It was none other than Philip Morris — for years and years the largest food manufacturer in North America through its acquisition of General Foods and then Kraft — who, in 1999, warned them that they were going to face as much trouble over salt, sugar, fat, obesity as Philip Morrris was then facing over tobacco smoking. This is now starting to happen for the food companies.
Last year almost all of them reported dismal earnings, and the most forthright among the heads of the food companies attributed that decline to consumers wanting to eat more healthily, and changing their purchasing habits. This is really hitting the food giants hard. (NPR: Here & Now’s on Obesity, America on the Scale, 2015)
About time. Just inspect the breakfast cereals on the breakfast isle at Safeway in Washington DC. Every cereal is full of sugar and salt, the carbohydrate level so high that to stick to the recommended 60 carbs a keal means you barely have a breakfast at all. Meanwhile, there is mile upon mile of junk foods, few of them with any nutrician and most fuelling the obesity of the shoppers around you. Obesity leads to diabetes, which in turn can mean a lifetime of injections and the severing of limbs. The supermarkets now know that they are helping to make people unwell. Their answer is, ‘We serve grownups. They want this stuff. We are just doing our job by supplying it’.
My answer: if it hadn’t been for government intervention millions of people would still be dying of lung cancer, caused by cigarette smoking. Obesity is a public health issue; sometimes we have to protect the public from its own stupidity or lack of general knowledge.
Libertarians might say it is not our place to dictate what people eat and how much. We have no business telling others to eat healithly, take exercise and keep fit. It is an intrusion into personal lives. The counter- argument is that diabetes and its consequences is increasing the medical costs hugely and this means that every one of us has to pay more, either to health insurance companies in the US or in taxes in other Western countries (diabetes being the disease of rich countries). I don’t want to pay more to deal with a condition brought about solely by Man’ stupidity and lack of self- discipline. Pay to help deal with cancer and a thousand other health conditions, yes, but not this one.
Big food companies are under big pressure in the US to reveal more about the ingredients of their products. The diabetes epidemic and the weight problems all too many Americans are forcing increased transparency. How is this food made? Is it good for me? There is great distrust of big companies.
Big Food is now starting to print on packaging what is known as Smart labels, or QR codes, which can be read by a smartphone and which contain details of nutrition, allergens and ingredients. Click on a certain ingredient and you can get a definition or find out whether the product contains GMOs. All foods already have labels listing contents, but these labels are more comprehensive.
Amanda Hitt from the Food Integrity Campaign comments. “Anything that informs consumers is a good thing, and gets us closer to a certain level of transparency. But theSmartLabel only shows us part of the picture. It’s highly unlikely that companies will voluntarily reveal the most unappetizing aspects of their business”.
But at least companies are beginning to do the right thing. We should be glad. (Adapted from the NPR website, December 26, 2015)
I agree with your comment that companies should publish more information about what their foods contain- there can be no harm done by greater transparency. I also think consumers should be better informed about what they are eating and drinking. But once the public has been well-informed, they should be free to make decisions based on that information. While ignorance is a genuine problem, if people want to eat and drink unhealthily in the full knowledge of the consequences, then they should be free to do so. The alternative is a nanny state that controls our lives in the name of making us healthier. And while a nanny state may achieve this, the cost is a free society. The most effective way of combating unhealthy eating is by changing the culture. Encouraging people to eat less low quality meat, and more vegetables, olive oil and fish would be a good start. As you’ve often mentioned, promote a Mediterranean diet. Taxes and regulations are unlikely to make much of a difference; binge drinking in Britain is more of a problem in France despite the latter’s alcohol taxes being lower.
As for unhealthy people putting a strain on the healthcare system, the answer to that is to charge people for treatment for self-inflicted conditions. In the US, smokers pay more in health insurance. If it can be proven that someone has a disease entirely because of a choice they have made, they should have to pay for treatment. In the US, insurance companies should refuse to insure people for self-inflicted conditions- if that is illegal it ought not to be.