Changing the Media and Legal Landscape: From Advertising to Taxation
Media Environment
In Chapter Eleven, I discussed how parents can "vaccinate" their children to minimize the impact of advertising on their eating habits. Recently, governments have begun to legislate to restrict food advertising aimed at children, making parental "vaccination" less necessary. For example, in 2004, Iowa Senator Tom Harkin introduced a bill allowing the Federal Trade Commission to restrict advertising aimed at children, and the National Advertising Review Board published an article promoting stronger regulation of responsible advertising for children.
Although the bill failed to pass and the article reviewing the advertisement only served as a suggestion, it indicates that public attention to this issue is increasing. A Roper Poll found that 85% of adults believe there should be no advertising on children's television programs, suggesting that legislators should be bold in confronting the food and advertising industries; timidity is unnecessary.
Another option for banning advertising for children's food is to secure equal airtime for ads targeting healthy foods. This approach has already led tobacco companies to voluntarily abandon television advertising because fairness requires equal time for anti-smoking messages. For every McDonald's ad, there might be a superhero (a comic book character with superhuman abilities fighting evil) shown gaining power from fruits and vegetables. Perhaps it's time for an updated version of Popeye and his spinach can (Popeye, one of Disney's most famous cartoon characters, gains superhuman strength by eating a can of spinach at crucial moments), or an American version of "Food Playboy."
The media's glorification of a tall, thin physique is a contributing factor to extreme dissatisfaction with one's body, particularly affecting girls and women. Encouraging healthy eating and activity habits should not make thinness the ideal. Public service announcements targeting parents may warn of the dangers of childhood obesity and offer advice on preventing overweight, while acknowledging and respecting all healthy body types. It is crucial that public health campaigns are careful not to further stigmatize children who have already experienced it.
Legal and political environment
Legislation, regulations, public education, and taxes are all means already being used to reduce health hazards. Who would consider frequent reminders an attack? Who would complain that laws authorizing seatbelt use are an excessive infringement on personal freedom? Federal and state governments have enacted various regulations to reduce health hazards. In addition to seatbelts, public health campaigns routinely remind us to get flu shots in winter, alcoholic beverages are labeled with warnings about reduced driving ability and potential health problems, and tobacco companies are required to include warnings from the U.S. Public Health Service in all their print advertising.
Similar actions can also be used to promote physical and mental development. Currently, adding nutritional information to packaged foods is a good start, but further improvements are needed. Serving sizes are generally labeled in grams, ounces, or cups. Adding more visual aids, such as "the size of your fist" (or the size of a tennis ball or a deck of cards), would help consumers choose the appropriate serving size. Health warnings, such as "Excessive consumption of this food may lead to childhood obesity, diabetes, and other diseases," should be prominently displayed on high-calorie foods, along with nutritional information.
There are emerging signs that the combination of concerns about the obesity epidemic and the ongoing challenges posed by tobacco companies may influence food manufacturers. In 2004, McDonald's announced it would eliminate extra-large portions of French fries and beverages (though it's unclear how many of its branches will implement the order). Some snack manufacturers have already removed saturated and trans fats from their potato chips. Kraft Foods (one of the largest food companies in the U.S., headquartered in Chicago, and one of the first international food and beverage companies to enter mainland China) is planning to reduce the fat and sugar content of Oreo cookies and some other products, but these changes are likely to be very small. A Kraft Foods spokesperson said, "We won't change the basics... We don't want to lose the flavors people love." So it's too early to judge whether their efforts are sincere.
Regulations and lawsuits are not the only policy tools available. Taxes are often used to restrict alcohol and tobacco use. One study found that a 10% increase in cigarette prices reduced adult smokers by 3-5%, with an even greater impact on teenage smokers. In a 1994 column in The New York Times, Dr. Kelly Brownell proposed an additional tax on foods low in nutritional value and high in fat: "Whether a food is high in fat should be determined based on its nutritional value per gram of fat or per calorie, with the least healthy foods receiving the highest tax rate. This would reduce sales of high-fat foods, and the increased tax revenue could be used for the construction of public sports facilities such as bike paths and running tracks, or for nutrition education in schools."
Taxing high-fat foods would also help lower the price of healthy foods. Sunday newspapers are full of coupons for discounts on cookies and other snacks, but have you ever seen a coupon for a bag of carrots that's 25 cents cheaper? Next time you walk down the fruit and vegetable aisle at the supermarket, count out how many "buy one get one free" or "buy three get one free" deals there are, and then you can compare them at the snack aisle. While fruits and vegetables are cheaper during harvest season, you rarely find promotions like those for snacks.
Tax increases are never popular, and politicians who propose them may face danger. But if the tax increase is applied to children's junk food, it might be more readily accepted. It's unlikely that many adults will be unable to access Fruit Loops (a famous brand of Kellogg's breakfast oatmeal), nor that parents will feel deprived of their children's right to enjoy their favorite foods simply because they have to eat Cheerios oatmeal. With childhood obesity and childhood diabetes increasing significantly in the last decade, it may be time to seriously consider Dr. Brownell's suggestion.
Professor Michael Pollan of the University of California, Berkeley, has proposed a less straightforward approach to controlling the obesity epidemic. He points out that people tend to eat more when food is cheap. Since the 1970s, the federal farm subsidy program has spent $19 billion annually to encourage farmers to produce more grain. The simplest way to deal with surplus grain is to process it into denser forms, such as cornstarch sugar and animal feed, and then sell it cheaply as Big Gulps or 99-cent hamburgers.
Pollan's point is that when agricultural products are cheap, food producers' profits decrease if they lower prices to pass the savings on to customers. Conversely, increasing food portions costs virtually nothing, while food prices and profits remain unchanged. Currently, overproduction of food is causing each American to consume an extra 500 calories per day. Pollan suggests that if the government stopped subsidizing food production, there wouldn't be such a surplus, and cheap, calorie-dense foods would significantly decrease.