The Washington Post’s Roberto Ferdman reported Thursday on the launch of a new advertising campaign targeting the fast-casual restaurant chain Chipotle. Kicking off with a full-page ad in the New York Post, the campaign, funded by the Center for Consumer Freedom, chastises Chipotle for selling high-calorie fare while marketing itself as a healthy alternative. Accompanied by a photo of an obese man who grins as he flexes, the ad says, “Eat two ‘all natural’ Chipotle burritos a week and you could gain 40 pounds in a year.”
The CCF, a nonprofit that lobbies for the food industry, is run by Richard Berman, a food- and energy-industry marketing consultant. Last fall, the New York Times reported on a secret recording of Berman talking tactics to an energy-industry crowd and saying, “You can either win ugly or lose pretty.” He told company executives they “must be willing to exploit emotions like fear, greed and anger and turn them against the environmental groups.”
Chipotle’s marketing has upset agribusiness interests in the past. And other, less-vested parties have noted the seeming contradiction between some of the company’s health claims and its portion sizes and the calories in its food. Earlier this year, a New York Times analysis found that “most meals” at Chipotle had “more than 1,000 calories and almost a full day’s worth of sodium.”