http://www.harvard-magazine.com/on-line/050465.html...But the most powerful technology driving the obesity epidemic istelevision. "The best single behavioral predictor of obesity inchildren and adults is the amount of television viewing," says theSchool of Public Health's Gortmaker. "The relationship is nearly asstrong as what you see between smoking and lung cancer. Everybodythinks it's because TV watching is sedentary, you're just sitting therefor hours—but that's only about one-third of the effect. Ourguesstimate is that two-thirds is the effect of advertising in changingwhat you eat." Willett asserts, "You can't expect three- andfour-year-olds to make decisions about the long-term consequences oftheir food choices. But every year they are subjected to intensive andincreasingly polished messages promoting foods that are almost entirelyjunk." (Furthermore, in some future year when the Internet merges withbroadband cable TV, advertisers will be able to target their messagesfar more precisely. "It won't be just to
kids," Gortmaker says. "It'll be to
your kid.")...
...Note that the pyramid [food pyramid] comes from the Department of
Agriculture,not from an agency charged with promoting health, like the NationalInstitutes of Health or the Department of Health and Human Services(DHHS). The USDA essentially promotes and regulates commerce, and itspyramid (currently under revision; expect a new version in 2005) wasthe focus of intensive lobbying and political struggle byagribusinesses in the meat, sugar, dairy, and cereal industries, amongothers...
...Consider the flap that arose after the United Nations' World HealthOrganization (WHO) and Food and Agriculture Organization issued areport in 2003 recommending guidelines for eating to improve worldnutrition and prevent chronic diseases. Instead of applauding thereport, the DHHS issued a 28-page, line-by-line critique and tried toget WHO to quash it. WHO recommended that people limit their intake ofadded sugars to no more than 10 percent of calories eaten, a guidelinepoorly received by the Sugar Association, a trade group that hasthreatened to pressure Congress to challenge the United States' $406million contribution to WHO.
Clearly, some food industries have for many years successfullyinfluenced the government in ways that keep the prices of certain foodsartificially low. David Ludwig questions farm subsidies of "billions tothe lowest-quality foods"—for example, grains like corn ("for cornsweeteners and animal feed to make Big Macs") and wheat ("refinedcarbohydrates.") Meanwhile, the government does
not subsidizefar healthier items like fruits, vegetables, beans, and nuts. "It's aperverse situation," he says. "The foods that are the worst for us havean artificially low price, and the best foods cost more. This is worsethan a free market: we are creating a mirror-world here."...
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