Upcoming events: Consumer Federation of America and Public Health Advocacy Institute

At the 28th Annual National Food Policy Conference of the Consumer Federation of America (.pdf) on Sept. 20 at9:00 a.m. at the National Press Club in Washington (perhaps to be recorded by CSPAN), a talk-show style debate and discussion:

Agricultural Subsidies: Effects on Nutrition, Consumers, Farmers, the Federal Budget, Trade and World Hunger.

Panelists:

Charles W. Stenholm, Senior Government Affairs Advisor
Olsson, Frank and Weeda

Senate Agriculture Committee senior staff member

Ken Cook, President, Environmental Working Group

David Beckman, President, Bread for the World

Parke Wilde, Assistant Professor, Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy, Tufts University

At the Third Annual Conference on Legal Approaches to the Obesity Epidemic, sponsored by the Public Health Advocacy Institute, at 1:00 p.m. on Sept. 24 in Boston:

Economics, Consumer Behavior and Government Policy

Economic forces are critically important influences on bottom-line consumer behaviors contributing to obesity. How do government policies that promote sugars and fats, such as through subsidies, contribute to industry practices involving food processing, packaging, pricing and marketing of obesity-generating products and consumption patterns? The influence of these factors on the obesity epidemic deserves careful evaluation.

Panelists

Katie Pratt, JD, LLM – Loyola Law School, Los Angeles

Parke Wilde, PhD – Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts

Michael Greve, MA, PhD – American Enterprise Institute

Anthony Robbins, MD, MPA – PHAI, Moderator

The Chicago Tribune covers the Oreo

Calorie Counter News, from CalorieLab, is an informative food policy weblog (and not at all a mere diet site). It recently offered interesting discussion of the Chicago Tribune's recent series about the Oreo.

Informed Eating covers food marketing to children

The August issue of Informed Eating, the newsletter of the Center for Informed Food Choices, has been posted. It features a special report on food marketing to children...

Last month, the federal government convened a meeting called “Marketing, Self-Regulation, and Childhood Obesity.” That the emphasis was placed on voluntary self-regulation—as opposed to setting legal restrictions on junk food marketing aimed at children—was a sure sign that nothing of substance would be discussed. But even worse, the event turned into a public relations bonanza for Big Food. A full two-thirds of the panelists (25 out of 38) had financial ties to either the food or advertising industries. Informed Eating has compiled the following links to documents that will make you feel like you were there. But as you read them, you will soon be glad that you weren’t.

... and Michele Simon's tribute to Peter Jennings...

How refreshing for such a respected journalist to be open to the truth and not allow politics or a pro-corporate bias to influence his reporting. Despite criticism from the right for the show being “biased,” Jennings continued to air news segments that questioned the role of the food industry. He also moderated a stimulating panel on food marketing to children last year at the ABC News/Time Obesity Summit. Food Politics author Marion Nestle shared the following with Informed Eating: "When I was filmed for the obesity special, Peter Jennings started the interview by saying that the entire program was based on my book. I was overwhelmed that someone of his stature would be so interested in the issues I care about and am heartbroken at his loss."

Teenage boys consume 160 pounds of sweeteners per year

Yuck! According to a report from Stephen Haley, Jane Reed, Biing-Hwan Lin, and Annetta Cook at USDA's Economic Research Service last week, teenage boys consume 160 pounds of sweeteners annually, more sweeteners than any other age/sex group consumes. People in the Midwest consume more sweeteners than those in any other region do. White and Black Americans consume similar amounts of sweetener overall, but often in different products. The report carefully combines food supply data with consumer survey data, to provide a wealth of similarly disaggregated estimates of consumption of sugar, corn syrup, and other sweeteners, in sodas, baked goods, and other food products.

The burdens of modern life

Oh, the burdens of modern life in the big city. Burden #1: finding time to exercise. Burden #2: the aggravating and time-consuming commute.

Here are just some of the sights on my twice-weekly 50-minute bicycle commute to work, which also doubles as my exercise regime, makes the expense of a gym membership unnecessary, and helps in part to spare our family the expense of a second car:
-- woman performing Tai Chi by Spy Pond, twinkling in the morning sunlight
-- the vegetable gardens along the bike path by Fresh Pond Reservoir
-- rowers, fishermen, and ducks enjoying the Charles River
-- the monastery of Saint John the Evangelist
-- the mansions of the Harvard elite
-- the dome at MIT
-- the gold-roofed Massachusetts Statehouse all aglow
-- the elegant 19th Century townhouses of the Back Bay
-- the Hancock Building, I.M. Pei's skyscraper
-- the Esplanade, a treasure of landscape architecture
-- the Boston Public Garden
-- the Boston Common
-- the gritty Theater District
-- the early-morning bustle of Chinatown

Ah, that all our burdens should be so light!

What would Stigler say about the cost of a healthy diet in Boston?

The Boston Medical Center, with support from Project Bread, this month reported (.pdf) the costs of purchasing the market basket stipulated in USDA's Thrifty Food Plan -- and a healthier food plan -- in Boston's metropolitan area. The researchers estimated, plausibly, that the Thrifty Food Plan cost $524 monthly for a family of four, or $27 more than the Federal Government estimates is needed for the maximum food stamp benefit nationally. This difference makes sense, because Boston food prices are likely to be somewhat higher than the national average.

For the healthier food plan, the researchers estimate that a family of four would need $645 monthly for food at home, or $148 more than the maximum food stamp benefit. However, for a family of four, the national average monthly spending for food at home is $385, and the national average monthly spending for all food (including restaurant food) is $652. For a low-income family of four (with annual income of $15k-$20k), the average monthly spending for food at home is $350, and the average monthly spending for all food is $468. I believe that even with some adjustment for higher than average prices in Boston, the $645 figure seems too high. To corroborate all the number crunching, my family of four buys a diet very high in fresh fruits and vegetables for much less than $645 monthly in the Boston metropolitan area. I would like to see more detail than the report provides about the basket of foods it used for the healthy diet calculation.

The Boston Medical Center report calls for increased federal food stamp benefits. The issue is not just whether low income families need more resources -- they certainly do! The question is whether one really wants to increase the maximum food stamp benefit for a family of four to $600 (more than many prosperous Bostonians spend on food in grocery stores), and then insist that even the most destitute beneficiaries of the program may not by law spend those resources on housing, transportation, education, health care, or any other important need. Such a high targeted benefit means, for example, that while most Americans rely on a combination of groceries and food away from home to feed their families, low-income Americans would be essentially required to spend far more in grocery stores alone. It seems unduly paternalistic.

As an interesting historical footnote, I was just re-reading George Stigler's classic 1945 paper on the cost of subsistence, in preparation for my class in U.S. Food Policy this coming fall. The paper is now available for free from Cornell's wonderful Core Historical Literature of Agriculture. For the record, since some of my nutrition colleagues dislike this type of minimum cost study, I'll mention that I don't endorse everything Stigler says. Still, I can't help quoting for your consideration Stigler's six-decades-old-but-timely provocative comments on why dieticians seemed to think a healthy diet cost much more than he did:

The first [reason] is that the particular judgments of the dieticians as to minimum palatability, variety, and prestige are at present highly personal and non-scientific, and should not be presented in the guise of being parts of a scientifically-determined budget. The second reason is that these cultural judgments, while they appear modest enough to government employees and even to college professors, can never be valid in such a general form.... If the dieticians persist in presenting minimum diets, they should at least report separately the physical and cultural components of these diets.

Healthy fast food not selling well

For a time, the Ruby Tuesday restaurant chain attempted to promote several healthier menu options, according to an article by Margaret Webb Pressler in the Washington Post today. But....

But diners didn't bite. So Ruby Tuesday has eliminated the Blueberry D'Lite, along with several other healthful dishes ditched after a lengthy period of slumping sales at the chain. Calorie and fat information was dropped except on the healthful items that survived and were moved to the back of the menu.

Now the chain is aggressively promoting its biggest burgers, and in the last three months, burger sales are up 3 to 4 percent. It has also restored its larger portions of french fries and pasta.

The article includes an interview with a Dan McDonald of Fredericksburg, VA, who is worried about his weight gain of 30 pounds in 5 years. Yet, the article finds him for his interview in the drive-through line in a Burger King. For work reasons, he eats quick fast food lunches of a cheeseburger and soda about four times per week. He knows about the comparatively healthy recent fast food offerings, but when he himself eats fast food, he just chooses what he wants most. "My problem," he says, "is I need to stay out of fast food places."

Everybody involved in this article seems to be thinking clearly: Pressler (the writer), the fast food companies, and Dan McDonald of Fredericksburg. For the fast food companies, it was worth a try to promote healthier options within their format. As Pressler goes on to describe, if real healthy options aren't selling, it may even make business sense for the fast food companies to promote unhealthy food under the pretense of being healthy. However, IF the healthy options don't sell well, it will be tempting for the fast food companies to promote them less heavily or eliminate them from the menu altogether.

So, am I in the camp that wants to throw up its hands and say, "American consumers don't really want healthy food anyway?" No! I admire the fast food companies for trying to offer healthy food within their existing high-volume hyped-marketing profit-driven format. IF the fast food companies find that they can increase sales 3 or 4 percent by returning to unhealthy food only, and that is enough motivation to give up on promoting healthy food, then Dan McDonald of Fredericksburg has the right solution: we should stay out of fast food places.

IF the fast food companies give up on healthy food, it will be time for all American consumers who care at all about their weight and their health to shun the fast food format completely. IF the fast food companies give up on healthy food, it will be time for public health folks to give up on talking about "public-private cooperation" and "a constructive role for the industry" in this arena. Instead, it will be time for every effort to doom the format to a long slow decline as an increasingly aware consumer population learns to get its lunch elsewhere. No government regulation needed. No food police. No meetings to mend fences, either. Just a long steady consumer campaign to send fast food restaurants the way of the buggy whip.

IF the fast food companies give up on promoting healthy food.

[Update 9/18/2005 evening: See good comments by Jack and good criticism from Mark, who's got a more sensible take on some of this than I did. I'm reconsidering what I wrote. It would have helped if I had more clearly articulated the question of whether the problem with fast food is particular menu offerings, or whether there is something inherently anti-nutritious about the fast food format. That genuinely open question might have been more interesting meat for a post than my dreams of some sort of boycott.]