The following editorial appeared in the Chicago Tribune on Wednesday, Sept. 1:
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Better access to supermarkets - long touted as a way to curb obesity in low-income neighborhoods - doesn't improve people's diets, according to new research. The study, which tracked thousands of people in several large cities for 15 years, found that people didn't eat more fruits and vegetables when they had supermarkets available in their neighborhoods.
-Chicago Tribune, July 13, 2011
The above news item on a University of North Carolina study about urban "food deserts" reminded us of a famous New Yorker cartoon:
A young girl scowls at her dinner plate.
Mother: "It's broccoli, dear."
Girl: "I say it's spinach, and I say the hell with it."
In other words, you can plant supermarkets in nutritionally challenged neighborhoods - in any neighborhoods, really - but you can't make people love healthier fare like spinach (or broccoli). Many say the hell with it.
Problem One: Fresh fruits and vegetables can be pricey compared to Big Macs.
Problem Two: Supermarkets brim with choices every bit as fattening as a 930-calorie Wendy's Baconator Double.
Problem Three: People of all income levels develop bad eating habits that are hard to break.
The upshot: Despite decades of educating, chiding and warning Americans that they need to eat healthier, many people don't.
Only 26 percent of the nation's adults eat vegetables three or more times a day, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says. Vegetable consumption totals are far short of what public health officials had hoped to achieve. (Smothering that broccoli in Velveeta doesn't count as eating a vegetable in our book.)
Yes, we love the wondrous convenience of salads washed and ready in a handy bag. But still, the average American eats a salad at mealtime only about 36 times a year, The Wall Street Journal reports. How short-sighted.
The University of North Carolina study "raises the serious issue of how we get people to eat healthy," says lead author Barry Popkin.
Our take is that government campaigns won't get many people to eat healthy. The current arsenal, heavy on hectoring Americans, isn't working.
P.S. It's not just Americans who are snubbing the eat-less eat-smart call: Global obesity rates have doubled worldwide in the last three decades.
We instead suggest some reality-based thinking from the eat-your-spinach-or-else school of public health.
First, baby steps. We need to start chipping away at America's obesity epidemic, one Triple Double Oreo (about 100 calories per cookie) at a time. We must waddle before we can waddle a little more briskly.
Health advocates, accept the bitter truth: Americans - people - like to eat tasty stuff that is not good for them. The prospect of living longer in the future can't compete with the prospect of creamy Key lime pie right now.
Preaching abstinence won't work. Nor will posting calorie counts on menus, handy as those are. People with a twinging conscience will gobble the 540-calorie KFC Double Down with a Diet Coke.
Some flashy marketing could help. Last year, the baby carrot industry launched a $25 million ad campaign. The concept: "Baby carrots. Eat 'em like junk food." The ads are edgy, replete with over-the-top sexual innuendo, thundering graphics, a woman firing carrots like bullets and a heavy metal sound track.
Brilliant. Instead of being the antidote to junk food, carrots are the new Cheetos!
Amazingly, it seems to be working. Sales rose 10 to 13 percent in test markets in the final months of 2010 compared to a year earlier, says a spokesman for Bolthouse Farms, the company that bankrolled the campaign.
The next hurdle for marketers is peer pressure. Face it, people who eat healthily tend to irritate those who don't. Munching on a salmon burger at lunch brings hoots of derision from pizza-snarfing colleagues about diets and, hint hint, extreme health food fanatics.
The Federal Food Nannies covet a world without Hardee's 1,320-calorie Monster Thickburger to tempt people. We disagree. The solution, as far as we can tell, is what Mom always said: Portion control. Everything in moderation. Don't eat if you're not hungry.
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(c)2011 the Chicago Tribune Distributed by Mclatchy-Tribune News Service.