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Jun 28, 2017 Leave a Comment

The Food Industry Thrives on Public Confusion

Earlier this week, Dr. Michael Greger of NutritionFacts.org published a brief must-watch video titled “The Food Industry Wants the Public Confused About Nutrition”.

Highlights:

* “The ‘Nanny State’ is typically used as a pejorative term to discourage governments from introducing legislation or regulation that might undermine the power or actions of industry or individuals,” and has been regularly used to undermine public health efforts. But those complaining about the governmental manipulation of people’s choices tend to hypocritically be fine with corporations doing the same thing.”

* “One could argue that “public health is being undermined by ‘the Nanny Industry’ that uses fear of government regulation to maintain its own dominance” and profits… and at significant cost to public health.”

* “The tobacco industry offers the classic example, touting “personal responsibility,” which has a certain philosophical appeal. Look, as long as people understand the risks, they should be free to do whatever they want with their bodies.”

* “But, the tobacco industry’s deliberate strategy of challenging scientific evidence undermines smokers’ ability to understand the harms smoking poses, and so, undermines the whole concept that “smoking is a fully-informed choice.”

* “And, is the food industry any different? The public is bombarded with information and it is hard to tell which is true, which is false, and which is merely exaggerated.”

* “How confused are we about nutrition? Head Start teachers are responsible for providing nutrition education to over [a] million low-income children [every year]. A hundred and eighty-one Head Start teachers were put to the test. And, only about four out of 181 answered at least four [out] of the five nutrition knowledge questions correctly. Most, for example, could not correctly answer the question, “Which has the most calories: protein, carbohydrate, or fat?” Not a single one could answer all five nutrition questions correctly.”

* “No purveyor of unhealthy products wants the public to know the truth. An [incredible] example comes from the US ‘Fairness Doctrine’. Before tobacco advertising was banned from television…, a court ruling in 1967 required that tobacco companies funded one health ad about smoking for every four tobacco TV advertisements they put on. Rather than face this corrective advertising, the tobacco industry took their own advertising off television. They knew they couldn’t compete with the truth. Just “the threat of corrective advertising even on a one-to-four basis was sufficient to make [the] tobacco companies withdraw their own advertising. They needed to keep the public in the dark.”

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Categories: Industry Spin, Industry-Funded Research Tags: Big Tobacco, industry-funded studies, marketing, Michael Greger, US Fairness Doctrine

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