Are nutritionists in the tank….

….for Big Food?  You probably aren’t surprised to learn that the answer is “yes”.  Again and again, though, I am stunned by the details of the unholy alliance of industry, bought-and-paid-for experts, and government that have so  thoroughly corrupted our food system and devastated the health of our country.

Chris Kresser, a blogger on health matters who specializes in covering holistic health issues was interviewed recently on the sell-out by the professionals we believe are protecting our well-being…and he discussed a press release on the subject:

Chris Kresser:   So, the press release was “Public health attorney and author Michele Simon asks: Are America’s nutrition professionals in the pocket of Big Food?”  Well, that’s a rhetorical question, haha, really.

“While the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics’ 74,000-member trade group partners with the likes of Coke and Hershey’s, the nation’s health continues to suffer from poor diet.”  “The report details how registered dietitians can earn continuing education units from Coca-Cola,”

– that’s great, haha –

“in which they learn that sugar is not a problem for children and how Nestlé, the world’s largest food company, can pay $50,000 to host a two-hour ‘nutrition symposium’ at the Academy’s annual meeting.”

So, there were some pretty choice bits in here.  One of my favorites was this doctor who is an MD at Harvard, you know, got Chief Physician at Massachusetts General Hospital, etc., I mean, got serious chops, right?  So, if someone sees this guy on paper, they’re going to think he’s extremely credible, but his résumé also reads like a Who’s Who of the corporate food industry.  He consults with Coca-Cola, Burger King, and General Mills and was tapped by Monsanto to be one of the numerous so-called experts speaking out against Proposition 37 in California, you know, which would have required labeling of genetically modified foods here in California.

Steve Wright:  That sounds like a guy I’d trust my health with.

Chris Kresser:  Yeah.  Well, the problem is a lot of people do.  So, he does this continuing education seminar sponsored by Coca-Cola, and the takeaway message from his seminar is how sugar is just fine for kids and the goal is to assuage parents’ concerns about sugar’s impact on their kids’ health.  And he dismissed such ideas as “urban myths” and “misconceptions,” which is really, really hard to swallow.  I mean, even for someone that can sometimes be as jaded as I am, that’s pretty, pretty hard to swallow.

Steve Wright:  Yeah.  You know, that’s bad for everyone, including Harvard.

Chris Kresser:  Yeah, really.  I mean, what are the standards here?  So, here are a few other bullet points from the executive summary that stood out for me.  Beginning in 2001, the AND — we’re going to abbreviate it that way, Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics — they had 10 food industry sponsors, and now as of 2011, their annual report lists 38 sponsors, more than a threefold increase during that time.  And these are companies like Coca-Cola, Kraft Foods, Nestlé, Pepsi — you know, all paragons of healthy nutrition, right? 

And these companies pay for the privilege of doing CEU seminars that then dietitians can take for credit.  And some of the themes and messages that are taught in these seminars are that sugar is not harmful to kids, as we just talked about; that aspartame, the artificial sweetener, is completely safe, including for children one year old; and the Institute of Medicine is too restrictive in its school nutrition standards.  Roughly 23% of speakers at the annual meeting of the AND have industry ties, although very few of them actually disclose those ties.  They don’t even get involved in controversial nutrition policies that could upset their corporate sponsors, like limiting soft drink sizes or taxing sodas or GMO labeling or things like that.

So, the reason this matters — I mean, it’s fairly obvious why it matters — but specifically, there’s a lot of evidence that shows that the food industry’s marketing of these processed, packaged, and refined foods, especially to children, is at least partly to blame for poor eating habits.  And I think personal responsibility obviously plays a huge role here, and it’s a cop out to just blame advertising, but it’s also naïve to assume that advertising doesn’t have a significant impact.  There is a lot of research that shows that it does, and it’s impossible, really, for any kind of ‘eat healthy’ messages, as misguided as some of the ‘eat healthy’ messages are that come out of the conventional establishment — that’s a whole other ball of wax! — but those will never be able to compete with an industry that spends billions of dollars a year marketing these processed food products.

The last little bit that I’m going to share that I thought was, haha, pretty amazing was that during the annual meeting, there was a series sponsored by Pepsi and Kellogg, it looks like, called the “Kids Eat Right Breakfast Series.”

Steve Wright:  Haha.  Oh, yeah?

Chris Kresser:  Yeah, haha.  They had a Breakfast in the Classroom: Convictions and Controversies, sponsored by Pepsi, and Shaping up America’s Breakfast: RDs and Consumers Choose My Bowl, sponsored by Kellogg Company, as if a bowl of cereal, of course, is going to be a really healthy breakfast.

Steve Wright:  Yeah, a bowl of cornflakes with a Pepsi Max poured on top.

Chris Kresser:  Haha, exactly!  You know, Pepsi owns Odwalla, which is their healthy drink that has about 60 grams — I don’t even know how many grams of sugar are in those things.  They might even be sweeter than sodas.  I’m not sure, but there’s a lot of sugar in those.  Yeah, and so Kellogg and Pepsi specifically, of course, manufacture tons of “child-friendly” cereals that are really, really high in sugar, and they’re going around in this annual meeting trying to educate registered dietitians to basically tell them that cereal, even sugary cereals like that, are part of a healthy breakfast because they don’t have saturated fat or cholesterol.  That’s essentially the take-home message from these seminars.  This is what we’re up against.

Steve Wright:  This is awful.  I mean, I’m laughing because I don’t want to get angry and ruin this microphone in front of me, but gosh, I feel so bad for the RDs and MDs or anyone in the medical field who wants to make a change and unknowingly might buy into this.

Chris Kresser:  Yeah.  But here’s the thing, here’s kind of what brought this home for me.  I was out the other day with Sylvie, and we went to a class that she had with some of her other little friends, and then afterwards some of the parents, we went to a café, and everyone had food for their kids, right?  So, Sylvie has some hard-boiled eggs and some sauerkraut and — what else did she have?  I think a little bit of salmon leftover and some blueberries.  That’s what’s in her little food container.  But everyone else is buying huge rice krispie treats, like seriously the size of two fists put together, like the biggest rice krispie treat I’ve ever seen.  And cookies and super sugary drinks, and they’re bringing this stuff back to the table and passing it around and asking:  Oh, can Sylvie have some of that?  And I’m like:  No, she can’t.  She can’t eat that.  Sometimes I’ll just tell people that she’s gluten intolerant.  I don’t even know if she is or not, but as far as I’m concerned she is!

Steve Wright:  Haha.

Chris Kresser:  And that’s just the easiest way to quickly explain it to people without going into a lot of detail.  And then there were a couple parents that you could see were not totally comfortable with the huge sugar binge thing that was about to happen, but they didn’t speak up, so they just kind of were resigned to letting it happen, and then their kid got a hold of the sugar, and then when their parent tried to intervene and say that’s enough, what do you suppose happened?  You know, full-fledged meltdown and all these kids are screaming, screaming, and going crazy.  And Sylvie’s there, eating her hard-boiled egg.

What struck me about that is that I’m really convinced that all of those parents want the best for their kids, and as a parent myself, I think that for most parents that’s true.  But what I also was thinking about at that time is that — And I was sitting there going, OK, so what’s happening here?  Do these parents just not even think about it?  Or do they think about it and go:  Oh, yeah.  We know sugar’s not that great, but so what.  It’s not the end of the world, and they’ll live.  You know, just kind of discounting how significant of an issue it will be?  I just think it’s still, even with the increased awareness of food and the role of food in health, I think a lot of parents just don’t really get the connection.  That’s what’s so disturbing about it.