Corporate Potluck: Dietitians and their company sponsors make strange buffet fellows

[marmar]

from In These Times:



Corporate Potluck
Dietitians and their company sponsors make strange buffet fellows
By Jacob Wheeler



For three days early this fall, the Pennsylvania Convention Center was home to corporate entities such as PepsiCo, Hershey’s, Taco Bell, Crisco and McDonald’s. They weren’t there to count calories but to rub bellies with members of the American Dietetic Association, who had gathered in Philadelphia for the annual Food & Nutrition Conference & Expo.

PepsiCo cares about you. The company’s “Health and Wellness” website pictures a smiling family in tennis shoes and workout clothes enjoying a brisk walk. All are consuming Pepsi products. Dad is drinking a can of Pepsi. Grandma is toting a bag of Lay’s potato chips. Aside from the questionable workout, we’re left to wonder: When did Pepsi become an advocate for health?

Marsha Holmberg, a food editor at the Oregonian who flew in from Portland, says too many Americans have become culinary illiterates, convinced by television commercials that processed food is nutritious. “Nobody thinks they have the time to cook,” Holmberg says. “They think it’s complicated. In reality, it takes as much time to make from a mix as it does to make from scratch. It’s an illusion that food preparation takes time.”

At the convention’s bookstore, neat rows of dietitian guidebooks—with covers of colorful fruit and vegetables, alongside the occasional whole grain cereal or wheat stalk—lined the booths. The message was healthy food, which professionals agree is the backbone of a sound diet.

Yet not everyone was eating from the same menu.

Registered dietitian Regena Gerth was promoting Taco Bell’s new “Fresco Style” line—which substitutes cheese with “fresh Fiesta Salsa.” “Patrons will continue to go to fast-food restaurants,” she says, “so the least we can do is offer healthy options—anything that can be incorporated into a diet.” She failed to mention that gut-busting Tex-Mex food filled with meat and beans is still the drive-thru favorite. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3447/corporate_potluck/

[NJCher]

1. Fast food for dinner

This semester numerous students did research papers on daycare. I ask my students to do their papers on a topic where they can contribute their unique viewpoint.

As daycare workers, two of my students observed that American families routinely pickup their children from the daycare center and night and then head for the nearest fast food joint. To their credit, my students were properly horrified. In their papers, they commented that it was because the parents are too tired to cook--or at least this is what they were told by the parent.

Is it any wonder we have an obesity problems with children?

If republicans really gave a damn about families, they would promote policies that make it easier on the American family to survive. Instead they are squeezing the middle class like never before, all the while they are flag waving and promoting "family values."

I wish HEN the best in their endeavors. It is sad how even our professional associations are corrupt to the bone (ADA). A few weeks ago a student and I perused their site and I was appalled. Sad to say, I had to tell the student it wasn't a credible site from which to draw research. This article explains why.



Cher

[Hannah Bell]

2. ADA =

Corporate mouthpiece.

Speaking as a dietician & former member.

The worst, most boring & irrelevant "scientific" journal I've ever read.

The most senseless & illogical organized body I've ever been part of.