Part 3 of the BBC’s Remarkable Three-Part Series “The Men Who Made Us Fat”:
Jacques Peretti examines assumptions about what is and is not healthy. He also looks at how product marketing can seduce consumers into buying supposed ‘healthy foods’ such as muesli and juices, both of which can be high in sugar.
He speaks with Simon Wright, an ‘organic consultant’ for Sainsbury’s in the 1990s, who explains how the food industry cashed in on the public’s concerns around salmonella, BSE and GM crops. By 1999 the organic industry was worth over £605M, a rise of 232% within two years.
How did the mainstream food producers compete? Peretti speaks with Kath Dalmeny, former policy director at the Food Commission, who explains some of the marketing strategies used by mainstream food producers to keep our custom.
The programme also explores the impact of successive government initiatives and health campaigns, such as the proposal of ‘traffic light labelling’, the introduction of which the food industry lobbied hard against.
But in 2012, when we have an Olympic Games sponsored by McDonalds and Coca Cola, has anything changed?
Related Situationist posts:
- The Situation of How We Became Fat – Part 2
- The Situation of How We Became Fat – Part 1
- Michael Pollan on the Political Situation of Food
- Marion Nestle on The Situation of Our Food
- Dr. David Kessler Waxes Situationist
- The Situation of our Food – Part I
- The Situation of Our Food – Part II
- The Situation of Our Food – Part III
- The Situation of our Food – Part IV
- The Situation of Our Food – Part V
For more on the situation of eating, see Situationist contributors Adam Benforado, Jon Hanson, and David Yosfion’s law review article Broken Scales: Obesity and Justice in America. For a listing of numerous Situaitonist posts on the situational sources of obesity, click here.
The Situationist 