Fat is a foreigner's issue
The bosses of US food companies are finally beginning to realise they have played a part in making America the most obese society on the planet
Stefano Hatfield
Thursday July 10, 2003
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It's difficult not to stare. I'm sorry, I know I shouldn't. My American friends scold me for having the temerity to notice. Yet those same friends accuse Europeans of being unwashed and smelly, with bad hair and teeth.
But it's 96 degrees today in Manhattan (feels like 105) and, when the sun comes out, New Yorkers shed their clothes.
You try not to stare. I'm not ogling babes in SoHo, by the way. No sir. Leave that to the tourists. That way lawsuits lie. No, for me, fat is a foreigner's issue.
This week Kraft, America's largest food company, announced it was to entirely rethink the way it produced, packaged and marketed its products, reducing fat and calories and even - this is the big one - portion sizes.
Other food companies are expected to follow suit.
"Suit" is a key word. Consumer activists, fresh from their many legal victories over the tobacco industry, are increasingly beginning to turn their ire on the trillion dollar food industry.
Already this year there was the high-profile case in which McDonald's had to fend off a lawsuit from disgruntled obese customers and Oreos had to fight another regarding trans-fatty acids in its cookies.
When the lawyers loom, the analysts tend to take to the hills, trailing investors in their wake.
The anxious CEOs of America's food companies are suddenly having to wake up to their role in the great unspoken sadness of America: this is the most obese society on the planet.
Were there really fat people in London? Three years gone and the memory plays tricks, but were there really the 300 pounders I see sweating their way up and down Broadway in shorts to put Kylie to shame, or the extraordinary "bling bling" bedecked velour tracksuit wearers I encountered on my first venture into Sopranos country (suburban NewJersey) this past July 4 weekend?
Coincidentally, I happened to be reading Greg Critser's truly startling book Fatlands: How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World.
A damning indictment of the food industry and the American health administration, Fatlands contained one paragraph I have been forwarding to everyone I know. It's in the chapter on super-sizing.
Any "alien" (that's what it says on my visa renewal form) going to the movies in the US cannot but be taken aback by the sheer size of the buckets of popcorn doled out and the accompanying pails of Coca-Cola you need to be able to wash them down.
They are two of the most obvious examples of super-sizing, the marketing technique that persuaded Americans to eat and drink more, without feeling guilty because there were not two of anything (ordering two smaller buckets would be greedy!) and the price was cheaper than two smaller pails anyway.
Critser describes super-sizing as "the ultimate expression of the value meal revolution", and then launches into a paragraph explaining how a portion of McDonald's french fries had exploded from a mere 200 calories in 1960 to 610 today. A 590-calorie McDonald's value meal today weighs in at 1550 calories.
Combine this with SUV culture, four hours of television watching a night and the continuing decline in the harshness of health advice meted out for fear of disincentivising the public and the results are sadly inevitable.
There are twice as many overweight children today in America as there were in 1980.
Belatedly, McDonald's is introducing the salad bar and soon the chance to supplant fresh fruit for chips in a Happy Meal. Three months ago it named its first ever corporate vice-president of healthy lifestyles.
Other companies from Kraft to Frito-Lays, Pepsi and Kellogg are all suddenly taking health consciousness even more seriously.
Well, so they say. The US is the most diet obsessed nation and the fattest nation simultaneously.
It appears every other person I know is trying the Atkins Diet at the moment - either that or a mystery halitosis epidemic is sweeping the nation.
But no diet is much use if you persistently exceed the maximum recommended portions. In America, the half and half diet works best: eat and drink half of everything you are served.
And the current reality of all this pontificating? There are new ad campaigns from McDonald's and Burger King.
The former employs the dreadful new line, "I'm lovin' it", which sounds like something an eastern European speaking English might say before stuffing his face.
The latter's "the fire's ready" is nondescript enough but the ad actually promotes BK's biggest ever burger, one that looks almost impossible to cram in the mouth.
What's needed for this subject to be taken seriously is not just law suits but a sustained and widespread mainstream education campaign backed up by some hard-hitting statistics from the government.
But, in the face of the powerful food lobby, I am not all sure it has the stomach for that particular fight.
· Stefano Hatfield is contributing editor to Advertising Age and Creativity
"Fat is a foreigner's issue"
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