The Evolution of Health Washing

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After the 1999 meeting, craft went off and tried to do a thing. The companies did what's called health washing - inventing fake ways of making their food seem less addictive or less troublesome. They started adding like, blobs of protein to other ways, sugary cereal on the notion that people kind of fixated on. So I think we're in this phase now where the companies are super sensitive to the food, they're super sensitive to competition. And there's the other thing that's happening too, is that they're insiders at these companies who are switching sides.

In the next two episodes of Your Undivided Attention, we take a close look at two respective industries: big food and social media, which represent dangerous “races to the bottom” and have big parallels with AI.

And we are asking: what can our past mistakes and missed opportunities teach us about how we should approach AI harms?

In this first episode, Tristan talks to Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author Michael Moss. His book Salt, Sugar, Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us rocked the fast food industry when it came out in 2014.

Tristan and Michael discuss how we can leverage the lessons learned from Big Food’s coordination failures, and whether it’s the responsibility of the consumer, the government, or the companies to regulate.

RECOMMENDED MEDIA

Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us

Michael’s New York Times bestseller. You’ll never look at a nutrition label the same way again

Hooked: Food, Free Will, and How the Food Giants Exploit Our Addictions

Michael’s Pulitzer Prize-winning exposé of how the processed food industry exploits our evolutionary instincts, the emotions we associate with food, and legal loopholes in their pursuit of profit over public health

Control Your Tech Use

Center for Humane Technology’s recently updated Take Control Toolkit

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AI Myths and Misconceptions

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How Might a long-term stock market transform tech? (ZigZag episode)

Your Undivided Attention is produced by the Center for Humane Technology. Follow us on Twitter: @HumaneTech_