IN THIS ISSUE

USDA’s Connection to Summer of Cheese Drawing Heat Have Your Cake and Cookies Sans Trans Fats Industry Chutzpah Award: KFC Promotes Fried Chicken as a Health Food You Want a Tour with That?

Calling it a Salad Doesn’t Make it Healthy Menu Labeling Bill Hits the Federal Level Bills to Restrict Obesity Lawsuits Loom Large Denmark Considers Restricting Junk Food Ads Aimed at Children Media Watch

NEWS BITES

USDA’s Connection to Summer of Cheese Drawing Heat

While you might expect a company like Pizza Hut to heavily promote cheese consumption, you probably wouldn’t predict that the federal government agency responsible for nutrition guidelines would be helping them out. Yet the National Dairy Promotion and Research Board, which is appointed and overseen by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, provided consumer research and "menu development expertise" to Pizza Hut to create two of its most popular and cheesiest pizzas, in its "Summer of Cheese" campaign.

Now with the USDA rewriting the Food Guide Pyramid and dietary guidelines that recommend what Americans should eat, some critics question whether an agency that so heavily subsidizes and promotes many unhealthy commodities produced by U.S. farmers should also decide the nation's nutrition policy.

"The primary mission of the USDA is, after all, to promote the sale of agricultural products," Republican Sen. Peter G. Fitzgerald of Illinois said during a hearing last month in which he announced legislation to end the department's role in writing dietary advice. "So putting the USDA in charge of dietary advice is in some respects like putting the fox in charge of the hen house." We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.

While nutritionists warn about the increased risk of heart disease from eating too much trans fat, big agribusiness is coming to the rescue. The king of biotech, Monsanto, is hard at work on a soybean breeding project to create a trans-fat-free product to use in manufacturing a plethora of processed junk foods.

According to Kim Severson, author of The Trans Fat Solution: Cooking and Shopping to Eliminate the Deadliest Fat from Your Diet: "It is the No. 1 thing on the minds of food manufacturers: How can they get a trans-fat-free oil they can put in fryers and cakes and cookies?"

The scientific wizardry involves breeding Monsanto's Roundup-Ready soybeans, which are genetically engineered to be herbicide-resistant, to produce lower levels of linolenic acid. A low-linolenic soy oil would require less or no hydrogenation, and so could reduce or eliminate trans fat in many foods. The beans will be available to plant in two years. Then let the munching continue.

Source: USA Today, October 26, 2003.

If you needed more evidence that the fast food industry is scrambling to counter charges that it bears some of the blame for making the nation sick and fat, look no further than the latest advertising campaign from KFC. A new television commercial shows a woman slamming down a bucket of KFC fried chicken in front of her husband, saying, "Y'know how we've been talking about eating better? Well, it starts today!" Another ad touts fried chicken as a great weight loss food for those who are "watching carbs."

Somehow the ads fail to reflect that that a bucket of fried chicken contains 3,090 calories along with vast amounts of saturated fat, cholesterol, and sodium. So the Center for Science in the Public Interest has filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission to force the campaign off the air as false advertising.

The commercials also drew the ire of an editorial in Ad Age magazine, which said that the ad campaign "damages the credibility not just of KFC but of the entire marketing industry." Credibility in marketing?

Global hamburger giant McDonald's, challenged by obesity lawsuits and decreased sales in England, hopes to tempt more Britons into its restaurants with guided tours of the kitchens. "Major attractions include the French Fry station and the Big Mac preparation area," the company said. Next stop: the emergency room.

Source: Yahoo News, October 15, 2003

Grams by which the amount of fat in McDonald's fattiest salad exceeds that in its fattiest burger: 3

Source: Harper’s Index, November 2003

LEGAL STRATEGIES UPDATE

Menu Labeling Bill Hits the Federal Level

Fast-food and other chain restaurants would be required to disclose more nutrition information if legislation recently introduced by Representative Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) became law. The Menu Education and Labeling (MEAL) bill would require fast-food chains to list calorie counts on fast-food menu boards, and would require table-service chains to list calories, saturated plus trans fat, carbohydrate, and sodium on printed menus. The bill applies only to standard menu items and to chains with 20 or more outlets. Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) announced he will introduce a companion measure in the Senate later this year. Legislation similar to the MEAL act is currently pending in Maine, New Hampshire, New York, Pennsylvania, and in the District of Columbia.

Bills to Restrict Obesity Lawsuits Loom Large

Senator Mitch McConnell, Kentucky Republican, defended the bill during the first Senate hearing last month as the best chance of promoting personal responsibility. "The food police are now sounding the alarm and saying that the rise in obesity corresponds to the increased availability of fast food.

What they want you to believe is that the food sellers are causing the obesity," he said.

Meanwhile, with the backing of the restaurant industry, state lawmakers in Illinois and Wisconsin have introduced similar bills and Mississippi may be next. So far, Louisiana is the only state that has passed such a law.

Editor’s note: Any law that seeks to prohibit "frivolous lawsuits" is redundant and unnecessary, as current legal rules already prohibit such practices. (At least that’s what they taught us in law school.)

Crain’s Chicago Business, October 30, 2003

Denmark Considers Restricting Junk Food Ads Aimed at Children

In an attempt to curb childhood obesity, Denmark’s government-funded National Consumer Council is lobbying legislators to ban TV ads for sugary breakfast cereals and unhealthy foods such as McDonald’s Happy Meals that are targeted to kids. Denmark’s Department of Health has agreed to examine enacting a law similar to one in Sweden that bans all TV advertising aimed at children under 12.

Source: Advertising Age, September 29, 2003

MEDIA WATCH

Cheers also to the San Francisco Chronicle for publishing an excellent column on October 8 by David Lazarus, "Pepsico gets fatter, so do we," most notable for its choice of quotes by, well, this editor. But despite the horn tooting, it really was refreshing to see a business section actually take a critical stand instead of just "doing the numbers" and being a cheerleader for corporate America.

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