What's For Dinner?

Michele Simon (Best Public Relations Money can Buy) This week's guest is Michelle Simon, a public health lawyer and author of Appetite for Profit: How the Food Industry Undermines Our Health and How to Fight Back (2006). We discuss her "Best Public Relations Money can Buy" report, about the food industry's use of front groups to discredit health arguments as a way to avoid involving their brands in doing dirty work. She gives examples of these campaigns - e.g.fruits and stilettos in vodka ads - and she says citizens overestimate the legal constraints on rebutting false claims. Simon's 2007 report on alcoholic energy drinks led to federal action to ban the products, and her "Food Stamps, Follow the Money" report on food stamps brought attention to industry lobbying.