Nutrition experts Marion Nestle and David Ludwig question whether the food industry can be trusted to play a constructive role in obesity prevention. They highlight 10 things junk food makers don’t want people to know about their products or how they promote them:
- Junk food makers spend billions advertising unhealthy foods to kids.
- The studies that food producers support tend to minimize health concerns associated with their products
- Junk food makers donate large sums of money to professional nutrition associations.
- More processing means more profits, but typically makes the food less healthy.
- Less-processed foods are generally more satiating than their highly processed counterparts.
- Many supposedly healthy replacement foods are hardly healthier than the foods they replace.
- A health claim on the label doesn’t necessarily make a food healthy.
- Food industry pressure has made nutritional guidelines confusing.
- The food industry funds front groups that fight antiobesity public health initiatives.
- The food industry works aggressively to discredit its critics.
The authors were commenting on an article published in Journal of American Medical Association, 15 Oct 2008
Read more: US News & World Report, 17 Oct 2008