Junk Food Nation

Junk Food Nation: Who's to Blame for Childhood Obesity?
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
Jos=E9 "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.=20
Let them eat chips!

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

Parents who by into it?


You're preaching to the choir as far as I"m concerned; however, I'm
wondering if you think that you're going to change a society that buys
into fast food.

Snipped the rest....

My eldest is 27 and I've been fighting this battle for at least that
long. My youngest is 10 and it's the SOS, another day. :-(

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

Parents who by into it?

Ooooops, buy into it :-)


You're preaching to the choir as far as I"m concerned; however, I'm
wondering if you think that you're going to change a society that buys
into fast food.

Snipped the rest....

My eldest is 27 and I've been fighting this battle for at least that
long. My youngest is 10 and it's the SOS, another day. :-(

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

Their irresponsible parents!

--
"If you push something hard enough, it will fall over." --
Fudd's first law of opposition

They can try to sell whatever they want to..... NOBODY can force you or
parents to buy anything and certainly none of these companies are forcing
food into our mouths.


--
---------------------------------------------
"If Stupidity got us into this mess, then
why can't it get us out?" -Will Rogers


"Haley" wrote in message
oups.com...
Junk Food Nation: Who's to Blame for Childhood Obesity?
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!