OT/Corporate Potluck - ADA BEING BOUGHT BY PHARMA, MONSANTO

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Features > December 14, 2007

Corporate Potluck

Dietitians and their company sponsors make strange buffet fellows

By Wheeler

For three days early this fall, the Pennsylvania Convention Center was

home to corporate entities such as PepsiCo, Hershey's, Taco Bell,

Crisco and Mc's. They weren't there to count calories but to rub

bellies with members of the American Dietetic Association, who had

gathered in Philadelphia for the annual Food & Nutrition Conference &

Expo.

PepsiCo cares about you. The company's " Health and Wellness " website

pictures a smiling family in tennis shoes and workout clothes enjoying

a brisk walk. All are consuming Pepsi products. Dad is drinking a can

of Pepsi. Grandma is toting a bag of Lay's potato chips. Aside from

the questionable workout, we're left to wonder: When did Pepsi become

an advocate for health?

Marsha Holmberg, a food editor at the Oregonian who flew in from

Portland, says too many Americans have become culinary illiterates,

convinced by television commercials that processed food is nutritious.

" Nobody thinks they have the time to cook, " Holmberg says. " They think

it's complicated. In reality, it takes as much time to make from a mix

as it does to make from scratch. It's an illusion that food

preparation takes time. "

At the convention's bookstore, neat rows of dietitian guidebooks—with

covers of colorful fruit and vegetables, alongside the occasional

whole grain cereal or wheat stalk—lined the booths. The message was

healthy food, which professionals agree is the backbone of a sound diet.

Yet not everyone was eating from the same menu.

Registered dietitian Regena Gerth was promoting Taco Bell's new

" Fresco Style " line—which substitutes cheese with " fresh Fiesta

Salsa. " " Patrons will continue to go to fast-food restaurants, " she

says, " so the least we can do is offer healthy options—anything that

can be incorporated into a diet. " She failed to mention that

gut-busting Tex-Mex food filled with meat and beans is still the

drive-thru favorite.

At the Unilever stand, the company marketed its Hellmann's mayonnaise,

demonstrating how to turn it into a meal in 10 minutes. Nearby,

Mc's fried up public relations (millions served)— trying to

recover from the heartburn wrought by Super Size Me, the 2004

documentary about the perils of eating at Mickey D's.

Asked if it was ironic that Mc's was at the Food & Nutrition

Conference & Expo, registered dietitian Braun said not at all.

" We're not trying to be a health restaurant, but we still want to

offer healthy options, " she said, admitting that this was an image

campaign.

enfood purveyor Monsanto, was also in attendance, the company's

public relations team extolling the virtues of technical engineering

on a massive scale. Would it not be safer and more environmentally

sound for consumers to rely on local food sources, especially given

the E.coli fallout from mass-produced foods such as spinach and beef?

(Not to mention the pollution emitted by transporting produce across a

continent?)

" The market can't be full of good, affordable foods without technical

engineering, " said Marshall, Monsanto's senior director of

public affairs. " Proponents of small organics overlook that we need

big farms, as well. I also wouldn't say that smaller is safer, because

large means accountability. "

By and large, the Chicago-based American Dietetic Association (ADA)

and a majority of its 67,000 members—what the association refers to as

" the nation's food and nutrition experts " —have failed to embrace the

local food movement, much less sound the alarm over our culture's

unsustainable reliance on mass-produced food: the pollution caused by

trucking corn, fruit and meat across multiple state lines, and

shipping it across the world; the environmental destruction wrought by

farmers pressured into a monoculture agriculture system; and the

inherent health risk of eating a bunch of spinach from an unknown source.

The valuable local food lessons of Pollan's The Omnivore's

Dilemma seem not to have registered at the ADA—or, at least, not

enough to have supplanted its need to court corporate sponsors for its

annual conference.

One of those sponsors, the pharmaceutical giant GlaxoKline (GSK),

recently released Alli, the first over-the-counter diet pill to gain

approval from the Food & Drug Administration and promoted at the Food

& Nutrition Conference & Expo. GSK launched a " Meet Alli " tour last

year in malls nationwide, where dietitians offered consultation and

free Alli pills for six months to weight-conscious shoppers.

In its promotional material, the corporation features three different

characters: Committed Connie who is white, Committed Carmen who is

Latina and Committed Cassandra who is African American. At a media

presentation in Philadelphia, a GSK spokesperson was careful to add

that, when it comes to the African-American community, Alli's

marketing focuses on " health " rather than " weight. " She explained,

they find size " a little more attractive. " Yet, at the same

presentation, the GSK spokesperson stressed that Alli only works if a

person sticks to a low-calorie, healthy diet.

Why, then, was a diet pill promoted at the ADA's annual keynote event

when the most important factor in maintaining a healthy lifestyle is

to eat right (the ADA's website, after all, is

http://www.eatright.org)? And how did " the nation's food and nutrition

experts " stray from promoting the fruits, vegetables and whole grains

featured on the covers of their books? Could it be related to the more

than $10,000 that GSK contributed to ADA as a corporate sponsor within

the last year? ADA's other corporate sponsors include Unilever,

National Dairy Council, PepsiCo, Kellogg's, General Mills, Mars Inc.

and Abbott Nutrition. According to ADA President Connie Diekman, " the

ADA closely evaluates any potential collaboration or partnership to

ensure it directly supports ADA's mission and strategic direction,

protects ADA's name and safeguards the integrity and credibility of

ADA and our members.

Rest of story:

http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3447/corporate_potluck/