\r\n\r\n
<\/a>\r\nOn the evening of April 8, 1999, a long line of Town Cars and taxis\r\npulled up to the Minneapolis headquarters of Pillsbury and\r\ndischarged 11 men who controlled America’s largest food companies.\r\nNestl\u00e9 was in attendance, as were Kraft and Nabisco, General Mills\r\nand Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola and Mars. Rivals any other day, the\r\nC.E.O.’s and company presidents had come together for a rare,\r\nprivate meeting. On the agenda was one item: the emerging obesity\r\nepidemic and how to deal with it. While the atmosphere was cordial,\r\nthe men assembled were hardly friends. Their stature was defined by\r\ntheir skill in fighting one another for what they called\r\n“stomach share” — the amount of digestive space\r\nthat any one company’s brand can grab from the competition.\r\n<\/p>\r\n
\r\n
<\/a>\r\nJames Behnke, a 55-year-old executive at Pillsbury, greeted the men\r\nas they arrived. He was anxious but also hopeful about the plan that\r\nhe and a few other food-company executives had devised to engage the\r\nC.E.O.’s on America’s growing weight problem. “We were very\r\nconcerned, and rightfully so, that obesity was becoming a major\r\nissue,” Behnke recalled. “People were starting to talk\r\nabout sugar taxes, and there was a lot of pressure on food\r\ncompanies.” Getting the company chiefs in the same room to\r\ntalk about anything, much less a sensitive issue like this, was a\r\ntricky business, so Behnke and his fellow organizers had scripted\r\nthe meeting carefully, honing the message to its barest essentials.\r\n“C.E.O.’s in the food industry are typically not technical\r\nguys, and they’re uncomfortable going to meetings where technical\r\npeople talk in technical terms about technical things,” Behnke\r\nsaid. “They don’t want to be embarrassed. They don’t want to\r\nmake commitments. They want to maintain their aloofness and\r\nautonomy.”\r\n<\/p>\r\n
\r\nA chemist by training with a doctoral degree in food science, Behnke\r\nbecame Pillsbury’s chief technical officer in 1979 and was\r\ninstrumental in creating a long line of hit products, including\r\nmicrowaveable popcorn. He deeply admired Pillsbury but in recent\r\nyears had grown troubled by pictures of obese children suffering\r\nfrom diabetes and the earliest signs of hypertension and heart\r\ndisease. In the months leading up to the C.E.O. meeting, he was\r\nengaged in conversation with a group of food-science experts who\r\nwere painting an increasingly grim picture of the public’s ability\r\nto cope with the industry’s formulations — from the body’s\r\nfragile controls on overeating to the hidden power of some processed\r\nfoods to make people feel hungrier still. It was time, he and a\r\nhandful of others felt, to warn the C.E.O.’s that their companies\r\nmay have gone too far in creating and marketing products that posed\r\nthe greatest health concerns.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n
\r\n\r\n
<\/a>\r\n
\r\nThe combination of salt, sugar (esp. the carefully engineered mix of\r\nsucrose and fructose on HFCS), and fat in fast foods has produced an\r\nepidemic of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. This combination\r\nis pushed by the soft drink and fast food companies, and high\r\nfructose corn syrup (HFCS) in most other processed foods adds to the\r\ndamage, pushed by their vendors. The whole mess is propped up with\r\ncorn subsidies and laws that let Monsanto get away with letting its\r\nseeds drift and then prosecute neighboring farmers for seed theft,\r\nwhille deliberately-planted MON seeds require massive amounts of\r\npesticides, detected in the urine of school children from Kansas to\r\nManhattan. Then there are the CAFOs with their chickens that can\r\nhardly stand up and cattle that are never allowed outside, both\r\npumped full of antibiotics from birth or hatching to slaughter,\r\nbreeding antibiotic-resistant bacteria and with traces of the\r\nantibiotics left in the “food”.\r\nIn other words, it’s actually worse than this article says.\r\nBut what it says is bad enough.\r\n<\/p>\r\n
\r\n\r\nMudd then did the unthinkable. He drew a connection to the last\r\nthing in the world the C.E.O.’s wanted linked to their products:\r\ncigarettes. First came a quote from a Yale University professor of\r\npsychology and public health, Kelly Brownell, who was an especially\r\nvocal proponent of the view that the processed-food industry should\r\nbe seen as a public health menace: “As a culture, we’ve become\r\nupset by the tobacco companies advertising to children, but we sit\r\nidly by while the food companies do the very same thing. And we\r\ncould make a claim that the toll taken on the public health by a\r\npoor diet rivals that taken by tobacco.”\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n
\r\n\r\nThis was in 1999.\r\nThe CEOs in the room acted predictably.\r\nLike tobacco executives before them, they refused to change.\r\n
\r\nRoger Rosenblatt wrote for NYTimes 20 March 1994,\r\n\r\nHow Do Tobacco Executives Live With Themselves?<\/a>\r\n
\r\n\r\n\r\n
<\/a>\r\nPEOPLE WHO WONDER how tobacco company executives can live with\r\nthemselves conclude that they must be in denial. That would explain\r\nhow they deal with their responsibility for a product that kills\r\nmore than 420,000 Americans a year — surpassing the combined\r\ndeaths from homicide, suicide, AIDS, automobile accidents, alcohol\r\nand drug abuse. But to be in denial implies that one may not be held\r\naccountable, in psychological terms, for one’s actions. Tobacco\r\npeople squarely face the accusation of accountability, and reject\r\nit.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n
\r\nThe picture is of\r\n\r\nseven tobacco companies’ heads swearing before Congress\r\nthat their products were not dangerous<\/a>,\r\neven though they all knew the evidence that tobacco kills.\r\n
\r\nL.A. Times 15 April 1994,\r\n\r\n7 cigarette makers deny adding nicotine<\/a>,\r\n
\r\n\r\n“We have looked at the data . . . [and] it does not convince me that\r\nsmoking causes death,” said Andrew H. Tisch, chairman and chief\r\nexecutive officer of the Lorillard Tobacco Co.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n
\r\nBack to the 2013 NYTimes food article:\r\n
\r\n\r\n\r\n
<\/a>\r\n…the one C.E.O. whose recent exploits in the grocery store had\r\nawed the rest of the industry stood up to speak. His name was\r\nStephen Sanger, and he was also the person — as head of\r\nGeneral Mills — who had the most to lose when it came to\r\ndealing with obesity….\r\n<\/p>\r\n
\r\n…Sanger began by reminding the group that consumers were\r\n“fickle.” (Sanger declined to be interviewed.) Sometimes\r\nthey worried about sugar, other times fat. General Mills, he said,\r\nacted responsibly to both the public and shareholders by offering\r\nproducts to satisfy dieters and other concerned shoppers, from low\r\nsugar to added whole grains. But most often, he said, people bought\r\nwhat they liked, and they liked what tasted good. “Don’t talk\r\nto me about nutrition,” he reportedly said, taking on the\r\nvoice of the typical consumer. “Talk to me about taste, and if\r\nthis stuff tastes better, don’t run around trying to sell stuff that\r\ndoesn’t taste good.”\r\n<\/p>\r\n
\r\nTo react to the critics, Sanger said, would jeopardize the sanctity\r\nof the recipes that had made his products so successful. General\r\nMills would not pull back. He would push his people onward, and he\r\nurged his peers to do the same. Sanger’s response effectively ended\r\nthe meeting.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n
\r\nSanger is retired as GM CEO now,\r\n\r\nbut he’s<\/a>\r\n
\r\na director of Target Corporation (since 2001) and Wells Fargo & Company (since 2003), and formerly served on the boards of Dayton Hudson, Donaldson, Grocery Manufacturers of America, and Minnesota Business Partnership. Sanger is a board member of Catalyst, the Guthrie Theatre, and the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, and a member of the Business Council and the US Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations.\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n\r\nForbes lauds his\r\n\r\n“seasoned, broad business perspective”<\/a>.\r\nFood company executives, unlike tobacco executives,\r\ncontinue to ride high,\r\nwhile the obesity and disease problem continues to get worse.\r\n
\r\nGeorgia\r\n\r\nisn’t quite one of the worst states<\/a> for obesity.\r\nBut Lowndes County is one of the worst counties, in the 31.9% to 43.9%\r\nobesity range, and that was for 2008:\r\n
\r\n\r\n
<\/a>\r\n
\r\n\r\nMapping U.S. obesity rates at the county level<\/a>\r\nby Max Masnick 15 November 2011.\r\n<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n
<\/a>\r\nThis is one reason why\r\n\r\nSouth Georgia Growing Local & Sustainable Conference<\/a>\r\nwill be in Lowndes County in January 2014.\r\nOther reasons include promoting the economy of south Georgia,\r\nand good food tastes better.\r\nSee you there.\r\n\r\n
\r\n -jsq\r\n<\/p>
\r\nPS: NYTimes junk food engineering article owed to Barry Shein.","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This is why there is an epidemic of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease in the U.S.: food deliberately engineered to make people eat until they get fat. Georgia is not quite one of the fattest states, but Lowndes County is one of the fattest counties. There is something we can do, even while Big Food […]","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[8,40,42,44,845,10,6,12],"tags":[2762,932,2774,2452,2776,3,2778,933,2836,2764,5,1841,2,931,2760,2766,514],"class_list":["post-1321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-agrochemicals","category-economy","category-food-and-drink","category-health","category-hfcs","category-history","category-okra-paradise-farms","category-politics","tag-agrochemicals","tag-diabetes","tag-economy","tag-epidemic","tag-food-and-drink","tag-georgia","tag-health","tag-heart-disease","tag-hfcs","tag-history","tag-john-s-quarterman","tag-junk-food","tag-lowndes-county","tag-obesity","tag-okra-paradise-farms","tag-politics","tag-tobacco"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4Gj0O-lj","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1321"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1321\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1328,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1321\/revisions\/1328"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}