Pictures really do equal a thousand words.
Yep, that would be beer, butter, and soda that have enjoyed the major declines. And fresh fruits and vegetable that have seen the steepest increases. Ben over at consumerist asks the obvious question - hey washington what’s up with subsidizing corn syrup and soy, but nothing for broccoli? we live in a topsy turvy world when a six pack of Coke is cheaper than some bell peppers.
The Naked Chef makes his debut at TED Talk. Now I love TED Talk, and I love Jamie Oliver, but I have to admit that Mr. Oliver comes off as a little strident, and just skims by shrill. However, the chart in the beginning is one to know by heart, and some outtakes from his new show teaching folks how to eat are rather poignant. Check it out:
Kelloggs took superfluous marketing claims to a whole new level with it’s recent claims that Cocoa Krispies, a cereal that boasts 11 grams of sugar in a single potion of 31 grams - yes, ONE THIRD of the cereal is pure sugar, “Now helps support your kid’s Immunity” in huge type splashed across the front of the cereal box.
The city of San Francisco sent a letter of concerns to both Kellogg and the FDA, questioning whether the claims go too far and outwardly misleading to parents with H1N1 concerns. The Rudd Center pointedly noted:
Of all claims on cereal boxes, “this one belongs in the hall of fame,” says Kelly Brownell, director of Yale University’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity. “By their logic, you can spray vitamins on a pile of leaves, and it will boost immunity.”
No sooner did Smart Choices fade from prominence, Big Food came up with something equally devious and absurd. Food labeling lies - its like playing wack-a-mole at the grocery store.
Candidates running unflattering photos of their competition in negative ads is nothing new in electoral politics. Heck, even a certain cable network has been found to take certain liberties with the photoshop. However, campaigning hit a new low this season when Jon Corzine put up an ad disparaging Chris Christie for his exceptional girth. The “throwing his weight around” ad has kicked up quite a bit of dust and poses an interesting question. How fat is too fat to get elected?
While we now have a president who is splashed across countless magazine covers, including one where he appears shirtless, the public at large is getting larger and larger. Yet there is increasing expectations on our elected officials to not just have pleasing policy positions, but to be easy on the eyes as well.
In a country where over 64% of the population is either over weight of obese, one would think we would see the opposite trend - a public that votes for heftier and heftier candidates that look just like them. Instead we see the rise of the politicians that look more and more like Hollywood. While New Jerseyans are slim by today’s standards, clocking in with a 22% obesity rate while states like Mississippi sport an eye popping 32%, that still means that one in five of the state’s citizens are tipping the scale. Yet Corzine is doubling down on his calculation that voters will pull the lever for the fittest candidate. Even while editorial pages are calling for an apology, the governor broke out the jogging shorts to run a 5K through the streets of Newark with Mayor Cory Booker.
While unseemly, the ad has been effective, and the fat label is sticking:
But, it appears the message might be working, for now. A new poll from Monmouth University revealed that when voters were asked to say the first thing that came to mind about Christie,“fat” was one of the most frequent responses. A political analyst told the Times that the ad seems to try to link Christie’s weight with his political ability — subliminally telling voters that he lacks self control.
One would think that overtly mocking one fifth of the state’s population would have consequences, and many political watchers predicted a backlash. Yet, in the past few weeks, Corzine has been making a comeback in the polls, gaining 5 points. Perhaps the lessoned to be learned is that voters don’t so much choose a candidate that is most like themselves, but rather most like who they want to be.
A new report out from Harvard this week claims to have highly accurate numbers on obesity and diabetes in the country, and things do no t look good for our southern friends.
Colorado, Minnesota, Montana and Vermont have low rates, with Vermont the lowest at 6.1 percent for people 30 to 59 and 19.9 percent for people over 60. Southeastern states have the highest rates, and Mississippi, where 11.4 percent of people 30 to 59 and 27.7 percent of those over 60 are diabetic, has the highest of all.
Perhaps most shocking is the clear differential between men and women. While men tend to have higher levels of alcoholism and therefore are more suseptible to diabetes, I had expected that women would roughly the same level of diabetes due to how difficult it is to shed excess pregnancy weight.
More men than women have diabetes in every state, and the gap is sometimes large. In Minnesota, for example, almost 12 percent of men have the disease, but only 8 percent of women. The variation among races is also stark. Nationally, about 18 percent of blacks and 16 percent of Hispanics have diabetes, compared with 11 percent of whites.
photo courtesy of flickr user thisisbossi
Sigh. Next they will be concern trolling that secret police will be raiding the kitchens of apple pie baking grandmas everywhere.
For the record - no one sane has proposed any kind of food ban (with the exception of extremely endangered species, but that’s not health concern related). People should be free to eat as many jelly donuts as they like. Of course, the it would be nice if the health costs were reflected in the food prices.
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||
http://www.sacbee.com/topstories/story/2188612.html
My mother drinks Coke with dinner every night, and I admit, it grosses me out. No, she’s not overweight, but it’s still not good for her. What can I say? I care, can’t you tell?
And yes, she does sign her name as “mommy savino”. I wonder if she remembers doing that. I further wonder whether she uses this email for work.
But, as pointed out by Dr. Michael Jacobson of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, “You could start out with some sawdust, add calcium or Vitamin A and meet the (Smart Choices) criteria.”
New York City has a new, rather disgusting ad out trying to convince New Yorkers to chug less sugar.
It took me a little while to recognize that it was human fat which was being poured out of the bottle. The Ethicurean wonders if the $277,000 price tag on these ads is worth it, but considering that 3.2 million New Yorkers are over-weight or obese, it might be too expensive NOT to run these ads.
The Whole Foods food fight continues this week, with Michael Pollan defending the grocery giant as an integral part of developing an alternative food system:
Because if health insurers can no longer pick and choose their clients, and throw sick people out, they will develop a much stronger interest in prevention, which is to say, in changing the way America feeds itself. When health insurers realize they will make thousands more in profits for every case of type II diabetes they can prevent, they will develop a strong interest in things like corn subsidies, local food systems, farmer’s markets, school lunch, public health campaigns about soda, etc. So Mackey is wrong on health care, but Whole Foods is often right about food, and their support for the farmers matters more to me than the political views of their founder.
Amanda from Pandagon on why Pollan is wrong:
I appreciated the Whole Foods boycott, because I think it was a symbolic reminder that eating food labeled “organic” isn’t some kind of health tonic that will negate your need for health care. John Mackey’s opinion on the whole health care debate was only deemed important because Whole Foods is associated with healthiness, and therefore the whole thing was a way to strengthen the belief that the only reason we need universal health care is that “some people” are lazy and inattentive to their health.
…
Of course, Pollan supports health care reform—and actually makes good points about how health care reform could lead to food reform—but the problem with these sorts of things is that most people just remember that Pollan defended Whole Foods, and thus feel reassured that their beliefs that the non-organic-eating don’t deserve health care are sound. Pollan’s more subtle message is going to get lost in the chest-puffing healthiness contests.
Meanwhile, Amy Muldoon points out the class warfare undertones of this dust up:
As obesity has become more of an issue in American life and politics, a growing awareness of the connection between race, class and health has emerged. However, the prevailing perspective from the media, politicians and corporate boneheads like Mackey is that the poor simply lack the discipline to improve their lives.
Over at Civil Eats, Whole Foods anti-worker practices are in the spot light. The growing focus on Whole Foods hypocritical nature and black mark on their image is a bigger liability in the long run than the growing boycotts.
However, unlike out-and-out opponents of the legislation, Starbucks and Whole Foods have built labor friendly images by supporting fair-trade and offering better wages than some other chains, despite being aggressively anti-union. Now it appears the retailers are cashing in on that image to modify the EFCA and remain, as Mackey says, “100% union-free.”
The hypocrisy is not lost on Whole Foods’ employees – one states, people need “to know just how false their [Whole Foods’] ’socially responsible’ image is, especially with regards to their own workers.”
Over the past few years we’ve been bombarded with buzz words like locavore, food deserts, organically grown, obesity epidemic and caloric denisty when it comes to talking about modern food. Left in the shadows is a term that had gained steam in the earlier part of this decade - fair trade.
In short, the Fair Trade label means that a product was grown ethically, following these principles:
Compared to some of the other standards out there, Fair Trade is the full package - addressing environmental, economic, political and physical health of both the producer and the consumer.
While Fair Trade may not be basking in the spot light as much as it should, it’s still making progress. In a huge move, Cadbury has announced that it will be offering Fair Trade chocolate throughout Canada, which they believe will double the amount of Fair Trade chocolate being sold in the country. This is great news for Ghana, where Cadbury is expected to quadruple their Fair Trade chocolate purchases from 5,000 tonnes to 20,000 tonnes, affecting 40,000 farmers.
Pushing major food processors to offer Fair Trade lines is not only a great way to bring income into Africa, it also stability and sustainable economic advances. It would be interesting to see whether major aid organizations like the UN or the Gates Foundation ever pick up the cause as a way to meet their goals.
Finally, yes, Fair Trade products must travel further and may have a larger carbon footprint than local products. However, Fair Trade does address environmental concerns in the area where the product is grown, and also, a stable and democratic government is that much less likely to allow environmental disasters under their watch.
I’ve been out bacheloretting this weekend and have been a very bad blogger. While I’ve been gone, many are abuzz with the new cover story from Time “Getting Real About the High Price of Cheap Food“. It’s a mammoth article which I have not gotten completely through yet. The pork industry has though, and they don’t like it one bit. The editorial “Time Trashes American Agriculture“, from Pork Magazine has all sorts of scathing, caustic retorts to the piece, although it is laughably short on rebuttals.
Obviously, Time thinks it appropriate that American agriculture discontinue feeding as many people as it currently does at a reasonable cost. After all, what do they have to worry about? Those who are priced out of Time’s idyllic food production scenario likely are neither subscribers to their magazine nor customers of their advertisers.
The article laments the fact that “American farmers now produce an astounding 153 bushels of corn per acre.” The reader is led to believe that it would be much better if the yield was half of that, with our “cattle chewing contentedly on the pasture.”
The “story” leads the reader to wonder if the author or editorial staff of Time have ever produced an ounce of food for themselves or others, or if all their ramblings are tossed in from the sideline. They are not part of the solution of feeding people, they are part of the problem.
Big Ag really is starting to sound like a broken record. Have a problem with our food system? You are anti-American and everything this country stands for. Want our food system to be more sustainable? You’re an elitist who wants everyone else to starve.
So, once more with feeling. Our food system benefits big corporations, not small family farmers. We produce more food than we could ever eat in the US. However we produce calories, not nutrients and the ensuing health problems are killing us all.
So says Science Daily. But only if you’re female.
Seriously, though, this is not that surprising. If you live in a food desert and the only place near you to shop is the convenience store on the corner or the gas station down the street, where do you think those food stamps are going to be spent? Two things can be done here:
1) Subsidize farmers markets to be launched in areas defined as food deserts.
2) Double or triple the value of food stamps that are spent on fresh fruits and vegetables.
Of course, Big Food would never let our government do that.
As the argument about food taxes mature, the food movement will need to gird themselves against the building “Food Police”.
Using the tobacco taxes as a model, we don’t have to smoke. We do have to eat and drink. Food is more than fuel and the aggregate of vitamins, minerals, and fiber. It is a cultural statement. It’s part of enjoying life. It’s an expression of taste.
Yes, a lot of choices are less healthy than others. Why do we have our choices? Because of the free market and response to the demand of consumers.
Free markets, glorious free markets, save us from our double chins! You have done wonders and have worked so well in the past like, like the fabulous job you have done with the housing markert. Oh wait. Oops. Moving on, true free markets require perfect and free information. Yet this author laments about onerous labeling requirements and disclosures. There is no free market when producers and suppliers obfuscate the true nature of their products so that consumers will by them.
Secondly, yes, we do have to eat and drink. We do not have to eat and drink everything out there. By this argument, alcohol should not be taxed either, because, hey, someone may want to reach for that bottle of whiskey at the breakfast table for their morning OJ. Who are we to judge?
Mike Shelton, the author of this brilliant piece, also wonders, “t the same time, the government would commit to tax subsidies to stimulate consumption of fruits and vegetables. A curious notion since the price of veggies has never placed them out of reach”. It seems Shelton has not been to a grocery store lately, where red peppers can top $2.49 a piece, and a bag of chips can be had for under a $1. Maybe he is fortunate enough to have someone shop for him.
Grocery shoppers, don’t you worry your pretty little heads though, because it’s not the food, its the exercise!
Why do we have an explosion of obesity? There have always been fatty foods, even more in the past than the present. We used to cook with lard. Not long ago, there was no such thing as “sugar-free.” Obesity has grown, in part, because our culture has created so many more reasons to sit down and stay down. Computer-based recreation. Employment that must be driven to instead of walked to. Decline in manual labor. Our normal activities used to burn the calories and bust the fat. Such is less the case now.
Of course, no one is talking about these real causes, primarily our grand transition from an agrarian nation to the urban and suburban. They are essentially irreversible on a societal level. We’re not doing a Pol Pot ban on computers. We’re not parking our cars to saddle the horse. We’re not going back to the life of 1900 when being fat was a sign of wealth and luxury. This script seems to long for the days of Farmer John pushing the plow. But John traded his plow for the tractor. The genie has long since left the bottle.
Of course, when its time to pay for the bike trails and gym classes, these same people will argue that its not the lack of exercise, it the food! Love the circular logic. Also note the complete lack of suggested alternatives to solving this major problem.
This gem has already been popping up all over the place and will be repeated ad nausea:
Using “save the children” as a shield, citing medical costs as a cause and disease prevention as the justification, there are forces at work to get us to surrender freedom of choice in one of the most basic areas of life: what we eat and drink. The goal is not our better health. It’s control and political power sought by academic and nutritional elites longing to be the parent of us all.
Ahhh, the paranoid delusions of grandeur. How did he know that I spend my days fretting about whether Mike Shelton reached for that second donut in the office kitchen this morning. So news flash to Mike: no one is proposing that your donuts should be taken away. This is nothing more than a classic scare tactic primarily used by right wingers - they exchange “taxed” with “taking away freedom” when there is a vast difference between the two in reality. We just think that a banana or apple should be cheaper than the chocolate glazed at Dunkin’ Donuts. Your waistline will thank you in the end.
This piece was cross-posted at Change.org’s Sustainable Food Blog. I’m helping Natasha keep the lights on while she’s off honeymooning.
Yesterday there was the startling report that 10% of all healthcare costs are due to obesity. That totals up to more than $147 billion a year. Considering that the current healthcare bills that are winding their way through Congress are wearing price tags in the $1 - $1.5 trillion range, it is clear that obesity is playing a large role in the spiraling costs.
While so many politicians wax poetic about keeping down costs, a sugar tax has been roundly panned as a non-starter. This is not surprising. As with tobacco, often public sentiment lags behind actual data. America still has a culture that believes that if you’re fat, well it’s your own damn fault:
Being poor in 21-st century America doesn’t mean not having enough to eat, but often it means being part of a culture where fattening, processed foods are not only relatively cheap and convenient, but socially acceptable. It also means having the kind of job that often isn’t all that rewarding, and you really just need to unwind after work instead of stopping at Whole Foods and whipping yourself up a nice tofu stir-fry.
This, perhaps, is what Bingaman really wants the USCO-OP ( United States Council on Overweight and Obesity Prevention) to change. Because let’s be honest: poor people know that green chile cheeseburgers will make them fatter than steamed salmon will, and they know that doing an hour of exercise will make them fitter than watching an hour of television. They know these things, but often they’ve had a long, hard day at work and they’re tired and hungry and just want to be left alone with their remote control and their burger and their Dr. Pepper.
This attitude is what is going to hold us back from really doing something obesity. Yes, people should exercise, but that’s not the whole story. We also live in a society where children drink more soda than milk and soda is one third the price of milk. Until the cost of food reflects the ill side-effects, people will still reach for the green chile cheeseburger, which btw costs one fourth the price of the steamed salmon. And elitists who don’t realize that should really shut their traps and not tell poor people how to eat.
So we have an attitude problem. Which is going to be a huge hurdle to clear. One the other side though, is greener pastures. Turns out that countries like Great Britain are already experimenting with sugar taxes. While we won’t know for years what are the potential health affects, we do know it has the potential to raise some serious dough:
And here’s the payoff: Conservatively estimated, a 10% tax levied on foods that would be defined as “less healthy” by a national standard adopted recently in Great Britain could yield $240 billion in its first five years and $522 billion over 10 years of implementation — if it were to begin in October 2010. If lawmakers instituted a program of tax subsidies to encourage the purchase of fresh and processed fruits and vegetables, the added revenue would still be $356 billion over 10 years.
Late last week, Center for Science in the Public Interest announced they were filing a lawsuit against Denny’s on behalf of a New Jersey man. The suit alleges that Denny’s endangered its customers by not disclosing the astronomically high amount of sodium in their food:
The suit contends that many of the meals at Denny’s contain more in the one meal than is recommended for an entire day. An example is Denny’s double cheeseburger which contains 3,880 milligrams. The lawsuit is asking the court to order to order Denny’s to list the sodium content of its food on the menu.
Another meal heavy in sodium is the Meat Lover’s Scramble which contains 5,690 milligrams. This meal includes eggs scrambled with cheese,, bacon, diced ham and sausage that comes with more meat on the side plus hash browns and pancakes.
The recommended daily allowance of sodium is 2300 milligrams. For those at risk of heart disease and hypertension, the acceptable level drops to 1500 milligrams. The Meat Lover’s Scramble has 2 and 1/2 days worth of sodium in one sitting. Of course, Denny’s is taking one out of the McDonald’s playbook, calling the suit ridiculous and frivolous. McDonald’s has been sued more than once going back as far as 10 years for causing health problems in their diners, and so far McDonald’s has managed to win in the courts:
NEW YORK (CNN) - A lawsuit alleging food from McDonald’s restaurants is responsible for making people obese got thrown out by a federal judge Wednesday.
The landmark legal action was the first of its kind against a fast-food chain to make its way into a U.S. courtroom.
McDonald’s spokesman Walt Riker said that common sense had prevailed in the suit. “We said from the beginning that this was a frivolous lawsuit. Today’s ruling confirms that fact.”
The Denny’s lawsuit will be a very hard case to make. However, as the Obama campaign has shown, its important to take a long ball strategy to public perception. The long history of tobacco litigation is instructive here.
The first tobacco lawsuits were filed in the 1950s, but almost always failed. The tobacco companies argued that the harmful effects of smoking had been recognized for decades; people choose to smoke and so are personally responsible if they suffer ill effects. Slate: A Tobacco Lawsuit Primer (April 25, 2000)
In the late 1990s, plaintiffs began introducing scientific documentation of the chemical dependency generated by smoking—and proof that the tobacco companies were well aware of its addictive properties. Slate: A Tobacco Lawsuit Primer (April 25, 2000) The first successful tobacco lawsuit was awarded in February 2000, when a California jury ordered Philip Morris to pay $51.5 million to a California smoker with inoperable lung cancer. Slate: A Tobacco Lawsuit Primer (April 25, 2000)
