U.S. News and World Report recently featured ‘Stuffed’ and interviewed Hank on solving the obesity crisis:

“In more than 30 years of working in the food industry, Hank Cardello didn’t think much about the health consequences of the products he promoted, whether Betty Crocker cake mixes, a proposed new malt liquor, or Diet Coke. He thinks about them plenty now, though. After a cancer scare in 1995, Cardello switched gears and started to look more critically at how his industry might help combat obesity. He’s now CEO of 27 Degrees North, a consulting firm that helps companies marry profit and social responsibility. In Stuffed: An Insider’s Look at Who’s (Really) Making America Fat (Ecco), just released in paperback, Cardello lays out his views on why consumers are not entirely to blame for their own girth, why well-meaning government regulations often fail, and how the food industry might put its marketing oomph behind better alternatives to some of the high-calorie packaged foods that Americans snarf down. Here are edited excerpts from our conversation…”

Focusing on food package labels as a panacea for the nation’s overweight and obesity crisis is like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic: lots of activity, but no real impact. Too much emphasis is placed on micromanaging acceptable levels of trans fats, sodium or the type of sugar used rather than focusing on the big picture. We need to engage the food corporations to lower the calories.

Labels alone cannot change the fact that for Americans there are 29 percent more calories available to eat than 50 years ago. Obesity is a supply problem and must be dealt with at the source.

A better way to start reducing America’s collective girth is to give food corporations incentives to sell less calories in a way that does not damage their bottom lines. One novel approach would be to adjust the deductions food corporations receive for their advertising expenditures based on their willingness to cut back on calories.

I applaud Michelle Obama for targeting childhood obesity as a priority and advocating for programs that improve the well-being of our youth. But I challenge her approach as it does not go far enough.

While efforts to increase the number of “healthy schools,” encourage more exercise, and improve the availability of more nutritious food in low-income neighborhoods are noble, they do not attack the real enemy in the battle of the bulge: the number of excess calories available to eat. This is the missing link.

Rather than looking at the food industry as a pariah, it’s time to reach out to them.

Putting into effect tax incentives that entice food companies to sell fewer calories will yield more tangible results than pushing for more consumer behavioral change. These incentives can be structured to reward companies that cut their calories. Conversely, if marketers continue to spew excess calories on the public, they would risk losing favorable tax treatments.

An Obama program fueled by an energized food industry would be a strong one-two punch to knockout obesity. Our children’s health depends on it.

Today it was revealed that a number of food companies have been quietly lowering the amount of salt in their products over the past few years. Icon brands such as V8 vegetable juice, Chef Boyardee canned pasta and Orville Redenbacher microwave popcorn have each shed more than 30% of their sodium content.  They got caught doing the right thing.

This Stealth Health approach offers a more enlightened way to ensure that consumers really do stick with changes intended to improve the nutrition of packaged foods and beverages. This is in contrast to the “stick” approach of taxing consumers or banning favorite ingredients to force changes in eating habits which rarely are adhered.

Why do I like Stealth Health? For one, food corporations have been deploying “stealth” tactics for many years to reduce costs.  Little by little, tweak by tweak, the iconic brands that we enjoy have all been tinkered with over the decades – all without us knowing so that we don’t abandon ship.

Stealth Health also avoids overtly depriving the public of the foods and beverages they enjoy. This is why diets fail. Instead of expecting consumers to abandon their favorite foods, improving the nutrition and/or reducing calories below the radar does not upset this delicate balance.

And, it sidesteps consumer suspicions that if a food is “healthy” it can’t taste good (witness cereals that have tasted like cardboard or the first soy hot dogs). Virtually every piece of research I have encountered confirms that, for foods that are typically more indulgent, the consumer believes that making these foods more healthy results in poorer taste.

For a half century, the food industry has quietly produced 29% more calories per person to eat every day.  It’s time to reverse that trend in the same way – quietly. Obesity will not be solved overnight, but by taking cues from the Salt Wars, food companies now have the blueprint on how to secretly perform nutritional surgery on their brands and go about taking the calories out without compromising their profits.

On paper, the Smart Choices package labeling initiative was a step in the right direction. Designed to help guide consumers to choose more nutritious food products, it reflected an industry driven solution to the nation’s overweight and obesity crisis.

The program began by highlighting the total number of calories per serving AND the number of servings per package right on the front of the label.   This allowed consumers to immediately determine the caloric merits for each product. Unfortunately, the Smart Choices effort quickly derailed by trying to accomplish too much.  In addition to communicating calorie and serving information, it complicated the matter by grading each item on its relative “healthfulness” according to interpretive nutritional criteria. Against all sensibility, items such as Fruit Loops and mayonnaise were bestowed the “Smart Choices” label, sending mothers and nutrition activists into a frenzy, resulting in an early death for the program and damage to the industry’s credibility.

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Here’s a press release outlining my position on why tax incentives make better sense than taxing soft drinks in order to lower rates of obesity:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 22, 2009
 
Author Stirs “Fat” Tax Debate with Controversial Proposal
Anti-Obesity Advocate and Former Food Executive Says Tax Incentives for Food Corporations a Better Way to Trim the Fat
 
Chapel Hill, N.C. – (September 22, 2009) Hank Cardello, a well-known author, advocate for addressing America’s obesity epidemic and former food industry executive has spent more than thirty years as a senior executive for some of America’s largest food and beverage manufacturers. While Cardello is the first to admit that the food industry has played some role in the proliferation of obesity in America, Cardello’s position highlights the importance of engaging the food industry to solve the problem – through incentives rather than ineffective taxes on select products deemed “unhealthy” by government and health advocates. Cardello also wants to tap into the marketing power of the food industry to help educate consumers about portion control.

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Check out my perspective as published in the September 12 edition of The New York Times on how to address America’s obesity epidemic:
 
In response to “Big Food vs. Big Insurance” September 9
 
To the Editor:
 
I applaud Michael Pollan’s recognition that obesity is the “elephant in the room” in the health care debate, but dissent on his solutions.

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“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.”
 - Albert Einstein

Today the Associated Press reported that, once again, Mississippi claimed the top spot as the #1 obese state. This news is not a surprise. What’s surprising is that we don’t “get it” that the same type of proposed solutions  – educating consumers, blaming the food industry and calling for even more government initiatives – have done nothing to derail the rise in obesity. 

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A recent op-ed in the New York Times by columnist Maureen Dowd entitled “Hold the Fries” suggests President Obama is sending mixed signals on nutrition. Proclaiming that the president is eating out of both sides of his mouth by preaching arugula while enjoying hamburgers with Vice President Biden misses the point. There is too much debate about what we eat rather than the amount we consume.

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(If you drive a car car), I’ll tax the street,
(If you try to sit sit), I’ll tax your seat,
(If you get too cold cold), I’ll tax the heat,
(If you take a walk walk), I’ll tax your feet.
Taxman.

            …The Beatles

The debate on taxing soft drinks continues in Washington. USA Today reported yesterday that the soda tax was still under consideration by the Senate Finance Committee. Health experts are arguing that taxes will lower sugared soft drink consumption and, ultimately, result in consumers’ losing weight. Of course this is also good for the Federal Treasury since new revenues will be collected.

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