Food and Beverage Companies Trim Trillions of Calories from Products - East Idaho News

Food and Beverage Companies Trim Trillions of Calories from Products

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gettY 091814 nutritionlabel?  SQUARESPACE CACHEVERSION=1411036350746iStock/Thinkstock(CHAPEL HILL, N.C.) — In wake of the news that American waistlines are larger than ever comes a report that 16 major food and beverage companies have made good on their pledge to reduce calories in their products.

The companies, acting in concert through the Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation, had pledged to remove one trillion calories from the market between 2007 and 2012, and 1.5 trillion by 2015.

They’ve actually reduced far more: 6.4 trillion calories, according to a report in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

“The 16 companies collectively met their pledge and exceeded their pledge,” said lead researcher Shu Wen Ng, an assistant professor of nutrition at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Ng said the reduction translates to about 78 fewer calories per person daily.

The calorie reductions came from food categories such as sugar-sweetened beverages, snacks, cereals, candies, cookies and fats and oils.

The 16 companies are Bumble Bee Foods, Campbell Soup Co., ConAgra Foods, General Mills Inc., Kellogg Co., Kraft Foods Inc., Mars Inc., McCormick & Co., Nestle USA, PepsiCo Inc., Post Foods/Ralston Foods, Hillshire Brands, Coca-Cola Co., Hershey Co., the J.M. Smucker Co. and Unilever.

Ng cautions that while companies have improved their products, the focus in the Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation effort was on calories only.

“We can’t say anything about other nutrients or ingredients,” Ng added. She acknowledges that more work is needed.

“Our diets are a function of a lot more than calories,” she said.

Researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported this week that the average waist size among American adults expanded more than an inch — from 37.6 inches to 38.8 inches — between 1999 and 2012.


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