Packaged Foods Fight the Obesity Demon!
Like my girls Sagan and Maggie, I am also fascinated with words. One word that came up recently in my reading of The Bostonians (and then again in The Hazard of New Fortunes) in mountebank. A mountebank is a charlatan or, in most basic term, a trickster. This word was probably used so prominently during the mid and late 19th centuries because, I’m sure, there was a direct correlation in the rise of the corporate with the rise of the fraudster. I can’t help but be sorely reminded of this still today…like really today as I read the article, “The Weight-Loss Message was Brought to You By Oreos” in the Los Angeles Times. Apparently, big food retailers such as Nestle and Mars Inc. are joining forces to “combat obesity.” Before I throw my shoe at the computer screen…*takes deep breath*….
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Here’s the article, and this is the gist, some taken from the official press release here:
- Big food manufacturers such as Kraft, Mars, ConAgra, and others, have joined farces forces in a “national, multi-year effort designed to help reduce obesity — especially childhood obesity — by 2015″ via The Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation.
- The HWCF will “promote ways to help people achieve a healthy weight through energy balance. It focuses on three critical areas — the marketplace, the workplace and schools.”
- The HWCF will promote “energy balance” defined as “balancing calories consumed as part of a healthy diet with calories expended by physical activity.”
- Members of the HWCF “have already committed $20 million to this joint initiative to raise awareness about the importance of balancing a healthy diet with physical activity, particularly among children ages six to 11 years old and their parents and caregivers.”
Why I’m Annoyed
- This is just another foundation created for positive PR and as part of a marketing scheme, rather than as an actual means to affect change. No real demands or restraints are placed on corporations — this is just an additional way to manipulate the public into thinking processed crap is healthy.
- The big scary “O” word. Obesity, that is. The term is always used in an alarmist fashion to evoke apocalyptic sentiments. More emphasis on fat being bad/wrong will certainly have adverse effects on the self-esteem of our kids and, after they’re done running away, wide-eyed and frantic from the Obesity Demon, they’ll be sure to need a refreshing diet coke and 100-calorie pack of cookies to comfort them.
- Big idiots donning white medical garb and playing with their stethoscopes while rolling around in a pig pile of money like pigs in hay are going to be the ones telling us how to eat. That’s like Big Pharma telling us how to self-medicate — it does not remove the invariable and ever-present self-interest.
- “Healthy Weight Commitment” is in itself imbued with issues simply as a title. Placing an emphasis on health being equated to reaching a particular weight is already going about health in the wrong way. First because weight is not an adequate determinate for health, second b/c it reiterates that weight is the be-all and end-all determinate for your worth. So, if you have a weight in the socially accepted “healthy” weight category but subsist on Baked Doritos, diet soda and Fruit Loops, you’re a star! And the Food Co.s will definitely love you mucho.
- This teaches false science/poor health by emphasizing calories and energy expenditure. Adding more prominent calorie details on a package of food is just like making the Surgeon General’s warning on a cigarette pack in larger font. I don’t see how this is going to remedy anything, though it may certainly create more problems via calorie obsession. How many times do we have to hear that a calorie is not a calorie for it to stick? Of course these companies want you to think it’s okay to eat a bag of Oreos as long as you starve yourself the rest of the day and run 10 miles. And of course they want to be the ones teaching your children how to eat healthy. That way the youth of America will grow up defining their health by, and being dependent on, what General Mills says.
- They want us to celebrate yet even more marketing dollars spent to confuse the ignorant. Look — we’re not all healthy lifestyle bloggers. We take our knowledge for granted. We assume everyone else has been as fortunate as us in learning how to read nutritional labels, in knowing what truly is and is not a health food. Let’s remember that healthy eating, in our society, is a learned habit and preference. When I look back 10 years ago, I truly believed that a 100-calorie pack meant the food was “healthy.” Others think this too. In fact, I’d guess more people do than don’t.
- I’m on double-talk overload. It started with Drop Dead Diva being brought to you by O-Band Bariatric Surgery, then Glamour paying lip service to “plus-sized” models and really just hiding them in the back of their issues (here and here). Then there are companies (like these Healthy Weight clowns) who use fictional characters, for instance, to in one case sell some crappy soup and then use another in an Ad Council ad promoting an active lifestyle.
I.give.
In the spirit of balance, please hit me up and tell me why I should suck it up and smile and think Packaged Food America is really on the right track. After all, teaching our kids about health through calories and energy expenditure is still teaching them some basic health knowledge, right? And making more portion-friendly snack foods is still better than the alternative, right? Tell me I’m just cranky and need to look on the bright side.
In the News
- New York Times‘, “A Crackdown on Bake Sales in City Schools” (10/2/09) here
- Slate‘s, “Glutton War: What if a War on Obesity Only Makes the Problem Worse?” (10/5/09) here — Could this article be any more fitting?! I truly recommend this piece!
Give-Away Round Up
- Win a $50 gift certificate to San Marco Coffee here
- Win a copy of the book 101 Things to do before you Diet by Mimi Spencer here
- Win a make-up bag from Three Custom Color Make-up here
<3, The Cranky One
Tags: ad council, corporate fraud, Drop Dead Diva, glamour, Glamour Magazine, healthy weight commitment foundation, Los Angeles Times
12 People have left comments on this post
Can I dress up in a lab coat & roll around in a big pile of money?
Better yet, can I fill all the pockets of the lab coat with money & keep it?
That is a much better solution in my mind.
While I think it is great to get the “healthy” message out there to kids of all ages & goodness knows many kids are easily swayed by a character on a box, etc… I just don’t 100% believe the motivation is as charitible as they declare. Money is always the motivator.
Every day another person looks around & realizes that they, and their family, needs to start eating better. We live in a society where convenience foods are important, so if this means there are going to be more kid friendly *healthy* choices available in this catagory, then more power to them.
I would be iterested in knowing their exact approach to “raising awareness” though. Printing a few posters & donating them to schools won’t do a thing. Choosing to change ingredients to make products more healthy *and* heavily promoting these healthy products to kids & parents is a better way.
If I were a betting person, I’d wager on them sending lame posters to schools & calling it a day…but I’m cynical like that.
Have a good day,
Lynn
If they really cared about promoting health, they would completely revamp their menus, reexamine where they get their food from, and make a crapload of other changes. Instead, they sit on their butts trying to figure out how they can sell *more* cheeseburgers while seeming to advocate health. Despicable!!
I wish I could say that I did a better job of boycotting fast food and other unhealthy places – well, okay, *I* never get anything from them – but Bobby is always getting “snacks” from McD’s, etc… He’s a thin guy, but I shudder to think how the food is affecting him.
I’ve gotten to the point where I just don’t trust any brand. Look at Jillian Michaels, who spouts out words of wisdom on TBL, then markets diet pills??? To me, that was the biggest insult.
Like you said, a lot of people don’t have the info that some of us have, and will follow the “guidelines” these companies set forth. I wish I knew what the answer was…
No, sorry, I can’t make you feel any better about this, I’m with you all the way. My personal bug bear over here in NZ is the prominent fat-free label on all sorts of foods, there is of course no mention that the product is 90% sugar! It drives me crazy, even bags of lollies proudly proclaim themselves ‘Fat Free’ as if somehow this makes them a healthy choice…… grr, now you’ve got me started on a rant …..!
I am not sure I will be much help either. Its so easy to dress up unhealthy food in a pretty little package labelled good for you and people will buy into it because a) they don’t know any better and b) they want to believe that its okay, heck that its good for you, to eat Oreos. Kids need to be taught portion control but I think its more important to teach them to reach for fresh fruit over a 100cal bag of Cheetos even though the calories count could be roughly the same. Children need to also understand vitamins and minerals and fibre and all the other parts of a food label that sometimes get overlooked in the war against fat and calories.
Ok – so let me go on a *bit* of a tangent here. When I grew up my mom was convinced I was allergic to milk and intolerant of wheat (allergy tests when I was a teen proved I *wasn’t* but whatever) and since SHE couldn’t handle junk food being around it rarely was. And when it came in the house it disappeared so fast I never got much anyway (my mom was/is the kind of person who would buy a carton of ice cream and eat it all in one night). So all I wanted when I was not at home was junk food. If it wasn’t completely absent at home, maybe I would have been a little more acquainted with the concept of moderation. I would eat spoonfuls of sugar and eat cough drops or corn syrup because there was NOTHING else sugary to eat. And while adults who sit on their butts in an office all day don’t really need much, I fully believe that active kids need some sugar.
However, no one needs to be conned into believing oreos are anything but a “sometimes food”. Soda is a treat, not something you drink every day. Chips are a “handful at a time” food, not a bag at a time food. If these companies could do ANYTHING good it would be teaching portion control. Somehow. Not that they would, but if they marketed themselves how they SHOULD be eaten (at least IMO) rather than how they want us to eat them (a package of oreos and a 2 liter of coke a day), that would be a good start.
So – probably way off the subject, but I could go on and on.
Ugh, this is so ridiculous. It’s so frustrating to see boxes of things that say “made with whole grains!” (words that should not be uttered on a box of Lucky Charms) or “trans-fat free” (yet partially hydrogenated oils are still in the ingredient list). People need to be educated about how to read nutrition labels and what the words mean. Unfortunately, most people just believe what they hear and more people talk about the convenience of these products and 100-calorie packs instead of REAL FOOD. What happened to eating an apple for a snack? Who needs 100 calories of Oreo-like wafers? Trust me, I used to be a junk food queen so I know how it goes. I wish I could make you feel better about this, but I’m just as disgusted as you are.
Mountebank is an awesome word. i learned a new word this week: belay. Simple, but I’d never heard it before. I love it.
As for the P.F.A. thing, I tend to think that in the grand scheme of things any health knowledge given to kids can be a good thing… I mean, if I look back at my childhood, no one EVER talked about that stuff. I only wish.
…Just because they’re promoting awareness about the bad juu juu in foods, doesn’t mean they’re going to change theirs.
The other day I bought some Haagen Daaz sorbet (Blueberry Cranberry), thinking it would be healthy because I saw it in a health magazine as a great alternative to high calorie ice creams/sorbets. On the side of it, it stated something to the effect of, “At Haagen Daaz we use only the highest of quality ingredients.” It took every bone in my body from writing a nastygram. HFCS is the cheapest form of sweatern/filler a company can use…and it’s bad for you! How is that high quality?
I am so sick and tired of reading one thing, and finding another in labels. This movement by Nestle and Mars is the same thing. They will be stating one thing, but their labels will contradict. But most consumers give too much trust to these companies, and wont look at the labels. “Oh, this is a healthy choice, because they’re spreading awareness…” Blah blah.
Blarg. Ya know?
Just found your blog though Prior Fat Girl – most attracted to the cranky part as I can be all about the cranky! Yep, it’s a total scam in my book as well. False concern, false conclusions etc and all employed to SELL MORE PRODUCT! Which is exactly why these corporations exist and exactly why they should never be taken seriously when they start be be all “helpful and caring”. Wouldn’t it be interesting if they put all that cash into underwriting farmers markets in poor urban areas or sponsoring farm to school programs or supporting food banks. Well, that won’t happen because their food-like products wouldn’t be on the menu, would they? (I’m taking a deep cleansing breath now!)
Wow!!!
Great post, well stated, amen!!!
I could go on and on about people I know and how ignorant they are about eating healthy.
Oh and great job on running faster on incline. Well have to talk about that bc I’m curious how much you’re burning. Incline is our friend for sure!
The only way you can manage obesity is throught Proper Diet and lots of exercise. The human body is designed for work so we should always get some form of physical exercise to stay fit.
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