Salt and Privacy: The Food Industry and Facebook
Now, the [food] industry is blaming consumers for resisting efforts to reduce salt in all foods, pointing to, as Kellogg put it in a letter to a federal nutrition advisory committee, “the virtually intractable nature of the appetite for salt”
The food industry’s argument is best summarized as follows,”People want salt – and we are just following the demand.” Yet salt is a cheap ingredient that serves a multiplicity of purposes that redound to the industry’s benefit:
Beyond its own taste, salt also masks bitter flavors and counters a side effect of processed food production called “warmed-over flavor,” which, the scientists said, can make meat taste like “cardboard” or “damp dog hair.”
Salt also works in tandem with fat and sugar to achieve flavors that grip the consumer and do not let go — an allure the industry has recognized for decades. “Once a preference is acquired,” a top scientist at Frito-Lay wrote in a 1979 internal memorandum, “most people do not change it, but simply obey it.”
The issue here is that the food industry is (rather transparently) protecting their own self interest by claiming that rather than leading, they are simply following customer demand. This total abdication of (1) reality and (2) responsibility is reprehensible when what lies on the other side of the equation is a human death toll. As the article points out, “Government health experts estimate that deep cuts in salt consumption could save 150,000 lives a year.”
Now here comes the stretch… What is the difference between the food industry’s stance on salt and Facebook’s stance on privacy?
Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg has stated,
People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people. That social norm is just something that has evolved over time. We view it as our role in the system to constantly be innovating and be updating what our system is to reflect what the current social norms are.
The consistent argument is that people have an “insatiable appetite” for sharing, that privacy is dead and that this is a positive social development. This spin on privacy is also an abdication of reality and corporate responsibility. Studies (and common sense) show that people ARE concerned with privacy (see the Pew Study below). While it is true that people love to share – they are also concerned with their privacy.
Facebook’s value as a business is all about harvesting their user’s data for targeted advertising, sale to search engines, and intranetwork commerce (mainly in virtual goods etc). The argument of trailing social norms is an argument of convenience and it is one we shouldn’t accept.
Links:
NY Times: Pushed to Lower Salt Use, Food Industry Pushes Back – NYTimes.com.
Facebook’s Zuckerberg says the Age of Privacy is Over
Reputation Management and Social Media (Pew Internet)
Related posts:
