Search results: food strategy

Center for Science in the Public Interest has just sued Denny’s for failing to disclose the amount of salt in its fast foods.  I heard about this from a reporter from Nation’s Restaurant News who thought the suit was absurd.  Everyone knows Denny’s food isn’t healthy, she suggested.  Maybe, but I had no idea how much salt the foods contained, and I’m supposed to know such things.

The figures that follow refer to the sodium content.  Sodium is 40% of salt (the other 60% is chloride) so 4,000 mg sodium is equivalent to 10,000 mg salt (10 grams).  The standard recommendation for healthy people is 2,300 mg sodium per day.  People with hypertension are supposed to restrict sodium to 1,500 mg.  With that said, try these examples and remember, this is sodium:

• 2,580 mg   Moons Over My Hammy sandwich  (ham, egg, cheese)
• 4,120 mg  Spicy Buffalo Chicken Melt with regular fries
• 5,690 mg  Meat Lover’s Scramble (eggs, bacon, sausage, bacon)

I see this as a flat-out issue of consumer choice.  If people want more salt, they can always add it at the table, but those of us want less salt don’t have a choice at all.  We are stuck with what is served to us and if we don’t know how much salt the food contains (and taste isn’t necessarily a reliable indicator of amount), we have no choice about the amount we are eating.

Litigation is not my favorite public health strategy but in this situation it seems like the only current option.  Voluntary salt reduction isn’t happening across the board, the FDA is up to its ears in food safety problems, so there is a huge vacuum waiting to be filled.  I will be interested to see what happens with this suit, and I’m not as convinced as the Nations Restaurant News reporter that it will be so easy to dismiss out of hand.

Later addition: I’ve just seen this from the industry-sponsored American Council on Science and Health, which thinks the CSPI lawsuit frivolous, to say the least:  “Maybe [CSPI’s] Michael Jacobson doesn’t want the public to have the choice of what he considers unhealthy food.”  That says it all!

Order from your local independent bookstore or Amazon or Barnes & Noble

Summary

What to Eat is a book about how to make sensible food choices. Consider that today’s supermarket is ground zero for the food industry, a place where the giants of agribusiness compete for your purchases with profits—not health or nutrition—in mind. This book takes you on a guided tour of the supermarket, beginning in the produce section and continuing around the perimeter of the store to the dairy, meat, and fish counters, and then to the center aisles where you find the packaged foods, soft drinks, bottled waters, baby foods, and more. Along the way, it tells you just what you need to know about such matters as fresh and frozen, wild and farm-raised, organic and “natural,” and omega-3 and trans fats. It decodes food labels, nutrition and health claims, and portion sizes, and shows you how to balance decisions about food on the basis of freshness, taste, nutrition, and health, but also social and environmental issues and, of course, price. Note to Readers: I cannot begin to tell you how much fun this book has been to research and write. It turned out to be as challenging a project as any I have ever undertaken, but also a lot more entertaining. Every time I walked into a supermarket, I discovered something new and often unsuspected. The most seemingly mundane products (eggs! bottled water!) led me to discoveries I had not even imagined possible. I found something astonishing—and often quite amusing—in every section of the store. I hope that you are just as amazed and amused reading this book as I was while writing it. I also hope that you put it to immediate use. Enjoy, eat well, and change the world (for the better, of course).

Reviews and Commentary

• Review of What to Eat by Adriana Velez on www.foodbuzz.com 3/12/08
• Interview in Haaretz with Shahar Smooha (in Hebrew, but the cartoon needs no translation) 9/23/07
• Book Review Preventing Chronic Diseases (serial online) 4/07
• Book Review Culinate 3/29/07
• The Politics on Our Plates The Chronicle of Higher Education: The Chronicle Review 10/13/06
• The Fight for Real Food The Sydney Morning Herald 9/28/06
• Truth or Consequences: Book Explores Grocery Shopping’s Hidden Burdens The Chicago Tribune 7/26/06
• Supermarketing Toronto Star 7/5/06
• How Much Is Too Much? The Hamilton Spectator 7/5/06
• Shopping Savvy: What Not to Buy The Washington Post 7/5/06
• Marion Nestle Interview: What to Eat Gremolata 7/06
• On Special at Your Local Supermarket: Moral Choices The New York Times 6/27/06
• Supermarket Sleuth Salon.com 6/12/06
• Decoding the Grocery Store Time 6/12/06
• Nutrition Expert Marion Nestle Tells Vermonters How to Eat Burlington Free Press 6/11/06
• Shop Smart, Eat Smart Food & Wine 6/7/06
• Healthy Skepticism Progressive Grocer 6/1/06
• What You Eat Is Her Beat The Christian Science Monitor 6/1/06
• Grocery Store Fat Traps Glamour 6/06
• Armed with a Grocery Cart, and a Critical Eye Los Angeles Times 5/29/06
• Eat Your Vegetables The New York Times Book Review 5/28/06
• Yes, We Really Are What We Eat U.S. News & World Report 5/22/06
• ‘The Rules’ for Eating Smarter Business Week 5/22/06
• Eat Drink and Be Wary People 5/22/06
• Nutritionist Wants This in Your Cart: Knowledge Seattle Post-Intelligencer 5/17/06
• Clearing Up the Cloud of Confusion Around Food Wine Spectator Online 5/12/06
• What (Not) to Eat North Bay Bohemian 5/3-9/06
• Add a Pinch of Testosterone; Food Writing is Big Business These Days, and Men Are Digging into the Subject with Gusto The Boston Globe 5/3/06
• ‘Aisle-by-Aisle:’ Cart Strategy for Good Eating USA Today 5/3/06
• An Easily Consumed Guide USA Today 5/2/06
• Voting with a Fork: The Politics of Food CNET News.com 4/28/06
• What to Eat: Expert Clears the Confusion eDiets.com 4/27/06
• Field Guide to the Grocery Aisles The New York Times 4/26/06
• Eat to Live: Controlled by the Food Biz United Press International 4/24/06
• Attention, Shoppers: Avoid the Center Aisles UC Berkeley News 4/13/06
• My Dinner with Marion O, The Oprah Magazine April 2006
• Down to a Science San Francisco Chronicle 3/15/06
• Review Publishers Weekly 3/13/06
• Review Library Journal 3/1/06
• Review Kirkus Reviews 2/1/06
• We Are (Still) What We Eat epicurious 2006

A comment on the previous post about chocolate asks why chocolate manufacturers think they have to put health claims on candy.  The simple answer is that health claims are the only things that sell food these days.  And chocolate candy is in trouble–you aren’t eating enough of it to keep these corporations growing fast enough.  And on top of all that, the companies are all being sued for price fixing which, alas, is illegal. Health claims are an “eat more” marketing strategy.  I think health claims–all of them–should be illegal.  That isn’t going to happen but we could make our displeasure with such misleading marketing known to the companies.