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Willett: 'The quality of our food supply is directly affecting the rates of obesity in this country'
Spending taxpayers’ money on helping low-income shoppers buy “mostly junk and soda” is “nuts” and inexcusable, delegates were told at a lively debate between leading academics and economists on how government policy impacts the food supply at Harvard last week.
Much of the discussion focused on the US Department of Agriculture’s (USDA’s) Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which Walter Willett, chair of the Department of Nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health, described as a “conduit for people to buy mostly junk and soda”.
Excuses USDA gave were ‘completely lame’
Willett - one of four panelists at a session of The Forum at Harvard School of Public Health - added: “We’re writing checks of billions of dollars a year to buy soda for the SNAP program and with the other hand we’re writing checks [to treat] diabetes. It’s nuts.”
The fact that USDA had told New York City it could not prevent SNAP dollars from being spent on sugar-sweetened beverages, “even on a trial basis”, was “just ridiculous”, he added.
“The excuses USDA gave were just completely lame. They can easily do it; they do it for alcoholic beverages.”
Parents are being undermined
Fellow panelist David Ludwig, professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, agreed that it “makes no sense to be paying for that [sugary drinks through SNAP] especially when we might end up paying for that as a society through the costs of obesity-related disease”.
As for encouraging children to eat more healthily, the government needed to regulate advertising and marketing to kids, he said. There was an “enormous incentive” for industry to market calorie-dense, nutrient-poor foods, while it was not possible to trademark broccoli, he argued.
But this didn’t mean the government should spend millions trying to make broccoli sexy, he stressed.
Advertising to kids
“Government’s role is not to try and compete with the food industry but to regulate. They [food manufacturers] can compete with each other to make healthy foods. And that should mean no advertising of any kind to young children.”
Children were inspired by sports stars and cartoon characters on food packaging, he added: “They get them to eat the highest-calorie lowest-quality food imaginable.
“I have a three-year-old at home and it takes a lot of work to guide a child in this food environment when busy working parents are undermined by this massive marketing campaign. The industry knows the parents are going to cave.”
Subsidies
But simply switching subsidies from corn to broccoli was not the answer, said agricultural economist Gary Williams, professor at the Department of Agricultural Economics at Texas A&M University, who pointed out that farmers in the Midwest could not just switch from corn to carrots or bananas.
As US farmers were competing in global markets against farmers in Europe, Brazil and China that were being subsidized, removing support structures could also put them out of business, threatening jobs and food security, he noted.
He also challenged the idea that Americans lacked food choice owing to the focus on corn, wheat and soy. ”I would challenge you go any place in the world that provides more quality and diversity… Sure we’ve got a lot of junk food out there, but you don’t have to choose it.”
But Willett countered: “But for many Americans, what’s affordable and what’s available is junk.”
Wealth of SKUs does not necessarily mean more choice
Moreover, what was not always obvious given the wealth of SKUs on offer at most supermarkets was that while there were thousands of processed food products to choose from, most were in fact “produced from just four key commodities: corn, wheat, soybeans and rice or the animals that are fed those commodities, and that’s the majority of calories in our diet”, he claimed.
And this had proved disastrous for the nation’s health, he claimed.
“If we judge by its impact on human health, the American food supply is a disaster. Americans consume huge amounts of refined starch, sugar, red meat and very inadequate quantities of fruits, vegetables, beans nuts and wholegrain high-fiber foods.
“And we know from lots of research that this is directly related to an increase in diabetes and cardiovascular disease. We [also] have very direct evidence that the quality of our food supply is directly affecting the rates of obesity in this country.”
Price elasticity, soda taxes
Asked about the extent to which demand for less healthy foods could be manipulated via soda taxes or other tools, Barry Popkin, distinguished professor at the Department of Nutrition, UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health, said it all depended on the product.
“We know that some foods are more price sensitive than others, price elasticity varies. Staples are less affected, people will buy them anyway. But sugar sweetened beverages are sensitive [increasing the price will reduce demand and vice versa].”
4 comments (Comments are now closed)
I'm afraid it may be hopeless
Medicine is big business, maybe the biggest in this country. It is really naive for us to expect that the USDA or FDA will have the consumers best interest at heart. The quality of food consumed in this country literally guarantees a need for ongoing medical research. They are killing us and then making a huge profit off of the slaughter. An entire industry has formed around making bad ingredients have an acceptable taste and marketing garbage as a healthy alternative to real food.
Anybody see the the article listed at the bottom of this page, "Caravan targets donut frying oil for unhealthy fat reduction". Yes, that's what we need, healthier donuts, that way we can put them on the breakfast table right next to the pop tarts and lucky charms.
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Posted by SK
03 November 2011 | 19h57
Dunk the Junk
Estimates are the government buys 4 billion dollars of soda with SNAP money each year. Purchases of Mountain Dew go up 400 percent at our local SuperMarket the week SNAP money is dispensed. Soda consumption correlates more closely than any other "food" to the rise in obesity and in diabetes. Mississippi has the highest per capita soda consumption and it also has the highest rates of obesity and diabetes. Famous study by Streigel and Moore found a dose response effect between soda consumption and obesity in kids. Had enough? www.dunkthejunk.org
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Posted by Kevin Strong, MD
26 October 2011 | 04h58
Tyranny exposed
Hooray for truth..
“If people let government decide what foods they eat and what medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as sorry a state as are the souls of those who live under tyranny.”
Thomas Jefferson quotes (American 3rd US President (1801-09). Author of the Declaration of Independence. 1762-1826)
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Posted by MA
24 October 2011 | 22h54
An unspoken piece of the puzzle
As a long-time lacto-vegan and organics consumer, I understand how much effort is required to thrive given the current American food production system. I also know that it's possible and I understand the fundamental importance of the stories I tell myself about who I am and what my life is worth to me, to make it happen. I take it for granted that I am, and am SUPPOSED to be, the primary guardian of my own health and appearance, and that drives me to take responsibility for my choices.
My point is that one rarely mentioned piece of the food puzzle is the fact that many consumers simply don't give a damn about their own health, appearance, or value. Nor do they believe that their lives are their responsibilities. The prevailing attitudes generally range from "the doctor will fix me when I'm sick, that's what I have insurance (or Medicare/Medicaid for)", to "why bother being attractive or well, my life really really isn't worth the effort", to "why would I eat yuccky (read: healthy) foods - I'm just going to get old and sick anyway so I might as well enjoy what I eat!" These people simply will not make different choices unless those choices become so hideously expensive in terms of dollars or effort that it becomes easier to just indulge in other life-threatening behaviors.
Many also excuse their dietary largesse by now buying into stories that cancer, obesity and heart disease are 'inevitable', so nutrition has no effect. For example, as several acquaintances have said to me, "There are two kinds of people: those who have had cancer, and those who will get cancer". They really believe this! With a mindset like that, and such a fatalistic attitude towards life's possibilities, what are the odds that such people will take charge of their choices in such a way as to dramatically reduce their chances of getting cancer?
This is just one example of how highly preventable scourges are now being scapegoated to remove the story believers from all responsibility for their own well-being. The root problem isn't the ag system per se, it's the willingness of people to lower their standards to accept illness an obesity as a way of life, coupled with a willingness to fool themselves into blaming their illnesses on factors beyond their control.
Until and unless the fundamental processes of buying into these myths, devaluing our own lives and accepting the current low, low standards on health and appearance are reversed, the food production and manufacturing system won't fundamentally change because there will be no actual support for change.
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Posted by Jennifer Christiano
24 October 2011 | 20h36
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