HealthContentAdvisors

NYC Aims to Limit Salt While the AAFP Website Promotes Salty Foods

• Posted January 12th 2010
• by Janice

The Bloomberg administration has launched an initiative to reduce salt in restaurant food by 25% and overall salt consumption by 20% over the next five years.   The National Salt Reduction Initiative is a nation-wide program supported by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and other donors.  Funding for the evaluation of salt intake guidelines was provided by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the New York State Health Foundation, the National Association of County & City Health Officials and the Centers for Disease Control. 

According to the January 11, 2010 press release:

The goal of the initiative is to cut the salt in packaged and restaurant foods by 25% over five years – an achievement that would reduce the nation’s salt intake by 20% and prevent many thousands of premature deaths. The sodium in salt is a major contributor to high blood pressure, which in turn causes heart attack and stroke, the nation’s leading causes of preventable death. These conditions cause 23,000 deaths in New York City alone each year – more than 800,000 nationwide – and cost Americans billions in healthcare expenses.

Given the known health risks of excessive salt intake, why would FamilyDoctor.org, the consumer health portal published by the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) promote deli meats on their Healthy Living page?  Granted, they may not be endorsing deli meats in their editorial content, but they have a large banner ad for Boar’s Head deli meats on the site and a full-page ad from Boar’s Head in their digital newsletter.  I don’t want to specifically single out Boar’s Head (ads for Buddig meats also appear on the site, along with ads for Hellmann’s Mayonnaise), but check out the sodium content in Boar’s Head Pastrami.  Just so you don’t think I chose the worst offender, you can look up the smoked liverwurst or any of the hams.  (Note, you can check nutrition fact labels of a long list of food items and restaurant items on this About.com site: http://caloriecount.about.com/.  Warning, the fast food listings are frightening!)

Back to my question.  Why would ads for foods so high in sodium be prominently placed on the AAFP Health Living site?  I don’t know with certainty, but it looks to me like a failure in choice of online ad network and ad sales agency.  One could go further and say it’s a failure in revenue model choice for an online consumer health site published by a medical association, a group that should be providing trustworthy content.  Note, I wrote earlier about the recent partnership between AAFP and Coca-Cola to: “provide Americans with credible information on beverages and enable consumers to make informed decisions about what they drink based on individual need“.  Certainly there are better options than to have soft drink and deli meat companies sponsoring sites that are supposed to promote healthy food choices. 

The parallels to sponsorship models in scholarly medical publishing are obvious.  When pharmaceutical and device manufacturers sponsor publications, it is difficult to accept that there is no bias in the editorial content–even if there is none.  On consumer sites, where there is such a strong need for reliable unbiased health, nutrition and exercise information, just the appearance of ads on the site may be harmful because of the implicit endorsement of the advertisers’ products. 

It may take some work to find a more acceptable roster of advertisers, but better options exist than those currently being pursued by AAFP.   Why not work with other stakeholders in the healthcare industry that share the objective of improving consumer health and wellness?  For instance, health insurers, employers, hospitals, and even other health content publishers are building and promoting wellness programs at a fast clip.  They need to promote their programs and offer authoritative content to engage consumers.  That sounds like an opportunity for a partnership.  As a parting thought, perhaps AAFP should speak to Mayor Bloomberg and his staff to get some ideas on where to find sponsors that will support research and publication of trustworthy health and wellness information.