Obesity is public enemy number one

Late one night I stood behind an obese young mother and her overweight son at a convenience food store. She was buying cigarettes, Pepsi, candy, and potato chips–and nothing else.

I may be a liberal, but I had to wrestle down a visceral urge to rip those things from her hands and admonish her sternly for the terrible things she was doing to her body and that of her child’s. “Doesn’t she know the risk of this kind of irresponsible behavior?” I asked myself.

The numbers are frightening. About one-third of Americans are now obese and another one-third overweight. Though New Mexico may have the 36th lowest rate of adult obesity in the nation, 26 percent of its adult population is obese, and 33 percent of its children are overweight.

Overall obesity-related spending reaches $147 billion a year (over $324 million in New Mexico), double the amount that it was nearly a decade ago. Eric Finkelstein, a health economist and author of a recent study on obesity, said it clearly: “Unless you address obesity, you’re never going to address rising health care costs.”

With numbers this big, the problem cannot be ignored by government or the private sector. This generation of children may be the first in the nation’s history to not live as long as their parents, according to some public health experts. We are eating ourselves to death while sacrificing our children at the same time.

But what should be done? If we look at our mother and child in the convenience store, do we see victims of weak self-discipline, or victims of circumstances beyond their control? The food industry, like the tobacco industry before it, wants you to believe it’s the former–simply irresponsible personal behavior.

But the fact is that people are buying more unhealthy food, especially during this recession, because it’s cheap. Our system of public subsidies for commodity agriculture, factory-scale farming, and mass food distribution systems (Wal-Mart, McDonald’s) make unhealthy food inexpensive. The real price of fruits and vegetables has increased 40 percent over the last 10 years (accounting for inflation), while the real price of sugary soft drinks and fatty snack foods has actually declined 10 to 15 percent.

Poor people buy cheaper food. That only makes sense. But poor people also have higher rates of obesity and diet-related illnesses such as diabetes as a result. People who are food insecure (New Mexico is the second most food insecure state in the country) may not know where their next meal is coming from. As a result, they often indulge in binge eating–a heavy consumption of high calorie food which is associated with obesity.

Many people, especially the poor, live in “food deserts,” communities that are not well-served by affordable, higher quality food stores. Lacking a reliable automobile or public transportation, they often purchase food at expensive small stores that don’t have fresh fruits and vegetables.

One-third of New Mexico’s counties are considered food deserts, including Quay County on the state’s eastern border. There shoppers must drive 25 miles one way to reach a supermarket. Over 71 percent of Quay County residents are obese or overweight as are 37 percent of their lower income (WIC) children between the ages of 2 and 5.

Compare this to Santa Fe County which has an abundance of supermarkets and reasonably good public transportation. There, the obesity and overweight rates are still high—49 percent for adults and 23 for 2 to 5 years olds—but noticeably lower than in Quay.

Consider lastly the role of education, information, and advertising. America’s food industry, particularly fast food, pumps out billions of dollars of persuasive messages designed to lure us into their clutches. It works so well, in part, because there is nothing to counter it. Our public schools provide either no or very limited nutrition education, and public expenditures for healthy eating information is in the millions, not billions. The system is essentially rigged to keep us fat, dumb, and happy—that is until our first diabetes test.

Since doing nothing is not an option, what do we do? I’d start with education. When people are taught how to read food labels, buy lower cost, healthy food, and cook, they make lasting changes. I’ve seen programs such as the one run by the Sustainable Food Center in Austin, Texas, turn around lower income moms’ diets in only six weeks. But because of limited funding they can only reach a few hundred households a year. Programs like this must be replicated across the country ten-thousand fold.

Nobody should have to drive 50 miles (some people hitchhike) for their groceries. Last year Governor Richardson created the New Mexico Food Gap Task Force. It has made several reasonable recommendations for re-storing the state’s underserved communities. But the legislature has yet to act on them. The time has come to ensure that every community offers its residents a place where they can buy healthy and affordable food.

And lastly, I would impose a castrating form of regulation on the food industry reminiscent of what we have done to Big Tobacco. Advertising of unhealthy food, especially to children, is being curtailed. Some cities such as Los Angeles and New York are trying to create “fast-food free zones,” particularly near schools. Clear calorie count labeling in chain restaurants has been implemented in some cities. Many state legislatures and the federal government are considering taxes on sodas and other junk food. The heavy hand of big government is necessary because the industry has shown no inclination to curtail its own immoral assault on our nation’s health.

So rather than grab that super-sized soda from the unfortunate mother above, I’d prefer to empower her with knowledge, healthy and affordable food options, and to protect her from the heavy hand of Big Food.

Mark Winne is the author of Closing the Food Gap: Resetting the Table in the Land of Plenty (Beacon Press 2008). He lives and works in Santa Fe. For more information, go to www.markwinne.com.