Fat is mainstream, which is why everyone has become complacent. What used to be considered pudgy before isn't even worthy of a comment today.

These days the biggest issue is how many calories you consume. So all of this stuff distracts people from thinking about calories.

When you have a food safety system that's voluntary and not mandatory, you're in a situation in which everybody wants everybody else to go first. So as a normal course of doing business, food companies cut corners and don't want to take the kind of trouble and the kind of testing and the kind of careful procedures that are required to produce the safe food because they don't have to.

One can only be in awe of the creativity of chocolate marketers. My take is that if there is a health benefit, it is small.

The real reason for health claims is well established: health claims sell food products.

We don't really have any that protect the food supply from farm to table. We have a food safety system that's piecemeal, largely divided between two agencies that don't talk to each other very much. Neither agency can enforce regulations from the farm to the table.

Consumers have to understand that the purpose of these claims is to get them to buy the product.