Derrick Z. Jackson, a syndicated columnist based in Boston: New York Times News Service
Published August 22, 2005

National Public Radio, which Republicans love to flog for "liberal bias," began a discussion this week about gasoline conservation with: "When you go to McDonald's or Wendy's, park the car, get out, go in and buy your hamburger instead of sitting at the window, letting it idle."

How American. Get out of the car to save gas. I figure if that happened on the "liberal airwaves," it demonstrates how junk-food marketers have conquered the national psyche. This is ironic because the majority of major fast-food chains, including McDonald's, Wendy's, Burger King, Pizza Hut, Domino's, KFC, Taco Bell and their lobbying arms, the National Restaurant Association and the American Beverage Association, give the vast majority of their political contributions to GOP causes. They are the very causes that keep trying to deep-six NPR and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Since 1990, the food and beverage industry and its executives have given $247 million to Republicans and $110 million to Democrats.

More important, the politicians do the industry's bidding to enact bans on obesity lawsuits; defeat or water down attempts to provide healthier meals and drinks in schools; and decry any limitations on marketing. The National Restaurant Association, with GOP Sens. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Rick Santorum and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, and John Cornyn of Texas in its pocket, held a news conference in June at which association President Steven Anderson said food establishments "should not be blamed for issues of personal responsibility and freedom of choice."

The rhetoric of "choice" is meant to obscure obesity's 112,000 deaths a year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That is nearly three times more than the toll from drugs and alcohol. The toll is sure to worsen as adult obesity has doubled since 1980 to 30 percent. The direct health-care costs of obesity have zoomed to $75 billion in 2003 from $52 billion in 1995.

The health-care costs are half that of those attributed to smoking, and the gap is closing.

The costs have resulted in a flurry of action this summer in Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Louisiana, Missouri, New Jersey, North Carolina, Rhode Island and Virginia, where boards of education, legislative bodies and governors approved or called for a range of anti-obesity measures to limit or ban junk food in schools.

Junk-food lobbyists worked hard to avoid total bans and scored one major victory in June when Gov. M. Jodi Rell of Connecticut vetoed a statewide ban on unhealthy snacks and sodas in schools. Rell, after being pounded by $250,000 of industry lobbying, said the issue should be left up to local districts.

In an effort to avoid full-scale bans, the American Beverage Association announced last week that it recommends that elementary schools eliminate soda, that middle schools withhold full-sugar soda until after school and that high school vending machines be no more than 50 percent soda.

That is a smokescreen to distract us from the overall annual advertising assault of $11.2 billion by the food, beverage, candy and restaurant industries on our children, teens and young adults. That amount rivals what President Bush spends on the No Child Left Behind Act.

As if to make up for losses in the schools, Hardee's has come out with a 1,400-calorie Monster Thickburger, Wendy's has ushered in a 1,000-calorie triple cheeseburger, Burger King has created the 730-calorie Enormous Omelet to compete with McDonald's 1,190-calorie Deluxe Breakfast, and Pizza Hut has come up with the 2,240-calorie Full House XL pizza. Ruby Tuesday's has issued an Ultimate Colossal Burger worth 1,780 calories.

Those monstrosities deliver double the calories from fat recommended by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Despite its pretense of caring about the nation's youth, the American Beverage Association knows it has hard-wired America to drown the salt and grease with sugar. Some of these burgers, with fries and a large soda, approach or crack the 2,000-calorie barrier.

That is a day's recommended intake for many Americans and far exceeds the daily average calorie intake for people in Afghanistan, Congo, Eritrea and Somalia, according to the United Nations. As junk food kills us slowly with decadence, a quarter of the children of Niger die before their fifth birthday, largely because of malnutrition. We indeed should tell Americans how to save gasoline. One way is not to drive to McDonald's or Wendy's.

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