RALEIGH – “That will never happen.”
Or so said a prominent academic researcher on tobacco use when I talked to him a few months ago about the dangerous precedent set by over-regulation. I had asked him why, if advertising bans and liability lawsuits were appropriate responses to cigarette marketing, the same theory couldn’t justify restrictions and lawsuits against fast-food companies for causing obesity. “That will never happen,” he insisted.
But I pointed out that politicians had already proposed fat taxes and plaintiffs’ attorneys had already filed suit against the likes of McDonald’s for recklessly endangering consumer health. “That’s just the tobacco-company line,” he assured me. “No one else is seriously pursuing that.”
Au contraire. Both in the United States and around the world, there are indeed serious efforts, from powerful lawmakers and litigation-happy interest groups, to wage a legal battle against Big Food similar to those waged for decades against Big Tobacco. The purported policy justification is also similar: given that government programs now account for a huge percentage of health care spending, taxpayers will be forced to shoulder huge costs for obesity-related illnesses unless regulators or courts step in to “protect” them.
The U.S. House of Representatives takes this threat so seriously, in fact, that last month it passed the so-called Cheeseburger Bill by a 306-120 margin. It stipulates that manufacturers, retailers, and other related businesses can’t be held liable in court for damages associated with the consumption of any legal, unadulterated food product. The Bush administration, industry groups, and the general public (by a 90 percent margin in a recent Gallup poll) agree that government should not attempt to combat obesity by going after the makers and sellers of food.
Unfortunately, the bill won’t make this issue go away, not by a long shot. Those who see the legal assault on tobacco as a wildly successful model to emulate are not going to give up easily on the notion of replicating it against the far-larger target of food processors and restaurant chains. Their plan, already evident in a re-filed lawsuit against McDonald’s in New York State, is to argue not that the food itself is the cause of obesity but rather than the industry’s advertising practices are deceptive and injurious to public health.
The activists argue that children are especially susceptible to manipulation by ads for breakfast cereals, snacks, and other products. These ads supposedly cause children to lobby recalcitrant parents to change the family diet or evade parental control altogether. One example offered is an ad campaign for Kraft’s Lunchables line of prepackaged lunches featuring nachos, hamburgers, sandwiches, and similar items. “You’re in Control,” promises the product’s advertising and packaging – a clear invitation, say critics, to ignore one’s parents and eat junk food.
The evidence linking advertising and obesity, in children or adults, is flimsy at best. A comprehensive 1997 survey of worldwide research on the topic found that while advertising played a significant role in influencing brand preferences in highly competitive markets, its role in influencing overall food consumption was limited.
Activists frequently cite a 1999 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association as providing evidence of the link, but it did not actually conclude that advertising had caused higher weight gains among children. After a seven-month experiment among third- and fourth-graders in California, the study found that the half of the sample who watched more television and played more video games had a slightly greater weight gain than the other half of the sample. While the study’s author did control for exercise levels, he found that the TV-watching group consumed an average of one more of their meals in front of the TV each day than the other group. Exposure to advertising wasn’t the only possible explanation for the difference in eating, he wrote, as it could have been the result of the less-portly group “simply spending less time sitting in front of the TV, where some children have a habit of eating.”
The fundamental problem with the would-be ad prohibitionists’ thesis is that it doesn’t match up well with history. The recent upswing in childhood obesity has not occurred during a time of intensified TV advertising aimed at children, which has existed for decades. In fact, American children are now gaining weight even as they watch somewhat less commercial television than previous generations did. One study estimated that children saw about 15 percent fewer TV ads in 2003 than their counterparts did in 1994. Alas, that does not mean today’s kids are playing outside more. They simply have many more commercial-free alternatives such as premium cable, tapes and DVDs, and video and computer games.
Another unfortunate fact for advocates of regulating food advertising is that their pet idea has already been done to the max – that is, in the form of outright bans of ads targeting children – in places such as Sweden and Quebec. The obesity rate of Swedish children differs little from that of British children, however. The same is true in Quebec vs. other Canadian provinces.
Furthermore, the line of causality from advertising to obesity must run through the intermediate point of eating more, or at least more calorie-laden, food. But there is surprisingly little agreement about this. Federal data reveal that average caloric intake of U.S. teenagers rose by only 1 percent from 1980 to 2000 while obesity rose 10 percent. Sedentary lifestyles seem to be the more significant factor. During the same period, average physical activity dropped by 13 percent.
It’s better, I guess, to be debating the effects of food advertising rather than blaming food itself for any deleterious effects of personal choices. But despite the recent congressional intervention, and contrary to the assurances of anti-tobacco activists, a major battle is still brewing over Americans’ freedom to eat and watch what we want.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation and the author of Selling the Dream: Why Advertising is Good Business, just out from Praeger. He’ll be speaking about the book on Monday, Nov. 14 at a Raleigh luncheon.