The Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation (HWCF) joined with First Lady Michelle Obama and the Partnership for a Healthier America to announce a new pledge to reduce 1.5 trillion calories by the end of 2015, a decrease HWCF member companies intend to sustain in subsequent years.
According to the announcement, the Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation manufacturing companies “will pursue their calorie reduction goal by developing and introducing lower-calorie options, changing recipes where possible to lower the calorie content of current products, or reducing portion sizes of existing single-serve products. These calorie reductions are in comparison with what was available in the marketplace in 2008.
“The Partnership for a Healthier America, for which the First Lady serves as honorary chair, is an independent, non-partisan organization that is working to mobilize action around the specific goals of the Let’s Move! campaign to curb child obesity within a generation ... The Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation is working to promote ways to help Americans achieve healthy weight by balancing the energy (calories) they consume with the energy they expend through physical activity. Today, many Americans are consuming more calories than they expend. Many nutrition and health experts refer to this imbalance as the ‘energy gap’.”
According to the announcement, the Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation manufacturing companies “will pursue their calorie reduction goal by developing and introducing lower-calorie options, changing recipes where possible to lower the calorie content of current products, or reducing portion sizes of existing single-serve products. These calorie reductions are in comparison with what was available in the marketplace in 2008.
“The Partnership for a Healthier America, for which the First Lady serves as honorary chair, is an independent, non-partisan organization that is working to mobilize action around the specific goals of the Let’s Move! campaign to curb child obesity within a generation ... The Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation is working to promote ways to help Americans achieve healthy weight by balancing the energy (calories) they consume with the energy they expend through physical activity. Today, many Americans are consuming more calories than they expend. Many nutrition and health experts refer to this imbalance as the ‘energy gap’.”
- KC's View:
-
There will be those who will say the Obama administration shouldn’t be getting involved in this stuff, and that the food companies should be responding to the markets, not perceived political pressure. But I have a hard time understanding the downside of these initiatives...
