Rudd Center Director Co-Authors Trio of Food Policy Papers
Recently published articles co-authored by Yale University’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity Director Kelly Brownell explore various aspects of addressing obesity. They include:
Kelly Brownell & Kenneth Warner, “The Perils of Ignoring History: Big Tobacco Played Dirty and Millions Died. How Similar is Big Food?,” The Milbank Quarterly, 2009. This article discusses the “Frank Statement” that cigarette manufacturers published in the 1950s assuring smokers that the industry “always will cooperate closely with those whose task it is to safeguard the public’s health.” The authors call this “a charade, the first step in a concerted, half-century-long campaign to mislead Americans about the catastrophic effects of smoking and to avoid public policy that might damage sales.” They examine the food industry to find purported parallels.
They claim that food companies appear to have a similar strategy, focusing on “personal responsibility as the cause of the nation’s unhealthy diet”; raising “fears that government action usurps personal freedom”; vilifying “critics with totalitarian language, characterizing them as food police”; criticizing “studies that hurt industry as ‘junk science’”; emphasizing “physical activity over diet”; stating “there are no good or bad foods; hence no food or food type (soft drinks, fast foods, etc.) should be targeted for change”; and planting “doubt when concerns are raised about the industry.” The authors call for the food industry to make changes and “behave in honorable, health-promoting ways.”
The article concludes by warning food companies that if they do not change, public opinion could turn against them. “Litigation could be one source of shifting opinion, with addiction potentially a looming target. Whether food companies are ever found responsible for health damages may be less important than the disclosure of internal documents generated by the discovery phase of the legal process. Tobacco was seriously wounded when its tactics became public knowledge.”
A spokesperson for the American Dietetic Association (ADA) rejected the comparison made in the article, observing, “There is no way to incorporate cigarettes into a healthy lifestyle, while it is not only possible but necessary to incorporate food into your lifestyle in a healthy way.” ADA president Martin Yadrick agreed that checks need to be put in place to ensure that industry-funded scientific research is sound and called for fixing public health issues by focusing on “synergy,” noting that recent changes in food labeling and trans fats came about “because everyone worked together.” See Foodproductiondaily.com, March 20, 2009.
Jennifer Pomeranz, Stephen Teret, Stephen Sugarman, Lainie Rutkow & Kelly Brownell, “Innovative Legal Approaches to Address Obesity,” The Milbank Quarterly, 2009. According to this article, “Legal solutions are immediately available to the government to address obesity and should be considered at the federal, state, and local levels.” Among the legal approaches explored are marketing regulations and compelled advertising; regulations directed toward what foods can be placed prominently in retail establishments; selective ingredient taxes; per capita limits on the amount of product a minor could purchase; zoning restrictions on the location and number of certain retail establishments; and litigation based on new scientific studies purportedly showing the addictive quality of certain food ingredients.
The authors call for innovative regulation such as imposing fees, fines or penalties on companies that fail to reach outcome goals such as reducing obesity rates among children in a specific region by a specific percent. Acknowledging that working out the regulatory details could be difficult, the authors contend that reframing the issue by placing responsibility for the problem of obesity on “those large companies that profit from these products [like junk food]” would make reaching agreement on the particulars possible. The article suggests that lawsuits based on nuisance law could also be a viable public health strategy. The authors conclude, “It is important for legal scholars to devise innovative strategies to address obesity from new perspectives. The great potential for the law to rectify the status quo has yet to be fully explored.”
Jennifer Harris, Jennifer Pomeranz, Tim Lobstein & Kelly Brownell, “A Crisis in the Marketplace: How Food Marketing Contributes to Childhood Obesity and What Can Be Done,” Annual Review of Health, 2009. Starting with the premise that food marketing is a contributing factor in rising rates of childhood obesity, this article contends that “food companies invest heavily to increase sales and create brand loyalty among young consumers.” The authors are critical of industry self-regulation and, among other matters, call for a range of solutions from company promises and industry performance indicators to local, national and international regulation and private litigation to affect youth marketing practices.
