New Haven Independent

Brownell (pictured) should know. He makes his living documenting that love affair, and combating it.

A national leader in that fight, Brownell conducts his research and writes his books and op-eds from his perch as founding director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale.

He offered an update in an interview the other day in his office, which is conveniently located on Edwards Street next to the Yale Sustainable Food Project, where New Haven school children and summer campers can be seen visiting the garden, growing and eating all kinds of healthful veggies and fruits.

Sitting on the couch in his spacious office — where floor-to-ceiling bookcases are filled with volumes about food, obesity and other health issues — Brownell earnestly described the current situation, and expressed both great frustration and a degree of optimism about where things are headed.

On the one hand, he said, projects such as the Yale Farm — and others, like the exploding number of farmers markets around the city, state and nation — are hopeful signs that the healthful just might be gaining ground on over-processed junk masquerading as food.

He also sees new dangers, especially those posed by web marketing for junk food. In his view, it’s time to order up a fresh look at regulation.

Brownell said the Rudd Center, founded in 2005, uses science to promote public policy changes in the realm of food and nutrition. It may be unique in also including “obesity” in its title and focusing on “weight bias and stigma” as one of its key issues.

Blaming The Obese Victim?

A recent report shows that the cost of treating obesity has doubled in the past ten years, and that obese people spent 42 percent more than people of normal weight on medical costs in 2006.

While that may be true, Brownell said it sounds a lot like blaming the victim.

“It’s very important to distinguish the condition of obesity from the way obese people are treated,” he said. “Obesity is costing the society hundreds of billions of dollars in health care costs, especially if you add it up over a period of time, and those numbers seem to be escalating. That says to me we need to put a high national priority on preventing this problem from occurring, because it’s so difficult and expensive to treat once you have the problem.

“That’s a much different way of looking at things than blaming obese people for bringing additional health care costs to society. Obese people already are under tremendous pressure to lose weight, so applying more pressure and more shame simply won’t help.”

Brownell said the “personal responsibility” approach taken in the past 40 years has shown little success, and the problem is growing worse by the day. He called for a new strategy. “What are the big environmental drivers that are pushing the whole society toward being obese, which is happening not only in the U.S. but in every country in the world?”

The problem is complex, involving lifestyle, economics, psychology and the outsize impact of the food industry and its marketing arm. His latest book, Weight Bias: Nature, Consequences and Remedies, focuses on these issues.

“When one looks at all the contributors to obesity,” he said, “you have a list a mile long: increasing portion sizes; physical activity being subtracted out of schools; value meal-type pricing that encourages people to buy lots of unhealthy foods; food marketing directed at children. The food industry uses this to support their position, ‘Why pick on us? Why should we change, because there are so many things going on.’ That sort of philosophy basically paralyzes you from doing anything. It makes sense to think more broadly about some of the obvious contributors. First, the cost of food: it’s just simply true that it costs more to buy good food than unhealthful food.

“Also, food marketing is a huge issue. It’s like a tidal wave enveloping the nation, and by educating people is like giving people swimming lessons while the tidal wave is coming in. You just simply can’t do it. A few people might be able to swim in those conditions, but most won’t, and that’s what’s happening now.”

A Taxing Solution

What about taxing the least healthful foods? Some denounce that idea as the poster child of the nanny state. Brownell said its time has come. A recent article in the Boston Globe pointed out that a 20-ounce bottle of soda contains 17 teaspoons of sugar, almost always high-fructose corn syrup.

Brownell said tobacco taxes offer a successful precedent, with study after study showing how the increased cost of cigarettes has deterred many people from starting to smoke.

“We believe that same principle should apply to food. So we’ve proposed, in particular, a penny an ounce tax on sugar-sweetened beverages, with the money raised to be used for nutrition-related programs. We think that’s a winning idea because there’s clear science on sugar-sweetened beverages showing they’re contributing to diseases like obesity and diabetes — stronger science than there is for any other category of foods.”

Unfortunately, of the billions of dollars paid to states by the tobacco companies, very little of it has been used for smoking cessation or smoking prevention programs. Could the same happen with a soda tax?

Brownell didn’t seem worried. He said an excise tax on sodas, similar to the tobacco tax — if it’s high enough — could discourage some consumers from buying the sugary drinks. That would be a plus even if the money raised is not spent to further promote public health, he argued.

He said he sees the tide turning in favor of a more healthful lifestyle, as popular authors like Michael Pollan (In Defense of Food) and Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation) expose the health and environmental downsides of industrial agriculture and chefs like Alice Waters promote fresh, local food.

“I see very good news on the horizon, and partly it’s because of signs that the American public cares more about the quality of food than the quantity. It used to be the case that Americans just wanted more food for less money, so they’d pile it on and get these enormous helpings at restaurants, etc. There’s still some of that, to be sure, but Americans care more about the story of their food — they want to know where it came from, who grew it, how far it was shipped, even to some extent the impact on the environment of different food choices they make. That’s all very good, and I think it bodes quite well for the future.”

But he’s not naïve about what he and others are up against. He said he wishes all the groups interested in local food, hunger, sustainability or health could coordinate better to push public policy faster in a positive direction.

And he’s concerned about the advertising arm of the food industry, which he exposed in his book, Food Fight. He charged that industry operates under almost no restrictions on what, how, and to whom it can advertise.

“The marketing used to be pretty simple. When I was a boy, for example, there were Saturday morning cartoons, there were ads for sugared cereal and that was about all you saw. But now it’s everywhere — it’s product placements, and people don’t recognize it as advertising. Product placements are in movies, and a new and very difficult to monitor problem is digital marketing. Marketing on the internet in particular. So the cereal companies, the candy companies, they all have websites where children can go and play these interactive games.”

Potato Chips, & CPS Chips

He pointed out that web advertising is much more cost-effective than television advertising. It’s cheaper. And potential customers — kids — spend much longer on the sites than they would watching a few 15- or 30-second television commercials.

“The whole marketing landscape is changing,” Brownell said. “Soon, because there are GPS chips in cell phones, people — kids included — will start to get food ads directed to their location. So they’ll get off school, power up their cell phone, and get an ad that says something like, ‘Are you hungry? There’s a donut shop two blocks on your right. Here’s 50 cents off a dozen.’”

He called these invasive forms of advertising “end runs around parents.” Pre-Internet, parents used to have trouble monitoring children’s exposure to ads. Now, he observed, “It’s nearly impossible. There’s a clear role for government to step in and do something about this, so one major policy change has to be to limit the amount of marketing of unhealthy food directly to children.”