November 6, 2008

FNCE 2008: Out of Towners

Some of the booths at this year's American Dietetic Association Food & Nutrition Conference and Expo struck me as very out of place:

Slimshots: A vanilla-flavored appetite suppresant. Maureen McCormick (Marcia Brady) istheir spokesperson. Appetite suppresants at a food conference?

Corn Refiners Association: Despite current ADA president Martin Yaddrick's statement that "The American Dietetic Association had no involvement with the recent Corn Refiners Association advertisements. ADA did not review or approve the ad in question, nor any wording in it; nor did ADA have advance knowledge of the advertisement,” the people behind this campaign were present at FNCE with all sorts of literature claiming high fructose corn syrup is just dandy.

GNC and Vitamin Shoppe: Although these stores sell legitimate vitamins and minerals, they also hawk supplements (which are unregulated) that often succumb to nutrition quackery in their advertising.

Coca Cola: I am completely at a loss as to how carbonated water with high fructose corn syrup or artificial sweeteners belongs at a nutrition conference. Sprinkling corn fiber into it does not make it "healthy."

Thoughts?

2 comments:

Lizzy said...

I continue to shake my head in despair at the whole fibrous Coke concept. Sigh.

Maybe the reason for all these products at an annual conference is because they are novel. If only *inarguably* nutritious foods (which are usually colourful, perishable, and much less brandable) were presented there, there probably wouldn't be the same draw for crowds every year.

But, such is the nature of novelties, they tend to die out pretty fast. So maybe Slimshots and Coke+Fiber will be like Christmas, with tons of hype and then it's done.

Unknown said...

Wow fiber in coke. I've been background internet research for a campaign to get cola companies to use cane sugar or beet sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup [see http://www.thepoint.com/campaigns/dear-high-fructose-corn-syrup-please-get-out-of-us-colas-thanks-america]

From my unscientific surveying, there seems to be about two blogs from dietitians, nutritionists, or doctors in favor of HCFS for every blog that I see against it.

More interesting for me at another message forum [tudiabetes.com] for diabetics, one guy tried HCFS. Measured his blood sugar. Then he tried cane sugar. Measured his blood sugar. His blood sugar with HCFS was twice as high as his blood sugar with cane sugar. His comment is just above here http://tudiabetes.com/forum/topics/583967:Topic:261850?page=1&commentId=583967%3AComment%3A327678&x=1#583967Comment327678 {I couldn't figure out a direct link - sorry}

I'm at a point where I'd like to simply see HCFS removed from our diets. One personal test I've been using is if HCFS is so good, why aren't other countries using it as rampantly as we do. My initial suspicion is that the FDA screening process and several of the pro-HCFS studies are funded by the industry and are not using rigorous enough methods.

Sorry for the rant.