last
year’s figures may have been depressed by unusual weather-related output losses in the first
quarter.
The severity of the financial
crisis and recession is another
possible explanation for weak
productivity growth. The deep
downturn may have crimped
companies’ willingness to invest
in the sorts of efficiency-enhancing equipment and software that
raises productivity.
Weak business investment has
been one of the puzzles of the
expansion so far. Mr. Varvares
camilla, a professor at the Yale
School of Public Health and a
member of the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee.
F
DA food labels include nutrition information to help
consumers compare similar products, but FDA serving
sizes aren’t recommendations.
Because the FDA’s food labels tell consumers how much
they tend to eat from a bag, box
or can, rather than how much
they should eat, some FDA
servings are double the size of
those suggested by the USDA
and HHS—and they are about
to get bigger. The FDA is in the
process of updating the labels
to reflect the larger portions
Americans now typically eat.
When the new labels are implemented, the FDA serving size
of ice cream will increase from a
half cup to a full cup. The serving size for a muffin will increase
from 85 grams to 110 grams. And
products that are typically consumed in one sitting—a 20ounce bottle of soda, for example—will no longer be labeled as
more than one serving.
“That’s created some controversy,” said Mary Poos, acting
director of the FDA’s Office of
Nutrition, Labeling and Dietary
Supplements. “Some people say
we shouldn’t make them bigger
because people will eat more.”
estimates that capital—equipment, software and buildings—
per worker has grown just 0.3%
a year so far this decade, by far
the worst in at least 40 years.
Many new innovations are reliant on equipment and software.
For example, a new computer
might be necessary to take advantage of the latest computeraided design software. Thus, the
reluctance to invest may have
retarded the spread of innovations through the economy.
If this diagnosis is correct,
the best hope for a rebound in
investment and productivity
would be for the economic recovery to gather steam. The
more confident that companies
are in future sales, the more
they will invest. That would elevate productivity, profits and
wages, feeding back to spending
in a virtuous circle. That already
may have begun happening. An
array of big firms ranging from
Macy’s Inc. to Campbell Soup
Co. have announced increases to
their capital budgets.
Yet the slowdown in productivity began before the recession, suggesting that more is at
work than just the lingering effects of that slump on business
confidence. Fifteen years ago,
when the Nasdaq first topped
5000, firms were rushing to exploit the Internet with new communications and computing
technology. They may not see
the same potential now.
In the past week, the Nasdaq
returned to 5000, led by a new
generation of technology stars.
Its biggest, Apple Inc., has just
been added to the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Many economists talk of another wave of innovations driven by consumer
applications such as social media.
Technology stocks are more
sedate than they were 15 years
ago, and high valuations of dubious business models are less
common. That probably means a
heart-stopping collapse isn't
around the corner—nor is a return to the heady productivity
growth that marked the first
bubble.
CORRECTIONS 
AMPLIFICATIONS
The final two questions of a
quiz accompanying a March 4
Money & Investing article about
a math competition incorrectly
used the minus sign rather than
the caret symbol in some places.
For the correct quiz, please go to
WSJ.com/Corrections.
Readers can alert The Wall Street
Journal to any errors in news articles
by emailing wsjcontact@wsj.com or by
calling 888-410-2667.
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