Synthesis Take Home Unit One: Food

Introduction:
The United States has a variety of food cultures that differ across regions, diets, income, and ages. And yet, the
mass appeal of processed and fast foods is one of the country’s largest industries. Meanwhile, the United
States continues to experience a rise in obesity and obesity-related illness, which many researchers and
doctors link directly with the success of these industries.

Reading Tasks:
● Read each text twice. During the first read, annotate the passage for claims and evidence.
● For the second read, discussion questions are provided at the end of each text, but annotate carefully
and record additional questions for clarification and discussion.

Essay Prompt:
To what extent is an individual responsible for their health habits and food choices, and/or to what extent are
these habits and choices out of their control? Your essay should be between 2-4 pages in length, and cite at
least 3 of the included sources.

Text 1 Excerpt from “The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food” by Michael Moss (2013)

What follows is from the introduction to a book titled Salt, Sugar, Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us by
Michael Moss. Excerpts from the book, which exposes the food engineering and marketing tactics that the
makers of processed foods use to hook consumers on their products, were published as an article in The New
York Times in 2013.

The discussion took place in Pillsbury’s auditorium. The first speaker was a vice president of Kraft named
Michael Mudd. “I very much appreciate this opportunity to talk to you about childhood obesity and the growing
challenge it presents for us all,” Mudd began. “Let me say right at the start, this is not an easy subject. There are
no easy answers — for what the public health community must do to bring this problem under control or for
what the industry should do as others seek to hold it accountable for what has happened. But this much is
clear: For those of us who’ve looked hard at this issue, whether they’re public health professionals or staff
specialists in your own companies, we feel sure that the one thing we shouldn’t do is nothing.”

As he spoke, Mudd clicked through a deck of slides — 114 in all — projected on a large screen behind him. The
figures were staggering. More than half of American adults were now considered overweight, with nearly
one-quarter of the adult population — 40 million people — clinically defined as obese. Among children, the
rates had more than doubled since 1980, and the number of kids considered obese had shot past 12 million.
(This was still only 1999; the nation’s obesity rates would climb much higher.) Food manufacturers were now
being blamed for the problem from all sides — academia, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the
American Heart Association and the American Cancer Society. The secretary of agriculture, over whom the
industry had long held sway, had recently called obesity a “national epidemic.”

Mudd then did the unthinkable. He drew a connection to the last thing in the world the C.E.O.’s wanted linked to
their products: cigarettes. First came a quote from a Yale University professor of psychology and public health,
Kelly Brownell, who was an especially vocal proponent of the view that the processed-food industry should be
seen as a public health menace: “As a culture, we’ve become upset by the tobacco companies advertising to
children, but we sit idly by while the food companies do the very same thing. And we could make a claim that
the toll taken on the public health by a poor diet rivals that taken by tobacco.”

“If anyone in the food industry ever doubted there was a slippery slope out there,” Mudd said, “I imagine they
are beginning to experience a distinct sliding sensation right about now.”

Mudd then presented the plan he and others had devised to address the obesity problem. Merely getting the
executives to acknowledge some culpability was an important first step, he knew, so his plan would start off
with a small but crucial move: the industry should use the expertise of scientists — its own and others — to
gain a deeper understanding of what was driving Americans to overeat. Once this was achieved, the effort
could unfold on several fronts. To be sure, there would be no getting around the role that packaged foods and
drinks play in overconsumption. They would have to pull back on their use of salt, sugar and fat, perhaps by
imposing industrywide limits. But it wasn’t just a matter of these three ingredients; the schemes they used to
advertise and market their products were critical, too. Mudd proposed creating a “code to guide the nutritional
aspects of food marketing, especially to children.”

“We are saying that the industry should make a sincere effort to be part of the solution,” Mudd concluded. “And
that by doing so, we can help to defuse the criticism that’s building against us.”

What happened next was not written down. But according to three participants, when Mudd stopped talking,
the one C.E.O. whose recent exploits in the grocery store had awed the rest of the industry stood up to speak.
His name was Stephen Sanger, and he was also the person — as head of General Mills — who had the most to
lose when it came to dealing with obesity. Under his leadership, General Mills had overtaken not just the cereal
aisle but other sections of the grocery store. The company’s Yoplait brand had transformed traditional
unsweetened breakfast yogurt into a veritable dessert. It now had twice as much sugar per serving as General
Mills’ marshmallow cereal Lucky Charms. And yet, because of yogurt’s well-tended image as a wholesome
snack, sales of Yoplait were soaring, with annual revenue topping $500 million. Emboldened by the success,
the company’s development wing pushed even harder, inventing a Yoplait variation that came in a squeezable
tube — perfect for kids. They called it Go-Gurt and rolled it out nationally in the weeks before the C.E.O.
meeting. (By year’s end, it would hit $100 million in sales.)

According to the sources I spoke with, Sanger began by reminding the group that consumers were “fickle.”
(Sanger declined to be interviewed.) Sometimes they worried about sugar, other times fat. General Mills, he
said, acted responsibly to both the public and shareholders by offering products to satisfy dieters and other
concerned shoppers, from low sugar to added whole grains. But most often, he said, people bought what they
liked, and they liked what tasted good. “Don’t talk to me about nutrition,” he reportedly said, taking on the voice
of the typical consumer. “Talk to me about taste, and if this stuff tastes better, don’t run around trying to sell
stuff that doesn’t taste good.”

The meeting was remarkable, first, for the insider admissions of guilt. But I was also struck by how prescient the
organizers of the sit-down had been. Today, one in three adults is considered clinically obese, along with one in
five kids, and 24 million Americans are afflicted by type 2 diabetes, often caused by poor diet, with another 79
million people having pre-diabetes. Even gout, a painful form of arthritis once known as “the rich man’s
disease” for its associations with gluttony, now afflicts eight million Americans.

The public and the food companies have known for decades now — or at the very least since this meeting —
that sugary, salty, fatty foods are not good for us in the quantities that we consume them. So why are the
diabetes and obesity and hypertension numbers still spiraling out of control? It’s not just a matter of poor
willpower on the part of the consumer and a give-the-people-what-they-want attitude on the part of the food
manufacturers. What I found, over four years of research and reporting, was a conscious effort — taking place
in labs and marketing meetings and grocery-store aisles — to get people hooked on foods that are convenient
and inexpensive.

Discussion Questions:
● How does the processed food industry view its own role in the obesity epidemic?
● Describe the essay’s tone, identifying words and phrases that convey it.
● Where in the essay does the author establish his credentials as someone sufficiently knowledgeable to
comment on this subject?

Text #2 “ Food Deserts” from From the Food Empowerment Project, Foodispower.org

This is an article from the website of a nonprofit organization dedicated to feeding the hungry.

Food deserts can be described as geographic areas where residents’ access to affordable, healthy food
options (especially fresh fruits and vegetables) is restricted or nonexistent due to the absence of grocery stores
within convenient travelling distance. For instance, according to a report prepared for Congress by the
Economic Research Service of the US Department of Agriculture, about 2.3 million people (or 2.2 percent of all
US households) live more than one mile away from a supermarket and do not own a car. In urban areas, access
to public transportation may help residents overcome the difficulties posed by distance, but economic forces
have driven grocery stores out of many cities in recent years, making them so few and far between that an
individual’s food shopping trip may require taking several buses or trains. In suburban and rural areas, public
transportation is either very limited or unavailable, with supermarkets often many miles away from people’s
homes.

The other defining characteristic of food deserts is socio-economic: that is, they are most commonly found in
communities of color and low-income areas (where many people don’t have cars). Studies have found that
wealthy districts have three times as many supermarkets as poor ones do, that white neighborhoods contain
an average of four times as many supermarkets as predominantly black ones do, and that grocery stores in
African-American communities are usually smaller with less selection. People’s choices about what to eat are
severely limited by the options available to them and what they can afford—and many food deserts contain an
overabundance of fast food chains selling cheap “meat” and dairy-based foods that are high in fat, sugar and
salt. Processed foods (such as snack cakes, chips and soda) typically sold by corner delis, convenience stores
and liquor stores are usually just as unhealthy.

Those living in food deserts may also find it difficult to locate foods that are culturally appropriate for them, and
dietary restrictions, such as lactose intolerance, gluten allergies, etc., also limit the food choices of those who
do not have access to larger chain stores that have more selection. Additionally, studies have found that urban
residents who purchase groceries at small neighborhood stores pay between 3 and 37 percent more than
suburbanites buying the same products at supermarkets.

Healthier foods are generally more expensive than unhealthful foods, particularly in food deserts. For instance,
while the overall price of fruits and vegetables in the US increased by nearly 75 percent between 1989 and
2005, the price of fatty foods dropped by more than 26 percent during the same period. [5] While such inflation
has strained the food budgets of many families regardless of their financial status, the higher cost of healthy
foods often puts them entirely beyond the monetary means of many lower-income people.
While unhealthy eating may be economically cheaper in the short-term, the consequences of long-term
constrained access to healthy foods is one of the main reasons that ethnic minority and low-income
populations suffer from statistically higher rates of obesity, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and other
diet-related conditions than the general population.

Discussion Questions:

● How does the author support the claim that food deserts are a widespread issue in the United
States?
● Based on the definitions and descriptions here, is it possible to have a food desert in our school
district? Explain.
● In what way can living in a food desert influence the dietary choices a person makes?

Source 3 “Most Teens' Physical Activity Occurs at School” By Tara Haelle, Dec. 8, 2015

This is an article from the online publication HealthDay Reporter at Healthday.org

About half of young teens' daily physical activity occurs at school, but it accounts for just a fraction of their time
there, according to a new study.

"We knew that schools were a major source of physical activity for kids. But, we were surprised that kids spent
only 4.8 percent of their time at school physically active, the lowest of all locations," said study lead author
Jordan Carlson, director of community-engaged health research at Children's Mercy Hospital in Kansas City.

Besides helping to prevent obesity and chronic diseases, physical activity has benefits for bone health, brain
development, academic achievement, on-task behavior and mental health, Carlson added.

"Kids have a natural instinct to move around, and schools can support this by providing more opportunities for
students to be active, such as by incorporating physical activity into the classroom," he added.

The study also found that walking to school added an extra 15 to 20 minutes of overall physical activity to
children's days. Yet the proportion of kids who walk to school has dropped from 40 percent a few decades ago
to 15 percent today, Carlson said.

Building schools closer to students' homes, improving pedestrian safety, and utilizing drop-off zones when the
distance to school is too far "could have meaningful impacts on their overall physical activity and health,"
Carlson said. The findings were published online Dec. 8 in the journal Pediatrics.

The researchers measured how much moderate to vigorous physical activity nearly 550 teens received daily by
outfitting them with a GPS tracker and an accelerometer for an average of seven days.

The group of teens ranged in age from 12 to 16 and was diverse in terms of gender, ethnicity, family income
and neighborhood type (easily walkable or not). They lived in either the Seattle or Baltimore-Washington, D.C.
metropolitan areas. The teens spent about 42 percent of their waking time at school and a little more than a
quarter of their time at home. They also spent about 13 percent of their time in their neighborhoods and 14
percent of their time elsewhere.
Overall, the study found they spent an average of 39 minutes a day engaged in moderate to vigorous physical
activity -- significantly less than the 60 minutes recommended for healthy development and obesity prevention.
On school days, just over half of this activity time occurred at school, the study found.

When averaged across a full week including weekends, teens got about 42 percent of their total physical
activity while at school. They got about 10 percent of their total physical activity each week in their
neighborhood or around their school, the study found.

Despite declining budgets, it's important that schools not neglect the value of physical education, said Dr.
Jennifer Beck, associate director of sports medicine at the Orthopaedic Institute for Children in Los Angeles.
This is especially true at a time when obesity in children has swelled along with increases in diabetes, high
blood pressure, high cholesterol and malnutrition in U.S. children, she added.

"The most important implication coming out of this study is that we as a society -- including parents, educators,
health care providers and government officials -- need to do more to promote a healthy, active lifestyle among
our at-risk adolescents," Beck said. However, she cautioned that this is a complex topic and said readers
"should take care in drawing specific, concrete conclusions from the data."

Still, studies have shown that kids learn better when they have time for physical activity, "even at the expense of
decreased study time for academic subjects," Beck said.
The current findings also reveal how much teens' lives have changed since decades past, before computers
and multimedia sources were fixtures in the home, said Dr. Danelle Fisher. Fisher is vice chair of pediatrics at
Providence Saint John's Health Center in Santa Monica, Calif.

"Kids rode bikes and walked to school or friends' houses," Fisher said. "Parents and kids have more structured
activities today, which include lots of programmed extracurricular activities, and teens spend less free time
around home."

For kids to get enough physical activity, changes need to occur at home and at school, Carlson said. Schools
need well-trained physical education teachers, recess for younger kids, classroom physical activity and play
before and after school, he said. Parents can also limit their children's screen time and advocate locally for
more pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods, he added.

Discussion Questions:
● How do the experiences of P.E. or gym class described in the article compare to your own experiences
with physical activity throughout your schooling?
● The author of this article goes into detail about the ages of the students tracked as well as the method
they were studied. What effect does this have on the audience reading the article?
● What, according to the researchers, are the implications of the research? What might someone refuting
these implications argue?
Source 4
Product photo of a Mcdonald’s plastic food playset formerly sold on Amazon.com

Discussion Questions:
● Describe the types of foods included in the playset. Why might the toy developers have chosen these
kinds of foods?
● In what other ways do food and restaurant brands make themselves prominent in our culture beyond
their typical advertising?
● What other questions does this “playset” provoke?

Source 5 Official USDA Food Plans: Cost of Food at Home at Four Levels, U.S. Average, December 2019

The following page is the monthly report from the USDA tracking food costs for families of different sizes.

Discussion Questions:
● What are three conclusions your can reasonably infer from the provided data?
● Based on what you know about wages, what percentage of a family’s budget would food represent if
one adult was working for minimum wage pay? Two adults? With two children?
● What additional questions does this data prompt for you?
Source 6: “School Kids Are Blaming Michelle Obama For Their ‘Gross’ School Lunches” by Roberto A., Ferdman,
Nov. 24, 2014

The following is an article from The Washington Post which was published shortly after federal guidelines went
into effect regulating the nutrition of school-prepared meals. These guidelines were part of the Healthy,
Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, for which First Lady Michelle Obama was a prominent advocate.

School kids around the country are tweeting rather unfortunate pictures
of the meals they're being served at lunchtime, and thanking first lady
and healthy school food advocate Michelle Obama for their bowls of
mush and mystery proteins.
The tweets, which have carried the not-so-subtle
#ThanksMichelleObama hashtag, were being sent out at a rate of 40 per
minute late last week, but started to gain momentum some 10 days back
and are still continuing to be posted as of this morning.

In some cases, the sarcastic tweets have poked fun at the strange
juxtaposition of healthy foods, such as fruit, and peculiar ones, like
whatever this mealy substance is:

Or this ball of -- it's unclear.

In others, the posts have taken issue with the new, purportedly healthier
meals more generally. Often, because they look sad — at least, when
photographed:

"We've seen the photos being tweeted," said Sam Kass, executive
director of Let's Move! and senior policy adviser for Nutrition. "But we
don't dictate the food that schools serve — school districts do."

The country's public school meal program has undergone a good deal of
change over the past few years, largely driven by a national push for
more nutritious lunch trays. And Michelle Obama, arguably the school
nutrition movement's most public proponent, has become a symbol of
the healthier meals. She was an instrumental player in the
implementation of new health standards in 2012, which mandate
minimum fruit, vegetable and whole grain servings, as well as maximum
sodium, sugar and fat contents. And she helped inspire more recent changes that took effect this school year
banning schools from serving soda and sugary drinks.

By some measures, the new requirements have been wildly successful. A recent study in Virginia found that
school children were eating significantly healthier meals when the food was chosen by their school, rather than
their parents. A similar study, conducted earlier this year in Massachusetts, concluded the same thing. Parents,
according to senior author Jeanne Goldberg, were serving lunches "comprised more of packaged foods than
anything else."
But just because children are being served healthy food doesn't mean they're eating it. A study by the Harvard
School of Public Health found that some 60 percent of vegetables and 40 percent of fresh fruit are thrown away
(for good measure, even more vegetables — some 75 percent — were thrown out before the USDA school
meal standards went into effect). A separate study notes a significant increase in waste in many schools ever
since the new health standards were implemented.

Based on some of these photos from children, it might not be surprising why so much of the country's public
school meals are going to waste. But there's also a long tradition among school children of complaining about
the quality and appearance of their cafeteria food. The hashtag #ThanksMichelleObama, though it has gained
momentum over the past couple weeks, seems to date back to 2012. And though some schools might be
serving meals unfit for iPhone cameras, others claim to be proud of the produce on their lunch plates.

Discussion Questions:
● To what extent are schools responsible for the nutrition of their students?
● How effective has the Healthy and Hunger-Free Kids Act campaign been in promoting healthy eating
among children and teens?
● How effective do you predict the healthy school lunch program will be in the long term? Why?

Source 7: “Percent of adults who engage in leisure-time physical activity, 2016”

The map on the following page, from the U.S. Center for Disease Control, shows the title data color-coded by
state.

Discussion Questions:
● According to the researchers, what does it mean to “engage in no leisure-time physical activity”?
● Hypothesize why there are vast differences in exercise habits among the different regions of the U.S.
Explain two ways you could realistically test this hypothesis.
● What questions does this data bring to mind? Write at least three.