Shepard Nevel is vice president of policy and evaluation for the Colorado Health Foundation.
Sometimes a call to battle can lead to victory for both sides. In the case of the food and beverage industry, and the marketing of unhealthy food to children that contributes to our nation's obesity epidemic, the free market may be cultivating a common-ground solution where industry, profit, job creation and health converge.
Like the rest of the nation, Colorado is experiencing an obesity epidemic. One out of every five Colorado adults is obese. In just four years, Colorado's childhood obesity rate plummeted from third leanest in the nation to 23rd. A new study estimates the cost of obesity to Colorado at $1.6 billion in 2009 alone, as the Colorado Health Institute's Emily King reported.
More than one-quarter of the increase in health care costs nationally can be attributed to the obesity epidemic, including 38 percent of the increased spending on diabetes and 41 percent of increased spending on heart disease, according to research by Kenneth Thorpe and colleagues published in Health Affairs magazine.
Among the many factors complicating the fight against obesity is the marketing of unhealthy food and beverages to children through network and cable television and new media.
According to a study by the Federal Trade Commission, food and beverage companies spend more than $1.6 billion per year on marketing their products to children and adolescents. Nearly 60 percent of those marketing dollars are spent on carbonated beverages, candy, frozen desserts and other products that tend to be high in calories, sugar and saturated fat.
The National Academy of Science's Institute of Medicine has reported "strong evidence" that television advertising influences the food and beverage purchase requests of children ages 2 to 11, as well as their short-term food consumption. The institute concluded that food and beverage marketing to children and adolescents are "out of balance with healthful diets and contribute to an environment that puts their health at risk."
When the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other federal agencies developed – at the direction of Congress – voluntary nutritional standards for food and beverages marketed to children, food and advertising industries launched what the Washington Post described as a "multi-pronged campaign to squash" the effort, portraying the guidelines as "job-killing, government overreach."
So it seems that two compelling interests are colliding – the rising public health and economic concerns about the obesity epidemic and the sizeable political influence and importance to our economy of the food and beverage industry.
While this battle will continue, there is reason for optimism that the free market, driven by consumer demand and the creative entrepreneurship that drives our economy, can reconcile industry profit and public health.
A report by the Hudson Institute's Obesity Solutions Initiative analyzed several of the largest food and beverage companies and found that healthier products (described in the report as "better for you") accounted for nearly three-fourths of sales growth. The Institute's director, Hank Cardello, a former food and beverage company executive, says the focus should be on the business not moral argument – the profitability of healthier products. He notes that many food, beverage and restaurant corporations are "making their profits and doing what's better for their customer's well-being." Cardello says "it's time that the food companies take custodianship over their customer's health and well-being. The only way to engage the food industry in helping is to show them how to make a profit while doing the right thing."
Others are making the business argument as well.
A global market review of health convenience food in 2012, published by Research and Markets, forecasts that the on-the-go health food market will reach a value of $74.9 billion in the U.S. by 2012 and concludes that the "food industry can no longer ignore the convenient and health food market. It has fantastic growth and profit potential for...manufacturers, retailers and suppliers."
While important policy and regulatory issues will continue to drive differences between health advocates and the food and beverage industry, encouraging and supporting the industry's shift toward healthier products and healthier profits offers fertile ground for consensus in the campaign against obesity.
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