Statement of CSPI Nutrition Policy Director Margo G. Wootan

July 8, 2011

This is why Americans are fed up with Washington: It’s a city where people might spend a year or two serving a new Presidential Administration … until it’s time to leave that Administration and actively undermine it in exchange for big bucks.

Former White House communications director Anita Dunn and her firm should be ashamed of themselves for leading the food industry’s panicky efforts to quash the Obama administration’s reasonable and voluntary nutrition guidelines proposed for foods marketed to children. I hope the revolving door didn’t hit her on the way out.

Far from banning the Easter bunny, as the industry’s fear-mongering goes, the Interagency Working Group—at the instruction of Congress—simply proposed a voluntary set of nutrition standards that food companies could (or could not) adopt as part of their existing self-regulatory program. These standards are voluntary, and lest anyone forget, Congress had in 1980 specifically stripped the Federal Trade Commission of its rulemaking authority to police junk food ads aimed at kids.

We’ve come to expect tantrums from the food industry when laws or binding regulations might impact the way it does business. But it’s a shame the industry is using such overheated rhetoric to fight reasonable, voluntary nutrition guidelines aimed at reducing kids’ risk of obesity, diabetes, and other diet-related diseases. Perhaps it’s a sign that the food industry’s self-regulatory program is not all that they have made it out to be.

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