An assistant professor at the University of Ottawa who operates a healthy-eating website is taking issue with a fundraising campaign held this month by Health Sciences North Foundation.
Dr. Yoni Freedoff, author of The Diet Fix, and founder of Ottawa's non-surgical Bariatric Medical Institute, is unimpressed by the foundation's pairing with Dairy Queen. Residents who buy a six pack of Oreo Blizzard Cupcakes in February will see $2 of $14 cost of the cupcakes donated to help cardiac programs at the hospital.
“From the annals of junk food fundraising, I bring you this gem from Sudbury's Health Sciences North Foundation,” Freedoff writes in a post on his website, weightymatters.ca.
“Just in case you want to take the position that you'd be buying them anyhow, looking to Health Science North Foundation's Facebook page you'll see their encouragement to buy them 'for a good cause,' and that you should '#treatyoself' and that, 'now's your chance to eat cupcakes without guilt.'"
Making it worse, he writes that people must buy six cupcakes at a time, “and each and every one packs 240 calories along with five teaspoons of sugar. That hospitals and their foundations are comfortably shilling half a dozen cupcakes in return for $2 isn't so much reflective of incompetence, but more that junk food fundraising is so normalized that no one bothers giving it a second thought.”
A call to Mary Lou Hussak, executive director of Health Sciences North Foundation, wasn't returned by Sudbury.com's deadline. Dan Lessard, a spokesperson for the hospital, said questions regarding the campaign should be directed to the foundation.
