Fed Up Page #6

They volunteered to help her.

I am so pleased to announce

a major agreement

on the part of the private

sector corporations.

to improve the nutrition of the food

that we put on the table

or that we grab on the run.

The Healthy Weight Commitment

is a partnership

between 16 corporations...

Pepsi, Coca-Cola...

everybody's offering to help.

But you have to look at

what they're offering to do.

We're very fortunate that the first lady

has taken on this initiative

so people are starting

to talk about it more.

In the schools, we have a program

where we have P.E. teachers and

nutritionists working together,

teaching the kids about calories in

and calories out

and really paying attention

to what you eat

and then paying attention

to the exercise you do every day.

Also, we went to the White House, and

we did an announcement with Mrs. Obama

that our companies would be pulling

1.5 trillion calories

out of the marketplace in 2015.

And so we're very happy that we can

provide healthier choices

for moms as they're shopping

for their kids.

Fourteen calories

a day is a single bite of food.

It's a couple sips of a soda.

It's a bite of an apple.

It's nothing.

They've agreed to reformulate

their foods in a number of ways.

All the food manufacturers

drew her into a very long, complicated,

intricate discussion

about processed food,

how we can make

processed food better.

But whatever they do to processed foods,

it will be used to sell us

more processed foods

than we should probably eat.

That's the beauty

of a processed food.

You can dial up the carbs,

dial down the carbs.

Same with the proteins.

Same with the sugars.

All these changes become marketing

claims designed to get you to buy more.

The food industry

has bamboozled and hoodwinked us

into thinking that there

are healthier alternatives.

Junk is still junk,

even if it's less junky.

It's about making money.

That's their bottom line.

They're in business to make money

not to keep America healthy.

Well, the companies

actually have three options

to participate in the calorie

commitment.

They can change the recipe

of existing products,

they can introduce new products

into the marketplace

and they can also introduce portion-size

products into the marketplace.

So, if they're... So...

You're going to be introducing new

lower and zero-calorie products.

Well, you have a significant transition

that's taken place in the last 10 years,

and I think that, uh, most moms and dads

know when you walk through

the grocery store

and you're making that selection as to

what products you want to buy

you have options that are

zero-calorie options,

lower-calorie options

and full-calorie options.

It feels like we're

avoiding the question.

That's the industry's response.

Change the conversation from real food

and cooking and going to

the farmers' market

to reengineer processed foods

and exercise.

Before too long, the first lady

was emphasizing more and more

the "exercise" part

of the Let's Move campaign.

Shouldn't be so hard to get them

to run around and play, right?

This isn't forcing them

to eat their vegetables.

It's getting them to go out there

and have fun.

It's about how active our kids are.

This isn't about demonizing

any industry or any, you know...

It's not about demonizing parents

and it's not about

demonizing businesses.

From the beginning

the name "Let's Move"

was not meant to evoke exercise.

It was meant to evoke action

on the issue.

Issuing a call to action.

But what a food industry

person hears is

their interpretation

of the obesity epidemic

which is that

we are too sedentary.

It's our own damn fault because

we're sitting, watching TV too much.

It's not the food.

And I think that was a very unfortunate

message for the White House to put out

because it is the food.

And the food, especially

the abundance of cheap, processed,

sugar-laden products is a direct result

of government policy.

Mainly the United States

Department of Agriculture.

The U.S.D.A.

was initially created

to help farmers thrive

by promoting their products.

But in the aftermath

of the McGovern Report

the U.S.D.A. inherited

dietary guidelines as well.

When obesity

became a problem,

the Department of Agriculture

was put into conflict of interest.

Because on the one hand

it was telling people to eat less

in order to prevent obesity,

and on the other hand it was

telling people to eat more

to promote consumption of

American agricultural products.

They can't do

a good job of both,

and because of lobbying dollars

and where the money really is,

it's doing a much better job

of promoting U.S. agriculture

than it is in teaching us

and helping us how to eat well.

One clear example of this conflict

is the curious case of cheese.

Remember back in the 1980s

when the food industry began

taking out the fat from its products

after the McGovern Report?

Women, and girls especially,

became a little bit more

health-conscious

and started drinking skim milk.

Did you ever stop to think

what happened

to the fat in the milk

when it became skim?

Well, one way

to make use of milk fat.

is to turn it into cheese.

As the demand for low fat milk

increased over the years,

the government found itself

with a lot of cheese

they didn't know what to do with.

Instead of pushing

the dairy industry

to cut back on the production,

Washington came up

with this other idea.

Why don't we help the industry

sell more cheese

by getting people

to eat more cheese?

Cheese, glorious cheese

Tastes mighty inviting

Cheese, glorious cheese

It's so tantalizing

Dairy Management

was created in 1995.

to act as a marketing arm

of the dairy industry.

Financed by the farmers,

with oversight by the U.S.D.A.,

Dairy Management helped flood the

marketplace with good-looking cheese.

Now walk into

the dairy aisle,

and the cheese section is bulging

with packages of cheese...

shredded, cubed, diced, grated...

made as simple as possible

for adding to other foods.

Some of the things

that Dairy Management did

to encourage the consumption of cheese

were so clever that the U.S.D.A.

actually bragged on them

in its annual reports to Congress.

In 2007, for example,

it noted how the industry was able

to sell 30 million more pounds

by designing things like

Pizza Hut's Cheesy Bites Pizza,

Wendy's Dual Double Melt

sandwich concept

and Burger King's

Cheesy Angus Bacon Cheeseburger.

So at the same time the Agriculture

Department is promoting

consumption of cheese, its small unit,

charged with protecting

consumers and fighting obesity

puts out these little brochures

that encourage people

to eat less cheese.

If the U.S.D.A. really wants to

increase cheese consumption

and promote a healthy lifestyle,

here is an easy solution,

cheesercize.

Just grab a set of baby bells

and really work those "goudes".

Oh.

The problem is,

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