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The Food Fight Continues

Featuring: Kelly Brownell, PhD

In 2004, Kelly Brownell, PhD, published his controversial and now famous book, Food Fight: The Inside Story of the Food Industry, America’s Obesity Crisis and What We Can Do About It (McGraw Hill 2004). Brownell’s credentials — as the Director of the Yale Center for Eating and Weight Disorders — and his well-researched statistics made him hard to ignore. But his message — that our country’s “toxic food environment” of mass-promoted junk foods and unhealthy public policies are largely responsible for the obesity crisis — made him unpopular with some very powerful people, including many food-industry leaders and lobbyists.

In the years since Food Fight came out, though, many folks have come around to Brownell’s way of seeing things. Books like Fast Food Nation and Chew On This and movies like Super Size Me have succeeded in creating a grassroots movement that’s putting more pressure on food companies and policy makers to evolve their approaches — and our food culture — for the better.

But both consumers and advocates for large-scale healthy change still have some formidable challenges ahead. In this episode of Get a Whole Life, Pilar talks with Dr. Brownell about some of the more compelling and promising shifts that have occurred since Food Fight first came out, and where he and fellow health-crusaders are taking their efforts next.

Find out more about Dr. Kelly Brownell and his work at www.yaleruddcenter.org. For related articles from Experience Life magazine, see “Fork in The Road,” (July 2003) and “The Lure, The Lie” (March 2004).

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