CSPI's major projects typically feature a mix of research, education, and
advocacy. The staff sees a symbiosis between those approaches: research provides the basis for
education, education a backdrop for advocacy, and advocacy a means for educating the public
through publications and media coverage.
Since 1980, CSPI's scientists, writers, and organizers have been bolstered by an in-house legal
staff. CSPI's scientists and policy specialists actively encourage the agricultural, food processing,
and restaurant industries to improve their products and market them honestly. When necessary,
the organization's legal staff seeks solutions through enforcement of existing laws or adoption of
new regulations or legislation.
One of CSPI's first major national undertakings was Food Day. The Center sponsored this annual
event from 1975-1977, spawning thousands of activities around the country concerning nutrition,
hunger, and agribusiness. There were newspaper articles and television programs, rallies in city
parks, a book, even a healthy White House buffet dinner.
Food Day turned out to be one of the pivotal events that helped persuade the public and
policymakers that nutrition had extremely important health effects. Until the mid-1970s, most
nutrition experts had focused on obtaining adequate levels of vitamins and minerals. The "new"
nutrition focused on the disease-promoting effect of a modern diet high in fat, cholesterol, and
sodium, and low in dietary fiber. (In 1993, the federal government estimated that diet and a
sedentary lifestyle contributed to 310,000 to 580,000 deaths a year, about as many as were caused
by tobacco).
Beginning in the early 1980s, many food manufacturers began promoting their products much
more aggressively on the basis of nutrition, responding to the increased public demand for
healthier food.
CSPI soon began to identify numerous product labels and advertising campaigns that were clearly
deceptive if not fraudulent. After first seeking a halt to individual deceptions on a case-by-case
basis the organization began to advocate wider-reaching legislation to protect consumers. That
effort culminated almost a decade later with passage of the Nutrition Labeling and Education Act
of 1990, which mandated clear and useful nutrition information on practically all food labels and
banned deceptive food claims.
Some companies responded by moving deceptive statements from labels to ads. But, again as a
result of CSPI's advocacy efforts, the Federal Trade Commission in 1994 followed up by adopting
a policy that called on companies to have their advertisements comply as fully as possible with the
nutrition-labeling law.
CSPI has long been concerned about the healthfulness of restaurant foods. Prodded by the
crackdown on deceptive advertising and its attendant publicity, by the late 1980s most large
fast-food chains for the first time disclosed the ingredients of which their foods were made. The
chains also provided more nutrition information and added lower-fat and lower-sodium products.
CSPI's work in this area involved several years of research, advocacy efforts, litigation, and
negotiations with industry, as well as the publication of Michael Jacobson's Fast Food Guide,
which provided the public for the first time with detailed nutritional information on the entire
menu lines of the major national and regional fast-food chains.
Beginning in 1993, CSPI's nutritionists began a series of studies on the nutritional values of foods
eaten in the most popular types of sit-down restaurants. The resulting studies of Chinese, Italian,
Mexican, and seafood restaurants generated worldwide publicity.
The enormous media coverage, in turn, prompted declines in sales at many restaurants, resulting
in decisions by a number of major chains and independent restaurateurs to both lower the fat or
sodium content of their dishes, and add a "health" section to their menus.
CSPI's related study of movie-theater popcorn found extraordinarily high levels of artery-clogging
fat in typical bags of popcorn. Again, the tremendous publicity resulted in sales declines, which in
turn prompted many theaters to change the way they popped corn, switching from coconut oil
and hydrogenated shortening, which promote heart disease, to air popping or canola or soybean
oil, which do not promote heart disease.
Even before it focused on nutrition, CSPI served as a watchdog group on food additives. In
addition to publishing a book and poster on additives, CSPI sought to reduce consumer exposure
to potentially risky additives. As a result of CSPI's work, the Food and Drug Administration
(FDA) advised pregnant women to minimize or avoid the consumption of caffeine.
FDA also banned most uses of sulfite -- a widely used preservative that caused numerous serious
reactions and deaths of sensitive (usually asthmatic) individuals -- in fresh vegetables and required
better labeling of other foods. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) set tighter limits on
the use of sodium nitrite, a preservative used in bacon, hot dogs, and most other processed meats.
Nitrite inhibits bacterial growth and provides a "cured meat" color and flavor, but leads to the
formation of cancer-causing nitrosamines.
More recently, CSPI has opposed the use of olestra, a fake fat manufactured by Procter &
Gamble. Olestra reduces the body's absorption of fat-soluble nutrients and causes severe
gastrointestinal symptoms in some consumers. Despite opposition by many academic experts, the
Food and Drug Administration approved olestra for use in snack foods, and in 1996 Frito-Lay and
Procter & Gamble started selling olestra chips in several test markets. CSPI began receiving
reports from hundreds of people who apparently suffered adverse effects due to those products
and repeated its request to the FDA to rescind the additive's approval.
Recognizing that pesticides used on farms endanger farmers, consumers, and the environment,
CSPI has long urged the reduced use of potentially dangerous agricultural chemicals. In the late
1980s CSPI's Americans for Safe Food project concentrated its efforts on winning passage of a
federal law that defined, for the first time, the meaning of "organic food." When that definition is
refined and adopted by the USDA, many more farmers and processors are expected to market
organically grown foods.
In 1982, CSPI created a new program to focus on alcoholic beverages because those products
kill an estimated 100,000 Americans a year and cause a wide range of health and social problems,
ranging from drunk driving to suicide to ruined careers. Also, few other organizations were
examining how federal policies on the labeling, advertising, and taxation of alcoholic beverages
could be modified to reduce alcohol problems.
Despite massive resistance from the alcoholic-beverage industry and its allies in the broadcasting,
publishing, tavern, and liquor-store industries, CSPI's goals in reducing the various problems
associated with alcohol have been partially achieved. Twice -- in 1984 and 1990 -- federal taxes
on distilled spirits, beer, or wine were increased, thereby raising the cost of the product and
reducing youth drinking. Congress passed a law requiring a warning notice on all alcoholic
beverages; the warning focused on drinking and driving and drinking during pregnancy.
Since publishing The Booze Merchants in 1983, CSPI has been a vocal critic of alcohol
advertising targeted at youth, women, or minorities; ads linking sexual or business success with
drinking; and ads showing drinking by people engaged in risky activities. CSPI's publications,
petitions, and press statements led to several congressional hearings and greatly increased concern
about alcohol advertising. In 1993 and '94 CSPI led a coalition seeking to win passage of
legislation, introduced by Senator Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.) and Rep. Joseph Kennedy
(D-Mass.), that would require health information in alcohol advertising, but the bill was beaten
back by brewers and broadcasters.
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