An Urban's Rural View

The war on obesity rages. The American Medical Association just declared obesity a disease and came out against allowing food stamps to be used to buy sugary drinks (http://tiny.cc/…). Starbucks announced it will publish calorie counts on the menus of all 11,100 of its U.S. stores (http://tiny.cc/…).

As these developments suggest, the debate over how best to wage the war rages, too. One school of thought favors an information and education blitz—calorie counts, label warnings, healthy-eating advertisements. Another advocates rolling out the government's heavy artillery -- taxes on fatty and sugary comestibles, portion-size restrictions, tougher limits on what can be purchased with food-stamps. A third says do both.

Then there's the cover story in the current issue of the Atlantic, which argues that the best hope to combat obesity lies in -- hang on to your hats -- "junk" food (http://tiny.cc/…). The article attacks the elitism of many of today's healthy-eating notions and argues there's great promise in "high-tech anti-obesity engineering"—making processed and fast food more nutritious.

Though none of the proposed cures have been adequately tested it's hard to spot a panacea in the bunch. Calorie counts might change some people's eating habits at least some of the time. They do mine. But most of those who order the venti Caramel Ribbon Crunch Crème Frappuccino know it's a sugar-laced calorie bomb. The gory details (640 calories, 80 grams of sugar) won't deter them. They'll want it anyway.

More coercive tactics -- taxes, bans, size restrictions -- have their own problem: political resistance. People don't want the government telling them what to eat. Politicians hate voting for unpopular measures.

Look at the backlash against USDA's attempts to make school lunches healthier. Is it unreasonable, when the taxpayers provide someone with a meal, to suggest fruits and vegetables be included on the plate? Apparently so. Judging by the outcry in Congress, you'd have thought Uncle Sam was forcing kids to binge on broccoli.

And the doctors' suggestion to put soft drinks and other sugary beverages on the "no" list for food stamps is going nowhere in Washington. It wasn't even seriously proposed in the farm-bill debate. Despite the "nutrition" in the food stamps program's formal name -- Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program -- nutrition is hardly top priority. The so-called nutrition lobby says banning sodas would be demeaning to the poor.

Taxes, arguably, played a role in pushing Americans to quit smoking. But unlike cigarettes, food isn't intrinsically harmful to health. Countries that have tried to tax "bad" food have had mixed results. Denmark repealed a "fat tax" a year after adopting it in the face of business and consumer resistance. Soda taxes may chalk up a higher survival rate but they won't be popular.

As odd as the Atlantic's solution sounds, it in some ways is the most realistic. At least it grasps the nub of the problem: We all know what's good for us, and we all know what we like, and the two are often not the same. In theory, engineering nutrition into what tastes good makes sense. In practice, doing this would face not only scientific challenges but also popular prejudice against processing.

And so the war, and the debate, rage on.

(ES/)

© Copyright 2013 DTN/The Progressive Farmer. All rights reserved.