• Fortune, Thursday, October 28, 2010 10:48 AM

Nestlé, which makes Hot Pockets and Häagen Dazs as Dan Mitchell pointedly points out, says it's creating Nestle Health Science S.A. and the Nestle Institute of Health Science because it wants to find "cost effective ways to prevent and treat acute and chronic diseases in the 21st century" and has identified "a new opportunity between food and pharma."

"The company is leaving little room for interpretation here: It means to peddle processed food products as medicine," Mitchell writes. "That's not always a bad thing, but it usually is," he claims.

POM Wonderful's claims that its studies preliminarily show that its juice will treat or prevent heart disease, prostate cancer and erectile dysfunction are a case in point. And POM is just a little bit more aggressive than most other major food producers in taking advantage of "the confusing legal and regulatory framework that allows food to be marketed as medicine, or at least to be sold based on dubious health claims."

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