The politics of food makes low-quality food easiest to access

The “miracle” of industrial food means that in 2012 we can find unhealthy food most anywhere in the world. Michele Simon, public health lawyer, activist and founder of Eat Drink Politics, takes on behemoths such as McDonald’s, PepsiCo, Anheuser-Busch and the Grocery Manufacturers Association and exposes the marketing, political and psychological tools they utilize which she believes are threatening public health and food justice. “Most people don’t have a say where their food is produced, or where it’s grown,” she said in a recent interview focused around her 2006 book, “Appetite for Profit: How the Food Industry Undermines Our Health and How to Fight Back.” We also talked about how the Occupy Movement is helping to shed light on the politics of hunger and the politics of bad food. Simon’s book is required reading by many in the field of food politics, nutrition and what is a bona fide area of study associated with many departments of urban planning, including University of Washington’s department of planning – food security planning. “Our food is tightly controlled by a small group of CEOs who do not have communities’ interests in mind. The problem is that food isn’t a commodity … food is an essential human need like water, land, and air and these corporations have co-modified it for profit.” “Appetite for Profit” is just as relevant today as it was six years ago – maybe more so with the looming facts hitting even this year’s Sundance Film Festival: one in four American children suffers from hunger, and 30 percent of American families – 49 million – often go without meals. These and other compelling issues are finding a stage in the documentary “Finding North,” a disheartening film by Lori Silverbush and Kristi Jacobson that looks at three lead characters: Colorado fifth-grader Rosie whose family survives on handouts; Tremonica, an Mississippi overweight second-grader who has health problems tied to a bad diet; and Barbie Izquierdo, 24, a mother of two children in Philadelphia who is literally fighting to put food on the table. Books like “Appetite for Profit” need foisting in this time of unlimited cash funneled into absurd presidential campaigns, and if the 2012 Sundance Film Festival is any indication, we’re seeing more interest in a broken health care system in the film “Escape Fire” and the ability of corporations to evade taxation in the film, “We’re Not Broke.” “We’re seeing the time-honored tradition of the right-wing blaming the individual. What’s taking center stage in the food realm is distracting from what’s really going on,” Simon said. “Nobody’s saying there isn’t shared responsibility for unhealthy eating, but we have to provide options for people.” Options in the form of healthy low-cost food that’s culturally relevant have been shunted away by the food industry through political malfeasance, and she emphasizes that it’s not just about telling families to turn off the TV or jsay no to McNuggets. Marketing bad food to children, Simon professes, is the key to our nation’s unhealthy youth, according to the Centers for Disease Control: * Childhood obesity has more than tripled in the past 30 years. * The percentage of children aged 6–11 years in the United States who were obese increased from 7% in 1980 to nearly 20% in 2008. Similarly, the percentage of adolescents aged 12–19 years who were obese increased from 5% to 18% over the same period. * In 2008, more than one third of children and adolescents were overweight or obese. Overweight is defined as having excess body weight for a particular height from fat, muscle, bone, water, or a combination of these factors. Obesity is defined as having excess body fat. * Overweight and obesity are the result of “caloric imbalance”—too few calories expended for the amount of calories consumed—and are affected by various genetic, behavioral, and environmental factors. Simon cracks open that last bullet point, bizarrely called caloric imbalance which this government agency, CDC, fails to tie to the marketing hocus pocus and lobbying strong-arming of the food and beverage (and factory farming) industries. Simon’s book looks at some deeply troubling trends over the past five decades with our food system becoming more and more controlled by a smaller number of people who care little about nutrition or environmental and community well-being. She delves into the stories around these company’s strategies, and how the de-naturing process of bringing fat, sugar and salt to the palettes of more Americans has ruled our collective diets. Add to that the hucksterism tied around our youth, kids who are virtual food prisoners in schools and at home because the pop-sugar-junk food marketers and the fast food purveyors have all the big guns behind them. “Most people live in neighborhoods where there are no healthy produce options,” she told me. “In this economic downturn, it’s very difficult for a majority of families to get healthy food.” So they turn to junk sold at Walmart and other mainstream grocery stores.