 America’s new diet: Less sprawl,
less fat, less frenzy.
By Ellen Creager
(Public Access Journalism)
If you’re an American, the statistics say you’re out of shape — and
you don’t need another study to tell you why. Your life is high in
stress and calories and low in free time and physical activity.
With two-thirds of adults overweight and 25 percent barely moving, the
shape of America is not good. But now, experts looking at the bigger
picture are becoming more convinced it’s not all your fault. Obesity,
they say, is not really caused by that extra Oreo. It’s the result of
urban sprawl, a frenetic lifestyle and global food policy.
And for the first time, public health, zoning, transportation,
fitness, education, government, legal and business interests have
aligned in determination to stop the runaway train of national
disrepair.
These experts envision a time when more people will walk briskly to
their destinations amid trees and shops, when gaggles of school
children will trot home from school, energized by their daily PE
classes. They see homes built not in distant, sprawling subdivisions,
but in walkable towns and cities. They see more people eating fresh
vegetables and fruits at family tables and fewer guzzling giant sodas
and 800-calorie burgers. “Right now, we have to realize that as a society, 80 percent of people
are not ready to change,” says Michael O’Donnell, editor of the
American Journal of Health Promotion. “But if there are things in our
society that are causing this, we need to figure out what they are and
change them.” There is groundswell movement to do both.
This spring, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty proposed making federal food
stamps worthless for junk food. Congress allocated $60 million to
boost physical education programs for children. A program called “Safe
Routes to Schools,” designed to get students walking, may get federal
funding this year. A lawsuit by two obese teens against McDonald’s
dismissed earlier this year has been filed again, based on the claim
that the company hid nutritional facts from consumers.
In recent months, the Internal Revenue Service designated obesity as a
disease and expanded a medical tax deduction for weight-loss programs.
Many school districts have banned soft drinks and snacks in vending
machines, even though it will cost them much-needed revenue. The state
of Maine is considering a broad anti-obesity bill to add physical
education classes and build more walking paths and bike routes. Under
intense scrutiny, federal nutritional guidelines for school lunches
and the food pyramid are being revised, with new versions set to come
out in 2005. “It’s snowballing,” says John Loving, public policy director for the
Sporting Goods Manufacturers of America, of the movement. “It’s
finally in the public eye.”
Yet the all-out effort has detractors. Restaurants and the food
industry are on the defensive, saying they are being unfairly blamed
for diners’ sedentary habits and big portions. Others say eating and
exercising should not be the province of a meddlesome “nanny”
government.
“Government has sunk its teeth into this issue with the gusto of the
famished devouring a juicy steak,” complained free-market analyst
Daniel Hager, writing for the Mackinac Center for Public Policy.
“Obesity should disappear as a public policy issue.”
Many agree, including two-thirds of the residents of Michigan, the
country’s most overweight state. A recent survey commissioned by
Michigan State University found only one-third of respondents believed
that overweight and obese citizens should be public health concerns;
the rest would prefer government and the health care industry stay out
of their eating and exercise habits.
“The health community and the government are saying this is a huge
public problem, but people see this as more of a personal concern,
more about individual choices, not something that impacts all of us,”
said report investigator Beth Olson, a Michigan State University
assistant professor.
But, says Mark Fenton, host of PBS’ “America’s Walking,” “the people
who make the ‘personal responsibility’ argument are usually white,
wealthy and well-educated. And they don’t have the personal experience
of not having a club membership, running shoes, exercise gear and not
being able to exercise at home. Not to mention the experience of
living in a community where kids can walk on the streets and not be
shot.”
Still, frustrating examples bolster the position of those who believe
obesity is beyond the reach of government. First, there is the
puzzling paradox that the more nutrition information the public gets,
the fatter it gets. The well-intended food pyramid backfired, with
citizens gobbling too many carbohydrates. “Eat low-fat” advice led to
misguided Americans pounding down boxes of “lite” treats in one
sitting. Fickle exercise guidelines have confused the public.
An ambitious project uniting federal, state and nonprofit agencies,
called “Healthy People 2000,” failed to reduce obesity rates in a
single state between 1990 and 2000. And government pressure for more
rigid academic focus in local schools had the unintended consequence
of cutting recess and physical education, the very things that experts
say can keep children slim and fit.
But the new alliance of public policy experts is determined to make
more focused, sweeping changes to encourage active living. They point
to successful government efforts to cut smoking rates, reduce drunk
driving and increase seat belt use. Why can’t obesity be fought — and
overcome — the same way?
“We need to make environments in which the prevailing circumstances at
least assist you in doing the right things instead of discouraging
you,” says walking advocate Fenton.
“Whatever gets the money gets the cures,” says Chuck Corbin, professor
of exercise and wellness at Arizona State University in Tempe. “There
has never been a large-scale effort to promote a healthy lifestyle.”
But unlike fighting tobacco or just saying no to drunk driving, “The
issue here is, we don’t have a particular enemy. It’s us against
ourselves,” says Richard Killingsworth, director of Active Living by
Design at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, a national
program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
Economists say rising obesity rates are more about workplace and food
trends than laziness or gluttony. This spring, a paper released by the
National Bureau for Economic Research connected an estimated 68
percent increase in obesity rates to the rise in the number of working
women. Women get heavier because they sit at their computers all day,
the reasoning went, and their families get fat because they’re eating
less home cooking and more fast food.
Last year, two RAND Corp. economists, Darius Lakdawalla and Tomas
Philipson, came up with a slightly different twist — the rise in
obesity rates over the past two decades is 60 percent due to sedentary
jobs and 40 percent due to cheap, plentiful food.
Plans for restoring an active population require changes in both. And
by looking at broader factors in the American environment, it may be
possible to make changes on a larger and more permanent scale, say
experts.
Peter Jacobson, an associate professor of public health at the
University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, predicts the most likely policy
changes will be in food labeling and advertising, food ingredients, a
stronger public information campaign by the government, and changes in
school nutrition and physical education.
Squelching urban sprawl also may play a role. When researchers from Rutgers University and the Centers for Disease
Control recently analyzed development, transportation and health data,
they found a link between urban sprawl and obesity. The idea was to
study whether people who live in counties with walkable neighborhoods
really walk more and weigh less than their car-dependent counterparts
who live in spread-out areas.
“The study is exciting because it is one of the first to bring
together national data from the fields of urban planning and public
health,” says Barbara McCann, project manager and Smart Growth
director of information and research, “and it shows a clear
association between the way the community is built and the weight, as
measured by Body Mass Index, of the people who live there.”
Another piece of the puzzle is food policy. Writer Greg Critser,
author of “Fat Land” (Houghton Mifflin, 2003), connected the widening
of Americans to the 1970s advent of cheap corn syrup sweetener. That
one event helped swell the number of available snack foods from 250 in
the 1970s to 2,000 today.
Cries for changes in food policy also have come from national advocacy
groups like the Center for Science in the Public Interest, which wants
a controversial tax on non-nutritious foods. Local communities are
fighting to get more fresh produce into schools and inner-city
markets, make fast-food labeling more specific and educate the public
to eat smaller portions.
Thrown onto the defensive, PepsiCo — whose biggest product is
fat-laden Fritos — went out and hired Kenneth Cooper, father of
aerobics, to help it promote “nutrition, fitness and wellness.” Kraft
Foods, whose Altria Group sibling is tobacco giant Philip Morris,
announced grants to fight obesity and in January rejected a television
ad for Double Stuf Oreo cookies because it portrayed teens as too
sedentary.
But the National Restaurant Association bristled that the “food
police” should not be wagging fingers at dining patrons. Indicating
how seriously they are taking this trend, the grocery and food
industry created the “American Council on Fitness and Nutrition” and
the “Center for Consumer Freedom” to fight more extreme ideas.
A third, large-scale front in the obesity wars is the “active living”
trend. Both fitness professionals and urban planners believe it is
healthier in the long run for people to be naturally active in their
daily lives rather than trying to set aside hours in already full days
specifically to exercise. Right now, 75 percent of all trips less than
a mile are taken by car. And only one American in 200 rides a bicycle
to work.
Physical activity rates have remained constant over the past 20 years,
experts say. About 25 percent of people are physically active. Another
50 percent do a little activity. And 25 percent do virtually nothing. Getting that middle 50 percent to move more during the normal course
of a day would be more effective in cutting obesity rates in the long
run than nagging people to go to the gym, planners say.
But how? Killingsworth is running a pilot program following 25
communities that will attempt to incorporate activity into daily life.
Planners already know that mixing businesses, homes and apartment
complexes, slow traffic, tree-lined sidewalks and real destinations
can entice walkers and cyclists. But it takes more than that.
“The dilemma is, most people are suburbanites who don’t know any other
behavior than driving,” Killingsworth says “They have to go through a
cultural relearning.”
“We can promote bicycling and walking until we are blue in the face,”
says Andy Clarke, executive director of the Association of Pedestrian
and Bicycle Professionals, “but unless the government takes the
position they prefer people to walk and bike then we won’t make the
political decisions necessary.”
There is some stirring in the nation’s capital. In the 2004 budget,
President Bush asked Congress for $125 million to promote a
“HealthierUS” plan to fight obesity and other chronic diseases. The
$100 million increase would fund state and local projects; one goal
would be to prevent 100,000 Americans from becoming obesity statistics
next year. But battle-scarred planners are setting their sights farther down the
road. Because change on this scale takes decades, they believe
initiatives to help children have the best likelihood of gaining
public support. Most urgent for future generations, Corbin says, is for states and
local school districts to return to regular recess and PE. More
importantly, the focus should be on teaching kids how to be fit for
life.
“Things can improve,” Corbin says. “But you don’t change habits in 15
minutes that have taken 50 years of bad behavior to establish. “Can the government do something? The answer, I think, is yes,” Corbin
says. “The question is what? One lesson we can take from tobacco is
you need to change social norms. Without adequate resources, it will
take at least a generation.”
But for experts and advocates who have been waiting for the national
wakeup call, the time is here.
“Right now, we’ve got a lot more interest and a little more money,”
for tackling the issue, says James Corless of the Surface
Transportation Policy Project. “If real change comes, it will not come
from government. It will come from the ground up.”
———
Ellen Creager is a health and fitness writer for the Detroit Free
Press.
———
(c) 2003, The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.
> Western-style consumption worldwide fuels 'globesity'
> Seven plans to get America moving
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