Balanced.org is an organization aiming to promote healthier food across America. Find out everything you need to know about Balanced.org today.
What Is Balanced.org?
Balanced.org is an advocacy organization that wants to encourage food companies to offer healthier foods to the American public.
The organization – founded by the mother of a two-year-old girl – claims that major food corporations have prioritized their profits over our health for too long. These corporations have ignored federal dietary guidelines and nutritional evidence. Today, the public is the one paying for it in the form of diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, and premature death.
Balanced.org compares this system to the tobacco industry of several decades ago:
“These companies have created a public health crisis and blamed it on us, just like big tobacco did two generations ago. Like big tobacco, they’ve called consumer health an individual choice—not a corporate responsibility. The truth is, we’ve been set up to fail.”
Balanced claims we’ve been set up to fail because there are too many cheap sources of bad food. It’s too easy to eat bad food – and too expensive to eat healthy. So yes, consumers technically have a choice – “but how much choice do we really have?” asks the official Balanced.org website.
What Does Balanced.org Hope to Accomplish?
The official Balanced website features a signup form where you can enter your first name, last name, and email address. By entering your contact information into that form, the organization promises to “hold major food corporations accountable for bringing balance to cafeterias, menus and store shelves”.
Here are some of the more specific goals of the movement:
- Food companies should sell food that reflects federal dietary guidelines and the best nutritional evidence available today
- Balanced wants more whole grains, beans, fruits, and vegetables in America’s food supply
- The organization also wants fewer servings of foods high in saturated fat, carcinogens, and sodium – like processed meats and other processed food
- Balanced.org has a donation form where you can choose to donate monthly or once; their suggested donation is $45
Who’s Behind Balanced.org?
Balanced.org was created by a concerned mom of a two-year-old girl. That mom tries her best to keep her daughter healthy, but struggles “in a world where so much of the food available is so bad for us.” She founded Balanced with the goal of making it easier for parents to feed their children healthy food.
The organization claims to be backed by a number of leading organizations, including the American Heart Association, the Obesity Action Coalition, The Defeat Diabetes Foundation, and major healthcare providers like Kaiser Permanente and The Mayo Clinic.
The organization also has a number of medical professionals on its advisory board.
You can contact the company by email at [email protected] or by phone at 816-945-4037.
The non-profit organization was launched in 2017.
Should You Donate to Balanced.org?
Balanced.org was founded on the idea that it shouldn’t be this hard to feed healthy food to your families. The goal of the organization is to hold food manufacturers accountable for their unhealthy food choices, and to have them choose public health over profits.
So far, it’s difficult to find concrete actions performed by the organization. The website just came online in April 2017. Although the website accepts donations, it’s unclear where your donations are going, or how much of those donations go towards administrative costs.
Ultimately, like any other new non-profit organization, you should wait for more information to appear online before you donate to Balanced.org. Although the organization appears to have good intentions, it’s uncertain how they plan to accomplish their lofty goals.
