OBESITY Fast-food foe says message is being heard
His idea of creating a tax on junk food is starting to spur debate.
By JEANNINE STEIN
LOS ANGELES TIMES
Kelly Brownell's crusade against fast food has made him persona non grata among industry lobbyists and restaurant associations but a hero to some obesity researchers and legislators.
They agree with Brownell, who is director of Yale University's Center for Eating and Weight Disorders, that just saying no to fattening foods and supersize portions isn't enough to combat escalating obesity rates.
"If you picked up the American food environment," says Brownell, "with its fast-food restaurants, the kinds of foods served in schools, food advertising and the lost cost of snack foods, and transplanted it to a country where there is very little obesity, you'd have an obesity problem."
Brownell is the coauthor of "Food Fight: The Inside Story of the Food Industry, America's Obesity Crisis, and What We Can Do About it," (Contemporary Books, 2003), which argues that the food industry and the organizations and people who support it must shoulder a large part of the blame for the U.S. obesity problem.
Advocates a tax
Besides fast-food restaurants, Brownell blasts food companies that pander to children, celebrities who endorse sugary and fat-laden foods, and schools that allow vending machines stocked with chips, cookies and soda. He also advocates a tax on junk foods and using the money generated for children's nutrition programs.
Brownell acknowledges that people need to take personal responsibility for their expanding girth -- but only to a point: "Our default reaction to most problems is to ask people to change," he said. "But people who have used that as the battle cry for obesity have had their chance and failed utterly. Something more has to be done, and the nation deserves an environment where it's easy for people to be personally responsible."
His book follows similar literary wake-up calls, including Eric Schlosser's "Fast Food Nation" and Greg Critser's "Fat Land." Brownell's distinctive views are familiar to many who specialize in food or obesity issues; he's been advocating taxes on junk food for years while suffering sneers from those who think his ideas are just plain nutty.
But as Brownell travels the country he's beginning to sense a shift in attitudes: "When I first started talking about this stuff, people went crazy," he says. "The biggest change is the issue of taxing food -- not that people are crazy about it, but they've gone from antagonistic to debating about it."
People are more open to his ideas, Brownell believes, because of the overwhelming evidence about the consequences of obesity, especially on children: "People have begun to see how children have been victimized. We've created this environment that is destined to make our children sick." A 2000 federal survey concluded that 15 percent of children ages 6 to 11 are overweight, more than double the rate in 1980.