accept an interest in people's heath as a basic responsibility...
Webelieve the products we make are not injurious to health." Read the whole ad here. It's basically one big lie after another.
similar route now that their products are under increasing attack.
The Big Food method is to "focus on personal
responsibility as the cause of the nation's un-healthy diet, raise
fears that government action usurps personal freedom ... criticize
studies that hurt industry as 'junk science,' plant doubt when concerns
are raised about the industry." Those four ideas are stolen verbatim
from the Big Tobacco playbook.
Written in normal English (as opposed to academic
English), the report
(PDF) is easy to read. I recommend heading to page 16 where the authors talk about how
the sugar industry used its connections inside the Bush Administration
to try to get World Health Organization funding cut completely -- the U.S. donates nearly $500 million to prevent starvation -- over a fight on sugar labeling. Page 23 contains a lot of
interesting information on caffeine and page 25 lists many
commercial examples of food companies advertising in the same way
cigarette companies did in the 1950s.
Ultimately, the
comparison of food and tobacco centers on one issue: "whether industry
can be trusted to make changes that benefit the public good and can be
responsible with the accompanying marketing." For Big Tobacco the
answer was a resounding no. Sadly, the answer looks the same for Big
Food.
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