Obesity and corporate greed | DW Documentary

The obesity epidemic is the most important international health problem. By 2030, half the world will be obese or overweight. This is a disaster. It's a man-made tragedy. Earlier in my life, I thought that my weight was all my fault. I felt like a failure, and frankly, unworthy. And it took me a while to really start questioning those beliefs and challenging those thoughts, like, well, are you really a failure? And the answer is, no, I'm not. I'm not. But it took a while to get to that point. Obesity, a blob of our era's fantasies caught in a web of prejudice. It prompts scolding for poor choices and accusations of laziness. Omnipotent genes provide an alibi. But what if obesity were a collective failure, not an individual one? The symptom of a free market that hates fat but produces fatsos. An obesogenic society. It's a global phenomenon. Not one country has halted it. Right now, there are two billion people, adults and children, who are overweight or obese. This doesn't happen by magic. It takes work. And you need to look at who it is that is driving that process. In the first years of the 21st century, Western countries declared war on obesity, to no avail. Experts estimate that by 2030, there will be 250 million obese children in the world. Have our governments taken the right tack? At least two-thirds of men and women in the UK are overweight. And the rates are still climbing. Obesity has life-changing impacts on the body and can slowly lower your quality of life. According to the messages spread far and wide, we alone are to blame for our weight. Fat people are simply gluttons, unable to control their appetites. You have a choice. Make the change. We are told it's up to us. But is it really? For me, the most difficult stigma to cope with is this idea that people have no willpower. That people in larger bodies, people with obesity, don't have any willpower, or else they wouldn't carry excess weight. Because we're told so often that that's all it takes to lose weight. Go to the gym, follow this diet program. You know, if you just stick to it, you'll get there. Public health officials were sure that a little personal willpower was all it would take to slay obesity. Eat less, exercise more became the mantra of the 2000s. It would go around the world. So let's start moving. Let's start pushing, twisting, climbing, and raising the roof. Let's start moving more every day for 30 minutes or 60. And if you feel like stopping, you can always start back up. Let's start moving. It's so easy for us to look at a lean person and say, ah, they have such willpower. They're so moral and strong. And then look at someone with a weight problem and attribute all these negative traits. Oh, they're just weak. They don't have willpower. It's not at the individual level. It's not individual willpower. And if we go on believing that, we'll never change this obesity epidemic. Hey, everybody, you know, getting active every day helps us all be healthy and feel great. The same old earnest advice about exercise has proffered with the best intentions. In 2010, Michelle Obama launched a campaign against child obesity. The first lady lent her sassy sachet to move your body, aiming to set healthier standards for food served in school lunchrooms. We send our kids to school. We have a right to expect that they won't be eating the kind of fatty, salty, sugary foods that we're trying to keep from them when they're at home. Unfortunately, you know, Michelle Obama was on the right track right from the beginning. And then I think she got derailed by a mixture of bad advisors and by bringing in the food companies. And they were able to dilute her very powerful message down to something where, you know, it's just her on television encouraging people to move that way rather than let's move together, you know, as a movement to be able to transform the food system. Eat better became move more. Beyonce easily upstaged the public service message. A boon to the multinationals who quickly joined the dance. In 2015, Coca-Cola created the Global Energy Balance Network, a worldwide think tank dedicated to solving the obesity problem. Guess how? By promoting exercise. Most of the focus in the popular media and in the scientific press is, oh, they're eating too much, eating too much, eating too much, blaming fast food, blaming sugary drinks, and so on. And there's really virtually no compelling evidence that that, in fact, is a cause. Professor Steve Blair is one of the head researchers recruited for the network. He's a specialist in physical exercise. But maybe the reason they're eating more calories than they need is because they're not burning many. So we need to be in balance. In just a few years due to this campaign spearheaded by Coca-Cola, lack of exercise has become central to the question of obesity, whereas it is based on a theory that was pulled out of a hat to defend the corporation's product and private interest. Here's how that translates into marketing language. The industry has been focused on the story of calories in, calories out. You can drink what you want. Just go on a jog and work off your calories. Well, we know that actually is not true. That's not the true story. Allegedly, to avoid weight gain, we would simply have to burn the same number of calories as we eat. The theory sounds logical. Unfortunately, it is untrue. Physical exercise actually plays a minor role in weight control. You have to jog for one hour to eliminate a hamburger. A pizza, though, requires over two hours of running. If you look at it from a calorie perspective, that is, fat accumulation equals sort of calories in minus calories out. And they say, well, that's always true, because if you look at it from a physics perspective, that is always true. But the problem is that that's physics, and we're dealing with human physiology, and it really has nothing to do with each other. I think we should take the focus off of Yes, you can eat less and lose weight for a short while, but your body will fight back. And over the long term, we know that metabolism is stronger than willpower. All right. If individual willpower is not to blame, what caused the steep rise in the obesity curve starting in the 1980s? So what's the difference between 1970 and 2019? Well, I don't think it's the basic biology of the person, but it's something to do with the way that we eat both the types of food and the frequency of the foods that we eat. In 40 years, our eating habits have undergone a real revolution, fomented by public health policies of the late 1970s. At the time, cardiovascular disease was the grim reaper, causing millions of deaths. The Senate Special Committee on Nutrition is looking into the connection between diet and heart disease. The sugar lobby succeeded in having a high-fat diet declared guilty, a false verdict that had serious consequences. Public health officials recommended that we reduce our intake of fats. Grains, touted as cholesterol-free, replaced meat as a staple food. And so eating more bread, more rice, more potatoes, for example, because they're very low fat, and, you know, eating less dairy, less meat, low-fat dairy, that kind of thing. That was the standard advice for so many years, and I think that is the most likely culprit as to why people have gained weight. The U.S. government called on the food industry to market thousands of processed foods that were reduced in fat and saturated fat. So if you're the food industry and you're supposed to reduce fat, what are you going to replace it with? Well, processed grains and sugar. Agroindustry's sleight of hand made the transition painless. Sugar, a cheap replacement for fat, made light foods tasty and addictive. Chemists went to work extruding ingredients. Supermarket shelves filled with attractively packaged starches, reprocessed as bread, cornflakes, and convenience foods. Eating excessive sugar causes deep dysfunctions inside our bodies, starting with the hormone imbalance. When you eat, certain hormones go up, and the main hormone that's involved in energy metabolism is insulin. Insulin determines whether the calories we eat get burned or get stored as fat. Glucose, sugar that is, fuels nearly all living cells. When we eat, our pancreas secretes insulin, and this insulin is what transports sugar to our cells. When our diets are heavy in foods that are starchy and sweet, like processed foods in fact, our insulin levels are constantly high. With too much insulin, our fat cells, the fat tissue in our body, takes up too many calories and holds onto them. So there aren't enough calories for the rest of the body. There aren't enough calories for the muscle, for the organs in the brain. And that's why we get hungry. So these highly processed foods, fast foods, sugary beverages, junk foods that we're snacking on, they digest very quickly, but they don't provide much satiety. So it's these processed carbohydrates that drive weight gain. Despite the negative impact these ultra-processed foods have on our metabolism, nothing has stopped their spread. It's profitable to sell food that is fatty and sugary and salty and addictive. It's much less profitable to sell food that is wholesome, that is high in fiber and is minimally processed. So what's driving the obesity epidemic? It's corporate profit. This dietary revolution has fathered empires. Nestle, Unilever, Coca-Cola, Kellogg's, PepsiCo. Currently, a handful of huge corporations own nearly every brand of food. Together, they pull in 500 billion dollars in annual sales and have taken control of our dinner plates. Food is a huge sector of our society. It's not only the food companies. It's not just the Nestle's and Danone's and Coke's and Pepsi's. It's the food retailers. It's the Walmart's and Carrefour's. It's the agribusinesses that are huge, that control all the supplies and commodities. And then it's also the marketers. It's all the advertisers making money from marketing junk food and beverages to people. So we're talking about a massive, massive component of our society is focused on selling the world unhealthy foods and beverages. The food multinationals have a secret weapon, price. The products they sell are up to 60% cheaper than fresh foods. The shoppers with the smallest budgets stock up. These low-income consumers, sitting ducks, are the primary victims of the system. The food industry says it's your fault, but the reality is they've changed the whole food environment. They've created a food environment where every place you turn, if it's on your smartphone, if it's on seeing a billboard, if it's seeing any kind of advertisement, if it's watching television or movies, you see their junk food being pushed. The manipulation starts with the children. Scientific studies show there is a direct link between the ads children see and the types of food they like to eat. The World Health Organization recommends regulating food commercials on TV, but the industry is ingenuous. It infiltrates new areas like social networks or online games. Slick marketing hides the fact that junk food causes one of the most devastating diseases that exists, diabetes. Today, it kills one person every six seconds around the world. Twenty-five years ago, if I told you that I have an 18-year-old patient in my clinic with type 2 diabetes, you would have said, oh my gosh, it's incredible, it's so rare, it's so strange. Now it's very commonplace that young people, children, have type 2 diabetes. We're like fighting a war at home. It's heartbreaking, it's unfair, it's unjust. People are making money off of this suffering. It's preventable. It's dehumanizing to ignore it. It's inhumane to ignore it. One of every two African-American children will develop diabetes. One of every five African-American children is obese. The rate is even higher among Hispanics. A young woman spoke out and triggered a rebellion. We eat like we still slaves. Yesterday, I decided to write down some ingredients in my day-to-day diet. First, there was a million things I could not pronounce, and then there was sugar, flour, sugar, hydrogenated oils, high fructose corn syrup, whey powder, high fructose corn syrup, sugar, die yellow 40, die red 52, die, die, die. I heard a young woman who was 16 at the time, and she performed a poem that even now it made the hair on my arm stand up. And for the first time, I saw a young person describing the obesity and diabetes epidemic as a social problem. And I realized that she, in a way, is a much more effective messenger than I ever could be. It's like Brother Christopher having juvenile diabetes at five. It's like, damn. It's like suicide. Dean Schillinger is coordinating the energy. His non-profit, Youth Speaks, holds writing workshops for young people in the Bay Area. He wants to use rap and spoken word to raise consciousness and thwart food industry propaganda. This idea that they were being lied to, that's what inspired them to become change agents. That's what turned their poem from being a piece of art into a weapon. Armed with talent and a video camera, they launched an awareness campaign called The Bigger Picture. So for me, each one of those films is a stone that we were throwing at the water and trying to see which one could make the biggest wave. I went to Roosevelt Middle School. My daily routine was to wake up hungry, walk to the bus stop, pass McDonald's, the liquor stores, pass Popeye's, pass the first Burger King, pass the 38 to the second Burger King, order my favorite round hash browns and watch the young brown bodies drool. And I don't know if we love Burger King or just love not being hungry anymore. Written and performed chiefly by young Hispanics and African-Americans, the videos garnered over a million views on YouTube. Meanwhile, 3,000 miles away on the East Coast, another activist has risen up and commandeered a podium to tell a community it is being decimated and how. This is a crisis in our community. And for me, it's a crisis because I'm finding that I'm losing more people to sweets than I am to the streets. And I'm losing more people to diet-related issues than I am to the streets, to gun violence. This is an epidemic and one that I'm deeply concerned about. In his combat against this evil, Reverend Coates is not inhibited by the conventions associated with his calling. Now, in this can of soda pop, right, there are 39 grams of sugar, 39 grams of sugar in one can of soda. Now, how many teaspoons of sugar is that? Anyone know? Almost 10 teaspoons of sugar. So I said, well, I want to see how much that is. And maybe a half. This is how much sugar is in just one drink, right? And our children are getting pre-diabetic by the ages of nine and 10. Borderline diabetes by the time they're 13 years old. And we are sabotaging an entire generation of our people because of sugar. Pastor William LaMoure and Delmon Coates at Mount Anion Baptist Church in Clinton, Maryland are suing Coca-Cola and the American Beverage Association. All right, let's do this. The war had moved to the courtroom. Delmon Coates dared to sick the law on the Coca-Cola Corporation. We know that the consumption of sugar in these products exceed the American Heart Association. What are you asking for from Coca-Cola? What do you want this company to do? We want Coca-Cola to end their deceptive marketing practices. They have spent $120 million in five years between 2010 and 2015 falsely advertising their product. The multinational retaliated by accusing the pastors of freedom of speech violations. And after suing for legal expenses, a threat worth several million dollars, Coca-Cola now demands that the case be dropped. Coca-Cola Statement. The allegations here are likewise legally and factually meritless, and we will vigorously defend against them. The allegations are that Coca-Cola misled consumers about the science of sugar-sweetened beverages because several of their executives went out in the press and made statements like there is no link between sugar-sweetened beverages and diabetes. We know that is not the case. For over 20 years, the soft drink industry has denied any link between its products and disease. To maintain the illusion, it employs all sorts of methods. Since 2015, Coca Leagues has revealed that the lobby puts pressure on journalists, keeps discredit on studies it dislikes, finances favorable research, and hobnobs with political leaders. To ensure these results, contact was established within the Senate. We will actively campaign to register that a soft drink tax is discriminatory, regressive, and will not address the challenge of obesity. We have commissioned the Economic Institute to complete a study which will prove inefficiency of such tax. It will be ready in 15 days, which will give us another tool to communicate both to the media and to avoid it gains ground within the party. Appointed to serve as scientific expert by the city and county of San Francisco, Dean Schillinger must untangle the truth from falsehood. When we did the analysis of these studies, we found that every study that found that there was no association between sugary beverage consumption and obesity and diabetes was funded in some way by the industry. Whereas among all the studies that found that there was an association between the consumption of soda and sugary beverages and obesity and diabetes, except for one, were independently funded. So we now know, and there's other evidence, that industry has been influencing very deeply the medical and scientific establishment to create controversy over the question of whether their products cause disease. The junk food industry is cornered. All over the globe, activists are demanding tighter legislation to protect consumers. The battle has now become political. In the 30 years since warning labels and other forms of regulation were placed on tobacco, over 1 billion lives have been saved. I'd say that's a pretty good day at the office for people who make policy. Malia Cohen and one of her fellow supervisors have made San Francisco the first U.S. city to declare war on sugary sodas. When people realize how much sugar they are consuming in one can of soda, they stop and they think. So we had testimony right here in this chamber of doctors, of nurses, of researchers that talked to us about the effects of sugar in our body. And it was through these ongoing dialogues, for years, that we came up with an idea to begin to tax sugary beverages. Imposing a tax is virtually revolutionary in the United States. The industry raged. Its ads pitched the line that the government was interfering with grocery shoppers. The beverage, the sugary beverage industry came out. They hired lawyers. They hired lobbyists. They found people within the community to come out and say, please, don't tell us what to eat or what to drink. This is not a nanny state. We want to make decisions on our own. They spent millions of dollars. As a matter of fact, they outspent us almost six to one. Give me a break. I can decide what to buy without government help. The government is just getting too involved in our personal lives. Tell the candidates government needs to trim its budget. Public health advocates were able to mobilize citizen protests against the recalcitrant industry. We're going to win this battle. Doctors and politicians lining up outside of San Francisco City Hall, framing the sugar sweetened beverage debate as the people versus big soda. We no longer can sit back and let the big soda industry target and hurt our community. The tax was finally voted in, but the victory was bitter. When San Francisco moved to require help warnings on soda containers, like the ones on cigarettes, the soft drink lobby sued once again and won on appeal. The warning labels were shelved. The same method had been used in New York City when Mayor Michael Bloomberg suggested a law limiting the size of jumbo sodas sold in restaurants. Bloomberg was mocked as a scolding nanny and the courts ruled in the industry's favor. In this face-off between corporate freedom and consumer protection, freedom once again seemed to be the private property of the most powerful. I represent a part of San Francisco that was immigrant people, people who speak English as a second language, people who live in subsidized housing, public housing, tenements. And the one thing that we all had in common was that we were dying from preventable diseases. And, you know, that was just really hard to accept. And it seemed like people didn't care. The industry didn't care. They continued to target their money and their resources to get people addicted so that they become wealthier. We've sweetened the world's diet because the markets no longer were growing in Europe and the U.S. So Coke and Pepsi and all the clones, all the local companies that do the same thing, exploded in marketing in low- and middle-income countries. Mexico was the first country to be colonized by these agribusiness conquerors. Today, 73 percent of the population is obese or overweight. Ten percent have diabetes, which has become the primary cause of death. The attention of the whole world focused on Mexico to figure out why the rate of obesity and overweight had soared. The sugar imperialists attacked one of Mexico's greatest treasures, its cuisine, valued by UNESCO as part of our world heritage. Consumption of fruits and vegetables dropped by 30 percent. Consumption of beans has fallen by 50 percent in 20 years. In 14 years, consumption of sweetened beverages has grown by 40 percent. In Mexico, there are one and a half million places to buy soft drinks and junk food. For public health, it's a criminal situation. Each Mexican drinks a whopping 144 quarts of soda per year, on the average, a world record. In a country that elected a former Coca-Cola executive to the presidency, challenging the food industry might appear to be impossible. But not for Alejandro Caldillo. Here we are in front of the Ministry of Health with a Frankenstein, symbolizing the monstrous obesity prevention policy created in collusion with the junk food and soft drink industries. Head of a small consumer advocacy group, Alejandro Caldillo organized the resistance. He found a precious ally within the health ministry itself, Simon Barquera, a researcher in nutrition. Two different visions are at war. One is public interest health policy and the other is economic interest. Us, because we're right. It took 11 years of fierce struggle, battling censors who rejected clip after clip, before the researcher and the activist finally succeeded in taxing sodas and junk food in Mexico. It was the first soda tax in North America. The tax was really effective because in the two years that followed, consumption of sweetened beverages fell. Mexico had been the world's largest consumer of soft drinks and it went down to fourth place. Encouraged by the success of the tax, 20 associations joined the effort led by Caldillo and Barquera. They demanded a nutritional labeling system, and they also hoped to raise the tax from 10 to 20 percent. Apparently, these demands were unacceptable to mysterious, nameless opponents. I got a message on my mobile, a text with a link. I clicked on the link and it took me to the website of Mexico City's main funeral home. I understood it as a death threat. Simon, your daughter, and they cited her name, has had an automobile accident and she is at the hospital in critical condition. For further information, click here. Simon, your daughter has just had an accident. It is very serious. Come quickly. She has been taken here. Police are still trying to identify the suspect who sent these threatening texts. We live in paradoxical times. Although merchandise can easily cross borders, endangering local producers, and junk food is conquering the world, barriers are raised to keep human beings out. The revolution came from a country at America's southern tip, Chile, despite the fact that for 30 years, it has been the darling of free market enthusiasts. The anti-obesity movement is led by a senator. For years, he has been fighting to dislodge his people from their rank as third worldwide in overweight and obesity. I was called the devil in one newspaper editorial. A devil persecuting those poor corporations. They have tried to discredit us. They have threatened us and assaulted us. But if we were not intimidated by Pinochet, we will not be intimidated by the multinationals, no matter how powerful they may be. In the past several years, Senator Guido Girardi, a former pediatrician, has attracted the industry's ire. He has been a fearless crusader in public health protection. First, he braved billionaire President Sebastián Piñera's official veto. Then, he had to overcome the industry's campaign to denigrate him. Finally, the law passed in 2016. It was the type of bomb agribusiness dreads most. The first right we gained with this law is the right to know. We created labels that tell you at a glance whether the product contains excessive sugar, salt, fat, or calories. In seconds, you're informed. We wanted something a six-year-old child could understand. Products that bear a warning label are banned from television commercials because we refuse to have trash advertised on television. They are also banned from online advertising. They cannot contain toys or stickers. They are banned from using their sneaky ways to grab children's attention. Fraudulent advertising violates the human rights of children and all the United Nations treaties that are supposed to defend children's rights and health. We accuse these corporations of pedophilia because they abuse children. That is why I've had extremely violent conflicts with some of them. The industry argued that the legislation would be ineffective and would penalize the poor. But only two years after it went into effect, a virtuous circle formed. The good news is that many of the products we thought it would be impossible to reformulate, because the industry told us that it was technically impossible, are now made with less sodium and less sugar. The industry itself says that 20% of its products have been reformulated. For certain categories of products, the improvement is even greater. From this viewpoint, it really is a success. In that same 18 months, we saw a 25% reduction in purchases of sugary beverages in Chile. That's unprecedented. And we're seeing large reductions in all the ultra-processed junk foods as well. That is the first time we've seen the glimmer of a country that might change the norms toward healthy eating. The Chilean food revolution has inspired action in neighboring countries. Peru has instituted the same labels, and Uruguay is about to do so. And dramatically, Mexico is joining them. Its new president and Congress have just passed new legislation requiring the same kind of labeling as Chile. On the other side of the Atlantic, the contrast is striking. Europe's Nutri-Score labeling is fairly timid, compared to the black labels in Chile. Only a few countries have adopted it, and it is not even mandatory. Back in 2010 and 2011, the European Union debated instituting a clear mandatory labeling system. Of course, the corporations opposed the measure. By their own admission, they spent over 1 billion euros lobbying to remove the mandatory stipulation. Another winning strategy for corporate interests in Germany has been to play the role of allies in the fight against obesity. This commercial, produced by a supermarket chain, promises a commitment to promoting healthy foods, to help children make their dreams come true. But is it really wise to trust the industry? A wave of overweight and obesity the size of a tsunami is headed for Germany. But politicians refuse to admit it. It is hard to understand how such a highly developed country can be so backward when it comes to prevention. But the corporate lobbies are extremely powerful in Germany. Even today, economic interest is invariably a higher priority than public health. The German government counts on the industry's ability to regulate itself. It does not impose either taxes on sugary beverages or restrictions on advertising. It is estimated that by 2040, about 12 million Germans will have diabetes. This is tragic. The challenges of our times are clustered in obesity. An explosion of chronic diseases endangers health care systems. Market leviathans limit action on government policy. Capital-intensive agriculture drives the junk food juggernaut. The whole sugar-peddling, mass-market food industry wants to addict us to cheap, empty calories that lead to chronic disease. Let's refuse to obey.