Stuffed: An Insider's Look at Who's (Really) Making America Fat and How the Food Industry Can Fix It - Softcover

Cardello, Hank

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0061896748 ISBN 13: 9780061896743

Publisher: Ecco, 2010

Synopsis

For more than thirty years, Hank Cardello was an executive and adviser to some of the largest food and beverage corporations in the world. For more than thirty years, he watched as corporate profits-and America′s waistlines-ballooned: fattening consumers meant fattening profits. Now, in this fascinating and timely book, Cardello offers a behind-the-scenes look at the business of food,

providing an insider′s account of food company practices, failed government regulations, and misleading media coverage that have combined to place us in the middle of a national obesity epidemic.

With insights culled from Cardello′s time in the food industry, Stuffed explores how food companies have spent the last fifty years largely ignoring healthier fare in the name of their bottom lines while pushing consumers toward "convenience" food and supersize portions without considering the health consequences. From grocery aisles to restaurant booths to boardrooms, Cardello reveals the hidden forces that have long shaped your supermarket purchases and menu selections. He examines the black-and-white mind-set that has produced the carefully targeted marketing strategies that have maximized profits for the food industry and led to weight gain for you.

But Cardello makes clear that the food companies should not take all the blame. They are merely a cog in a larger system that′s broken, and here Cardello illustrates how the government and the media have only made it harder for Americans to make nutritious choices. Highlighting both bit players and high-profile voices of change, Cardello explains the fundamental risks to one-size-fits-all regulatory solutions and the bigger dangers posed by letting the food pundits confuse the health conversation.

More than simply a chronicle of how we got here, Stuffed also puts forth a groundbreaking blueprint for the future of the food industry. In debunking the common myth that "healthier" has to mean higher costs and unpalatable tastes, Cardello provides novel but concrete steps that food companies can take to fatten their profits and slim down their customers. In addition, he stresses the realistic role that consumers must play in America′s new health equation, explaining that unless they demand healthier food with their wallets, America will continue to tip the scales for years to come.

About this title

From the Publisher:

"Anyone who is interested in their health and thinks they're educated about nutrition needs to read this book."
-- Bookbrowse.com

"Former food-industry executive and current anti-obesity advocate Cardello calls on his erstwhile colleagues to become custodians of their customers' well-being....the point zings home: The food industry knows how to sell; now it has to sell the right thing."
-- Kirkus Reviews

"An interesting look into the psychological world of the "Big Food" business...Stuffed is a great book because it is honest, and Cardello does not mince words when it comes to the reality of our nation's misguided obsession with food."
-- Eats.com

"Food companies would be more profitable and keep their customers longer if they adopted the ideas in STUFFED."
-- Tom Ryan, former Chief Concept Officer of McDonald's Corporation

"Hank Cardello paints a clear picture of the economic and market forces that have converged to feed the global epidemic of obesity. STUFFED makes a forceful and compelling argument that the right mix of regulation and voluntary restraint by the industry will be a topic of legitimate debate for years to come. There is no question that we must find a way to create a level playing field on which the food industry can promote and sell products that support rather than subvert the health of Americans."
-- Walter Willett, MD, PhD; author of Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy: The Harvard Medical School Guide to Healthy Eating; chair of the Department of Nutrition, Harvard University

"Hank Cardello offers insights into the obesity epidemic that no author or scholar has had. He illuminates how the food sector confuses and ultimately controls us, explains how pricing in supermarkets works, and details how restaurants and many other elements control our eating patterns."
-- Barry Popkin, PhD; director of the Interdisciplinary Obesity Center, UNC-Chapel Hill; author of The World Is Fat

"We can't underestimate the role that healthy lifestyle choices make in reducing the incidence of any number of life-threatening diseases, breast cancer among them. Cardello's book provides insights into our nutrition choices that, hopefully, will help us to make the right decisions about what we eat and avoid health problems down the road."
-- Hala Moddelmog, president and CEO of Susan G. Komen for the Cure

"A wake-up call to the food industry to take action, so that together we can make a difference in fighting obesity and heart disease, and protect our nation's health. This should be required reading for food company insiders and anyone else who wants to better understand what goes on in the inner recesses of the food industry."
-- Kathleen M. Zelman author of Healthy Eating for Babies and Toddlers and Harvest of Healing Foods

"One would think that enlightened self-interest would cause everyone in the food industry to help their customers live longer, healthier lives. Unfortunately this has not happened. Here Cardello makes the case for how and why the food industry, the government, and the media must change, so we don't all eat ourselves to death."
-- Bob Goodale, former president of Harris Teeter Supermarkets

From the Back Cover:

It was his job to keep you eating.
It was his job to keep you drinking.
It was his job to keep you buying.
Unfortunately for you, he was good at it.

For more than thirty years, Hank Cardello was an executive and adviser to some of the largest food and beverage corporations in the world. For more than thirty years, he watched as corporate profits—and America's waistlines—ballooned: fattening consumers meant fattening profits. Now, in this fascinating and timely book, Cardello offers a behind-the-scenes look at the business of food, providing an insider's account of food company practices, failed government regulations, and misleading media coverage that have combined to place us in the middle of a national obesity epidemic.

With insights culled from Cardello's time in the food industry, Stuffed explores how food companies have spent the last fifty years largely ignoring healthier fare in the name of their bottom lines while pushing consumers toward "convenience" food and supersize portions without considering the health consequences. From grocery aisles to restaurant booths to boardrooms, Cardello reveals the hidden forces that have long shaped your supermarket purchases and menu selections. He examines the black-and-white mindset that has produced the carefully targeted marketing strategies that have maximized profits for the food industry and led to weight gain for you.

But Cardello makes clear that the food companies should not take all the blame. They are merely a cog in a larger system that's broken, and here Cardello illustrates how the government and the media have only made it harder for Americans to make nutritious choices. Highlighting both bit players and high-profile voices of change, Cardello explains the fundamental risks to one-size-fits-all regulatory solutions and the bigger dangers posed by letting the food pundits confuse the health conversation.

More than simply a chronicle of how we got here, Stuffed also puts forth a groundbreaking blueprint for the future of the food industry. In debunking the common myth that "healthier" has to mean higher costs and unpalatable tastes, Cardello provides novel but concrete steps that food companies can take to fatten their profits and slim down their customers. In addition, he stresses the realistic role that consumers must play in America's new health equation, explaining that unless they demand healthier food with their wallets, America will continue to tip the scales for years to come.

Provocative and insightful, Stuffed is a sweeping critique of excessive food consumption in America, one that uncovers the money behind the calories and presents a fresh vision for building health into the lives of ordinary Americans.

About this edition

• Publisher: Ecco
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0061896748
• ISBN 13: 9780061896743
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 272