It's tempting to blame big food companies
for the rise in obesity rates. After all, they're the
folks who Supersized our fries, family-portioned our potato
chips and Big Gulped our sodas. There's also the billions
they've spent keeping their products ever on our minds
and in our mouths.
Likened by some to the way tobacco
companies seduced smokers, such practices have made the
food industry the target of lawsuits and legislation seeking
to yank junk food from schools and curb advertising to
children.
But some experts say neither the problem nor the solution
is nearly so simple.
"You don't have the collusion or the cover-up you had
in smoking," says James Tillotson, a business and food
policy professor at Tufts' Friedman School of Nutrition.
"We want to blame somebody, but the thing is, we're all
a part of it."
Sure, companies set the stage with cheap, calorie-dense
foods.
But government also has propped up agribusiness, the
medical community was slow to take on obesity and good
nutrition, and consumers seem determined to move less
and eat more, says Tillotson, a former food industry executive.
How much of that burden of blame belongs to the food
industry can be difficult to answer.
___
Personal responsibility
The food industry emerged at a time when malnutrition
was the nation's chief dietary concern. But at some point
food became too plentiful, a change that altered the culture
of the American diet.
Yale obesity expert Dr. David Katz says that's because
companies aggressively peddle food to people who don't
need it.
Food industry officials prefer to call it consumer choice.
"We don't think the food industry has done anything particularly
wrong in this regard," says Robert Earl of the Food Products
Association, a lobbying group that prefers to indict sedentary
lifestyles and poor choices.
Companies have tried to help people make better choices,
he says, offering healthier products and more nutrition
data. But people can't be forced to make the right choice
and consumer disinterest doomed many of those products.
He's right. Consumers bear much responsibility for their
weight and the fact that two-thirds of Americans are overweight
or obese. It's not the industry's fault that people don't
get exercise, or that schools have cut physical education,
or that people prefer the taste of Twinkies (500 million
sold a year) to tofu (much less).
But critics call Earl's assessment disingenuous. Personal
responsibility has limits in the face of a multibillion-dollar
marketing whirlwind pushing countless high-calorie treats.
"They (food companies) are putting $36 billion into directing
those choices," says Marion Nestle, a nutrition professor
at New York University and critic of the food industry.
"And their methods are very effective."
Meanwhile, efforts to market the healthier products Earl
spoke of historically have been lackluster, acknowledges
Brock Leach, an executive for new products at PepsiCo
Inc.
As for nutrition data, it isn't always helpful. And
attempts to standardize or clarify labeling still meet
resistance.
Personal responsibility also falters when it comes to
children, who are bombarded by junk food ads that undermine
parents.
Everything from child-friendly merchandizing of sugary
cereals to cartoon ads is designed to give companies more
sway over what children eat, says Dr. Susan Lynch, a child
obesity doctor and wife of New Hampshire Gov. John Lynch.
Such tactics make it tougher to teach good eating habits
to kids who equate food with entertainment, she said.
"It becomes a marketing thing, a fashion thing," says
Lynch. "You want to buy the food with the cartoons on
the box or the toy."
The industry should have done more to direct the child
obesity debate, agrees Pepsi's Leach. Much of the focus
has been on getting junk food out of school vending machines,
but Leach argues that's just a tiny part of the solution.
He says food companies — including his own, one
of the biggest losers in the vending machine fight —
should have offered healthier vending options long ago,
then redirected attention to other critical issues, such
as getting physical education back in schools.
___
Science lag
In many ways the food industry is chasing a moving target.
For years, food production was a better understood science
than nutrition. And so whole grains were abandoned and
hydrogenated fats embraced.
The medical community takes much of the blame, says
Dr. George Blackburn of Harvard Medical School's nutrition
division.
"We didn't even put nutrition in the medical curriculum
except in the last 30 or 40 years," he says. "As soon
as we got drugs, to hell with nutrition. We're just now
getting it to be a professional responsibility to be sensitive
to people's healthy eating."
Today, the food industry suffers from nutrition research
overload, with tidal waves of new and sometimes contradictory
health findings that strain its ability to produce appealing
foods that are in sync with the latest science.
Even when companies succeed, they still are susceptible
to scientific surprises that can break a business.
When saturated fat was the enemy, companies reformulated
their products, says Grocery Manufacturers Association
spokeswoman Stephanie Childs. Only later did they learn
that the trans fats they had replaced them with were even
worse.
But the science lag can't explain the growing ubiquity
of food or the ballooning portions of it, from bigger
buckets of movie popcorn to McDonald's much vilified —
and now defunct — Supersized burgers.
The industry again points to the consumer, saying that
starting in the 1970s people demanded convenience and
bargains. Smart companies launched family sizes and sold
food everywhere from office supply chains to hardware
stores.
"It's a tremendous way of getting people to buy more
at lower cost to the producer," says Nestle, who notes
research has shown that the more food people have, the
more they eat. "There's no question that that's an incentive
to buy. Everybody loves a bargain."
This has changed how Americans eat. So-called portion
distortion has contributed enormously to obesity.
And overeating becomes even easier when food is everywhere,
Nestle says. Meal time is all the time when everything
from cars to backpacks to grocery carts are redesigned
with snack food holders to accommodate constant munching.
But Nestle acknowledges it becomes a chicken-or-egg
question. Lifestyles have changed and Americans want to
eat big and on the run. Did that lead food companies to
change, or did new products change Americans?
___
Engineering obesity?
Despite his criticism of the industry's practices, Yale's
Katz acknowledges companies are in a difficult position.
Ultimately, they sell food, and staying in business means
selling the foods people want. Public health is secondary.
But what if those companies engineered their foods to
make you eat more of them? Though he acknowledges that
evidence is scarce, Katz believes companies do just that,
much the way tobacco companies were accused of tinkering
with nicotine.
Research shows that people eat more when faced with
a variety of foods, or even a variety of flavors within
a single food. For example, you are less likely to overeat
plain baked potatoes than those drenched in butter, salt,
sour cream and chives.
Sugary cereals, Katz notes, have more salt in them than
many potato and corn chips. Katz believes that's one way
to make a cereal's flavor more complex and appealing to
get people to eat more of it.
Industry officials dispute Katz's theory. Earl, of the
Food Products Association, says he knows of no company
that has knowingly manipulated ingredients as Katz suggests.
Whatever the food industry's share of the blame, Tillotson,
the Tufts professor, thinks obesity lawsuits are inappropriate
and Congress is considering a measure to bar them. Food
companies were asked to feed a hungry nation; suing now
penalizes them for doing so, he believes.
Industry officials contend lawsuits divert resources
from efforts to educate consumers and to produce healthier
foods. Market demand and a sense of social responsibility
are better catalysts for change, they say.
And some companies deserve real credit for living up
to that.
• General Mills Inc., the nation's No. 2 cereal
maker, now makes all its cereals from whole-grain flour.
• Kraft Foods Inc., the nation's biggest food
manufacturer, says it's curbing snack food ads to children
and will redesign packaging to flag its healthier products.
The company also recently cut the fat in hundreds of products
and stopped marketing snacks at schools.
• PepsiCo Inc., which credits healthier products
with two-thirds of its revenue growth, has launched various
healthy eating education efforts and even has tied executive
bonus programs to the development and marketing of healthier
items.
• The Coca-Cola Co. now labels some of its sodas
with nutrition data for the entire bottle, not just one
serving.
But while critics applaud the changes, they say industry
goodwill and consumer demand aren't reliable enough. The
realities of competition can push goodwill aside and consumers
can't be counted on to want what's good for them.
Leach acknowledges it's true that industry will follow
consumer demand, and that includes high-fat, high-sugar
foods.
That's why Richard Daynard, director of the obesity
and law project at Northeastern University School of Law
in Boston, says lawsuits — some are pending, some
were dismissed or settled — still are needed as part
of a larger assessment of the obesity epidemic.
"You can't get to a solution until you get a diagnosis.
If you don't see the role of the junk food industry in
causing the problem and in continuing to maintain the
problem, you've missed a big part of the diagnosis," says
Daynard, who is leading a soda industry lawsuit.
"Things that dramatically assign blame, like a lawsuit,
help people make a diagnosis."
Ellen Van Gelder, an obese 41-year-old health care worker
from Concord, N.H., doesn't need a lawsuit to make her
diagnosis.
Though she disapproves of many of the food industry's
marketing methods and wishes food companies would make
it easier to eat healthier, ultimate responsibility for
her weight is her own, she says.
"I would love to blame somebody else. The reality is
it's each person's responsibility," says Van Gelder, who
has battled her weight her entire life. "You put the food
on your plate. You choose whether to eat it."
