With Swine Flu making parents (and others) across the country nervous about even going into public with out tiny bottles of hand sanitizer, of course companies would start taking advantage of them.

Kellogg is beginning to join in on the trend by plastering “Now helps support your child’s IMMUNITY” on boxes of Cocoa Krispies. Cocoa Krispies, along with other Kellogg cereals are not only loaded in sugar, but have not done anything to truly back up such a claim.

The city attorney in San Francisco finds the claim just as false as everyone else and has sent a letter to Kellogg as well as the Food and Drug Administration asking Kellogg to disclose what exactly helps boost immunity in the cereals.

Kellogg has been responding to critics’ attacks saying that it started developing a more healthy cereal last year and actually released them in May 2009 not to capitalize on the H1N1 “flu situation” but to respond to consumers’ needs for a healthier foods and a more positive nutrition value. A spokesperson from the company said that there are more vitamins A, C, and E in the cereals; increased from 10% daily value to 25% daily value.

Here’s an idea, if the company wanted to take advantage of consumers’ needs for a more healthy cereal, why not take some of the sugar out of its cereals?

It is a good thing that this has been given to the FDA for consideration. The FDA is supposed to be the governing body of false and misleading labeling on products. Right now, the FDA isn’t saying anything about this cereal or its strange, and likely false label.

Sugar coated cereals are not good for children in the amounts that are typically given to them. Have you ever measured out a serving of cereal? It’s not as much as many people pour themselves. Not to mention, cereals in general (even though many are made out of whole grain of some kind) are carbohydrates and while they may help keep your child awake for the first little while they are at school, carbs tend to burn quickly…adding sugar to that equation doesn’t help too much either.

Most parents don’t have the time to make a real, homemade breakfast everyday for their kids, so why not give them cereal that will actually help throughout the day or at least a cereal that is a bit healthier than Cocoa Krispies or any of the other sugar laden cereals that have found their ways on to our grocers shelves? I like sugary cereals from time to time. I actually enjoy Cinnamon Toast Crunch, but I also know that it won’t keep me from getting sick and it is DEFINITELY not a replacement for my vitamins.

Do you plan on getting vaccinated this flu season?

Question:

Everyone is warning about the upcoming flu season. Do you plan on getting vaccinated at all for either type of flu?

Answer:

I have only gotten the flu shot one time in my entire life, and the one time I got the vaccine, I got sick with the flu. Ever since then, I have not gotten a flu shot. This year, though, the H1N1 Swine Flu is going around and it has actually hit my town relatively hard because of the college campus here.

Even though there is an outbreak of the flu, I will still likely not get a vaccination because there are more high risk people who need it a lot worse than I do.

More and more Americans opted for cheaper cuts of meat over this past Fourth of July weekend. Instead of steak, many found themselves opting for hot dogs.

“It will be the cheaper cuts that will take the majority of the business,” said John Kleist, analyst with the McHenry, Ill-based advisory firm Allendale Inc.

Thanks to the highest jobless numbers we’ve seen in 26 years and the ongoing recession consumers’ spending decisions have been deterred and due to how large holiday meals typically are and the overall cost, people will be trying to feed the same amount of guests on a much smaller budget.

Even with meats on sale at many grocers across the country, they are still expensive and when the sales figures come out for the week, they are likely to show that sales were much less this year when compared to last year’s meat sales.

“I think the economy is going to have a negative effect,” said Len Steiner, a principal with the retail consulting firm Steiner Consulting.

Sales of beef and pork have been really slow this year, and much slower than expected throughout the spring and summer seasons when barbecues lead to higher sales of the meats. I can also assume that slow pork sales has something to do with swine flu worries more than the cost, simply because I find pork to be much less expensive than beef and actually similarly priced to chicken. Slow sales of meat is bad news for livestock farmers. Over the past year, feed prices have been really high for them and due to the slow sales, they are unable to get profitable prices for their cattle and hogs.

“Until the economy improves, we are going to see pressure on the quality meats. That is keeping pressure on livestock prices,” said Ron Plain, agricultural economist at the University of Missouri. “People are just wanting to eat cheaper.”

When I buy hot dogs, I always buy the turkey ones that are 98% fat free so they’re pretty expensive when compared to the prices of other kinds of hot dogs.

It’s been a few days since I’ve heard anything about the swine flu on television or read about it on the internet. Yesterday, however, it was announced that the “piggy” flu has become an international pandemic.

As of now, the swine flu has reached 74 countries and infected close to 30,000 people. While it is considered a pandemic, most get the illness and never actually seek medical treatment and get better on their own. It has turned out that swine flu is a lot less potent than some were worried that it would be. It shouldn’t be considered any more dangerous now that it is considered a pandemic, just that it has reached several countries around the world.

In my opinion, the swine flu is a lot more hype than anything else, at least while it is in its current form. Only 144 people have died from swine flu, that number is dwarfed by the amount of people who die around the world from the regular people flu every flu season. Nearly half a million people die every year from the ordinary flu; when you think about it, more people die every year from the common cold than from the swine flu in its current form.

That being said, every year, the flu takes on a new form and typically turns into a new strain that we don’t have a vaccine against. So, in the future, the swine flu could be very bad…but this time around, it’s just not.

While the swine flu has been deemed a pandemic by the United Nations Health officials WHO, drug makers could start making vaccines against it, however…if they were to start making a vaccine for the swine flu, they would not have the ability to manufacture the regular flu vaccine to capacity for the coming up flu season. Manufacturers need to decide which is more important right now and if the current totals are an indication as to which is more important, I believe it is a no brainier.

I think it’s kind of amusing that China, the country that has brought us illnesses like SARS, has been quarantining visitors from other countries, including the mayor of New Orleans, if they believed that they could be carrying the flu.

Still, New York City reported three more swine flu deaths Thursday, including a child under 2, a teenager and a person in their 30s.

“Countries where outbreaks appear to have peaked should prepare for a second wave of infection,” Chan warned.

The 33 year old woman lived near a popular border crossing town in Texas and had chronic health problems. On top of that, she also had given birth to a healthy baby while sick with the flu at the hospital.

This is, still, much more mild than even seasonal flu outbreaks. Thousands succumb to the seasonal flu every year and it doesn’t ever get as much attention as the swine flu. I am only talking about it because it is popular news and directly affects trade with other countries and the United States. At this point, I think that it is mainly hype. Of course, this is no consolation to the families of people who have the swine flu or who have died as a result of contracting it, but typically the people who have very serious cases of this are the same people who would have very serious cases of the seasonal (regular) flu.

Smithfield Foods, the largest producer of pork products in the world, has released a statement saying their pigs had no signs or symptoms of swine flu, even at its operations in Mexico.

This information was released after, along with Tyson, shares of the company dropped today.

Smithfield Foods (NYSE: SFD), based in Smithfield, Va., says it is cooperating with Mexican officials to assist in the investigation of possible sources of the outbreak and will submit samples from its swine herds to the University of Mexico for testing.

The company also noted that it regularly vaccinates its swine herds against influenza and conducts monthly tests for the presence of swine flu its Mexican farms and processing plant

Of course, you can’t get swine flu from eating cooked pork. It is transmitted through human to human contact and human to (live) pig contact.

There have been over 100 deaths in Mexico from the flu (where the strain originated) and thousands of cases reported. In the United States, some traveling to Mexico have come back with the illness, although cases in the U.S. have been mild.

This is from Wikipedia:
“The new strain [of swine flu] is derived in part from human influenza virus A (subtype H1N1), and in part from two strains of swine influenza as well as an avian influenza. In April both the WHO and the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) expressed serious concerns about this novel strain, because it apparently transmits from human to human, has had a relatively high mortality rate in Mexico, and because it has the potential to become a flu pandemic.”

So this is a pretty dangerous situation where everyone should take precautions to try to avoid contact with someone showing signs or symptoms of the flu.