Stuffed : an insider's look at who's (really) making America fat /

A veteran of the high-flying world of food marketing, Cardello knows firsthand the shrewd methods the food industry has employed to encourage Americans of all ages to consume their attractive products. Commencing with the 1950s TV dinner, industrialists have processed and sold America's farmlands' vast, seemingly unlimited produce. Focusing on short-term profits, these producers have played a substantial role in the genesis of the current epidemic of obesity. Americans have been wheedled into craving unhealthy foods, those highest in fats, sugar, and salt. Restaurants, especially the large chains, have been as guilty as grocery stores, both pushing quantity over quality. Consumers, too often seeking convenience above all other considerations, have contributed to their own problems through seemingly willful ignorance of nutritional laws. Well-meaning government regulations have too often generated confusion or unintended consequences. Cardello's solution? Push manufacturers to heed science and technology's wisdom on sound nutrition.--Knoblauch, Mark Copyright 2009 Booklist

When Cardello, a former food and beverage executive, was initially diagnosed with leukemia (lab tests later disproved it), he began looking closely at the relationship between public health and corporate health. The obesity epidemic in particular, he argues, is connected to food businesses that control "almost everything the average American eats." Drawing substantially on his professional knowledge, he examines such factors as marketing and product packaging, the recent controversies involving branded school snacks and beverages, the use of trans fat in restaurants, and the various food lobbies. Cardello believes that bottom-line thinking makes it difficult for Americans to eat well. While agreeing that the basic agenda of corporations and consumers alike is "more"-more profit, more product-he argues that the industries' long-range interests are directly entwined with public health and that with their substantial economic power and overpackaged goods, supermarket and restaurant industries could redirect consumption and wellness in novel ways. Although the tone ranges from finger-wagging polemic to reformist optimism, the author does sketch out several solutions to get around obstacles like entrenched corporate and consumer thinking, and he himself cohosted a 2007 summit between industry leaders and obesity researchers. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Former food-industry executive and current anti-obesity advocate Cardello calls on his erstwhile colleagues to become custodians of their customers' well-being. Few would deny that obesity is a plague on the land. The question is, what to do about it? The author's answer: Let the food industry clean up the disaster it facilitated. Can the perpetrators reform? Certainly, asserts Cardello, because they won't be surrendering what is most important to thema fat bottom line. As he points out, they can easily make healthier, just-as-tasty versions of the stuff they now sell, which is slowly killing the hand that feeds that bottom line. Given their lack of table discipline and impulse control, consumers currently inhaling bacon cheeseburgers and washing them down with another 48-ounce soda aren't the answer, Cardello concludes. Nor is the government, which has been at best inept and at worst utterly bewildering regarding food healthiness. Least of all can various agenda-driven groups be trusted to come up with anything other than bad science and pettifogging. Only industry has access to the resources, research and infrastructure to immediately fashion foods offering less caloric and greater nutritional intake, declares the author. All it needs is a mindset that fosters responsible behavior. Will customers, traditionally suspicious of flavorless "healthy" foods, go for the improved regimen? Why even tell them? Cardello proposes a simple switcheroo: "Making a food or beverage more nutritious without bragging about it to the consumer. In fact, keeping consumers in the dark about these improvements might be an even bigger advantage." This Big Brotherish approach raises a number of questions. Do flavorings themselves have potential health hazards? Where's the oversight? Who decides what's healthful or not? In addition, the subject of healthy food by ineluctable extension requires addressing environmental and agricultural policy issues, which Cardello avoids. Nonetheless, the point zings home: The food industry knows how to sell; now it has to sell the right thing. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.