So I’m tagging along on a business trip with John for the beginning of this week… and I forgot my camera cord… yup so no pictures for you yet, sorry about that. But I do want to tell you about this amazing appetizer I had last night. They were like buffalo wings… except they were shrimp. SO GOOD!Seriously jumbo gigantic shrimp with a barley there crust, drenched in buffalo wing sauce, and

So I got an awesome book in the mail the other day.. Secrets of a Skinny Chef by Jennifer Iserloh. The recipes are totally my style the only bummer is not every recipe comes with a picture But don’t let that stop you from making all of her tasty treats.After paging through every last page of the book I decided on the chicken enchiladas! They have an italian twist to them which had me a little

Sunday is big sauce night in our house… this past week. Red sauce with spicy chicken sausage, shrimp and mushrooms… *swoon* Now that is one quick and satisfying dinner!

Tiramisu… a wonderful dessert… I had high hopes for you tiramisu… but you turned into a Tira-misery-su. I wont say where this recipe came from… but it was a cookbook that other amazing recipes have been made from so I was certain this would also be tasty… oh how sad the conclusion was. It was John’s birthday sunday and I made this to celebrate. A skinny version of the decadent treat…

We are developing an online course on monitoring the baby food industry.

You can find out more by watching a short film clip and trying a sample quiz on our website.

Please take a look and let me know what you think of the technology. If you are a member of Baby Milk Action, also register with our site because the first module will be free to members. Members will also receive a discount on the remaining modules. The planned price for non-members is £10 per module.

See:

http://info.babymilkaction.org/courses/monitoring

These are NOT healthy… I repeat… NOT HEALTHY These are dense buttery sugary bars spiked with butterscotch chips. I made them for our wonderful snow blowing neighbor who keeps John’s walks and driveway cleared out of the kindness of his heart. He LOVED these bad boys.I found the recipe over at SugarLaws. The only change I made was to add the butterscotch chips. Ready… set… chow!!!want

My good friend Matt and I have been chowing buddies for over 10 years now. We met by fate setting us both to live on the same dorm room floor our freshman year of collage. Since our first meeting it has taken Matt about 9 years to finally remember that I am NOT a vegetarian… yup that’s right… going out to eat together almost weekly for 9 years… and it still surprised him every time I

• Prime your metabolism to burn fat
• Eggs for breakfast help weight loss
• Blood glucose and cancer risk
• Renovate your breakfast with grains, cereals and porridges
• New GI values for breads and juice beverages
• Prof Jennie Brand-Miller on why breakfast flakes have a high GI

This month we take a look at breakfast in Food for Thought. We aren’t going to tell you that it’s the most important meal of the day – all your meals are important, or that you should eat like a king. After all, out here in the real world, most of us save the king-size meal for dinnertime. Why breakfast is important is that it breaks the longest time your body goes without incoming food so what you eat affects your blood glucose and insulin levels more than meals and snacks later in the day. We highlight some breakfast studies in News Briefs; dietitian Sue Radd talks about grains, cereals and porridges in Food of the Month, Dr Alan Barclay sets out the criteria for breakfast cereals carrying the Low GI Symbol and in GI Update Prof Jennie Brand-Miller explains why healthy high-fibre cereals like bran flakes actually have a high GI.

Good eating, good health and good reading.

Editor: Philippa Sandall
Web management and design: Alan Barclay, PhD

Mr Tom Levitt, Member of Parliament for Buxton, has announced he is standing down at the next election.

Nestlé bottles Buxton water in the town and has befriended its MP with free tickets to the Wimbledon tennis tournament and a free trip to South Africa.

After the trip, Mr. Levitt praised Nestlé and suggested it should no longer be criticised for issues he said were 30 years in the past. In the Buxton Advertiser today, he is again quoted defending his friends at Nestlé:
http://www.buxtonadvertiser.co.uk/news/MP-Tom-denies-Nestle-job.6108297.jp

There is a short quote from me in the article and I have posted a follow-up to the editor as follows:

—

It is a disgrace that Mr. Levitt continues to claim regarding Nestlé baby milk marketing : “Nestle is amongst the most ethical of traders in this field.”

He has been provided with information showing that while he was enjoying his free trip to South Africa, Nestlé was advertising infant formula in supermarkets – a practice so shocking that even its competitors in the Infant Feeding Association tried unsuccessfully to stop it. The voluntary Advertising Standards Authority, part-funded by Nestlé advertising revenue, cleared the practice, meaning all companies may resort to advertising, something prohibited by the international marketing standards Nestlé claims to follow. Nestlé drives down standards.

Mr. Levitt ignores the fact that the Department of Health in South Africa told Nestlé to stop making claims about its formula that undermine breastfeeding – and the fact it says it was not asked for an opinion by the ASA about the Nestlé supermarket advertising as normally happens with issues impacting on health.

Nestlé is currently promoting its formula with the claim it ‘protects’ babies and refuses to stop misleading mothers; infants fed on formula are more likely to become sick than breastfed babies and, in conditions of poverty, more likely to die. This is not an issue from 30 to 40 years ago as Mr. Levitt likes to claim when defending his free Wimbledon tickets and other Nestlé benefits.

See our Campaign for Ethical Marketing.
—

The article picks up on a report in Private Eye that Mr. Levitt is heading for a consultancy with Nestlé, something they both deny in the Buxton Advertiser article.

We will watch closely. There is a history of Nestlé paying back people who have defended it. Lord Nazir Ahmed cropped up several times when former Nestlé Pakistan employee, Syed Aamir Raza, exposed practices such as bribing of doctors, which were substantiated by internal company documents. Lord Ahmed arrived uninvited at the European Parliament Public Hearing into the affair, which Nestlé boycotted. When he was unable to speak there, he wrote to Members of the European Parliament offering to brief them.

Aamir had met with Lord Ahmed asking for his help – a meeting I attended – and he was originally enthusiastic. However, a proposed public meeting never went ahead and Lord Ahmed then announced he had conducted an independent investigation in Pakistan which had found Nestlé was doing nothing wrong and that Aamir was trying to blackmail Nestlé. Two years later it emerged that the trip Lord Ahmed made to Pakistan had been organised and paid for by Nestlé and that he was being taken on by the company as a consultant. I took part in a head-to-head interview with Lord Ahmed on the BBC radio when his financial links with Nestlé were revealed. You can listen to the recording at:

http://www.babymilkaction.org/ram/broadcasts.html#lordahmed

Lord Ahmed again came to Nestlé’s defence in 2003 when the TUC (Trade Union Congress) refused Nestlé a stand at their annual conference (Nestlé was one of two corporations that regularly exhibited, always amidst controversy – the other being British Nuclear Fuels). We had offered to debate with Nestlé in previous years and it refused – now denied its customary platform it agreed. Lord Ahmed was in the audience and to his lasting shame, stood up and told the audience that Aamir was living happily in Canada and his campaign exposing Nestlé had been about finding a way to leave Pakistan. I pointed out that Aamir was without his wife and children who he had not seen since leaving Pakistan three years before – he was unable to return home after threats from doctors implicated by the internal documents in accepting bribes and after shots were fired at his home, narrowly missing his brother. As Lord Ahmed attacked Aamir in this underhand way, Aamir was indeed in Canada, but distraught as his mother was ill with cancer. Aamir was separated from his wife and children for seven years and he never saw either of his parents again, who both passed away. There are many issues involved in Aamir’s case. You can read his evidence here:
http://www.babymilkaction.org/update/update27feature.html

Another case of someone claiming to be independent but turning out to have financial links with Nestlé, revolves around an article published in the British Journal of Midwifery. Nestlé has widely distributed an off-print of the article, without the substantial right-to-reply from Baby Milk Action exposing some of the many errors and misrepresentations in the article. You can find a detailed analysis on our archive site. This provides an in-depth history of the campaign, with reference to source documents which can be downloaded from the site. See:
http://www.babymilkaction.org/resources/yqsanswered/yqanestle09.html

Nestlé claims the article was written by ‘independent midwives’. In reality the lead author was Chris Sidgwick who worked with Nestlé on a video that was distributed to UK health workers in breach of UK law, something that Trading Standards has raised with Nestlé several times. Not only did the authors enjoy an all-expenses-paid trip to Switzerland for ‘fact-finding’ at Nestlé’s HQ, Chris’s organisation, HCP Study Events, received funding from the Nestlé Nutrtion Institute. It still does, and Chris crops up from time to time inviting health journalists on jollies to Switzerland on Nestlé’s behalf and students to drop their support for the boycott. We have contacted her to discuss her work for Nestlé, but have never received a reply. See:
http://boycottnestle.blogspot.com/2009/09/nestle-rcslt.html

Nestlé has even tried to use its cheque book to bring Nelson Mandela into its fold, offering half a million pounds just for a photo-opportunity. Nestlé persuaded Lord Richard Attenborough to put the offer to former President Mandela. The Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund rejected the sum. i.Africa reported:

“In a statement it [Mandela's Children's Fund] reiterated the position it took in 2000 regarding a donation Nestle proposed to the Fund. In July 2000 the Fund was approached by Nestle, to contribute towards its Aids Orphan Appeal, a theme it had adopted for Mandela’s birthday celebration with the children in that year

“However given the Nestle debacle in relation to HIV/Aids infected mothers and their campaign on promoting formula milk as opposed to breast milk and the disadvantages they put out publicly regarding breast feeding, the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund declined the donation.”"

Nestlé’s Chairman has been open in saying that the company only supports good causes if it benefits shareholders. See:
http://boycottnestle.blogspot.com/2007/03/nestle-generosity-to-good-causes.html

Nestlé is no doubt pleased that Mr. Levitt has parroted its PR about its baby food marketing following his trip, refused our offer to meet and ignored the evidence we have sent to him. I don’t know the source of the Private Eye report on the alleged consultancy agreement, and would not wish to doubt Mr. Levitt’s word, but it certainly reflects the way Nestlé works.

Is it friday yet? Really?? WOOHOOO! We were supposed to get a snowicane… a snow storm and hurricane mixed together. So far not so much… this is a picture from Thursday morning… I’m writing this Thursday evening so it’s rather possible when this posts I’ll be burried under the snowicane… lets cross our fingers and hope it’s not too bad This dish has nothing to do with snow… I love an