Is Big Food similar to Big Tobacco? Two researchers think the answer is yes.

(Twitter, considered by some to be 'the worst thing ever', sometimes brings vital research to the attention of many. Today, Marion Nestle posted this piece, which links to an important article by Brownell and Warner published recently in the Milbank Quarterly. Having worked in Big Food for 4 years -and hating almost every minute of it - I have been waiting for something like this article for a long time. Thank you Marion!).

I've been getting frustrated with ranting websites and blogs sounding the alarm about the vast conspiracy engineered by shadowy companies manufacturing products consumers buy every day in supermarkets, restaurants, and anywhere else food is sold. Most of the rants are, in general, nothing more than lazy coded shorthand, sloganeering and repetition of anti-big food conventional wisdom, painting big food as a monolith  (when it is, in fact, an exceptionally fragmented industry), working against consumers and public health. Information is gleaned largely from bestsellers, films, and other websites and reflect little research, experience, or genuine understanding.

Don't get me wrong - I'm no big food apologist. I don't eat processed food and haven't since I learned how to cook as a teenager. But there's one thing I can't stand -   the knee-jerk syndication of information that fits in well with that particular website's/blogger's world view. Slogans and alarmism have replaced good information - on both sides of the Big Food fight.  Even Nick Kristof of the New York Times wrote something about it on 3/19/09 in his Op-Ed in the New York Times. This passage, in particular, I found particularly resonant:

...there’s pretty good evidence that we generally don’t truly want good information — but rather information that confirms our prejudices. We may believe intellectually in the clash of opinions, but in practice we like to embed ourselves in the reassuring womb of an echo chamber.

Later in the piece he states:

The result is polarization and intolerance.

A good example of an important Food Industry report few on the Big Food side will never read (and likely dismiss out of hand based solely on the title) is  The perils of ignoring history: Big Tobacco played dirty and millions died.  How similar is Big Food? a fascinating piece of research and analysis by Kelly Brownell (of Yale) and Kenneth Warner (of the University of Michigan). The comparison between food and tobacco, already 'rejected''**  by the American Dietic Association as "not valid", is presented in a compelling manner by the two researchers, who have taken great pains to show from history and present example, how there are truly similarities between the two industries.

Let's make something clear. No one is saying food is tobacco, especially not Brownell and Warner. Food is a necessity, tobacco is a choice. Food is vital to sustain life, tobacco is not. Tobacco almost always leads to illness and death (my dad, a smoker, died from lung cancer at age 65). Food can, but it isn't inevitable or necessarily probable (though with 2/3rds of the US population currently overweight and the rates for children rising THREE times the rate for adults, it is indicated in more and more obesity-related diseases). Tobacco is clearly addictive. Food may be - the research is just beginning.  But in the tactics adopted by major food corporations in the fragmented food industry, from ingredients suppliers (ADM, Cargill, Bunge, Monsanto etc) to consumer packaged goods companies (General Mills, Sara Lee, Kraft, Nestle, Unilever, Pepsi Co, Coca-Cola etc) to the foodservice industry (McDonalds, Yum Brands, Burger KIng etc), to supermarket chains (Albertson's, Kroger, Publix, etc) the resemblance is uncanny. Obesity, the epidemic responsible for surging rates of metabolic disorder and diabetes, can be seen as a direct result of these tactics, which include but are not limited to advertising and other messaging ('push' strategies), lobbying, influencing scientific research, and flat-out denial of responsibility.

The paper highlights these details and elaborates - over nearly 30 pages - how big food has played a major role in the oversupply and the overfeeding of the consumer and how the tactics - legal challenges, PR campaigns, lobbying, and the publication of seemingly empathic recognition of the problems they are responsible for and the steps they are taking to make amends -  favored by different trade associations representing different constituents of the big food universe (National Restaurant Association, FMI, GMA and all of the industry specific associations such as the Corn Refiners Association and the Sugar Association etc) look astonishingly like those used by Big Tobacco.

The article points out that if American consumers were to eat a healthy number of calories (ie equal to or slightly less than what they need per day), these food companies would stand to lose a huge amount of revenue. It is not in these companys' best interest - and, most importantly, in the interest of their shareholders - to see consumers turning away from cheap calorie-laden snacks and processed foods and turn toward healthier, fresh, and home-made alternatives.The bottom-line consequences would be huge, paradigm-shifting disruptions.

Brownell and Warner point out the defensive 'playbook' utilized by the different constituents of the big food universe who are fighting to justify their existence. The basics of their strategy, which look remarkably similar to Big Tobacco's, include (page 7):

• Focus on personal responsibilty as the cause of the nation's unhealthy diet.
• Raise fears that government action usurps personal freedom.
• Villify critics with totalitarian language, characterizing them as the food police, leaders of a nanny state, and even as "food fascists", and accuse them of desiring to strip people of their civil liberties.
• Criticize studies that hurt industry as "junk science".
• Emphasize physical activity over diet.
• State there are no good or bad foods; hence no food or food type (soft drinks, fast food, etc) should be targeted for change.
• Plant doubt when concerns are raised about the industry.

The food industry has become a propaganda machine, adopting similar tactics as psy-ops and totalitarian states, leafletting our cities and towns with their own planted 'truths". With enough fly-overs and dumping of information designed to deflect attention from their products and methods and refocus it on personal responsibility, obesity no longer becomes their problem.

At my former employer, I worked with our company nutritionist and our R&D team on new products. When Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food came out, I copied a few choice sections and sent them to these people. When I approached them later, their response was not dissimilar to the #3 response above, "vilify critics with totalitarian language, characterizing them as food police." There was no self-reflection or a glimmer of contrition.

Nothing was getting through. 

Later, at an all-company meeting, the CEO made a speech about how we were now in the healthy food market, thanks to a few products we already manufactured that were naturally low in calories and some new products that were 'healthy' versions of existing products. Some had reduced salt, even.

I realized that I was mostly alone at my company, an industry player that - thankfully - never marketed to children but that was as responsible as any for manufacturing foods that emphasized taste and flavor and cheapness over quality and healthfulness. They hypocrisy of our organization - touting a few "healthy products" while flourishing from sales of the unhealthy ones - made me ill. While my product lines were less stomach churning (I worked on products that customers had requested), I was still contributing to a company that profited from the manufacture and marketing of foods I didn't believe in or would ever eat.

I was the hypocrite.

I was pushing the cause of real food privately while publicly supporting the food I hated and spent my life rallying against.

I witnessed the tactics, the press releases, the backroom discussions of how we were going to work on products that had a 'health halo' so that the company image would benefit. I witnessed conversations that sounded an awful lot like this: "yes, we could make (healthy product x) but our consumers wouldn't want it, and our brand is associated with indulgence."

How do you fight that kind of failure of confidence and cynicism? 

The sad part is that now that consumers have developed a taste for this kind of salty, fatty, crunchy, chewy, savory, sweet crap, they crave it. Weening the consumer of the bad food habit takes more than just an outpouring of outrage and public service announcements. It means fighting the propaganda machine with facts, with data, with real food that tastes great, with indisputable facts, with food pricing that reflects the reality of food costs - both real ingredient costs and long term impact costs. Consumers needs to push back. And change themselves. And stop believing everything they see and read and taste - especially when so much of it is part of strong PR efforts on the part of the individual companies, the industry associations, and their hired agencies.

I don't really do justice to Brownell and Warner's research and article, which concludes by urging the food industry to change its tactics and approach to avoid the same fate as Big Tobacco and to help reverse the rapid decline in health caused by the obesity epidemic.

I urge you to read the article, as It is one of the best researched and informed pieces I've read on the subject and provides a lot of food for thought. It reawakened in me a sense both of urgency and anger at an industry that has, for the last 14 years, in one way or another, been my meal ticket.

**The ADA wrote in its rebuttal to the piece:

“When it comes to public health, we have to focus on synergy,” said [ADA President Martin] Yadrick. “…Food labels, trans fat substitutions and many other recent changes have come about because everyone worked together and I think all those involved in these changes recognize that.”

"In this regard, [the ADA's President's] views were broadly resonant with those expressed by the Grocery Manufacturers Association regarding industry’s efforts to move towards healthier formulations. The GMA said that industry had reformulated over 10,000 healthier products and would continue to play its part in tackling obesity."

I worked for a company 'reformulating' many hundreds of its SKUs to be 'healthier'. Truth was, our products were still unhealthy, but they had taken the trans fat out. Portions were the same, as was the sugar content  and overall fat content. If that's what passes for healthly these days, we should be very worried about industry associations and lobbyists. Many members of the ADA are corporate nutritionists who work in the best interest of their company, not public health. Further, the ADA's annual meeting features a trade show featuring these same company's booths - showing off 100 calorie packs, whole grain products, and their healthy/organic brands. The ADA would hate to lose sponsorship or piss off its most powerful members.

Comments

[Seth]

Wow, excellent post--one of the things that makes this convincing is the solid business logic: "if American consumers were to eat a healthy amount of calories, these food companies would stand to lose a huge amount of revenue. It is not in these companys' best interest - and, most importantly, in the interest of their shareholders - to see consumers turning away from cheap calorie-laden snacks and processed foods and turn toward healthier, fresh, and home-made alternatives.The bottom-line consequences would be huge, paradigm-shifting disruptions."

In other words, unless these companies were to reject the 80s paradigm of being driven by quarterly profit growth (about as likely as them becoming nudists), they would be idiots to do anything other than manipulate people into eating lots of bad food, and then deceive people about what they're doing.

[Cake and Commerce]

Depressing, isn't it?

[FoodRenegade]

I think the same applies for Big Pharma. They only make money when you're sick, not when you're healthy. They have no reason to tell people that they can treat & cure chronic diseases like diabetes or heart disease through lifestyle & diet changes. They make their money selling drugs to repeat buyers -- the longer you take the drugs the better. Doctors & health care professionals, while perhaps more willing to look at the whole picture, are only as good as the information they get. And the information they get (and subsequently pass on) is all based on research funded by who? You guessed it. Big Pharma.

[Cake and Commerce]

That's a great point, Kristen, and also incredibly frustrating. Taking drugs for every itch, scratch, and chronic illness is so much easier than changing diet and habits. If only doctors were less quick on the prescription pad and and more quick to prescribe lifestyle changes.

[Bowl of Plenty]

The thing is, for every ranting food blogger who repeats Michael Pollan as gospel, there is someone ranting back at them using the food industry 7-point strategy. You can see an example of this in the comments for the trailer to "Food, Inc." on YouTube. While it's tempting to dismiss YouTube comments in general because of their reputation as unmitigated dreck, the fact that comments specific to this trailer rise above the expected "haha u suXX0rs" level of idiocy makes them notable and indicates to me that they're not drawn from the typical YouTube audience, meaning that either a) there are a lot of angry farmers out there, b) a lot of people believe what the food industry has told them, or c) the industry is astroturfing. Slogans have replaced real information on both sides.

Anyway, two things from the Brownell and Warner study stood out to me:

p. 5: Common to all these players is an arresting logic: to successfully address the obesity epidemic, the nation must consume fewer calories, which means eating less food.
This brings to mind a post that Marion Nestle made on 2/27 citing the results of a study that basically boil down to "more calories = more weight." Her commenters, however, take exception to this seemingly simple and logical conclusion, and one specifically wanted to see a study made with the Atkins regimen. So in addition to a food industry that needs to sell more calories (food) for their survival, it seems that much confusion is sown by a diet industry (intentional or not? I don't know) that depends on sales of everything from diet books to SlimFast shakes for their survival.

p. 17: Expressing concern for "the hard working sugar growers and their families," [The Sugar Association's] president again wrote the WHO
You can see this sentiment expressed in the comments to "Food, Inc." I've also seen people criticize the new White House vegetable garden via this line of reasoning -- "with the President setting an example, more households will take up backyard farming, meaning they'll buy less produce, which will then lead to farmers going out of business." I know nothing about the economics of agriculture, but with the above quoted passage, I wonder if people who use that logic are arguing from a position of knowledge or just repeating lines they've been fed.

[H.Peter]

Wow.
Massive.

I moved to North America from Europe, 15 years ago. My weight went from 78kg (171 lbs) to 95kg (209 lbs) pretty much over the same period.
Yet, I really can only blame myself. Three Burgers instead of one, lower quality food in general and of course just plain simple bad choices at the store.
My wife who is from North America, has not increased her weight over the last 10 years due to her conscious food intake. Moderation. Home cooking.
Wise choices of ingredients. It sounds so easy...

Brilliant post, brilliant article.

[Cake and Commerce]

Thanks H.Peter! What you relate is not an uncommon story for Europeans living in North America. The company I worked for had a healthy share of E.U. passport holders, and all complained of gaining weight when they came here. It is easy to fall into the trap - bigger servings, eat more food.

I will be thrilled when we see companies shrinking the size of their products to sensible portions.

[Cake and Commerce]

I guess the point I was trying to make - poorly - is that the more we rant on our side, the easier it is for those who oppose change (and sensible eating) to not take the rants seriously. I would hate to see a logical, empirical argument, backed up by strong, meaningful data, dismissed or not taken seriously because of the buzz of voices on the internet that knee-jerk furiously about the vices of Big Food.

There are two false assumptions in that argument you've heard made about backyard gardens - and people buying less produce - is that it assumes the capacity to consume produce is finite (and therefore the market is finite) and that backyard gardeners will be able to meet their needs entirely with their harvest.

First - anyone who has taken a marketing class or worked in marketing knows that the pie can be grown - meaning, as we change our eating habits and adjust to using more fresh produce, we will buy more. The market for fresh produce will grow. There is no statistic or market data or rule out there that says that per capita consumption of produce is limited to x or y or z per person.

The trouble with growing a pie, ie, growing a market, is that it takes a great deal of education (usually) to do so, or innovations, or new products, etc. In the case of produce, innovations and new products are old products and tradition. We may, in fact, be at an inflection point in our awareness, where the pie does start to grow, significantly.

Alice Waters, Michael Pollan, Marion Nestle and others - many others - have done a huge service by constantly, unflinchingly, advocating for more fresh, real food. You can bet people are listening. Not everyone, of course, but enough to make a difference. And enough to grow segments of the produce market, not cause it to decline.

Anyone who has had a garden in their yard knows how hard it is to meet all your needs from that patch of earth alone during the growing season, let alone year-round. I'm a pretty good organic gardener with good yields, but the only crop I didn't need to buy because I grew enough was tomatoes. And lord knows tomatoes alone can't make a person happy (but they get darn close). Everything else I had to supplement. Through CSAs, farmers markets, and, out of season, grocery stores.

While some people are lucky enough to have large yards, a huge percentage of the US population lives in urban areas (approximately 79% in 2000 - I checked the census data), and has extremely limited access to a garden. These people will continue to need produce. And they'll be needing more than they did before as their diets change (I hope) for the better.

Sure, some farmers who produce vegetables for the frozen market and for canned goods may suffer if frozen & canned produce purchases decrease, but they will be replaced by new farmers (and there are a lot of back-to-landers emerging these days) producing products that more accurately meet the needs of the market.

Who stands to lose the most? The CPGs the consumer packaged goods companies- and their suppliers, collectively referred to as Big Food - who will, I hope, sell less crap as more turn to the past - its food and traditions - for inspiration and satiation.

This is wildly generalized and simplified, but I think I can say with certainty that people arguing that home gardeners will kill small farmers are just repeating lines they've been fed.

[Nicole]

Great post, Linsey, and very thought provoking.

I like your analysis of the article you're discussing much more than the actual article. I think the authors of that study are trying a bit too hard to parallel Big Tobacco with Big Food, when, as you pointed out, there are two big distinctions--tobacco most likely will kill you, whereas eating food that is "bad" for you may or may not; and Big Tobacco spent all that time and money covering up studies that exposed tobacco as deadly, whereas Big Food has no such smoking gun. Correlation does not equal causation.

I think the fight here is in the marketing and pricing of processed food, especially with regards to children. I've argued time and time again how diet takes a back seat to price when you're living on a low income, and Big Food is taking advantage of that. The question is, do companies like Sara Lee really have a responsibility to promote healthy food, especially when it might hurt their bottom line? I'm not sure. I think they have a responsibility to be responsible in marketing their products by being honest and not exploitative. When you quoted your meetings saying things like this: "yes, we could make (healthy product x) but our consumers wouldn't want it, and our brand is associated with indulgence.", I have a hard time disagreeing with that, to be honest. Their brand is associated with indulgence. Should they be forced to change the branding of their company if they are being honest about what it is they are selling and how they are doing it? Not if their customers don't demand it.

I think a lot of problems here could be solved if people at both ends of the spectrum were less black-and-white and more accommodating of the realities of a daily diet, as well as better teaching of nutrition in schools. Alice Waters isn't doing the movement any favors by being an arrogant, unyielding elitist on 60 Minutes--that only invites blowback. The fact is that processed foods are not necessarily harmful if eaten in moderation or as a treat now and again, and not even inherently harmful in general. If people on either side just slam the other side without acknowledging any merit at all, there will be no advancement in the debate. And unfortunately, the burden in this argument is upon those in the whole foods movement since they are the ones raising objections. For better or worse, they are the ones who have to be more careful in what they say and how they say it.

The main problem I see is that too many people are ignorant of proper nutrition and have no idea how to put together a balanced diet, or even to cook things from scratch. My Home Ec class in junior high was a joke and I learned nothing but how to sew a stuffed animal and how to melt cheese on a tomato. I think if the focus of these classes was changed to how to cook on the most basic level with whole foods, we might have a generation growing up with the tools to make better choices with their diet, and to resist the entreaties of Big Food.

I wish that the subtleties of famous food writers like Michael Pollan could be better communicated in the media, such as how naturally raised foods can be incorporated into a daily diet at a low cost, and how it doesn't have to be all or nothing. As it stands, there is such a forced polarization that the real education such writers provide gets lost amidst the Big Food lobbyists' cries. I think there are good things to be said about both sides of this argument, ie, whole foods are flavorful and healthy, but Big Food has provided innovation that has helped food across the board, etc. But you never see that kind of discussion in the media because it's too complex.

I don't know if any of this is coherent or not. But I will say that I don't think that you should beat yourself up about your participation in a business that, in a way, ran counter to what you personally believe in. I don't think you were a hypocrite--you stood up for what you believed in within a company that simply had different goals, but it didn't change who you were or your ideals. From what you've said, it doesn't seem like Sara Lee misrepresented itself or used dirty dealings to hide any bad information. I might be old school, but I think the way to real change is to change things from within, and that's what you tried to do. Sara Lee might not be doing healthier items right now for the most part, but who knows, they will have to turn with the tide, and you might have inspired some higher-ups with your Pollan readings. These people might never have been exposed to such views or treated them with any regard if they hadn't been alerted to them by you. Baby steps.

I hope that what the Obamas are doing in their kitchen and with the garden will be a big inspiration to those who might not have listened to such ideas from anyone else. Who knows.... All I really know at this point is that I am fat, and I'm fat from eating lots of fat and calories in whole foods and despite miniscule HFCS intake! Yeah I think it's time to stop writing now.