Ralph Nader and the Terrible Ten

Food,” said a 1944 slogan, “will fight the war and win the peace.” Right now food is the subject of a war of words. On one side are the “health food” stores and their vociferous supporters, including “diet doctors” and show business personalities. The target of their attack is the big companies that make up the bulk of the multi-billion-dollar food industry—who seem too bewildered to fight back and, instead, often try to make a fast buck by invoking their critics’ slogans on behalf of special lines of products designed for nature lovers. Condemnation of the food industry is de rigueur for liberal columnists; on April 20 Nicholas Von Hoffman hinted darkly that we were all being poisoned. Caught in the crossfire between Granola and Sugar Frosties, between enriched white bread and the stone-ground, chemical-free, whole-grain variety, between prime beef and sunflower seeds, scientists of the “nutrition establishment” have tried to straddle the fence’s uncomfortable ridgepole. A few have even tried to buck the “health food” crowd; the Food and Nutrition Board of the National Academy of Sciences did so, and its members were thereupon termed “tools of industry” by Senator William Proxmire.

On April 17, Ralph Nader’s Center for Science in the Public Interest (which might better be called the Center for Lawyers in the Performing Arts) held a carefully planned, well heralded “Food Day.” The Advisory Board included Hubert Humphrey, middle-aged Consciousness III types like William Sloane Coffin and George Wald, organic food journalists, some genuine academic nutritionists like Jean Mayer of Harvard (who, as will be seen, ducked out before Food Day arrived), Julian Bond, Norman Cousins, Fred Harris, and Robert Redford.

TJ

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Thomas H. Jukes

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Food,” said a 1944 slogan, “will fight the war and win the peace.” Right now food is the subject of a war of words. On one side are the “health food” stores and their vociferous supporters, including “diet doctors” and show business personalities. The target of their attack is the big companies that make up the bulk of the multi-billion-dollar food industry—who seem too bewildered to fight back and, instead, often try to make a fast buck by invoking their critics’ slogans on behalf of special lines of products designed for nature lovers. Condemnation of the food industry is de rigueur for liberal columnists; on April 20 Nicholas Von Hoffman hinted darkly that we were all being poisoned. Caught in the crossfire between Granola and Sugar Frosties, between enriched white bread and the stone-ground, chemical-free, whole-grain variety, between prime beef and sunflower seeds, scientists of the “nutrition establishment” have tried to straddle the fence’s uncomfortable ridgepole. A few have even tried to buck the “health food” crowd; the Food and Nutrition Board of the National Academy of Sciences did so, and its members were thereupon termed “tools of industry” by Senator William Proxmire.

On April 17, Ralph Nader’s Center for Science in the Public Interest (which might better be called the Center for Lawyers in the Performing Arts) held a carefully planned, well heralded “Food Day.” The Advisory Board included Hubert Humphrey, middle-aged Consciousness III types like William Sloane Coffin and George Wald, organic food journalists, some genuine academic nutritionists like Jean Mayer of Harvard (who, as will be seen, ducked out before Food Day arrived), Julian Bond, Norman Cousins, Fred Harris, and Robert Redford.