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Despite Obesity Crisis, Govt Slow to Rein in Fast Food Industry
NEW YORK - When the fast food chain McDonald's decided to add oatmeal to its menu in January 2011, it literally sugar-coated the offering as a "portable, affordable and balanced breakfast solution... to help make it easier and more inviting for our guests to eat more whole grains and fruits".
In 2007, McDonald's spent an estimated 1.74 billion dollars globally on advertising. (Credit:ND Strupler/CC BY 2.0) Although a single serving of plain oatmeal has one gramme of sugar, one serving (253 grammes) of McDonald's fruit and maple oatmeal with brown sugar contains 32 grammes of sugar. One serving of the same oatmeal, without brown sugar, contains 18 grammes of sugar, according to the company's nutrition facts.
"Why would McDonald's... take a venerable ingredient like oatmeal and turn it into expensive junk food?" lamented New York Times columnist Mark Bittman in February 2011.
McDonald's oatmeal, he pointed out, "contains more sugar than a Snickers bar and (is) only 10 fewer calories than a McDonald's cheeseburger or Egg McMuffin".
But critics say McDonald's uncanny ability to turn an inherently healthy food into an unnaturally processed product (the oatmeal itself contains seven ingredients, including "natural flavour", according to Bittman) is not even the most egregious of the stunts that large food corporations manage to pull.
A Nestle supermarket that set sail in the form of a barge on the Amazon River in Brazil in June 2011 could be one of the more outlandish efforts by the food industry to offer an expanding range of customers a plethora of processed and packaged foods.
Even though processed food is inexpensive, noted Bittman, "the costs aren't seen at the cash register but in the form of high health care bills and environmental degradation".
In the United States, food activists who are highly critical of corporations that market aggressively to attract and keep a steady consumer base are also critical of the government, which seems unable or unwilling to regulate these corporations, whether through limiting their marketing or requiring them to adhere to specific nutrition standards.
System overload
As a result, not only are individuals and communities feeling the effects of a consistent intake of unhealthy processed foods laden with sugar and fat, but societies around the world and the earth itself are also forced to bear the heavy burden of the unsustainable agricultural system upon which the food industry relies.
Some 33.8 percent of adults in the United States are obese, according to the Centres for Disease Control (CDC). Obese means having a body mass index (link) of more than 30. The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that by 2015, 2.3 billion adults will be obese.
Lifestyles that incorporate little to no exercise and a processed diet high in fat and sugar are linked to obesity and being overweight, which are connected to a multitude of health issues, including heart disease, type 2 diabetes and some cancers.
Marketing tactics
On Dec. 1, a law took effect in San Francisco, California, known as the Health Meals Incentive Ordinance, establishing basic nutritional standards for kids' meals that come with free toys, a marketing strategy used to attract kids.
Before the law was passed, according to Corporate Accountability International, McDonald's threatened to sue San Francisco on the grounds of the First Amendment.
Once the law went into effect, instead of giving away free toys with its Happy Meals, McDonald's decided to charge 10 cents per toy.
Still, "this law really had a tremendous public health impact even before it took effect," despite McDonald's approach, said Sara Deon, Value [the] Meal campaign director.
Southern Los Angeles passed a moratorium limiting the development of new fast food restaurants, for example, and Jack-in-the-Box eliminated toys from meals altogether.
Although prohibiting toys from accompanying meals may change nothing about the actual content and nutritional value of the food, the changes do have an impact on who buys fast food meals, and how often.
"It's really about marketing," Deon told IPS. "Big food companies create big demand for their products through aggressive marketing," with some companies, especially McDonald's, marketing especially aggressively towards children, so eliminating toys does help reduce demand.
In 2007, McDonald's spent an estimated 1.74 billion dollars globally on advertising, according to a report by Consumers International. Yum Brands, the parent company for Taco Bell, Pizza Hut and KFC, spent 1.23 billion dollars.
Additionally, "federal agencies wield tremendous influence over what types of foods we eat and the information we receive about them," wrote Michele Simon, a public health lawyer, on her blog, pointing out that the government sets food safety standards, gives nutrition advice and subsidises agriculture.
However, powerful food industry lobbies are able to pressure representatives and senators who hail from districts where people rely on food industry corporations for jobs.
Conflict of interest
Many food activists seriously doubt lawmakers' commitment to ensuring that people have access to healthy, affordable food, citing conflicts of interest and a focus on protecting corporations rather than people.
In April, the Interagency Working Group (IWG), including the Federal Trade Commission, the Food and Drug Administration, the CDC and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, developed and proposed recommendations on both the nutritional quality of food marketed to children and teenagers, and marketing practices.
The House Committee on Energy and Commerce, however, wrote a letter to the IWG, saying, "the real causes of childhood obesity have more to do with inadequate physical activity and excess calorie consumption than with the advertising and packaging of food."
It ignored evidence of a connection between marketing and the purchase and eating of fast food, which in turn contributes to excess calorie consumption.
The letter asked the IWG to "withdraw the current proposal and start afresh".
"Corporations simply throw their money around and threaten politicians if they try to get in their way," Simon told IPS. "Even when regulatory agencies try to do the right thing they're beat back by congressional members that oversee them."
Simon is not convinced that regulations and guidelines are the most viable solutions to a host of related issues including but not limited to poor nutrition, obesity, and an unsustainable food system that exploits labour and harms animals.
What Simon considers truly necessary is complete system overhaul. Her call for an end to corporate and industry control has a familiar ring.
"We need to build a political movement," she said.
Still, despite "a lot of localised restructuring" and alternatives such as farmers' markets, such options are insufficient, she insisted, because they fail to strike at the core of a flawed and broken system.
Comments
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42 Comments so far
Show AllThis even goes for salt in our food, today. Salt is added for flavor and preservation of foods that otherwise would have no taste (due to the processing of its ingredients) or would rot. Yet, added dietary sodium can increase risk for hypertension (high blood pressure), and in turn, uncontrolled/high blood pressure can significantly increase the risk for cardiovascular disease (stroke, myocardial infarction). In spite of these facts, the Salt Institute, backed by salt producers, continually lobby against Institute of Medicine recommended reductions in maximum daily levels of sodium (which dictate the % DV sodium levels that you read on a food label).
Here we go again. Deranged right winger pretends that the food industry throws away billions of dollars a year for fun on advertising.
When the US Congress designates pizza as a vegetable, it's likely that it has everything to do with it. But you're probably not smart enough to connect the dots and see the implications. And, btw, the nanny state comment is priceless. Now, if you only demanded that the pedophiles recruited in jails around the countries stopped performing gynecological and anal exams at the airport, I could possibly start to take you seriously. Till then, you are what you are.
Modern man and the evolution of nutrition: We need the government to tell us how to eat. Burrp!
To chameleon.
Two words; Food deserts!
Most poor people live in areas that the cheapest food, maybe even the only food is high fat, high salt, high sugar and highly processed.
Not only that but a lot of food given away by food banks is much of the same processed food.
In addition, given the highly subsidised ag industry, we are awash in milk and milk-products, soy and high fructose corn sugar. Someone has to use it/ eat it.
If it were just as easy as you say then I would agree with you. But alas it is not.
Aberfan. Even in poor urban areas it is possible to eat well and economically. Co-operation, imagination and the desire to have a healthy diet are a good beginning.
Waiting for government and the food industry to act is naive.
Looks like we got too much of a Big Mac attack.
Yes it is possible. That does not change the really that it is harder to do so.
I think the term, "food desert" is another media contrivance. I find it highly unlikely that finding fresh affordable fruit and vegetables to be so hard. A lot of people don't eat right, not because they lack money or time, but because they lack the right "nutritional intelligence." It's a lot easier to eat an apple than it is to eat a candy bar. Apples are cheaper, too!
And I find it highly unlikely that you know what you are talking about.
"A lot of people don't eat right, not because they lack money or time, but because they lack the right "nutritional intelligence." It's a lot easier to eat an apple than it is to eat a candy bar. Apples are cheaper, too! "
Wrong. It isn't either / or. People don't eat "right" because of lack of time AND money AND lack of knowledge about nutrition.
And it is NOT easier to eat an apple that a candy bar, which is why people tend to eat candy bars over apples.
.
""Why would McDonald's... take a venerable ingredient like oatmeal and turn it into expensive junk food?""
Ummm.. because without sweetening and flavoring it tastes liks shit, and people won't buy it.
Next question from the Food Police ?
What's next - you want a law that says I have to get 8 hours sleep a night ? You want to put a monitor in my bedroom for it ? And of course there's broccoli - I should have a legal obligation, federallly enforced, to eat broccoli ....
After all you think it's 'good for me'.
I could think of some menu items to suggest to you, but I doubt you'd care for them.
Eat s.......... ( spinach ? or something else ... )
Good point PMJ. Government regulation is out of control. Why, for example, should we criminalize meth users and dealers. And heroin too! Get the government out of my veins and into the board rooms and battlefields, where they belong. Sugar isn't addicting, is it? Alas.
Sugar is addictive.
Perhaps if the FDA were not wasting time and energy going after and persecuting small and local farmers, they might succeed in reigning in Big Food. Furthermore, the USDA has a serious credibility problem when it comes to the "USDA organic" labels. All in all, it is not that the government cannot speed up but that they just will not bother much. And what about our disaster capitalist system that is the 800 lb "gorilla" in the room?
and how much money did they give "your" representative?
I tell my patients that their weight is like their bank accounts. If they deposit more as food calories than they withdraw as exercise, their weight will increase and vice versa. If they want to lose weight but do not want to exercise, they must go on a starvation diet.
Second, a cup of fat has 2 1/2 times as many calories as a cup of sugar. Therefore, fried foods are anathema. Grill or bake your chicken.
Another problem is that due to farm subsidies the country is awash in corn syrup that is largely fructose. Consequently it is cheaper than sugar. It is absorbed very rapildy and the blood sugar shoots up. Then the pancreas kicks in to drive it back down, but it overshoots and the blood glucose becomes too low, and hunger pangs ensue. So people pop a can of pop and get another shot of fructose. Thus, their blood sugars are on a constant roller coaster until the pancreas becomes exhausted--type 2 diabetes and the attendant medical costs. It used to be rare in children. But some children now park in front of a TV set or play computer games while drinking a 16 ounce bottle of fructose laden pop.
Get the picture?
I totally agree with you. Also, a diet high in saturated fatty acids may lead to beta cell dysfunction (and result in glucolipotoxicity or just lipotoxicity).
It's funny how few people are willing to consider removing sugary drinks from their diet when it's not that hard to do (and the drinks significantly increase the caloric intake per meal). It's a little more difficult to remove saturated fat from the diet, since it can be harder to detect in food, but it's not that difficult to do, either. Exercise, itself, is so beneficial, even if exercise does not result in weight loss. Anyway, here's a great article on obesity that I found a while back. It should be essential reading for the general public (except... I'd remove the part about nicotine, first).
http://www.endotext.org/obesity/obesity7.2/obesityframe7-2.htm
I took a quick browse through your link. It is based on out of date myths.
High fructose corn syrup is almost always made with GM corn, too. Yummy!
Wont people take responsibility for themselves sometimes ?
That's what I keep telling the banksters: take responsibility for yourselves some time. Care to ask me how that's going?
I can (and do) enjoy extremely unhealthy, yet local and organic, prepared foods at the excellent farmers markets I've been lucky enough to live near. Orange-cranberry scones, lo mein and cider doughnuts, nom nom nom! As to the argument about advertising and the addictive qualities of fast food, the lines at the Cambodian food and flat-bread pizza stalls at a local market are consistently longer than any I've seen at a fast food establishment.
Well, a marathon runner can eat all the unhealthy stuff he/she wants and will not gain weight. It's the context that matters. There's nothing wrong with saturated fat, if not eaten too often in excess. There's nothing wrong with sugar if not eaten too often in excess. But, if someone has a high metabolic rate, then what defines "excess" can be different than for someone with a slower metabolic rate.
I couldn't agree more. Pure water will poison at a certain intake.
I'm with those who don't put the blame on the fast food industry. I'll admit to being partial to fast food. Even if you stuff yourself with healthy organic low fat food, guess what will happen? Government has the responsibility to advise what people should eat. But government has no right to tell people what they should eat; nor should government make it difficult for legitimate businesses to operate. Fast food chains sell food, not some illegal substance. Besides, creating needless problems for businesses inadvertently translates into higher prices and fewer jobs. As a resident of Greece, this is something I know, first-hand.
Yes, but people living in Greece are still subject to EU food regulations, which are more stringent than in the States. For instance, the EU regulates production of HFCS as well as the amount of additives in food. Even the food in a Greek McDonalds has slightly different ingredients from the food in a McDonalds that exists Stateside, although the menu may be very similar or the same. You benefit from government regulation without knowing it.
"ut government has no right to tell people what they should eat; nor should government make it difficult for legitimate businesses to operate"
What is "difficult" and what is "legitimate"?
This is a problem that only exists in the minds of people who refuse to take responsibility for their lives.
1. Stop watching (or better yet get rid of) your TV, listening to radio, and reading the newspaper (it really is a daily advertising bulletin with "editorial content" filling whatever space couldn't be sold to advertisers) and throw out all junk mail as soon as you get it out of the mail box.
2. Learn to cook from scratch--no convenience foods, (hamburger helper, Ramen noodles, frozen entrees) junk foods (pizza, ice cream, carbonated soft drinks, doughnuts), or "fast foods" (those franchise food dispensers who treat their workers like robots and their product like a manufactured good).
3. Pay more for quality food and buy (and therefore eat) less of it.
Good points, but there are problems for people with limited income and long hours at work. It may not be possible for people to make food from scratch all the time. Plus, food advertising really seems to work well on kids, and they may put a lot of pressure on their parents to buy junk food.
What you say is true, however, there are solutions but they do require a lilttle creative thinking on the part of adults and kids. Peanut and butter and jelly (low sugar if pssible) or even some honey are very widely available and are not as expensive as most fast food.
Or a box of raisins, some peanut butter, honey, and celery can be transformed into "ants on a log" very easily and inexpensively. Most citrus fruits are also pretty widely available for low cost at this time of year. They make excellent snacks and contain vitamins and minerals not found in candy or soft drinks.
Tired, and distracted adults who allow their children to be tutored by commercial advertising are easy marks for kid's pestering, but their example will still trump the conditioning of mass media and outside pressures being exerted if the parents have the will and mind to be the change they want to see in their children.
Your solutions are not solutions. For example, this
"Or a box of raisins, some peanut butter, honey, and celery can be transformed into "ants on a log" very easily and inexpensivel"
is going to be high in sugar, form the honey and raisins.
Honey is tasty, and in raw unprocessed form might have some healthful micronutrients, but it is still high in sugar, a high GI and high calorie food. Raisins are tasty, but as with any dried fruit, are going to be high in sugar. Dried fruit, while tasty, concentrates the sugar content of fruit..
Your post has just highlighted, if inadvertently, the problems of those who rant that all that people need to show is some willpower etc. Your information is wrong.
I somewhat agree with you. BUT, there are a lot of parents who, if given the time and resources, would shape their childrens' perceptions of food so that they would be more naturally inclined toward seeking out healthier choices, even just based on taste. And, there are probably a lot of children who would love to eat food that is more genuinely fulfilling and nutritious. It's often not possible on a limited income, with limited time and limited neighborhood choices.
I have two grown children. Once I took my children to McDonald's because my son wanted to go because all of his friends in school went there. When I asked him how he liked his hamburger, he didn't answer me. (He was obviously disappointed.) If I managed to keep my children away from fast food why is it that the other parents can't?
It's simple. People get fat and unhealthy by eating an unnatural diet. That alone contributes to lethargy and a reliance on habits that will amuse one as they languish... TV, etc.
Of course, in our elitist society, it is intended that the poorest people suffer more than the wealthiest... so if something is deemed good, there will logically be less of it available to poor people, e.g. fresh produce, etc.
But, the real issue here is ecological health. Did you know that humans are herbivores? http://allinharmony.org
I strongly suggest you all get a copy of the book, The China Study. http://thechinastudy. If you want to see a sneak preview, check out the trailer http://www.forksoverknives.com/ for Forks Over Knives, a movie based upon The China Study.
Finally, McDonald's, the FBI and many other key players in our Nazi World Order (not only American) have been hard at work to block affordable and healthy fast food from entering the marketplace. How do I know? I tried to launch an all vegan, affordable, healthy fast food McDonald's analog.
The extent to which I was attacked by COINTELPRO operations could fill a few tomes! If you (collectively) want to get healthy... well, you may just have to address the top down military police state that controls our deception culture and its 'free market' economics!
This is frankly one of the most B.S. articles I have ever read. Oh the horror of putting sugar in your oatmeal....... Basically what this along with a number of other "liberal" narratives really get down to is hatred of the poor, middle class and any thing that smacks of an affordable lifestyle. Yes Americans are over weight however if you think our diet is any worse than the french or germans think again. What this gets down to is certain people want most of the population to be on the brink of starvation, so that they can feel good about being able to be "special" since they can afford the overpriced crap at whole foods. In the end all this really gets down to is some strange superiority complex that certain people have. Of course I might be wrong and that block of triple cream brie from whole foods that the author just ate is in fact a health food.......
Not to mention that our gracious CONgress is contributing greatly to the cause by designating pizza as a vegetable. We've long crossed the line from the sublime to the ridiculous and this is the proof. To see how all this works, I recommend watching the documentaries "Fast Food Baby" at http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/fast-food-baby/ and "Super Size Me" at http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/super-size-me/
Ho-hum, so what? I eat what I wish to eat and I don't eat breakfast,, lunch,, or supper at McDonalds an or any fast food crap food outlet... If anyone else wants to do so, I do believe that falls undere the catagory of their business.