May 30 2008

USDA’s corporate challenge: the road to healthville?

I’ve just gotten a press release from the USDA announcing its “road to healthville” challenge. On June 10, the USDA will hold a multi-media event featuring “dozens of some of the Nation’s leading corporations stepping forward to help stem the tide of overweight and obesity among America’s young people with specific new, out-of-the-box initiatives. The program will be hosted by CNPP Executive Director Dr. Brian Wansink.”  I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait to see what food corporations will come up with.  Why am I thinking that out-of-the-box will not include stop marketing junk foods to kids, let alone making them.

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  • Sheila
  • May 30, 2008
  • 10:17 pm

I am thinking they will ramp up those special package notices to help us make “better” choices, like the mostly-sugar processed fruit roll-up products might get labeled as “fat-free” to attract consumers to this now “healthy” fruit product.
Or the labels on soda and cookies telling us that these products are “low sodium” foods.
Or those tiny 100-calorie packages of chips and cookies, like we won’t eat 6 of those packages at a sitting!

  • K
  • May 31, 2008
  • 6:47 pm

…out of the *cardboard* box, probably.

Like Sheila said, these are the people who brought us the 100-calorie snack packs. As a fellow blogger said, “100 calories of garbage is still garbage.”

I still haven’t seen any truly brilliant ideas, or even slightly good ones, come from Wansink. When are we gonna get a nutritionist, instead of an expert on marketing, to head up the arm of the USDA that makes dietary guidelines?

Oh, wait … never.

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