Junk Science for Junk Food [1]
Submitted by Sheldon Rampton [2] on
The food industry used an absurdly contrived "experiment" to prove that parents should let their kids eat junk foods in a study published in the June 1999 issue of The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. The food-industry researchers taunted preschoolers by displaying an item of junk food while forbidding them to eat it. After five days of this treatment, they found, the kids' desire for the food item had increased. This study was promptly seized upon by the industry-funded American Council on Science and Health (ACSH) as proof that "the food police are on the wrong track" when they "exhort us to keep so-called junk food away from children in order to steer them toward healthy dietary habits."