Sixty years ago marketing campaigns for tobacco used to focus on cigarettes’ alleged health benefits. Craven A prevented sore throats, Lucky Strike helped with digestion and could keep you from over-eating; one brand of filtered cigarettes was “just what the doctor ordered.” In 1946 an ad campaign even boasted that “more doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette.” Smoking was fashionable, a popular way to soothe social anxiety, or to appear sophisticated and worldly.
Today, of course, few of us believe this. Tobacco advertising has been banned from cinemas and television, smoking is no longer allowed on airplanes, in restaurants and other public spaces – at least in most developed countries. Punitive class action settlements in the US have forced tobacco firms to admit to their deceptive practices, and to concede that their product is in fact both dangerous and addictive. Modern cigarette packs often carry stark warnings about the damage that smoking can do to your health.
In many ways, sugar is set to become the tobacco of the new century. An obesity epidemic which began in the United States (but has since become noticeable in other parts of the world) has many analysts worried that unless more is done to inform the public about the dangers of excess sugar consumption, healthcare systems will be overwhelmed by the costs of treating chronic obesity-related conditions like diabetes. According to a factsheet produced by the Department of Nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health, two out of three Americans adults are overweight, and so is one out of every three children. The cost of medical treatments for the complications associated with obesity is currently estimated at a staggering US$190 billion annually.
Fed Up, a compelling documentary on the origins of the obesity epidemic, shows that the overuse of sugar in the US diet is a leading cause of the current crisis. In the late 1970s when federal regulators forced US food companies to reduce the amount of fat in the American diet, they often offset the tastelessness of the new fat-free foodstuffs by lacing them with sugar. Shortly afterwards, as American consumers began to rely more on processed food – which offers food companies unprecedented control over the chemistry of their products – the nation’s diet shifted decisively towards low-fibre, calorie-dense and sugary food, with grimly predictable consequences.
In 2004, Mother Jones magazine reported that the US Department of Health and Human Services wrote to the World Health Organisation “with dozens of objections to the scientific findings that underlie the WHO’s effort to issue anti-obesity guidelines.” Subsequently, the Bush administration threatened to withhold funding from the UN when the WHO decided to issue recommended daily minimums for sugar consumption. The pressure worked and the WHO removed any mention of sensible limits from its guidelines.
Successive US administrations have largely agreed to let the industry regulate itself. But, like their Wall Street counterparts, the big food companies have dodged serious reform and cleverly downplayed the risks of their products while keeping them as enticing, and addictive, as possible. Meanwhile, like tobacco companies before them, they have overwhelmed consumers with deceptive advertising. In 2006, for instance, US beverage companies spent more than US$3 billion marketing carbonated beverages. Similarly, food company lobbyists in the US have continued to ensure that school cafeterias stock their heavily sugared products, sometimes exclusively, instead of offering healthy alternatives.
Consequently, the diet of millions of American teenagers is overwhelmed by sugar-heavy foods and many of them consume more than the recommended daily maximum before they have finished breakfast. For the first time, these teens have a lower life-expectancy than their parents, a development due in large part to sudden rise in obesity.
Globalization has made the staples of the US diet commonplace items around the world. Today nearly every country, regardless of its economy, has international fast food chains that offer relatively cheap food of little nutritional value.
Furthermore, calorie dense processed foods are widely exported and consumed as luxuries. In Guyana and the Caribbean we have grown up familiar with sugar and often overlook the dangers of consuming it in large quantities, or the need to prevent our children from doing so. Under the spell of American advertising more and more of us have begun to eat like Americans and have the health complications, and waistlines to prove it. America’s growing awareness of its obesity epidemic, and its belated efforts to take action, are therefore timely warnings to countries like ours. At the very least we should all be more mindful of the increasing amount of sugar in our diets, and wary of widespread, often global, advertising campaigns that encourage us to consume even more of it.
