The War on Junk Food
This was a slow weekend for thought-provoking articles. But I thought that I would post this William Saletan article about the war on junk food. I find it a really interesting issue because I am in a small minority of folks who think that the industry bears a share of the blame for rising obesity rates. Of course, I don't really believe in individual free will, which also places me essentially off the American political spectrum. I say that partially in jest, but in all truth I think that if you wanted to represent the extent to which we have choices about how our lives play out, versus the extent to which things are determined by accident of birth (including genetics, geography, parenting, luck, etc.), I would put the choice figure at about 1%. Sometimes I say 5% if I'm feeling more optimistic.
People always protest that this view is fatalistic and does not account for the ability of people to change. On the contrary, I think one can do a hell of a lot with their 1 to 5% free will. We just do it in a context where the deck has been stacked in certain ways.
How does this relate to junk food? Well, I guess I would say that the deck has been stacked in terms of what we eat, what we think tastes good, and where we get our food. It may seem strange for me of all people to say this, since I grew up in a house jam-packed full of junk food (soda, twinkies, cookies, processed cheese products, etc.) and still managed to become an adult who eats relatively healthily, although I am still addicted to sugar (and thus artificial sweeteners). After reading Fast Food Nation , I stopped eating fast food almost entirely and now am such a freaking yuppie that the thought of McDonald's makes me slightly nauseated (does Au Bon Pain count as fast food?). My food deck was stacked, but I managed to overcome it, so I'm the poster girl for consumer responsibility, right?
Well, not really. I learned about nutrition because I desperately wanted to be thin -- a desire that is also culturally driven. (Genetics helped out quite a bit in allowing me to accomplish this, another example of how free will is a crock). And my journey from hedonism to moderation was an uneven one. I still have a huge bag of Hershey's miniatures in my refrigerator.
So I know and understand very well the strong pull of junk food. Eating healthy is expensive, time-consuming, and requires planning. Because of the decline in family meals and home ec classes (people dis them, but I know what a pastry blender is and how to use it because of my 8th grade home ec class!), a lot of people grow up not having learned much about nutrition or how to prepare food. People without cars are limited in where they can shop for food, and others lack the time and money to prepare meals with real vegetables in them. This is not to say that healthy eating can't be done by almost anyone -- it can -- but it's certainly not the path of least resistance. And the abundance of unhealthy food choices out there make it very easy to go through life thinking that french fries and ketchup count as vegetables.
How does this translate into a policy prescription? Rather than following the route of the big tobacco lawsuits, I would advocate legislation restricting the production and marketing of nutritionally worthless foods. Although ideally, the industry would voluntarily change its practices regarding same (I think it is Kraft that has made some strides in this way). Putting the blame wholly on the consumer is attractive because it's easy -- but it practically ensures that little will change.
People always protest that this view is fatalistic and does not account for the ability of people to change. On the contrary, I think one can do a hell of a lot with their 1 to 5% free will. We just do it in a context where the deck has been stacked in certain ways.
How does this relate to junk food? Well, I guess I would say that the deck has been stacked in terms of what we eat, what we think tastes good, and where we get our food. It may seem strange for me of all people to say this, since I grew up in a house jam-packed full of junk food (soda, twinkies, cookies, processed cheese products, etc.) and still managed to become an adult who eats relatively healthily, although I am still addicted to sugar (and thus artificial sweeteners). After reading Fast Food Nation , I stopped eating fast food almost entirely and now am such a freaking yuppie that the thought of McDonald's makes me slightly nauseated (does Au Bon Pain count as fast food?). My food deck was stacked, but I managed to overcome it, so I'm the poster girl for consumer responsibility, right?
Well, not really. I learned about nutrition because I desperately wanted to be thin -- a desire that is also culturally driven. (Genetics helped out quite a bit in allowing me to accomplish this, another example of how free will is a crock). And my journey from hedonism to moderation was an uneven one. I still have a huge bag of Hershey's miniatures in my refrigerator.
So I know and understand very well the strong pull of junk food. Eating healthy is expensive, time-consuming, and requires planning. Because of the decline in family meals and home ec classes (people dis them, but I know what a pastry blender is and how to use it because of my 8th grade home ec class!), a lot of people grow up not having learned much about nutrition or how to prepare food. People without cars are limited in where they can shop for food, and others lack the time and money to prepare meals with real vegetables in them. This is not to say that healthy eating can't be done by almost anyone -- it can -- but it's certainly not the path of least resistance. And the abundance of unhealthy food choices out there make it very easy to go through life thinking that french fries and ketchup count as vegetables.
How does this translate into a policy prescription? Rather than following the route of the big tobacco lawsuits, I would advocate legislation restricting the production and marketing of nutritionally worthless foods. Although ideally, the industry would voluntarily change its practices regarding same (I think it is Kraft that has made some strides in this way). Putting the blame wholly on the consumer is attractive because it's easy -- but it practically ensures that little will change.
posted by Sandi | 7:24 AM
12 Comments:
Sorry you're having a bad day, Joe. I didn't say ban, I said restrict. And the restrictions would be directed at the companies who manufacture and market the foods, not at the consumer. There are a number of ways to structure restrictions so that they give the food industry (and by extension, the consumer) the appropriate incentives and still leave room for individual choice -- although I have not thought in great detail about what my ideal legislation might look like. I would also advocate universal nutrition education in schools to the extent that it does not already exist so that future generations of consumers have access to information.
I must agree with the low-rise jeans thing, though. :)
Ha ha! Muffin top!
I'm not as much of a structuralist as you Sandi, but I agree that our tastes in junk food are in large part due to being told over and over again how good X tastes. And then having X be one of the quickest and easiest and cheapest things to get our hands on.
The government did take a small step in this direction a few years ago by requiring nutritional information on food products. And it seems that telling "the industry" to be a bit more responsible isn't unprecedented. (I'm talking out my ear here, so feel free to correct me.) Didn't the government tell auto makers to be more responsible with the ways they manufactured cars (concerning gas mileage) back in the day? And this was a) before environmental concerns about fuel consumption and b) something that actually helped the car industry sell more cars.
I'm sure there are bad examples of the government stepping in, but it doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing. It can make industries think in innovative and helpful ways.
I'm interested in this sensitivity to the word "legislation," as if it is always and in all circumstances a thing to be avoided rather than one to be embraced. I said in the next sentence that in an ideal world, the food industry would voluntarily change its spots -- and I applaud companies that are willing to do this.
However, people don't always do the right thing just because it's the right thing. Sometimes incentives need to be provided -- and I generally prefer the incentive approach to anything more heavy-handed unless there's a compelling reason to put the beat down on folks. I think food is a perfect example of an issue where incentives at the industry level are an appropriate way to help people make better choices about something that affects their health.
For one thing, marketing junk food to kids is absolutely verboten in my book. Kids are not able to make reasoned and informed decisions about what they want to eat in the same way that adults are. Parents have enough trouble trying to get kids to eat their vegetables without having McDonald's, soda and sweets hawked to them on tv and in school.
I also don't have a problem with the idea of a "sin tax" on junk food. The whole way that food is priced in this country is f'd up -- as Pollan said in the quote I posted from him, the least nutritional calories are the cheapest, and obesity is correlated with socioeconomic class. Only relatively well-off people can afford to eat in the healthiest ways, i.e. lots of fresh produce and raw ingredients, less processed foods. Fresh produce can be very expensive, and it takes time to prepare healthy meals. So maybe if the pricing structure changed a little, and healthy foods were no more expensive than unhealthy ones, people might be enabled to make better choices.
I might add that a lot of good has been accomplished through legislation. And I have generally found that no one is against legislation per se -- conservatives always seem to be in favor of it when it's an issue that they care about, like conscience clauses for pharmacists, banning gay marriage and adoption, or mandating the Pledge in schools. So it's definitely a case-by-case basis as to whether legislation is for good or ill.
Whitney, I don't have as many student wearing low-rise jeans as I do wearing insanely short skirts or spandex running shorts with the legs pulled up so it looks like they are wearing bikinis. That's an almost daily thing here.
As for legislating only when it adversely effects others -- didn't the article say obesity related health problems cost tax payers $64 Billion a year (sounds absurd, so maybe I'm misremembering). That would qualify as an adverse effect to me. There needs to be responsibility on both sides, of course, but I have an inherent distrust of businesses doing something that isn't immediately profitable for themselves (like putting seatbelts in cars or producing more effecient cars or placing warning labels on cigarettes and alcohol or putting nutrition labels on foods or etc.)
And the article Sandi posted today begins a discussion of choice and individual responsibility on a much more concrete level (than advertising and cultural norms and tastes and time and the like). When certain less-than-healthy foods are subsidized and made readily available on the cheap, then it does take away a lot of our choices. We don't have as many because the less healthy foods are being used and sold and consumed for next to nothing, and they are providing little nutritional value. So, in some sense, it takes not only money and time (to prepare a meal) but also time to research which ingredients making up the foods we cook actually have the nutritional value we need.
Mikey
Hi Whitney,
Before getting back to the substance, I have to clarify one thing as a lawyer who handled church-state issues for the first four years of my career and knows the state of the law intimately: people say "prayer was banned in school" or similar things, which sounds like a limitation on individual freedom, but the truth is that it is only school-sponsored prayer that is disallowed. Individual students can pray silently to themselves and in a non-disruptive way during non-instructional time in any school. Of course, there are definitely questions about where individual student freedom begins and school sponsorship ends -- in terms of the school giving an individual student a platform and there being a captive audience, etc. But there is a mistaken idea out there that anyone caught praying in school is told to stop, and that's just not true, nor is that what the ACLU or Americans United has advocated. On the contrary, both organizations strongly support individual religious freedom (free exercise clause) in the appropriate balance with separation of church and state (establishment clause). This is not so much to you as just a general public service announcement I feel compelled to make because the misunderstanding is so widespread.
Now, back to junk food! I don't see putting an additional tax on junk food as a penalty; I see it as an incentive. Or rather, perhaps it is the removal of an incentive (the inexpensiveness of most junk food) to buy something that is bad for you. Some people don't need any incentive other than wanting to preserve their own health and be there for their kids. Others might need a bit more prodding. Certainly kids and teenagers would, because they don't yet have a sense of their own mortality. I have a picture in my head of a kid with a dollar in his pocket. If candy bars cost $2 and a piece of fruit cost 50 cents, the candy bar would still taste better, but he would have to buy the fruit instead. Or, better yet, there would be fewer bad choices than good ones (if you put all of the onus on the manufacturers).
I don't believe by any stretch in legislating EVERYTHING. And I think that this issue inspires that "everything" reaction because people don't consider food a serious public health issue the way we do smoking or drugs. Obviously there are differences, but food really does have an impact on health. Michael is right to bring up the public health costs of poor eating habits. Plus, when it is the parents who are eating poorly, they are affecting someone else -- their kids, who are both being taught bad eating habits themselves and have parents who won't be around for them as long or as well.
But the way that sounds -- all finger-wagging and condescending -- is exactly why I think there should be some government-imposed solutions to begin with. There is this whole moral dimension to food that I think, based on my experience and what I've read, does us no good at all. All the shame and moral judgment associated with making bad food choices (which of course we all do sometimes) is there precisely because there is so much choice, but it's choice that is loaded against eating healthy. McDonald's is easier for parents because (at least in some cases) it is cheap and it is fast, and for people who work a lot of hours and are struggling to fit everything into their day, something has to give and if there's no counterincentive, then you end up at McDonald's. I guess it comes down to this -- I'd rather blame McDonald's for serving junk to begin with and marketing it the way they do than blame individual parents. They are all doing something that is not unique to them, but is a society-wide pattern that is now being replicated in other countries. It just seems more logical to place the responsibility for making change on the institutions that can more easily effect it than on the individual.
As for legislating only when it adversely effects others -- didn't the article say obesity related health problems cost tax payers $64 Billion a year (sounds absurd, so maybe I'm misremembering). That would qualify as an adverse effect to me.
Precisely, Mikey.
Returning to Whitney's seatbelt analogy, seatbelts are required by law because not wearing them DOESN'T just affect that one person. People who don't wear their seatbelts tend to wind up needing a lot of very expensive medical care, sometimes for the rest of their lives. We all pay for that, either through higher insurance premiums or, if the driver had no insurance, through other mechanisms. (There's also the cost to society of that person's lost productivity, but lets stick to the hard, monetary costs.)
The poor diet issue is the same. Poor diet leads to a host of very expensive medical problems -- for one example, the sudden rise in adult diabetes (which then leads to a host of other expensive, long-term medical problems). We all wind up paying for that, not just the poor eater.
When society has a stake -- in this case, an economic stake -- in individual behavior, should it not be allowed to exert influence on the individual?
Your right, Joe, that food production / consumption issues are very complicated. I didn't read what Sandi was saying as trying to force people to eat certain ways (or control the system) as much as trying to manage the system better by: a) holding businesses accountable in some way and b) making sure people are able to make more informed decisions about their eating habits and c) somehow make it as economically feasible to eat healthy as to eat unhealthy.
Innocent question, Joe. Do you think that taste is something that can be socially manipulated in some way? Like, if we see hamburgers all the time and people are happy eating them, we might be inclined to eat them too? Fast food hamburgers haven't always been so tasty, I don't think. My family used to shun fast food hamburgers because they weren't as good as what we made at home. But now, my dad is wont to buy two or three Whoppers at a time. He developed a taste for them.
Also just curious why some people, like myself, put more faith in governmental control than in the hands of businesses. I realize that's a philisophical issue, but I've been asking myself that a lot lately, and I'm not sure I have a great answer for it just yet. Other than my aforementioned inherent distrust of businesses doing anything that isn't immediately profitable.
Whitney -- I work in the "Humanities," so, umm..., I don't have too much real work to do. Mostly just getting coffee with students and trying to look smart and stuff. Although I am *just* keeping myself busy enough to not write an actual post, like I'm sposed to each week about books. I have about four or five articles started though. Maybe I'll try to finish one of those this afternoon.
This discussion proves again to me the point that I've been making for years (mostly to myself): the primary difference between a progressive worldview and a conservative worldview is that conservatives just prefer to blame the individual for everything. That sounds harsh, what I really mean is that conservatives don't really believe in applying sociology or looking at things from a macro perspective when it comes to social policy. I do believe in those things. We are individuals, but we live our lives within structural constraints and incentives. Change the constraints and incentives, and individual behavior changes to match. That just seems like a really simple proposition to me.
So, of course there are elements of choice in most things we do -- but like Mikey was saying with regard to food, and like I said in my original post, our choices are not wholly free. They are in some measure either manipulated or limited by factors and forces beyond our individual control.
Which gets me to Joe's single-parent, stay-at-home-parent song and dance. Joe, I have to hand it to you. If I am a caricature of a liberal, you are a caricature of a conservative, and I say that with affection because I like you and what you bring to the blog. To begin with: Not all single parents are single by choice. Not all working parents are working by choice. But in addition, I think that workweeks and commute times are too long, and that that goes a long way toward contributing to some people eating convenience foods.
Is some of the rise in convenience foods attributable to laziness? Sure. But it's so much more complicated than that. Sometimes it's about lack of education, sometimes about feelings of hopelessness or loneliness. Maybe people's perception that they don't have time to cook is incorrect; but let's address why they have the perception. It's not necessarily because they're lazy, bad people.
And I do think that cost is a factor (not the only one, but one) driving food choices. The kids interviewed for the McDonald's article, as well as the company spokesperson, said as much.
Oh, and finally, yes, Whitney, I do have a hard time getting work done because I spend time here. But I guess that's my free choice. :) LOL. It's worth it.
I think you're probably right, Sandi, that the more conservative one is, the less stock one tends to put in the efficacy of macro level efforts. In the language of the Right, that sort of thing is deprecated as "social engineering." It's a difference in outlook between the Left and the Right, and I doubt there'll ever be enough objective data on the subject to convince either side they're wrong.
What I find interesting is comparing these views of Society to views of the Corporation. No one in this country seems to have any trouble with the notion that a Corporation -- which is a collective organized for coordinated action, much like a Society -- can have interests of its own that differ from those of any person or persons within that Corporation, and that the Corporation has the right to protect its interests, even against the interests of any individual person(s) in it. A Corporation can, for example, declare a collective goal and exert force on its members to behave in such a way that they advance the Corporation's goal, rather than their own goals.
Yet ISTM the Right, generally speaking, continues to deny that a Society is similarly situated. It is somehow out-of-bounds for a Society to set collective goals and use the mechanisms at its disposal to bring its members' behavior into line with those goals.
I may have that entirely wrong. I'll admit I'm a little fuzzy on it, to tell the truth. It doesn't quite make sense to me, and I've never been able to quite get a clear enough explanation of American conservatism's view of collective action to resolve the fuzziness.
Also, I'll stipulate that I think it's true that, for practical reasons, a Society ought not to force its members into too many behaviors they find distasteful, shouldn't use any more force (i.e., influence) than is necessary, and that all such exercises of social power require justification. Still it seems to me the Right has some unresolved conflicts between its view of the Corporation and its view of a Society. Somehow, for reasons I'm not clear on, they seem to think Corporations are less suspect than Societies. I would think things would be just the opposite.
(BTW, I said nobody seemed to have a problem with our modern notion of the Corporation. I should 'fess up and say I have BIG problem with it, but I'm just me.)
I'm rambling.
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