Reuters Focuses on Corporate Spending and Effects on Gov’t Anti-Obesity Initiatives
Reuters has issued a “special report” titled “How Washington went soft on
childhood obesity” that details how food and beverage industry interests
have allegedly turned aside national and statewide initiatives aimed at
addressing childhood obesity. According to the article, “[a]t every level of
government, the food and beverage industries won fight after fight during
the last decade. They have never lost a significant political battle in the
United States despite mounting scientific evidence of the role of unhealthy
food and children’s marketing in obesity.” A number of industry critics,
including Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), Rudd Center for Food Policy and
Obesity Director Kelly Brownell, and Center for Science in the Public Interest
(CSPI) Executive Director Michael Jacobson, are quoted making comparisons
between the tactics used by the food and beverage industries and those used
by tobacco companies.
The report focuses on first lady Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” campaign, which has over time shifted its focus from healthy foods to exercise as a means to address obesity, and the 2009 congressional mandate that federal agencies draft voluntary nutrition standards for food marketing to children, an effort that died two years later when the budget bill included a 55-word sentence “requiring the agencies to do a cost-benefit analysis of their recommendations before finishing the report.” After the budget provision passed, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) noted, “Congress has clearly changed its mind about what it would like the Interagency Working Group to do with regard to the report on food marketed to children,” and FTC Chair Jon Leibowitz said during a March 2012 congressional hearing that the voluntary food standard was no longer a priority.
According to the report’s authors, these changes in direction may be attributable to significant increases in the money the industry has spent on lobbying. For example, the effort to remove the least nutritional foods from the government’s $10.5 billion school lunch program ultimately preserved French fries as a staple and designated pizza as a vegetable after more than $1 million was spent to defeat it and a champion was found in a Democratic senator from Minnesota, home to Schwan Food Co. with 70 percent of the school frozen pizza market. The article also notes that when CSPI spent $70,000 for lobbying to improve the nation’s diet in 2011, that represented what opponents spent every 13 hours.
The report highlights the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s “Weight of the Nation” conference to be held in Washington, D.C., May 7-9, 2012; it will premiere an HBO documentary series of the same name as part of the campaign discussed in Issue 423 of this Update. According to the report, the initiative could renew public debate over the issue despite the lack of any pending legislative action on childhood obesity during an election year. New York University Professor Marion Nestle responded to Reuters’ report by calling on readers of her blog to send a note to the White House to support the first lady’s Let’s Move campaign. Nestle attributes White House caution on the issue “to the upcoming election.” See Reuters, April 27, 2012.
