Green is the new Fat Free.

During the height of the Fat-Free food craze, marketers were putting Fat-Free on food products that naturally had no fat in order to sell more product. The rush to the aisles to indulge in seemingly guiltless pleasures drowned out the voices of physicians trying to explain to consumers that Fat Free does not mean calorie free and in many instances high calorie sugar is used as a substitute for the fat extracted. Marketers are always ready to leverage the behavior changes consumers are willing to make in pursuit of strongly held beliefs. Unfortunately, it is proving to be no different with the green movement. Crossover SUV’s that were underpowered and had a disadvantage because they didn’t have the horsepower of their competitors now tout their single mile gas efficiency advantage as signifying they are the greenest car in the category. I don’t think the difference between a category average of 28 miles an hour and the 29 miles per gallon a particular vehicle gets will save the planet today. As long as we rally around quick fixes and feel good marketing messages we will continue to fall short of acting on our problems. We are fatter than we were before the NLEA (Nutrition Labeling and Education Act) legislation of 1990 required products to state their ingredients thus fueling the fat free craze. Will we be worse off as a planet because of green?