Junk Food Nation: Who's to Blame for Childhood Obesity?

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Junk Food Nation: Who's to Blame for Childhood Obesity? JoAnn Guest Aug 13,

2005 18:11 PDT

By Gary Ruskin and Juliet Schor

The Nation

 

29 August 2005 Issue

 

In recent months the major food companies have been trying hard to

convince Americans that they feel the pain of our expanding waistlines,

especially when it comes to kids. Kraft announced it would no longer

market Oreos to younger children, McDonald's promoted itself as a salad

producer and Coca-Cola said it won't advertise to kids under 12.

 

But behind the scenes it's hardball as usual, with the junk food giants

pushing the Bush Administration to defend their interests. The recent

conflict over what America eats, and the way the government promotes

food, is a disturbing example of how in Bush's America corporate

interests trump public health, public opinion and plain old common

sense.

 

The latest salvo in the war on added sugar and fat came July 14-15, when

the Federal Trade Commission held hearings on childhood obesity and food

marketing. Despite the fanfare, industry had no cause for concern; FTC

chair Deborah Majoras had declared beforehand that the commission will

do absolutely nothing to stop the rising flood of junk food advertising

to children.

 

In June the Department of Agriculture denied a request from our group

Commercial Alert to enforce existing rules forbidding mealtime sales in

school cafeterias of " foods of minimal nutritional value " - i.e., junk

foods and soda pop.

 

The department admitted that it didn't know whether schools are

complying with the rules, but, frankly, it doesn't give a damn. " At this

time, we do not intend to undertake the activities or measures

recommended in your petition, " wrote Stanley Garnett, head of the USDA's

Child Nutrition Division.

 

Conflict about junk food has intensified since late 2001, when a Surgeon

General's report called obesity an " epidemic. " Since that time, the

White House has repeatedly weighed in on the side of Big Food. It worked

hard to weaken the World Health Organization's global anti-obesity

strategy and went so far as to question the scientific basis for " the

linking of fruit and vegetable consumption to decreased risk of obesity

and diabetes. "

 

Former Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson - then our

nation's top public-health officer - even told members of the Grocery

Manufacturers Association to " 'go on the offensive' against critics

blaming the food industry for obesity, " according to a November 12,

2002, GMA news release.

 

Last year, during the reauthorization of the children's nutrition

programs, Republican Senator Peter Fitzgerald of Illinois attempted to

insulate the government's nutrition guidelines from the intense industry

pressure that has warped the process to date.

 

He proposed a modest amendment to move the guidelines from the USDA to

the comparatively more independent Institute of Medicine. The food

industry, alarmed about the switch, secured a number of meetings at the

White House to get it to exert pressure on Fitzgerald.

 

One irony of this fight was that the key industry lobbying came from the

American Dietetic Association, described by one Congressional staffer as

a " front for the food groups. " Fitzgerald held firm but didn't succeed

in enacting his amendment before he left Congress last year.

 

By that time the industry's lobbying effort had borne fruit, or perhaps

more accurately, unhealthy alternatives to fruit.

 

The new federal guidelines no longer contain a recommendation for sugar

intake, although they do tell people to eat foods with few added sugars.

 

 

The redesigned icon for the guidelines, created by a company that does

extensive work for the junk food industry, shows no food, only a person

climbing stairs.

 

Growing industry influence is also apparent at the President's Council

on Physical Fitness. What companies has the government invited to be

partners with the council's Challenge program? Coca-Cola, Burger King,

General Mills, Pepsico and other blue chip members of the " obesity

lobby. "

 

In January the council's chair, former NFL star Lynn Swann, took money

to appear at a public relations event for the National Automatic

Merchandising Association, a vending machine trade group activists have

been battling on in-school sales of junk food.

 

Not a lot of subtlety is required to understand what's driving

Administration policy. It's large infusions of cash. In 2004 " Rangers, "

who bundled at least $200,000 each to the Bush/Cheney campaign, included

Barclay Resler, vice president for government and public affairs at

Coca-Cola; Robert Leebern Jr., president of federal affairs at Troutman

Sanders PAG, lobbyist for Coca-Cola; Richard Hohlt of Hohlt & Co.,

lobbyist for Altria, which owns about 85 percent of Kraft foods; and

José " Pepe " Fanjul, president, vice chairman and COO of Florida Crystals

Corp., one of the nation's major sugar producers.

 

Hundred-thousand-dollar men include Kirk Blalock and Marc Lampkin, both

Coke lobbyists, and Joe Weller, chairman and CEO, Nestle USA. Altria

also gave $250,000 to Bush's inauguration this year, and Coke and Pepsi

gave $100,000 each.

 

These gifts are in addition to substantial sums given during the 2000

campaign.

 

For their money, the industry has been able to buy into a strategy on

obesity and food marketing that mirrors the approach taken by Big

Tobacco. That's hardly a surprise, given that some of the same companies

and personnel are involved: Junk food giants Kraft and Nabisco are both

majority-owned by tobacco producer Philip Morris, now renamed Altria.

 

Similarity number one is the denial that the problem (obesity) is caused

by the product (junk food).

 

Instead, lack of exercise is fingered as the culprit, which is why

McDonald's, Pepsi, Coke and others have been handing out pedometers,

funding fitness centers and prodding kids to move around.

 

When the childhood obesity issue first burst on the scene, HHS and the

Centers for Disease Control funded a bizarre ad campaign called Verb,

whose ostensible purpose was to get kids moving. This strategy has been

evident in the halls of Congress as well.

 

During child nutrition reauthorization hearings, the man some have

called the Senator from Coca-Cola, Georgia's Zell Miller, parroted

industry talking points when he claimed that children are " obese not

because of what they eat at lunchrooms in schools but because, frankly,

they sit around on their duffs watching Eminem on MTV and playing video

games. " And that, of course, is the fault not of food marketers but of

parents.

 

Miller's office shut down a Senate Agriculture Committee staff

discussion of a ban on soda pop in high schools by refreshing their

memories that Coke is based in Georgia.

 

A related ploy is to deny the nutritional status of individual food

groups, claiming that there are no " good " or " bad " foods, and that all

that matters is balance. So, for example, when the Administration

attacked the WHO's global anti-obesity initiative, it criticized what it

called the " unsubstantiated focus on 'good' and 'bad' foods. "

 

Of course, if fruits and vegetables aren't healthy, then Coke and chips

aren't unhealthy.

 

While such a strategy is so preposterous as to be laughable, it is

already having real effects.

 

Less than a month after Cadbury Schweppes, the candy and soda company,

gave a multimillion-dollar grant to the American Diabetes Association,

the association's chief medical and scientific officer claimed that

sugar has nothing to do with diabetes, or with weight.

 

Industry has also bankrolled front groups like the Center for Consumer

Freedom, an increasingly influential Washington outfit that demonizes

public-health advocates as the " food police " and promotes the industry

point of view.

 

Meanwhile, public opinion is solidly behind more restrictions on junk

food marketing aimed at children, especially in schools. A February Wall

Street Journal poll found that 83 percent of American adults believe

" public schools need to do a better job of limiting children's access to

unhealthy foods like snack foods, sugary soft drinks and fast food. "

 

Two bills recently introduced in Congress, Massachusetts Senator Ted

Kennedy's Prevention of Childhood Obesity Act and Iowa Senator Tom

Harkin's Healthy Lifestyles and Prevention (HeLP) America Act, both

place significant restrictions on the ability of junk food producers to

market in schools.

 

Interestingly, this is a crossover issue between red and blue states.

Concern about obesity and excessive junk food marketing to kids is

shared by people across the political spectrum, and some conservatives,

such as Texas Agriculture Commissioner Susan Combs and the Eagle Forum's

Phyllis Schlafly, as well as California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger,

have argued for restricting junk food marketing to children. This may be

one of the reasons New York Senator Hillary Clinton has once again

become vocal on the topic of marketing to children, although Senator

Clinton has called not for government intervention but merely for

industry self-regulation, requesting that the companies " be more

responsible about the effect they are having " - exactly the policy the

industry wants.

 

A vigorous government response would clearly garner the sympathy of the

majority of Americans.

 

The growing chasm between what the public wants and the Administration's

protection of the profits of Big Food is a powerful example of the

decline of democracy in this country.

Let them eat chips!

 

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_________________

JoAnn Guest

mrsjo-

www.geocities.com/mrsjoguest/Genes

 

 

 

 

AIM Barleygreen

" Wisdom of the Past, Food of the Future "

 

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