Walmart made big news yesterday with a press conference alongside the First Lady to announce new company commitments. Most of the mainstream media coverage of the Walmart announcement seemed to buy the company PR that it was taking valiant steps to improve the affordability and health qualities of the food it sells. Among these commitments, Walmart said it will be working with food suppliers to reduce sodium, sugars, and trans fat in certain products by 2015; developing its own seal to help consumers identify healthier products; and addressing hunger by opening Walmart stores in the nation's "food deserts."
Do these Walmart promises really hold big upsides for health and food insecurity?The Times seemed to think so, running with this headline: "Wal-Mart Shifts Strategy to Promote Healthy Foods." (Am I crazy or does that read remarkably like the Walmart press release: "Walmart Launches Major Initiative to Make Food Healthier and Healthier Food More Affordable"?) Had The Times been aiming for accuracy it might better have titled the article: "Walmart Launches PR Campaign Promoting Promises to Win the Hearts and Minds of Urban Consumers."
With little critical coverage in the mainstream media, we are left to ponder the impact of these Walmart commitments ourselves. Thankfully, we have the wisdom of experts like Marion Nestle, author of Food Politics and What to Eat, to shed light on these claims. (Check out her take here). One of Nestle's most important points is that Walmart's promise to develop its own front-of-package seal is a clever preemption of work underway at the Institutes of Medicine and FDA to "establish research-based criteria" for such packaging and create regulations for the entire industry, with real oversight.
Let's dig deeper and look carefully at what the company is saying it is committing to doing. Specifically, Wal-Mart is pledging to "reduce sodium by 25 percent, eliminate industrially added trans fats, and reduce added sugars by 10 percent by 2015" in some of the processed foods that it carries.
Impressive? Not so fast.
First, consider that it's not unusual for a can of soup to contain as much as 2,291 mg, or more, of sodium. (For perspective, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend we consume just 1,500 mg a day). We need to reduce that sodium figure significantly more than 25 percent on many of Walmart products before we dare call them "healthy." As for trans fats, public health advocates have long been advocating for all food producers to eliminate trans fats across the entire food supply. Finally, a 12 oz. can of Coke, for instance, bought at Walmart--and which the company notoriously pushes at steep discounts--will already contain 39 grams of sugars, the upper limit of what is often suggested as the total daily consumption for non-diabetics. In other words, Walmart's nutritional commitments are really about making the unhealthy processed food it sells marginally better, at best; at worse, it's offering the veneer of healthfulness to foods that should be considered bad for us.
These nutritional promises are not only weak in their aspirational goals; they're also non-binding, which means we've got to take the company on its word. (The White House's Sam Kass has stressed that all these proposals can be verified in an "open, transparent" manner. But with Walmart's history of backroom deals--like its lobbying with other retailers against strict meth laws--I'm dubious).
Corporate driven, non-binding promises like these are also the oldest trick in the food industry PR playbook. Just ask Michele Simon author of Appetite for Profit, who details how Pepsi, Kraft, and numerous other food companies have made similar promises and gotten big payback with good press even though they've done very little to actually improve the health qualities of their products. These commitments also receive great press at first--note the windfall for Walmart--but there is little accountability over time when the changes are supposed to be made.
Now, let's turn to the Walmart claim that the company wants to move into urban markets, and reduce the costs of some of its food items, to help low-income people access more affordable food. The New York Times writes that "that low-income people, especially those who receive food stamps, face special dietary challenges because eating healthy costs more and healthier food is harder to get in their neighborhoods." Yet, the Times fails to mention the studies that have found that because of Walmart's low wages and benefits, its employees rely on food stamps and other social services far more than the typical retail employee. While Walmart is spending a lot of time and money saying they plan to address food insecurity, the company is actually exacerbating its underlying root causes.
The Times also mentions that Walmart will help address food deserts, defined as "a dearth of grocery stores selling fresh produce in rural and underserved urban areas," by building more stores, the paper didn't quote any community-based activists addressing these so-called food deserts on the ground. Do these community advocates think Walmart is the solution? Are they happy Walmart has set its eyes on Washington DC, New York City, Chicago, and other urban markets? Of those I've talked to, all are skeptical of the company's promises and highly critical of the Walmart model: the anti-worker rights, low-wage, low-benefit way of doing business.
We also have plenty of evidence now that when Walmart moves into town, the company puts small businesses out of business and sucks capital out of the community. For every dollar spent at a Walmart, only a small fraction stays to benefit the local economy. We've seen enough evidence, too, that the company has a long, dark track record of sex discrimination and workers rights abuses.
Let's be clear, expanding into so-called food deserts is an expansion strategy for Walmart. It's not a charitable move. Making a big PR splash about improving the health qualities of its food is a smart tactic to deflect attention from the real impact of Walmart on the quality of life for Americans. (Is it a coincidence that this press conference occurred the same week a new study was gaining attention that tracked health and population data and found links between Walmart expansion from 1996 to 2005 and increased rates of obesity?)
As far as I'm concerned, as long as the company depresses wages, exploits workers, violates workers rights, and pushes highly processed foods and sodas, Walmart is not only failing to address the problem of food deserts and food insecurity, the company is exacerbating their root causes.
Originally published on CivilEats.org
Anna Lappé is the author most recently of Diet for a Hot Planet (Bloomsbury USA 2010) and is a fellow of the Glynwood Institute for Sustainable Food and Farming and a former Food and Society Fellow, a program of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy.
Follow Anna Lappe on Twitter: www.twitter.com/annalappe
I suggest that we reward their successes with acclaim rather than criticism. They do what they do better than anyone has ever done before, and that is the truth.
Wal-Mart's Violation of US Workers' Right to Freedom of Association
http://www.hrw.org/en/reports/2007/04/30/discounting-rights-0
If poor people have access to Organic food, then what are the elitists going use to look down their noses at the "poors" and "minorities." It was the Prius and going "Green."
If Wal-Mart started to purchase and demand higher quality organic produce it would make the Organic not just some buzz word used by the wealthy and the hip, it could change the culture of food in the United States. It is definitely a chance for them to get good PR and make a profit, but Whole Foods and your local farmers are in the exact same boat. Just less discrimination lawsuits and a better record with their labor force
Some of the commenters should ask themselves if fresh, pesticide and hormone free food should be a right, or if it should be a privilege.
If you hate Wal-mart so much then why not start a campaign in your local lower income area and take a family with you shopping at Whole Foods using their Government assistance card. Or better yet, what about farmers markets that take government assistance. How about promoting those.
Some of you are using the name "Wal-Mart" as a way to disguise your prejudice against lower income and minority citizens of this country while on a "progressive" website.
Michelle Obama made a mistake lending her name to this scenario. Unless, of course, she supports big business to the exclusion of the American people....
Ms. Lappe: I would add that Walmart institutionalizes poverty. It is a business model that is being expanded into the general job market: proliferation of part-time jobs with no benefits. It even exists in higher education: adjunct professors, making $10-12/hr. with no benefits, some on food stamps, some making less than their students who work.
Walmart as a concept or model is dangerous and erodes the American quality of life. It is in fact a kind of "Poverty Engineering" program, destroying the middle class.
I agree completely and am in the same boat as those professors without the big education but learning on the job and taking courses to excel have taken me from the 70's to the teens - earning what I made in the 70's! Lately I'm thinking I will never work for someone or make a decent living again (luckily my wife of 31 years has a good secure job) even though I know IT and counting the 1100 days until I'm 62. I thought as you got older you would ease off into retirement but nowadays the stress will probably end up decreasing life expectancies.