University of Colorado joins McDonald's, others to tout healthy food

As McDonald's cuts salt in its hamburgers by 10 percent, it will have to adapt thousands of trigger-activated salt shakers, each used hundreds of times a day by burger flippers at the 34,000-restaurant chain .

But it's exactly that kind of mind-boggling volume ? 69 million customers a day worldwide ? that attracted the University of Colorado Anschutz Health and Wellness Center into a partnership with the golden arches.

"I take the world as it is, not necessarily as I wish it were," said the center's James Hill, in an Aurora McDonald's with the chain's national director of nutrition. CU is working with McDonald's, as it has with Disney, "because that's where kids are coming."

Hill and McDonald's senior nutrition director Cindy Goody were in Aurora to promote "5th Gear Kids," a partnership launched in the fall among CU, Children's Hospital Colorado and food purveyors, including King Sooper's, Arby's, Subway and others.

Students in Aurora and Cherry Creek schools can earn points when they buy healthier menu items and meet fitness challenges. Rewards include sports gear and other prizes.

Physicians and nutrition advisers say their health admonitions are often overwhelmed by billions of dollars a year in mass advertising for soda, french fries, candy, and salty, fatty foods. Hill and other researchers argue, though, that food sellers can put similar high-visibility efforts into healthy menu items and messages of moderation.

"There's no way we can do this without the collaboration of industry," said Pam Coxson, a University of California at San Francisco co-author of a new report analyzing the health benefits of sodium reduction.

Researchers used computer modeling to show that reducing sodium intake to even the upper level of federal nutrition guidelines would save 500,000 to 850,000 lives in 10 years, through fewer strokes and heart attacks.

Childhood obesity, meanwhile, has been on the rise, with Colorado the second-fastest growing state. More than one-quarter of Colorado children are overweight or obese.

Menu switches won't work unless balanced with fitness, Hill said.

"If kids aren't active," he said, "nothing they eat will keep them healthy."

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850,000

Upper estimate of lives potentially saved over 10 years through fewer strokes and heart attacks, according to a university's computer modeling on reduced sodium intake to even the upper level of federal nutrition guidelines

Source: http://feeds.denverpost.com/~r/dp-news-local/~3/Ag4_pJrgP5E/university-colorado-joins-mcdonalds-others-tout-healthy-food

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