Profit before nutrition makes you sick

The world’s food systems are “deeply dysfunctional” and society is paying an exorbitant price for a diet of processed food that ignores human beings’ real nutritional needs.

This is the damning conclusion in a new report from Olivier De Schutter, the United Nations special rapporteur on the right to food.

For the past half century, food production has soared in quantity, whilst the quality of our diet has got worse. The twin curses of malnutrition and obesity have been actively promoted by subsidising grain, soya and meat production at the expense of fruit and vegetables.

Between 1961 and 2009, while fruit and vegetable production increased 332%, world oilseed production increased by 610% and meat production increased 372%. Over roughly the same period (1963–2003), developing countries increased the amount of calories they consume from meat (119%), sugar (127%) and vegetable oils (199%), and industrialised countries also increased vegetable oil consumption (105%).

Whilst emergency aid concentrates on getting calories and protein to people, in the long term what communities need is access to fresh fruit and vegetables that provide “micro-nutrition” essential for health. These can only be provided by good local food and farming infrastructure.

This is being actively undermined by governments that focus on big agriculture, cash crops for export, or even sell off land to foreign investors who will use it to grow more of the foods that are already making us sick.

About 34% of children in developing countries, 186 million children in total, have a low height for age, the most common symptom of chronic under nutrition.

Although food costs declined from the early 1960s until 2002, “the poorest are still too poor to feed themselves in dignity because agriculture has not been designed to support the livelihoods of the most vulnerable and marginalised groups”, the report states.

The export of the US diet to the rest of the world is causing a growing public health crisis. More than a billion people worldwide are overweight and at least 300 million are obese. Overweight and obesity cause 2.8 million premature deaths per year, and 65% of the world’s people live in a country where obesity kills more people than hunger.

Globally, diets have become increasingly energy-dense and rich in sugar, salt and saturated fats, as many higher fibre foods are replaced by heavily processed foods. This means that today‘s children could have shorter life expectancies than their parents.

This globalisation of the unhealthy “supermarketised” diet, which we have experienced very powerfully in free market Britain, is having a negative impact everywhere now. The report is very clear that we must urgently switch to a “sustainable diet”, defined as one which is

• low in environmental impact
• contributing to food and nutrition security
• protective and respectful of biodiversity and ecosystems
• culturally acceptable,
• economically fair and affordable;
• nutritionally adequate,
• safe and healthy
• optimising natural and human resources.

The report concludes that the food system must turn away from an exclusive focus on boosting production and instead look towards “integrating the requirements of the adequacy of diets, social equity and environmental sustainability. All these components are essential to achieving durable success in combating hunger and malnutrition”.

De Schutter’s deeply researched report says that nutrition initiatives can be strengthened by “by being integrated into broader national strategies for the realisation of the right to food”.

But this is the exact opposite of the current system which profits the corporations and is supported by their client governments, even with subsidies from taxpayers. Subsidies applied in the wrong place mean that a healthy diet is more expensive than a poor diet in many countries. Putting profit before nutrition is making us sick, leaving healthcare system to deal with the consequences of corporate greed.

Penny Cole
Environment editor

Put supermarkets’ bloated profits on a diet

The government’s New Year campaign against obesity and for healthier living is a shameful piece of hypocrisy because it ignores the real causes of the health crisis. 

In the so-called Change4Life campaign launched with expensive advertising, the website explains that “it can be hard these days to live a happy, healthy life ... The way we live in modern society means a lot of us, especially our kids, have fallen into unhealthy habits”. 

But presenting the fact that “if we carry on as we are 90% of today’s children could be overweight or obese by 2050”, as if it is some naturally occurring social phenomenon, is a total fraud. This health crisis is a direct result of a distorted society where generating profit is the sole criteria of everything, and governments collude in conditioning us to accept that. 

The system is dependent on people consuming, and over-consuming – and that applies as much to food as to other commodities. Through advertising, sponsorships of popular culture, and of course the whole structure of food distribution through the global giant supermarkets, these profits are sustained. 

Over the last 30 years of globalisation and the industrialisation of food, agri-business and food supply and retail giants have been allowed to carry out uncontrolled experiments. People eat what are in effect poisonous substances because the governments they elect to safeguard their health, allow them to be freely sold and promoted. 

An example of this is the development of so-called trans-fats, used because they are cheaper than natural oils and fats. Trans-fats increase unhealthy cholesterol and are implicated in cancer; they are in your food now. And it’s also a fact that poorer people who can’t afford to eat well often end up buying cheaper junk food, which encourages obesity. 

Nobody asked us if we wanted this to happen – we have no control over the content of our food. And New Labour cannot even enforce an agreed system of food labelling so that people can try to make rational decisions when they are shopping – it remains a voluntary code. The levels of fat, sugar and salt in products are still hard to fathom – it is a case of “buyer beware, because the state won’t help you”. 

As to urging young people to do more exercise, we should note that more than four out of 10 school and community playing fields in England have been lost since 1992. There used to be 78,000 pitches on 26,000 sites; now there are 44,000 pitches on 21,000 sites. Hundreds of swimming pools have been closed down while fitness centres are too expensive for many to afford. Tens of millions of pounds have been removed from funding grassroots sport to pay for the 2012 corporate Olympics. Government funding for “elite sportsmen and women” has increased by 230% since 2000. In the same period, funding for the bodies that pay for community sport went up by just 7%. 

The government has created a national curriculum where schools struggle to provide even two hours a week of healthy exercise or sport for children. Children who should be out playing, running and enjoying themselves instead have their noses to the grindstone, being prepared for the world of work (or unemployment). British schools are like fast food outlets – corporately-produced ingredients, put together by underpaid overworked staff to make unsatisfying and unhealthy products, which children are then forced to consume. 

As for adults, leaving the car and using public transport would help most people get fitter. But since public transport is so poor and underfunded, people are forced to stick to the car to get to work on time. 

The best way to take control of your life, and your family’s health, is to join with millions of others in a struggle to end the bloated profits of the supermarkets and agri-corporations and bring the production and distribution of food under social control. Now that’s a real incentive to live longer, lose weight and get fit – good luck with the diet! 

Penny Cole
Environment editor