• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Dietitians for Professional Integrity

  • Home
  • Our Team
  • Resources
    • Advocacy & Action Toolkit
    • Conflict-Free CEUs
    • Distinguished Dietitians
    • Ethical Sponsorship
    • FNCE Guides & Reports
    • Like-Minded Organizations
    • RD Resource Toolkit
    • Statements of Concern
    • Understand The Issues
  • Contact
  • FAQ
  • Blog
  • Donate
  • Search

Apr 21, 2017 Leave a Comment

Must-Read: “To Solve Hunger, First Solve Poverty”

Andy Fisher is the author of the new book, Big Hunger: The Unholy Alliance between Corporate America and Anti-Hunger Groups. In this Civil Eats interview, Fisher explains why Big Food’s presence in the anti-hunger movement is problematic for public health (spoiler: follow the money!).

Highlights:

* “In the summer of 2013, I discovered the extent to which large, national anti-hunger organizations were trying to shut down criticism about anti-hunger programs. Steve Holt [who also writes for Civil Eats] wrote a two-part series criticizing food banks for being in bed with corporations for TakePart.com extensively quoting me. When the second part of the series didn’t run, I discovered that Feeding America went “ballistic” after reading the first article. They admitted that the critiques were true, but convinced the website to censor the second article. I also discovered that the Food Research Action Center (FRAC) tried to convince the Harvard School of Public Health to stop publishing research that was critical of the nutritional implications of the SNAP program.”

* “By failing to organize around wages and jobs, and perpetuating dependency on free food and food stamps, the anti-hunger community contributes to economic insecurity.”

* “We’ve pretended that the problem is hunger and not poverty. We’ve pretended that the solution to hunger is charity, not ensuring the right to food or increasing the political power of the poor. We’ve pretended that corporations are not to blame—at least in part—for the economic inequality that leads to hunger. We’ve pretended that we can take billions of dollars from companies such as Walmart and not compromise our integrity. It’s time to point out that the emperor has no clothes.”

* “The food industry has been an important player in advocating for the passage of SNAP in the Farm Bill. But at what cost? The beverage industry, for example, sold an estimated $6.5 billion of SNAP benefits on sugary beverages in 2011. Soda sales to SNAP recipients reinforces a poor American diet, and a diabetes epidemic. At the charity level, industry donates food, cash, volunteers, and board members (25 percent of food bank board members work at a Fortune 1000 company). In exchange, only a handful of food banks advocate for hunger-reducing policies such as a higher minimum wage.”

Share this:

  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)

Related

Categories: Advocacy Tags: Andy Fisher, Civil Eats, diabetes, Farm Bill, Feeding America, hunger, SNAP, soda

Reader Interactions

Leave a Comment Cancel

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

sidebar

Blog Sidebar

Social Media

FacebookTwitter

Subscribe to receive our quarterly newsletter and other breaking news!

  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Browse by Topic

  • Academic Research
  • Advocacy
  • Distinguished Dietitians
  • Ethical Sponsorship
  • Industry Spin
  • Industry-Funded Research
  • Interviews
  • Photos
  • Problematic Sponsorship
  • Recommended Reads
  • Reports
  • Statements of Concern
  • Uncategorized

Tags

Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics American Beverage Association Andy Bellatti Big Tobacco California Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics Center for Science in the Public Interest CEUs Civil Eats Coca-Cola ConAgra conflicts of interest Corn Refiners Association FNCE front groups General Mills Global Energy Balance Network Hershey's industry-funded research junk food Kellogg Kids Eat Right Kraft Kraft Singles lobbying Marion Nestle marketing marketing to children Mars McDonald's meat industry Michele Simon moderation National Dairy Council Nestlé New York Times PepsiCo policy soda soda tax soda taxes sugar The Sugar Association Unilever World Health Organization Yoni Freedhoff

Footer

Subscribe to receive our quarterly newsletter and other breaking news!

  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Recent Posts

Farewell to Our Supporters

Dear DFPI Supporters, Since February of 2013, we at Dietitians For Professional Integrity have been a voice for uplifting the registered dietitian credential at a time when corporate influences - both overt and covert Read More

Highly Processed Foods Can Negatively Impact Health

Good read from New York Times on how highly processed foods (and the ingredients in many of them) can negatively impact health by creating an imbalance in the gut microbiome. This is the future of nutrition. The fact Read More

Social Media

FacebookTwitter

RSS

  • RSS - Posts

© 2021 Dietitians for Professional Integrity