Are Big Food Companies Sponsoring the ‘NoBadFoods’ Movement?
The Washington Post published an article last week highlighting some pretty alarming activity going on between registered dietitians on social media and big food companies
Over the last five or so years, there’s been a growing trend online where registered dietitians and nutritionists are promoting the idea of food freedom, the concept that there are no such thing as bad or good foods, and the “all foods fit” mentality.
These philosophies around food can certainly be helpful for those who struggle with their relationship with food or who have histories of eating disorders, but is this the appropriate messaging for the general public, especially when obesity and chronic diseases caused by lifestyle are running rampant in the U.S?
What is causing the rise in this type of messaging? Turns out, Big Food could have something to do with it.
General Mills, one major food giant, has been making the rounds promoting ‘anti-diet research’ and the harms of ‘food shaming’.
They’ve also been giving away product to registered dietitians who promote junk food online with hashtags like #DerailTheShame.
Of course, shaming people for what they eat is not helpful and not what we want, but clearly there are ulterior motives for these food companies to be speaking out about it.
The article also references an analysis on over 6,000 social media posts by 68 registered dietitians with a decent following and showed that about 40 percent of those influencers repeatedly used anti-diet language, most of whom were paid to promote food and beverage brands.
Last year, registered dietitians were tagging General Mills and promoting their products in social media posts with hashtags promoting the anti-diet movement.
One particularly concerning instance was a dietitian who made a sponsored post with the caption “I will always advocate for fearlessly nourishing meals, including cereal, because everyone deserves to enjoy food without judgement, especially kids.”
The post included boxes of Cinnamon Toast Crunch and Cocoa Puffs.
To be clear, I don’t think it’s inherently an issue for dietitians and nutritionists to promote products that they truly feel are better options for consumers, but an alliance between big food companies and registered dietitians, promoting objectively unhealthy, sugar-laden, ultra-processed foods with the anti-diet message just feels wrong to me.
It’s a good reminder to be aware of the content you’re consuming and to think critically about the motives behind it.
See more here washingtonpost.com
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They want people comfortable with certain types of food products and this is part of their campaign.
The certain foods will undoubtedly show themselves to be capable of delivering drugs or other agents to the body, or be of some questionable source that doesn’t provide bioavailable nutrients. For example, they take chitosan, pack it with carbon nanotubes, acetylate it, and then sell it to you as ‘chitin’.
I imagine that grains, flours, cereals etc will be the easiest groups to manipulate and stabilize.
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