The Shocking Reason Sweetgreen CEO Was Called 'Fat-Phobic'
Johnathan Neman, CEO and co-founder of the salad chain Sweetgreen, has ended up with his foot in his mouth after some controversial comments. The comments have drawn ire from people who feel the CEO comes off as fat-phobic.
According to the Sweetgreen website, the company's mission is to build healthier communities by serving sustainable, fresh, and healthy ingredients. The company was started in August 2007 to provide healthy options as an alternative to traditional fast food. However, some believe that specialty salad restaurants like Sweetgreen and its competitors Chop't, Tendergreens, and Just Salad aren't as accessible as they aim to be due to high prices (via Huffington Post). Depending on the order, food options from the salad chains aren't even necessarily healthier than other fast food options when the nutritional values are broken down, according to the Washington Post.
Now Sweetgreen CEO Neman is in hot water after discussing his personal response to the COVID pandemic. Find out what he said below.
Sweetgreen CEO's controversial comments
The Sweetgreen CEO Johnathon Neman made the controversial comments in a LinkedIn post. As People reports, the post implied that the "root cause" of COVID was actually processed, unhealthy food and that masks and vaccines are not going to fix that. Neman claimed that a large majority of COVID hospitalizations were "obese and overweight people" and suggested that there were underlying causes in healthcare that were not being addressed. He suggested government incentives like taxes on processed foods to deal with the issue.
Commenters were quick to call out his post. One commenter said, "Yikes, this is incredibly fat-phobic ... Have you considered how our healthcare system systematically underserves people who are considered to be in those groups?" He responded to the comment, saying that the poster had made some good points and that healthy food needs to be made more accessible (via Business Insider).
The post has since been deleted.