Here’s a quiz from Jennifer Wilson, Kansas State University Research and Extension county director in Riley County, Kan.

True or false? Packaging materials account for 32 percent of the nation’s household waste.

If you answer true, you’re right, Jennifer said, who said that fact would seem reason enough to “take stock and step up to reduce environmental waste.”

“Much of the waste comes from grocery packaging materials,” said Wilson, who has teamed with Virginia “Ginny” Barnard, Riley County Extension nutrition educator, to help the public learn more about reducing environmental waste.

To illustrate the issue, the two educators shopped for food products a typical family of any size might choose: a box of corn flakes; box of pre-packaged packets of instant oatmeal; bagged corn muffin mix; box of pre-packaged fruit snacks; noodles; and boxed macaroni and cheese mix.

A package of each was enough to fill the grocery sack, said Barnard, who reported that once back at the Extension office, they emptied the full grocery sack, opened the packages and dumped the actual food (contained within the packaging) into a separate sack.

“The full sack of groceries yielded about one-third of a sack of food,” Wilson said.
And, using the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s thrifty food plan to shop for a family of four, Barnard estimated an annual cost of about $600 for grocery packaging materials that end up in the trash.

“Reducing waste is an environmental issue; doing so also can reduce the health risks associated with processed foods, which often are high in sodium, and save money,” said Barnard, who offered this example: Mixing a comparable, homemade version of taco seasoning mix can yield the equivalent of six more costly pre-packaged mixes, and reduce the calories, carbohydrates and sodium (30 .6 mg per serving vs. 2,328.7 mg) per serving,” Barnard said.

Other environmentally-friendly shopping tips that also can offer health-promoting and/or cost-saving ideas from the family and consumer science Extension agents include:
— Invest in reusable grocery bags – and use them.
— Weigh cost vs. convenience. Compute the cost of buying six or eight individually wrapped 100-calorie snack packs compared with buying a box of crackers, measuring 100-calorie servings and placing them in reusable or disposable food-storage containers.
— Do it yourself: Cutting up vegetables, rather than buying cut celery, carrot or pepper strips, or grating cheese, rather than buying grated cheese, yields fresh flavor and a cost savings of up to 45 percent.
— Buy in bulk to reduce packaging and, if you or your family use the product within its use-by dates, to save on cost per serving.
— Opt for seasonal foods such as fruits and vegetables that typically cost less when peak supplies are available. Buying at local farmers’ markets often means shoppers will find fresh, locally grown produce.
— Choose products with less packaging, such as a waxed or cellophane bag, rather than a box of cereal, or refillable liquid hand soap or dishwashing detergent.
— Choose multi-purpose products, such as cleaners rather than a product for each job.
— Keep a running grocery list; buy what you need and use what you have.
— Cover and refrigerate perishable leftovers promptly, and, if leftovers cannot be used within a day or two, wrap, label, date and freeze for future meals.
— Invest in a reusable water bottle for each member of the household. In 2005, estimates suggest that 40 billion of the 50 billion plastic water bottles sold in the U.S. ended up in a landfill, said Wilson, who recommended checking with local recycling centers for a list of locally recycled packaging and other materials.

Thinking your memory will get worse as you get older may actually be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

That’s according to researchers at North Carolina State University who have found that senior citizens who think older people should perform poorly on tests of memory actually score much worse than seniors who do not buy in to negative stereotypes about aging and memory loss.

In a study published earlier this month, psychology professor Dr. Tom Hess and a team of researchers from NC State show that older adults’ ability to remember suffers when negative stereotypes are “activated” in a given situation.

“For example, older adults will perform more poorly on a memory test if they are told that older folks do poorly on that particular type of memory test,” Hess says. Memory also suffers if senior citizens believe they are being “stigmatized,” meaning that others are looking down on them because of their age.

“Such situations may be a part of older adults’ everyday experience,” Hess says, “such as being concerned about what others think of them at work having a negative effect on their performance – and thus potentially reinforcing the negative stereotypes.” However, Hess adds, “The positive flip side of this is that those who do not feel stigmatized, or those in situations where more positive views of aging are activated, exhibit significantly higher levels of memory performance.” In other words, if you are confident that aging will not ravage your memory, you are more likely to perform well on memory-related tasks.

The study also found a couple of factors that influenced the extent to which negative stereotypes influence older adults. For example, the researchers found that adults between the ages of 60 and 70 suffered more when these negative stereotypes were activated than seniors who were between the ages of 71 and 82. However, the 71-82 age group performed worse when they felt stigmatized.

Finally, the study found that negative effects were strongest for those older adults with the highest levels of education. “We interpret this as being consistent with the idea that those who value their ability to remember things most are the most likely to be sensitive to the negative implications of stereotypes, and thus are most likely to exhibit the problems associated with the stereotype.”

“The take-home message,” Hess says, “is that social factors may have a negative effect on older adults’ memory performance.”

Just because that meal includes a salad doesn’t necessarily mean its good for you, according a Duke University researcher.

“Vicarious goal fulfillment,” is when a person can feel a goal has been met if they have taken some small action, like considering the salad without ordering it, said Gavan Fitzsimons, professor of marketing and psychology at Duke’s Fuqua School of Business, who led the research.

In a lab experiment, Fitzsimons said participants possessing high levels of self-control related to food choices (as assessed by a pre-test) avoided french fries, the least healthy item on a menu, when presented with only unhealthy choices. But when a side salad was added to this menu, they became much more likely to take the fries.

Fitzsimons said although fast-food restaurants and vending machine operators have increased their healthy offerings in recent years, “analysts have pointed out that sales growth in the fast-food industry is not coming from healthy menu items, but from increased sales of burgers and fries.”

“There is clearly public demand for healthy options, so we wanted to know why people aren’t following through and purchasing those items,” he said.

Fitzsimons asked research participants to select a food item from one of two pictorial menus. Half of the participants saw a menu of unhealthy items, including only french fries, chicken nuggets and a baked potato with butter and sour cream. The rest of the participants were given the same three options, plus the choice of a side salad.

When the side salad was added, a few consumers did actually choose it. However, the vast majority of consumers did not, and went toward unhealthier options. Ironically, this effect was strongest among those consumers who normally had high levels of self-control.

“In this case, the presence of a salad on the menu has a liberating effect on people who value healthy choices,” Fitzsimons said. “We find that simply seeing, and perhaps briefly considering, the healthy option fulfills their need to make healthy choices, freeing the person to give in to temptation and make an unhealthy choice. In fact, when this happens people become so detached from their health-related goals, they go to extremes and choose the least healthy item on the menu.”

Two other test menus showed the same effect. “We also had participants choose from menus contrasting a bacon cheeseburger, chicken sandwich and fish sandwich with a veggie burger,” Block said. “And we tried chocolate covered Oreos, original Oreos and golden Oreos against a 100-calorie pack of Oreos and obtained the same result.”

“Adding the healthier option caused people with high self-control to choose the least healthy option possible. Even though it was not their first choice before the healthy option was included,” Block said.

The team’s findings suggest that encouraging people to make better choices may require significant effort on the part of both food service providers and customers. “What this shows is that adding one or two healthy items to a menu is essentially the worst thing you can do,” Fitzsimons said. “Because, while a few consumers will choose the healthy option, it causes most consumers to make drastically worse choices.”

Schools and other establishments concerned with promoting healthy behaviors may need to take an extreme approach and eliminate all unhealthy food, Fitzsimons said. “It sounds quite drastic, but because the effect of mixing healthy and unhealthy choices is so powerful, we would suggest that the safest way to get children to eat well is to take the pizza, fries and other junk foods completely out of schools, and replace them with healthy foods.”

The team also suggests that consumers might empower themselves through awareness. “This is one of those human quirks that we may be able to overcome if we are conscious of it and make a concerted effort to stick to the healthy choices we know we should be making,” Block said.

What’s good for Mother Earth is also good for you.

According to a new study from the International Journal of Epidemiology, maintaining a healthy body weight is good news for the environment.

Because food production is a major contributor to global warming, the study found that a lean population, such as that seen in Vietnam, will consume almost 20 percent less food and produce fewer greenhouse gases than a population in which 40 percent of people are obese (close to that seen in the USA today).

According to Phil Edwards and Ian Roberts of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine’s Department of Epidemiology and Population Health, transport-related emissions will also be lower because it takes less energy to transport slim people. The researchers estimate that a lean population of 1 billion people would emit 1.0 GT (1,000 million tonnes) less carbon dioxide equivalents per year compared with a fat one.

In nearly every country in the world, average body mass index (BMI) is rising. Between 1994 and 2004 the average male BMI in England increased from 26 to 27.3, with the average female BMI rising from 25.8 to 26.9 (about 3 kg – or half a stone – heavier). Humankind – be it Australian, Argentinian, Belgian or Canadian – is getting steadily fatter.

‘When it comes to food consumption, moving about in a heavy body is like driving around in a gas guzzler’, say the authors. ‘The heavier our bodies become the harder and more unpleasant it is to move about in them and the more dependent we become on our cars. Staying slim is good for health and for the environment. We need to be doing a lot more to reverse the global trend towards fatness, and recognise it as a key factor in the battle to reduce emissions and slow climate change’, they conclude.