268: Food Marketing Expert Hank Cardello Explains How Manufacturers Are Making You ‘Stuffed’!

Written on July 6, 2009

Right-click to save this episode to your computer.

Hello and welcome back to The Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb Show with Jimmy Moore!

Today Jimmy shares his interview with Hank Cardello, a former insider in the world of food commerce who had a change of heart after a brush with cancer in the 1990s. These days Hank wants everyone to know what food brands, restaurants and grocery stores are really thinking about when developing marketing schemes and new products. It may not be a conspiracy against consumers, but it can be a messy business with much room for improvement.

While talking about Hank’s book called Stuffed, Jimmy does set the record straight on a point or two, such as Cardello’s assertion that only calories are important to labels, but Jimmy clearly enjoyed the book and asks the author to relate and expand on many of the insider insights shared within.

LINKS MENTIONED IN EPISODE 268
- Jimmy Moore’s “Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb Links” blog
- Hank Cardello bio
- Stuffed: An Insider’s Look at Who’s (Really) Making America Fat
- StuffedNation.com
- Hank Cardello’s “Stuffed” blog
- Hank’s 27º North–pointing the way to responsible profits
- Contact Hank Cardello

Advocacy, fast food, Reviews

16 Comments - Leave a comment!

sss

Just more blather about outsized portions and sugar from someone who is just another calorie counting fat phobe. Oh, and some talk about locally produced food and other such trivial distractions like “wholeness” or “organics.” Just another example of how the conventional thinking is only ever half right. No understanding of the harmful effect of starches and sugars generally. Of course, it is starches and sugars generally that are at the root of the problem. Even if it is a “whole” grain that is “organically and locally produced” it’s still going to be starch. Dr. Su understands this. So does Gary Taubes. Taubes discusses the harmul effect of “easily digested carbohydrates” not simply refined grains like white flour or white rice. The Drs. Eades understand this; that’s why pages 43-46 of “The Protein Power Life Plan” place the blame squarely on starches and sugars generally and insist on their reduction if not elimination from the diet. If a person doesn’t understand this bedrock principle then they’ll be sidetracked by any number of discussions about “wholeness,” “organics,” “locally produced,” or “grass fed.” It’s not about finding locally produced, organically grown, bananas and potatoes and whole wheat hamburger buns. It’s about not eating bananas and potatoes and eating hamburgers w/o buns.
http://www.carbohydratescankill.com Robert Su, M.D.

Thank you very much for mentioning me in your post, sss. (My interview: Episode 249)

Listening to this interview with Mr. Hank Cardello, I appreciate that the former food manufacturing executive who changed heart because of his own illness, decided to write a book to expose the business secrets of the industry by stuffing its customers for profit. At the same time, I am sorry that he did realize that not only the excessive calories fattens the customers. I wish he learned that also the amount of carbohydrates, regardless of its forms, has caused the customers to eat more and to become ill.

Most people do not understand that all carbohydrates, except fibers, are sugars when they go into the body, and boost the blood glucose level. The rise of blood glucose level causes and promotes inflammation that develops most, if not all, of diseases including cancers.

To prevent diseases from happening, we must first keep the blood glucose level within a low normal range. To do that, we must restrict the amount of carbohydrates in the diet.

Having mentioned the impacts of high blood glucose level on our health, being a slim person does not guarantee him a good health. For example, he could consume 2000 kilocalories (or nutritional calories) a day just enough for his daily activities, he is not going to gain weight. However, the makeup of his daily 2000 kilocalories decides the state of his health very much. With most of his daily 2000 kilocalories from fats and proteins, he would experience more satiety and requires less or no snacks, because he would not have a Sweet Roller Coaster. On the other hand, with 45-60% of his daily 2000 kilocalories from carbohydrates, he would have more feeling of hunger and requires more snacks. Actually, he might gain weight. Worst of all, he would have Sweet Roller Coaster all the time, because his blood glucose level is always going up and down. (See my book, Carbohydrates Can Kill.)

I hope that the food industry will reverse its food process, started from farming, to produce carbohydrate products, which contain more non-digestible carbohydrates, e.g. including the stems and leaves of the grain in the flour, to lower their glycemic indices and glycemic load. Perhaps, this procedure will reverse the risks of overweight/obesity as well as other diseases much easier and quicker. The question is if the industry is listening and learning.

Robert Su, M.D.
http://thepaleogarden.com Zach

Jimmy,
You rock. You continue to set the standard with great and informative guests, and I enjoy you engaging with them. If you had guests that espoused 100% of what you know at that time, there would be no disagreement perhaps, but there certainly wouldn’t be the chance to add on to your ever-growing knowledge. It’s been cool over the last year of listening to you broadcast to listen and learn, and in some cases learn right along with you. Thanks for the learning and teaching, it’s been great.
Best Regards,
Zach
http://www.livinlavidalowcarb.com/blog Jimmy Moore

I couldn’t agree more with your assessment, sss. And while Hank is still stuck on conventional wisdom as it relates to the quality of the calories you eat, I give him credit for trying to educate consumers about being smarter with their food buying decisions now.

THANKS for your feedback, too, Dr. Su. He certainly needs to learn what carbs are doing to the weight and health of people, although I doubt it is something he would be involved in with the position he holds.

Zach, I appreciate your kind compliments. Whether I agree or disagree with my guests is irrelevant when you stop and think about it. We all have our own personal views and we learn from the points made by others either through agreeing with what they say or pondering points made that we eventually come to terms with ourselves. It’s what makes this show so much fun to do.

One day I’d like to have my own LIVE nationally-syndicated radio show to talk about these issues more often. SOMEDAY!
sss

Jimmy, if my remarks are trenchant or worse, they’re never aimed at you – only your guests. You’ve provided a sort of clearinghouse of the very best: Mary Vernon, Eric Westman, William Davis, Gary Taubes, Richard Feinman, Malcolm Kendrick, et al. And those like Drs. Su and Steve Parker who’ve come along on their own w/o having read Taubes are especially worthy too. But we’re now at the point where Taubes’s work has been out for over a year and a half and anyone opining in this area needs to be familiar w/ it. And address it. Our country is fat, sick, and…well, pathetic on account of the wrongheadedness that has stood in for sound thinking on nutrition. And those who would simply point out the obvious – that they’re trying to sell us more of the same crap (as if that’s a new feature of capitalism) – while perpetuating the same conventional thinking are themelves another diversion. Calorie counting fat phobes (or saturated fat phobes…or animal saturated fat phobes (they’re a moving target)) who like to vapor about locally grown organic whole foods that have not been part of some evil food system (evil just because it’s impersonal and industrial (I grew up just outside of Philadelphia; I’ve never wanted a personal relationship w/ a cow) who only grudgingly concede that meat may be eaten – but only occassionally – are the latest sideshow. (Did I just describe Michael Pollan?) There is no substitute for understanding the harm caused by eating starches and sugars.
http://www.carbohydratescankill.com Robert Su, M.D.

http://amjmed.blogspot.com/2009/06/failing-grades-in-adoption-of-healthy.html

Please read the original article and the accompanying commentary by the editor-in chief.

Robert Su, M.D.
Bill Berggren

I liked the show. My mom is from the great depression WWII, and I know she picks the grocery store based on milk prices (meat too). Thus their margin is small or negative. Too bad I don’t drink milk anymore. I saw a show on tv last night from UCSF the guy claimed all diets work the same and the best way to reduce risk of CVD is to exercise. However, the people only lost like 3 kg on the diet, which makes me think they were not following it.

The guy is right, calories is probably most important as us low carber already know or can find out the carbs in most products. Calories in supersized letters would be better and a link to find complete info including vitamins would be nice. Transfats should be illegal everywhere.

I found a good open-source diet tracking software cron-o-meter 0.93 love it as it show vitamins.
Bill Berggren

Robert Su, Thanks for the link. The only reason I am trying to get healthier is that I went to Walmart and checked my blood pressure. I think there is a market to get a heart score at a strip mall as I would love to know all my risk factors easily without going to a doctors office.
http://www.carbohydratescankill.com Robert Su, M.D.

You are welcome, Mr. Berggren. I hope you also have read the comments following the commentary by Dr. Alpert. I sent another comment a couple of days ago, but have not seen it posted yet. I think that the mainstream medicine still does not get it, and has a hard time of getting away from the pawn of pharmaceutical industry.

Robert Su, M.D.
Linda

This was a very interesting interview, thanks Jimmy – you continue to find interesting people and topics for interviews. I always learn something new.

I wish this guy had talked more about grocery retailing, it’s a fascinating subject. Most people don’t realize the store is manipulating you. I have read that all sorts of things in stores are designed to make you SLOW DOWN. Apparently the more slowly you go through the store, the more likely you are to buy more stuff. That’s why all those separate displays in the aisles cause deliberate shopping cart traffic jams. There’s a lot more to the business than “eye level”.

I go shopping at 7am to avoid all those distractions!
http://www.drlittlefield.com david littlefield

A great book to read is Michel Poulan’s “In Defense of Food”. He explains how the whole food industry has hust become a business and even so called nutritious food with low fat, low cholesterol and added vitamins is noy as good for our bodies as just eating nutritious natrural food. I do recommend however adding fish oil supplements because you may be getting to much mercury and PCB’s in your diet if you try to get an adequate amount just from fish, especvially if it is tuna.
http://www.livinlavidalowcarb.com/blog Jimmy Moore

I agree it’s a great book, David. I’ve asked Pollan for an interview, but he declined.
http://thisisyourbusiness.net/Coloncleanse noviorbis

I have been reading a number of the comments on this page, which I find excellent and interesting.

We all know that 80% of all foods are acidic, most drinks are acidic, no wonder cancer is rampant in this world.

In 1931 Dr. Anton Walberg received the nobel for discovering that ancer or any other illness cannot survive in an alkaline body, yet in an acidic body illnesses are beyond control
sss

No, it was Otto Warburg for his work which showed “the primary cause of cancer ….[implicated] the fermentation of sugar.” Hmmm, pertinent to the elimination or reduction of starch and sugar in the diet. (Taubes, Lutz, and others have discussed this effect.) So where did you get that gem? Are you going to tell us about blood type diets next?
kevin

sss, going back to your earlier comments, I have to say that carbs and obesity are only part of the problem with the western diet, especially as practiced in the US.

Michael Pollan, in The Botany of Desire, talks about how modern agricultural processes are destroying land set aside for that use. Foods are not only covered in pesticides, but are now being bioengineered to BE pesticides. The FDA now considers certain vegetables (eg the specific monoculture of potato used for McDonalds fries) to be not a foodstuff, but a pesticide (see Pollan’s Bot. of desire).

Now, I love my low-carb veggies like Cauliflower and Broccoli as much as the next person, but when I can, I certainly try to get pesticide-free or organics.

Jimmy has done at least one episode on the importance of grass-fed, free range beef, and while I don’t have much access to that or the extra scratch to pay for it, I do value it’s production, and hope it becomes mainstream enough to afford more easily.

It isn’t a distraction from low-carb health to talk about other aspects of food policy and trends, in my opinion. I think there is (and must be) room to discuss the spectrum of ways diet can be improved.

Odd that Taubes and Pollan work for the same paper, but I can take what each says on it’s own merits without disdaining the men themselves for what they don’t know about/discuss/believe in.
sss

Do some amateur anthropology by looking through some old Life magazines from the thirties onward – overweight and obesity are not parts of the problem they are the problem. Overweight itself or its underlying cause is at the root of most if not all diseases of civilization. A central theme of Taubes’s book. On the “environment” and chemicals, do consult Taubes’s discussion of the work of the epidemiologists, Doll and Peto. It’s the carbs in the diet, not the chemicals. No kidding. Grassfed beef and “pasture butter” (even harder to find) for its better fat profile, CLA, and vitamins A, D and K2? Sure, it’s what I eat. But I’m not confused. The probable benefit of any or all of those things is NOTHING compared to slashing starches and sugars from the diet. Pollan has simply conglomerated a set of fretful notions the half educated already possess to “explain everything.” Although some of those concerns are legitimate of themselves, inasmuch as they are deployed to address overweight and its companion illnesses they are misused. Pollan has set himself up to market a line of cookware. Pure Madison Avenue. Taubes has written a great work of science. Pollan is to nutrition what Sarah Palin is to politics.