Why we should be regulating junk food as we do tobacco and other addictive drugs

[Guest guest]

Why we should be regulating junk food as we do tobacco and other

addictive drugs

By Wayne Roberts

http://www.nowtoronto.com/issues/2004-11-04/news_feature.php

NOW | NOV 4 - 10, 2004 | VOL. 24 NO. 10

 

It's taken an issue as honking big as the obesity epidemic to do it, but

the invisibility cloak that's long protected the junk food industry from

public scrutiny and debate has finally started to slip.

 

In mid-October, Education Minister Gerard Kennedy moved to ban junk food

from vending machines in elementary schools, an initiative British

Columbia quickly followed. Some 20 U.S. state governments, and cities

like New York, Los Angeles and Seattle, have also jumped on the bandwagon.

 

Though sales from school vending machines are modest, the ban has

started a movement that will quickly build momentum until junk food

becomes a controlled substance like tobacco – heavily taxed, with retail

regulations and advertising restrictions.

 

Diseases linked to obesity and junk food addiction already rival those

linked to smoking as top causes of preventable death and leading factors

in runaway health care budgets. Soon the two industries will be

competing for the most damage-recovery lawsuits. Like tobacco, fast food

will be legal but marked by skull-and-crossbones warnings, off-limits in

public spaces and shunned in respectable gatherings.

 

Gandhi once outlined the life cycle for social change issues: first they

ignore you, then they ridicule and denounce you, then they debate you,

then you win. This is the trajectory healthy food system advocates are

on, though at present they're barely out of the first phase.

 

As essential as food is to daily life, health, business and the

environment, the food industry has enjoyed almost 90 undisturbed years

without public policy controversy. It has functioned exactly like Muzak

in superstores. It's been everywhere – championing charities, funding

nutrition conferences and research, financing women's and family

magazines, sponsoring sports and TV shows, dominating main streets – but

has always melted into the woodwork.

 

Like Muzak, its effect has been inaudible, invisible, unnoticed,

visceral. It has dominated the unconscious, the submerged nine-tenths of

the mind, and hasn't had to worry about what the superego was fretting

about.

 

Until obesity waddled along, the junk food industry epitomized deep or

hegemonic power.

 

Food is one of the most depoliticized and privatized sectors of the

economy, with less public financing of infrastructure and regulation

than the arts, energy, transportation or shelter. You're legally

entitled to much more information about your car, clothes, electrical

outlets or house, for example, than you are about the food you put in

your body.

 

Even those charged with policing the industry have to pussyfoot around.

Phrases such as " eat less fat and sugar " are verboten, and the

recommendation is to " eat more lean meats. " Obesity became epidemic over

the past decade while health authorities wrung their hands, confining

themselves to criticizing dieting and promoting self-esteem and respect

for all body shapes and encouraging a range of healthful individual

behaviours. Outside of Quebec, Sweden and Finland, junk food advertisers

have had complete access to children's minds, even in publicly financed

institutions.

 

Obesity has done to food politics what landfill and incineration sites

near nice neighbourhoods did to environmental politics. The food

industry can carry on, but " not in my backyard, " which for children

means school. The industry has gone too far, and ticked off moms.

 

The campaign to limit the sway of junk food in public spaces builds on a

centuries-old Anglo-American tradition of promoting social policy change

in the name of children. Adults are big enough to bear personal

responsibility for how they cope in the marketplace, the mantra goes,

but children aren't, so we can make an exception for them and let the

government step in.

 

Because of this tradition, it's education, not health departments, that

has taken on the all-powerful food industry with measures to limit junk

food. Indeed, senior Ontario health ministry staff didn't learn of the

provincial education initiative until the day before Kennedy made his

public announcement in October.

 

Focusing on children not only allows anti-hunger advocates to tug at the

heartstrings of potential donors, but it also enables health advocates

to win legislative breakthroughs they might not otherwise make.

 

There's also a strong legal case that schools have a " duty of care " and

could be liable for billions of dollars in damages when the inevitable

bills for childhood obesity and habits encouraged while attending school

come due.

 

However, there are severe limits to child-centred policy reform. Most

children live in families. They go hungry because other family members,

including full-grown adults, also go hungry. They scarf trash because

that's what their parents buy for them. You can't ensure that kids are

well fed without doing something so that all people, including parents,

are also well fed. Programs that focus only on children are more

expensive but less effective than those that would promote a baseline of

health for all. As well, junk food sales in schools isn't the sole cause

of obesity. Overweight is the outcome of a series of abusive lifestyle

systems fostering passive and mindless consumption, the good life with

no physical effort and no reason to leave the home entertainment centre.

Banning foods of minimal or negative nutritional value from elementary

school vending machines is a start. It's a wise and logical starting

place because it identifies public and government responsibility for the

" obesogenic environment. " It makes an ethical statement by ending the

shameful period when educators abused compulsory school attendance to

provide captive markets for corporations.

 

Fat chance that limiting junk food access in schools will reverse the

trend toward overweight, obesity and their associated behaviours.

Obesity is not just about schools. It's mainly about public health, what

experts call " population health " as distinct from individual cures and

counselling.

 

There's a smoky line that blurs the distance between school- and

child-centred policy and broader public health policy. The tobacco

industry knows how it goes. The cycle starts with leading public

officials saying there is indeed a health problem. We can now check that

one off. Next comes identifying the product as illegitimate and limiting

the places where it can be consumed. Hospitals started banning smokers

during the 1970s (though most have since become addicted to pushing junk

food in their lobbies).

 

Then come warning labels that are understandable to someone without a

PhD in chemistry. If the warnings on cigarette packages set the

standard, we can expect something like " eating too much of this food

will cause you to die of heart disease or diabetes. "

 

Then come multi-billion-dollar lawsuits that eat up industry profits.

We've been there and done all that with tobacco. But it will likely

proceed much faster with junk food, if only because the road is now known.