Michelle Obama still has the midas touch when it comes to shifting industries and their products. Because of her initiative to battle childhood obesity, major food companies like PepsiCo and Kraft Foods are making some serious changes. Kate Andersen Brower of Bloomberg Business Week posted an article called, “Michelle Obama’s ‘Spotlight’ on Obesity Enlists Kraft, PepsiCo“.
Says Brower,
Her lobbying of companies to make products healthier, labels easier to read and limit marketing of unhealthy foods to kids is paying off. A month after she began her campaign, PepsiCo Inc., the world’s second-largest food and beverage company, pledged to stop selling full-sugar soft drinks in schools by 2012. Kraft Foods Inc., the maker of Oreo cookies and Oscar Mayer lunch meats, announced it would further reduce the sodium content of its products.
Brower goes on to say,
The companies’ announcements followed a meeting in Washington on March 16 during which Obama told members of the Grocery Manufacturers Association, including Purchase, New York- based PepsiCo and Northfield, Illinois-based Kraft, “to move faster and to go farther” to make their products healthier.
These fortune 500 companies are listening. Read their repsonse,
The first lady has “accelerated our focus,” Kraft’s president of health and wellness, Rhonda Jordan, said in an interview.
“We’ve long advocated for schools to be made as conducive as possible to promoting the health of students,” Michelle Naughton, a PepsiCo spokeswoman, said in a statement.
The message in Michelle Obama’s campaign to eradicate childhood obesity is being heard loud and clear. It is an apparent indication that change is still alive and well. Our kids are going to be more healthy whether they like or not. Posted by Bridgette.
