Seeing Through the Food Industry's "Personal Responsibility" Smoke Screen
I grew up in a home where family meals were the norm. Nearly every night, nine of us would crowd around the kitchen table to enjoy a home-cooked meal together, recount our days, laugh and argue, celebrating each unique personality's contribution to the whole. Each meal made the fabric of our family stronger. Those experiences have stayed with me as I've grown and started a family of my own, where I happily continue the tradition of sitting down together nightly to share a meal and exchange stories.
For us, food is at the core of what makes us strong, happy and healthy as a family and as individuals. It isn't about calories, nutrients, micro nutrients and so on. It's about engaging our senses, strengthening our community by buying local foods whenever possible and sharing with our friends and neighbors. It's about creating a healthy foundation for our growing children.
We knowingly spend a greater portion of our income on food than the average American household, which works because we forgo things that bring us less value, e.g., cable television, new cars, fancy vacations and more. This sort of conscious decision making is at the core of personal responsibility, and is something we work hard at every day. Living in a rural community, surrounded by farms and dairies and being outside the reach of most mainstream media surely helps.
But today, the individual's ability to exercise personal responsibility has been severely compromised by our industrial food system. Yet defenders of the status quo consistently use "personal responsibility" as a smoke screen to cover the tracks of industrial food, tracks that run roughshod over the mirage of choice and personal responsibility.
It is clear that industrial food knowingly develops and promotes food-like substances that make us fat, spread diet-related diseases and disregard unsustainable impacts on our environment. Backed by hundreds of billions of dollars in product development, marketing, advertising and lobbying, along with government regulations favoring industrial food, there is seemingly nothing standing in their way.
Except for those who believe it is time to rein in processed foods. Our numbers are rapidly growing, making us increasingly capable of driving real, meaningful change, especially through entrepreneurial means (see Pro Food). These changes will take many forms, but here is one that I find particularly compelling.
First, we significantly reduce the number of highly processed food-like products (and the many empty calories they deliver). Next, we repopulate those now-empty shelves with whole and minimally-processed foods. Finally, with fewer processed foods, which take up considerable floor space in today's supermarkets, we begin replacing these unsustainable retail dinosaurs with intimate, community-oriented food stores (<5,000 square feet), designed from the ground up, to help consumers expand in-home food preparation, what we used to call "cooking." And with triple-bottom-line operating models (see Pro Food advantages), these new stores will sustainably balance people, planet and profits, something industrial food unfortunately can't do without ultimately destroying itself.
Clearly, such changes would rock today's industrial food system, but leaving it as is perpetuates the problems we face. As most major food companies are publicly traded they must increase sales, reduce costs or both, quarter after quarter, to increase shareholder value or face the consequences (Note: shareholders (owners) are not the same as stakeholders, which would include eaters, whose interests, beyond food expenditures, are secondary). This singular bottom line focus drives them to do whatever is necessary to maximize profit, which they typically achieve through sales of new products with high initial profit margins. That is upwards of 17,000 new "food" products are introduced every year.
These highly processed, engineered foods, never before seen, but often extending an established brand name, are not guaranteed financial success, so food companies invest tens of billions of dollars every year in sophisticated marketing programs and advertising campaigns to build demand, with a heavy emphasis on hawking heavily sugared wares to children and convenience to their ever more harried parents. Undeniably, these highly sophisticated product development and demand creation engines are significantly influencing consumers; worse, these campaigns are often coordinated to affect us in subconscious ways: the potent combination of food science and marketing at work!
Without continuous financial improvements, the value of food companies would suffer greatly. That isn't happening. Consider that since 1979 (30 years ago) General Mills stock price is up 577%, while Wal-Mart has registered an astonishing 420,000% increase (from less than $0.12 per share to $49.14; hasn't always been in food retail, but rapidly ascended to #1 in category). Then there's Cargill with estimated revenues at $120 billion, which would make it a Top 10 publicly traded company. Clearly, food companies are meeting shareholder expectations, which doesn't bode well for consumers, who are largely "responsible" for this financial success.
As for the significant financial pain and organizational upheaval the changes Pro Food envisions will have on the industrial food system, while the transition will be difficult, not sudden, America's entrepreneurs will get a running start. And if there is one thing we can count on, it's our entrepreneurs: the best in the world at picking themselves up, brushing themselves off and getting back to work.
The results of such a revolution in how we grow, process and consume food will be significant. Sustainable businesses will become the norm, offering rewarding careers for people interested in more than a single bottom line. Regional economies will begin rebuilding after being decimated for decades by large food retailers. Our food system, through hard work, sustainable technologies and a longer-term perspective, will regain its balance with nature. And, most important, food will become an enjoyable, enriching part of our daily lives, rather than just another accessory.
Join the Pro Food Revolution...already in progress.
Follow Rob Smart on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Jambutter
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Maybe I missed it but where was your solution that didn't involve personal responsibility? I have never been in a grocery store that didn't have all the raw ingredients needed to cook a meal from scratch. People walk past those raw ingredients and buy processed food. The grocery stores sell what consumers will buy. I don't doubt that people would be healthier if more people cooked and less ate processed foods but how are you going to change consumer behavior? It is about personal responsibility.
For starters AngryOhioan, what are you angry about?
Regarding personal responsibility, to be clear, the role of the individual is always #1 in my book, but there is a line between an individual's ability to make good, informed decisions, ones they should be 100% accountable for, and the role external forces play in that individual's decision making, where the "blame" or "responsibility" is shared.
And while that line shifts from side to side based on each individual, it is always a combination of factors that lead to the choices we make.
The problem I am highlighting is how the food industry regularly acts as if it plays no role, as if the tens to hundreds of billions of dollars invested every year in product development and marketing are purely to benefit consumers. That's hogwash. They know it, but will never admit it because they believe people won't take the time to figure it out and/or put the energy into doing anything about it. That's changing. You can see it everywhere.
To change behavior or culture will require engaging people where they make purchase decisions. That won't happen easily in most supermarket chains because the business model is dependent on selling new, high margin, highly processed foods and prepared foods. So, we need entrepreneurs to invest their time and energy in developing new retail experiences and formats that are more farmers market than supermarket.
Again, change is coming!
Cheers,
Rob Smart
We can debate all day the costs of this or that to the economy, based on lost productivity, healthcare costs, advertising campaigns and the sort, but what it comes down to is what is able to practically, measurably, and quickly reduce the cost of healthcare to taxpayers. And really, when we're talking percentages here, smoking wins that one.
The National Center for Health Statistics reports that 34% of Americans are obese, and that 32.7% are overweight. By contrast, roughly 20% of Americans are smokers.
Even if we were to go by your statistics, Rob, which I don't agree with based on recent calculations, you're saying that 66.7% of Americans cost the economy $150 billion, and 20% of Americans cost the economy another $145 billion.
That means that, annually, obesity costs us $750 a person, and that each smoker costs us $2416.
$2416. This is plain and simple math: each smoker costs us more than three times the amount that each overweight person does. I don't think that the majority of Americans deserve to bear the brunt of every smoker costing the economy $2416. That just doesn't add up.
Jim Houston
For the record, the $147 billion in obesity-related health spending, which is double the amount only a decade ago, was reported in the journal Health Affairs (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32170526/ns/health-health_care/). By the way, your denominator should be 34% of the US population, not 66.7%, since the data is based on obesity, not obesity and overweight Americans.
An important thing to consider is that obesity is on the climb, and that there are numerous other diet-related diseases following the same path, e.g., diabetes. My guess, although I don't have data to back it up, is that tobacco-related health issues are stabilized or on the decline.
Regardless, both are problems and both need solutions. We have made considerable progress with tobacco, e.g., the U.S. government no longer subsidizes tobacco crops and the industry is paying at least part of the price for its actions.
It's time to focus on highly processed foods!
Okay, speaking of personal responsibility, why are we focusing on the obese? I'm a little bit pudgy, myself, and that's not going to change much. I mean, yeah, I could go on a crash diet and lose 50 pounds in order to avoid having to pay a surcharge for my health insurance, but that's not healthy, and that's rubbing salt in the wound: I KNOW I have to get to the gym. I don't think it was 100% my choice to get fat; that has at least something to do with hereditary issues. But I've never met someone who claimed that their genes made them, say, smoke. In the midst of this massive health care crisis, why aren't we calling for taxes on smokers instead of, well, the rest of us? The majority of the rest of us. Practically all of us with any sense. I think people like this are hitting a sore spot for some Americans, but are really making a lot of sense:
http://www.pr-inside.com/personal-responsibility-coming-to-health-r1398033.htm
It's about time smokers see a real, financial impact from their bad habits and stop passing the rest of us the bill. I'm unemployed; a new tax on ME in order to fix the health care system sounds stupid when we could really help fix the problem if we taxed the people responsible for all of this.
If you have trouble with your weight eating less processed food helps. Recent research shows that the amount of calories eaten by Americans doesn't completely account for our average excess weight and tests on lab rats shows that those that are fed processed foods weigh more than those that are fed traditionally cooked foods even though they have the same calorie content.
I don't think taxing people for unhealthy behavior will help very much and besides, this is a free society. Smoking, like drinking and other forms of drug abuse is very genetic.
Great article BTW. We really need reform.
hitpoint:
You mention smokers being held accountable for our health care problems. At least that is my takeaway.
Did you know that obesity-related health care costs have reached nearly $150 billion per year, $5 billion more than cancer? Since everyone eats, and not nearly as many smoke, it seems to me that we need to focus proportionately more energy on dealing with diet-related diseases.
Steppenwolfsayhi's suggestion of eating less processed meat is one of the main points my post, and other efforts is focused on. (THX, steppenwolfsayhi for "great article" comment).
Cheers,
Rob Smart
If people don't want to buy what is on the shelves, they don't have to do so, Rob.
Everyone who sells something develops what they think the market wants. Some are right, some are wrong. The bottom line is, people want convenience and they want it to taste good. That is simple request that shoppers have been asking and looking for - for decades. Long before billion dollar marketing plans you seem to believe have turned us 'regular folk' into sheep.
I am very glad you choose to buy what you do - and celebrate that. But that is your life and your decisions.
As you continue down your path as a disciple of Pollan, feel free to have your own opinions and even share them. (Just don't try to pass them off as 'facts'.) However, don't ask that the rest of society follow you and please don't accuse the rest of us of simply falling into the trap of big food. To do so paints you as a elitist foodie, because, shucks, we're just not as gullible and ignorant as you seem to think.
We can make up our own minds as to what is best for our families and our situation.
Mike1608,
I've heard nearly all of the comments you made before, typically by the people that are protecting the status quo for whatever reason.
So, while you want to suggest that I'm telling people how to eat, or accuse me of being a "disciple of Pollan" or a "elitist foodie," it doesn't change one thing about the points I made in this post. In fact, it further validates that I've hit the intended mark.
Thanks for your help in making my point.
Cheers,
Rob Smart
The same question again... how exactly is this possible, Mr. Smart? First of all, a wide selection of fresh and 'unprocessed' foods ARE available at your local grocery store. Heck, even McDonald's offers quick, convenient, and healthy alternatives. What Rob doesn't want to tell you... is that the real problem is that consumers simply aren't CHOOSING these options. If they were, if consumers were actively demanding these products and more products like them, McDonalds and the grocery stores would be ramping up their efforts to make them available! Why wouldn't they? Fresh produce offers higher margins, higher profit potential, and because it can't be stored over a long-term, it would ensure more trips to their establishment. The only conclusion I can come to is that Mr. Smart is somehow justifying the FORCING of these companies to sell only products that their consumers haven't demanded in the past.
Rob's third step is barely even worth mentioning. He wants to tear down and replace large food stores with smaller stores. Brilliant.
I have just one question for Mr. Smart. Rob, if you so wholeheartedly believe in these crazy ideas, I suggest you give it a try and implement them for yourself. Create a company with like-minded people, pool your resources, buy a few grocery stores, tear them down, replace the food people WANT with food YOU want them to want, and just see how the business goes. I for one would gladly tune in to see how that turned out!.
Mike,
Disciple or not, I think that Rob makes some other good points (and no it does not pain me to say so). Knowledge is power and I do not really think the population understands what they are doing to their bodies. I run the middle road. I make sure that we have vegetables on the table every night. I try to limit the sweets my kids get. I buy unsweetened apple sauce (why does apple sauce need HFCS anyway?) But I also buy cheap milk with growth hormones. I shop at Safeway. And I eat beef. But I do pick berries in the summer and make jam.
Aristotle said, "everything in moderation," however we did not evolve to moderate our calories. We evolved to eat when food was available. Food companies do not have your best interest at heart, rather their shareholders. They have engineered their product to be as irresistible as possible, using the best science possible.
I believe this is impacting even those who make good choices. Empty calories are expanding our waist lines and with that obesity related diseases, which we all pay for in higher medical taxes and health insurance premiums (mine went up 10% last year). So you can say that it is about personal choice, but some choices affect us all.
I do not think Rob is telling us all what to eat, but rather he is raising the level of discourse on the subject of making wise choices.
Sure, people want convenience and they want it to taste good. But this brings with it problems like obesity, heart disease, environmental damage and pesticide poisoning. Are really you saying people consciously decide they want that too for their lives, for those of their families, and for all the families in the rest of the country?
I'm all for fresh healthy food. However, local producers and especially organic producers are unable to satisfy demand now or in the near future. Supply constraints on organic and locally produced fresh fruit and vegetables have made them increasingly less competitive with conventional alternatives. I think it is unreasonable to expect people to reduce their intake of fresh fruits and vegetables by 20 to 150% (the range of price difference) and risk their health for the poorly established principle that this will somehow help "the planet".
Are there any plans or programs available to help people make up this extraordinary price gap?
lff
You're totally wrong. People need to trade in their ipod, dish network, tivo, two car payment, too much house for the budget, fast food, starbucks, lack-of-a-plan lifestyle and start paying for good wholesome food. The modern american lifestyle has been at the expense of investing in our own health and well being. Dump the junk and start spending money on what matters.
"It cost more, because it's worth more."
And yes, there are plans and programs for people who truly cannot afford Real Food. Here are three, and I am sure there are more.
http://www.fns.usda.gov/wic/FMNP/FMNPfaqs.htm
http://www.fns.usda.gov/wic/SeniorFMNP/SFMNPmenu.htm
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/20/us/20market.html
Kindly, J.
Well I don't think many of the 15 million unemployed are enjoying all those litte extras you mentioned. They are too busy trying to hold on to their house.
Economically I can't see how giving people organic or locally grown produce can help the situation much. This sort of help can work in a market that has plenty of food. However, the organic and locally grown food markets are short on supply already - that is why prices are so high - and giving away part of the supply will just drive prices higher and result in more people into needing aid in a vicious circle.
lff
Great article Rob! I recently decided to sell my truck and buy a bike to commute to work everyday. I will also rely on public transportation and carpooling to replace my truck, especially during the winter. I estimate saving $1000 a year in expenses not including repairs. I plan on using the extra money to invest in local, healthy organic food for me and my family. I am pumped about this decision and how it will enrich my life on so many levels. You see, it’s not about organic food, or being green, or sustainable… it’s about getting back to what matters. It’s about enriching our lives with simple, natural pleasures… food, fellowship, exercise, community, meaningful work, good health, family and the likes. My original intention for selling my truck was to save money and reduce my impact on the planet. However, what I will gain is so much more (new hobby, exercise, health, new friends, closer relationship with co-workers, being out in nature, etc.). So it is with the ProFood movement and getting back to buying from farmers, friends, brothers and sisters. Viva la Revolucion!
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