International Food Information Council
Small Changes: Thoughts on Wellness 09 Conference
Eat more soup. Have some almonds. My two biggest personal take-aways from a few days at IFT’s Wellness 09 conference.
Beginning with the Center for Disease Control’s overview of America’s dietary habits (with a state-by-state map demonstrating the uptick in obesity rates from the 1980s’, replete with some of the most unattractive food photography I’ve ever seen) to the sad knowledge, courtesy of NPD Market Research, that America still feeds itself the same five basic meals for dinner in 2008 as we did twenty years ago.
Whenever I attend a show like this—a great peek into the minds of nutritionists and food scientists—I come away with the resolution that today’s the day I start my macrobiotic diet. But then, I’m prone to making sweeping, large-scale changes. Or at least prone to thinking that I will.
Which brings me to the mantra expressed over and over again at the conference: “Small Changes.” The powers that be in the food nutrition world have pretty much given up on (for good reason) the concept that the American consumer will ever kick our terrible eating habits, even with the strongest of intentions. But it took a “Joint Task Force of the American Society for Nutrition, Institute of Food Technologists and International Food Information Council” to draw this conclusion?
