So far legislative proposals to implement the idea, including bills in New York and California, have not gone anywhere. But in his book Brownell plausibly argues that modest junk food taxes aimed more at revenue raising than behavior modification have a good chance of passing. Although Brownell wants the money earmarked for anti-obesity efforts, it's not hard to imagine a legislature welcoming this new source of revenue as a way to avoid spending cuts. "Small taxes with earmarked money...may be the way to begin," Brownell and co-author Horgen write. "This would introduce the concept to the public, and if the earmark programs were successful, higher taxes might be acceptable at a later time."
Ultimately, Brownell wants to combine the taxes with subsidies for fruits, vegetables, and other foods deemed healthy, achieving centrally planned prices designed to minimize weight, maximize nutritional value, and "thereby improve public health." Given that Brownell is undaunted by the complexity of this task, perhaps it's not surprising that he does not bother to make a persuasive case that price is an important barrier to healthier eating. Potato chips are cheap, it's true, but so are most fruits and vegetables. At my local Giant supermarket, green beans, apples, kale, and fresh carrots cost $1.99, $1.49, 99 cents, and 89 cents a pound, respectively. A 20-ounce bag of Utz potato chips goes for $4.19, or $3.35 a pound.
Anti-fat activists do not let such mundane facts obstruct their vision of food prices perfectly geared toward health improvement. In her 2002 book Food Politics, New York University nutritionist Marion Nestle, who agrees with Brownell that the government should be doing much more to fight obesity, notes that "it is not difficult to select a health-promoting diet...at quite low cost." Yet 24 pages later, she suggests that "the prices of fruits and vegetables...could be subsidized to compensate in part for the low economic added value of these foods -- just as is already done through price supports for dairy foods and sugar." Price supports, of course, make prices higher, not lower, but you get the idea.
Force-Fed Fatties
If economics is not the forte of Brownell and his allies, neither is constitutional law. To combat ads for fast food and sugary treats, Brownell and Horgen want to revive the "fairness doctrine," under which the Federal Communications Commission required broadcasters to provide time for opposing views when they covered controversial topics. The FCC abandoned the policy in 1987 after concluding that it had a chilling effect on speech, encouraging TV and radio stations to steer clear of controversy. Brownell and Horgen not only ignore that concern but propose "requiring advertisements for healthy foods or spots discouraging consumption of unhealthy foods" in every medium, even though the original fairness doctrine hinged on the special status of broadcasters as custodians of "the public airwaves." The U.S. Supreme Court has explicitly rejected a broader "right of reply" as inconsistent with the First Amendment.
Nestle likewise suggests an "equal time" requirement for "eat less, move more" messages, but she and Brownell both would prefer a complete ban on advertising aimed at children, for any product (not just food) in any medium. While Brownell does not even acknowledge that such a ban would raise First Amendment issues, Nestle tells me, "It's very hard for me to believe that the Founding Fathers intended the First Amendment to apply to commercial speech." (By contrast, presumably, they did intend the Constitution to authorize a federal war on obesity.)
Aside from a narrow view of the First Amendment -- which, after all, says nothing about a distinction between "commercial" and "noncommercial" speech -- this enthusiasm for banning ads reflects the complaint that companies foist their products on an unwilling yet malleable populace. By Nestle's account, "The overly abundant food supply, combined with a society so affluent that most people can afford to buy more food than they need, sets the stage for competition. The food industry must compete fiercely for every dollar spent on food, and food companies spend extraordinary resources to develop and market products that will sell, regardless of their effect on nutritional status or waistlines. To satisfy stockholders, food companies must convince people to eat more of their products or to eat their products instead of those of competitors."
Nestle thus treats "the overly abundant food supply" as a pre-existing fact, arbitrarily determined by "the food industry" without regard to demand. "Whether consumer demands drive food sales or the industry creates such demands is a matter of debate," she writes, "but much industry effort goes into trying to figure out what the public 'wants' and how to meet its 'needs.'" The scare quotes suggest which side of this debate Nestle comes down on. If you view competition as bad for consumers, you can't have a very sanguine view of their ability to resist corporate come-ons. "Food industry practices distort what Americans are told about nutrition...and compromise food choices," Nestle argues. "Food companies will make and market any product that sells, regardless of its nutritional value or its effect on health. In this regard, food companies hardly differ from cigarette companies."
And not just in this regard. "Like cigarette companies," Nestle writes, "food companies...expand sales by marketing directly to children." That's what Brownell was getting at, of course, when he started comparing Ronald McDonald to Joe Camel. The child protection argument is crucial for the anti-fat movement because, as Nestle notes, "most of us believe that we choose foods for reasons of personal taste, convenience, and cost; we deny that we can be manipulated by advertising or other marketing practices." But even if you're naive enough to believe that you know your own desires, you may still think that children, less savvy about advertising than adults, are vulnerable to manipulative marketing -- "easy prey for the food companies," as Brownell and Horgen put it. After all, "children find advertisements fantastically engaging."
However mesmerizing the commercials for Lucky Charms or Skittles might be, parents usually have some say as to whether the product will be purchased. "It is easy to blame parents," say Brownell and Horgen. No, it's not. It is easy to blame big corporations. Blaming parents means expecting them to take an active role in monitoring their kids' diets. As Nestle suggests, that is not a popular message. "Most parents of my acquaintance tell me they are constantly arguing with their children over food choices," she writes. "Parents vary in the ways they deal with children's demands for advertised foods, but many prefer to reserve family arguments about setting limits for dealing with aspects of behavior that they consider more important." Please. If parents don't have the wherewithal to say no when their kids ask for something they saw on TV, their problems go far beyond the risk of chubby offspring.
This is not to deny that the rise in obesity among minors, which has been accompanied by the increasingly early occurrence of what used to be called "adult onset" (Type 2) diabetes, is a legitimate cause for concern. The government's data indicate that 15 percent of Americans between the ages of 6 and 19 were overweight in 2000, about three times the rate in the early 1970s. It's certainly appropriate for parents, educators, nutritionists, and physicians to talk about how to improve nutrition education, increase physical activity during the school day, and raise the quality of food available in schools. But anti-fat activists are using concern about obese kids to justify policies that treat adults like children -- as any attempt to eliminate ads that reach minors inevitably would.
Giant Killers
Brownell understands that since "the responsibility to protect children is deeply ingrained in American morality," it makes sense to depict the anti-fat campaign as a crusade to save the children. "Children are targeted in a relentless way by the food companies," he and Horgen write. "Children need us; the nation can afford to fail them no longer. They need protection from the giant that looms over them."
Presumably they're not talking about the Jolly Green Giant, since he hawks the vegetables that Brownell wants to subsidize. But the food giant certainly seems friendly, offering consumers a cornucopia of food choices at low prices. You could easily be fooled by the giant's benign appearance if, like most Americans, you've been tricked into believing that choice and value are good.
Anti-fat activists know better. For Nestle, the huge number of food products on the market is prima facie evidence of the industry's callous disregard for "the public health." Brownell emphasizes that variety encourages overindulgence.
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