Street roots
10
March 16, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
Our wealth of food - most of it unhealthy
BY PAUL K. HAEDER
C O N T R IB U T IN G W R IT E R
or more than 15 years, Michele Simon
has helped expose the nefarious
marketing, political and psychological
tools used by corporations and groups such
as McDonald’s, PepsiCo, Anheuser-Busch
and the Grocery Manufacturers Association.
As a public health lawyer and founder of Eat
Drink Politics, a consulting firm that helps
individuals and
government agencies
wage food policy
campaigns, taking on
such behemoths has
shown her how their
actions threaten
HOW
THE FOOD
public health and food
INDUSTRY
justice.
UNDERMINES
OUR HEALTH
“Most people don’t
AND HOWTO
FIGHT BACK
have a say where their
M id ttS ’siMON
food is produced or
where it’s grown,”
Appetite for Profit Simon said in a recent
- How the Food
interview focused
Industry
around her 2006
is distracting from what’s really going on,”
Undermines Our
book, “Appetite for
Simon said. “Nobody’s saying there isn’t
Profit: How the Food
Health and How
shared responsibility for unhealthy eating,
Industry Undermines
to Fight Back by
but we have to provide options for people.”
Our Health and How
Michele Simon
Options in the form of healthy, low-cost
to Fight Back.”
food that’s culturally relevant have been
Simon’s book is
shunted away by the food industry through
required reading by
political malfeasance, and she emphasizes
many in the field of food politics, nutrition
that it’s not just about telling kids or parents
and food security planning, an area of study
to turn off the TV or just say no to
associated with many university urban
McNuggets. Marketing bad food to children,
planning departments, including the
Simon professes, is the key to our nation’s
University of Washington.
unhealthy youth.
“Our food is tightly controlled by a small
According to the Centers for Disease
group of CEOs who do not have
Control and Prevention, 17 percent of
communities’ interests in mind. The
children and adolescents are obese. The
problem is that food isn’t a commodity. ...
CDC also noted th at fo r t h e s e y o u n g p e o p le ,
Food is an essential hum an need like water,
being
overweight or obese was the result of
land and air, and these corporations have
“caloric imbalance” — too few calories
co-modified it for profit.”
expended for the amount of calories
“Appetite” is just as relevant now as it
consumed — and was affected by various
was when released - maybe more so, with
genetic, behavioral and environmental
recent statistics revealing one in every four
factors.
American children suffer from hunger, and
Simon cracks open that last point, caloric
30 percent of American families — 49
imbalance, which the CDC fails to tie to the
million people — often go without meals.
marketing and lobbying of the food and
“We’re seeing the time-honored tradition
beverage (and factory farming) industries.
of the right wing blaming the individual.
Her book points out some deeply
What’s taking center stage in the food realm
F
troubling trends over the past 50 years, with
the U.S. food system becoming increasingly
controlled by an ever-dwindling number of
people who care little about nutrition or
environmental and community well-being.
She delves into the strategies of taste
factories, and how the denaturing process of
bringing fat, sugar and salt to the palettes of
more Americans has ruled our collective
diets. “Most people live in neighborhoods
where there are no healthy produce
options,” she said. “In this economic
downturn, it’s very difficult for a majority of
families to get healthy food.”
“Appetite” pulls back the veil on how
McDonald’s and PepsiCo got their talons in
u ut c h i ld re n, th a n k s to a^£austian bargain of
allowing these companies to distribute junk
food and beverages to struggling school
districts, as well as letting them advertise
their subsidiaries such as Pizza Hut, Taco
Bell and KFC. And Simon details the
influence Kraft Foods, Coca-Cola, Safeway,
ConAgra and other U.S.-owned corporations
have on Capitol Hill, which has turned
obesity into a global epidemic: 1.5 billion
people worldwide are waging the battle of
the bulge.
And there’s more.
The Grocery Manufacturers Association
has more than 140 members, representing
every major food manufacturer, and
combined sales of more than $680 billion.
The GMA opposes any state bill or citizens
initiative calling for the restriction of the
sale of junk food or soda in schools. Then
there’s the other NRA - the National
Restaurant Association - with 60,000
companies controlling more than 300,000
dining establishments. This group doesn’t
want nutritional information of foods
available to consumers.
Two more heavyweights Simon brings
down to earth are the Center for Consumer
Freedom (CCF) and American Council for
Fitness and Nutrition (ACFN). The former
is a lobbying engine for the restaurant, food,
beverage and alcohol industries for political
campaigns that calls medical and health
professionals, parents’ groups and lawyers
like Simon “food cops.” The latter creates
industry-friendly “articles” in both the
academic press and commercial media. The
corporate backing of those authors is
usually left out of the byline.
Simon sees all of this as an industry-
funded battle for the country’s health, one
where fruit and vegetable prices have gone
up 40 percent since 1980, while junk food
prices have gone down 40 percent. “It’s not
a level playing field because parents and
food and nutrition advocacy groups are up
against their unlimited marketing budgets,”
she said.
Simon advocates a whole food, plant-
based diet, and this war, which she’s been
fighting for more than 15 years, is not about
th e heirloom tastes of foodies or t h e ____ _
locavore movement. She sees it as the
unfair pricing strategies of these three
industries and the power of branding.
“The irony is the McDonald’s brand is so
powerful that if the McDonald’s logo was
associated with organic carrots,” she said,
“kids would eat organic carrots.”
Rosette Royal is the assistant editor fo r Real
Change, Street Roots sister paper in Seattle,
Wash. Reprinted from Real Change News.
Alone
By Jason W olf
I yell out at the top of my lungs
My screams fall upon deaf ears
The sound of my echo makes me feeble
I stop and listen to the thunderous silence
My heart is racing on all four legs
I breathe deep and hard as if sedated
I feel the desolation
course through my veins
I grow cold in my isolated winter
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