Fast food, Fat profits: Obesity in America | Fault Lines

so while after you eat these meals you have energy but the energy lasts a very short period of time and you're hungry much sooner and then you have to eat again and then you have to eat again and then you have to eat again it is a lot cheaper to go eat fast food that meaning it definitely you can buy a hamburger for cheaper than you can buy an apple that's very sad so you tell them you have to pay more in order to eat healthy you pay less in order they get that and to make you rich so for something I might die over it's unbelievable the poorest people in our country are the fattest people there's we've done something completely wrong [Music] on a Sunday afternoon in a New Orleans supper the Bucktown seafood festival is getting underway Bucktown is a tiny fishing village that has been here for more than 150 years it was almost completely destroyed by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 but it hasn't lost its touch for what it does best food is a big part of the culture in New Orleans and they tend to use a lot of deep fried foods and heavy sauces they'll tell you that while people in other places may eat to live here they actually live to eat with ruolan's most of my food begins with what we call a room in a roux is a combination of flour and oil and that's the basis for most of our sauces and as a result there's a lot of fat that's in the basic foods that we make from the soups to Gumbo's to your a two-phase how important is food to the culture down here it's what we live off of what I would you take the food away and just the city would die it's all about food and drink around here you know it's a certain way we do seafoods you know in a certain way we fry they like you guys behind it the way they fry where we take whole onions and you know if we fry all kind of stuff and make it taste good with the extra spice and then there are the extra kick that can't be good for you we can't be but it tastes good have you ever seen anyone eat one of those you know when I was younger I used to be able to eat one I couldn't touch 1/2 on one now it's a big sandwich the high fat deep-fried food culture here is delicious but has deadly consequences pressure and heart disease are major killers Wendy O'Neill was born in New Orleans after Katrina she says it's even more difficult to access good food let's see McDonald's for breakfast McDonald's for lunch McDonald's for dinner we ate McDonald's all the time we ate the trashiest stuff for Sidney impastato weight has always been an issue he's down now to 170 kilos from nearly 200 it's been a difficult challenge for his family to endure somehow we see an internal medicine doctor who has a plan that we can go to and but you know the prescriptions that he really needs we can't afford and the the specialist we can't afford to see the kidney specialist and so that's it's not a good situation I don't want to be the fat guy that was just another typical fat guy who died and well we loved him I wish she would've lost weight he would have been skinny and he would have lived I don't want to be that guy dawn has reached the point with Sidney is he believes an operation that would constrict his stomach with a band may be his best hope but no insurance company will give him coverage because his obesity is considered a pre-existing condition you know it is a radical approach but if he can't get it soon his body will be will not be strong enough to even have that done Don Sidney on alone consider the facts two out of every three Americans are overweight that number is expected to rise to three out of four by 2020 the United States is the world's baddest developed nation with an obesity rate double of that in many European countries one in three Americans is expected to have diabetes by 2050 minorities have been even more profoundly affected blacks of a 50% higher prevalence of obesity in Hispanics 25% higher wood compared with whites so how did it get this way obesity rates have been going up very rapidly in the United States but really only since about 1980 before that they were constant for decades a change in the way our federal agriculture policy worked which went from paying farmers not to grow food to paying farmers to grow as much food as they possibly could and the result of that was an enormous increase in the amount of food available in the country for consumption portion sizes went up as well best food servings are two to five times what they used to be this is the signature Burger King story Times Square in New York this particular mill has somewhere around 3,600 calories look at the size it would take around 18 hours of exercise to burn off this many calories I mean I still remember there was a Coke machine in the teachers lounge of my elementary school and it had these itty-bitty little bottles I think they probably were eight ounce bottles of coke and now I mean it's the average portion that you see if you went into like a convenience store would probably be a 20 ounce bottle that's sold as a single serving American food policy doesn't happen in isolation there are many moving parts that make up a complex puzzle large government agencies multinational corporations and of course lobbyists who try to shape the country's food policy as it comes out of Washington for the government to try to force changes to dictate to consumers in a free society what they do is not there's not a good record of that being successful all of this goes back to Congress and if you want to do something about public health in Amer what you really need to do is to change election campaign laws so that these big corporations aren't paying for congressional elections that's the source of corruption in American government two out of every three food stores in Harlem is what's known as a bodega now these aren't grocery stores they're more like corner convenience stores so rather than having fresh meat and fresh vegetables they tend to have a lot of processed foods sugary foods and especially sodas the city of New York has identified sodas and other sugar sweetened beverages is one of the main causes of obesity in an attempt to improve health and decrease consumption the city is requested it to year ban on allowing recipients of food stamps or snap to purchase the drinks the SNAP program is really not designed to purchase a person's entire diet but it's designed to give them more money so that they can afford nutritious foods and I don't think anyone in this country would argue that sugar sweetened beverages are nutritious foods while the request is being considered by the Department of Agriculture the beverage industry is fighting back it'll add $5 to these drinks that's not pennies that's serious money New York has fought a similar battle once before and lost when it tried to implement a soda tax earlier this year we can't afford no to the beverage tax the American Beverage Association spent more than 10 million dollars on their ad campaign defeating the bill people are entitled to treat themselves at a certain level they treat themselves with government money by their own by all means because soda is not the sole culprit of obesity and if you're gonna pinpoint what are the culprits obesity we're gonna have to eliminate maybe 60% of products we sell in our supermarkets today what about people say great eliminate them well then you have to do that across the board but the American food landscape is going to be totally different than what we know it today one drink per salt the supermarket is chubby imported from the Caribbean the manufacturer of the drink boasts that it was developed to target children and that it fits snugly in the palm of a child's hand the US has no rules or laws of ravenna soda from being marketed to children industry backers liked it that way an exciting new category in the soft drink industry was created when chubby was developed to target children that's a terrible idea but here I mean when was the last time you were able to see little Chubby's first of all Chubby's in washington DC it small little Chubby's this is the kind of poor practice that shouldn't be occurring should be regulated should be regulated yeah that's about seven donuts worth of sugar in there so see it doesn't they don't just the nutritional information on the bottle oh well then it's on the container if it's on the package otherwise it's not illegal to be sold United States I don't know where you got it tell me if I've got that in Washington DC okay why suspect you should probably do can call their own traditional information off their website okay 32 34 I'm not sure then depending on the place I'm just not gonna defend it that's a terrible practice should it be regulated should be regulated should children be protected from that protected that's what parents are for for many Americans economic times have never been worse but for fast food companies they've never been better while one in eight Americans rely on food stamps the stalks of taco bell/pizza hut Kentucky Fried Chicken and McDonald's are at all-time highs for consumers stretching their recession dollars to buy healthy food has been tough especially when chains like Little Caesars offer a large pizza for only 5 bucks or the McDonald's McDouble their double cheeseburger goes for just $2 your mother gives you 5 dollars you want to make that stretch anything you're going to McDonough's you're gonna make that when you gave me some fries then I'm gonna get you something to drink that way you still have a lease of dollars to the maybe buy you some chips a little later growing up I had home economics in school and so they taught you what a healthy plate look like you have a starch a protein a vegetable and I think that's the information that children don't have and because they see in their environment unhealthy food and they see it's cheaper it's being consumed by everybody they don't think about an alternative but if you gave them the education maybe they would have the information to make the alternative choice the healthier choice at the Thurgood Marshall lower Academy an elementary school on 151st Street an experiment is underway to fight back against the array of bad food choices in the community dr. logic a Williams is a neurologist at Harlem Hospital he's developed a program that harnesses the power of hip hop music to teach children about healthy food choices hip hop is is the social epidemic and wants to use hip hop is is the life form amongst the youth one thing to program teachers is menu board literacy the ability to read a food label that ranges on the menu board they're inches and sizes and and it's very very complicated [Music] to your grandparents to your friends and about calories dr. Williams knows that the odds are stacked against them nearly half the children in Harlem are overweight or obese and this message has to be not a well-oiled well-funded fast-food industry that spent 4.2 billion dollars on advertising last year we are up against an incredible enemy for lack of a better words you know fast food industry makes money little small programs trying to make a difference in our city one block at a time one sweep at its ninth one neighborhood at a time if we can succeed here in a parliament we can pretty much succeed in any tough neighborhood across the world [Music] it's media day at the white house internalists from around the world are clamoring to see Michelle Obama's kitchen garden she's decided to make healthy eating and exercise the centerpiece of her role is First Lady we have to eliminate food deserts in this country and we need to do it now you don't need to travel far from the White House just a few miles to find what Michelle Obama describes as a food desert plenty of liquor stores but no fresh food southeast DC has one of the worst obesity rates in the country the food that you put in your body can either heal you or kill you on a Saturday morning the ward eight farmers market is a small oasis in an otherwise barren food landscape Lauren Vanderpool a Washington DC native and vegan chef is giving a demonstration teaching residents how to make a raw food salad are released into the water I was born in Washington DC I was raised in a food desert you know and people just don't know people just don't know they haven't been exposed they haven't left South East they're used to what they've been exposed to and what they've been exposed to is liquor stores corner stores and carry-outs chicken wings with mumbo sauce hot chips with blue juices if all else fails you and you can't find the small jugs of the blue juice we always have access to the gallon look at that so that's a gallon of blue juice no mountain artificially colored and artificially flavored how would you describe the the health of people who live in environments like this where we are right now in DC which is South East Ward 8 is statistically the most obese place in the country there's something wrong with that being in the nation's capital something extremely wrong with that what I find is that when you're eating foods and there are no nutrients in it you're going to want to eat more because your body is not recognizing the nutrients that you're needing so you're going to keep on eating your body's intelligence says let me keep on eating to try to get some of these nutrients but you're not getting any of it because you're eating fried foods you're eating dead foods you're eating foods that have no life this is the United States Department of Agriculture or USDA it represents the American food industry everything from small farmers to chain restaurants and in doing so it helps them sell more food but it also puts out the Dietary Guidelines for Americans and for a nation facing an obesity epidemic eating less food could be the only way out so how can this one department represent these conflicting interests the USDA whose historic role has been to promote American agribusiness is now also in the position of promoting healthful diets and that was never a problem before obesity became a problem it was all the and dietary advice needed to change to encourage people to eat less that the USDA came into conflict and those conflicts have played out over the years an example well the Dietary Guidelines for Americans which is the advice that the government gives the people about what to eat it never says heedless of anything I worked very hard on setting up the first review process for those to be sure that scientific authorities were calling the shots John bode was the Assistant Secretary of Agriculture for food and consumer services during the 1980s now he's a lobbyist representing clients like Kraft Foods and McDonald's it's what's known as the revolving door between the food industry and the government agencies meant to regulate it for example michael taylor was an executive at the agricultural giant Monsanto before taking a senior post at the Food and Drug Administration or Catherine woteki who left the USDA in 2001 and later joined Mars the candy company that makes skittles and M&Ms and then was brought back by President Obama this year to the USDA and so the revolving door that causes some concern that's understandable the notion that our government officials would one day be a government official in the next day basically selling their influence and so stepping out for a year I think that makes good sense it does I mean this has been extended and so there they're no longer they're no longer yeah well do you know what they are they I'm sorry I don't feel comfortable trying to recite what they are now listen up America the cheesy bites pizza is back in 2007 Pizza Hut came out with cheesy bites pizza as you'd expect it's high in calories and saturated fat what you may not suspect is that some of the support for it came from a surprising source a trade group overseen by the USDA is there a conflict of interest when you're representing the cheese industry and you're representing the nutritional interest of Americans well I wouldn't presume to speak to that because that's not my particular area of expertise I will tell you that the Food and Nutrition Service a part of USDA that tries to encourage healthy eating in a school setting I has never taken it more seriously than we do today we pressed Julie Paradiso about this several times today the USDA is celebrating the opening of a salad bar at an elementary school in Washington DC it's a step in the right direction for a school system that has one of the highest obesity rates in the country forty-three percent of the students here are either obese or overweight this is very very atypical of what you see in the school system you know mostly it's processed high in sugar foods qahal Armstrong is an executive chef and owner of a local four-star restaurant he took an interest in school food when the White House chef personally asked him to make a visit yeah we visited Tyler Elementary on Capitol Hill and we went into the cafeteria and went into the refrigerators in the freezer and inside the freezer they had this box of turkey sandwiches you know this turkey sandwich for breakfast and it had about a hundred ingredients in it we were so shocked I took a photograph of the ingredients that were on the label wait turkey sandwiches like meat meat and bread the last time I checked and bread has four ingredients sometimes five so if then the kids why do they do this this student makes a food cheaper that brusky was shocked at what he found when he volunteered in his daughter's elementary school cafeteria so I went in and expecting to see food cooked from scratch and here comes all these frozen beef crumbles and tater tots I started taking pictures of the food for a new blog so the parents could see what their kids were eating it was mostly processed food that's partially because the USDA diverts raw excess food to large companies that return it to schools in the form of patties pizzas and Nuggets it's all about money and you know the so called value-added products where corporations can somehow get between you and you no real farm products and whip it into something that they can make money off of I mean that's really what it boils down to our health versus their money works part-time at a private school in Washington teaching children how to cook and enjoy food you seen real changes in the DC public school system less sugary foods and more fruits and vegetables my feeling is if school food is important because we're perpetuating a culture of junk food that is literally making kids sick the US government says the current generation could be the first in history to have a shorter lifespan than their parents the forces driving the obesity spike in America may be complex but they're not unknown the question is who's profiting from the current situation clearly not the children I think it comes down to money and I think it's a complicated multi-layered problem and I think it's something that's perpetuated itself throughout the years especially for people of color to be in a very poor urban area is not exactly a choice your money dictates that you need to live there and the same thing with what you buy to eat you buy this within your means the economics of our food structure are completely working against public health I mean you almost couldn't have designed a worse environment where you take your least healthy products things that are high in sugar and fat and salt and highly processed and you make them significantly less expensive than your most healthy products [Music] and a lot of families do are just in that financial situation where cheap food is so heavily subsidized so falsely inexpensive that they just don't know any better you know and I tell you once they once they find out what we've done with with their food system what we're due to their children hopefully they'll be open arms about it

Channel: Al Jazeera English

Views: 4,432,922

Rating: 4.7305679 out of 5

Keywords: food desert, urban agriculture, Fault Lines, overweight, foodie, health food, fried food, Obesity War, agricultural policy, trans fats, Dr. Olajide Williams, farmers market, USDA, Monsanto, diabetes, obesity, Harlem, fast food documentary, obesity in america, food documentary, documentary food, aljazeera, aljazeera english, al jazeera, al jazeera english, Fast food Fat profits, Obesity in America, Fast food, Fat profits, Obesity in America has reached a crisis point

Id: slwgXXVXM3I

Length: 23min 15sec (1395 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 19 2010

Reddit Comments

[u/daubergoat]

TL; DR: Obesity is an insanely difficult problem that, on the whole, can't be solved without solving a lot of systematic and legislative problems, the two biggest of which are, (A) shitty food costs less, and (B) the people who make shitty food have enough money to stop people from solving anything.

TL;DR again: Bitches love McDoubles.

[u/Free_Soil]

Should it be regulated?

God that man was so slimy.