Holding Food Accountable
Jenson Hagen
I go to the bars and I find that no one can smoke inside anymore. I think we are all now quite familiar with the reasons for moving this type of prohibition forward. We are fully aware of the health consequences, and we are trying to minimize the impact to (1) non-smokers and (2) smokers themselves that are continuing with the habit despite the health warnings. Should we renew efforts to raise cigarette taxes high enough to offset the indirect and direct costs that smokers bear upon us all?
More importantly, should we begin a social effort to have everyone also realize the health consequences of eating certain foods? We seem to blithely ignore how a diet high in fructose, low in fiber, high in animal fats and low in micronutrients can lead to heart disease, type II diabetes, cancer, obesity and many other health problems. We are busy! Processed foods are easy and taste good. Let's not think about the health consequences until disease is upon us.
Our food supply has become the number one cause of disease in this country. I just watched for free online the movie Future of Food, noting how so many species of food have died off because we no longer grow them. We have traded biodiversity for generic, cheap farming methods. We need to continue our efforts to force food manufacturers to label genetically-modified food. We tried with Ballot Measure 27, but we were defeated. Support your local farmer and farmer's markets!
It's time that we hold certain foods accountable, just like we have with cigarettes.
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1:11 p.m.
Aug 12, '09
There are some interesting questions here. To me, the question "should we?" is as interesting as "how?"
We should restrain the impulse to come up with complex and confusing bad-food tax rules that merely encourage food manufacturers to exploit loopholes and create a new cottage industry for lobbyists.
Let me propose a simple idea: tax corn syrup. It features prominently in "bad" food and has a small number of manufacturers.
1:19 p.m.
Aug 12, '09
Kari,
Look at how we have gone about building public awareness against smoking. Can't we simply duplicate that effort against the types of foods I've mentioned?
Also, corn syrup is not much of a problem since it's glucose and that's what every cell in our body runs off. When researchers began converting glucose into fructose in the late 1970's and then putting high-fructose corn syrup in every processed food imaginable beginning in the 1980's, that's when you start to see obesity take off in this country.
1:52 p.m.
Aug 12, '09
Jensen - Have you read "In defense of Food?" The author makes a pretty compelling case that the rise in obesity is linked to more generally to a rise in the consumption of carbs, coupled with what he refers to as "Nutritionism", which is the ideology of food manufacturing and food science that encourages us not to think about food as food, but rather as a delivery system for certain nutrients.
Milk, he points out, is not merely a liquid suspension of calcium, protein, some vitamins, and animal fat, but thinking about it as such allows us to move away from consuming fewer things that are actually healthy -- vegetables, legumes, and so on -- and consuming more processed food-like substances such as sugary cereals or gogurt, which can make some fantastic claims about their nutritional benefits.
The FDA, he points out, will soon be putting its stamp of approval on certain Frito Lay chips on the seemingly thin premise their consumption may decrease the consumption of less healthy chips.
The main takeaway of the book is given away in the first paragraph: "Eat food, not too much, mostly plants."
Aug 12, '09
Far lefty Kari's solution to everything thing? TAX it!
Sooooo, if taxing "bad food" would curtail its use why doesn't taxing business curtail its use? (greedy job makers and all)
Hypocrites? OverTax cigs and bad food so less will use it admitting it will cost too much BUT then tax Hospitals, Doctors and business making them cost more and that is a good thing? Hello!
Gee I wonder if Big Brother is taking care of all your health care needs then a ban on all bad food will have to happen next? And a ban on all alcohol as well.
Next? People that do not sleep 8 hours a night will be penalized for not taking better care of their bodies.
YOU ADMIT PAYING MORE TO BIG BROTHER IS A NEGATIVE NOT A POSITIVE activity folks, yet you always support it?!.
2:02 p.m.
Aug 12, '09
Rick - Most of the hospital providers in the state supported the continuation of that tax because it raised funding needed to trigger more than a billion dollars in Federal funding.
Every dollar raised through the state tax will bring in $1.66 in federal funding, according to a study commissioned by the Oregon Health Fund Board.
Aug 12, '09
I always get a good laugh over Mr. Hagen's posts, and this one is no exception. As I was reading it, I suddenly pictured the restaurants on 23rd being required to erect a separate little outside eating area - not less than 10 feet from the doorway - where foie gras and other evil but tasty foods could be served, away from the sensitive eyes and noses of the inside dining crowd. Perhaps they could combine the foie gras area with with the smoking area. Never tried smoking foie gras. And if they outlaw foie gras, I wonder if we can get medical foie gras cards? Hmmm
Aug 12, '09
Great, the food nazi is back. You can have my pastrami sandwich when you can get past the 1911 in my other fist.
Aug 12, '09
Taxing poor people for eating cheap food is a truly terrible idea.
And smoking is banned in bars, not for health reasons, but rather because non-smokers are offended by the smell of smoke (and smokers). If beer smelled that bad, it would be banned too.
But on the upside, tobacco is easy to grow here in Oregon, and it's tax free.
Aug 12, '09
An interesting set of suggestions. But, data also points to the ever decreasing amount of aerobic activity and the declining caloric output of individuals here in the US. There is a corresponding need for 'clean' power.
How about we have every person report their hieght/weight/body mass and lifestyle to the central planning authority? that way THEY can decide what out optimal weight should be given our body style and height. Then it would be simple to assign a daily set of minimum aerobic outputs required of each individual.
Then, THEY could set up regular kiosks of aerobic activity machines which each individual could input their SSN into in order to get daily credit for producing the minimum required aerobic activity. The machines could be hooked up to static generators and produce 'clean' ebergy for the state. Those over producing could gain credits for days when they felt like not working out.
We could then run contests to see who or what group could produce the greatest amount of energy for the State. Winners could indulge in all the junk food they wanted.
Aug 12, '09
Jenson, you really need to deal privately with your therapist with your character development problems around control issues. That is advice that applies equally to you too Kari. There is a tone and content to your comments that bespeaks a lower level of character development then is appropriate for your apparent age.
Of course, these two are not alone. We have a serious problem that a large segment of NW "Blue" community is made up of people who who consistently express immature desires to determine (and express with abandon) what is best for others, as well as to advocate and otherwise work to control them accordingly. We all need to be clear that these impulses and behavior have absolutely nothing to do with being progressive or the values that define the Democratic Party.
In Jansen's and Kari's case, it is the same desire to control behaviors that could impact health that private insurance companies express and act on. It is also the case that if insurance companies were human beings rather than artificial persons, they would be diagnosed as being clinically psychotic and institutionalized as a danger to themselves and others.
Furthermore, it is those with mental health issues around improper desires to control others such as these two and their cohorts exhibit that are as problematic in our battles to pursue responsible, progressive, and dare I say adult, solutions for environmental protection, health care, economic stability --- you name it --- as their similarly challenged counterparts on the other side.
Jansen, Kari, and those who share their problem, the one thing that you may respond to in your troubled state is this: On the one hand, when you talk as you do, you just egg on the lunatics on the other side. On the other hand, despite what you almost certainly believe, you come across just as batshit crazy as they do.
Aug 12, '09
Taxing bad foods is one thing (nanny state? no thanks.), but we actively subsidize the ingredients of our junk food. I'm sure other posters here know more on the specifics than I, and will correct me if I am wrong, but I believe we subsidize wheat, corn, and dairy. Well, yes, all those are fine things but we get starchy foods, high-fructose sugars, and fat from those things. Stop subsidizing them, and junk foods like ice cream, candy bars, and pizza go up in price. Milk, bread, and other staples become more expensive, too, but maybe the benefits outweigh the negatives.
Aug 13, '09
Great idea -- micro manage every aspect of everyone's lives.
When are you going to dictate sexual positions?
Aug 13, '09
Well, this is how the Democrats will lose the next few cycles. By taking an elitist "we know best" attitude and justifying the fears of the political middle in that we do indeed want to ban anything fun or tasty.
We would absolutely flip out if the Republicans proposed any kind of limitation on people's personal habits, but it seems like every time Mr. Hagen reads a new book or watches a new documentary, the intelligensia here can't wait to justify a limitation on personal activity.
There's a pro-choice bumper sticker that I like that says: "Don't support abortion? Don't have one!"
So I'll just paraphrase that as my central response: "Don't like processed food? Don't eat it!"
By all means, please do continue to educate and advise on healthy habits... but until there's a risk of me getting cancer at a restaurant from someone else's second-hand mayonaise... just keep your mitts off my food, please.
Aug 13, '09
As far as I know, there is no safe way to use tobacco products. Being around smoke is unhealthy, and I think it is reasonable to preserve public spaces for the majority that don't wish to be exposed.
This is not true with food. Food that is unhealthy to some, can be perfectly fine for others. For example, I know someone who is on a ketogenic diet in order to help manage seizures. If I ate a diet that was 4 to 1 fats to proteins/carbs, it would not be so awesome. In the case of food, I think it is the specific use that is unhealthy, not the food itself. I think that to tax it in order to influence people's eating habits would be unfair to those who's eating habits would not benefit and could even suffer from this influence. (Poor people who eat a lot of cheap food and would otherwise eat less of it certainly fit into this category).
Aug 13, '09
Jenson and Kari are on the right track again. I think we easily fix this problem by having people report to the local IRS department in their undies for an annual fat tax assessement. The really big porkers will have to pay a fine but that should teach them a lesson.
It will be a little more difficult to figure out exactly what types of food the fatties have been eating but I suppose we could equip the IRS agents with rubber gloves and sample jars in order to gather up the evidence.
Better watch out Kari, based on your picture I'm thinking you'll be needing to pay a fatty fine yourself. Maybe you have time to listen to a lecture from Jenson and change your ways before the IRS program gets started.
I'm sure that Obama will support this new program. He loves taxes and he loves anything that imposes government controls over people. So this should be a natural fit with the rest of his program. So I think it is a go boys. Pull the brown boots out of the closet, lets round up the fatties and herd them down to the IRS office for their weigh in.
Aug 13, '09
This is hilarious -- somebody is punking BO by posting this over-the-top nanny state nonsense as a real article.
"Holding food accountable" -- because people don't eat food, food gets eaten by people!
Last time I heard this concept of blaming inanimate objects for human decisions, it was an alcoholic singing "long neck bottle, let go of my hand!"
Aug 13, '09
Comrade Hagen,
I think the best solution to this problem would be to nationalize stores. Stores would then prepare and pre-package meals made specifically to meet all Federal requirements for health and nutrition.
So, instead of the consumer going to a store and shopping for individual ingredients for a particular meal. They would simply purchase a Meal Plan. All the meals would be prepared and proportioned in a healthy manner by a Federal agency, and then need to just be heated up by a consumer for consumption.
The "Freedoms" people currently have to engage in un-healthy eating habits needs to end - and the way to accomplish this is by controlling the distribution points.
Solidarity, Vitaly Yurchenko
Aug 13, '09
"You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink Perrier," is pretty much the way I look at it. While I disagree with many other posters on your motives; I think it's a sincere desire for a more healthy populace and not an 'unhealthy urge to control other's behaviors,' I see no simple or easy way to get people to eat better.
In fact my love of butter, bacon and sausage might put me in the group one might think needs dietary correction. I disagree. Everything in moderation is my approach.
Probably the best thing a person could do is cook healthy, good tasting meals for their children. Once you've been raised on good, home grown, fresh, healthy food as I have, there is no going to the other side. Be a good example for your children.
Aug 13, '09
Jenson, your heart is probably in the right place, but, this statement comes across as tone deaf to even me, a lefter than left N. Europe model social dem.
Do you know how many people there are that are forced to eat what they can find coupons for and what their local supermarkets put on special to keep from going hungry?
Don't even start the "healthy cheap bulk food" lecture. If you are not a cook with a couple years experience, you can't make bulk natural foods edible over a long period of time without spending a fortune on spices/condiments and hours cooking each day in a full kitchen.
High fructose corn syrup seems to be the current trendy villain. Go find something to drink a kid will drink (and won't vomit back up, throw at the closest wall, their brother, etc.) that doesn't have high fructose corn syrup in it. Lemme guess... something from Trader Joe's that costs $2+ a serving?
See where this is going? Slow food is a nice concept, but the only people it's practical for are the same people who already pay others to do their laundry, housework, etc.
Aug 13, '09
Unrepentant Liberal "Probably the best thing a person could do is cook healthy, good tasting meals for their children"
And if a person doesn't have a stay home spouse, or a trust fund so that they can walk away from any full time job that starts to require employees work more than a 40 hour week for their salary?
Because if you have to work more than an 8 hour day, forget any those ideas about getting home to cook a healthy meal for the kids. You're gonna be cooking, at best, something that goes in the category, prepared food, calling Pizza Hut...
3:36 p.m.
Aug 13, '09
TAX ALL MEAT AND DAIRY!
This ends my vegan-fascist part of the day.
Aug 13, '09
Because tobacco is not a food a more appropriate comparison is with trans-fats. New York City instituted a bad on these as ingredients in resturants several years ago. Recall, these are vegetable oils that when exposed to high temperatures undergo a small change in their chemical structure. this allows them to be semi-solid (like butter) at room temperature. Trans-fats do not naturally occur in animal or vegetable products, and according to scientific reports, their consumption raises the LDL cholesterol (the bad stuff) and puts one at increased risk for coronary heart disease (a leading cause of death in the US).
It turns out that most people actually want to avoid high cholesterol and heart attacks at 35. So having trans fats listed in the ingredients of prepared foods became really bad marketing - and the converse statement is prominently found on food labels now. It turns out that fructose sweeteners also tend to elevate LDL cholesterol and triglycerides in the blood... a somewhat similar effect to trans fats. Our consumption of these trans fats has gone way down, and i believe the same public attitudes are emerging with high-fructose corn syrup.
So should we regulate these "foods"? Of course the one exception to this is when eating out - you don't always know what is in your food. As trans fats were disappearing from shelves of the supermarket, their use was continuing in restaurants. When New York City banned trans fats in restaurants there was quite a political battle that I believe involved a lawsuit with the National Restaurant Association. However, this municipal law eventually prevailed and it might be a good model to use against high fructose corn syrup. One important result of this is that it got a lot of publicity and more than any dry scientific report helped people to realize that consuming trans fats, even though they are cheap and taist yummy, is not healthy. Also note, this was not a tax... but an out right ban.
Some of the previous posts illustrate how unpopular it is for the government to be regulating what we eat. But honestly, if those same people (and their kids) are going to expect to be taken care of public funds (i.e. medicare) when they are over weight and unhealthy, then I don't want to have to pay for their stupidity. It is much better to use what we have gained from the huge amount of scientific research that we have done on foods to implement some policy that will result in healthier kids and cheaper medical costs down the line.
10:07 a.m.
Aug 14, '09
jamie said:
That's been going on for a long, long time. Laws against sodomy are still on the books in many places, and yes, they do apply to heterosexuals.
That said, Jensen never managed to deal with the proven relationship between obesity and poverty in his last food fascism post, and neither his more recent "solution" or Kari's corny tax strategy make any account for how poor people are supposed to pay for their food.
Aug 14, '09
"... how poor people are supposed to pay for their food."
And that's a common shortcoming, I think, among our Democratic activists.
It's a fine thing for a person to be able to live in the Pearl District and work Downtown and thusly ride a bike to work every day. But when I explained to a anti-car activist recently, I live too far from work to ride my bike. His solution? I should simply move.
And here we have another stellar proposal: that people should simply take time to shop for raw (and more expensive) food at farmer's markets instead of focusing on convenience.
Jenson casually acknowledges the cry of "We are busy" as a mild speedbump on the road to health... But the "busy" for a lot of families may be a few extra hours of overtime that determines whether they eat a particular meal at all.
Most low-income people I know are not unaware of the health effects of cheap, fast, processed food. It's not that people are ignorant -- it's just what makes financial sense.
Until we address wage disparities, labor conditions, and a health care system that rewards late treatment of the resulting conditions rather than preventative care... this is going to be an issue.
Anything else is just patronizing.
Side note: I was impressed when Governor Kulongoski purchased his meals on a food stamp budget for one week. Perhaps someone in his office can remind us whether there were any nutritional issues at hand?
Aug 14, '09
It is much better to use what we have gained from the huge amount of scientific research that we have done on foods to implement some policy that will result in healthier kids and cheaper medical costs down the line.
Here's betting Chris Olson doesn't have a clue what the scientific research does and does say about food and health. I highly recommend MIchael Pollan's "In Defense of Food" for a readable, popularized account by a professor of journalism who is hardly a righty to first get a good perspective on what the science does and doesn't say about food and health as a starting point for a political debate on the matter.
The real question here, though, is about Chris Olson's real agenda when he jumps from the effects on health of food products produced by our corporatized food system to a right-libertarian nutjob rant about not wanting to pay for health care for low income people.
All in all one of those comments that are a facade of seeming lucidity, but that doesn't quite hold together long enough masks a disturbed value system.
And DSS while I agree with the values you seemingly express in all of your comments, you too go off the rails in your last paragraph for unknown reasons. Kulogonski's little stunt was pure, disgusting politics. A closer look at much of his administration reveals positions and initiatives which advance the agenda of the corporate interests Blue Doggish Democrats like him actually represents over working people. The truth has to be faced that poor people and children are as much as not just props for him. One actually can't help but wonder if his value system is so scrambled he doesn't even fully know what he is doing. (remember this is the guy who supported Bush's Iraq war and snarled in polite NW passive-aggressive way at Democrats who called him to account for that.0
Aug 17, '09
Leave out the sin-tax argument. I think everyone is missing the most important point of the article. If we simply mandated labeling of food, consumers can make up their own mind. They can make a fully informed decision to eat things that may or may not be bad for them. But there is no point of origin labeling enforced in this country, and the term "organic" has been watered down by the FDA to the point that it barely resembles it's original intent. This is one of those cases where I think the market will force the companies to make healthier decisions, not the government telling them to make healthier food or pay a tax for the fat content.
Aug 17, '09
Obama needs to roll out his Food Reform plan, and fast.
How will we know what foods we should buy and which ones we shouldn't unless the feds take over food production?
We need a Public Option where government approved foods are sold to us at a reduced rate.
So what if food manufacturers go out of business? They deserve to because they have made us unhealthy by forcing us to eat Haagen Dazs and Cheezits for lunch.
Aug 17, '09
DSS wrote:
"Until we address wage disparities"
I hope you're not suggesting that the government should decide how much each person should or should not earn.
Do you really want it to take an act of Congress to get a raise?
What if too many people apply for the 'good jobs'? Should government also decide how many people can and cannot be hired for these positions?
People are not the helpless drones that liberals suppose them to be.
People that want to earn more, can do so. They can 'moonlight' on a second job. They can start a business, either 'on the side' or in place of their current position. Lots of possibilities are open to people who are willing to work hard and not settle for what they have now.