Food Safety

"Trying to capture the high ground in the nation's ongoing debate over obesity and nutrition, McDonald's has teamed up with Oprah Winfrey's personal trainer to demonstrate its commitment to healthy foods and physical fitness," PR Week reports. McDonald's new "Go Active" meal includes a salad, water or soda, a pedometer and an information booklet by Winfrey's trainer Bob Greene. According to PR Week, the affiliation with Greene and the new meal are part of an "effort to exert leadership in another area of social responsibility.

"Kraft Foods' recently announced initiatives on obesity have marked a new phase in how food companies will address Americans' concerns about food and nutrition," PR Week writes. Until now, the food industry has tried to deflect the blame for America's growing waistlines by promoting physical activity. Now Kraft and others are talking about changing products and marketing.

"Kraft Foods grabbed the PR high ground in the public debate about obesity and America's unhealthy eating habits by announcing a series of planned changes in how it will make and market its products," PR Week reports. "The changes include increased communications with various groups interested in the obesity issue, as well as proactive efforts to encourage improved child fitness and nutrition." But the Guardian's Mark Borkowski calls Kraft's move "PR at its shabbiest and most shameful.

Ruth Ozeki's second novel, All Over Creation, is praised today in separate reviews in both the San Francisco Chronicle and the New York Times. Her first novel, My Year of Meats, skewered the beef industry's PR efforts to promote its product in Japan and examined the health hazards of growth hormones. This time Ozeki again looks at food and PR, specifically the the genetic engineering of potatoes.