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.
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