Dietary Guidelines: Why we need them
In an article about fast food marketing, the Los Angeles Times explains as clearly as could be why Dietary Guidelines matter so much. The article is titled “Eat less, U.S. says as fast-food chains super-size their offerings.”
Why would fast food chains want to offer hot dogs, hamburgers, and burritos ranging from 800 t0 1,600 calories each? How’s this for a candid answer:
The bottom line is we’re in the business of making money, and we make money off of what we sell,” said Beth Mansfield, spokeswoman for CKE Restaurants Inc., which owns the Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s chains. “If we wanted to listen to the food police and sell nuts and berries and tofu burgers, we wouldn’t make any money and we’d be out of business.
You want to help people stay healthy? That makes you food police.
If you care about public health, you can expect to be called names. But that shouldn’t stop you from trying to create a healthier food system.
And thanks to Sheila Viswanathan of the GoodGuide for sending the article.
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Comments
Such arrogance on the part of the fast food industry makes me even more determined to spend not to spend one thin dime to fatten their coffers. I hope one day they lose a liability lawsuit in a similar fashion as the tobacco industry, with proof provided that they are selling a harmful and addictive product.
I hope one day they have to chip in to pay down the ever increasing and unfunded U.S. health care costs that they are complicit in creating. It’s especially outrageous that they target the least educated and affluent consumers.
Lest we not upset the corporate consumerist machine with ‘welfare’ and ‘greater good of public health’ speak, as their system is profitable and good at keeping what would otherwise be a knowing society enabled and handicapped, foraging on industrial fodder and entranced by the myriad of regulatory misinformation and propaganda.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Marion Nestle, fadsandfancies.com and Hi5living.org, Jonathan Chiu. Jonathan Chiu said: Marion Nestle: Dietary Guidelines: Why we need them http://bit.ly/elIDu7 [...]
The only things that you can even order at Carl Junior’s Green Burritto restaurant <190 calories are a SIDE of sour cream or a SIDE of Guacamole. http:/www.carlsjr.com/system/pdf_menus/6/original/GreenBurrito_Nutritionals_3.5.10.pdf
When citizens stand up and demand change, as a nation, we’ll do what is right and insist our tax money doesn’t go to support industrial agriculture and therefore fast food joints, via the (GMO) Corn, soy, wheat subsidies of the Farm Bill.
I’m not sure what is worse, subsidizing corn to be HFCS & Corn oil or subsidizing corn grown for ethanol.(~10% of the corn, last I counted)
>>Corporate welfare has to go.
Yes, people want police when their neighbors are having a rowdy party, when someone speeds on their street, when someone threatens their life. They want government intervention when their mom is neglected in an old folks home, when insurance rates skyrocket, when their neighbor builds their fence too high, when Acme Hairdyes dump toxins in our rivers, when Bernie Madoff abuses the money they voluntarily gave him to invest in a too-good-to-be-true scheme.
This despite all our freedoms to party, to drive fast, to get mad, etc. We still want those freedoms regulated.
But heaven forbid government should interfer when food companies abuse the freedom we’ve given them to make and market foods that jeopardize our health, cost us billions in health outcomes including sick days from work, and threaten the stability of our economy.
We regulate production of cars for safety. Why shouldn’t we regulate production of food?
In fairness and with all due respect, Ms. Mansfield markets popular decadence in the meals her company sells while you, Dr. Nestle, market popular sanctimony in the books you sell. How many books is it now, five or six?
Business is business, is it not? It is likely that if Ms. Mansfield refrained from peddling decadence, if she stuck to marketing “nuts and berries and tofu burgers” and if you refrained from peddling sanctimony, if you stuck to writing scientifically rigorous textbooks of nutritional biochemistry, you would both be “out of business” before long.
Unflattering, perhaps, but “food police” seems an entirely appropriate description of your stock in trade. Certainly no more inappropriate than “fast food” as a description of Ms. Mansfield’s expertise.
[...] via foodpolitics.com [...]
To Mudd:
The food police should be the FDA. They fail badly, so there are no food police to handle an unfettered fake food culture.
Dr Nestle is a food advisor, and what you call sanctimony, I call health. What you call decadence, I call sickness and death.
Where we all so naive as to think this wasn’t the case? They’re all corporations and, as such, are bound to maximise profit At least Ms Mansfield has the gumption to say so.
Corporate responsiblity and healthy alternatives will only exist while they drive traffic or increase sales – in short, increase profit.
“Popular Decadence…”, I like the term, Doc Mudd! It does appear this is what our ignorant society is buying into these days. Too bad we all have to go down together.
Oh my! Sanctimonious, eh?
I wonder if Mr. Mudd thinks his doctor is being “sanctimonious” when he tells him to get a flu shot?
I wonder if Mr. Mudd wears a seat belt?
I wonder if Mr. Mudd has a smoke alarm in his home?
I wonder if Mr. Mudd is aware that Ms. Nestle’s second degree is in Public Health? But perhaps, I need not bother pointing that out, as Mr. Mudd obviously has no interest in anyone but himself–least of all children who are being victimized by the fast food industry and the agricultural system that props it up.
Doc Mudd –
Why are you here reading Marion Nestle’s blog? I would hope because you believe the information is beneficial. Why would you willingly subject yourself to sanctimonious chiding?
I am always suspicious of these ad hominen attacks on Dr. Nestle. Please have the sincerity to identify yourself as a representative of one of the companies or p.r. groups that are on the fast track to ensuring that we have all the raw materials necessary to be a health care system-bankrupted nation of obese, diabetic, cardiovascular diseased citizens.
The most dangerous consumer to the corporate bottom line is an educated consumer. That’s why most of us are here.
My new chant:
Sticks and stones may break my bones,
sugars and fats will give me a heart attack,
but NAMES will never hurt me!
Anyway, I don’t mind being called the food police at all!
My brother is an honest to goodness policeman. I guess justice, whether it’s on the streets or on our plates, is in our blood.
Sad.
[...] via Food Politics, “Dietary Guidelines-Why we need them.” [...]
My Name is Mudd… she’s not marketing “popular decadence” at all. That would imply that their marketing message was “you know its bad for you, but go ahead and indulge”, which is not the case. Their positioning is more along the lines of “eat this, it tastes good, its easy and its cheap”. Carl’s Jr. is marketing convenience, taste, frugality and to a large extent hunger itself… but not decadence. Ms. Mansfield is wise to stay away from such positioning because it implies her product is somehow a “sin”.
And you CAN make money selling Soy burgers (although I strongly disagree with it).
it doesn really help my question what is it???