Come eat with me

摘要

Over the past half-century, millions of people worldwide have chomped through trillions of McDonald's burgers and fries. But by the turn of the millennium, critics had made the corporation shorthand for everything that's bad in food in rich countries: over-processed, fatty, unhealthy. Faced with this image problem, and stalling and falling profits, McDonald's began fighting back. In 2003 - in what will sound to some a deeply ironic gesture -it set up the Global Advisory Council on Healthy Lifestyles. Its role was to reform McDonald's from within and make the company look like it was taking the global obesity epidemic seriously. The council recruited some of the world's most respected scientists-, biochemists, nutritionists, policy advisers and epidemiologists, keen to help the food giant transform itself. Given the council's academic credibility and good intentions, is it wrong to be cynical about McDonald's' motivation? And given the hold the company has on the hearts and minds of its many customers, is it better to try to applaud the company for its efforts? Canadian obesity and nutrition researcher Harvey Anderson thinks so. He is one of the elite scientists working with McDonald's, so Diane Martindale asked him if we should start trusting the food giant.