US: Is Fast Food Just What the Doctor Ordered?

[Guest guest]

http://corpwatch.live.radicaldesigns.org/article.php?id=12193

 

by Melanie Warner, New York Times

May 2nd, 2005

 

 

For the last 28 years, Dr. Dean Ornish has been trying to persuade

people to eat healthier. In his five books, he champions low-fat

diets; he was one of the first researchers to show that stringent

healthy eating can reverse chronic illness, particularly heart

disease. Among his advice to patients is to eat a lot of vegetables

and minimally processed foods, and avoid all things greasy.

 

Dr. Ornish also works for the McDonald's Corporation. As a paid

consultant, he meets with top executives, gives talks to employees and

recently wrote nutritional words of wisdom about diet and breast

cancer for table displays to go into all McDonald's restaurants in the

United States for Mother's Day.

 

He is not the only one straddling this line between science and

commerce. In the last two years, at least two dozen leading nutrition

scientists and experts have started working for large food companies,

either as consultants or as members of health advisory boards. Most do

not directly promote products, though Dr. Arthur Agatston, a

practicing cardiologist and author of " The South Beach Diet, " has a

licensing deal with Kraft Foods to sell a line of South Beach foods,

which are appearing on supermarket shelves this month.

 

As concerns mount over the nation's elevated obesity rates and the

surge in diet-related illnesses, food companies have received

heightened scrutiny from Congress and face threats of litigation from

trial lawyers. In response, companies have fashioned " health and

wellness " initiatives. And companies like McDonald's, Kraft, PepsiCo

and the Coca-Cola Company have created advisory boards, putting people

who might otherwise be critics on the payroll.

 

Their dual roles have created a deep divide in the scientific

community. Some critics say that working for a large food company

compromises the credibility of scientists' research and makes them

look like part-time company representatives. They say advisory boards

and tacit endorsements from health gurus do more to make companies

look good and help them sell products than inspire change.

 

" These companies can say we have all these really important people who

care about health working with us, and that takes some of the heat

off, " said Marion Nestle, a nutrition professor at New York

University. " But all they're doing is making junk food marginally

healthier. "

 

But scientists working for the food companies say they hope to improve

the American diet from within.

 

Dr. Ornish, who is president and director of the Preventive Medicine

Research Institute, which is based in Sausalito, Calif., and studies

the effects of diet and lifestyle choices on health and disease, says

he wants to help McDonald's become a healthier company, a place that

one day will sell a lot more of the kind of food he counsels people to

eat. He won't say how much McDonald's pays him, but he says the money

is not why he's doing it.

 

" A lot of colleagues were puzzled at first by my decision, but now

they see it as a logical extension of what I've been doing my whole

career, " said Dr. Ornish, who also works for PepsiCo and ConAgra

Foods. " It's an amazing platform to make a difference. "

 

Sometimes a scientist's name appears on a food package. Health tips

from the fitness expert Dr. Kenneth H. Cooper appear on packages of

Frito-Lay's baked snack chips, for example, with his name attached.

Other times a scientist appears in marketing material: a photo of Dr.

John P. Foreyt, a researcher on heart disease at the Baylor College of

Medicine in Houston, is in a Coca-Cola ad in magazines like Good

Housekeeping this month.

 

Dr. Agatston, who is an associate professor at the University of Miami

School of Medicine, says he decided against appearing in ads for

Kraft. Instead, the South Beach logo appears in large type on two

dozen products.

 

One medical specialist recruited to a food company advisory board has

already decided that membership was not worth the cost. Dr. George L.

Blackburn, director of the Center for the Study of Nutrition Medicine

at Harvard Medical School and a prominent researcher on obesity

issues, decided to step down from a McDonald's advisory council on

balanced lifestyles two months ago.

 

In an interview, he said he left because he was disappointed that

McDonald's had not incorporated his recommendations into its recent

" Balanced Lifestyles " campaign. " Our message here at the center is

threefold: cut the calories, eat quality food and exercise, " said Dr.

Blackburn. " The first two messages weren't making it through. "

 

McDonald's new worldwide health education campaign, introduced last

month, focuses largely on exercise, with little discussion of diet.

" If I were on the exercise side, I'd be ecstatic, " said Dr. Blackburn.

" But I'm focused on the role of food in a healthy lifestyle. Every

scientist knows that increasing exercise is not going to replace

cutting the calories. "

 

McDonald's executives said that they were surprised by Dr. Blackburn's

resignation, and that they were committed to changing the company's

menu and encouraging better nutrition habits among customers.

 

Other members of McDonald's advisory council say they are willing to

be more patient. " I feel like we're being slowly yet consistently

effective, " said Dr. Dennis M. Bier, director of the Children's

Research Center at Baylor College of Medicine and a member of the

McDonald's council. " McDonald's is such a big company that it takes

longer to have changes implemented. "

 

Dr. Bier said he and other council members were involved in

encouraging McDonald's to add fruits and vegetables - premium salads,

apple dippers and other items on the way - to the menu.

 

Dr. Cooper, who runs the Cooper Institute, a preventive medicine

organization in Dallas, also said he thought his work with PepsiCo

over the last three years had had a meaningful impact. A tall,

energetic 72-year-old, Dr. Cooper said he was instrumental in getting

the company to remove trans fats - a substance found in chemically

modified vegetable oils that is believed to increase cholesterol

levels - from its snack chips and to introduce baked potato chips.

Now, he says, he is prodding the company to use low-fat cheese for

snacks like Cheetos and Doritos.

 

Dr. Cooper, who is also a medical adviser to President Bush, says he

and the other members of PepsiCo's advisory board do not hold back

their criticisms. Currently, he says, the board is trying to prevent

the company from putting a SmartSpot label on its line of light chips,

which contain olestra, a fake fat that once had to carry a warning

label about unpleasant gastrointestinal side effects. The SmartSpot

designation identifies products that PepsiCo has determined to be

healthy choices.

 

" Unless I get some good data that shows benefits and no harm, I would

not allow that, " Dr. Cooper said. " Pepsi listens very carefully to us

and follows our recommendations. "

 

Pepsi's health board gathers in person four times a year, Kraft's

three times. Coke's and McDonald's both meet twice a year. Fees paid

to the specialists often are closely guarded secrets. Kraft, Coke and

Pepsi would not say how much their advisers and consultants were paid.

McDonald's was more forthcoming and said its board members receive an

annual fee of $7,500.

 

Like Dr. Ornish, Dr. Cooper declined to talk about the compensation he

receives as a consultant. Dr. Agatston said he would receive royalties

based on sales of South Beach products, which include whole-wheat

frozen pizza, several varieties of whole-grain cereal and frozen

dinners with minimal saturated fat.

 

Some scientists say any amount of money received is too much and has

the potential to create the appearance of a conflict of interest. Dr.

Walter Willett, chairman of the Department of Nutrition at the Harvard

School of Public Health, says he has turned down a variety of offers

from food companies because accepting would compromise his research.

 

" It's particularly an issue if we come out and say some food has no

problems and I'm on one of their boards, " said Dr. Willett, an

epidemiologist who is involved in the large, continuing nurses' health

study. " People would wonder whether we were really biased or not. "

 

Dr. David Ludwig, director of the childhood obesity program at

Children's Hospital in Boston, has also turned down paid consulting

offers and says he has ruled out being on a company's advisory board,

even unpaid. " If Coca-Cola were interested in my thoughts about how it

could design more healthful products, I would be delighted to offer my

opinion to them, " said Dr. Ludwig. " But I won't accept money in

return, nor will I accept a seat on their advisory board. I think it

implies that you are representing the interests of the company. "

 

Some of Dr. Ludwig's work includes findings that are not exactly good

news for food companies, such as those correlating fast-food

consumption with weight gain and sugar-sweetened beverages with a

higher risk of Type 2 diabetes, the kind associated with obesity, in

women.

 

Dr. Ornish argues that detractors don't give food companies enough

credit. " It's very easy to be a purist and demonize things, but as I

get older I realize that life is shades of gray, " he said recently.

" Are these companies moving as quickly as I might like? Of course not.

But they're moving much faster than I ever thought possible. "

[Guest guest]

I just took action to make prescription drugs safer by

prohibiting physicians and scientists who received

money from drug companies from serving on FDA boards

that approve new drugs or determine their safety.

These conflicts undermine the safety of the medicines

we take each day

 

Last month, the House of Representatives stood up to

the powerful drug lobby by approving a measure -- by

just eight votes -- that would help end drug company

influence at the Food and Drug Administration. A

similar measure will be up for a vote on the Senate

floor within days, but the drug companies and the FDA

are working hard to kill it.

 

Send a letter to your Senators asking them to pass the

House measure.

To send an email just like I did, please go to

Consumers Union's

take-action page at

 

http://cu.convio.net/drug_company_influence

 

Pamela

 

 

 

 

 

 

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