"Center For Consumer Freedom" - Defending Tobacco, Defending Fast Food

[hatrack]

The full-page newspaper ads shout "Hype" at readers, warning them that they have "been force-fed a steady diet of obesity myths by the 'food police,' trial lawyers, and even our own government." The sponsor, the Center for Consumer Freedom, is a "nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting consumer choices and promoting common sense," the ad notes.

The group was founded about 10 years ago with tobacco-company and restaurant money to fight smoking curbs in restaurants. Back then, the group called itself Guest Choice Network. But it changed its name in 2001, as it shifted its focus to food and beverage issues, raised by concerns about obesity, mad cow disease and genetically modified products.

The group and its ads are the brainchild of Richard Berman, a Washington lobbyist and lawyer who is the center's executive director. Berman is also president of Berman & Co., a public affairs firm that in 2003 received more than $1.1 million in compensation from the nonprofit group -- more than a third of its revenue that year, according to its most recent tax returns. Berman, 62, also is the founder of two other restaurant-supported groups: the American Beverage Institute, which fights restrictions on alcohol use, and the Employment Policies Institute Foundation, which has argued against raising the minimum wage -- a move that would hurt restaurants because of their large staffs of low-wage workers.

Philip Morris USA Inc. pledged $600,000 -- most of the seed money -- for Berman's group in 1995. The company said it needed a consultant who was both a "hospitality industry insider as well as a legislatively astute individual," according to documents collected as part of the multi-state lawsuit against tobacco companies. Under the 1998 settlement, the documents were made public. Philip Morris continued to give money to Berman for several years, as did restaurant firms such as Host Marriott Corp. and Brinker International Inc., which owns the Chili's Grill & Bar and Maggiano's Little Italy restaurant chains. Neither firm returned phone calls about their ties to the Center for Consumer Freedom. Berman declined to give specifics about who funds the Center for Consumer Freedom. He said only that it is funded by a coalition of restaurant and food companies as well as some individuals. "It doesn't add anything" to give details, Berman said.

EDIT

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/04/26/AR2005042601259.html

[IrateCitizen]

1. This is all diversion, anyway...

The real problem is not really our diets -- the real problem is our auto-centric lifestyle, accompanied with the mantra of "bigger, better, MORE".

They have fast food in Europe too. But when I visited there, I didn't see too many obese people wandering around. I wonder if it has something to do with the fact that people there still WALK and BIKE to a lot of the local places they have to go, build communities that actually encourage them to do so, and consume food in more realistic portions than we do here in the states.

[kliljedahl]

3. Exercise, eat sensibly?

Who came up with that crazy idea? Don't we have a pill to take care of that?


Keith’s Barbeque Central

[IrateCitizen]

4. Your response reminded me of an interview with Ted Koppel...

In which Ted is reminicing about growing up in post-WWII Britain (where everything was still rationed into the early 1950's) and then coming to America. The thing that amazed him most about America was that there were actually products being marketed for easing pain from eating too much. Coming from where he did, where scarcity and austerity were still ways of life, he couldn't understand how the solution wasn't simply to EAT LESS.

That's America in a nutshell for ya....

[NJCher]

2. oboy, I can't wait to read this one

At the moment, however, I am :rofl: over the name, "Center for Consumer Freedom!" OMG!!

What new freak show will the corporate hacks unleash on us next?!

This is just too funny for words. Can you imagine people from other countries coming to visit this freakazoid land? Seeing these "proud-to-be-an American" people driving around two-ton SUVS, talking on their cell phones, oblivious ot the damage they're causing to the country and the world--all the while being "protected" by the Center for Consumer Freedom.

After I quit laughing, I'm going to :puke:


Cher

[starroute]

5. There's a lot more on these guys at SourceWatch

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Center_for_Consumer_Freedom


And here's one of the more interesting stories linked from that page:

http://www.cspinet.org/new/200302201.html

A trade association representing chain restaurants and taverns has surrendered the domain names of two sites designed to hijack web traffic away from the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), the pro-nutrition advocacy group. The trade association, the Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF), had registered cspinot.com, where it attacked CSPI and it's web site, cspinet.org. CCF had also purchased smartmouth.org, a domain name almost identical to that of Smart-Mouth.org, where CSPI provides information for children about nutrition and food marketing.

CCF is one of a shadowy trio of tax-exempt front groups run by Washington lobbyist Richard Berman. That trio also includes the American Beverage Institute, which fights laws designed to curb drunk driving, and the Employment Policies Institute, which is opposed to raising the minimum wage, particularly in the labor-intensive restaurant industry. CCF used to be named the Guest Choice Network, which was founded with seed money from Philip Morris. Berman controls all the organizations, which operate out of Berman's for-profit business, Berman & Co. The current funders of these groups are not disclosed, but Berman's groups are associated with executives from table-service restaurants like Outback Steakhouse,Chili's, and Pizzeria Uno.

"The so-called Center for Consumer Freedom deceives the American people every day of the week by posing as a consumer group, when it's really a front group that does P.R. dirty work for the restaurant and tavern industry," said CSPI executive director Michael F. Jacobson. "But even I was surprised that Rick Berman and his henchmen would stoop so low as to stop young kids from getting valuable nutrition information. I'm never surprised, though, by the goofy and low-brow tone of his efforts. Berman's a real bottom-feeder."