Yesterday — in response to an article praising the new children’s food marketing standards adopted by several industry leaders — The Wall Street Journal published a letter from the former director of Program Development for the President’s Council on Physical Fitness & Sports, Dr. Richard Keelor:
Caving into groups like the Center for Science in the Public Interest will encourage their frivolous demands and prolong any effective solution to childhood obesity. Worse, it deludes consumers into the false impression that the captains of the food and beverage industry are little more than hucksters …While consumer groups growl and threaten frivolous legal action and the food and beverage industry trembles, our youth will continue on to even higher levels of chronic disease directly related to the real culprit — lack of sufficient daily physical activity.