How diet fads could help shape a sustainable revolution

Starting in 1994 the FDA required all food products to have the updated nutrition label, a decision at the time that might not have seemed like a big deal. In the years following this move we began to see a flurry of diets and fad diets that caused consumers across this country to judge products based on what they found on the back panel as much as they did on the name on the front. Who knows how much correlation actually exists between the two events, but it is interesting watching people in a grocery store attempting to evaluate products based on their current diet. “I am really watching my calories from fat”, “I need to have more good cholesterol”, or “I am not eating carbs, white flour or refined sugar”. And while this movement hasn’t vaulted the American public into a suddenly healthy nation, it has caused food producers to reevaluate their products and menus. Whether it is the Subway diet, Applebee’s advertising 500 calorie meals, or Taco Bell offer ‘fresco’ items, the principal is the same. Nutrition facts transparency is opening people’s eyes to just how bad the food is they are consuming. Many companies are not too happy about it as they are forced to tell their most loyal customers ‘hey the Big Mac value meal is really bad for you’. See the 2009 federal court decision requiring New York fast food chains to display nutrition facts on their menus; the New York State Restaurant Association was not happy.
So how can we use this to our advantage in our drive to make America more sustainable? How about a ‘nutrition facts’ label on products displaying information on the product’s and company’s environmental grade? Even if the information doesn’t pressure consumers into buying ‘healthier’ products, the transparency might force companies to reevaluate their environmental practices. It might not make the average consumer ‘greener’, and they might see their options and still eat the Big Mac, but in the process it might make a lot of companies see exactly what they are doing to the environment. Companies would hate it, they would pay lawyers millions of dollars to try and keep their environmental skeletons in the closet, but for the average consumer at Walgreens the information is power. Suddenly we all have the power to balance price and effectiveness vs. it’s ‘ECOValue’.