OPINION:Blaming victims of obesity and overweight is just an excuse that lets Big Food off the hook of its responsibility
IT IS tempting to dismiss the news that Ireland has one of the highest childhood obesity rates in Europe with a weary shrug. Kids are so greedy, aren’t they? Not really. Adults eat far more junk food. That explains why 61 per cent of Irish men and women are now either overweight or obese, and why we are witnessing a shocking rise in the incidence of diabetes, heart disease and certain forms of cancer.
Politicians, the media and even academics neglect to address this matter, while the food industry drags its heels. The situation continues to worsen, meanwhile. Within 20 years it is estimated more than half of Irish adults will be obese. That is the context in which the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland has asked the public how food and drink should be commercially promoted to children in the broadcast media.
As the situation stands, cynical marketing messages are broadcast with a frequency that borders on the pathological. No wonder we are facing a massive public health crisis. Few observers expect the authority to implement all the necessary changes, and it seems pathetic that there is only tinkering around the edges. Ever more insidious ways will doubtless be found to rot kids’ teeth, and the dangers of junk food are not confined to children.
There are other reasons to be pessimistic. Irish politicians have long kowtowed to Big Food, with its blithe assurances that clearer labelling and self-regulation are a sage response to soaring obesity levels.
Denmark has just introduced a tax on foods that contain more than 2.3 per cent saturated fat. Ireland should follow suit, but that seems highly unlikely. A national taskforce on obesity was established in 2005. Six years later, less than a fifth of its 93 recommendations have been implemented. A national nutrition policy has been “forthcoming” or “about to be published” every few months since November 2005.
At least the industry is getting involved in the obesity debate. When we’re finished stuffing our faces, Big Food thinks we ought to get out more. And stretch those legs! Seriously. Dr Muireann Cullen is head of the Nutrition and Health Foundation, which sounds like a noble institution. Last August, Dr Cullen wrote an article in The Irish Times in which she admitted obesity is a national disaster, before gaily suggesting something called the National Physical Activity Guidelines “must be improved upon and explained more” – as if explaining how to jog is more important than, say, banning the advertising of junk food to children.
Dr Cullen’s position seemed obtuse until a few days later, when The Irish Times published a letter from Michael O’Shea of the Irish Heart Foundation: “Dr Muireann Cullen omits what is perhaps a significant element of the current obesity crisis – global food companies’ highly sophisticated and effective marketing and promotion of foods that are high in fat, sugar and salt.”
There was a more substantial omission in the same article, O’Shea pointed out. “Dr Cullen avoids reference to the junk foods of [her] funders including Coca-Cola HBC Ireland, PepsiCo International, Mars Ireland and Kraft Foods Ireland.”
No one doubts that physical activity is important. But imploring consumers to exercise more has been the default approach to obesity for years. It has not worked. Yet food manufacturers and politicians still trot out the “personal responsibility” mantra.
As one member of the Oireachtas committee on health and children put it recently: “We need to stop blaming the fast food chains of this world, the food manufacturers and the advertisers, and start looking at ourselves. We are too quick to point the finger of responsibility at others.”
The personal responsibility argument seems plausible because it is so familiar. We tolerated the same argument from Big Tobacco for decades, and it is demonstrably rubbish. After all, the incidence of obesity increases year after year. Were Irish people any less responsible in 2010 than they were in 2009? Of course not. Blaming the victim is just an excuse to let industry off the hook.
The truth is that we are too slow to point the finger of responsibility at others. Self-regulation of food marketing has not worked, cheap food is only cheap in the short term, and far more government intervention is essential to tackle the obesity crisis.
We put heavy taxes on cigarettes and alcohol in an effort to limit their usage, and to help pay for the damage they create. Junk food should be targeted in exactly the same way, with the tax revenues ring-fenced to make healthier foods more affordable.
As environmental campaigner John Gibbons has written, “much like burning coal, processed foods laden with salt, sugar and fats are only cheap as long as you don’t have to pay to clean up the mess, and society, rather than the producers and polluters, continues to pick up the tab”.
British journalists such as Felicity Lawrence and Joanna Blythman have done important work on this subject. In Ireland, with the exception of “mavericks” such as Gibbons and the Slow Food movement, the politics of food production is seldom addressed for fear of upsetting advertisers. Indeed, when journalists write about food, they usually treat the subject as a branch of the entertainment industry.
Reporters who lavish attention on celebrity chefs are useful idiots of Big Food. Each time we write an article on the size of a chef’s ego we miss an opportunity to expose an even bigger scandal. (Disclosure: As a young journalist I wrote many such pieces.)
And when we deign to consider food, it is with a facile determination to miss the point. We will ponder, for example, the pros and cons of organic food, which constitutes less than 5 per cent of food sold in Ireland. Whose interests does it serve for us to ignore the larger story about the junk that most people eat every day? Industry and legislators prevaricate, thus undermining the public good. Journalists miss the point.
More depressing still is the relationship between industry and academia. According to Joanna Blythman, “many scientists are looking for research money, and a lot of that money comes with strings attached”.
In 2005 a government report estimated obesity cost the State up to €4 billion a year. One day it will be clear to us all the societal cost of treating such diseases is far greater than the right to peddle cheeseburgers and heavily sugared water. At that point the sort of measures that led to a dramatic decrease in smoking will be introduced.
In the meantime, if you are concerned by issues raised in this article, you have four days left to contact the broadcasting authority.
The deadline for submissions to the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland is 12pm next Friday, October 14th. Write to Children’s Code Consultation, Broadcasting Authority of Ireland, 2-5 Warrington Place, Dublin 2. Or e-mail sowens@bai.ie.
Trevor White is a journalist and writer on food