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July 21, 2011
In Australia overweight and obesity have become increasingly more prevalent among socially disadvantaged groups, particularly in urban areas. Like most other risk factors for ill-health, excess body weight tends to be more prevalent among people further down the social and economic scale.
Gary Sauer-Thompson, Mill St, Adelaide, 2011
Encouraging healthy eating habits is difficult given the extensive array of convenience and pre-packaged foods high in fat, sugar and salt (so called junk foods) which are increasingly available across the world, often promoted in large or multiple serving sizes.
This has made eating healthily a challenge—for individuals personally, and for policymakers indirectly; and the challenge has been compounded by a bombardment of marketing and advertising that surreptitiously and adversely influences people’s food preferences and consumption patterns.
In Overfed, overgrazed and difficult to overcome in the Sydney Morning Herald Elizabeth Farrelly refers to Sydney's diabetes map. This:
map reveals a clear doughnut pattern with dark, congealed patches around the west and exurban fringes (Mt Druitt, Wollongong, Toongabbie) and pale bits in the old centre (north shore, city, Coogee). It's the direct inverse of how a rickets or tuberculosis map would have looked a century ago.It's not just fat. Maps of obesity, heart disease, renal failure, smoking, TV-watching and hypertension - diabesity, if you'll excuse the coinage - would show similar patterns...What's interesting is that this stuff is class-related. Diabesity is a poverty indicator.
The data provokes the question not only why the poorest of the poor and the most vulnerable and marginalised groups have bad health but why is there a socially graded relation between social position and health?
The Marmot Review highlights that there is a social gradient in health – the lower a person’s social position, the worse his or her health. Health inequalities result from social inequalities. Consequently, reducing health inequalities is a matter of fairness and social justice. Health equity then becomes a marker of successful development.
So why the social gradient in health? Farrelly says that (relatively) poor Australians, despite decades of education campaigns, still see conspicuous consumption - of land, leisure, energy, alcohol, food - as a norm, not a mortal danger. It's overconsumption that is driving obesity and diabetes.
The problem with Farrelly's argument is that obesity and diabetes doesn't come from overconsumption per se (the middle class also over consume as Farrelly acknowledges); it comes from overconsumption of cheap junk food. What, and how much, people eat, drink and smoke and how they expend energy are responses to their socio-political, socio-economic, socio-environmental and socio- cultural environments.
From another perspective that a significant proportion of the Australia population now eats large volumes of energy-dense nutrient-poor foods--junk food --- does not expend enough energy, smokes and consumes harmful quantities of alcohol is a sign of success –the commercial success of the corporate food industry. It's a lucrative business. Hence the intensive advertising.
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"Education" is the key.
I air quoted it because 'education' comes in various forms.
The most visible and pervasive form is TV radio, print etc advertising.
Mass media in other words.
Where people are constantly exhorted cajoled persuaded etc to consume buy spend now, as in immediately.
Including processed and junk foods, foods known to have low levels of nutrition and high levels of salt and sugar despite the de-emphasis of such and the silence and even handwaving in other directions in the advertising. Where sugar is disguised as an 'energy source' and any attempt to regulate such, tut tut, is seen as an attack on personal and individual liberty, the rights and duties of the parent, the forcing of unacceptable 'nanny statism' on a public that would be deprived if such antidemocratic [or is that anti corporate, same thing] care was allowed to be exercised.
So instead we have a brief [usually] series of advertisements, to the joy of the advertising and media companies, extolling the virtues of 2 fruit and 3 veg which is drowned in volume and quantity by a whole barrage of ads from the supermarkets, chef programs, junk food companies who assure us that if it comes processed in a pack its really good stuff.
Far more powerful than what is generally termed 'education' programs.
BTW Gary, I do appreciate you giving us the insights you do and the opportunity to engage in a rant or two.