CDC Chief says junk food ads aimed at kids will seem like pro-smoking ads

The new head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Thomas Frieden, spoke on unhealthy food advertising to kids at the CDC's "Weight of the Nation" conference this week. According to the Atlantic's politics blog, Frieden's solution would be to "raise the price of bad foods and lower the price of good foods."

Frieden stopped short of saying we have to re-examine our tax structure. But let's remember, we subsidize McDonald's every day with our tax dollars, by giving farm subsidies to the corn and soy that feed the cattle that ends up in Big Macs or acts as filler in the bun. Wouldn't it be great if the head of the CDC came out and said that?

Abstinence-only Lunch - courtesy of The Onion

The Onion skewers the whole "personal responsibility" argument used by food industry allies when discussing solutions to the obesity epidemic.

In some ways, it's not that funny - kids are bombarded by marketing for unhealthy food, much the same way they are inundated by media images of sexuality. Is it any wonder 1/3 of American kids are obese? The rhetoric of the past couple decades - saying we have so many overweight kids because of lax parenting - doesn't seem to have fixed the problem. Maybe that's because parents don't have billions to spend on marketing consultants and media campaigns like Big Food does.

(Thanks to the fabulous School Lunch Talk for the link!)

Obesity's sticker shock

A new study in Health Affairs estimates the cost of obesity to our country to be $147 billion annually - that's 10% of our annual spending on health care. As we contemplate health care reform as a nation, this will be an important issue to consider.

Meanwhile, McDonald's made $4.3 billion in profits last year, and has consistently been among the corporations with high numbers of employees on Medicaid rolls. In other words, not only do their products and marketing help drive the obesity epidemic, they aren't even paying medical costs for many of their own employees - we are.

Are we the addicted dupes of the obesity industry?

In Friday's Boston Globe, columnist Ellen Goodman presents a must-read vision for the future of food in this country. Will we one day see the "obesity industry" in the same light as Big Tobacco, and those who eat their products the same way we now view smokers, as addicts, duped into buying these products by slick marketing?

She says:

"The analogy between Big Tobacco and Big Food is imperfect. You can’t quit eating or wear a food patch...But if the campaign against smoking provides a model, it’s in the effort to label restaurant foods and expose the tactics of Big Food. It’s also recasting the folks who bring us bigger food as obesity dealers."

And isn't that what McDonald's is doing? Pushing obesogenic food on our kids using marketing that is designed to appeal to kids? Is Ronald McDonald the new Joe Camel?

Big Fast Food wants menu labeling their way

A recent compromise in the Senate may have paved the way for national menu labeling on fast food menu boards. But Big Fast Food wants it on their own terms. First they demanded pre-emption, meaning that a national law would invalidate stronger local laws, such as Philadelphia's, that require sodium and other information to be posted. Remember, it's not just calories alone that are making us sick; salt, fat and sodium aren't so great for us - or our children - in the huge proportions dished out at the drive-through. So if all that other information goes away? That's a win for the industry.

But now some of the biggest chains have decided that that isn't enough - they want mom-and-pop shops to have to post calorie counts, too. Yum! Brands (parent company of KFC, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut) and other chains think this would be more fair, that the law unfairly targets chains with 20 or more locations. But those chains have scale, and they have uniformity, which is why menu labeling work. That makes it affordable and practical for large chains to calculate the calories in their product, where the costs and variable ingredients would make it untenable for a local restaurant. And with the big profits they're making, comes big responsibility.

Interestingly, this comes at a time when it appears menu labeling is having a big impact - on restaurant chains. Out in California, where state-wide menu labeling went into effect, patrons are seeing more low-calorie options popping up at some restaurants. I wonder if it will lead McDonald's to change their Deluxe Breakfast formulation, currently packing 1150 calories before you add the syrup and butter - that's more than half of what you need each day. (It also has your ENTIRE DAY'S worth of sodium - yikes!)

Alternatives to Fast Food: San Francisco Mayor Drafts Guidelines to Improve Access to Healthy Foods

Leading the charge in 2007, he became the first mayor to issue an executive order to cut city spending on bottled water. Now, Mayor Gavin Newsom is making headlines again with a recently ordered executive directive to increase access to healthy foods for the people of San Francisco.

According to his plan, city departments will have six months to audit unused property to assess whether these empty lots, rooftops and median strips could be transitioned into community gardens. An interesting aspect of the plan directs city offices to serve healthier food at work events, although "healthy" has been vaguely defined as "has high nutritional value."

We can't wait to see what comes out of this.

Photo from SFGate.com

Eating healthy costs more?

The economics of obesity has researchers alarmed by the impact this economic recession is having on consumer’s food choices. And anyone who’s told anyone about the Value [the] Meal campaign has likely heard the objection that fast food is a cheap option for those who can’t afford to eat healthy. Okay sure, when pitted against gourmet health foods like wild salmon or organic spinach, there’s little question that a Big Mac will get you more calories in less time for less money. But as Dr. Adam Drewnowski of University of Washington Center for Public Health Nutrition points out, there are many overlooked healthy foods that aren’t necessarily cost prohibitive. Debunking the myth that health food has to be expensive, Drewnowski says it’s not just about the most nutrient-rich foods, but the most affordable nutrient-rich foods, and advocates for healthy options that won’t break the bank now, and just as importantly, won’t force you to pay with your health either. Check out this article from the Washington Post - it's a good resource for anyone looking for value from their meal.

Obnoxious Fast Food Ad of the Week: Burger King’s Ham Sandwich (Spain)

Burger King seems to have a new marketing strategy: Offend, Earn Media, Apologize, Repeat.

Taking a break from the hyper-sexualized ads of late, Burger King has taken a new approach of ostracizing ethnic groups. This most recent ad that ran in Spain depicts a Hindu goddess, Lakshmi, seated atop a ham and cheese sandwich, under a caption: “A snack that is sacred.”

Burger King has said it will pull the ad out of respect to the vast number of vegetarian Hindu offended by the goddesses’ suggested endorsement. Still, it’s obnoxious.

Seen worse? Post it in the comments below.

“F as in Fat”

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and The Trust for America’s Health have just released this year’s obesity report, "F As In Fat" which contains rankings of state obesity rates and a review of federal and state government policies aimed at reducing or preventing obesity. The US once again receives an overall failing grade. Some startling findings include:

• Adult obesity rates continued to rise in 23 states. Rates did not decrease in any state.
• Thirty-one states have adult obesity rates above 25 percent.
• Thirty states have child overweight and obesity rates above 30 percent
• Eight of the 10 states with the highest rates of obese and overweight children are in the South, as are nine of the 10 states with the highest rates of poverty.

This report is a stark reminder that not only are we nowhere near to fixing this problem, but also that the obesity epidemic - and the diseases that come with it - are closely bound to poverty.

Yale’s Rudd Center report suggests food advertisement influences eating habits

A new study finds that food advertising on television triggers automatic eating, regardless of hunger, and is a significant contributor to the obesity epidemic. The results again put into perspective how critical it is to reduce unhealthy food advertising, particularly to children. Visit the Yale Rudd Center to read the full study.

The research will appear in the July issue of the journal Health Psychology, published by the American Psychological Association.

The evidence keeps mounting - when will the industry take responsibility for its role in the obesity epidemic?

Challenging Corporate Abuse of Our Food: Urban Farmer Will Allen

In the midst of so much Corporate Abuse of Our Food, it was reinvigorating and inspiring to read this NYT article about Will Allen - Milwaukee farmer, MacArthur "genius" award winner, and national advocate for bringing healthy food and self-determination to low-income communities and the African American community. Anyone out there seen this small-scale sustainable fish farming in action? Sounds amazing.

Obesity and Menu Labeling: The Good, The Bad And The Ugly

There's so much going on in the world of menu labeling, it's hard to keep up!



The Good: Maine passes it's own version of menu labeling, and California's state-wide law goes into effect. In Tennessee, a triumph over industry interference, as the Governor vetoes a law that would have invalidated Nashville's municipal menu labeling.

The Bad: Connecticut Governor Jodi Rell vetoes menu labeling in that state. Did she not see all those Corporate Accountability action alerts?

The Ugly: Obesity rates continue to climb. These laws are important tools to hold fast food corporations accountable, but they're clearly the first step of many. We're going to need a lot more than menu labeling to save ourselves, our health system, and especially our kids from the diet-related diseases that are crippling our country.

Image from Center for Science in the Public Interest

The Onion: New Taco Bell's New Green Menu Takes No Ingredients From Nature

I had to re-post this hilarious send-up of Big Food greenwashing efforts.


Taco Bell's New Green Menu Takes No Ingredients From Nature

Healthy school lunch efforts face threats from ever-present fast food

How will efforts to address poor school food environments ever succeed in the face of omnipresent fast food restaurants and marketing that affects the eating habits of our children?

A recent article detailing the hurdles that healthy school lunch efforts face is a stark reminder of the influence that fast food has over our children's eating habits. Despite efforts being made at the federal, state and local levels to improve school lunches, we still have a long road ahead to change the eating preferences of our children.

The primary obstacle to achieving healthier eating is the gauntlet of fast food and junk food purveyors that our children must navigate on a daily basis. And to be clear, this gauntlet extends to the ubiquitous marketing that inundates our children and affects their food preferences.

Obesity rates for school age children has tripled since 1980. It should be no surprise that fast food is a major contributor to our children's poor health considering that the number of fast food restaurants has exploded since 1970 from 30,000 to 220,000 in 2001.

Healthy school lunches will never be able to compete with the hundreds of millions of dollars that fast food giants spend to market junk food to our children. For most children, there's no comparison between a big mac and a fruit salad and there never will be until fast food giants stop targeting children through irresponsible marketing and locating their restaurants near schools.

Here's a thought: to achieve healthy school lunches, maybe it's time to focus less on school lunch policies and more on changing the irresponsible practices of the fast food industry?