Narrative: Trapped- How a Family is Bound to an Unhealthy Lifestyle by Processed Foods Prepared by Bradley Bottoms

            The Gonzalez family is simply an average, lower middle class family, but their story is an excellent example of how the food industry exploits its consumers. The information about the Gonzalez’s lifestyles comes from the documentary Food Inc. The Gonzalez’s are an incredibly hard working family of four, as Maria, the mother, said, “we leave the house at six, and we don’t get home until nine, ten o clock at night” (Food Inc). Because of their long hours spent at work, coupled with their low wages, the family is bound to getting their meals through a drive through window, which is seriously affecting the health of the family.

            This diet has led to numerous problems for the family, predominantly the declining health of the father, which is now undercut by type two diabetes. Contracting diabetes is a giant obstacle by itself, but it is also putting his family further and further into debt. According to Maria, her husband is on two types of medications, which costs the family 260 dollars a month, this costs digs a massive hole in their already small salary. As Maria put it, paying for the medication “takes a lot of our income away. We're really tight from either paying for his medicine to be healthy or buying vegetables to be healthy” (Food Inc). There is no real way to get out of this predicament; once they bought into the industrial food system, there was really no way to get out. For the Gonzalez, there is no way out of this unhealthy system because there only options are to either they stop paying for the father’s required medicine and start paying for better food, or continue buying cheap processed foods.

            Gonzalez really does not have the option of discontinuing his medication; his case of diabetes is so severe that if he stopped taking his medicine he could go blind. If becoming blind is not a frightening enough option, Maria explains how that is even less of an option as her husband “is a truck driver by profession, and if he cannot see, he cannot drive, and if he loses his job, I do not know what we would do” (Food Inc). Considering that the family can barely afford the basic necessities to live know, if their primary income was lost, they would easily be rendered homeless.

            This predicament is seriously affecting the health of not only the father, but of the whole family. Because the highly processed, unhealthy foods are so affordable, that is what the Gonzalez family has had to live off of. As Maria put it “when you have only a dollar to spend and you have two kids to feed, either you go to the market and try to find something that's cheap or just go straight through a drive-thru and get two small hamburgers for them and "Okay, here, eat them, this is what's going to fill her up, not that one single item at the market” (Food Inc). The two daughters, one a teenager and the other still in middle school, are wildly fascinated with the prospects of eating a healthy diet, grounded by fruits and vegetables, but the Gonzalez’s simply cannot afford this lifestyle. Because as Maria says “the broccoli is too expensive” and that the processed foods, especially “the sodas are real cheap” (Food Inc), she is not able to allow their interests in a healthy lifestyle grow as they cannot afford for their children to be healthy. Her youngest daughter is already rather overweight and is likely to have diabetes by her late teenage years, and so this industrial trap is set on another generation of Gonzalez’s.

            It would be so nice to say that this family is an extraordinary case, but unfortunately it is far from the truth. Everyday people are getting hooked into this dependency for cheaply processed foods that are incredibly unhealthy. There are countless hardworking families like the Gonzalez family that simply do not have the money or time to eat a healthy and well balanced diet. After eating this way for a duration of time, not only are the people literally addicted (because of all of the added fat, sugar, and sodium), but they are also financially hooked into this way of life because of the medication required because of the related diseases. Then unfortunately the parents cannot meet the expense of teaching their kids how to eat well and a new generation is bound by the industrial food system. Once a less fortunate person gets into eating in this processed food landscape, there is no hope for them to regain a healthy lifestyle. This issue is going to take an army of support to correct, but unfortunately, only few are working toward a healthier future. Many doctors, scientists, nutritionists, and writers are fighting the current food system, but it is going to take so much more for serious change. Food producers have unlimited resources to lobby politicians, making legislation against processing foods an incredibly difficult process. This is why this issue needs the support of the general public, as the politicians need extreme pressure from voters to pass legislation against the processing of foods. In the end, lower income families like the Gonzalez’s need the voters to demand this legislation.

             

Interview with Dr. Robert Lustig - Prepared by Bradley Bottoms

I interviewed Doctor Robert Lustig of University of California San Francisco medical center. He is the director of the weight assessment for teen child health program as well as a professor of clinical pediatrics. Doctor Lustig received his degree from MIT and his medical degree from Cornell University Medical College. His current academic focus is perfecting a treatment and prevention of obesity. Through this study Lustig has found that obesity stems from the consumption of processed food, the key ingredient in which is fructose. The interview took place on Sunday March 21, 2010, at nine in the morning in his office in the UCSF medical center. In was given a half hour interview with him before his morning rounds.

I was received pretty well. I originally emailed Dr. Lustig on the March 20, after seeing him on Nightline the night before. After I emailed him, I had a response in a few hours, and after emailing back and forth several times we arranged an interview the next day. I met him at his office the next day and we were limited to a half hour. Although he was not amazingly welcoming, I was incredibly pleased because I was the last half hour available in his schedule for the next several months.

I learned a lot of things that expected to learn. Dr. Lustig’s primary focus is how fructose correlates with obesity so I obviously learned a lot about the affects of fructose on the body. In regard to the affects of fructose on the human body I learned a myriad of information. First I learned how fructose is found in low levels in nature, but used in vast quantities in processed goods. I also learned that in natural foods, wherever there is fructose, there is a massive quantity of fiber, such as sugar cane that has so much fiber it is literally a stick. As Dr. Lustig put it, “When God created the poison he created the antidote, wherever there is fructose in nature they is way more fiber; sugar cane is a stick. The only place that is different is with honey and that is protected by bees.” He also went into detail discussing how the food industry removes the fiber from foods to add to shelf life and make it more a more desirable good, such as juices and bread. By processing these goods, the industry removes the good nutrients and to make the fructose more prominent in food. We also discussed how fructose directly correlates to health. Lustig cited numerous diseases that have been associated with fructose consumption including some that surprised me such as Alzheimer’s disease.  Lustig also explained that “the difference between just plain old obesity and metabolic syndrome is sugar consumption,” and due to the food industry’s processing of foods “the sugar consumption is ramped.”

What shocked me the most during the interview was the obesity related cases that he has treated. He discussed how he has had to do double liver transplants on four hundred pound fifteen year olds, whose obesity was linked to soda consumption. He also talked about how diseases such as adult onset diabetes actually had to be renamed because it is no longer a disease that only plagues adults. As Lustig said, the diseases that are linked to sugar consumption “are occurring younger and younger.” I was also surprised to hear his stance against Michelle Obama’s “Lets Move” campaign. Doctor Lustig said that the campaign says, “that it is up to the individual, family, and the community and not up to government and not up to food industry,” and went on to say that the campaign “ultimately will prove to be ineffective.” I was also surprised to hear that foods packed with sugar, namely processed foods, have highly addictive qualities. Lustig described this phenomenon by saying “sugar makes you want more, because it works on the reward center of the brain, so in essence it is just like tobacco or ethanol in that it promotes peripheral disease and central addictive like properties thereby causing you to eat more, it is a vicious cycle of consumption and disease.

I was incredibly impressed with my interview. It was amazing to interview such an authority on my topic. I learned a lot about how impossible it is for the individual to start a healthy diet without intervention. Lustig described this issue by saying that “if I laced your breakfast cereal with morphine and told you not to eat it, could you? Addiction means you can not stop, and that’s what we are seeing in America today.” Basically Lustig says that there is no way for personal responsibility to prevent the health related diseases. He continues to talk about this by saying, “I don’t know how we are going to expect a personal responsibility paradigm to be able to shift this without help from the government.” He said that unfortunately due to incredible lobbying by the industry and corruption in the government, there is no way that the government will intervene without a public uprising. Lustig says, “the only way to make this happen is a bottom up grassroots approach.” This is a great thing to hear because he tells it shows that our project is a great step in the right direction. 

Background: The Food Industry and the Undermining of America Prepared by: Johnathan Robinson

The injustices described in the narrative all comes down to one industry. America has been filled with these thieves of public health for years. This industry is the food industry and because of their selfishness and greed, the nation’s health has taken a downward spiral.
The first target of the food industry is children. Children are easy targets for the food industry because children are susceptible to flashy images and fancy advertisements of the food industry and can be convinced to buy more of their products. Obesity rates have rising rapidly since the 1990’s. In 1997 American children obtained a whopping 50% of their calories from added fat and sugar and diets of nearly (45%) of all US children failed to meet any of the serving numbers recommended in the Pyramid (Muñoz 1085-1091). According to Marion Nestle’s book Food Politics child obesity “results from complex interactions of societal, economic, demographic, and environmental changes that not only encourage people to eat more food than need to meet their energy requirements but also encourage people to make less healthful food choices and act as barriers to physical activity” (Nestle 175). These detriments on society puts children in the bind of eating lifestyles that far extends past what is acceptable in a healthy diet.
Families from poor neighborhoods are taken advantage of as well. Food industries often underestimate the intelligence of poor families and will often throw out deals that means economically feasible to them but never reveal what is made up of the product. “Statistics are pretty clear that the obesity problem is especially bad among minorities in urban neighborhoods, arguably because there are more fast-food joints in poor neighborhoods than produce stands and good quality supermarkets” (Simon 107). Fast food seems economically reasonable because they have special deals that run at cheap and affordable prices. Most of this is processed food which is composed of salt. Salt makes processed foods “palatable, and it makes people thirsty” (Nestle 84) thereby prompting people to ‘eat more’ of their products. Since poor families are prone to eat more fast-food, they unknowingly are injecting dangerous amounts of salt into their system which has bad repercussions on health such as blood pressure.
Though certain groups are targeted by the food industry, this also effects the entire population. “Obesity is an extraordinarily important public health problem” (Nestle 75), and the population is blissfully unaware of these problems because of special interests. When one looks beyond the mind-numbing aspects of the food industries, it becomes clear people often forget the distinction between food labels and advertisements. “Such distinctions are invisible in supermarkets and health food stores and cannot possibly matter to the average consumer, but they thoroughly preoccupy supplement marketers, lawyers, and federal regulators” (Nestle 227). The American population is in reality being doped and their health is ignored merely because they act as a source of income to the food industry.
The ones responsible for all this are those hiding behind the logos and the happy cartoon characters. Essentially, they are the ones in charge of the food industry. The food industry operates for profit. By definition, their top priority is not for nutrition, which is ironic since their products are all about nutrition, but merely for profit. One matter that needs to be addressed is that America’s food supply is overabundant. We have more food in this country than we can chew. Overabundance is pressured to add value to foods while processing. In 1998, an average of 20% of retail cost - the “farm value” of the food – was returned to its producer” (Dunham D.). Clearly, to have the price of food jump like that begs the question how can the price of food shoot up like that? What food companies do to their products may shock and disgust the general public, so the question is… how can the food industry continue producing the food they do in order to earn profits yet keep the public unaware of the dangers? The American pastime: lobbying. Lobbyists will do anything to protect the products of food industry which includes “gifts from corporate representatives to federal officials” (Nestle 137). Food companies need not only the government on their side by nutrition professionals so they will not criticize their actions. Cooperating with academic experts is an “explicit corporate strategy” (Nestle 111). In return, health professionals receive funds from food companies to support academic departments, institutions, and conferences. These professional desperately seek these funds in order to further their own agendas which alters the integrity of such individuals.
The question now brought upon us is how the food industry subliminally brainwashes the population. The main source is advertisements. Advertisements are argued by the food industry as freedom of speech which is often acknowledged by rational adults. Average adults will be able to differentiate between commercials and programming. However, children are not adapt to make such judgments because they have no firm grasp of what is fantasy and reality. “Even high school students had difficulty distinguishing between commercials and programming when confronted with sales messages cloaked as entertainment, information or public service announcements” (Nestle 181). So why is it that fantasy and reality are being so cloaked together? Research has shown that children respond overwhelming to commercials that appeal to individual gratification – play, fun, friends, and to a lesser extent concerns about achievement (McNeal) which is dangerous. This connects with how “the kid sees big Kool-Aid guy and that’s all they will see” (Simon 134). Children want to feel cool and included and through the use of advertisements, they are brainwashed to feel they are cool. “Most remarkable, they justify the results of this research as a public service: ‘Advertising to children… is nothing less than primary education in commercial life; the provision, in effect, of free and elementary instruction in social economics – a passport to street wisdom. Far from being further restricted, as many suggest, this education course should in fact be supported, encouraged, and enlarged’” (Nestle 179). If this was the case than our entire culture has been shaped by advertisements. Advertisements have altered a child’s perception of reality which is dangerous for a free society such as America. These targeted children are in the midst of their development into adulthood. These children have not yet distinguished reality and fantasy completely. A child must have the opportunity to find a differential between the two. However, a child cannot do this because in order for big businesses to make the billions of dollars they lust for, they must stretch reality in order to find favoritism on their part. Advertisers do this in every field regardless of what the product is. But when a child is being taken advantage of, this is a serious crime to human dignity.
Though this may seem cloudy and unfeasible to break out of, there are ways to stay away from this delusional world created by the food industry. Long before our time, the human spirit was still trying to crush the food industry. Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle revealed to the public the obscene reports of the meat industry. By publishing this work, Congress passed the Food and Drug Act in 1906 (Nestle 233). The USDA made specific reductions in the fat, sugar, and salt content in the lunches at school when they acknowledged, “childhood eating patterns that influence lifelong habits” (USDA 30218-30251) in 1994, however there has been little effect with this. This issue comes down to the individuals who make the right choices. As Dana McCabe noted, “shopping around the perimeter of the grocery store is what the public needs to do more of (McCabe).” The perimeter of the grocery store contains all whole foods such as fruit, vegetables, fish, meat, bread, etc. and everything in the middle is all processed foods. When people make the right choices and buy the right products such as whole foods, their diet will dramatically change for the better.
In conclusion, the food industry is a serious threat to society. They are a business which provides a public service: feeding the population. Everyone in America deserves good food and not to be subject to the whine of the corporate hound dogs of the industry. This issue holds validity because it affects every American and if we all let it slip by, then we have failed as a nation to help the greater good of the people. We all need to stand up and make the right choice in the industry.
Bibliography
Muñoz KA, Krebs-Smith SM, Ballard –Barbash R, Cleveland LE. Food intakes of US children and adolescents. Achieve of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine 1995; 149:1085-1091
Dunham D. Food Costs… From Farm to Retail in 1993. Washington, DC: USDA Economic Research Service, 1994
Simon, Michele. Appetite for Profit: How the Food Industry Undermines Our Health and How to Fight Back. New York: Nation, 2006. Print.
Nestle, Marion. Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health. Berkeley: University of California, 2007. Print.
McNeal JU. Children as Consumers. Austin: University of Texas Bureau of Business Research, 1964
USDA. National school lunch program and school breakfast program: nutrition objectives for school meals; proposed rule. Federal Register 59:30218-30251, June 10, 1994.
McCabe, Dana. "Dana McCabe Interview." Personal interview. 7 Apr. 2010.

Interview with Dana McCabe: Prepared by Johnathan Edward Robinson

For my social justice project directed towards the food industry, I interviewed one of the top registered dietitians in the San Francisco Bay Area: Dana McCabe. Mrs. McCabe provides private nutrition counseling to clients and helps develop strong nutritional lifestyles where individuals can enjoy the food they love while living a healthy lifestyle. We met on April 7, 2010 at Starbuck’s Coffee on 4th Ave in San Mateo. We met at approximately three in the afternoon because she had a client at four. We took about fifteen minutes to prep for the video recorded interview and the actual interview took about another fifteen minutes to execute.

I first contacted Mrs. McCabe two days beforehand via phone and asked if she would be interested and she responded the day of showing great interest and enthusiasm. I sent her the questions I would be asking her through email. She gave me her personal email over the phone. Within my questions I quoted Marion Nestle’s book in order to elaborate on my questions. She responded back to me and was extremely impressed by the fact I read such a complex book for being a high school student.

When the interview date came, I dressed in formal attire because I just came from a scholarship interview. We quickly chatted up on my high school experiences and future plans. She was very graceful and was enthused about doing an interview with a high school student who treats his work like a college project. For the first fifteen minutes of prep we discussed the questions which allowed me to prepare for further questions about the topics in order to have her elaborate on the issues.

I expected to learn from her how people should properly diet because as a food professional, she knows the in’s and out’s of how to properly diet in America’s fast food culture. She acknowledged the fact nutrional advice is often political and corporate America feeds only on profits and not always the general welfare for the American public. She also elaborated on the issue of how the food industry uses cartoon characters for children to lure them into buying their products. She mentioned how a study was done where more children recognized Ronald McDonald versus former president George W. Bush.

I gained some great insight, however, some diabetes and statistics with children. One thing she talked about was how the grocery store is organized. She said all whole foods are located around the perimeter of the store. Everything in the center is all processed food. So for her clients, she advices people to shop around the perimeter of the store and avoid the center as much as possible. She was filled with information about America’s health which included the health of children and how to avoid such clashes.

After the interview she told me how she had been asked to interviewed by many students and she only accepted my request because of my professionalism and polite behavior. I felt highly commended and I enjoyed every moment of being apart of this interview. The experience as a whole to me was a preview of my professional life. Being able to perform an interview with an individual to whom I had no prior relationship to was something that would be the cornerstone of my professional career. It was a highly enlightening experience.

Sharing Catholic Social Teaching: Food Industry vs. Human Dignity

The Catholic Church’s social teaching invigorates the model of a society that arises to the challenges we face in the 21st century and beyond. Based on tradition of papacy teachings, biblical writings, and acknowledging the new culture we now live in while finding a compromise. The food industry has drastically risen more mainstream then ever before in the past hundred years. And like all super powers that rise in a short period of time, there are bound to be out of balance evils within. However, Catholic Social Teachings will find how to sort the just and unjust in the food industry.

Life and Dignity of the Human Person
Every human life is precious no matter how young or old, guilty or innocent. Dignity of people is rooted in the foundation of a moral vision for society that we establish. Human life is often seen by the food industry not as sacred, rather a trash can to dispense the poison they put into the food we eat. Uncaring and unwilling to see life as unique individuals, the food industry benefits off the cruelty they express towards the individuals who buy the food which to them seems affordable yet is loaded with consequences.

Word Press

Call to Family, Community, and Participation
The family we all belong to as human beings must work to promote and protect the good of society as a whole. The family as a whole should only grow, never be undermined. Those in charge of the food industry are a part of this family and should encourage it to grow. The food industry has a literal responsibility to provide the family of human beings a healthy diet regardless of whether or not the food industry makes a profit. They are providing a service to the family of human kind and with they must answer the call even though it may not work out to their favor.

Care2

Rights and Responsibilities
Human rights must be protected and responsibilities must be met. Every person has a fundamental right to life and a right of allowing human decency to be expressed and administrated. More often than not, corporations will throw away their responsibilities as massive influences in society and do anything to take away the rights of others in order to advance their own interests. Corporations in the food industry have a responsibility to uphold since their product is used by everyone and the food industry should never take advantage of those who buy their products. Their influence must be for the good, other they become an evil to society.

Daily Galaxy

Option for the Poor and Vulnerable
Soicety is only as strong as its weakest link. Society has a duty to break the barriers that dividethe rich from the poor. Those who are poor never have many options unlike those who are rich. With the few options available to them, they are often taken advantage of by those who are in power. The food industry is no exception. The poor often has to resort to cheap food like fast food in order to feed themselves and their children in between moments.

Ebaums World

The Dignity of Work and Rights of Workers
Workers must be protected in order to let the economy fluctuate. In order a thriving economy to exist, workers must be entitled to certain privledges such as right to unionize and minimum wage. When these privedleges are denied by the corporate hound dogs of the food industry, a worker’s dignity steps back and is lost in the mix. Its important that those in charge should never take advantage of those who work for them. An thriving economy can only happen when workers are happy and making it thrive.

Found SF

Solidarity
We all belong to one family and as humans, an animal species, we must find command it is that as together. Recongizing this beauty, we should all understand that destroying this solidarity will destroy ourselves and the planet with it. Seeing that we are all human beings connected by a common bond, the food industry should never strip away what’s beautiful about our solidarity in order to advance their own intentions.

Rabbit Fur

Care for God’s Creation
We are called to protect the people, planet, and the animals living in it. In order to have the future relish the gifts bestowed upon us, food industries must realize they should never ravage the planet for their own goals. The animals and planets should not die through cruelty and should painless. Pesticides and slaughterhouses often ignore this Catholic Social Teaching and it should be addressed before its too late.

Food, Inc.