For many Americans, food is a daily battle as concerns about nutrition collide with busy schedules and the availability of cheap, ubiquitous but unhealthy and fattening offerings. But what if we could make the foods we love healthier without losing taste or increasing costs? Sound impossible? Not according to Hank Cardello, a long time food marketer for some of the world’s biggest companies, including General Mills and Coca-Cola.

In Stuffed: An Insider’s Look at Who’s (Really) Making America Fat, he doesn’t spare  companies from blame for the ways they have encouraged us to eat sugary, fat-filled, unhealthy food in large quantities but Cardello ultimately believes they are also the only ones who can help Americans escape the rising tide of obesity. He holds that food and beverage manufacturers can reform how we sell and consume food in ways that improve both Americans’ health and companies’ bottom lines.

Cardello argues that a myriad of options exist to make foods healthier and keep both taste and company profit. Some have to do with using new better-for-you ingredients like healthier oils or adding healthy elements like Omega-3s and plant sterols to products from juice to ice cream. Others have to do with changing how food is packaged, such as offering serving size packages in order to reduce calorie consumption per sitting or reconfiguring combo meals to promote lower calorie products. And all can be implemented without significantly raising prices — in fact, some actually increase companyprofits.

Cardello calls such initiatives “Stealth Health” because they are subtle, even covert (since some people perceive food as less tasty if they think it is healthy), but offer the promise of a tangible effect on American’s unhealthy habits and ultra-caloric diets.

Forbes has called Stuffed “thought-provoking…informative and filled with clever ideas” and prophesized that the book “will certainly get people talking and thinking.”  And Tom Ryan, once the chief concept officer for McDonald’s agreed, “Food companies would be more profitable and keep their customers longer if they adopted the ideas in Stuffed.”

Walter Willett, MD, PhD., author of Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy: The Harvard Medical School Guide to Healthy Eating and chair of the Department of Nutrition, Harvard University said,“ Stuffed makes a forceful and compelling argument that the right mix of regulation and voluntary restraint by the industry will be a topic of legitimate debate for years to come. There is no question that we must find a way to create a level playing field on which the food industry can promote and sell products that support rather than subvert the health of Americans.”

Cardello has been interviewed about the book on ABC News, where he also hosted an online chat, the Los Angeles Times, Air America and more.  He lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and can be found online at www.stuffednation.com.

By Caroline Patton