“If we are to solve the many problems that obesity is creating for American society, we must first move beyond the stale ‘willpower versus the food-industrial complex’ debate,” contends politics editor Marc Ambinder in the May 2010 edition of The Atlantic. Examining the powerful interest groups arrayed against each other in this fight, Ambinder claims that the rise in obesity is not attributable to one specific cause but “is associated with a rogue’s gallery of individual, social, and technological factors.” He resists the temptation “to borrow insights and metaphors from the 50-year battle against smoking,” maintaining that “[o]besity belongs in a different category of social illness.” In Ambinder’s view, the current epidemic is a confluence of both personal and environmental risks largely mitigated by socioeconomic status. In particular, he criticizes public health campaigns aimed at individual choices when “just being an American can naturally lead you to be obese.” According to…
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The Liverpool City Council is reportedly considering a ban on the word “obesity” after the Liverpool Schools Parliament, a student body organization, expressed concern that some could find the term offensive. Although some experts have apparently disputed this contention, suggesting that the word adequately reflects the severity of the health condition, students argue that the stigma “would turn people off, particularly young people,” as one youth representative told the press. The proposal would require the council to use the description “unhealthy weight” in all literature geared toward children. “We can’t change government terminology or clinician terminology, but we can look at changing how we communicate weight issues in council reports and in our communications with children,” a council spokesperson was quoted as saying. See BBC News, April 12, 2010; The Telegraph, April 13, 2010. Meanwhile, a South Yorkshire community has also attracted considerable media attention for its aborted plan to…
The Romanian government has reportedly proposed a tax on fast foods high in fat, sugar and salt. Backed by the European Public Health Alliance, the health ministry has sought to create the world’s most comprehensive tax scheme that would include, not just sugary foods and beverages, but savory fare as well. Proponents have claimed that the measure would help combat rising obesity rates in the Balkan nation while simultaneously raising £860 million for government coffers. But legislators have apparently struggled to define fast food as they consider more than 40,000 products eligible for the levy. They have already exempted popular street fare like pizza and kebabs on the ground that these items are often made from fresh ingredients, drawing further criticism from detractors who have questioned the proposal’s uneven application. In addition, the World Health Organization has noted that the plan penalizes vulnerable populations in a country where the average…
British celebrity chef Jamie Oliver recently debuted his first American network TV show titled Food Revolution, a reality series that brings his penchant for school lunch reform and theatrical interventions to cafeterias and homes in Huntington, West Virginia. A health food evangelist, Oliver has drawn both praise and criticism in the United Kingdom for his efforts to harness government power and money for anti-obesity programs. But his latest incursion into American media has apparently attracted the ire of outlets as diverse as AlterNet and Reason, the latter of which has equated the show with several of the entrepreneur’s more “dubious endeavors.” According to Reason, Oliver received the 2010 TED Prize for his work as “a standard bearer in the fight against obesity” and hopes that Food Revolution will secure him an invitation from the White House to contribute to the nation’s childhood obesity initiative. “[It] would be a serious mistake to…
A recent study has reportedly likened overeating to a drug addiction, concluding that rats given access to high-fat food exhibited a neurochemical dependency similar to the “reward homeostasis induced by cocaine or heroin.” Paul Johnson and Paul Kenny, “Dopamine D2 Receptors in Addiction-Like Reward Dysfunction and Compulsive Eating in Obese Rats,” Nature Neuroscience, March 28, 2010. Researchers monitored the brains of rats divided into three groups: the first allowed unlimited access to high-fat foods; the second given access to high-fat fare for only one hour per day; and the third fed rat chow only. While the rats in the second group acquired a pattern of compulsive binge eating, consuming 66 percent of their daily calories during the one hour when high-fat food was available, the rats with extended access not only grew obese but also displayed “a progressively worsening deficit in neural reward responses.” The obese rats gradually developed an…
A new study asserts that the food portions depicted in paintings of the Last Supper as chronicled in the New Testament of the Bible linearly increased for 1,000 years. Brian and Craig Wansink, “The largest Last Supper: depictions of food portions and plate size increased over the millennium,” International Journal of Obesity, March 23, 2010. Authored by sibling scholars, the study examined 52 of the most artistically significant depictions of the Last Supper between the year 1000 and the year 2000, although Craig Wansink was quoted as saying the period of artwork considered ended about 1900 because few non-parodic Last Suppers have been created since then. Using the size of the diners’ heads as a basis for comparison, the Wansinks determined that the relative sizes of the main course increased by 69.2 percent, bread by 23.1 percent and plates by 65.6 percent. “I think people assume that increased serving sizes,…
A recent study involving both short- and long-term animal experiments has purportedly linked high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) to significant weight gain in rats. Miriam Bocarsly, et al., “High-fructose corn syrup causes characteristics of obesity in rats: Increased body weight, body fat and triglyceride levels,” Pharmacology, Biochemistry and Behavior, March 2010. According to a March 23, 2010, Princeton University press release, researchers have “demonstrated that all sweeteners are not equal when it comes to weight gain: Rats with access to high-fructose corn syrup gained significantly more weight than those with access to table sugar, even when their overall caloric intake was the same.” In the short-term experiment, the authors reported that “male rats given water sweetened with [HFCS] in addition to a standard diet of rat chow gained much more weight than male rats that received water sweetened with table sugar, or sucrose, in conjunction with the standard diet.” Moreover, the long-term…
The Institute of Medicine (IOM) has announced an April 9, 2010, open workshop to continue its review of front-of-package (FOP) nutrition rating systems and symbols. As tasked by the Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, IOM established a committee to evaluate and report on “the use of symbols, logos, and icons to communicate nutritional information on the front of food labels.” At the forthcoming open session, the committee will gather information on both international and domestic nutrition rating systems and symbols. Scheduled speakers include representatives from (i) the U.K Food Standards Agency (FSA), (ii) the American Heart Association, (iii) ConAgra Foods, the General Mills Bell Institute of Health & Nutrition and Unilever, and (iv) Texas A&M University, the University of Maryland, the University of Washington, and the Yale Prevention Research Center. In addition, New York University Professor Marion Nestle will address concerns about nutrition rating…
The U.S. district court judge now presiding over the obesity-related claims in Pelman v. McDonald’s Corp. has ordered the parties to refile a number of documents previously submitted on motions addressing class certification. Pelman v. McDonald’s Corp., No. 02-7821 (S.D.N.Y., order entered March 24, 2010). Among the documents the court has requested are the defendant’s motion for an order striking the class allegations in plaintiffs’ second amended complaint and plaintiffs’ cross motion to certify a class and motion for an order further denying the defendant’s motion to strike. Filed in 2002 and appealed twice to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, this litigation seeks damages for the obesity-related health conditions of teenagers who contend they were misled by fast food advertising. Claims that the food consumed in defendant’s restaurants caused the plaintiffs’ health problems are no longer in the case.
This article invokes public-health campaigns of the past, including measures taken to increase seat belt use and stop drunk driving, to call for “big-think solutions” to the nation’s obesity problems. The author outlines the factors that have led to a tripling of obesity rates among teenagers, such as a decrease in physical activity; ubiquitous high-calorie, low-nutrient foods; “rampant” food advertising to children; and food “deserts” in urban areas where the nearest convenience store sells candy and white bread. She quotes Yale’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity head Kelly Brownell as saying, “The country defaults to giving industry the benefit of the doubt. Industry says you don’t need to regulate us; we’ll police ourselves. The tobacco industry abused that with God knows how many lives as a consequence. To expect the food industry to be different may be wishful thinking.” Among the measures the author recommends to address the…
