I listened to Marion Nestle– a leading nutrition researcher and author of Food Politics– give a speech that was very compelling. She was tackling the issue of personal responsibility versus collective responsibility when it comes to food choices. This is a sticky topic in the land of the free. Nobody wants the US government telling them what to eat, yet, she argued, if a restaurant was putting arsenic into a recipe, there would be outrage if nothing was done about it. Where issues of public health and safety are concerned, people WOULD like the government to be protective of them. So transferring that analogy to transfats, where the latest scientific research tabulates that between 72,000 to 228,000 Americans die prematurely due solely to the effect of transfats in their diet, it’s kind of astounding that the US government would prefer to let the “free market” deal with it. That seems out of alignment with how much people were freaking out after 3 people died from an E coli outbreak in spinach last year.

These are some trends in the world of nutrition that Marion Nestle has noticed;

1) Increasing complexity– From 1980 to 1995, the USDA food pyramid came with seven Dietary Guidelines for Americans that would basically make anyone who followed them healthier. Eat a variety of foods, don’t eat too much fat, saturated fat, cholesterol, salt or sugar and drink alcohol only in moderation. Pretty straightforward. These Dietary guidelines for Americans are used as the benchmark in military and prison food facilities, school lunch program and food stamp programs, so they are more than just suggestions.

The guidelines were revised again in 2000 and then again in 2005, and the trend is towards increasing complexity and individual responsibility. The guidelines now have 41 recommendations, (23 for the general public and 18 for special populations,) 11 food groups, 2 diet plans and 12 calorie levels. You are supposed to log on to the USDA website to tailor- make your personal program.

2) Individual responsibility– By putting the responsibility squarely on the shoulders of individuals, any discussion of public policy solutions is stopped. This is just what the food industry is paying its lobbyists for! The USDA has a double mandate to benefit the food industry AND educate the public. They increased their recommended daily intake of dairy products (an optional food for most people on the planet) from 2-3 cups a day up to 3 cups a day, so there’s the benefit-the-food-industry part.

And as for their education component? Hey they gave it a shot! There’s a new emphasis on eating whole grains (like “whole grain bread, cereal, crackers or pasta”– none of which, by definition, are whole grains) as well as eating “nutrient- dense” foods (like baked french fries, baked potatoes, lowfat hotdogs or “diet” margarine.) (Not kidding.) Educating people to make good choices is very important in a population in the midst of obesity, diabetes and heart disease epidemics. If the leading federal nutrition education agency is telling people to eat more food, we clearly have a problem, not to mention their misconstruing the basics of good nutrition. Policy makers, in my opinion, also have a responsibility to be examining the larger societal, economic and environmental factors that contribute to obesity– factors that can be modified with legislation that could save people’s lives.

3) Food “Equivalency” — this is that old yada yada about there being no good or bad food, that it’s all about balance, variety and moderation. All foods can be part of a healthful diet, the food lobby says. That is just plain false. High Fructose Corn Syrup and hydrogenated oils can not be part of any healthful diet. They are damaging to the human organism. And the pervasive propaganda of the food industry leads to “variety” becoming pop-tarts, lunchables, candy bars and pizza as the frequent daily diet of innumerable American children. How can individuals make informed choices when we are soaking in a culture where ketchup is a “vegetable” and everyone you know has a soda with dinner and always has? Again, it’s up to policy makers to see the larger patterns and trends and step in when they become dangerous.

Unfortunately, not only is the government not stepping in to stem a bad cycle, it is protecting and subsidizing the least healthy food in the food supply. Our farm subsidies plow over $10 billion into wheat, corn, soy which create the main components highly processed, nutrient-depleted junk food. As Marion Nestle said, it’s why you can spend $5 at McDonald’s and get either 5 hamburgers or one salad.

Marion Nestle’s analysis of the societal, economic and environmental factors that contribute to obesity is that many factors started in the early 1980s–

• Farm supports– She recounted how back in 1980, Reagan was elected with a “deregulatory agenda for business.” This resulted in farmers being encouraged to grow more food, which they did really well. There went from being about 3200 daily calories available for every man, woman and child in the US in the early 8os, to being 3900 daily calories per person now– about twice what anyone really needs to eat. This meant that prices for basic food commodities dropped and the competition between food companies became intense (again, as a result of deliberate federal policy.)
• The “Shareholder Value Movement”– This was also in the early 1980s, when Jack Welch was the head of GE and talked about how the duty of any corporation was to give immediate value back to its shareholders. This put enormous pressure on food companies to sell more calories as quickly as possible.
• Eating out– People started to eat outside the home more often because it was finally affordable to do that. People eat more calories when they do that because of the “buffet syndrome” and also because restaurant food is higher-calorie food, generally speaking, than what people make at home.
• Increase in portion sizes– Nestle jokes about how the standard USDA portion size for a drink is an 8 ounce cup, but you can’t even buy one of those anymore. She cites a study that analyzed food portion size with regard to obesity rates and found that they paralleled exactly, with a rise that started in the early 80s. Remember when muffins and bagels were small and you shared your soda in the movie theater? Way back when?
• Ubiquity– There never used to be cafés in bookstores of libraries. Our culture has shifted to make this “normal.” In Italy, you don’t eat if you miss the narrow window of restaurant hours. There are no vending machines either. You go hungry.
• Proximity– Dunkin Donuts. Enough said.
• Frequency– midmorning snacks, candy dish on your desk, eating while driving, essentially non-stop gnoshing is culturally acceptable now, when it didn’t used to be.
• Food is cheap– so you don’t have to budget to have a snack.

These factors in this country developed because of intense competition between food companies that was in large part due to deliberate federal subsidy programs. (Did you notice in that chart above that our government gives $1.5 billion tax dollars to subsidize tobacco? Need I say more? Things need to be redrawn.) If we should all be eating more fruits and vegetables, the government might consider squeezing tobacco out of the budget, at very least. There is no fruit and vegetable lobby in Washington and that fact is showing up on the waistlines of two-thirds of all Americans.

It is the policy makers in this country who should have the vision, the historical reference and the gumption to change the status quo from one that encourages unhealthy food choices while squawking the refrain of “personal responsibility!” I’ve sent my two cents to Senators Collins and Snowe. The Farm Bill will be voted on when they get back to congress after the August break. Let’s hope our leaders start choosing the health of citizens over the health of corporations.

Filed under: 1