Franken Foods: Is industrially produced food the new killer? - DEVINDER SHARMA

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GMW: Is industrially produced food the new killer? - DEVINDER

SHARMA

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Tue, 19 Apr 2005 09:15:55 +0100

 

 

 

 

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http://www.gmwatch.org

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" As the US and European Union remained locked in a battle over

certification, the fact remains that more and more such unwanted and

unhealthy

foods are being dumped all over. "

 

Wide ranging article from the New Delhi-based food policy analyst

Devinder Sharma.

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Is industrially produced food the new killer?

By Devinder Sharma

 

The world is fast becoming fat, obese and rotund. And so are the hungry

and impoverished. If nutritionists are to be believed, more and more

slum dwellers in New Delhi, Mumbai and elsewhere are fast adding on

unwanted body fats. Resulting obesity is turning into a major killer –

topping the global chart.

 

As if this is not enough, the US President George Bush has announced

that the United States is rapidly outsourcing obesity to India. Speaking

sometimes back before the US Chamber of Commerce, Bush said that since

most of the millions of jobs outsourced were to India since he first

became the President, " These jobs are now making the people of India fat

instead of us. "

 

America hopes to shed some three trillion pounds of unsightly cellulite

every year through outsourcing. Since the call centre jobs are

sedentary, workers are fast putting on weight. One reason is that the BPO

industry has provided enough space for the fast food joints thereby

providing the workers with the limited choice of eating junk foods to

fill

their hungry stomachs. In the long run, therefore, the fast growing BPO

industry will create a health epidemic in India.

 

At the same time, genetically modified food with no visible advantages

for the consumers is being marketed with impunity. Between 2001 and

2004, the Swiss multinational Syngenta released about 700 tons of the

illegal seeds into the US market by mistake, enough to produce about

150,000 tons of corn. This new corn variety contained a gene that

makes it

resistant to the antibiotic Ampicillin. It is widely feared that if

humans consume animals fed with the corn, they could develop

immunities to

antibiotics.

 

As the US and European Union remained locked in a battle over

certification, the fact remains that more and more such unwanted and

unhealthy

foods are being dumped all over. In 2001, a similar mishap from Starlink

had cost the US economy over a billion dollars. In any case what is

being marketed as `substantially equivalent' is something that brings no

gains to the average consumers. It only helps the biotech seed companies

garner more profits from its cultivation. Since what is grown has to

ultimately enter the food chain, scientists are being used to justify the

need to have such crops and then pronounce these foods as safe.

For almost three decades in a row, the global food industry grew at a

phenomenal rate with the promise of feeding the upwardly mobile

population with tasty and cheap fast foods. The educated and the rich

first

latched on to the attractively packed and quickly delivered food

products.

By the time they realized that the industrially produced foods were

unhealthy and in reality a killer, the habit had grown. The industry

meanwhile grew in size and moved across shores using the power of

advertisement to lure the gullible consumers. The Food and Agriculture

Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), which is always eager to

promote

unwanted technologies so as to promote the commercial interests of the

agribusiness companies and that too in the name of hunger and

malnutrition,

turned a blind eye to the unhealthy food trends and for obvious reasons.

 

The World Health Organisation (WHO) too belatedly reports that more

than 1.2 billion people, about one-sixth of the global population, are

now

overweight. Ironically, the number of fat people far exceed the number

of absolute hungry – some 840 million people go to bed with empty

stomach. The only redeeming feature being while a majority of the

obese are

in the developed countries, almost the entire population of hungry live

in the Third World countries. So far only 115 million people in the

Third World are reportedly obese and the faulty eating habits have

induced

a rise in heart and diabetes-related problems.

 

The worst affected is of course America. With its heavily subsidized

food supply chain, receiving enormous subsidies at the time of production

and processing, food was never so cheap. Backed by media blitz,

Americans devoured everything that was put on the market. The result:

obesity

has now become the major killer in the United States, leaving cigarette

smoking far behind. Some 400,000 people die every year from

obesity-related ailments. More and more agile activists and affected

people are

now moving the courts to stop the food industry from killing people and

also to seek adequate compensation.

 

In China, a country that was battling malnutrition all these years,

reports now indicate that over 22 per cent of Chinese are obese, and the

rate of fattening is rising faster. In India, a study conducted by the

All India Institute for Medical Studies (AIIMS) reveals that 27 per

cent of school children are obese. Another study by the Centre for

Obesity

Research (COR), Kanpur, shows that between 1998 and 2003, India spent

Rs 3,750 billion on treating obesity-related problems, with tax-payers

picking up the tab for half the amount. This is because urban India,

which may be only five percent of the country's population, consumes 40

per cent of the country's available fat.

 

Obesity is fast growing in eastern European countries, where obesity

rates have tripled in last 25 years. In Australia, some 20 per cent of

the school children and adolescents are obese and over-weight. In Middle

East, the obesity ratio has reached 60 per cent. In Japan, where people

were traditionally thinner and short, reports show that men between the

age of 20 and 60 are getting fatter at an alarming rate.

 

The alarming trend is therefore something that the consumers as well as

the governments need to worry about. As the British Food Standards

Agency pointed out recently, if obesity continues to grow at the present

rate, today's young people will not be able to live as long as their

parents. And yet, when the WHO earlier this year came out with a report

chastising the sugar industry for being responsible for growing diabetes,

and therefore calling for a reduction in sugar consumption, the

industry reacted and forced the international agency to withdraw its

report.

 

At the same time, worried at the rising anger among the consumers, the

American food industry has come together to prepare a joint front

against the spate of legal suits being filed. Nor has the industry

allowed

the governments to clamp moratorium on advertisements on the small

screen. The recent softening of the Indian government's stand against the

soft drink industry is a pointer to who decides as to what we should eat

and drink. The relentless expansion of McDonald's and Wimpy's to the

remote corners of the developing world is an indication of the impact of

media backup to unhealthy foods.

This brings us to the more fundamental question. It is often been said

that the consumer is the best judge of the market economy and therefore

he or she makes decisions that are best required. The food industry

therefore pleases the consumers by repeatedly saying that consumer is the

king. In reality, the consumer is simply stupid.

 

Take the case of cigarettes. It has been clearly written on the

cigarette packs that smoking is injurious to health, and yet the

educated went

on smoking as if there was no tomorrow. How can the consumers be

considered wise if the sales of cigarettes continued to soar despite

the loud

warning? Similarly, after the damage already done by the food industry,

no questions are being asked about the newly introduced genetically

modified food products. If the consumers were never discerning enough to

find out how the fast foods were detrimental to their health, they are

not making any effort to question the nutritional and human health value

of the genetically-modified foods that have suddenly appeared on the

market shelves.

 

After all, what benefit does a consumer have by eating a soybean that

has a gene for herbicides? When will the consumer begin to ask these

simple questions? What benefit does the average consumer in India have

when the industry provides them with cotton seed oil for cooking that

contains a bacterial gene for toxicity? How long will the consumers allow

the food industry to poison them? When will the consumers begin to

question the nutritional safety of food products that are being forced

down

their throat?

 

Regardless of what GM food means for human health, a Japanese-US study

published by the annals of the American Academy of Sciences has

recently concluded that beef and milk from cloned cattle is similar to

that

produced by normal animals. " We conclude that most parameters of the

composition of meat and milk from somatic animal clones were not

significantly different from those of the genetically modified

animals, " the

study had concluded. If that be so, what is wrong with the beef and milk

from ordinary cattle? Why should the consumers opt for milk and meat from

genetically modified cattle? Why is the industry producing these

genetically modified cattle when the normal cattle are no less inferior?

Failure to ask these questions is resulting in the death of hundreds of

thousands of people all over the world. These are unwanted deaths.

These deaths are the not the outcome of poverty and hunger. The

industrial

food epidemic affects first the rich and educated. Their only fault

being that they have been eating whatever came their way. Like cattle,

they are being very conveniently led to a slaughter house.

 

Food produced industrially is now becoming a major killer. Obesity

related deaths have now reached an epidemic proportion. Who will bell the

cat?

 

(Devinder Sharma is a New Delhi-based food policy analyst. Responses

can be emailed at dsharma)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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