Incendiary Video: When it comes to food, less bad is not good

Earlier this year we posted a link to a video presentation by Dr. Yoni Freedhoff that was supposed to be delivered to the food industry. The Ontario Medical Association got asked to send a representative to speak on what the food industry could do to improve public health. That presentation never got delivered — they cancelled out on Freedhoff. The Ottawa family doctor decided that if the food industry didn’t want to listen, perhaps the rest of us would. Since then, more than a quarter of a million people have logged in to view that presentation on YouTube. Freedhoff has been tweeting this week about a new rant challenging the findings of a report that suggests kids today are marginally more healthy than their counterparts 10 years earlier. While we were on his Weighty Matters site, we noticed that there is a follow-up video to that original food industry presentation that suggests what public health should do, including stop appointing food industry representatives to sit on public health panels.  Deb Matthews’ Ontario Healthy Kids Panel is one such example. Freedhoff also shows that the Heart and Stroke Foundation Health Check program is less than reliable, including an endorsement of grape juice that the OMA suggests should have a warning label much like we attach to cigarettes. As for children’s hospitals and schools — maybe these public institutions should stop promoting pizza sales especially at a time when childhood obesity is a growing concern. Absolutely incendiary, check out Freedhoff’s 15-minute rant from last February on the role of public health: