Published August 26, 2011
http://www.thelancet.com/series/obesity
This four-part Series critically examines what we know about the global obesity pandemic: its drivers, its economic and health burden, the physiology behind weight control and maintenance, and what science tells us about the kind of actions that are needed to change our obesogenic environment and reverse the current tsunami of risk factors for chronic diseases in future generations.
The first paper looks at the global drivers of the epidemic; the second paper analyses obesity trends in the USA and UK, and their impact on prevalence of diseases and healthcare spending. The third paper introduces a new web-based bodyweight simulation model, that incorporates metabolic adaptations that occur with decreasing bodyweight; and the final paper assesses the interventions needed to halt and reverse the epidemic. Its authors conclude that the changes needed are likely to require many sustained interventions at several levels, but that national governments should take the lead.
Series Comments
The future challenge of obesity
David King
Full Text | PDF
Reversing the tide of obesity
William H Dietz
Full Text | PDF
Where next for obesity
Harry Rutter
Full Text | PDF
Series Papers
The global obesity pandemic: shaped by global drivers and local environments
Boyd A Swinburn, Gary Sacks, Kevin D Hall, Klim McPherson, Diane T Finegood, Marjory L Moodie, Steven L Gortmaker
Summary | Full Text | PDF
Health and economic burden of the projected obesity trends in the USA and the UK
Y Claire Wang, Klim McPherson, Tim Marsh, Steven L Gortmaker, Martin Brown
Summary | Full Text | PDF
Quantification of the effect of energy imbalance on bodyweight
Kevin D Hall, Gary Sacks, Dhruva Chandramohan, Carson C Chow, Y Claire Wang, Steven L Gortmaker, Boyd A Swinburn
Summary | Full Text | PDF
Changing the future of obesity: science, policy, and action
Steven L Gortmaker, Boyd A Swinburn, David Levy, Rob Carter, Patricia L Mabry, Diane T Finegood, Terry Huang, Tim Marsh, Marjory L Moodie
Summary | Full Text | PDF
Sunday, August 28, 2011
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
Food Politics » SNAP soda ban? USDA says no!
Food Politics » SNAP soda ban? USDA says no!:
Marion Nestle
Marion Nestle
SNAP soda ban? USDA says no!
Remember New York City’s idea to ban purchase of sodas with SNAP (food stamp) benefits? I supported the proposal and explained why in posts on April 16, April 30, and May 1.
USDA has just sent a letter turning down the proposal. Most of its grounds for denial are technical: too much, too soon, too big, too complex, too hard to evaluate.
Underlying these concerns is a philosophical issue:
USDA has a longstanding tradition of supporting and promoting incentive-based solutions to the obesity epidemic, especially among SNAP recipients. In fact, USDA is currently partnering with the State of Massachusetts in implementing the Healthy Incentives Pilot, which increases SNAP benefits when fruits and vegetables are purchased….We feel it would be imprudent to reverse policy at this time while the evaluation component of the Healthy Incentives Pilot is ongoing.
SNAP is USDA’s biggest program. The latest figures on participation and costindicate that SNAP serves 40 million people at a cost of $68 billion annually.
Advocates for SNAP prefer positive incentives. They strongly—and successfully—opposed the New York City proposal.
Indeed, the public health and anti-hunger advocacy communities are split on this issue.
I wish they would find common ground. Rates of obesity are higher among the poor than they are in the general population.
That, after all, was the proposal’s purpose in the first place. As Mayor Bloomberg put it:
We think our innovative pilot would have done more to protect people from the crippling effects of preventable illnesses like diabetes and obesity than anything being proposed anywhere else in this country – and at little or no cost to taxpayers. We’re disappointed that the Federal Government didn’t agree..New York City will continue to pursue new and unconventional ways to combat the health problems that affect New Yorkers and all Americans.
Back to the drawing board.
Food's New Foot Soldiers
August 23, 2011, 10:10 pm
Food’s New Foot Soldiers
By MARK BITTMAN
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/23/foods-new-foot-soldiers/?ref=opinion
FoodCorps, which started last week, is symbolic of just what we need: a national service program that aims to improve nutrition education for children, develop school gardening projects and change what’s being served on school lunch trays.
I’ve been looking forward to this for months, because it’s such an up: 50 new foot soldiers in the war against ignorance in food. The service members, most of them in their 20s, just went to work at 41 sites in 10 states, from Maine to Oregon and Michigan to Mississippi. (FoodCorps concentrates on communities with high rates of childhood obesity or limited access to healthy food, though these days every state has communities like that.)
I’d be even more elated if there were 50 FoodCorps members in each state. Or 5,000 in each, which approaches the number we’re going to need to educate our kids so they can look forward to a lifetime of good health and good eating. But FoodCorps is a model we can use to build upon.
Curt Ellis, co-creator of the movie, “King Corn,” is running the show with Debra Eschmeyer, formerly of the National Farm to School Network, and Cecily Upton, formerly of Slow Food USA. FoodCorps is part of the AmeriCorps, from which it receives about a third of its budget. Most of the money comes from sources like the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and individual donors.
Is FoodCorps necessary? The organizations that are fighting childhood obesity on the front lines seem to think so: 108 groups from 39 states and the District of Columbia applied to host FoodCorps, which chose to work at locations that had already begun to improve school food and needed help in expanding their work.
Potential participants were turned away at a crazy rate: More than 1,230 people applied for 50 positions. (It’s easier to get into Harvard.) Nor is this a program for the college grad who wants to do some soul-searching by playing in a garden for a year. “Many service members,” says Ellis, “have firsthand experience with the communities they’re serving. Some are going back to the towns they grew up in; others were raised on food stamps or overcame obesity. They understand these challenges from the inside.”
They’re also smart, well informed, and articulate; Ellis told me there wasn’t a day last week that he didn’t tear up from something that one of them said. (I’m going to post some of their initial sets of beliefs and, I hope, ongoing reports from the field on my blog.
FoodCorps members will be paid $15,000 for the year. On this they must find places to live and pay for food, though those without other sources of income are being encouraged to apply for help from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (usually called SNAP, and formerly known as food stamps), so they’ll live like many of those they’re serving. (Those eligible will also receive a $5,550 federal education award to apply to their student loans when they finish.)
How, I asked Ellis, will we know if FoodCorps is successful? “This year we expect about 60,000 kids to benefit from improved food education,” he says. (This will be sadly easy to achieve: currently, elementary-age kids typically get less than five hours of nutrition education annually.) “Gardens will be begun or fortified to try to get kids more excited about fruits and vegetables; fresh food will be sourced from local farms; and parents and community members will be more invested in school food.”
FoodCorps will cost less than $2 million for the first year. Thus for less than a million bucks of our money we are getting a program that will start to roll back the $147 billion it costs us each year to deal with the health consequences of obesity, while changing the way thousands of young people grow up thinking about food.
Not to burst any bubbles, but let’s note that this in no way levels the playing field. That $2 million invested in FoodCorps — well conceived, raised with the best possible nonprofit intentions, and ultimately well spent (a bargain!) — was starkly contrasted last week with the $30 million that a new group of corporate farmers and ranchers intend to spend to promote the idea that they’re “committed to providing healthy choices.” As anyone who’s followed the news in recent years knows, agribusiness has done pretty much the opposite, relying on direct federal subsidies (also our money) to the tune of at least $5 billion annually to produce precisely the kind of junk food that is largely responsible for the tripling of childhood obesity in the last 30 years.
Here’s the problem: raising $30 million for a corporate public relations campaign to defend the rights of Big Food to continue to produce junk is easy; raising $2 million to promote healthy eating in our children is hard. Ellis says that his dream is to have 1,000 service members a year working in all 50 states by 2020. I say let’s have 10,000 by 2015.
But let’s end on a happy note: FoodCorps is up and running. Hallelujah!
Food’s New Foot Soldiers
By MARK BITTMAN
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/23/foods-new-foot-soldiers/?ref=opinion
FoodCorps, which started last week, is symbolic of just what we need: a national service program that aims to improve nutrition education for children, develop school gardening projects and change what’s being served on school lunch trays.
I’ve been looking forward to this for months, because it’s such an up: 50 new foot soldiers in the war against ignorance in food. The service members, most of them in their 20s, just went to work at 41 sites in 10 states, from Maine to Oregon and Michigan to Mississippi. (FoodCorps concentrates on communities with high rates of childhood obesity or limited access to healthy food, though these days every state has communities like that.)
I’d be even more elated if there were 50 FoodCorps members in each state. Or 5,000 in each, which approaches the number we’re going to need to educate our kids so they can look forward to a lifetime of good health and good eating. But FoodCorps is a model we can use to build upon.
Curt Ellis, co-creator of the movie, “King Corn,” is running the show with Debra Eschmeyer, formerly of the National Farm to School Network, and Cecily Upton, formerly of Slow Food USA. FoodCorps is part of the AmeriCorps, from which it receives about a third of its budget. Most of the money comes from sources like the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and individual donors.
Is FoodCorps necessary? The organizations that are fighting childhood obesity on the front lines seem to think so: 108 groups from 39 states and the District of Columbia applied to host FoodCorps, which chose to work at locations that had already begun to improve school food and needed help in expanding their work.
Potential participants were turned away at a crazy rate: More than 1,230 people applied for 50 positions. (It’s easier to get into Harvard.) Nor is this a program for the college grad who wants to do some soul-searching by playing in a garden for a year. “Many service members,” says Ellis, “have firsthand experience with the communities they’re serving. Some are going back to the towns they grew up in; others were raised on food stamps or overcame obesity. They understand these challenges from the inside.”
They’re also smart, well informed, and articulate; Ellis told me there wasn’t a day last week that he didn’t tear up from something that one of them said. (I’m going to post some of their initial sets of beliefs and, I hope, ongoing reports from the field on my blog.
FoodCorps members will be paid $15,000 for the year. On this they must find places to live and pay for food, though those without other sources of income are being encouraged to apply for help from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (usually called SNAP, and formerly known as food stamps), so they’ll live like many of those they’re serving. (Those eligible will also receive a $5,550 federal education award to apply to their student loans when they finish.)
How, I asked Ellis, will we know if FoodCorps is successful? “This year we expect about 60,000 kids to benefit from improved food education,” he says. (This will be sadly easy to achieve: currently, elementary-age kids typically get less than five hours of nutrition education annually.) “Gardens will be begun or fortified to try to get kids more excited about fruits and vegetables; fresh food will be sourced from local farms; and parents and community members will be more invested in school food.”
FoodCorps will cost less than $2 million for the first year. Thus for less than a million bucks of our money we are getting a program that will start to roll back the $147 billion it costs us each year to deal with the health consequences of obesity, while changing the way thousands of young people grow up thinking about food.
Not to burst any bubbles, but let’s note that this in no way levels the playing field. That $2 million invested in FoodCorps — well conceived, raised with the best possible nonprofit intentions, and ultimately well spent (a bargain!) — was starkly contrasted last week with the $30 million that a new group of corporate farmers and ranchers intend to spend to promote the idea that they’re “committed to providing healthy choices.” As anyone who’s followed the news in recent years knows, agribusiness has done pretty much the opposite, relying on direct federal subsidies (also our money) to the tune of at least $5 billion annually to produce precisely the kind of junk food that is largely responsible for the tripling of childhood obesity in the last 30 years.
Here’s the problem: raising $30 million for a corporate public relations campaign to defend the rights of Big Food to continue to produce junk is easy; raising $2 million to promote healthy eating in our children is hard. Ellis says that his dream is to have 1,000 service members a year working in all 50 states by 2020. I say let’s have 10,000 by 2015.
But let’s end on a happy note: FoodCorps is up and running. Hallelujah!
Friday, August 19, 2011
Engineering Food for All
By NINA V. FEDOROFF Published: August 18, 2011
FOOD prices are at record highs and the ranks of the hungry are swelling once again. A warming climate is beginning to nibble at crop yields worldwide. The United Nations predicts that there will be one to three billion more people to feed by midcentury.
Yet even as the Obama administration says it wants to stimulate innovation by eliminating unnecessary regulations, the Environmental Protection Agency wants to require even more data on genetically modified crops, which have been improved using technology with great promise and a track record of safety. The process for approving these crops has become so costly and burdensome that it is choking off innovation.
Civilization depends on our expanding ability to produce food efficiently, which has markedly accelerated thanks to science and technology. The use of chemicals for fertilization and for pest and disease control, the induction of beneficial mutations in plants with chemicals or radiation to improve yields, and the mechanization of agriculture have all increased the amount of food that can be grown on each acre of land by as much as 10 times in the last 100 years.
These extraordinary increases must be doubled by 2050 if we are to continue to feed an expanding population. As people around the world become more affluent, they are demanding diets richer in animal protein, which will require ever more robust feed crop yields to sustain.
New molecular methods that add or modify genes can protect plants from diseases and pests and improve crops in ways that are both more environmentally benign and beyond the capability of older methods. This is because the gene modifications are crafted based on knowledge of what genes do, in contrast to the shotgun approach of traditional breeding or using chemicals or radiation to induce mutations. The results have been spectacular.
For example, genetically modified crops containing an extra gene that confers resistance to certain insects require much less pesticide. This is good for the environment because toxic pesticides decrease the supply of food for birds and run off the land to poison rivers, lakes and oceans.
The rapid adoption of genetically modified herbicide-tolerant soybeans has made it easier for farmers to park their plows and forgo tilling for weed control. No-till farming is more sustainable and environmentally benign because it decreases soil erosion and shrinks agriculture’s carbon footprint.
360 million acres. Of the 15.4 million farmers growing these crops, 90 percent are poor, with small operations. The reason farmers turn to genetically modified crops is simple: yields increase and costs decrease.
Myths about the dire effects of genetically modified foods on health and the environment abound, but they have not held up to scientific scrutiny. And, although many concerns have been expressed about the potential for unexpected consequences, the unexpected effects that have been observed so far have been benign. Contamination by carcinogenic fungal toxins, for example, is as much as 90 percent lower in insect-resistant genetically modified corn than in nonmodified corn. This is because the fungi that make the toxins follow insects boring into the plants. No insect holes, no fungi, no toxins.
Yet today we have only a handful of genetically modified crops, primarily soybeans, corn, canola and cotton. All are commodity crops mainly used for feed or fiber and all were developed by big biotech companies. Only big companies can muster the money necessary to navigate the regulatory thicket woven by the government’s three oversight agencies: the E.P.A., the Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration.
Decades ago, when molecular approaches to plant improvement were relatively new, there was some rationale for a cautious approach.
But now the evidence is in. These crop modification methods are not dangerous. The European Union has spent more than $425 million studying the safety of genetically modified crops over the past 25 years. Its recent, lengthy report on the matter can be summarized in one sentence: Crop modification by molecular methods is no more dangerous than crop modification by other methods. Serious scientific bodies that have analyzed the issue, including the National Academy of Sciences and the British Royal Society, have come to the same conclusion.
It is time to relieve the regulatory burden slowing down the development of genetically modified crops. The three United States regulatory agencies need to develop a single set of requirements and focus solely on the hazards — if any — posed by new traits.
And above all, the government needs to stop regulating genetic modifications for which there is no scientifically credible evidence of harm.
Nina V. Fedoroff, who was the science and technology adviser to the secretary of state from 2007 to 2010, is a professor of biology at Pennsylvania State University.
FOOD prices are at record highs and the ranks of the hungry are swelling once again. A warming climate is beginning to nibble at crop yields worldwide. The United Nations predicts that there will be one to three billion more people to feed by midcentury.
Yet even as the Obama administration says it wants to stimulate innovation by eliminating unnecessary regulations, the Environmental Protection Agency wants to require even more data on genetically modified crops, which have been improved using technology with great promise and a track record of safety. The process for approving these crops has become so costly and burdensome that it is choking off innovation.
Civilization depends on our expanding ability to produce food efficiently, which has markedly accelerated thanks to science and technology. The use of chemicals for fertilization and for pest and disease control, the induction of beneficial mutations in plants with chemicals or radiation to improve yields, and the mechanization of agriculture have all increased the amount of food that can be grown on each acre of land by as much as 10 times in the last 100 years.
These extraordinary increases must be doubled by 2050 if we are to continue to feed an expanding population. As people around the world become more affluent, they are demanding diets richer in animal protein, which will require ever more robust feed crop yields to sustain.
New molecular methods that add or modify genes can protect plants from diseases and pests and improve crops in ways that are both more environmentally benign and beyond the capability of older methods. This is because the gene modifications are crafted based on knowledge of what genes do, in contrast to the shotgun approach of traditional breeding or using chemicals or radiation to induce mutations. The results have been spectacular.
For example, genetically modified crops containing an extra gene that confers resistance to certain insects require much less pesticide. This is good for the environment because toxic pesticides decrease the supply of food for birds and run off the land to poison rivers, lakes and oceans.
The rapid adoption of genetically modified herbicide-tolerant soybeans has made it easier for farmers to park their plows and forgo tilling for weed control. No-till farming is more sustainable and environmentally benign because it decreases soil erosion and shrinks agriculture’s carbon footprint.
360 million acres. Of the 15.4 million farmers growing these crops, 90 percent are poor, with small operations. The reason farmers turn to genetically modified crops is simple: yields increase and costs decrease.
Myths about the dire effects of genetically modified foods on health and the environment abound, but they have not held up to scientific scrutiny. And, although many concerns have been expressed about the potential for unexpected consequences, the unexpected effects that have been observed so far have been benign. Contamination by carcinogenic fungal toxins, for example, is as much as 90 percent lower in insect-resistant genetically modified corn than in nonmodified corn. This is because the fungi that make the toxins follow insects boring into the plants. No insect holes, no fungi, no toxins.
Yet today we have only a handful of genetically modified crops, primarily soybeans, corn, canola and cotton. All are commodity crops mainly used for feed or fiber and all were developed by big biotech companies. Only big companies can muster the money necessary to navigate the regulatory thicket woven by the government’s three oversight agencies: the E.P.A., the Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration.
Decades ago, when molecular approaches to plant improvement were relatively new, there was some rationale for a cautious approach.
But now the evidence is in. These crop modification methods are not dangerous. The European Union has spent more than $425 million studying the safety of genetically modified crops over the past 25 years. Its recent, lengthy report on the matter can be summarized in one sentence: Crop modification by molecular methods is no more dangerous than crop modification by other methods. Serious scientific bodies that have analyzed the issue, including the National Academy of Sciences and the British Royal Society, have come to the same conclusion.
It is time to relieve the regulatory burden slowing down the development of genetically modified crops. The three United States regulatory agencies need to develop a single set of requirements and focus solely on the hazards — if any — posed by new traits.
And above all, the government needs to stop regulating genetic modifications for which there is no scientifically credible evidence of harm.
Nina V. Fedoroff, who was the science and technology adviser to the secretary of state from 2007 to 2010, is a professor of biology at Pennsylvania State University.
Friday, August 5, 2011
Health Affairs: Following Federal Guidelines To Increase Nutrient Consumption May Lead To Higher Food Costs For Consumers
Following Federal Guidelines To Increase Nutrient Consumption May Lead To Higher Food Costs For Consumers
The federal Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2010, emphasized the need for Americans to consume more potassium, dietary fiber, vitamin D, and calcium, and to get fewer calories from saturated fat and added sugar. We examined the economic impact of meeting these guidelines for adults in King County, Washington. We found that increasing consumption of potassium—the most expensive of the four recommended nutrients—would add $380 per year to the average consumer’s food costs. Meanwhile, each time consumers obtained 1 percent more of their daily calories from saturated fat and added sugar, their food costs significantly declined. These findings suggest that improving the American diet will require additional guidance for consumers, especially those with little budget flexibility, and new policies to increase the availability and reduce the cost of healthful foods.
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
Can Big Food Regulate Itself? Fat Chance
August 2, 2011, 8:10 pm
Can Big Food Regulate Itself? Fat Chance
By MARK BITTMAN
Life would be so much easier if we could only set our own guidelines. You could define the average weight as 10 pounds higher than your own and, voilà, no more obesity! You could raise the speed limit to 90 miles per hour and never worry about a ticket. You could call a cholesterol level of 250 “normal” and celebrate with a bag of fried pork rinds. (You could even claim that cutting government spending would increase employment, but that might be going too far.) You could certainly turn junk food into something “healthy.”
A Happy Meal with a piece of apple is still a box of branded, overpriced junk food.
That’s what the food industry is doing.
Back in May I wrote about the voluntary guidelines for marketing junk food to kids developed by an interagency group headed by the Federal Trade Commission. These non-binding suggestions ask that the industry market real food to kids instead of the junk they so famously favor selling. But the industry argues that the recommendations are effectively mandatory because non-compliance would lead to retaliation and eliminate all food advertising to adolescents, as well as 74,000 jobs.
On the phone last week, Representative Rosa DeLauro, a Democrat from Connecticut, told me that even though the guidelines are “without teeth,” the pushback from the industry has been formidable: “We have seen political showmanship, misinformation about the impact of these voluntary guidelines, insistence that the industry has been successful in self-regulation and that these efforts would violate the First Amendment.”
That voluntary guidelines could curb the right to free speech is absurd, but not as wacky as letting the industry set its own standards. Yet that’s what has happened: The Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative (CFBAI), a group of food manufacturers that includes McDonald’s, Burger King, PepsiCo and Kraft Foods came up with its own guidelines defining foods healthy enough to market to kids. (It’s worth mentioning another group, too — if just to admire its name, The Sensible Food Policy Coalition — led by PepsiCo, Kellogg’s, General Mills and other big companies, evidently created solely to prevent the voluntary guidelines from gaining a foothold.)
CFBAI is a champion of “self-regulation,” which means repeating a series of mantras that include “facts” like “there is no such thing as good food and bad food,” or that Cookie Crisp cereal (or dozens of others) “can be a part of a balanced diet,” all the while micro-adjusting hyper-processed food so that “more fiber” and “less sugar” aren’t outright lies, even though the food itself can hardly be claimed to be “less junky.” With self-regulation, even Kraft Singles can be considered “part of a balanced diet.”
And guess what? In general, the companies fare well in meeting their own standards (which, pathetically, the F.T.C. sees as a “significant advance”): two-thirds of the products they advertise are A-O.K., with the remainder requiring just modest adjustments. See? Mission accomplished! Corn Pops are now healthy!
Another example: last week, McDonald’s promised a minor tweak of its Happy Meal, (which, of course, “can be part of a well-balanced diet for kids”) adding a few apple slices, removing a few French fries and making milk — chocolate or regular — a more prominent option. It still comes with a toy, and soda will remain a choice. (I’m not sure anyone is claiming soda is part of a healthy diet, but stay tuned.) The move received widespread praise, with Michelle Obama leading the cheers.
Self-regulation may be immediate, non-threatening and magical, but it doesn’t work.
But despite the seal of approval of our first lady/self-appointed nutrition expert, a Happy Meal with a piece of apple is still a box of branded, overpriced junk food sold not by its value but by its marketing scheme. (Forty percent of McDonald’s advertising budget is spent on marketing to kids.)
This is not “progress,” but a public relations victory along with — as Michele Simon points out in her blog — an attempt to short-circuit regulations and laws that have some guts, like the one in San Francisco that forbids the inclusion of toys in meals that don’t meet reasonable nutrition standards. The last thing McDonald’s or any like corporation wants to see is a strong, activist government protecting consumers, whether or not they’re capable of adult judgment or are habituated (a harsher word is “addicted”) to self-destructive products.
Self-regulation may be immediate, non-threatening and magical, but it doesn’t work. A study published earlier this week in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine by Dr. Lisa Powell and other researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago tracked changes in exposure for all food, beverage and restaurant TV ads seen by kids from 2 to 11 years old, from 2003 to 2009. It found that, overall, daily exposure to the ads declined but the percentage among companies that had pledged to self-regulate was higher than those that didn’t. And in 2009, 86 percent of these ads still featured unhealthy foods.
What’s worse? Self-serving self-regulation or toothless guidelines set by an agency that appears to be complicit in maintaining the status quo? Hard to say. What’s better is having grass roots movements that drive agencies toward real regulation.
Can Big Food Regulate Itself? Fat Chance
By MARK BITTMAN
Life would be so much easier if we could only set our own guidelines. You could define the average weight as 10 pounds higher than your own and, voilà, no more obesity! You could raise the speed limit to 90 miles per hour and never worry about a ticket. You could call a cholesterol level of 250 “normal” and celebrate with a bag of fried pork rinds. (You could even claim that cutting government spending would increase employment, but that might be going too far.) You could certainly turn junk food into something “healthy.”
A Happy Meal with a piece of apple is still a box of branded, overpriced junk food.
That’s what the food industry is doing.
Back in May I wrote about the voluntary guidelines for marketing junk food to kids developed by an interagency group headed by the Federal Trade Commission. These non-binding suggestions ask that the industry market real food to kids instead of the junk they so famously favor selling. But the industry argues that the recommendations are effectively mandatory because non-compliance would lead to retaliation and eliminate all food advertising to adolescents, as well as 74,000 jobs.
On the phone last week, Representative Rosa DeLauro, a Democrat from Connecticut, told me that even though the guidelines are “without teeth,” the pushback from the industry has been formidable: “We have seen political showmanship, misinformation about the impact of these voluntary guidelines, insistence that the industry has been successful in self-regulation and that these efforts would violate the First Amendment.”
That voluntary guidelines could curb the right to free speech is absurd, but not as wacky as letting the industry set its own standards. Yet that’s what has happened: The Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative (CFBAI), a group of food manufacturers that includes McDonald’s, Burger King, PepsiCo and Kraft Foods came up with its own guidelines defining foods healthy enough to market to kids. (It’s worth mentioning another group, too — if just to admire its name, The Sensible Food Policy Coalition — led by PepsiCo, Kellogg’s, General Mills and other big companies, evidently created solely to prevent the voluntary guidelines from gaining a foothold.)
CFBAI is a champion of “self-regulation,” which means repeating a series of mantras that include “facts” like “there is no such thing as good food and bad food,” or that Cookie Crisp cereal (or dozens of others) “can be a part of a balanced diet,” all the while micro-adjusting hyper-processed food so that “more fiber” and “less sugar” aren’t outright lies, even though the food itself can hardly be claimed to be “less junky.” With self-regulation, even Kraft Singles can be considered “part of a balanced diet.”
And guess what? In general, the companies fare well in meeting their own standards (which, pathetically, the F.T.C. sees as a “significant advance”): two-thirds of the products they advertise are A-O.K., with the remainder requiring just modest adjustments. See? Mission accomplished! Corn Pops are now healthy!
Another example: last week, McDonald’s promised a minor tweak of its Happy Meal, (which, of course, “can be part of a well-balanced diet for kids”) adding a few apple slices, removing a few French fries and making milk — chocolate or regular — a more prominent option. It still comes with a toy, and soda will remain a choice. (I’m not sure anyone is claiming soda is part of a healthy diet, but stay tuned.) The move received widespread praise, with Michelle Obama leading the cheers.
Self-regulation may be immediate, non-threatening and magical, but it doesn’t work.
But despite the seal of approval of our first lady/self-appointed nutrition expert, a Happy Meal with a piece of apple is still a box of branded, overpriced junk food sold not by its value but by its marketing scheme. (Forty percent of McDonald’s advertising budget is spent on marketing to kids.)
This is not “progress,” but a public relations victory along with — as Michele Simon points out in her blog — an attempt to short-circuit regulations and laws that have some guts, like the one in San Francisco that forbids the inclusion of toys in meals that don’t meet reasonable nutrition standards. The last thing McDonald’s or any like corporation wants to see is a strong, activist government protecting consumers, whether or not they’re capable of adult judgment or are habituated (a harsher word is “addicted”) to self-destructive products.
Self-regulation may be immediate, non-threatening and magical, but it doesn’t work. A study published earlier this week in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine by Dr. Lisa Powell and other researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago tracked changes in exposure for all food, beverage and restaurant TV ads seen by kids from 2 to 11 years old, from 2003 to 2009. It found that, overall, daily exposure to the ads declined but the percentage among companies that had pledged to self-regulate was higher than those that didn’t. And in 2009, 86 percent of these ads still featured unhealthy foods.
What’s worse? Self-serving self-regulation or toothless guidelines set by an agency that appears to be complicit in maintaining the status quo? Hard to say. What’s better is having grass roots movements that drive agencies toward real regulation.
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