KIND CEO Daniel Lubetzky slams companies that sell over-processed food: ‘We’re paying for it at the hospital’
In a new interview, KIND CEO Daniel Lubetzky blasted snack giants that sell over-processed food, saying that Americans end up “paying for it at the hospital.”
“We're paying for it as a society, with the rising diabetes and obesity epidemic. And so it is necessary for the food industry to move on, to provide more high-quality products,” said Lubetzky, who founded the snack bar company in 2004.
Bad diet has become the leading cause of death in the U.S., eclipsing those caused by tobacco use and high blood pressure, according to a study published in The Lancet in April.
Even a modest improvement in Americans’ diet could save $30 billion-$47 billion in health-related costs each year—a sizable amount, though just a fraction of the $1.5 trillion spent annually on health care, found another April study in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.
Lubetzky described a race to the bottom between large snack companies that use unhealthy ingredients as a cost-cutting strategy.
“The challenge that a lot of the large conglomerates have is that, over the last 60, 70 years, they've gone to the lowest common denominator,” Lubetzky said. “A pound of refined flour or refined sugar costs you $0.25 to $0.37, a pound of almonds costs you $2.85 ... So you can understand why these companies are compelled to move to the cheapest ingredients.”
More than half of the U.S. diet is made up of “ultra-processed” foods, according to a study released in 2016 by researchers at the University of São Paulo and Tufts University.
Lubetzky made the comments to Editor-in-Chief Andy Serwer in a conversation that aired on Yahoo Finance in an episode of “Influencers with Andy Serwer,” a weekly interview series with leaders in business, politics, and entertainment.
Since Lubetzky founded KIND in 2004, the company has sold 2 billion snack bars. The KIND Foundation, an affiliated philanthropic organization, gives resources and mentorship to students around the world. In 2015, President Barack Obama named Lubetzky a Presidential Ambassador for Global Entrepreneurship.
‘One of the most healthful products’
Lubetzky did not criticize companies by name, but nutrition advocates often target snack giants like General Mills (GIS) and Kellogg’s (K) for their sale of processed foods. Nutritionists also question the healthfulness of KIND snack bars, each of which contains whole nuts but also five grams of sugar.
“Every single one of our leading competitors has two times to five times more sugar than a KIND Bar,” Lubetzky said. “Out of packaged foods, it's probably one of the most healthful products.”
Snack companies face a difficult choice between using cheap ingredients and offering a healthy product, Lubetzky said.
“It is challenging, because you want it to be affordable,” he says. “So you need to make choices, and you need to find the right balance. But the balance that we currently have in society is not the right balance.”
Andy Serwer is editor-in-chief of Yahoo Finance.
Read more:
‘I love AOC’ but her criticism of capitalism is ‘headline porn,’ says Mark Cuban
Mark Cuban explains how he would fight the trade war differently than Trump
Charlie Munger: Trump is not primarily responsible for US economic success
Follow Yahoo Finance on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Flipboard, SmartNews, LinkedIn,YouTube, and reddit.
