What?  Know ye not that your body is the Temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and are not your own?!  I Corinthians 6:19

How the food industry drives us to eat!

And defiles the Temple of the Holy Ghost

Based on an article in Nutrition Action

May, 2010 issue

Two out of three American adults – and one out of three children – are overweight or obese.  Why?

The answers are everywhere: 

There are 490 calories in a Starbucks Zucchini Walnut Muffin.

There are 750 calories in a Turkey Artichoke Panini at Panera Bread.

The Wild Mushroom & Grilled Chicken Pizza at the California Pizza Kitchen has 1300 calories.

And that small unbuttered popcorn at the Regal Theatre contains 670  calories.

Yet many people (not to mention the food industry) blames the overweight to eating too much and exercising too little.

“It’s difficult to avoid obesity in a toxic food environment,” says Yale University psychologist Kelly Brownell.  “There’s tremendous pressure on people to overindulge.”

 Danger:

Excess pounds raise the risk of diabetes, heart disease, stroke, cancer (of the breast, colon, esophagus, kidney and uterus), gallbladder disease, arthritis and more.  And once people gain weight, the odds of losing it and keeping it off are slim.

“Estimates are that this generation of children may be the first to live fewer years than their parents,” says Kelly Brownell.  “Health care costs are now $147 billion annually.”

What are we doing about it? Not enough.

The conditions that are driving the obesity epidemic need to change,” says Brownell.  Here’s how and why…

Why do you call our food environment toxic?

        Because people who are exposed to it get sick.  They develop chronic diseases like diabetes and obesity in record numbers.

How does the environment influence what we eat?

            When I was a boy, there weren’t aisles of food in the drugstore, and gas stations weren’t places where you could eat lunch.  Vending machines in the workplace were few and far between, and schools didn’t have junk food.  Fast food restaurants didn’t serve breakfast or stay open 24 hours a day. 

Today, access to unhealthy choices are ever-present.  Burgers, fries, pizza, soda, candy and chips are everywhere.  Apples and bananas aren’t.  And we have large portion sizes:  bigger bagels, burgers, steaks, muffins, cookies, popcorn and sodas.  We have the relentless marketing of unhealthy food, and too little access to healthy foods.

Does the price structure of food push us to buy more?

            Yes. People buy a Value Meal partly because that large burger, fries and soda cost less than a salad and a bottle of water.  A large popcorn doesn’t cost much more than a small.  A Cinnabon doesn’t cost much more than a Minibon.

And most stores are pushing junk food, not fresh fruit?

            Yes. There’s a Dunkin Donuts at our “Stop ‘n Shop” supermarket and at Wal-Mart there’s a McDonald’s.  They’re set up in ways that maximize the likelihood of impulse purchases.  For example the candy is on display at the checkout line of the supermarket.  And when you go to a modern drugstore the things you usually go to buy – like bandages, cough medicine, pain reliever, your prescription – they’re all in the back.  People typically have to walk by the sodas, chips, and other junk food to navigate their way there and back.

How do advertisements encourage overindulgence?

        Overindulgence is written into the language that companies use – names like Big Gulp, Super Gulp, and the  Extreme Gulp. The burger companies describe their biggest burger with words like the Whopper, the Monster Burger, and the Big Mac.  The industry capitalizes on our belief that bigger is better and promotes large amounts of their least healthy foods.

Why do we want a good deal on bad food?

            Everybody likes value.  Getting more of something for your money isn’t a bad idea.  You like to do that when you buy a car or clothes or laundry detergent or anything.

        But when the incentives are set up in a way that offers value for unhealthy food, it’s a problem.  If you buy the big bag of Cheetos, you get a better deal than if you buy the little bag (if you like cheese flavored air!).  A big Coke is a better deal than a little Coke.  But if you buy six apples, you don’t get a better deal than if you buy three!

Is indulgence a code word for overeating?

            Yes.  You deserve a reward and we’re here to offer it to you.  And ads describe foods as sinful.  Or we make light of eating too much, like the ad that said “I can’t believe I ate the whole thing!”  Do you remember what the ad that used that line was advertising?  Alka Seltzer.

How does the food industry blame people for the obesity epidemic?

            The two words it uses most frequently are personal responsibility.  It plays well in America because of this idea that people should take charge of their own lives and because some people have the biological fortune to be able to resist our risky environment.

        But it also serves to shift blame from the industry and government to individuals with weight problems,  It’s right out of the tobacco-industry playbook.

So, people think it’s their fault?

            Yes.  Many people who struggle with weight problems believe it’s their own fault anyway.  So worsening that is not helpful.  But removing the mandate for business and government to take action has been very harmful.

Are people irresponsible?

            There’s been increasing obesity for years in the United States.  It’s hard to believe that people in 2010 are less responsible than they were 10 to 20 years ago.  You have increasing obesity in literally every country in the world.  Are people in every country becoming less responsible?

Is it as though society rewards obesity?

            No.  Obesity is stigmatized.  Overweight people, especially children, are teased and victimized by discrimination.  Obese children have lower self-esteem and a higher risk of depression.  They’re less likely to be admitted to college.  And obese adults are less likely to be hired, (or when they’re hired ) they have lower salaries and are often viewed as lazy and less competent.  So the pressure to overeat must be overwhelming.

If responsibility isn’t to blame, what is?

            When you give lab animals access to the diets that are marketed so aggressively in the United States, they become obese.  We have abundant science that the environment is the causative agent here.  So the environment needs to be changed.

        That’s what public policy is all about.  We require that children get vaccinated and ride with their seat belts on.  We have high taxes on cigarettes.  Your car has an airbag.  The government could educate us to be safe drivers and hope for the best.  Or we could put an air bag in every car.  Those are examples of government taking action to create better defaults.

Why is it so hard to keep weight off?

            There’s good research, much of it done by Rudolph Leibel and his colleagues at the Columbia University that shows that when people are overweight and lose, their biology changes in a way that makes it hard to keep the weight off.

        Take two women who weigh 150 pounds.  One has always weighed 150 pounds, the other was at 170 and reduced down to 150.  Metabolically, they look very different  to maintain her 150 pound weight,  the woman who has dropped from 170 is going to have to exist on 15% fewer calories than the woman who has always been 150.

Why?

            It is as if the body’s senses it’s in starvation mode so it becomes more metabolically efficient.  People who have lost weight burn fewer calories than those who haven’t, so they have to keep taking in fewer calories to keep the weight off.  That can be tough to do day after day especially when the environment is pushing us to eat more, not less.

Are you saying that our bodies think we’re starving when we lose just 10% of our body weight?

            Yes.  It’s not hopeless, but the data can be discouraging.  The results of weight-loss studies are clear.  Not many people lose a significant amount of weight and keep it off.  All these environmental cues force people to eat, and then this biology makes it hard to lose weight and keep it off.

Are some foods addictive?

My prediction is that the issue of food and addiction will explode onto the scene relatively soon, because the science is building almost by the day and it’s very compelling.  I think it’s important to put the focus on food, rather than the person.  There are people who consider themselves food addicts, and they might be, but the more important question is whether there are enough addictive properties in some foods to keep people coming back for more and more.  That’s where the public health problem resides.

What are those properties?

            What’s been studied most so far is sugar.  There are brain-imaging studies in humans and a variety of animal studies showing that sugar acts on the brain very much like morphine, alcohol and nicotine.  It doesn’t have as strong an effect, but it has similar effect on the reward pathways in the brain.  So when kids get out of school and they feel like having a sugared beverage, how much of that is their brain calling out for this addictive substance?  Are we consuming so many foods of poor nutrient quality partly because of the addictive properties of the food itself?

How much does exercise matter to losing weight?

            Exercise has so many health benefits that it’s hard to count them.  It lowers the risk for cancer, heart disease and cognitive impairment as people age.  There’s a very long list of reasons to be physically active, but weight control may not be one of them.  Recent studies have suggested that the food part of the equation is much more important than the activity part.

Because you can undo an hour of exercise with one muffin?

Yes.  The food industry has been front and center in promoting exercise as the way to address the nation’s obesity problem.  The industry talks about the importance of physical activity continuously, and they’ve been quite involved in funding programs that emphasize physical activity. The skeptics claim that’s the way to divert attention away from food.

So what’s the answer to the obesity epidemic?

          The broad answer is to change the environmental conditions that are driving obesity.  Some of the most powerful drivers are food marketing and the economics of food, so I would start there.  I don’t think we have much chance of succeeding with the obesity problem unless the marketing of unhealthy foods is curtailed.