When a Food Marketer Helps Devise Nutrition Advice (for the USDA)

[Rose Siding]

Candy lovers from 200 countries voted on a new M&M's color in 2002.

Purple won, and hundreds of newspapers and television stations reported the news. Web sites buzzed. Jay Leno worked it into his monologue on "The Tonight Show."

The campaign, regarded as a masterwork of food marketing, was created by Porter Novelli, one of the world's largest and most successful public relations companies.

Now the company is selling a different kind of product. Within the month, the Agriculture Department is expected to present a new icon to help Americans interpret the recently released federal dietary guidelines. For the company's work in designing the icon (which may or may not retain the shape of the current food guide pyramid) and for related tasks, Porter Novelli will receive nearly $2.5 million.

At a time when the government is increasing its use of public relations techniques to promote its agenda, its hiring a company with a stable of food industry clients to sell the national nutrition plan has some public health advocates concerned.

Government nutrition guidelines and the icon that illustrates them are more than keys to healthy eating. They can be powerful marketing tools for the food industry; a favorable nod toward one food group or another can result in millions of dollars in sales, food manufacturers say. They also influence federal food programs costing $46 billion a year, including food stamps and meals for schoolchildren............

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/10/politics/10pyramid.html?

[w4rma]

1. Chocolate as a food group? Heh. (nt)

[rodeodance]

2. all of gov depts are infiltrated with industry

[MisterP]

3. this is the Cato Institute's and the other browns' wet dream

[wildeyed]

4. I stopped paying attention to the government recommendations for diet

ages ago. After the low fat/high carb recommendations almost put me in the hospital with severe hypoglycemic reaction.

[Emillereid]

5. I'm with you. On high carb, low fat I gained 40 pounds!

My LDL cholesterol went up, mu HDL went down and my tryglicerides sky-rocketed! I became a nutritionist and after taking many, many courses in biochemistry and physiology I finally understood that my body was doing what it was designed to do on that diet! Some people I know lost their gall bladders on that diet. The damn high carb diet was a front scheme for getting rid of all the surplus grains in this country!

Now don't get me wrong -- I think people ought to eat their veggies, but if you don't eat some fat many of those wonderful vitamins, mineral and phytonutrients in your veggies can't even be absorbed.