It has been suggested that Liquid Candy be merged into this article. (Discuss) Proposed since March 2024. |
Abbreviation | CSPI |
---|---|
Formation | 1971 |
Founder | Michael F. Jacobson |
Type | Non-profit |
Purpose | Consumer advocacy |
Headquarters | Washington, D.C. |
Region served | United States |
Website | cspinet.org |
The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) is a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit watchdog and consumer advocacy group that advocates for safer and healthier foods.
CSPI is a consumer advocacy organization. Its focus is nutrition and health, food safety, and alcohol policy. CSPI was founded in 1971 by the microbiologist Michael F. Jacobson, [1] along with the meteorologist James Sullivan and the chemist Albert Fritsch, two fellow scientists from Ralph Nader's Center for the Study of Responsive Law. [2] In the early days, CSPI focused on various aspects such as nutrition, environmental issues, and nuclear energy. However, after the 1977 departure of Fritsch and Sullivan, CSPI began to focus largely on nutrition and food safety [3] and began publishing nutritional analyses and critiques. [1]
CSPI has 501(c)(3) status. Its chief source of income is its Nutrition Action Healthletter, which has about 900,000 subscribers and does not accept advertising. [4] [5] The organization receives about 5 to 10 percent of its $17 million annual budget from grants by private foundations.
CSPI has more than sixty staff members and an annual budget from over $20 million. [2]
Jacobson now serves as a Senior Scientist at CSPI, with Peter G. Lurie acting as the organization's current President.
CSPI advocates for clearer nutrition and food labeling. [6] For example, labeling of "low-fat" or "heart healthy" foods in restaurants must now meet specific requirements established by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as of May 2, 1997. [7]
In 1994, the group first brought the issue of high saturated fat in movie popcorn to the public attention. [8]
In 1975, CSPI published a "White Paper on Infant Feeding Practices" aimed at criticizing the commercial baby food industry's products and advertising. The White Paper started a formalized, political discussion of issues surrounding early introduction of solid foods and the extraordinarily processed ingredients in commercial baby food. CSPI took particular issue with the modified starches, excessive sugar and salt additions, and presence of nitrates in baby food products. In addition, the White Paper criticized branding and advertisements on products, which they argued lead mothers to believe that solid foods ought to be introduced earlier in an infant's diet. [9]
In 1989, CSPI was instrumental in convincing fast-food restaurants to stop using animal fat for frying. They would later campaign against the use of trans fats. [10]
CSPI's 1994 petition led to the FDA's 2003 regulation requiring trans fat to be disclosed on food labels. CSPI's 2004 petition, as well as a later one from a University of Illinois professor, led to the FDA's ban of partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, the major source of artificial trans fat. [11]
In 1998, the Center published a report entitled Liquid Candy: How Soft Drinks are Harming Americans' Health . It examined statistics relating to the soaring consumption of soft drinks, particularly by children, and the consequent health ramifications including tooth decay, nutritional depletion, obesity, type 2 (formerly known as "adult-onset") diabetes, and heart disease. It also reviewed soft drink marketing and made various recommendations aimed at reducing soft drink consumption, in schools and elsewhere. A second, updated edition of the report was published in 2005. [12] Among the actions they advocate are taxing soft drinks. [13] Sugar-sweetened beverages are taxed in Berkeley, California; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Boulder, Colorado; San Francisco, California; Oakland, California; Albany, California; and Cook County, Illinois. [14] Seattle introduced a city-wide comprehensive sugary drinks tax in 2019. CSPI followed up with a 2013 petition calling on the FDA to limit the sugar content of soft drinks and to set voluntary targets for sugar levels in other foods with added sugars. [15]
In 2003, it worked with lawyer John F. Banzhaf III to pressure ice cream retailers to display nutritional information about their products. [16]
In January 2016, the Center released a report entitled "Seeing Red - Time for Action on Food Dyes" [17] which criticized the continued use of artificial food coloring in the United States. The report estimated that over half a million children in the United States suffer adverse behavioral reactions as a result of ingesting food dyes, with an estimated cost exceeding $5 billion per year, citing data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The report urges the FDA to take action to ban or curtail the use of such dyes. [18] CSPI has urged companies to replace synthetic colorings with natural ones, and Mars, [19] General Mills, [20] and other major food manufacturers [21] have begun doing so.
CSPI has worked since the 1970s to improve the nutritional quality of school meals, and remove soda and unhealthy foods from school vending machines, snack bars, and a la carte lines. Despite pushback from the soda and snack food industries, CSPI successfully worked with a number of local school districts and states to pass policies in the early 2000s to restrict the sale of soda and other unhealthy snack foods in schools. [22] In 2004, CSPI worked with members of the National Alliance for Nutrition and Activity (NANA) (a CSPI-led coalition) to include a provision in the Child Nutrition and WIC Reauthorization Act of 2004 to ensure all local school districts develop a nutrition and physical activity wellness policy by 2006. [23]
In 2010, CSPI and NANA led the successful effort to pass the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, a landmark law to improve child nutrition programs. The law (enacted December 13, 2010) authorized the U.S. Department of Agriculture to update the nutrition standards for snacks and beverages sold in schools through vending machines, a la carte lines, school stores, fundraisers, and other school venues. CSPI worked with NANA to mobilize support for the updated nutrition standards and urge the USDA to adopt strong final school nutrition standards (released in June 2013). Despite opposition from some members of Congress and the potato and pizza industries (which lobbied for unlimited french fries and ketchup as a vegetable in school meals) CSPI and NANA's efforts also resulted in strong nutrition standards for school lunches. [24]
One of CSPI's largest projects is its Food Safety Initiative, directed to reduce food contamination and foodborne illness. In addition to publishing Outbreak Alert!, a compilation of food-borne illnesses and outbreaks, the project advocated for the Food Safety Modernization Act, which was signed into law in 2011. The law refocused government attention on preventing food contamination rather than on identifying problems after they caused outbreaks of illnesses. [25] [26] [27]
Between 2011 and 2016, CSPI sponsored Food Day, a nationwide celebration of healthy, affordable, and sustainably produced food and a grassroots campaign for better food policies. [28]
Food Day's goal was to help people "Eat Real", which the project defined as cutting back on sugar drinks, overly salted packaged foods, and fatty, factory-farmed meats in favor of vegetables, fruits, whole grains, and sustainably raised protein. This annual event involved some of the country's most prominent food activists, [29] united by a vision of food that is healthy, affordable, and produced with care for the environment, farm animals, and the people who grow, harvest, and serve it.
Across the country, several thousand events took place each year, from community festivals in Denver, Savannah, and New York City, to a national conference in Washington, D.C., to thousands of school activities in Portland, Minneapolis, and elsewhere. [30]
The group's "Alcohol Policies Project", now discontinued, advocated against what it considers adverse societal influences of alcohol, such as marketing campaigns that target young drinkers, [31] and promoted turning self-imposed advertising bans by alcohol industry groups into law. [32]
In 1985 CSPI organized Project SMART (Stop Marketing Alcohol on Radio and Television). It generated huge public interest, a petition campaign that obtained a million signatures, and congressional hearings. Members of the media joined the project, such as syndicated columnist Colman McCarthy. [33] However, strong opposition from the alcoholic beverage and advertising industries ultimately prevailed.
The Alcohol Policies Project organized the "Campaign for Alcohol-Free Sports TV". Launched in 2003 with the support of at least 80 other local and national groups, the campaign asked schools to pledge to prohibit alcohol advertising on local sports programming and to work toward eliminating alcohol advertising from televised college sports programs. [34] It also sought Congressional support for such a prohibition. [35] CSPI also sponsored Project SMART—Stop Marketing Alcohol on Radio and TV—which called for federal bans on marketing. The project gathered more than 1 million signatures on a petition, which it presented to Congress at a hearing. That effort was unsuccessful.
In addition, CSPI has pressured alcoholic beverage companies with lawsuits. In one such lawsuit, filed in September 2008, the Center "sue[d] MillerCoors Brewing Company over its malt beverage Sparks, arguing that the caffeine and guarana in the drink are additives that have not been approved by the FDA," and that the combination of those ingredients with alcohol resulted in "more drunk driving, more injuries, and more sexual assaults." [36]
During the 1980s, CSPI's campaign "Saturated Fat Attack" advocated the replacement of beef tallow, palm oil and coconut oil in processed foods and restaurant foods with fats containing less saturated fatty acids. [37] CSPI assumed that trans fats were benign. [38] In a 1986 book entitled The Fast-Food Guide, it praised chains such as KFC that had converted to partially hydrogenated vegetable oils, which are lower in saturated fat but high in trans fat. As a result of this pressure, many restaurants such as McDonald's made the switch. [37]
After new scientific research in the early 1990s found that trans fat increased the risk of heart disease, CSPI began leading a successful two-decades-long effort to ban artificial trans fat. [39] From the mid-1990s onward, however, CSPI identified trans fats as the greater public health danger. [40] CSPI executive director Michael Jacobson went on record saying, "Twenty years ago, scientists (including me) thought trans [fat] was innocuous. Since then, we've learned otherwise." [37]
In response, three trade groups – the National Restaurant Association, the National Association of Margarine Manufacturers and the Institute of Shortening and Edible Oils – "said the evidence [on trans fat] was contradictory and inconclusive, and accused [CSPI] of jumping to a premature conclusion." [41]
In 1994, CSPI petitioned the FDA to require trans fat to be added to Nutrition Facts labels, and in 2004, [42] with stronger evidence of trans fat's harmfulness, CSPI petitioned FDA to ban partially hydrogenated oil, the source of most artificial trans fat. In 2003 FDA required trans fat to be labeled, [43] and in 2015 [44] FDA banned the use of partially hydrogenated oil.
Former U.S. Representative Bob Barr (a Republican, and later Libertarian Party nominee for President of the United States) accused CSPI of pursuing "a pre-existing political agenda" and pointed to individual responsibility for dietary choices. [45] Cato Institute (a Washington D.C.-based libertarian think tank) scholar Walter Olson wrote that the group's "longtime shtick is to complain that businesses like McDonald's, rather than our own choices, are to blame for rising obesity," and called CSPI's suit against McDonald's for using toys to encourage young children to ask for the company's Happy Meals on behalf of a California mother a "new low in responsible parenting." [46]
In 2002, the Center for Consumer Freedom, a group opposed to excessive government regulation, published a series of print and radio ads designed in part to drive traffic to the CCF website that provided additional critical information about CSPI. A San Francisco Chronicle article identified CSPI as "one of two groups singled out [by the CCF] for full-on attack," and said, "What's not mentioned on the [CCF] Web site is that it's one of a cluster of such nonprofits started... by Berman." [47] [48]
In nutrition, biology, and chemistry, fat usually means any ester of fatty acids, or a mixture of such compounds, most commonly those that occur in living beings or in food.
A soft drink is any water-based flavored drink, usually but not necessarily carbonated, and typically including added sweetener. Flavors used can be natural or artificial. The sweetener may be a sugar, high-fructose corn syrup, fruit juice, a sugar substitute, or some combination of these. Soft drinks may also contain caffeine, colorings, preservatives and other ingredients.
Margarine is a spread used for flavoring, baking, and cooking. It is most often used as a substitute for butter. Although originally made from animal fats, most margarine consumed today is made from vegetable oil. The spread was originally named oleomargarine from Latin for oleum and Greek margarite. The name was later shortened to margarine.
Trans fat regulation, that aims to limit the amount of "trans fat" — fat containing trans fatty acids — in industrial food products, has been enacted in many countries. These regulations were motivated by numerous studies that pointed to significant negative health effects of trans fat. It is generally accepted that trans fat in the diet is a contributing factor in several diseases, including cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and cancer.
Diet or light beverages are generally sugar-free, artificially sweetened beverages with few or no calories. They are marketed for diabetics and other people who want to reduce their sugar and/or caloric intake.
Shortening is any fat that is a solid at room temperature and is used to make crumbly pastry and other food products.
A healthy diet is a diet that maintains or improves overall health. A healthy diet provides the body with essential nutrition: fluid, macronutrients such as protein, micronutrients such as vitamins, and adequate fibre and food energy.
Crisco is an American brand of shortening that is produced by B&G Foods. Introduced in June 1911 by Procter & Gamble, it was the first shortening to be made entirely of vegetable oil, originally cottonseed oil. Additional products marketed under the Crisco brand include a cooking spray, various olive oils, and other cooking oils, including canola, corn, peanut, sunflower, and blended oils.
Liquid Candy: How Soft Drinks are Harming Americans' Health is a report published by the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) which examines the increasing levels of soft drink consumption in the United States, particularly by children and teenagers, and the health problems this poses. Originally published in 1998, a second edition containing updated data was released in 2005.
Michael F. Jacobson, who holds a Ph.D. in microbiology from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is an American scientist and nutrition advocate.
The nutrition facts label is a label required on most packaged food in many countries, showing what nutrients and other ingredients are in the food. Labels are usually based on official nutritional rating systems. Most countries also release overall nutrition guides for general educational purposes. In some cases, the guides are based on different dietary targets for various nutrients than the labels on specific foods.
The "jelly bean rule" is a rule put forth by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on May 19, 1994.
The Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA) provide nutritional advice for Americans who are healthy or who are at risk for chronic disease but do not currently have chronic disease. The Guidelines are published every five years by the US Department of Agriculture, together with the US Department of Health and Human Services. Notably, the most recent ninth edition for 2020–25 includes dietary guidelines for children from birth to 23 months. In addition to the Dietary Guidelines per se, there are additional tools for assessing diet and nutrition, including the Healthy Eating Index (HEI), which can be used to assess the quality of a given selection of foods in the context of the Dietary Guidelines. Also provided are additional explanations regarding customization of the Guidelines to individual eating preferences, application of the Guidelines during pregnancy and infancy, the USDA Nutrition Evidence Systematic Review, information about the Nutrition Communicators Network and the MyPlate initiative, information from the National Academies about redesigning the process by which the Dietary Guidelines for Americans are created, and information about dietary guidelines from other nations.
Critics and competitors of high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS), notably the sugar industry, have for many years used various public relations campaigns to claim the sweetener causes certain health conditions, despite the lack of scientific evidence that HFCS differs nutritionally from sugar. The HFCS industry has tried to respond to these campaigns with their own efforts.
Citizens for Health is a U.S. non-profit organization which advocates on issues affecting nutrition, obesity, dietary supplements, food labeling and other health matters.
Fred August Kummerow was a German-born American biochemist. A longtime professor of comparative biosciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, Kummerow was best known as an opponent of the use of artificial trans fats in processed foods, carrying out a 50-year campaign for a federal ban on the use of the substance in processed foods. He was one of the pioneers in establishing the connection between trans fats and heart disease, and he helped to cement the inclusion of trans fats into the Nurses' Health Study. He also helped discover that it is oxidized cholesterol, rather than the cholesterol, that causes heart disease.
Cooking oil is a plant or animal liquid fat used in frying, baking, and other types of cooking. Oil allows higher cooking temperatures than water, making cooking faster and more flavorful, while likewise distributing heat, reducing burning and uneven cooking. It sometimes imparts its own flavor. Cooking oil is also used in food preparation and flavoring not involving heat, such as salad dressings and bread dips.
Sugar is heavily marketed both by sugar producers and the producers of sugary drinks and foods. Apart from direct marketing methods such as messaging on packaging, television ads, advergames, and product placement in setting like blogs, industry has worked to steer coverage of sugar-related health information in popular media, including news media and social media.
Trans fat, also called trans-unsaturated fatty acids, or trans fatty acids, is a type of unsaturated fat that occurs in foods. Trace concentrations of trans fats occur naturally, but large amounts are found in some processed foods. Since consumption of trans fats is unhealthy, artificial trans fats are highly regulated or banned in many nations. However, they are still widely consumed in developing nations, resulting in hundreds of thousands of deaths each year. The World Health Organization (WHO) had set a goal to make the world free from industrially produced trans fat by the end of 2023.
Fat hydrogenation is the process of combining unsaturated fat with hydrogen in order to partially or completely convert it into saturated fat. Typically this hydrogenation is done with liquid vegetable oils resulting in solid or semi-solid fats.
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