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Posted November 17th, 2011 by Mike Jacobson
Think of all the things that food manufacturers could be doing to improve the nation’s health. They could reduce the amount of salt in packaged foods to help prevent blood pressure from rising. They could make healthier foods for school lunches. And they could use their billions of advertising dollars to encourage children (and their [...]
Posted November 11th, 2011 by Mike Jacobson
In case you haven’t already heard the news, Food Day 2011 was a huge success! With over 2300 events in all 50 states, we were thrilled that so many organizers joined the movement for “real food” across the country on October 24. Mark your calendars for Food Day 2012, which will again take place on [...]
Posted September 6th, 2011 by Mike Jacobson
The “Big Gulp.” Free Refills. 20-ounce single servings. 2 liters for 99 cents. Soda vending machines just about everywhere. During the past 40 years or so we’ve opened the spigot of sugary drinks, roughly doubling our consumption. It shows in our bulging waistlines and widening bottoms, but equally so in the health care and economic [...]
Posted May 5th, 2011 by Mike Jacobson
Cue the music; the gauzy, soft-focus ads; and the focus-grouped fridge magnets: Coca-Cola turns 125 this week. Never a slouch in the self-promotion department, high-flying CEO Muhtar Kent had himself serenaded by a red-shirted “Coca-Cola 125th Anniversary Young People’s Chorus” to celebrate. Photos of the occasion have a vaguely authoritarian hue, as if the world’s [...]
Posted April 15th, 2011 by Mike Jacobson
“April 15” fills many Americans with anxiety as tax returns become due (though this year Uncle Sam has given us until April 18th). I recently remembered that April 15 has another grim association: the opening, 56 years ago, of Ray Kroc’s first McDonald’s franchise in Des Plaines, IL. (Now is as good a time as [...]
Posted April 5th, 2011 by Mike Jacobson
It’s time to fix our broken food system. Over the course of the next six months, we hope to create what will be a huge grassroots mobilization for changing what Americans eat—and what the food industry produces—for the better. Let me introduce you to Food Day, which will be celebrated on October 24.
Posted February 16th, 2011 by Mike Jacobson
Food marketers have long had a special knack for euphemism. (If you didn’t believe me I’d offer you a Rocky Mountain oyster.) But even as someone who has watched the food industry closely for 40 years, sometimes even I can get taken by surprise. One such case is an innocent-sounding ingredient that appears on Coca-Cola, [...]
Posted November 22nd, 2010 by Mike Jacobson
Monday, November 29 is our last best hope for the Senate to pass food safety reform. That’s something I hope we can be thankful for next week. Part of the point of Thanksgiving is to appreciate the incredible bounty of foods we enjoy and often take for granted. Imagine what the Pilgrims who landed on [...]
Posted June 29th, 2010 by Mike Jacobson
Would you like some disodium 6-hydroxy-5-((2-methoxy-5-methyl-4-sulfophenyl)azo)-2-naphthalene-sulfonate in your yogurt? Well, you won’t find that mouthful of mumbo-jumbo on food labels. But you will find it listed with the friendlier name of Red 40. You might pass up a macaroni and cheese that contains the slightly foreboding-sounding tartrazine. But if it (I’m looking at you, Kraft) [...]
Posted June 22nd, 2010 by Mike Jacobson
Dangle a toy in front of a child’s eyes, and you can bet the child will do just about anything to get it. And that’s exactly what McDonald’s (and other restaurants) do, using everything from TV commercials to signs in windows to the Internet in order to get kids to pester their parents to take [...]
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