On Healthy Living

I wanted to just title this post “Wow!” or “Outrageous!” because that’s how I really felt when I read this story from Reuters about the Center for Consumer Freedom running full-page ads in the big newspapers (New York Times, L.A. Times, Washington Post, USA Today, Chicago Tribune, etc. as well as Newsweek) citing the study released last week that says fewer people are dying from obesity that before thought (I wrote a little about it for our sister blog, The Diet Logs, which you can read here.)

Basically, the group is saying the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention needs to retract a study published last year that said 400,000 Americans are killed each year because they are overweight. The group says its more like 25,000, and, like this new study says, being technically overweight poses no health risk.

Which is all well and good, but the kicker to this story is who the Center for Consumer Freedom really is. You might have guessed the punchline by now. It’s not a group of doctors, or even a group of consumer advocates. It “is a nonprofit coalition of restaurants, food companies, and consumers working together to promote personal responsibility and protect consumer choices.”

Yup. Restaurants. Probably fast-food chains, mostly, though they don’t disclose thier membership and the couple of big chains contacted for that Reuters story said they couldn’t say if they contributed to the group.

If you want to see the ad or learn more about the group, check out its website. If nothing else, you’ll probably be amused and disturbed. I know I was.

Sarah White wrote this on April 26th, 2005 and filed it under Healthy Living, Healthy Eating |