Top Six Food Politics Lessons Learned in 2011

Nancy Huehnergarth     Huffington Post    12/27/11 03:51 PM ET

This hasn't been a banner year for improving America's food system, food environment or food policies. A look back demonstrates that not only have we failed to make any new progress in food and nutrition policy, but we actually appear to be moving backwards in some instances. Here's why:

1. Congress is in bed with Big Food and under five layers of blankets- One of the most remarkable things food reformers learned this year was just how much influence deep-pocketed Big Food corporations exert over the current Congress. The answer -- when it comes to proposed nutrition policy, if Big Food talks, Congress listens and does what industry wants -- America's kids be damned. Big Food successfully derailed or has worked overtime to weaken National School Lunch Program (NSLP) nutrition standards (pizza is a vegetable!), voluntary guidelines for foods that can be marketed to kids (see Marion Nestle's insightful post on this development), the 2012 Farm Bill (a scary version of which was drafted behind closed doors) and federal menu labeling requirements. And the food industry is already taking aim at the rules being written by the USDA as mandated by the Healthy, Hunger Free Kids Act -- rules that would improve the nutritional content of competitive foods (foods that are not sold as a part of the NSLP). 2012 should bring more of the same thanks to our anti-nutrition policy Congress.

2. The First Lady is a Strong Advocate for Food Policy, Except When We Get Close to an Election Year- Michele Obama's wonderful Let's Move! campaign to end childhood obesity has veered sharply away from supporting policies to improve the food environment for children (the First Lady was instrumental in getting the Healthy, Hunger Free Kid's Act passed in 2010) to brokering voluntary agreements with food corporations and focusing on physical activity. Now there's nothing wrong with voluntary agreements to improve nutrition -- unless they're in lieu of policy, which is the only truly sustainable way to improve our food system and food environment. The First Lady has been conspicuously and painfully silent as Big Food spent millions to successfully weaken the Healthy, Hunger Free Kid's Act, attacked the IWG voluntary guidelines for foods marketed to kids (Margo Wootan of the Center for Science in the Public Interest has done a wonderful job of leading the fight to get these voluntary guidelines passed) and the Farm Bill was negotiated in secret. The closer we get to election year, the more Mrs. Obama seems to shy away from supporting policies that may inflame Big Food. She recently announced a new focus on getting kids to move which Michele Simon brilliantly questioned in "Sorry Mrs. O, but Jumping Jacks Aren't Enough." Will the feisty, policy-supporting Mrs. Obama, please come back in 2012?

3. Big Food Will Go to Great (and Humorous) Lengths to Try to Reframe the Message on Food Reform- If the health problems in this country weren't so serious and costly, we could actually have a good laugh at some of Big Food's more memorable attempts to reframe themselves as champions of a healthy, sustainable food system. Big Ag formed a new alliance, the United States Farmer's and Rancher's Alliance (USFRA), which introduced a new marketing campaign to mend its tattered image. Funny thing is that while USFRA describes itself as representing the average farmer, it appears that the groups' funding this heartwarming campaign are mostly Big Ag concerns including Monsanto, Archer Daniels Midland, Dupont and dozens of Big Ag trade organizations, which are often at odds with the needs of the average farmer. In another wacky development, Andy Bellatti informed us of McDonald's new "farmwashing" campaign, where America's largest fast food corporation, in a fit of McChutzpah, tries to portray their menu as "farm to fork." How about telling the truth, McDonalds? It's Big Ag farm to factory to fork at the golden arches.

4. Big Food and Conservatives Have their Antenna Up for Any "Proof" that Food Policy Doesn't Work- Food industry and conservative critics have jumped on a Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) report about participation decline in their school lunch program since healthier food replaced junk. These critics claim that the LAUSD experience proves that kids won't eat healthier food and in the case of one conservative blogger, Michele Malkin, that the LAUSD experience is indicative of government waste and the "nanny state"(see Bettina Elias Siegel's fine rebuttal). Similarly, critics gleefully report that the Seattle public school system may bring back unhealthy foods into their vending machines due to a drop in vending revenue, which hurts after-school programs. Reality-check time. Does anyone really think that Los Angeles' and Seattle's children who have been raised, since birth, on a steady diet of unhealthy junk and processed foods and are shockingly unfamiliar with vegetables, fruit, whole grains and other healthy fare would change their palates easily and rejoice at the healthy changes in schools? It took decades to teach America's kids to prefer unhealthy food. Yet we're ready to throw in the towel and serve kids the same garbage that has made them the first generation in history that may see a drop in their life expectancy thanks to the epidemic of obesity and related chronic diseases? Conservatives have had no problem being patient for 8 years as the U.S. fought a deadly and costly war in Iraq to root out terrorism. I guess our kid's health isn't as important.

5. Big Food is Cleverly Using Philanthropy to Silence Potential Critics- If you've ever wondered why fine health organizations like the American Dietetic Association, the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, Save the Children, Susan G. Komen For the Cure or the American Academy of Family Physicians accept funding from Big Food behemoths such as Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Hershey's, McDonald's, or KFC, your hunch is probably right. Funding is always tight for non-profits and Big Food knows it. That's why they dangle huge sums of money in front of public health and health organizations that many seem unable to refuse -- even if the money is clearly tainted. And once a health organization accepts Big Food money, they rarely will criticize the food or beverage industry. There needs to be an aggressive campaign to convey how damaging it is to the food reform movement when health organizations accept Big Food philanthropy. And groups that take this tainted money should be publicly shamed. The "good" that they can do with that money is miniscule in comparison to the damage they do with their apparent public support of unhealthy food and drink.

6. Food Reformers Need to Get Tough and Use Different Tactics if We Want to Win - Earlier this year, I wrote about how food reformers' focus on science and evidence is easily trumped by Big Food's money and messaging. If ever a year demonstrated how food reformer's need to "up their game" it was 2011. The food industry's clever advocacy, marketing, lobbying and messaging tactics torpedoed or weakened several important food policies (see Lesson #1, above) that would have made a huge difference in the lives of both kids and adults. We can't win policy fights with industry if we don't use similar tactics. It's also critical that food reform funders start funding counter-marketing, advocacy and messaging campaigns. Yes, Big Food and Big Ag will always have more lobbying/advocacy money than public health advocates. But as the tobacco wars demonstrated, advocacy funding and a strong counter-marketing campaign (the Truth Campaign) can make a huge difference and change public perceptions of industry. Michele Simon's recent post 2012: The Year to Stop Playing Nice, should be a wake-up call to the world of public health.

Food Politics » The farm bill hackathon: results and a plea for more

Marion Nestle    Food Politics    December 13, 2011   

Grist and Food and Tech Connect have excellent reports on last week’s Farm Bill Hackathon. This event brought together farm bill experts and designers to try to produce materials that make farm bill issues accessible.

The terrific winning entry: A Clean Farm Bill of Health slideshow illustrating the contradiction between USDA dietary advice policy and that for farm supports.

I could not participate in the Hackathon but having just taught a class on the farm bill I know what I’d like to have: a complete text of the farm bill annotated to include all of the relevant information.

The 663-page 2008 farm bill is readily accessible online, but it is unreadable (by me at least). This is because it refers to previous bills and other Acts of Congress, which in turn refer to previous bills and Acts, in some cases going back to 1933.

You don’t believe me? Try this entirely typical section, chosen at random:

SEC. 12001. DEFINITION OF ORGANIC CROP.
Section 502(b) of the Federal Crop Insurance Act (7 U.S.C.
1502(b)) is amended—
(1) by redesignating paragraphs (7) and (8) as paragraphs
(8) and (9), respectively; and
(2) by inserting after paragraph (6) the following:
‘‘(7) ORGANIC CROP.—The term ‘organic crop’ means an
agricultural commodity that is organically produced consistent
with section 2103 of the Organic Foods Production Act of 1990
(7 U.S.C. 6502).’’.

It would be so nice to have a text that gives the relevant information in one place: what the Federal Crop Insurance Act says, what paragraphs 7 and 8 are all about, and what’s in section 2103 of the 1990 Act.

Hackers: anyone want to take this on?

Food and Media Companies Lobby to Weaken Guidelines on Marketing Food to Children

Posted: 12/ 7/11 04:15 PM ET

This post was written by Nancy Watzman, consultant for the Sunlight Foundation.

A major lobbying push by a powerful group of food and media companies appears to be working, with a federal agency indicating it would back off on parts of proposed voluntary guidelines for marketing food to children. The guidelines are meant to combat childhood obesity.

Also, language in a pending congressional spending bill, one of several that Congress must approve before the end of the year to keep the government running, threatens to prohibit the agency, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), from issuing a final version of the nutritional guidelines at all without doing a cost-benefit analysis first.
Big companies such as Nestle, Kellogg, Viacom, McDonalds, General Mills, and Time Warner have indicated on official reports that they have lobbied on the controversial proposed guidelines; all together such companies have reported spending more than $37 million on lobbying this year. Most of these companies have a long list of concerns on Capitol Hill of which the nutrition guidelines are just one; however the totals reported demonstrate how powerful a presence these entities have in Washington. Most are also major sources of campaign money for members of Congress.

Kellogg complained that the new guidelines--which the government has stressed would be voluntary--were too strict and among other things could eliminate their use of popular characters like "Tony the Tiger" and "Ernie Keebler," the elf. Children's advocacy and health groups countered that an epidemic of childhood obesity warranted tough action.

"This influence parallels the influence of unhealthy food marketing in our children's lives," says Jeff McIntyre, director of policy for Children Now. "The real price is an obesity rate that has more than tripled in the last 30 year, alarming rises in cardiovascular diseases in younger children, and predictions of shorter life expectancies for American children for the first time in our country's history."

In October hearings before the House Energy and Commerce Committee, a representative from Campbell Soup Company, which reports spending $70,000 on lobbying this year, charged that the nutritional criteria in the guidelines are "unrealistic, counterproductive, contrary to established nutrition policy" and that industry would do a better job of policing itself.

Another witness from the Association of National Advertisers, which reported spending $820,000 on lobbying this year, argued that the proposed guidelines are “backdoor regulation” by four "extremely powerful government agencies that seek to accomplish a goal indirectly that could not be reached through normal rulemaking procedures."

At the same hearing, David Vladeck, director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection for the FTC, announced that the agency was "in the midst of making significant revisions to its preliminary proposal' and that these changes would "share much in common" with new standards proposed by an industry group last summer. These changes include making the guidelines applicable to a smaller age group--children ages 2 to 11 rather than 2 to 17, and exempting seasonal advertising, such as in-store displays for Halloween.

Several weeks later, at a hearing for the renomination of FTC commissioner Jon Leibowitz, Democratic and Republican senators alike--who as reported by Sunlight counted food and media companies among their campaign donors--lobbed hostile questions about the guidelines. Leibowitz stressed the voluntary nature of the guidelines and the fact they are unenforceable.

Meanwhile, last summer, Rep. Jo Ann Emerson, R-Mo., reported the Washington Post, inserted language into a pending appropriations bill that would prohibit the FTC from completing its draft report on nutrition guidelines without first doing a cost benefit analysis. Among her donors this election cycle are PACs for the American Beverage Association, the National Restaurant Association, and PepsiCo Inc., all of which are lobbying against the guidelines. Her office did not return several calls for comment.

The FTC guidelines, which the agency is issuing in conjunction with several other agencies, were mandated in a 2009 appropriations bill. Industry rallied against the guidelines, particularly when the FTC issued a draft and opened it up for comment last April. The agency received 29,000 comments, the great majority from letter writing campaigns supporting the proposal, according to Vladeck's testimony. Industry groups, however, also are heavily represented, with most of the groups that reported lobbying on the guidelines also filing comment letters. (Unique comments can be found on the FTC's website here.)

Some of the companies went beyond in-house lobbying staff to get help from lobbying firms on the issue. For example, the Coca-Cola Company used Williams and Jensen. Pepsico got assistance from the C2 Group and Russell and Barron. Sara Lee used SNR Denton. Over all public relations were handled by Anita Dunn, formerly communications director at the Obama White House, at the firm SKDKnickerbocker Consulting.

Children's advocacy and health organizations that support the guidelines have also reported lobbying on the guidelines; however, their efforts are not as well funded. The Center for Science in the Public Interest, which sent a representative to testify at the October hearings and which was instrumental in creating the 2009 legislation mandating the guidelines, has reported spending $62,354 on lobbying this year. The American Academy of Pediatrics reported spending $205,168, and the American Dental Association, $1.9 million. Other supportive groups, such as Children Now, do not report any lobbying expenses.

Organization    Reported amount spent on lobbying in 2011      
American Advertising Federation $123,000     
American Assn of Advertising Agencies   $180,756     
American Bakers Assn    $23,339
American Beverage Assn  $700,000     
Assn of National Advertisers    $820,000     
Campbell Soup   $70,000
Cargill Inc.    $1,620,356   
Coca-Cola Co    $4,740,000   
Dean Foods      $775,000     
Dunkin' Brands  $390,000     
Entertainment Software Assn     $3,309,034   
General Mills   $660,000     
Grocery Manufacturers Assn      $2,980,000   
Kellogg Co      $639,484     
Kraft Foods     $2,090,000   
Mars Inc        $1,720,000   
McDonald's Corp $1,120,000   
National Grocers Assn   $220,000     
National Restaurant Assn        $2,119,000   
Nestle SA       $3,136,400   
PepsiCo Inc     $2,610,000   
Sara Lee Corp   $390,000     
Snack Food Assn $150,000     
Time Warner     $3,301,979   
Viacom Inc      $2,370,000   
YUM! Brands     $845,000     
TOTAL   $37,103,348  

Follow The Sunlight Foundation on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@SunFoundation
P Please consider the environment before printing this e-mail.

NYTimes: How the Food Industry Eats Your Kid's Lunch

By LUCY KOMISAR    December 3, 2011
 An increasingly cozy alliance between companies that manufacture processed foods and companies that serve the meals is making students — a captive market — fat and sick while pulling in hundreds of millions of dollars in profits. At a time of fiscal austerity, these companies are seducing school administrators with promises to cut costs through privatization. Parents who want healthier meals, meanwhile, are outgunned.

Each day, 32 million children in the United States get lunch at schools that participate in the National School Lunch Program, which uses agricultural surplus to feed children. About 21 million of these students eat free or reduced-price meals, a number that has surged since the recession. The program, which also provides breakfast, costs $13.3 billion a year.

Sadly, it is being mismanaged and exploited. About a quarter of the school nutrition program has been privatized, much of it outsourced to food service management giants like Aramark, based in Philadelphia; Sodexo, based in France; and the Chartwells division of the Compass Group, based in Britain.

They work in tandem with food manufacturers like the chicken producers Tyson and Pilgrim’s, all of which profit when good food is turned to bad.
Here’s one way it works. The Agriculture Department pays about $1 billion a year for commodities like fresh apples and sweet potatoes, chickens and turkeys. Schools get the food free; some cook it on site, but more and more pay processors to turn these healthy ingredients into fried chicken nuggets, fruit pastries, pizza and the like. Some $445 million worth of commodities are sent for processing each year, a nearly 50 percent increase since 2006.

The Agriculture Department doesn’t track spending to process the food, but school authorities do. The Michigan Department of Education, for example, gets free raw chicken worth $11.40 a case and sends it for processing into nuggets at $33.45 a case. The schools in San Bernardino, Calif., spend $14.75 to make French fries out of $5.95 worth of potatoes.

The money is ill spent. The Center for Science in the Public Interest has warned that sending food to be processed often means lower nutritional value and noted that “many schools continue to exceed the standards for fat, saturated fat and sodium.” A 2008 study by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation found that by the time many healthier commodities reach students, “they have about the same nutritional value as junk foods.”

Monica Zimmer, a Sodexo spokeswoman, said that “much has changed” since those studies, pointing to the company’s support for “nutrition education to encourage young students to eat more fruits and vegetables.”

Roland Zullo, a researcher at the University of Michigan, found in 2008 that Michigan schools that hired private food-service management firms spent less on labor and food but more on fees and supplies, yielding “no substantive economic savings.” Alarmingly, he even found that privatization was associated with lower test scores, hypothesizing that the high-fat and high-sugar foods served by the companies might be the cause. In a later study, in 2010, Dr. Zullo found that Chartwells was able to trim costs by cutting benefits for workers in Ann Arbor schools, but that the schools didn’t end up realizing any savings.

Why is this allowed to happen? Part of it is that school authorities don’t want the trouble of overseeing real kitchens. Part of it is that the management companies are saving money by not having to pay skilled kitchen workers.
In addition, the management companies have a cozy relationship with food processers, which routinely pay the companies rebates (typically around 14 percent) in return for contracts. The rebates have generally been kept secret from schools, which are charged the full price.

Last year, Andrew M. Cuomo, then the New York State attorney general, won a $20 million settlement over Sodexo’s pocketing of such rebates. Other states are following New York and looking into the rebates; the Agriculture Department began its own inquiry in August.

With the crackdown on these rebates, food service companies have turned to another accounting trick. I found evidence that the rebate abuses are continuing, now under the name of “prompt payment discounts,” under an Agriculture Department loophole. These discounts, for payments that are often not prompt at all, are really rebates under another name. New York State requires rebates to be returned to schools, but the Sodexo settlement shows how unevenly the ban has been enforced.

The food service companies I spoke with denied any impropriety. “Our culinary philosophy, as a company, is to promote scratch cooking where possible and encourage variety and nutritionally balanced meals,” said Ayde Lyons, a Chartwells spokeswoman. “We use minimally processed foods whenever possible.”

There are economic and nutritional consequences to privatization. School kitchen workers are generally unionized, with benefits; they are also typically local residents who have children in public schools and care about their well-being. Laid-off school workers become an economic drain instead of a positive force. And the rebate deals with national food manufacturers cut out local farmers and small producers like bakers, who could offer fresh, healthy food and help the local economy.

Children pay the price. Dr. Zullo found that privately managed school cafeterias offered meals that were higher in sugar and fats and made unhealthy snack items — soda, cookies, potato chips — more readily available. The companies were also less likely to use reduced-sugar recipes. Linda Hugle, a retired school principal in Three Rivers, Ore., told me that when her district switched to Sodexo, “the savings were paltry.” She added, “You pay a little less and your kids get strawberry milk, frozen French fries and artificial shortening.”

Advocates who fight for better food face an uphill battle. Dorothy Brayley, executive director of Kids First, a nutrition advocacy group in Pawtucket, R.I., told me she encountered resistance in trying to persuade Sodexo to buy from local farmers. (Sodexo says it does buy some local produce and has opened salad bars in many schools.) Donna D. Walsh, a former school board president in Westchester County, N.Y., told me she worked with a supportive superintendent to get Aramark to stop deep-frying food and to open a salad bar. But after a new superintendent came in, she said, the company went back to profit-driven menus of pizza and bagels.

The federal government could intervene. The Agriculture Department proposed new rules this year that would set maximum calories for school meals; require more fruits, vegetables and whole grains; and limit trans fats.
Not surprisingly, the most committed foes of the rules are the same corporations that make money supplying bad food. Aramark, Sodexo and Chartwells, as well as food processing companies like ConAgra, wrote letters arguing, among other things, that children may not want to eat healthier food.

Any increase in fruit and vegetables might result in “plate waste,” wrote Sodexo. A protein requirement at breakfast, Aramark said, would hamper efforts to offer “popular breakfast items.” Their lobbying persuaded members of Congress to block a once-a-week limit on starchy vegetables and to continue to allow a few tablespoons of tomato sauce on pizza to count as a vegetable serving. Thanks to that cave-in, children will continue to get their vegetables in the form of potatoes for breakfast and pizza for lunch.

One-third of children from the ages of 6 to 19 are overweight or obese. These children could see their life expectancies shortened because of their vulnerability to diabetes, heart disease and cancer. Unfortunately, profit, not health, is the priority of the food service management companies, food processors and even elected officials. Until more parents demand reform of the school lunch system, children will continue to suffer.

Lucy Komisar is an investigative reporter and author, who received support from the Investigative Fund, a project of the Nation Institute, for the reporting of this essay.

Y.M.C.A. ‘Healthy Living Standards’ for Children - NYTimes.com

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/30/us/ymca-healthy-living-standards-for-children.html?_r=1&src=rechp

Y.M.C.A. Adopting Health Policies for Youth
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

WASHINGTON — The Y.M.C.A., one of the nation’s largest child-care providers, intends to announce Wednesday that it is adopting new “healthy living standards,” including offering fruits, vegetables and water at snack time, increasing the amount of exercise and limiting video games and television for youngsters in its programs.

The guidelines grow out of discussions the Y has been having with Michelle Obama, the first lady, and the Partnership for a Healthier America, a year-old nonprofit group dedicated to supporting Mrs. Obama’s campaign to reduce childhood obesity. The first lady will join Y officials for the announcement.

Roughly 700,000 youngsters are enrolled in early childhood, after-school and summer programs at 10,000 Y chapters around the country, and the organization has a broad reach into the lives of American families. Independent experts and White House officials say they hope the Y’s move will serve as a model for other day-care providers.

“The difference between kids getting a sugary beverage and an unhealthy snack versus water and an apple can change a kid’s life, if that’s what they are eating day in and day out after school,” said Sam Kass, Mrs. Obama’s top food policy adviser. “The Y sets a standard.”

The standards, however, will be voluntary; Neil Nicoll, president and chief executive of the Y.M.C.A. of the U.S.A., said the national organization could not impose them on chapters. But Mr. Nicoll said that they had been developed in consultation with Y leaders around the country, and that he expected 85 percent of chapters to comply.

“We don’t anticipate a lot of pushback,” he said. “We find that once kids get into healthy habits of eating carrots instead of cookies and being physically active instead of sitting in front of the screen, they go with the flow pretty easily.”

Specifically, the Y is urging its chapters to serve fruits and vegetables at each meal, and to offer water instead of juice. For young children, the guidelines call for 15 minutes of exercise per hour, no more than 60 minutes per day of screen time for 2- to 5-year-olds, and no screen time for children under 2. Older children would have 60 minutes a day of physical activity, and no access to television or movies. Digital devices would be used only for homework or programs that promote physical activity.

Mr. Nicoll estimates the changes will cost 50 cents per child per day; he said the Y was working with food vendors to help chapters buy discounted fruits and vegetables. It has also pledged an independent evaluation of the program’s effectiveness.

“The early childhood and youth development fields need more evidence of what works to prevent and treat obesity in children and adults,” said Carol Emig, president of Child Trends, a research organization not affiliated with the Y. “Hopefully, the Y experience will produce such evidence.”

The Y is the latest in a string of companies and organizations, including Wal-Mart and Walgreens, to sign onto Mrs. Obama’s initiative. This year, Bright Horizons, a company that provides day care to about 70,000 children, agreed to standards similar to those adopted by the Y.

The Partnership for a Healthier America, financed by philanthropies like the Kaiser Permanente and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundations, was founded to work with the private sector, and to ensure that Mrs. Obama’s initiative continues beyond her White House tenure. The Y will unveil its program at the partnership’s first conference; Mrs. Obama will be the keynote speaker.

“One in three kids are overweight or obese,” said Lawrence A. Soler, the partnership’s chief executive. “We are not going to be able to solve this problem in one or two presidential administrations.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: November 30, 2011

An earlier version of this article incorrectly described the source of funding for the Partnership for a Healthier America. It was financed in part by the Kaiser Permanente Foundation, not Kaiser Permanente.

Freakonomics Blog: Still Wrong on Local Food

By Tom Philpott on Fri. November 18, 2011 1:27 PM PDT

When we last checked in with him, Freakonomics blogger Steven Sexton was ludicrously blaming the "local food movement" for a listeria outbreak that sickened people over a swath of the nation stretching from New York to Alabama to Oregon.
Now Sexton is back with an even broader indictment of local food. This one starts off on shaky ground, and then plunges into an abyss of self-assured and deeply flawed analysis. Honestly, I would not spend time engaging with it if I didn't know that serious people, some of whom wield real political power, automatically regard the Freakonomics brand with credulity. So here goes.

Sexton opens by raising the specter of a vast political tide on the verge of imposing relocalization on the US food system. A "Local Farms, Food and Jobs Act" has been introduced in Congress, Sexton informs us, which would allot about $200 million to local farm programs. He acknowledges that that sum amounts to a "rounding error in the $3.7 trillion federal budget"—but that's not all! The local food lobby is formidible. Just look:

But the bill follows on a federal rule that gives preference to local farms in contract bidding for school lunches. It also builds on high-profile advocacy by Michelle Obama, who has become a leader of the food reform movement, joining the likes of Michael Pollan, the author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, and famed-chef Alice Waters.

All of this is nonsense. In terms of influencing public policy, the local-food movement is stuck in the mud. The Local Farms, Food and Jobs Act, paltry sum notwithstanding, has no chance of passing. Meanwhile, a few members of Congress are currently holed up writing a "secret farm bill" which, if it passes, would slash funds for local food projects and provide yet more billions of dollars of public support for the kind of large-scale agriculture Sexton loves.

As for schools giving preference to local farms, their tiny lunch budgets—less than a dollar of federal cash to spend per meal on ingredients—mean they're stuck buying the same old heat-and-serve dreck from the food industry. Meanwhile, Michelle Obama'a food advocacy has devolved into staging photo ops for Walmart. When Big Food lobbyists pushed Congress to gut new rules that would have improved school lunches, the First Lady uttered not a public peep.

So Sexton need not tremble at the thought of government power enforcing the dictates of the local food movement. The well-heeled agribusiness lobby has that arena pretty much sewn up. What he should worry about is the very institution the Freakonomics crew worships: the market. The number of US farmers markets quadrupled between 1994 and 2011, the USDA reports. In another recent study, the agency found that farmers selling into local markets grossed $4.8 billion in 2008, and that direct-to-consumers sales at places like farmers markets spiked 215 percent in real terms between 1992 and 2007.

This explosion in local-food sales took place with minuscule government support, in a period when billions of dollars of annual federal subsidies propped up industrial farming and antitrust regulators looked the other way while agribusiness firms consolidated into vast, market-dominating entities.

In other words, an increasing number of people want to support farmers in their own regions, and are bucking larger economic trends to do so. Are they misguided?
Yes, asserts Sexton: They are violating the doctrine of comparative advantage, and by doing so, they threaten the planet and the hungry. Again, the analysis doesn't hold up. Comparative advantage, an idea from the 19th century British economist David Ricardo, holds that each region should generate a surplus in stuff it can produce most cheaply, and trade those excess goods for the specialized products of other regions.

But in our present-day food system, an entire host of ecological and social calamities masquerade as prime examples of comparative advantage. Sexton, for example, cites the case of California and its massive vegetable production:

The case for specialization is perhaps nowhere stronger than in agriculture, where the costs of production depend on natural resource endowments, such as temperature, rainfall, and sunlight, as well as soil quality, pest infestations, and land costs. Different crops demand different conditions and vary in their resilience to shocks. So California, with mild winters, warm summers, and fertile soils produces all U.S.-grown almonds and 80 percent of U.S. strawberries and grapes.

And that's not all. According to California's ag department, the state produces 99 percent of the artichokes grown in the US, 44 percent of asparagus, a fifth of cabbage, two-thirds of carrots, half of bell peppers, 89 percent of cauliflower, 94 percent of broccoli, and 95 percent of celery, 90 percent of the leaf lettuce, 83 percent of Romaine lettuce, 83 percent of fresh spinach, 84 percent of peaches, and 97 percent of fresh plums.

Now here's a region making the most of its natural resource endowments! However, in much of California's most productive farm land, the apparent comparative advantage is like the sight of water in a sun-baked desert: a mirage.

In the the state's intensively farmed San Joaquin Valley, with its teeming fields of tomatoes, almonds, pistachios, lettuce, cantaloupes, grapes, and other crops, growers have long relied on federally subsidized water diverted from long distances to keep their crops irrigated. As this 2010 Environmental Working Group report shows, the soil in much of the valley is rich in selenium and other salts, which, when subjected to irrigation, concentrates in groundwater and makes it impossible for crops to grow. So that means expensive government-financed projects to divert fouled groundwater into waterways, which just pushes the ecological trouble downstream.

And as drought has further pinched the area's water supplies, water is getting more expensive—forcing farmers to make adjustments that only make things worse. The veteran reporter Matt Jenkins put it this way in a Grist article last year:

Farmers are shifting to higher dollar-value crops that will cover the water price hikes—but, paradoxically, are more sensitive to drought. They're pumping groundwater as an emergency supply of water—and burning through that safety net even as it saves them from the current dry spell. And some farmers here are beginning to think about an exit strategy from agriculture altogether.]

 The US food system brims with such comparative-advantage mirages. Arizona's arid Yuma Valley provides a huge portion of the nation's winter vegetables, but to do so, it relies on the same source of water as California's Central Valley: the Colorado River. As in California, heavy irrigation leads to high salt levels in groundwater, which then flows into Mexico, causing cross-border tensions and forcing expensive action on the part of the US government. South-central Florida, source of 90 percent of US winter tomatoes, has also been hailed as a comparative-advantage paradise for its sunny weather. Yet as Barry Estabrook shows in his excellent book Tomatoland, tomatoes could never grow there without an an annual monsoon of pesticides and fungicides.. And the Midwest's former prairies produce mountains of corn; but in doing so they hemorrhage topsoil at alarming rates and send gushers of agrochemical down the Mississippi where they accumulate in the Gulf of Mexico, creating a huge annual dead zone.

A true application of comparative advantage—one that took ecological factors into account—would likely lead to changes in our food system that Sexton would deplore: a highly diversified, geographically dispersed ag landscape that takes advantage of ecological niches without driving them to ruin.

Brandishing his flawed comparative-advantage analysis, Sexton goes on to make a couple of fatuous claims. First this:

My conservative estimates are that under the pseudo-locavore system, corn acreage increases 27 percent or 22 million acres, and soybean acres increase 18 percent or 14 million acres. Fertilizer use would increase at least 35 percent for corn, and 54 percent for soybeans, while fuel use would climb 23 percent and 34 percent, for corn and soybeans, respectively. Chemical demand would grow 23 percent and 20 percent for the two crops, respectively.

What Sexton is doing here is assuming that a relocalized food system would seek to grow just as much corn and soy as the current one. That's just silly. The local food movement has been relentlessly critical of US ag's corn/soy fixation. Nobody's building out an alternative food system with the intent of reproducing the excesses of the current one.

Then we get this jawdropper:

And, as we try to tackle obesity, locavorism is likely to raise the cost of precisely the wrong foods. Grains can be grown cheaply across much of the country, but the costs of growing produce outside specific, limited regions increase quickly. Thus, nutrient-dense calories like fruits and vegetables become more expensive, while high fructose corn syrup becomes relatively cheaper.

Right; so we're going to relocalize the food system and make sure to keep growing the same amount of corn, which we're going to keep turning it into cheap high-fructose corn syrup. Huh? If Sexton took his nose out of USDA corn and soy data and took a look at what's happening on the ground across the country, he'd see that no one is looking to open a local corn syrup factory.

But Sexton isn't doing the serious work of thinking through what a re-localized food system would look like. We need much more of that—including critical perspectives. What he's doing instead is mounting an intellectually vapid defense of the current deeply flawed food system, swathed in the high-sounding tropes of classical economics.

Healthier School Lunches? No Thank You, Says Congress

By Meredith Melnick   Wednesday, November 16, 2011 
http://healthland.time.com/2011/11/16/healthier-school-lunches-no-thank-you-says-congress/

Is pizza with tomato sauce a vegetable? Apparently yes, according to Congress, which on Monday blocked legislation that would have made school lunches healthier.

In their final version of a spending bill that includes planning for the $11 billion National School Lunch Program, House and Senate committee members blocked or delayed major proposals from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) that aimed to toughen nutritional standards for students' subsidized meals.

The USDA proposals — the first update to school-lunch nutritional guidelines in 15 years — suggested cutting back on salt; reducing starchy vegetables like potatoes, corn, lima beans and peas; and adding more fresh fruits and vegetables. The proposals also called for setting a maximum calorie allowance for meals (currently, there is only a calorie minimum) and installing more specific targets for dairy and whole grain content in school lunches. The USDA also proposed not counting tomato paste on pizza as a vegetable.

Given that a third of American children are overweight or obese, and that they get roughly 40% of their daily calories during school lunch, nutrition experts have long advocated for an overhaul of the federally subsidized meals dished out to 31 million students each year.

Not surprisingly, frozen pizza makers and potato growers pushed back on the USDA proposals. Schools also complained that the changes would have cost too much money, and some politicians and school administrators said the government shouldn't be in the business of telling school districts that they can't serve specific foods.

Citing financial concerns and a lack of data on the potential benefits of the USDA proposals, Congress blocked the following requirements:

• Limiting starchy vegetables, including corn, peas and potatoes to two servings a week, and requiring weekly minimums of leafy greens and vitamin-rich orange veggies. This measure was aimed at reducing kids' consumption of French fries, which some schools serve daily. (A group of senators with farmer constituents, led by Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, successfully blocked this provision.)
• Preventing two tablespoons of tomato paste — roughly the amount on a serving of pizza — from being classified as a serving of vegetable. The USDA wanted to increase the conversion, and allow no less than a half-cup of tomato paste — too much to put on a pizza, but adequate for more nutrient-dense meals like pasta, chili, ragout and soup — to equal a serving of vegetables. Federally subsidized lunches are required to have a minimum number of vegetables to be served.
• Limiting sodium in school meals. Congress wants to hold off until more study is done on the long-term effects of sodium-reduction requirements.
• Requiring half of all grains and breads to come from whole grains, rather than refined sources. Congress requested that the USDA define "whole grains" before regulating them.

"They are making sure that two of the biggest problems in the school lunch program, pizza and French fries, are untouched," Margo Wootan, a nutrition advocate at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, told the AP.

The USDA's recommendations, originally announced in January, would have significantly revamped the standard school menu, as evidenced by a pair of before-and-after weekly menus [PDF] — one based on the current guidelines, and the other based on the proposed updates. "This is a huge step forward and USDA deserves lots of support for doing this," wrote Marion Nestle, a nutrition professor at New York University and the author of Food Politics, on her blog at the time. It's a shame the agency didn't get it.


Meredith Melnick is a reporter at TIME. Find her on Twitter at @MeredithCM. You can also continue the discussion on TIME's Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIME.

The Secret Farm Bill

By  Mark Bittman  November 8, 2011   NYT
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/08/the-secret-farm-bill/?utm_source=Food%2BTech+Connect+Newsletter&utm_campaign=0d55569f6c-Food_Tech_Bytes_11_14_11_11_20_1111_14_2011&utm_medium=email#

The Republican-manufactured budget crisis of this past summer — remember? — resulted in a “solution” that’s hijacking what little representative democratic process we have left. Equally sad is that the so-called supercommittee — charged with creating an outline for reducing the deficit by $1.2 trillion over 10 years — may preclude full discussion of the farm bill.The

It’s the farm bill that largely shapes food and agriculture policy, and — though much of it finances good programs — ultimately supports the cynical, profit-at-any-cost food system that drives obesity, astronomical health care costs, ethanol-driven agriculture and more, creating further deficits while punishing the environment.

The farm bill is written every five years. Although the current one doesn’t expire until September, the next one may be all but wrapped up by your first bite of turkey, because the leaders of the House and Senate agriculture committees — a group of four, representing Oklahoma, Michigan, Minnesota and Kansas (do you see a pattern here?) — are working feverishly to draw up a proposal in time to submit it to the supercommittee before the Nov. 23 deadline.

This leaves many advocates and progressives in the world of food, environment, health and poverty in the odd position of trying to influence the group of four’s report to the supercommittee while hoping the process fails. Because if the supercommittee cannot agree on deficit reduction (and it probably won’t, unless stubborn Republicans cave on revenues or Democrats misplace their spines again), we’ll see automatic cuts made to the bloated defense budget that we otherwise would not. (Although the Pentagon’s defenders on the Hill are looking for wiggle room.)

Still. If recommendations by the four farm-state people are folded into the supercommittee’s deficit reduction package, and that package passes, we could see five more years of food policy signed into law without so much as a spirited debate.

Welcome to the world of the secret farm bill, a world of intrigue and ambivalence.

Some think that there’s a better chance of influencing the supercommittee by lobbying the group of four than there is of passing an improved farm bill through the Republican-controlled house. Others think the atmosphere around food has changed, and an open policy discussion just might yield a farm bill that supports real food.

I’d rather think about dinner, but this stuff is distracting.


The group of four is aiming at $23 billion in cuts, with around $14 billion coming from commodity subsidies, $6 billion from conservation programs, and the rest from nutrition programs like food stamps, now more important than ever. Everyone (almost literally) wants the restructuring of subsidies, but it sounds as if direct payments would be replaced by a new “shallow-loss” protection plan, essentially free insurance that would cover revenue losses before the also heavily subsidized paid insurance kicks in. Replacing direct payments with shallow-loss protection may save some money, but does nothing to change the fact that the wrong people will get it.

And the devil is in the details. Will small and medium farms raising what are outrageously called “specialty crops” (fruits and vegetables!) be covered by shallow-loss? Will programs supporting new farms, local farms, organic food, access to real food by real people, be boosted? Probably not.

Few are privy to discussions of either the group of four or the supercommittee. Those in Congress who appear most concerned about the process are led by Representative Ron Kind, Democrat of  Wisconsin, who, with 26 other members of Congress, sent a letter to the supercommittee urging it to reject the creation of new farm programs outside the normal legislative order. Meanwhile, Congress was flooded by 27,000 phone calls — encouraged by the excellent Food Democracy Now — protesting the secret farm bill.

Scores of legislators, farm and advocacy groups, individuals and other organizations have crafted proposals to be considered for the next farm bill (here are just a few), and at least some are slipping notes under the door of the group of four, hoping to influence their recommendations. Among the best of these is the Local Farms, Food and Jobs Act, a title that would strengthen local and regional agriculture and increase access to healthy food, introduced by Congresswoman Chellie Pingree, Democrat of  Maine, and Senator Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio.

I spoke with Pingree by phone on Monday. The title, she said, “looks at existing programs and tries to find ways to make them work for the small to medium-sized family farm, which is the side of agriculture that’s actually growing.” It would make it easier for small and new farmers to borrow money, get small grants and secure crop insurance. It would make it easier to use food stamps at farmers’ markets and buy local food for school lunches.

In short, it would be a huge step in the right direction, and asking your Congress representative  to co-sponsor this title is worth five minutes of your time.

Pingree “was looking forward to a public hearing on those things that should be eliminated or encouraged, and re-evaluating how we treat food and agriculture in this country.” But with the farm bill headed for a quick (and secret) trip through the supercommittee, large-scale reforms like hers may not get the consideration they deserve. Although Pingree is optimistic that she’ll get at least some of her proposals included in the supercommittee report, without an out-in-the-open process real change will be shut out of the debate, as will entire states like California, whose gigantic agricultural industry produces the bulk of our “specialty crops.” (Fruits and vegetables, remember?) As for Vermont, Maine, Oregon and other states where small farms are gaining in number and strength: wait five years.

The Republican plan, of course, is to use everything — including the farm bill — as a tool for cuts. But a farm bill that preserves the status quo instead of addressing a food system that causes disease and wrecks the environment isn’t even marginally serious about deficit reduction. By 2030 Type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease will combine for costs of more than $1.5 trillion — not over 10 years but annually! Need I remind you that these are both preventable, diet-related diseases?

The savings are in producing, selling, cooking and eating healthy food, in supporting the farmers who grow it and in getting it to everyone. The farm bill, which shapes agricultural policy, should re-shape it when it isn’t working, not replace a direct corn subsidy with a slightly cheaper indirect one.

Those who are ready and willing to make these arguments publicly may not even get that chance. Our food system deserves a fairer fight than that. So do we.

Kids And Teens See More Ads For Sugary Drinks

October 31, 2011  by Allison Aubrey

Kids and teens saw double the number of ads for soda in 2010 than they did in 2008.
From 2008 to 2010, children's and teens' exposure to television ads for soda doubled, according to a new report from the Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity at Yale University. And beverage companies targeted black and Hispanic kids more than others in recent ads, the report found.

Commercials for Coke and Dr. Pepper products led the increase. Pepsi actually showed young audiences 22 percent fewer commercials for its products in that same time period.

Under a voluntary agreement, beverage companies have pledged to improve advertising directed to kids. But "our results clearly show that the beverage industry's self-regulatory pledges are not working," says Kelly Brownell, director of the Rudd Center.
 
The American Beverage Association takes issue with the report's conclusions. "This report is another attack by known critics in an ongoing attempt to single out one product as the cause of obesity when both common sense and widely accepted science have shown that the reality is far more complicated," writes president and chief executive officer Susan Neely in a statement.

Neely also points to research documenting a dramatic change in food and beverage advertising during children's programming.

Between 2004 and 2010, advertisements for soft drinks decreased by 96 percent, according to a study conducted by Georgetown Economic Services. It also found that, during the same time period, ads for fruit and vegetable juices increased by 199 percent. (The study was sponsored by the food and beverage industry.)

The beverage industry also says the new Rudd report does not adequately differentiate between ads directed to children (think: Nickelodeon's Back at the Barnyard) and marketing to teens and general audiences (think: Dancing With the Stars). Lots of programs capture adolescent audiences, but are not considered to be children's programming

Beverage companies currently follow guidelines of the Children's Advertising Review Unit of the Council of Better Business Bureaus, the self-regulatory body for children's advertising. But the industry also played a part in shaping those guidelines to suit their business model.

The Rudd Center, however, would like to see the government place strict regulations on companies advertising unhealthy foods, like sugary beverages, to children. The Federal Trade Commission says that, together with the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, it is developing "a set of principles to guide industry efforts to improve the nutritional profile of foods marketed directly to children ages 2-17 and to tap into the power of advertising and marketing to support healthful food choices." But so far, it looks like those guidelines are likely to be voluntary, too.

FT: Obesity: An ever heftier problem

By Louise Lucas, Alan Rappeport and Andrew Jack

Industry under fire for what many see as undue influence over health policy

In the food fight between governments and the “big snack” sector, Ronald McDonald and Tony the Tiger appear to have won the latest round. As ambassadors for multinationals that sell fast food and sugary cereal, the duo boast powerful backers. So it was perhaps less than surprising that US regulators this month retreated from proposals to ban the advertising of less healthy foods to children in a drive to combat ballooning rates of obesity.

Five years after the ranks of the obese overtook the number of malnourished in the world, numerous governments are acting to tackle a problem that is taking its toll on public health, healthcare budgets and workplace productivity alike. The global bill for type 2 diabetes alone, a condition brought on largely by being overweight, will on some estimates approach an annual $500bn by 2030.

That has sparked a debate over the role played by the food and drinks industry in setting the policy agenda. Critics charge that manufacturers of products that many see as contributing to the obesity epidemic increasingly wield undue influence over governments and social policymaking through their lobbying dollars. For its part, the industry argues that it is working in partnership on the issue and that self-regulation will prove more effective than measures, such as taxes and advertising restrictions, which it says will have costs that struggling households can ill-afford.

But can an industry that is seen as a big part of the problem also be part of the solution? The question was highlighted in New York last month at a UN summit on non-communicable diseases, many of which are caused by obesity. A decision to place business interests and advocacy groups under the same “civil society” banner irked non-governmental organisations that believe food and beverage companies should not be involved in setting policy but be brought into the process only at the implementation stage. For some, the omission of targets from the final document was taken as evidence of effective industry lobbying.

Speed read

Weighty question Can an industry seen as part of the problem also be part of the solution? The question was highlighted at last month’s UN summit on non-communicable diseases, many of which are caused by obesity. Some saw the omission of targets from the final document as evidence of effective industry lobbying

Smoke free The industry is keen to distance itself from parallels with tobacco, citing a lack of precise proven correlation between its products and the growing global burden of cancer, diabetes and cardiovascular disease

New markets Manufacturer behaviour is hard to monitor at global level – and fears remain that food producers simply dump their less healthy offerings on poorer countries with weaker regulations

“The reason we are particularly anxious they should not be there at the policy formulation stage is some of the policies one wants to discuss are controls on the market,” says Tim Lobstein of the International Association for the Study of Obesity, funded in part by the European Commission and the World Health Organisation. “If industry is there it will be very vigorous in undermining this, because that’s what it doesn’t want.”

Foodmakers retort that they too have an interest in prolonging life. “We want consumers coming back to us in the long term, enjoying products that are good for their health, or we will lose them, from a purely business point of view,” says Derek Yach of PepsiCo, the US beverages and snacks maker. Some governments appear to buy this line. On the Responsibility Deal Food Network, Britain’s task force on the issue, business interests have more representatives – six out 12 – than any other group.

This blending of industry and advocacy groups led to the crumbling of a similar deal on alcohol – NGOs walked out after grumbling that spirits producers had seized control of policymaking – but food manufacturers are quick to insist their network is one of equals. “This is not a lovey group on behalf of industry. It’s a partnership we believe will move quicker and make more progress working together as a group,” says Fiona Dawson, president of Mars Chocolate UK and a member of the food network.

The structure chimes with the UK’s strategy of “nudging” citizens into correct habits rather than wielding a legislative stick. Academics such as Harvard University’s Edward Glaeser see this type of “soft paternalism” as an “emotional tax on behaviour, which yields no government revenues”. But Anne Milton, Britain’s public health minister, bristles at any suggestion of laxity. “I don’t think we are at the soft end on this. There are already quite a lot of regulations out there about food, particularly on advertising to children,” she says.

. . .

Across the Atlantic, the industry fended off the recent move towards tougher rules by marshalling numbers, rhetoric and a dose of ridicule to keep airing advertisements to children over the age of 11. “Does anyone seriously believe that ‘voluntarily’ removing corporate icons such as Tony the Tiger or making ‘Snap, Crackle and Pop’ Public Enemy Number 1 or removing pictures of well-known athletes from cereal boxes would materially reduce childhood obesity?” wrote Daniel Jaffe of the Association of National Advertisers, a US marketing organisation, in congressional testimony.

There is, however, evidence to the contrary. After the UK government ordered curbs on advertising fatty, sugary and salty foods to children, children’s body mass index dropped, a report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development found. In the case of self-regulation, “the effects of the intervention were assumed to be half of those produced by formal regulatory measures, because of possibly looser limitations self-imposed on advertising and a less than universal compliance to the voluntary arrangements,” the Paris think-tank concluded.

Yet industry has a back-up answer to that one too: shackle us with restrictions and you choke off jobs. The more successful curbs on advertising are, “the greater will be the economic damage to jobs and numerous businesses”, wrote Mr Jaffe.

For Rhona Applebaum, chief regulatory officer of Coca-Cola, taxes conjure up pictures of a Big Brother state. “It’s almost a rat in a cage model, where they are giving us the food and taking our choice away. We’re not going to control all human behaviour, nor should we strive to. If you give people the information, 99 per cent of the time they’re going to make the right decision.”

‘Fat tax’ milks the Danes

Denmark is not the only country to combat obesity with fiscal levers – Hungary recently brought in a tax targeting soft drinks and snacks; France too is planning a levy on soft drinks, write Louise Lucas and Clare MacCarthy. But when Copenhagen imposed the world’s first “fat tax” this month, it highlighted something of an anomaly.

For as well as its famed buttery pastries, Denmark also produces relatively slim people. About 13 per cent of the population was classed as obese last year by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, lower than the European average. The goal, according to the previous government, which introduced the levy, was to raise life expectancy.

The tax – DKr16 ($2.98) per kilogramme of saturated fat in a product – will increase the price of a burger by about $0.15 and that of a pack of butter by about $0.50.

Critics contend that the levy is complicated and costly to calculate, and harms business. With suppliers refusing to issue details on ingredients, some stockists have dropped speciality products such as Tuscan salami. Swedish supermarkets have reported a run on butter as Danish shoppers cross the border seeking cheaper fare. And the Danish bakers’ guild has complained to the European Union that the levy skews competitiveness: Danish-made deep-fried Christmas cookies are levied on the oil used to cook them, including the fat that remains in the vat. The charge on their German-made equivalents covers only the fat content of the finished product.

Officials counter that calculating the fat content of most dairy products and oils is “administratively relatively simple”. Government guidelines, however, show the process can be arcane: fat levels in sunflower seeds from a south-facing Spanish field can be different from those grown in Germany. The milk of cattle fed on fresh grass all summer will differ from the output of those fed on hay.

Despite generating an expected DKr550m in extra public revenues this year, the surcharge could soon be overhauled: the new centre-left government is considering changes in response to business and consumer protests. Christian Bitz, Denmark’s favourite television nutritionist, offers an attractively simple alternative – why not just drop value added tax on healthy food such as fruit and vegetables instead?

Persuading the authorities to make their own “right decision” is a process on which her company and its rivals, meanwhile, lavish both attention and cash. According to the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a US consumer advocacy group, Coca-Cola has spent nearly $25m on government lobbying in the past six years, and PepsiCo close to $19m. Both complain about being unfairly targeted as culprits of obesity, while acknowledging that their products should be used in moderation and not marketed aggressively towards children.

Above all, the industry is keen to distance itself from parallels with tobacco. Its arguments include the lack of a precise proven correlation between its products and the growing global burden of cancer, diabetes and cardiovascular disease; and the fact that, unlike tobacco, moderate consumption of food and drink is not only harmless but also necessary.

“It’s a fundamental mistake to think you can apply tobacco policy to food policy. Tobacco policy worked because every type of tobacco can be taxed. We have no idea if people will switch to other beverages with higher calorie content if sodas are taxed,” says Pepsi’s Mr Yach.

Lobbying is not the only weapon in companies’ arsenal. Producers are themselves removing fats, sugars and salt by the truckload. Nestlé, the world’s biggest food producer by sales, recites the tens of thousands of tonnes of bad fats, salt and sugar it has cut from its output worldwide. Kraft, a main competitor, has set a goal of reducing sodium by an average of 10 per cent across its North American portfolio by next year and has reformulated about one-quarter of its products in the US since 2005.

. . .

Even these moves raise cavils, however. For one, cautions the obesity association’s Mr Lobstein, the small print does not always bear out the headlines. He cites PepsiCo’s pledge to reduce the average sugar level in its drinks. It can do this, he says, while keeping sugar amounts constant – just so long as it sells even more cans of low- or zero-calorie drinks.

Second, voluntary pledges can be overturned on a whim. Campbell Soups did just this when it announced last July – in a statement to investors headed “Campbell continues to provide consumers with an array of lower-sodium choices” – that it would be “improving the taste” of 31 soups with “a variety of flavours and seasonings, including increased salt”.

Third, manufacturer behaviour is difficult to monitor effectively at global level – and the fear remains that food producers “do a tobacco” and simply bump their less healthy offerings into poorer countries with weaker regulations. There they are free to use tactics, such as advertising targeted at children, that are no longer acceptable in the west.
In China, which has seen the biggest growth in diabetes in both percentage terms and absolute numbers – 92m have the condition and another 140m are on track to acquire it, according to the International Diabetes Federation – the debate shaping a public agenda on obesity is just beginning. India trails even further behind.
Beyond China and India are a long list of smaller countries that are no match for the might of business: 60 per cent of the world’s nations have an economic output lower than the annual turnover of the top five food and beverage companies, according to one academic’s calculations.

It is in these countries too that particularly questionable tactics for marketing to children are in evidence. Consumers International, a UK-based watchdog, points to Kentucky Fried Chicken’s Chicky Club in Malaysia, the biggest children’s membership organisation in the country, which offers discounts on unhealthy products directly to children. In the Philippines, Nestlé’s “fuel for school” television commercial alludes to increased academic performance from eating its high-sugar Koko Krunch cereal.

Nestlé says the advertisement merely “communicates that eating breakfast is a good start to help children perform well at school”.
The OECD finds counter-productive effects from the preponderance of food companies that help to run health education and exercise initiatives, such as Coca-Cola’s and Kraft’s after-school health and wellness programmes for pupils. “These initiatives likely contribute to brand loyalty and may even increase consumption of the products of the sponsoring firms by those who are exposed to them,” says the report.
For the industry, this is all part of its well-meant efforts. But as the survival of Ronald McDonald and Tony the Kellogg tiger suggests, the common ground only goes so far – perhaps just so far as agreeing that no one wants to be fat.
For some, those extra layers of blubber are the profits of the food and drink industry made flesh. Others demur. Says Michael Silverstein of Boston Consulting Group: “It’s not the food industry’s fault. It’s the human condition.”
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