Junk Food and Unhealthy Diets
Junk Food and Unhealthy Diets
Fr. Seán McDonagh, SSC
In previous articles I have been looking at the rise of agribusiness during the past 50 years. In this article, I will argue that agribusiness is also connected with the consumption of junk food which is high in saturated fat, salt and sugar and low in nutritional content. This has led to an epidemic of obesity in many First World countries. Forty-four million US citizens are now obese. Within this category there are 6 million 'super obese'. The rate of obesity in the US has doubled since the late 1970s. By 2001 it had increased by 60% on 1991 figures. Obesity is also affecting children. In the US, 13% of children aged between 6 and 11 years are overweight.
A person who is 30 pounds overweight increases his or her risk of developing heart disease, diabetes, gall bladder disorders and arthritis. Overweight children are at risk of cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and other health problems. In Britain, one in five adults are obese and two-thirds of the men and half of the women are overweight. According to James Meikle in an article "The Fat of the Land", in The Guardian, April 24th 2002, obesity is a factor in 31,000 deaths each year and is costing the British economy around £2 billion annually.
In Ireland, a study carried out for the Food Safety Promotion Board in 2003 found that 18% of the adult population was obese. Anne Byrne put it succinctly in The Irish Times, on April 21st 2001, "as soon as fast food outlets expand, waistlines soon follow". Maeve O'Sullivan, a clinical nutritionist at Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children, Crumlin, in Dublin, believes that childhood obesity is storing up problems for the future. Soft drinks are a particular problem in Ireland. According to her, Irish children are getting fatter because of poor diet, lack of exercise and too many hours watching television. She told the journalist Aideen Sheehan that "if you eat a fast food meal of a large burger, large fries and large soft drink, that would be over 2,000 calories. You would need to run a marathon to burn it off" ( Irish Independent, July 4th 2003).
Many claim that fast food and soft drinks companies directly target children. In 1988, School District 11 in Colorado allowed Burger King to place advertisements in school hallways in return for educational funds. Today, on average, school children will watch 30 advertisements on TV encouraging them to gorge themselves on fast foods and soft drinks.
One would think that governments would introduce measures to reduce this awful wastage of human life. Unfortunately, this does not happen very often because corporations oppose any regulations. In April 2003, the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) published a document entitled, Diet, Nutrition and the Prevention of Chronic Diseases. This document encouraged people to opt for a diet low in saturated fats, sugars and salt. People were advised to eat more vegetable and fruit and to take regular exercise. The document took two years to produce and involved consultations with sixty experts in nutrition and other related areas of dietary medicine. Though most of the recommendations were merely best dietary practice, the document fell foul of the powerful sugar industry, especially in the US. The US-based Sugar Association and World Sugar Research Organisation were so annoyed at the recommendation that sugar should provide no more than 10% of the energy in peoples' lives, that they mounted a strong lobby on the government in Washington. These organisations attempted to discredit the findings of the report, claiming that it was based on bad science. Not content with this claim, according to Andy Coghlan writing in the NewScientist (May 3, 2003, page 13), the sugar barons wanted the US government to flex its political and financial muscles and withhold the $406 million which the US government annually donate to WHO.
Eric Schlosser in his well-known book Fast Food Nation, found out that the taste one associates with food outlets does not come from the potatoes, onions, or beef but from artificial, food flavouring. Much of it is supplied by factories in New Jersey such as International Flavors and Fragrance, the world's biggest flavour company. Many of these chemicals have a negative impact on our health.
Another reason for avoiding French fries as much as possible emerged from a study by the Swedish National Food Administration. It found that a cancer-causing chemical – acrylamide - is formed when starchy foods like potatoes are exposed to high temperatures.