Environmental and public safety issues: impacts and policy considerations

Environmental or Public Safety Issue

Public health problem: Obesity crisis

If knowledge was power, America would be thin. However, despite the fact that knowledge about food and nutrition has been more widely disseminated to Americans, in the form of more comprehensive food labeling and research into the etiology of nutritionally-related diseases, the American waistline has been expanding at an exponential rate. "Low fat foods are abundant, health club memberships are up considerably, and athletic gear manufacturing is a multibillion-dollar industry. However, overweight and obesity rates have continued to increase during this expansion of health-related industries. What are the causes for this apparent paradox of an increasingly overweight populace in the face of increasing attention to health issues?" (Etiology of obesity, Lifestyle management of adult obesity, 2007). "The first signs of trouble appeared in the late 1970s as rates of overweight that had been relatively stable for years started to rise...families were eating more takeout or processed food. Spurred by the profit margins of volume production, fast-food restaurants pushed larger portions. Gadgets such as remote TV controls and video games meant children were planted for longer periods in front of televisions and computers....Through the 1990s, the waistline expansion accelerated. On campuses, once-rare vending machines multiplied (Levine & Aratani 2008).

But the increase in obesity is not confined to America or even to the developed world. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), even in many nations where people lack access to vital nutrients, the populations' rates of obesity are increasing. Worldwide, more than a billion adults are overweight, and three hundred million are described as clinically obese. "Obesity is a complex condition with serious social and psychological dimensions, affecting virtually all ages and socioeconomic groups" (Obesity and overweight, WHO, 2009). Obesity is multifaceted chronic health problem, without one clear cause. Diet, level of activity, and body composition all clearly play a role, but it is controversial as to what degree, and the influence of these various contributory factors. Genetics may play a role as well, as scientists have identified several dozen genes that appear to be connected to human obesity. But "in most cases, genes involved in weight gain do not directly cause obesity but rather they increase the susceptibility to fat gain in subjects exposed to an environment characterized by an abundance of food and limited physical activity" given that the worldwide rise in obesity has been so swift and seismic. Alterations in the gene pool could not have occurred so swiftly and thus cannot explain the rise in obesity around the world (Etiology of obesity, Lifestyle management of adult obesity, 2007).

For example, "current obesity levels range from below 5% in China, Japan and certain African nations...But even in relatively low prevalence countries like China, rates are almost 20% in some cities" where the Western diet and inactivity have grown more common (Obesity and overweight. WHO, 2009). Even in Japan, a nation famed for its healthy diet, obesity has been on the rise, escalating to 24% of the population over 15 and 29% of Japanese men aged 20 to 60 are overweight (McCurry 2006).

Interest groups

The epidemic has produced many proposed solutions, none of which are perfect, spanning from low-carbohydrate diet advocates to low-fat diet advocates, who often do battle in the media. Advocates for more physical education in school (which has been the subject of budget cuts and also time constraints in an age where preparing students to take standardized tests often takes priority over health), advocates of organic and vegetarian diets all do battle in the public stage in search of answers. And some of the most vocal critics have been of the U.S. government policy regarding agriculture. "Absurdly, while one hand of the federal government is campaigning against the epidemic of obesity, the other hand is actually subsidizing it, by writing farmers a check for every bushel of corn they can grow" (Pollan 2003, p.2).

While the Department of Health and Human Services promotes a balanced diet, there is pressure from the Agricultural Department to encourage Americans to consume more food, pursuant to the interests of U.S. farmers. The Department indirectly, through subsidies encourages the consumption of obesegenic corn-fed beef and corn-based products with concentrated, highly caloric sweeteners such as High-Fructose Corn Syrup. Food corporations also have an interest in encouraging individuals to eat more, not less. As a result of such political pressures, "Since 1977, an American's average daily intake of calories has jumped by more than 10%. Those 200 or so extra calories have to go somewhere...there is a surfeit of cheap calories that clever marketers sooner or later will figure out a way to induce us to consume" (Pollan 2003, p.1).

Legislation

Because the cause is multifactoral, addressing the issue has proved difficult, and has largely been done on the local level. Some schools have banned sugary snacks and soft drinks; others have tried to increase physical education and nutritional awareness. Some towns have tried to limit the number of fast food establishments within certain areas that have high obesity rates and little access to fresh produce. "For almost two decades, young people in the United States got fatter and fatter -- ate more, sat more -- and nobody seemed to notice. Not parents or schools, not medical groups or the government... since the alarm was finally sounded in the late 1990s, the problem has been the country's reaction: a fragmented, inchoate response that critics say has suffered particularly from inadequate direction and dollars at the federal level" (Levine & Aratani 2008).

Administration

This stands in contrast with Europe and other nations such as Japan in their response to the epidemic: "France mandated health warnings on televised food ads. Spanish officials reached agreement with industry leaders on tighter product labeling and marketing as well as reducing fat, salt and sugar in processed foods. Britain has gone the farthest, restricting food ads on TV programs catering predominantly to children and pulling sweets and sweetened drinks from schools. Eighty-five percent of all grades have at least two hours of physical education a week" (Levine & Aratani 2008). Although the causes of obesity may be too many to perfectly quantify, attacking all potential causes within human control as soon as possible has been the focuses of these European governments.

Even Japan, with its more modest increases in obesity rates has launched a "Health Japan 21 program, a collection of dozens of numerical health targets it hopes to achieve by the end of the decade" (McCurry 2006). However, in contrast to these more homogenous systems of governance, a unified policy in the U.S. has been more difficult to achieve between the states and federal government, although some have suggested a kind of 'health czar' is needed at very least, to make the approaches of the Agricultural Department and Health and Human Services more consistent.