We believe this approach offers a better way to jump-start a mass reduction in the calories sold. If companies embrace this message and increase the percentage of BFY products in their portfolios from today's 40 to 50 percent, that's $10 billion more a year in lower-calorie, healthier foods. Yes, all these products would not be "healthy" according to strict nutritional standards, but the increase in sales would go a long way toward reducing the number of calories bought each year. And obesity is a calorie issue.

To engage the food industry constructively, it's necessary to understand their goals and needs. This does not mean kowtowing to their every demand. But as any good negotiator knows, you have to know where the other side is coming from in order to effect movement. And what is paramount for a company's success, if not its survival, is growth -- sales growth, market-share growth, and profit growth. When these go up, the people a company is accountable to -- the shareholders -- are happy and retain their investments in the company.

The results from this study set a foundation to align the needs of both food corporations and the public health community. These findings provide ammunition for food and beverage executives to justify moving more aggressively into better-for-you foods given the potential to improve sales and financial performance. And they offer public health advocates and policymakers insights as to how to construct proposals that can better motivate food marketers to adopt change.

So we are now confronted with a choice: rigidly insisting on being right, that every food be perfect (and thus generating fierce resistance from industry) or adopting a more pragmatic pathway that gives businesses a way to both make money and do some heavy lifting to help reduce childhood and adult obesity in this country.

The win-win approach advanced by the Hudson study opens the door to significant tangible progress toward improving our food supply in a way that also improves bottom lines. Without the two working in concert, reaching a workable solution to obesity is doomed to failure.

The choice is staring us in the face.

Image: Preto Perola/Shutterstock.

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