The Junk-Food Wars

By Melinda Welsh, Sacramento News & Review. Posted November 21, 2002.

Chomp down on a Big N' Tasty with Cheese.

Make that a Double Whopper with a side of Biggie Fries, or, instead, why not a Western Bacon Cheeseburger with Great Biggie Fries! Better yet, think outside the bun: Order a Double Burrito Supreme or maybe a Super Supreme Stuffed Crust Pizza. To wash it down, how about a large or extra-large soda or even a 52-ounce X-treme Gulp?

Because we think young. And we deserve a break today.

Don’t bother us: We’re eating.

Everyday, hundreds of millions of people across the globe and in Sacramento purchase literally billions of such items -- brand-named in the enthusiastic language of fast foods -- and consume them happily and often in super-sized quantities. Americans spend about $120 billion a year on the stuff. Ultimately, in three short decades, this style of eating has transformed the American diet by making inexpensive, tasty meals easily available to pretty much all of us, anytime and everywhere.

In the process, fast food also has helped revise the population’s health forecast -- and not in a righteous way. Most of these food products are high in fat, loaded with sugar or both. You don’t have to be a nutritionist to recognize that this simple fact, coupled with an increasingly TV-watching and sedentary public, has fueled what has become a major public-health crisis in America, an epidemic of fat. A particularly chilling report from the Center for Disease Control described obesity as having “spread with the speed and dispersion characteristics of a communicable-disease epidemic.” Just last month, that same organization found that the number of overweight adults had increased from 56 percent to 65 percent of the population. Some 25 percent of all American kids are now viewed as overweight; 15 percent of them are considered severely overweight or obese.

The fact that kids are at risk has caused a public stir -- in Sacramento and across the country.

Parents are coming to realize they’re raising the most overweight, unfit, unhealthy generation of children in American history and are beginning to get anxious. Hospital costs related to childhood obesity have more than tripled in the past 20 years, and obese and overweight children are turning up at medical clinics with health problems that used to be limited to people their parents’ age: high cholesterol, type II diabetes, high blood pressure and even heart disease. In California, a Public Health Institute study found that only three out of 10 adolescents were getting enough physical activity, twice as many adolescents were in heavier weight categories than would be expected, and the risks were highest for low-income and African-American and Latino children. And the numbers keep climbing to super-sized proportions.

What’s a public-health advocate to do?

Declare war.

Right now, some of the very groups who targeted the tobacco companies are gearing up to go into combat once again -- this time against junk food. Instead of Big Tobacco, this fight will be waged against Big Food. Individuals representing nonprofit and government agencies in Sacramento are gathering information with which to arm the grassroots activists in the struggle.

The early battles, they say, will be fought in the schools because of the serious dangers to kids’ health and because that’s where the government has some control.

Last year in Sacramento, the state Legislature passed SB 19, the comprehensive bill from Senator Martha Escutia, D-Montebello, which aimed to increase physical exercise for kids and limit the availability of junk food in elementary and middle schools. Meanwhile, efforts to target on-campus sales of soda -- with its high-calorie, no-nutrition content -- seem to be a high-level priority for public-health organizers around California. When the behemoth Los Angeles Unified School District announced a little more than a month ago that it would ban the future sale of soft drinks on campus, many people saw the decision as a consequential victory, an early warning shot across the bow of Big Food.

Of course, the food industry does not plan to take any of this lying down -- not with billions of dollars at stake. Powerful organizations such as the National Soft Drink Association (representing soda giants such as PepsiCo and Coca-Cola) and the Grocery Manufacturers of America (the world’s largest association of food and beverage products) have fought legislation both in Washington, D.C., and here in Sacramento that would regulate the marketing or sales of fatty foods and sodas at schools. The food industry is prepared for battle. Several manufacturers have formed a coalition that’s reportedly set to roll out an ad campaign depicting health activists as “food police” who want to tell you and your family what you can and can’t eat. Also, some of the junk-food giants, such as McDonald’s and Frito-Lay, are making wise, pre-emptive moves by modifying their foods to contain less of a harmful fat.

But, so far, none of this has deterred the health advocates who have lobbied school-board members. Further legislative actions are being considered. How-to manuals are being written. Conferences are being planned. Even Ralph Nader, wanting in on the ground floor of this health-related activism, made headlines in Europe last spring for referring to Big Macs as “weapons of mass destruction.”

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