258 THE CHINA STUDY
up. In a patronizing tone, he said to the group, "There are honorable
people in our society who may not necessarily agree with this list. Per-
haps we should put it on hold." A reluctant discussion ensued, and they
decided to forgo the proposed press release.
With the conclusion of the news release issue, the meeting came to
an end. As far as I was concerned, it was a dubious beginning, at best.
A couple of weeks later, back in upstate New York, I turned on a
morning TV news show and Tom Brokaw appeared on the screen and
started talking about nutrition with Bob Olson, of all people. They were
discussing a recent report that Olson and friends had produced at the
National Academy of Sciences called "Toward Healthful Diets." This
report, which was one of the briefest, most superficial reports on health
ever produced by the NAS, extolled the virtues of the high-fat, high-
meat American diet and basically confirmed that all was well with how
America was eating.
From a scientific point of view, the message was a doozy. I remem-
ber one exchange where Tom Brokaw asked about fast food, and Olson
confidently stated that McDonald's hamburgers were fine. With millions
of viewers watching this "expert" praise the health value of McDonald's
hamburgers, it's no wonder that consumers around the country were
confused. Only a handful of insiders could possibly know that his views
did not even come close to reflecting the best understanding of the sci-
ence at the time.THE SECOND MEETING
We were back for round two in Atlantic City at our annual meeting in
late spring of 1981. From our correspondence over the past year, the
committee already had an informal agenda in place. First, we were to
establish the proposition that nutrition scams were eroding the public's
trust in the nutrition research community. Second, we needed to pub-
licize the idea that advocating more vegetable and fruit consumption
and less meat and high-fat foods was, itself, a scam. Third, we intended
to position our committee as a permanent, standing organization. Up
to this point, our group had only served in a temporary capacity, as
an exploratory committee. Now it was time to get on with our job of
becoming the permanent, principle source of reliable nutrition informa-
tion in the U.S.
Within the first few days of arriving at the convention, a fellow mem-
ber of the committee, Howard Applebaum, told me of the developing