Michael Moss: Obesity as Advertised

by the turn of this past century one out of two Americans was overweight and a quarter of the population was classified as obese our next guest says this is all part of a battle fought and won by the food industry joining us now for more here's Michael Moss New York Times reporter and author of salt sugar and fat how the food giants hooked us and welcome back for day 2 Michael's very heavy here drinker I want to take you back 1999 Minneapolis Minnesota to a secret meeting that took place among some of the Giants in the food industry put us in the room what happened was that the old Pillsbury headquarters in Minneapolis Minnesota these were the heads of some of the largest companies in North America I should say they rarely get together normally these these executives are fighting each other for turf in the grocery store and trying to come up a better and out selling products to one another but they were brought together for this one dinner meeting to consider one issue that was starting to be a problem and that issue was obesity they sat down and up in front on a low stage in front of them got a gentleman name stood a gentleman named Michael Mudd and what's really stunning about this as Michael Mudd was not a consumer health advocate from a not-for-profit group he was one of their own he was a senior executive at Kraft and he and a number of other insiders had organized this meeting because they had become increasingly concerned about the food their own industry's responsibility for culpability for this emerging obesity crisis and he gets up and walks through the most stunning and alarming statistics you can imagine he talks about obesity talks about diabetes he talks about high blood pressure he even stood linked bad diets to several cancers and he touched the third rail of the processed food industry and compared their situation to that of the tobacco industry and he laid responsibility at least in part for these public ills at the feet of the executives of the food company and how did they react and he also at the end pleaded for them to collectively start doing something to turn the corner on this do the right thing by consumer health from mr. muds perspective the meeting was a total disaster they reacted defensively and especially the head of General Mills stood up and made the following points we are already responsible to both consumers and shareholders and acted responsibly we offer everything to everybody if you want low fat we have a low-fat version of our products low sugar we've got a low salt yes we're adding whole grains to our products we're offering something to everybody if they wanted we can serve but the notion that we should down formulate and mess around which one observers sort of called the company jewels the salt sugar and fat because of some white coat scientists notion that obesity is becoming a problem no way we're going to go down that road that was 1999 and how far down that road have they in fact gone since then they came out of that meeting and went back to what they were doing in many cases adding more salt sugar and fat to their products and continuing to do so um it was it was a it was one of those classic enough moments in time where the industry sort of fork in the road and do we go this way do without go that women since then you know several million kids who have been born who are clinically obese the obesity rates have risen diabetes is now 24 million Americans now have type 2 diabetes which is the type that's tied in some cases to diet gout is on the increase you know remember the arthritic disease used to be called the rich man's disease for over eating over indulging and the surge is being attributed to bad diets total health cost up to 300 billion dollars in added medical costs and lost productivity for obesity alone so things have only gotten worse since that 1999 meeting I wanted just one last follow-up on that they didn't invite the press to this meeting 1999 so how did you find out about it secret yeah I mean one of the one of the beautiful things in terms of researching this book was I came across a trove of documents internal records these are the strategy papers the internal memos the meeting pitches by the food industry these are the records that companies create and never think that they're going to go public and astonishing enough I found these in public archives created when the states sued the tobacco industry and how is that relevant to food the largest tobacco company of all Philip Morris became the largest food manufacturer in North America when it acquired the old General Foods giant and then Kraft and through the 80s and 90s Philip Morris was sort of doing what you would expect they would bring in their food managers monthly to product meetings and listen to their pitches and help them out and in cokes and encourage them to do things that would sell their products more they even blend them some of their marketing strategies and tools to help them out and the story gets really fascinating and surprising in the late 90s when Philip Morris as a change of heart it's come under huge regulatory pressure on nicotine it becomes the first company to embrace government first tobacco company to embrace government regulation as a way of saving the company it's convinced that it's on the verge of losing the public trust and when it does this and the person who walks me through this history is a former CEO of Philip Morris when they do this they turn to their food division it goes how can we be changing our policy and attitude toward nicotine and cigarettes in governor Lucian and not doing about food and they started warning the food division managers that you guys are going to be facing as great if not greater problems with salt sugar fat and obesity as we are now with nicotine and they began doing the opposite that they had coaxing the food division to rethink their incredible dependence on salt sugar fat how successfully well turns out Kraft actually did a remarkable thing mr. Mudd after failing to enlist the rest of the industry managed to convince the head of Kraft the top officials at Kraft to go it alone they created an anti obesity initiative at Kraft that did three amazing things first they cut back on their marketing of the most sweetest products to kids the TV advertising on on Saturday morning cartoons because they knew like we know that kids can't distinguish between advertising and reality they're totally gullible at that point second thing is that they looked at the labels and decided they were being deceptive or certainly not completely honest with people especially in their products bags that are made with two or three servings of snack foods because their research showed that so many of us would eat the whole thing and yet when you turn to the fine print nutrition box it'll only give you the amounts of yet you're eating per serving not the whole bag you have to do the math yourselves cressid that's crazy we'll do the math for them so we're not under estimating how many calories and grams of fat and sugar people are eating remarkable thing and then finally the most astonishing thing is that they put a cap on the amount of salt sugar fat calories that their food engineers could use in creating new foods they wanted to make sure they weren't doing anything however subliminally to encourage overconsumption I want to come back to the advertising in a second because we've got an ad we want to show you just before we get there do you believe having written almost 400 pages on this now that America maybe Canada by extension is suffering from an obesity epidemic I mean it's not what I believe it's it's the fact that industry insiders believe it back in 1999 not only did they believe that obesity was bad and getting worse and using the term epidemic but they were convinced that their own industry was accountable and I think when you look at the numbers one in three adults clinically obese one in five children clinically obese and then all of the associated ills especially diabetes high blood pressure I don't hear anybody sort of arguing otherwise including the food companies okay let's just take a look at one of the monitors here in the studio because we do want to show one of these ads this is for kool-aid cool well no hang on this is for Capri Sun mm-hmm I'll get the kool-aid story in a second now that's obviously aimed at kids quite clearly sure what's in that sugar purely don't care sugar yeah and they're watered and and and water um and and some fruit juices I recall your but if you look at that ad what jumps out at you kids cartoon characters fun um a pleasure it's it's pitched at kids and it's pitching the sweetness of the process your uh from parent you know shopping with your kid yeah and they see that yeah that's one of the issues you know I know the industry using cartoon characters to sell products is is sort of a big part of the of the of the industry marketing strategy yeah they want to go directly at kids and now let's go back 20 years kool-aid the kool-aid bursts yes classic story doesn't again I mean the industry sort of glommed onto fruit for its shimmer uh of health and it's one of the burning issues in nutrition now school nurses nutritionists will tell you that even fruit juice is just as loaded with sugar as soda and if you're looking to tamp down on weight to control your weight you've got to watch out for fruit juice as much as you will coca-cola for example and with the burst kool-aid decided that it could add just a mijin of fruit juice I recall it something like 5% and that would enable them to splash the word fruit on the front of the package and it give it sort of this as I say shimmer ah of health and now you see products all over the grocery store touting fruit on the front and when you turn to the back off and sugar is the first ingredient and then there'll be something called fruit concentrate or fruit puree which from a nutritional standpoint is about as far as from fresh whole fruit as you can go well I don't want to make consumers sound like they are completely helpless in this but on the other hand given all the advertising given the I don't know would you say a parent lack of choice at eye level in supermarkets of healthier foods what's a consumer to do it got to be really careful I mean some people many people say just look you've really got to make a list before you go the grocery store and stick to it it's an old axiom but it's so true so much of the marketing effort in the store and the design and the layout is aimed at getting you to make spontaneous decisions which leads to sort of mindless eating if you will and snack foods especially and will attract you to those most alluring products spend more time in the outer aisles with the fresh fruits and vegetables everybody says we should be eating more of those and that's where you should spend more time when you get to the center of the store beware of the middle part of the aisle at eye level the companies have done studies where they've put devices on people's heads that measure your eye movements and you hit the aisle and we all look directly at eye level in the middle of the aisle and that's where they put the most loaded products so you're in the cereal aisle raw oatmeal is going to be down at ground level or in the early stages of the aisle and the most sugary items are going to be either your eye level or the kids eye level probably both and so that's another trick to use which is the look high look low there are alternatives if you spend us a little time hunting but you've got young kids right young kids trip don't you find that their desire to get the kind of food that is the unhealthiest possible option for them is absolutely relentless and that you as a parent you know you've only got so much strength after a day of work right to be able to say no no no no we're getting a healthy stuff you have to healed at some point yeah yeah and part of that problems the demise of home economics I mean girls and boys used to be taught how to shop and nutrition in this country in that fell by the wayside just about the start of the obesity crisis 1980 in our house we've tried to engage our kids in a little bit of nutrition not to be dogmatic we're not anti sugar and anti salt or fat or anti processed foods my wife set a limit of 5 grams of sugar per cereal and so now when we take our kids into the cereal aisle they're engaged they're hunting for those cereals that have 5 grams or less and they can find them and I find that when you involve them they're smart they don't want to be overweight or sick in other way but on the other hand you just can't throw sliced carrots and apples at them expect to eat them in the lunchroom with all their pals without engaging them a little bit I'll tell you a funny story about Capri Sun my eight-year-old came home the other day and said I called dad all my friends are having a Capri Sun every day and I said well ok but look at the amount of sugar in it and you know kudos to Kraft they've dropped the amount of sugar you know substantially lately but still he's not won it every day just every now and then like tomorrow and you know I find that we can sort of negotiate with them that way treat these processed foods the most highly sugary fat ones as a treat not as an every day every hour thing and then you can make them work for you not you working for them what did you think of New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg efforts to cut down on this by saying you can only sell such-and-such a size you know cup of joe in the theater otherwise forget it yeah I mean I'm really empathetic because I'm you look at so many attempts at government regulation they're all imperfect whether it's a soda tax or his decision to try to restrict the sale of these mega sodas and i think the new york times even editorialized against him calling it a nanny state move but I have to say I'm empathetic because when you look at how much money the soda companies are putting into marketing soda often to the most vulnerable people they call their best company their best customers heavy users and those are people who drink as many as three so it's three cans of soda a day thousand a year um that is not a level playing field and I'm sympathetic with people like mayor Blume for Bloomberg who is trying to level the playing field for consumers and he was completely ridiculed by so many people for doing so ridicule but you know he got the law passed by his health department and when polling came out I think he actually won a slight majority of people I think people are really starting to get it despite the lobbying and the advertising by the soda industry so is that a sign of the times more of that to come I think we're probably going to see more of that I happen to know that the White House is thinking about other things to level the playing field they're looking at ways to move the subsidies federal subsidies of highly processed foods over to the fruits and vegetables so well-meaning parents can go in there and buy those things which everybody says we should eat more of and not go broke that's one thing restarting the home economics program is another thing that they're looking at so I think we're going to see some smart government intervention come in to help consumers I was interested to read though that you don't necessarily think a tax on junk food would be smart government intervention right it's really hard to kind of go that route I mean if you wanted to tax something they want to attack salt sugar and fat so they're not so tempting to the industry to use but I mean I think probably the smarter way to go is this redirection of subsidies so instead of instead of making processed foods more expensive why not make healthier whole foods less expensive and level the playing field that way but it's all imperfect it's all going to have some pushback from certainly from the industry of not individuals so nothing's going to be nothing's and there is no silver bullet to fix this problem a couple of years ago you're you know States Department of Agriculture Center for nutrition policy and promotion published a report yes what did it say um well you'll have to correct me on which report because they put out a few there was remind me sugar to fat this is where our Americans getting their saturated fat from oh yes so every five years the USDA brings in a panel of experts which advises us on how to eat better and what to watch out for and they determined that the number one source of saturated fat in the American diet now she's it's a lot our cheese consumption has tripled since the 1970s to as much as thirty three pounds per person per year on average and I asked myself how did that happen I don't eat that much cheese or do I and it turns out that story is actually really remarkable starting the 60s people began drinking less whole milk as a way of avoiding saturated fat in the calories they turned the skim milk that left the dairy industry with a glut of whole milk and something called milk fat which they extract from the whole note to make the skim milk they started turning that into butter ice cream and then cheese and they started making so much cheese that it piled up the federal government being sympathetic bought the surplus cheese it piled up grew mouldy Ronald Reagan came in the office and said this is really dumb we're not buying any more of your surplus cheese that people can't eat but they didn't want to abandon the dairy industry so they created a marketing scheme by which the dairy industry is allowed to tax itself raise tens of millions of dollars every year overseen by the Department of Agriculture in which they market cheese with the sole aim of getting us to eat more cheese and a really interesting happened in conjunction with the processed food companies they turn to cheese from a mere delicacy that you would use an hors d'oeuvre before a dinner to an additive both in terms of home cooking go to the dairy aisle now and you'll see cheese I used to be sold in block and slice now you see the dairy aisle stuff with bags and boxes of cheese it's shredded cubed diced ringed tubbed to make it all the more easier to use as an ingredient in home cooking and then walk through the grocery store and you starting to see cheese in so many products frozen pizza used to have a little cheese on top they have a lot of cheese on top and more cheese stuffed into the crust peanut butter cheese crackers are now in the grocery store and on and on and on and that's contributed to this amazing increase of cheese and saturated fat in our diet which we're all now getting way too much of and what is the USDA's response to all of this they have dual missions and that's one of the problems at the USDA that they're wrestling with one of their missions is to support the agriculture and food industry the other mission is to encourage consumers and protect consumers encourage them to eat better unfortunately most from the consumer perspective most of the money they spend by far is on the agriculture industry side peanuts are spent encouraging people to eat better how you talk about Ronald Reagan a second ago and ending the subsidies for milk that I get and how did this end up boosting the consumption of beef at the same time which I think did happen as well yeah they had the same program for the in fact what happened is the the beef growers came along and saw this they called the checkoff program marketing program for cheese and raised their hands and said hey what about us people are eating less beef they're worried about saturated fat and salt and beef and the government created a marketing scheme for the beef industry as well which by all measures has has worked fantastically and while they haven't managed to increase our consumption of beef they did manage to sort of slow the decline in part by turning beef also into an ingredient and they started coming up with imaginative ways of using beef in home cooking and in already prepared foods in the grocery store in ways up and never did before ok Michael in our last few minutes here let's see if we can spend some time on the responsibility to curb the that is happening in your country in mind and I wonder where the preponderance you believe of responsibility lies and I'm going to use a cutesy little line here in the hands of the food giants the mouths of the consumers or the regulatory arm of government mm-hmm boy I would like to sort of marshal that out you know one-third one-third one-third buddy no it's gonna it's a case-by-case sort of situation with every person and every family what's kind of what's going to happen I mean hats off to Michelle Obama for encouraging more exercise by kids and certainly the food companies like to talk about that if only we moved more than we would expend more calories and that could help solve the problem there's some truth to that I think the food companies are hugely responsible this is these are their products and while any one of them may not make us obese collectively there's no question that they do our own responsibility lies in this phenomena starting in the 80s it became acceptable socially acceptable to eat anything anywhere anytime business meetings walking down the street I'm almost surprised we don't have some snacks here to get us really the subways buses anywhere absolutely and that was a real turning point that also coincided with the start of the obesity epidemic and I think what it led to is this form of eating called mindless eating where your hand to mouth not paying attention it reminds me of the opposite of what my mom encouraged me when I was growing up she said Michael chew your food slow down and there was science behind that because your brain takes some time to catch up with your chewing and so does your stomach and to send you those signals that hey I'm getting I'm getting full here you're getting full slow down there's a delayed reaction and I think that from a consumer standpoint and hoping this book will show people the way to that is no easy things we can do to go back to mindful eating and paying a little bit more attention to our food because that will help empower us if we want to have control over what we eat like we just do need to pay a little more attention you have clearly not let the food Giants off the hook or consumers or regulators but let's not leave the video game manufacturers out of this too because as soon as the video games came out people became couch potatoes and this from the whole phenomenon we're talking about today got worse yeah no there is that absolutely yeah oh all right what do you what are you gonna as soon as you leave this studio I wonder were you heading Airport right or thought you're gonna ask me what I'm gonna eat well that's that was coming now we're gonna go to the airport you're gonna wait there for flight and the may be delayed by weather yeah I'll look around um I'll probably wait until I get home I mean airports for me or actually pretty dangerous places it's really amazing you can't go to a vending machine and get fresh apples or care you know it's really kind of stunning just how inaccessible good the better for you food is when you're on the road and especially road warriors have to be really careful about what they eat so I will tend to sort of put off my meal rather than deal with what's in front of me good for you such discipline well he's a pilot surprise winning author Michael Moss salt sugar fat how the food giants hooked us it's really good of you to visit us these last couple days here at TV oh thanks so much thanks for having me support Ontario's public television donate at TV org

Channel: The Agenda with Steve Paikin

Views: 19,552

Rating: 4.8418078 out of 5

Keywords: TVO, TVOntario, The Agenda with Steve Paikin, current affairs, analysis, debate, politics, policy, food, social issues, obesity

Id: z-vQSKSJMyc

Length: 25min 44sec (1544 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 20 2013