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