PCRM Petitions USDA to End Oreo Cookie, Junk Food Promotions; Demands Feds 'Get Serious' about Fighting Obesity Epidemic

http://releases.usnewswire.com/GetR...id=112-06182004


6/18/2004 11:56:00 AM

To: National Desk and Health Reporter

Contact: Howard White of Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, 202-686-2210, ext. 339 or hwhite~pcrm.org

WASHINGTON, June 18 /U.S. Newswire/ -- The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) today petitioned the U.S. Department of Agriculture to stop promoting Oreos and other junk foods through its controversial agricultural "check-off programs," urging it to "get serious about fighting the obesity epidemic" in the United States.

Through the dairy check-off, the USDA is currently partnering with Nabisco to push kids to eat more Oreos and Chips Ahoy cookies and to drink more milk. The recently completed "Dunk and Win" cookie contest, which awarded $1 million to the holder of a "special Oreo cookie" that, when dunked, turned milk blue, was touted by the dairy industry as "the most successful retail milk promotion ever conducted under the check-off program." By airing commercials on kid-friendly networks such as Nickelodeon and the Cartoon Network, the USDA aims to induce kids to push their parents to buy even more milk and cookies.

Because of the success of the "Dunk" contest, the USDA, the dairy industry, and Nabisco launched a new promotion in June: Spell M-I-L-K with specially marked Oreo cookies and win $100,000. A third milk-and-cookies sweepstakes-this one aimed at school children-is set to kick off in August.

More than two-thirds of American adults and one in five children are overweight or obese. Milk is the number-one source of total and saturated fat in the diets of American children.

"Pushing children to eat even more high-fat and high-calorie junk foods will only fuel the obesity epidemic," says PCRM President Neal Barnard, M.D.

"We keep hearing that the federal government has declared war on obesity. Apparently, someone forgot to tell the USDA," Barnard added.

As part of its campaign to get the USDA to start worrying more about America's waistline and less about the meat and dairy's industries' bottom lines, PCRM is running an advertisement in the June 20 "Outlook" section of the Washington Post. The ad features Uncle Sam holding a plate of cookies. The headline reads: Uncle Sam Wants You...Fat!

The livestock and dairy check-offs, which were created by Congress at the behest of industry and are administered by the USDA to boost the consumption of milk and meat and reduce surpluses, are two of the most active USDA marketing programs.

In addition to partnering with Nabisco, the USDA has also partnered with McDonald's, Wendy's, Taco Bell, and many others. Through check-offs, the USDA has promoted Subway's BBQ Rib Patty Sub (840 calories/38 grams of fat), Dunkin' Donuts' Steak, Egg, and Cheese Sandwich (640/26), and Taco Bell's Steak Quesadilla (540/31). The McRib and Cheddar Lovers' Bacon Cheeseburger tip the scales at 490 calories with 25 grams of fat and 690 calories and 40 fat grams, respectively.

Copies of the USDA petition letter were sent to Dr. Richard H. Carmona, U.S. Surgeon General; Dr. William Dietz, director of the Division of Nutrition and Physical Activity, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Tommy Thompson, Secretary of Health and Human Services, Tommy Thompson and President Bush.

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Editor's Note: Copies of the "Uncle Sam Wants You...Fat" ad can be found at http://www.pcrm.org. Free use is permitted with the credit: Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine.

Founded in 1985, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine is a nonprofit health organization that promotes preventive medicine, especially good nutrition. PCRM also conducts clinical research studies, opposes unethical human experimentation, and promotes alternatives to animal research.



http://www.usnewswire.com/

Ok, I personally am not a fan of any sort of the PCRM, not even a small fan, but I have to give them a little credit on this one. I had no idea the USDA was encouraging the practices of companies like this, and I hate to say this, but I agree with Barnard's statement:
Yes, Dr. Barnard, someone needs to clue the USDA in. They ought to know better than this.

Of course, if this is just a pack of lies, and the USDA really isn't behind this, then this will certainly discredit the PCRM a little (although I usually don't buy into what they say anyhow).

While I agree that it's a good idea to decrease the push with America's youth to consume more junk food and, face it, the kids don't need to be encouraged to eat more junk, the ads are really more aimed at getting their parents to purchase more of these junk foods in hopes of winning the contests, it bothers me that PCRM is implying that milk is a junk food.
Then again, given that PCRM is a vegan organization and milk is an animal product, it shouldn't surprise me that much.

In retrospective it amazes me that anyone ever took any health advice from an organization whose principal aim is to boost sales. It's like believing Nasbisbo when it insists that sugary cereals are great for children. Or when KFC claim their chicken is health food. It's letting the fox set the rules for the chicken coop.

The USDA doesn't have and never had the interest of the consumer at heart. It serves the interests of the producers and manufacturers. We would do well to keep this in mind.

I checked on the USDA web site and found a summary of their milk products check-off programs for 2002. Based on the excerpts posted below, I belive the USDA was also a partner in the Oreo campaign.

http://www.ams.usda.gov/dairy/prb/rtc_2003/chapter_1.pdf


DMI also worked closely with top national restaurant chains, including Taco Bell ®, Pizza Hut ®, and Wendy's ®, to drive cheese volume and ensure that cheese was prominently featured in menu items. For example, DMI staff assisted Taco Bell ® with consumer research and trend data to demonstrate the value and appeal that three cheeses would deliver to Quesadilla consumers. As a result, Taco Bell ® developed and launched a new Steak Quesadilla item, which featured a blend of Cheddar, Pepper Jack, and Mozzarella cheeses. The item used an average of eight times more cheese than other items on their menu. Taco Bell ® used television, print, the Internet, and in-store advertising to support the promotion. Also, DMI worked with Pizza Hut ®, who declared summer 2002 the Summer of Cheese. The promotion, which ran for 12 weeks, featured the reintroduction of Stuffed Crust and Insider pizzas. The Summer of Cheese culminated with Pizza Hut's cheese usage increasing +4 percent during the promotion period and by 102 million pounds of cheese during the entire summer. And, for the fourth straight year, Wendy's ® restaurant reintroduced its popular Cheddar Lovers' Bacon Cheeseburger sandwich. During the 4-week promotion period, Wendy's ® sold more than 12 million sandwiches, each featuring two slices of Cheddar cheese and a Cheddar sauce. The promotion used nearly 1.5 million pounds of cheese, and the chain's cheese use grew by 15 percent, compared to the same time period a year ago. DMI assisted Wendy's ® with the development of this cheese-friendly sandwich in 1999.



The Fluid Milk Board and DMI conducted three national promotions. "Nothin' But Flavor" was designed to bring new consumers to the category and increase chocolate milk sales through feature advertisements and dairy aisle displays of flavored milk. The spring promotion, held during the months of February and March, leveraged the integrated milk marketing NBA partnership by providing special National Basketball Association (NBA)/Chocolate Milk logo prizes. Over 1,330 retailers participated in the promotion, representing over 23,697 stores. The 5-week chocolate milk promotion surpassed the performance level of the 2001 event by generating increased sales of flavored milk products. Flavored milk sales increased 10.8 percent during the promotion and 4.6 percent thereafter, when compared to pre-promotional periods. As in the previous year's promotions, this success is attributed largely to greater product availability and increased retailer participation. The "Full Chill Flavor" contest was a national promotion partnership with Music Television (MTV) and targeted the teen audience. It featured an on-line contest entitled "Summer Beach House Trivia" at www.mtv.com, where viewers had to answer questions about specific segments of the MTV channel online. The winner was awarded a trip to the MTV Summer Beach House. During the promotion, flavored milk sales increased 4 percent and continued with a sustained 0.4 percent increase after the promotion ended.



Capitalizing on the summer 2002 blockbuster movie "Spider-Man," the milk industry partnered with Kellogg's and Sony Pictures to create a milk and cereal retail promotion. The promotion's two main goals were to drive incremental white gallon volume and increase in-store visibility of milk with Point-of-Sale and Near-Pack Coverage materials. The promotion offer invited consumers to "Buy 2 gallons of milk and 2 boxes of specially marked Kellogg's cereal" and receive a one-of-a-kind Spider-Man Movie PC Game. To help support the promotion, 15-second radio tags were created and added to the "Ode to Morn" radio advertising, and a 10-second television tag was added to two of the kid television spots running on Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network during the month of April. Final Spider-Man PC Game fulfillment figures indicated that more than 610,000 consumers took advantage of the mail-in offer and that the promotion created 4.2 million gallons of incremental purchases.”



The Fluid Milk Board and DMI, partnering with Mott's Applesauce, launched the "Mix it With Milk" public relations program, targeting kids ages 6-12 and morns. The multiyear program aims to make milk a "want-to-have" beverage for kids, help morns make milk fun tbr kids to drink and motivate kids and morns to choose milk more often by involving kids with milk in a fun and creative way. As an added-value promotion opportunity, Mott's contributed more than $2 million to a 3-month promotion effort by sponsoring the "Mix it With Milk and Mott's" contest. The contest encouraged kids to invent "fun" milk drinks consisting of one glass of milk, 1/2 cup of Mott's Apple Sauce or Mott's Fruitsations, and any other ingredient such as flavored syrup or cookie crumbs. The winner received a $5,000 college scholarship and a trip to the "Big Apple" (New York City).

I don't trust the PCRM as far as I could throw them. You can bet they couldn't care less about the cookies; it's drinking milk they oppose.

Well, I personally agree (and so did doctor Atkins) that milk is junk food (because of the high sugar content), but that is beside the point. The PCRM, of course, is upset that americans are still eating and "expoiting" animals. Their agenda (like that of the USDA) promotes a way of eating that would continue to promote obesity and degrade the health of americans. Not only is the USDA pushing sugar, but also trans-fats, which are almost universally recognized as a dietary evil.

Of course, the free market will eventually depose the trans-fat tycoons unless they find healthier oils in which to cook their junk food. No doubt sensing the coming revolution, Frito-Lay has impressively led the charge on this matter. Of course, they still have very few products worth eating.

Neal Barnard is complaining about "high fat" junk foods, but Oreos are low fat and advertised as such. And since Nabisco switched from lard, there's nothing in Oreos that a vegan could object to. So who's fighting obesity?

I'm not too sure that Dr. Atkins considered milk a junk food on par with processed snack foods such as cookies. In Atkins For Life, he lists dairy products such as cheese and cream in the "eat regularly" category and whole milk and plain yogurt in the "eat in moderation" category. It would seem to me that if Dr. Atkins really considered milk a junk food, he would have placed it in the "eat sparingly" category for those on maintainence (where all the other true junk foods are placed).
Yes, milk has too many carbs for those in the induction or ongoing weight loss phase, but in pre-maintainence or maintainence, it would be permitted if your carb tolerance permitted it.
Given the choice between giving my kids milk or Coke, the milk gets my vote hands down.

Hmmm. I disagree. I think this is a pretty shrewd move on the part of the PCRM because this is something that nearly everyone will agree with. They've made themselves into ridiculous extremists in the past with an unequivocal agenda of vegetarianism. With this move they look like they actually care about health issues. I think it improves their image.

I was stunned this weekend to find how far the influence of the PCRM has reached. I was eating breakfast with a friend who ranted about how "Atkins diet is all a bunch of hooey, Atkins was obese, he died from a heart attack," etc. These are all lies propagated by the PCRM. And she truly believes them. She's no vegetarian either -- she ate twice as much bacon as I did and just as much egg along with potatoes and buttered toast.

I tried to reason with her, but it was a lost cause. After all, I'm obese and she's skinny so what could I possibly know? I think I'm going to quietly step out of this friendship -- I can't deal with people who are irrational and have strong opinions on things they haven't researched.

I'm not convinced of their "inflence". PRCM is afterall not a commonly recognized name. Rather it's the influence of their media coup when they spread those rumours and half-truths about Dr. Atkins death. It's a sad fact that once something is released into the media, even when it's a pack of lies, it's pretty impossible to counter. Many a reputations have been forever ruined by that. You'd think the weight of that responsibility would make journalists check their facts before publishing something. You'd think.

That your friend doesn't believe in the Atkins method is her perogative. However, that she believes a pack of lies and will not listen to a differing viewpoint is reason enough to dump her, IMO. I'd send her a credible rebuttal to the PRCM slander, along with information revealing their true goal. If that doesn't convince her, she is a lost cause.

Unfortunately, PCRM realizes this all too well and uses it to their full advantage enlisting the aid of the all-too-willing media who don't bother to check their sources anymore it seems.
Most people, OTOH, will believe anything that comes from an organization with the word "physicians" in their title (something else that PCRM knows full well) without bothering to check and find out that fewer than 5% of this organization's members are actually physicians and that the group is nothing more than a radical vegan organization willing to say pretty much anything, true or not, to advance their cause as well as employing tactics that are often unethical at best.

I work for a company that has a web-based Case management program. On our Home page, we post all kinds of articles about medicine. Out Web mistress picks them...she has no medical training...if it looks interesting, she'll post it. I've given her strict orders to never publish anything that has PCRM listed as a major contributor! When I explained why, she was floored that they could call themselves a physician's group when such a small number are actually physicians.