"Real Food" Stages a Comeback

By Anastasia Toufexis

For food growers, the past two decades must have seemed like some nightmarish Nutrition Court. One after another, popular foods from butter to beef have been hauled into the dock and charged with crimes against health and humanity. "Guilty," the jury of popular and scientific opinion has snapped each time. The punishment: a sentence to suffer lower sales and market shares. Bang of gavel. But these days, food manufacturers have wised up. They are now mounting aggressive advertising campaigns to press claims that their products have got a bum rap and to extoll the benefits of the genuine article. Enter the rehabilitation of real food.

Meat and dairy groups, which have suffered the most from consumers' withdrawal pangs, are making the biggest efforts to regain public trust. In January the National Live Stock and Meat Board launched a $30 million promotion campaign that it hopes will beef up sales that have been less than bullish since 1976. Back then, Americans' per capita consumption was 94 lbs., & in contrast to 80 lbs. last year.

The "Real Food For Real People" ads feature such wholesome types as Actress Cybill Shepherd and Actor James Garner, who was named the "last real man" in 1985 by PEOPLE magazine. Along with the glitz and macho, though, the industry emphasizes that cattle are now bred leaner and cuts of beef are trimmed of excess fat. Today, consumers are told, a 3-oz. serving of beef contains the same level of cholesterol as an equivalent amount of chicken.

The National Pork Producers Council is trying to boost consumer interest with former Olympic Figure Skating Champ Peggy Fleming and a $7 million pitch presenting pork as the "other white meat," comparing it favorably with poultry. The National Dairy Board meanwhile is plugging milk, yogurt and cheese for their high content of a vaunted mineral. "Calcium the way nature intended," blare the ads. All-dairy products get to sport a red REAL seal.

Almost every industry group is touting nutrition. The Washington Apple Commission, a growers' organization based in Wenatchee, calls its fruit the "original health food" and asserts that the natural fiber in apples is an appetite suppressor. The Potato Board is pushing its vegetable as "multivitamins with minerals." Even the Sugar Association has something positive to stress: the sweetener's low 16 calories a teaspoon and its placement on the Food and Drug Administration's "safe" list, a claim artificial alternatives cannot make. "Which would you rather put on your kids' cereal?" the ads ask.

To be sure, the unsavory reputations of certain foods are undeserved. "Potatoes have complex carbohydrates, fiber and are a good source of vitamin C," says Dr. Walter Mertz, director of the U.S.D.A.'s Human Nutrition Research Center in Beltsville, Md. "As a basic food, they're excellent." Some food scientists point out that there is no such thing as a "bad" food. "Every food, even sugar, meat or eggs, has its place as part of a balanced and varied diet, as long as it is not taken in excess," Mertz observes.

Moreover, nutritionists increasingly recognize that artificial foods, which were supposed to supplant "real" products, are not quite as palatable and problem free as once thought. Imitation meats, for example, are marketed as low in cholesterol and calories, but they tend to be extravagantly high in salt. Many nondairy creamers are touted as cholesterol free, though they contain coconut oil, a highly saturated fat.

! Still, many experts find the glut of health-oriented advertisements for real food difficult to swallow. Declares Bonnie Liebman, director of nutrition at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a consumer-advocacy group in Washington: "Some of the ads may be honest, but you need a Ph.D. to tell the difference."

Pitches for fresh produce, like those for apples and potatoes, draw few quibbles. But most of the promotions, nutritionists contend, are misleading. For instance, there is little evidence, as some sugar ads say, that the sweetener causes heart disease, cancer and diabetes. But "it is not 'perfectly safe,' " emphasizes Dr. William Connor of the Oregon Health Sciences University in Portland. "It's a major cause of tooth decay." Besides, he adds, sugar is hardly nutritious since it contains "no fiber, vitamins, minerals or proteins. You get only calories." Liebman takes issue with the National Dairy Board's campaign for its emphasis on whole milk and cheeses, despite their being good sources of calcium. Consumers should be urged instead to drink low-fat milk and eat smaller portions of cheese, she says. Indeed, dairy products today are Americans' second highest source of saturated fat.

The major source of fat consumed by Americans is still red meat, another fact the current barrage of ads ignores. "Beef is not one of the high- cholesterol foods," observes Dr. Connor. However, "it has a great deal of saturated fat. Chicken has a lot less." The public gets a bum steer as well from the industry's use of a 3-oz. serving as the basis for nutritional information. The average portion is 4.7 oz. for a hamburger and 5.7 oz. for a steak.

Nutritionists deride the pork commercials as hogwash. The meat may be close in color to poultry, but the average serving of pork contains at least twice as much fat as does a piece of turkey or chicken. Pork is not a white meat, no matter how much "producers want to distance themselves from beef, which they perceive as a loser," notes Liebman. The rehabilitation of real food may have begun, say health experts, but it still has a long way to go.

With reporting by Beth Austin/Chicago and Andrea Sachs/New York