….for Big Food?\u00a0 You probably aren’t surprised to learn that the answer is “yes”.\u00a0 Again and again, though, I am stunned by the details of the unholy alliance of industry, bought-and-paid-for experts, and government that have so \u00a0thoroughly corrupted our food system and devastated the health of our country.<\/p>\n
Chris Kresser, a blogger on health matters who specializes in covering holistic health issues was interviewed recently on the sell-out by the professionals we believe are protecting our well-being…and he discussed a press release on the subject:<\/p>\n
Chris Kresser:<\/b>\u00a0\u00a0 So, the press release was \u201cPublic health attorney and author Michele Simon asks: Are America\u2019s nutrition professionals in the pocket of Big Food?\u201d\u00a0 Well, that\u2019s a rhetorical question, haha, really.<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cWhile the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics\u2019 74,000-member trade group partners with the likes of Coke and Hershey\u2019s, the nation\u2019s health continues to suffer from poor diet.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cThe report details how registered dietitians can earn continuing education units from Coca-Cola<\/strong>,\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n \u2013 that\u2019s great, haha \u2013<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cin which they learn that sugar is not a problem for children and how Nestl\u00e9, the world\u2019s largest food company, can pay $50,000 to host a two-hour \u2018nutrition symposium\u2019 at the Academy\u2019s annual meeting.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n So, there were some pretty choice bits in here.\u00a0 One of my favorites was this doctor who is an MD at Harvard, you know, got Chief Physician at Massachusetts General Hospital, etc., I mean, got serious chops, right?\u00a0 So, if someone sees this guy on paper, they\u2019re going to think he\u2019s extremely credible, but his r\u00e9sum\u00e9 also reads like a Who\u2019s Who of the corporate food industry.\u00a0 He consults with Coca-Cola, Burger King, and General Mills and was tapped by Monsanto to be one of the numerous so-called experts speaking out against Proposition 37 in California, you know, which would have required labeling of genetically modified foods here in California.<\/em><\/p>\n Steve Wright:<\/b>\u00a0 That sounds like a guy I\u2019d trust my health with.<\/em><\/p>\n Chris Kresser:<\/b>\u00a0 Yeah.\u00a0 Well, the problem is a lot of people do.\u00a0 So, he does this continuing education seminar sponsored by Coca-Cola, and the takeaway message from his seminar is how sugar is just fine for kids and the goal is to assuage parents\u2019 concerns about sugar\u2019s impact on their kids\u2019 health.\u00a0 And he dismissed such ideas as \u201curban myths\u201d and \u201cmisconceptions,\u201d which is really, really hard to swallow.\u00a0 I mean, even for someone that can sometimes be as jaded as I am, that\u2019s pretty, pretty hard to swallow.<\/em><\/p>\n Steve Wright:<\/b>\u00a0 Yeah.\u00a0 You know, that\u2019s bad for everyone, including Harvard.<\/em><\/p>\n Chris Kresser:<\/b>\u00a0 Yeah, really.\u00a0 I mean, what are the standards here?\u00a0 So, here are a few other bullet points from the executive summary that stood out for me.\u00a0 Beginning in 2001, the AND \u2014 we\u2019re going to abbreviate it that way, Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics \u2014 they had 10 food industry sponsors, and now as of 2011, their annual report lists 38 sponsors, more than a threefold increase during that time.\u00a0 And these are companies like Coca-Cola, Kraft Foods, Nestl\u00e9, Pepsi \u2014 you know, all paragons of healthy nutrition, right?\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n And these companies pay for the privilege of doing CEU seminars that then dietitians can take for credit.\u00a0 And some of the themes and messages that are taught in these seminars are that sugar is not harmful to kids, as we just talked about; that aspartame, the artificial sweetener, is completely safe, including for children one year old; and the Institute of Medicine is too restrictive in its school nutrition standards.\u00a0 Roughly 23% of speakers at the annual meeting of the AND have industry ties, although very few of them actually disclose those ties.\u00a0\u00a0They don\u2019t even get involved in controversial nutrition policies that could upset their corporate sponsors, like limiting soft drink sizes or taxing sodas or GMO labeling or things like that.<\/em><\/p>\n So, the reason this matters \u2014 I mean, it\u2019s fairly obvious why it matters \u2014 but specifically, there\u2019s a lot of evidence that shows that the food industry\u2019s marketing of these processed, packaged, and refined foods, especially to children, is at least partly to blame for poor eating habits.\u00a0 And I think personal responsibility obviously plays a huge role here, and it\u2019s a cop out to just blame advertising, but it\u2019s also na\u00efve to assume that advertising doesn\u2019t have a significant impact.\u00a0 There is a lot of research that shows that it does, and it\u2019s impossible, really, for any kind of \u2018eat healthy\u2019 messages, as misguided as some of the \u2018eat healthy\u2019 messages are that come out of the conventional establishment \u2014 that\u2019s a whole other ball of wax! \u2014 but those will never be able to compete with an industry that spends billions of dollars a year marketing these processed food products.<\/em><\/p>\n The last little bit that I\u2019m going to share that I thought was, haha, pretty amazing was that during the annual meeting, there was a series sponsored by Pepsi and Kellogg, it looks like, called the \u201cKids Eat Right Breakfast Series.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Steve Wright:<\/b>\u00a0 Haha.\u00a0 Oh, yeah?<\/em><\/p>\n Chris Kresser:<\/b>\u00a0 Yeah, haha.\u00a0 They had a Breakfast in the Classroom: Convictions and Controversies, sponsored by Pepsi, and Shaping up America\u2019s Breakfast: RDs and Consumers Choose My Bowl, sponsored by Kellogg Company, as if a bowl of cereal, of course, is going to be a really healthy breakfast.<\/em><\/p>\n Steve Wright:<\/b>\u00a0 Yeah, a bowl of cornflakes with a Pepsi Max poured on top.<\/em><\/p>\n Chris Kresser:<\/b>\u00a0 Haha, exactly!\u00a0 You know, Pepsi owns Odwalla, which is their healthy drink that has about 60 grams \u2014 I don\u2019t even know how many grams of sugar are in those things.\u00a0 They might even be sweeter than sodas.\u00a0 I\u2019m not sure, but there\u2019s a lot of sugar in those.\u00a0 Yeah, and so Kellogg and Pepsi specifically, of course, manufacture tons of \u201cchild-friendly\u201d cereals that are really, really high in sugar, and they\u2019re going around in this annual meeting trying to educate registered dietitians to basically tell them that cereal, even sugary cereals like that, are part of a healthy breakfast because they don\u2019t have saturated fat or cholesterol.\u00a0 That\u2019s essentially the take-home message from these seminars.\u00a0 This is what we\u2019re up against.<\/em><\/p>\n Steve Wright:<\/b>\u00a0 This is awful.\u00a0 I mean, I\u2019m laughing because I don\u2019t want to get angry and ruin this microphone in front of me, but gosh, I feel so bad for the RDs and MDs or anyone in the medical field who wants to make a change and unknowingly might buy into this.<\/em><\/p>\n Chris Kresser:<\/b>\u00a0 Yeah.\u00a0 <\/em>But here\u2019s the thing, here\u2019s kind of what brought this home for me.\u00a0 I was out the other day with Sylvie, and we went to a class that she had with some of her other little friends, and then afterwards some of the parents, we went to a caf\u00e9, and everyone had food for their kids, right?\u00a0 So, Sylvie has some hard-boiled eggs and some sauerkraut and \u2014 what else did she have?\u00a0 I think a little bit of salmon leftover and some blueberries.\u00a0 That\u2019s what\u2019s in her little food container.\u00a0 But everyone else is buying huge rice krispie treats, like seriously the size of two fists put together, like the biggest rice krispie treat I\u2019ve ever seen.\u00a0 And cookies and super sugary drinks, and they\u2019re bringing this stuff back to the table and passing it around and asking:\u00a0 Oh, can Sylvie have some of that?\u00a0 And I\u2019m like:\u00a0 No, she can\u2019t.\u00a0 She can\u2019t eat that.\u00a0 Sometimes I\u2019ll just tell people that she\u2019s gluten intolerant.\u00a0 I don\u2019t even know if she is or not, but as far as I\u2019m concerned she is!<\/em><\/p>\n Steve Wright:<\/b>\u00a0 Haha.<\/em><\/p>\n Chris Kresser:<\/b>\u00a0 And that\u2019s just the easiest way to quickly explain it to people without going into a lot of detail.\u00a0 And then there were a couple parents that you could see were not totally comfortable with the huge sugar binge thing that was about to happen, but they didn\u2019t speak up, so they just kind of were resigned to letting it happen, and then their kid got a hold of the sugar, and then when their parent tried to intervene and say that\u2019s enough, what do you suppose happened?\u00a0 You know, full-fledged meltdown and all these kids are screaming, screaming, and going crazy.\u00a0 And Sylvie\u2019s there, eating her hard-boiled egg.<\/em><\/p>\n What struck me about that is that I\u2019m really convinced that all of those parents want the best for their kids, and as a parent myself, I think that for most parents that\u2019s true.\u00a0 But what I also was thinking about at that time is that \u2014 And I was sitting there going, OK, so what\u2019s happening here?\u00a0 Do these parents just not even think about it?\u00a0 Or do they think about it and go:\u00a0 Oh, yeah.\u00a0 We know sugar\u2019s not that great, but so what.\u00a0 It\u2019s not the end of the world, and they\u2019ll live.\u00a0 You know, just kind of discounting how significant of an issue it will be?\u00a0 I just think it\u2019s still, even with the increased awareness of food and the role of food in health, I think a lot of parents just don\u2019t really get the connection.\u00a0 That\u2019s what\u2019s so disturbing about it.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" ….for Big Food?\u00a0 You probably aren’t surprised to learn that the answer is “yes”.\u00a0 Again and again, though, I am stunned by the details of the unholy alliance of industry, bought-and-paid-for experts, and government that have so \u00a0thoroughly corrupted our food system and devastated the health of our country. Chris Kresser, a blogger on health matters who specializes in covering holistic health issues was interviewed recently on the sell-out by the professionals we believe are protecting our well-being…and he discussed a press release on the subject: Chris Kresser:\u00a0\u00a0 So, the press release was \u201cPublic health attorney and author Michele Simon asks: Are America\u2019s nutrition professionals in the pocket of Big Food?\u201d\u00a0 Well, that\u2019s a rhetorical question, haha, really. \u201cWhile the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics\u2019 74,000-member trade group partners with the likes of Coke and Hershey\u2019s, the nation\u2019s health continues to suffer from poor diet.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cThe report details how registered dietitians can earn continuing education units from Coca-Cola,\u201d \u2013 that\u2019s great, haha \u2013 \u201cin which they learn that sugar is not a problem for children and how Nestl\u00e9, the world\u2019s largest food company, can pay $50,000 to host a two-hour \u2018nutrition symposium\u2019 at the Academy\u2019s annual meeting.\u201d So, there were some pretty choice bits in here.\u00a0 One of my favorites was this doctor who is an MD at Harvard, you know, got Chief Physician at Massachusetts General Hospital, etc., I mean, got serious chops, right?\u00a0 So, if someone sees this guy on paper, they\u2019re going to think he\u2019s extremely credible, but his r\u00e9sum\u00e9 also reads like a Who\u2019s Who of the corporate food industry.\u00a0 He consults with Coca-Cola, Burger King, and General Mills and was tapped by Monsanto to be one of the numerous so-called experts speaking out against Proposition 37 in California, you know, which would have required labeling of genetically modified foods here in California. Steve Wright:\u00a0 That sounds like a guy I\u2019d trust my health with. Chris Kresser:\u00a0 Yeah.\u00a0 Well, the problem is a lot of people do.\u00a0 So, he does this continuing education seminar sponsored by Coca-Cola, and the takeaway message from his seminar is how sugar is just fine for kids and the goal is to assuage parents\u2019 concerns about sugar\u2019s impact on their kids\u2019 health.\u00a0 And he dismissed such ideas as \u201curban myths\u201d and \u201cmisconceptions,\u201d which is really, really hard to swallow.\u00a0 I mean, even for someone that can sometimes be as jaded as I am, that\u2019s pretty, pretty hard to swallow. Steve Wright:\u00a0 Yeah.\u00a0 You know, that\u2019s bad for everyone, including Harvard. Chris Kresser:\u00a0 Yeah, really.\u00a0 I mean, what are the standards here?\u00a0 So, here are a few other bullet points from the executive summary that stood out for me.\u00a0 Beginning in 2001, the AND \u2014 we\u2019re going to abbreviate it that way, Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics \u2014 they had 10 food industry sponsors, and now as of 2011, their annual report lists 38 sponsors, more than a threefold increase during that time.\u00a0 And these are companies like Coca-Cola, Kraft Foods, Nestl\u00e9, Pepsi \u2014 you know, all paragons of healthy nutrition, right?\u00a0 And these companies pay for the privilege of doing CEU seminars that then dietitians can take for credit.\u00a0 And some of the themes and messages that are taught in these seminars are that sugar is not harmful to kids, as we just talked about; that aspartame, the artificial sweetener, is completely safe, including for children one year old; and the Institute of Medicine is too restrictive in its school nutrition standards.\u00a0 Roughly 23% of speakers at the annual meeting of the AND have industry ties, although very few of them actually disclose those ties.\u00a0\u00a0They don\u2019t even get involved in controversial nutrition policies that could upset their corporate sponsors, like limiting soft drink sizes or taxing sodas or GMO labeling or things like that. So, the reason this matters \u2014 I mean, it\u2019s fairly obvious why it matters \u2014 but specifically, there\u2019s a lot of evidence that shows that the food industry\u2019s marketing of these processed, packaged, and refined foods, especially to children, is at least partly to blame for poor eating habits.\u00a0 And I think personal responsibility obviously plays a huge role here, and it\u2019s a cop out to just blame advertising, but it\u2019s also na\u00efve to assume that advertising doesn\u2019t have a significant impact.\u00a0 There is a lot of research that shows that it does, and it\u2019s impossible, really, for any kind of \u2018eat healthy\u2019 messages, as misguided as some of the \u2018eat healthy\u2019 messages are that come out of the conventional establishment \u2014 that\u2019s a whole other ball of wax! \u2014 but those will never be able to compete with an industry that spends billions of dollars a year marketing these processed food products. The last little bit that I\u2019m going to share that I thought was, haha, pretty amazing was that during the annual meeting, there was a series sponsored by Pepsi and Kellogg, it looks like, called the \u201cKids Eat Right Breakfast Series.\u201d Steve Wright:\u00a0 Haha.\u00a0 Oh, yeah? Chris Kresser:\u00a0 Yeah, haha.\u00a0 They had a Breakfast in the Classroom: Convictions and Controversies, sponsored by Pepsi, and Shaping up America\u2019s Breakfast: RDs and Consumers Choose My Bowl, sponsored by Kellogg Company, as if a bowl of cereal, of course, is going to be a really healthy breakfast. Steve Wright:\u00a0 Yeah, a bowl of cornflakes with a Pepsi Max poured on top. Chris Kresser:\u00a0 Haha, exactly!\u00a0 You know, Pepsi owns Odwalla, which is their healthy drink that has about 60 grams \u2014 I don\u2019t even know how many grams of sugar are in those things.\u00a0 They might even be sweeter than sodas.\u00a0 I\u2019m not sure, but there\u2019s a lot of sugar in those.\u00a0 Yeah, and so Kellogg and Pepsi specifically, of course, manufacture tons of \u201cchild-friendly\u201d cereals that are really, really high in sugar, and they\u2019re going around in this annual meeting trying to educate registered dietitians to basically tell them that cereal, even sugary cereals like that, are part of a healthy breakfast because they don\u2019t have saturated fat or cholesterol.\u00a0 That\u2019s essentially the take-home message from these seminars.\u00a0 This is what we\u2019re up against. Steve Wright:\u00a0 This is awful.\u00a0 I mean, I\u2019m laughing because I don\u2019t want to get angry and ruin this microphone in front of me, but gosh, I feel so bad for the RDs and MDs or anyone in the medical field who wants to make a change and unknowingly might buy into this. Chris Kresser:\u00a0 Yeah.\u00a0 But here\u2019s the thing, here\u2019s kind of what brought this home for me.\u00a0 I was out the other day with Sylvie, and we went to a class that she had with some of her other little friends, and then afterwards some of the parents, we went to a caf\u00e9, and everyone had food for their kids, right?\u00a0 So, Sylvie has some hard-boiled eggs and some sauerkraut and \u2014 what else did she have?\u00a0 I think a little bit of salmon leftover and some blueberries.\u00a0 That\u2019s what\u2019s in her little food container.\u00a0 But everyone else is buying huge rice krispie treats, like seriously the size of two fists put together, like the biggest rice krispie treat I\u2019ve ever seen.\u00a0 And cookies and super sugary drinks, and they\u2019re bringing this stuff back to the table and passing it around and asking:\u00a0 Oh, can Sylvie have some of that?\u00a0 And I\u2019m like:\u00a0 No, she can\u2019t.\u00a0 She can\u2019t eat that.\u00a0 Sometimes I\u2019ll just tell people that she\u2019s gluten intolerant.\u00a0 I don\u2019t even know if she is or not, but as far as I\u2019m concerned she is! Steve Wright:\u00a0 Haha. Chris Kresser:\u00a0 And that\u2019s just the easiest way to quickly explain it to people without going into a lot of detail.\u00a0 And then there were a couple parents that you could see were not totally comfortable with the huge sugar binge thing that was about to happen, but they didn\u2019t speak up, so they just kind of were resigned to letting it happen, and then their kid got a hold of the sugar, and then when their parent tried to intervene and say that\u2019s enough, what do you suppose happened?\u00a0 You know, full-fledged meltdown and all these kids are screaming, screaming, and going crazy.\u00a0 And Sylvie\u2019s there, eating her hard-boiled egg. What struck me about that is that I\u2019m really convinced that all of those parents want the best for their kids, and as a parent myself, I think that for most parents that\u2019s true.\u00a0 But what I also was thinking about at that time is that \u2014 And I was sitting there going, OK, so what\u2019s happening here?\u00a0 Do these parents just not even think about it?\u00a0 Or do they think about it and go:\u00a0 Oh, yeah.\u00a0 We know sugar\u2019s not that great, but so what.\u00a0 It\u2019s not the end of the world, and they\u2019ll live.\u00a0 You know, just kind of discounting how significant of an issue it will be?\u00a0 I just think it\u2019s still, even with the increased awareness of food and the role of food in health, I think a lot of parents just don\u2019t really get the connection.\u00a0 That\u2019s what\u2019s so disturbing about it.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,27,9,8,21,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1675","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-food","category-government","category-health","category-nutrition","category-on-the-soap-box","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thistlehill.net\/wpblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1675","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thistlehill.net\/wpblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thistlehill.net\/wpblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thistlehill.net\/wpblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thistlehill.net\/wpblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1675"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.thistlehill.net\/wpblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1675\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1678,"href":"http:\/\/www.thistlehill.net\/wpblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1675\/revisions\/1678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thistlehill.net\/wpblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thistlehill.net\/wpblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thistlehill.net\/wpblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}