Let Them Eat Junk

Three years ago I reviewed a major book by Thomas Campbell called The China Study, which tracked a large number of Chinese people in terms of their health over a considerable period of time. One of the major findings was that developing countries went through a 'nutritional transition' where the focus of their efforts changed from preventing large-scale starvation to coping with diseases of civilisation, including their association with obesity. These two books consider the world food system as a whole, starting from the diagnosis that it is dysfunctional: despite vast increases in output since the Second World War, we still have 850 million people starving. In addition, the latest figures show that 1.3 billion are overweight or obese (around 33% of the world's adult population), and that this figure is set to rise to 2.3 billion by 2015. Governments are becoming aware that there is a real crisis on hand, but it will not be easy to resolve, given the tension between economic growth and healthy lifestyles in view of the current power structures in the food system and their enormous influence on political processes.

Two key drivers of capitalism make the situation intractable, and call for political action. First, the trend towards consolidation, with large companies buying up smaller ones and diversifying their revenue streams. For example, the cigarette manufacturer Philip Morris has diversified way beyond tobacco, but is employing similar marketing techniques with junk food. The giant conglomerate Cargill is becoming the world's leading supplier of food commodities, buying up chocolate factories in Europe, the vegetable oil refinery in Russia, olive oil presses in Italy and the largest sunflower oil plant in Romania, all in 2005 alone. Secondly, and this is a key theme in Albritton's book, capitalism is geared to short-term profit, regardless of the long-term consequences. Hence capitalist rationality may be entirely irrational when considered in the long term. This proposition is particularly clear with reference to tobacco, an addictive substance leading to the premature death of millions of people. Having been prevented from extending markets in the developed world, tobacco companies are now acquiring millions of young smokers in the developing countries. Moreover, the social and environmental costs of junk foods are externalised: the profits remain with the corporations, while the taxpayer or the planet pick up the tab.

The scale and power of food corporations and supermarkets mean that they can heavily influence political processes. They fund political parties during election campaigns and have a powerful lobby presence around the world. They commission research, which frequently puts scientists in a compromised position, especially if the results do not come out in favour of the product. They sit on regulatory boards and can effectively prevent health legislation from being passed. For instance, and the American sugar lobby threatened to have the US Congress cut off funding to the WHO and the FAO if they implemented a guideline recommended in their report to limit the daily average intake of added sugars to 10% of total calories.

Another important trend is the way in which developing countries, especially China and India, are moving up the food chain and adopting American dietary habits. This means increasing intake of junk food as well as eating more meat, what Albritton calls 'meatification'. This has considerable systemic implications: more cereal has to be grown for animal feed, which means that the crops can no longer be fed directly to people. In the case of soya, large swathes of rainforest are cut down in order to grow the crop. Livestock are responsible for a considerable proportion of the contribution by agriculture to global warming. More food processing requires increased energy input and is also associated with greater transport costs. All of this places further strain on the Earth's already extended ecosystems. It also highlights the imperative of thinking systemically about these issues and relating, as I suggested in the previous review, environmental and human health.

Already, in the litigious US climate, food corporations are becoming concerned that they may be sued by consumers in a similar way to tobacco companies. The film Supersize Me put the wind up McDonalds, who have not only sponsored the Olympic Games since 1976, but in 2004 launched a new slogan 'Go Active'. The clear implication is that consumers of their products need to take more exercise if they are to avoid becoming overweight. The second book explains how this is quite difficult in technical terms, given the mismatch between intake of calories and expenditure of energy. And exhorting people to eat less and exercise more has not proved very effective. The move that these companies are making is to shift responsibility to the consumer. The US House of Representatives approved a bill in 2005 called The Personal Responsibility in Food Consumption Act, otherwise known as the Cheeseburger Bill because of the way in which it looked after the interests of the fast food industry by preventing consumers from being able to sue them. Philip Morris has taken this further by setting up a bill of rights of smokers, which is backed by the so-called Centre for Consumer Freedom. They naturally back consumers' right to choose, even though these very consumers are being manipulated by mass marketing techniques and are hooked on addictive substances; needless to say, it is these same people who complain about food cops and the nanny state. They appeal to people's instinctive sense of freedom as a façade for business as usual.

So what can be done about all this? The books take a slightly different approach but come to the same broad general conclusions. Within the food system, we are closer to a command economy than a free-market economy, given the power of the largest corporations and the reach of their influence. They have the capacity to squeeze the margins of their suppliers, so that the average take of the producer has declined from around 30% to 3% in the last 60 years. Supermarkets reinforce this trend. There are some grassroots movements moving in the direction of family farmers grow nutritious food for local consumption, but the current system encourages consolidation of farms and rewards the largest farms with the most generous subsidies; incidentally, this then leads to overproduction and a drop in the price which affects farmers worldwide. So reducing these subsidies is part of the answer. In addition, corporations need to be made more publicly accountable, which means changing their legal status from the current 'legal persons' situation. Markets need to be made more democratically accountable by internalising social and ecological costs, which means a revision of accounting practices. The second book makes many further specific suggestions, but they both agree that a raft of measures will be necessary so as to make it easier for people to make healthy choices. This is where the 'nudge' comes in. Of course industries will resist any form of taxation on junk food and will argue that it penalises the poorest people most. It is unfortunate that much cheap food also lacks nutritional value or 'nutrient density'.

There are many other themes that I could have taken up, especially in Albritton's book, which is not only brilliantly argued, but also provides a wealth of statistical backup and information and a historical perspective on how we have reached our current predicament. It will be interesting to see if a more concrete connection emerges between intensive livestock farming and the outbreak of pandemic viruses – another potential systemic link. Intensification also implies acceleration so that animals are nothing more than a commodity in receipt of inputs to produce a given output. It is pretty staggering to read that dairy cows in 1900 yielded around 5,000 pounds of milk per year and are now forced to produce 22,000 pounds. Similarly, beef cattle are brought to slaughter in a quarter of the time that it takes a grass-eating animal, with the help of huge quantities of corn, soy, hormones and antibiotics. Needless to say, the resulting meat contains a higher concentration of fat and fewer micronutrients. I could go on, but would encourage readers in particular to study Let Them Eat Junk (a marvellous title) consider its far reaching implications. Kunstler's notion of 'the long emergency' certainly applies to our food system, which will require major restructuring over the next decade, especially when one considers that many of the same companies responsible for a toxic food environment are also involved in the dieting, pharmaceutical and medical industries – so they can continue to profit from treating conditions they helped bring about.