Say you're in the snack food business. Your products are popular amongst kids and adults alike. You rely on an arsenal of creative marketing to keep the money rolling in. Also, although your snack products are - when you get down to basics - really just reconstituted corn and its byproducts, they involve some pretty high-tech manufacturing techniques. So when the profitability of those products is threatened, you'd fight like the Dickens to protect yourself, wouldn't you?

That's exactly what's going on now, as manufacturers like Coca-Cola, Hershey, Kraft, Kellogg and Frito-Lay tweak their product lineup a little. Juuust enough, mind you, to meet criticism that they are contributing to the so-called obesity epidemic - and it's terrible health complications including heart disease and Type 2 diabetes - through peddling their fat and sugar-saturated products. As this AP article details, the snack food industry changes represent an attempt to, firstly, capitalize on the growing consumer demand for "healthy" food choices and, second, to undermine their critics (including those in government) who accuse them of direct responsibility for the health crisis.

From Kellogg to McDonald's, big business execs are scrambling to protect their companies: their brand image, their profitability, their investments and, yes, their employees. No, this is not really about the health of the nation or anything lofty like that. It's about cynically protecting the bottom line. Yet, strangely, I feel no sense of outrage about this. Can you blame them for giving just a little instead of a lot? What's more, while fatty snacks may be contributing to an overall decline in public health, I'd argue it's a step too far to compare the manufacturers to, say, the tobacco industry. After all, Fritos may be a nutritionist's nightmare but there's no addiction factor here to muddy the ethical waters. Nevertheless, given what happened to Big Tobacco, the snack food industry is taking no chances.