They
Hooked Us on Junk Food
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Sugar has been
described by nutritionists as the methamphetamine
of processed food ingredients, with its high speed,
blunt assault on our brains, while fat is the opiate
– a smooth operator whose effects are less obvious but
no less powerful. Obesity in North America took off in
the 1980s with the exponential increase in HFCS based
soda consumption. By 2003 the
average North American adult was 11 kilograms / 24
pounds heavier than in 1960. One in three adults and
nearly one in five kids aged six to eleven are
classified today as obese. Type 2 (acquired) diabetes
represents 12 percent of the Canadian population and
rising as the Boomer segment ages. Between 1980 and
2000 soda pop consumption tripled to the daily
consumption levels it remains at today – an average of
200 litres or 40 gallons per year, 60,000 calories,
3,700 teaspoons per person (one can of pop contains
ten teaspoons). In the 1990s General Foods had
developed HFS (high
fructose sugar). The FDA was
unwilling to ascribe anything more than tooth decay to
soda pop sugar until a Yale study made headlines
finding that children who were given two cupcakes
suffered a tenfold increase in adrenaline and
exhibited abnormal behaviour. World
Health Organization proposed changing its nutritional
guidelines to lower the recommended daily levels of
sugar to 10 percent caloric intake, citing various
links between sugar and diabetes, cardiovascular
disease and obesity. (In early 2014, it began to
appear there may be a slight decrease in sugary drink
consumption). |
Enter Big
Tobacco
In the 1970s and ’80s the writing was on the
wall for the tobacco industry. Massive class-action
lawsuits brought against them by most US States
eventually resulted in billions of dollars in
settlement to help offset quickly increasing medical
costs. To protect their bottom lines, several of the
larger tobacco companies, including R.J. Reynolds, and
Philip Morris diversified into processed foods. Kraft
Foods new owners, Philip Morris tobacco, brought a new
motivation to the industry to get people to eat more
of its convenience food in order to maximize profits.
The tobacco executives used marketing apparatus and
strategies that had been so successful in selling
cigarettes and encouraged their in-house scientists to
find ways to attract consumers and then applauded the
victories when sales surged. Food companies
are typically loath to provide details on specific
products or brands. Their formulas are calculated and
perfected by scientists and chemists who know very
well what they are doing to hook us on sugar, fat and
salt. For the consumer, especially the parent, the
grocery store is a battlefield, sprinkled liberally
with landmines itching to pop up into our carts and
explode into our mouths. Salt, sugar and fat are
cheap. Food companies were already selling their
products in an environment in which there were twice
as many calories as anybody needed. Now they had to
grow their profits every ninety days. The result was
that food companies had to seek to new ways to market
their foods and they did this by making larger
portions, as convenient as they could. In the heat of
competition, they looked past the health impact of
their products. Market and taste surveys have given
way to computerized brain scanning techniques which
allow tobacco owned Kraft and General Foods to design
the perfectly addictive foods of today. However, big
tobacco argue they are in good legal shape because
addiction arguments used in suing them previously does
not apply to food as there is no painful
withdrawal readily applicable to the desire for
junk food. However, consumer advocates contend that
when people start feeling hungry for junk food – salt
sugar fat, they are not seeking the primary benefit of
food, the calories needed to keep them alive – they
are responding to the body’s signal that it doesn’t
ever want to be put in the position of needing to eat.
Most North Americans never truly feel the pain of
hunger, starving for nutrition. The sad but very
ironic reality is that while weight and obesity
skyrocket, health is declining due to a lack of
nutrition in the very processed food big tobacco now
helps promote and glean massive profits from the way
they did historically with tobacco. Their profits are
once again dependent upon the costs to our health care
system – and very own tax-payer dollars.
RR |