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Sunday 20 September 2015

Is the Surgeon General of the USA in the back pocket of Big Food ?

"Has our nation's top doctor, Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy, turned into a spin doctor? His latest public health initiative, the Step It Up campaign to promote walking, is so misleading that it's got me wondering whose health he's protecting: the American people's or the food and beverage industry's?

The Step It Up campaign is alarmingly similar to Coca Cola's Coming Together campaign, which enlisted scientists with impressive-sounding credentials to promote the idea that the root cause of our obesity epidemic is not over-consumption of sugary beverages and processed foods, but rather a lack of exercise.
This is just flat-out false. As Katie Couric and I documented in our movie Fed Up, scientists who aren't subsidized by the food industry will tell you that although exercise is critical for our physical and mental well-being, the most effective way to achieve and maintain a healthy weight is to reduce your consumption of empty calories.

Naturally, the soda companies are on the defensive. Their job is to make money, and they need to encourage kids to keep on slugging down sodas even though we now know it's the biggest source of empty calories and sugar in our children' diets.

People are starting to get the message, so the soda industry -- with help from the Surgeon General, now -- is suggesting that you don't need to cut back on soda, you just need to get out and walk more. What they don't tell you is that in order to burn off the 250 calories in a 20-ounce soda, you'd have to walk five miles.

Back when the tobacco industry was still allowed to advertise, one of the most famous slogans was "I'd walk a mile for a Camel." Where are the billboards proclaiming "I'd Walk Five Miles for a Coca-Cola?" Banksy, are you listening?"

More on this story here.

Eddie

1 comment:

chris c said...

Soooo much stuff was known in the past but bulldozed out of our consciousness by George McGovern and his lapdog Ancel Keys. I only recently discovered Joseph Kraft, to add to John Yudkin and Peter Cleave. What is now called "Evidence Based Medicine" is an absolute travesty, it is dumbed down one size fits all dogma-based medicine based on marketing. You can tell this because it doesn't work.