Corporate Responsiblity for Obesity

why blame the giant food corporations...they only do to food what our
govt. allows and the need to make a porfit...blame our lawmakers for
not passing tough food laws to keep americans from becoming obese...get
involved...vote
Dave Head wrote:
OK, here's a different slant on the issue, or at least one I haven't much seen
discussed.

Everyone is familiar with the "Supersize Me" tactics of Mickey-D's, and the
1400 calorie burger at (Hardees?), but this is more ubiquitous.

Snacks. Coke, Pepsi, almost everything comes in containers that are _way_ too
big for consumption by one person.

Coke / Pepsi used to have 6 oz bottles in the last 50's early 60's when I was a
kid. Now, go to your average convenience store and try to buy one less than 20
oz. 20 oz. is a _lot_ of calories. Its too much for me, a grown man, let
along some poor kid 1/3 my size and weight. I at least drink diet, so its not
an issue for me, but wow, that's a lot of drink.

Nuts. Peanuts, cashews, almonds. Look at the snack sizes for these. I
recently went to 3 different stores before finding a simple 2 1/2 oz bag of
peanuts (they're supposed to be good for U, right?) that, at 160 calories and
ounce, is still 400 calories. What were my other choices? Wawa's own-brand
packaged peanuts at 6 ounces a bag. 6 ounces! 960 calories!!!! Yeah, it'd be
fun to eat those, but wow - fat city. Then there's the 7-11 store selling the
familiar-brand bag of peanuts at 5 ounces for that bag. 800 calories!!! Wow.

Simple things from the grocery. At least this was "light" no matter how much I
ate, but... strawberries. They come, at least if fresh, in 1 lb boxes. Just
great. I can eat maybe 1/3rd of them at once. After that, I'm not much
inclined to eat any more for about a week. I keep my refrigerator at the a
lower temperature than anyone I know, but I sure don't want to touch the rest
of the strawberries during the next week. They just don't last.

Soooo... corporate culpability is a real thing, as far as I'm concerned, in the
constant fight to eat reasonably. They want to sell as much product as they
can, and don't give a rip about the calorie-bomb that a 1400 calorie burger, or
a 960 calorie bag of peanuts constituting a health threat to everyone that buys
the stuff.

Dave Head

Actually, I meant "hear hear!". I hate it when I do that.

Dally

Mxsmanic wrote:

Carol Frilegh writes:

I am off to have 20 almonds and can manage that all on my own without
corprate assistance. I bought the almonds in bulk, not packaged and
fortunately can count to twenty amd take responsibilty for the
appropriate portion limitations.

How do you resist the temptation to eat all of them at once? Isn't
the bulk seller conspiring to make you eat 40 lbs of almonds at a
sitting?

Yes, Carol - do tell! What is this magical trick you employ in order to
avoid snarfing down the whole bag in a sitting?

I agree that I would prefer companies to sell true one-serving, smaller
package size of things. When I visited the U.S. I was dismayed by the overly
large packages of snacks containing too many calories.

So what I did was pass up on them.

I can understand the frustration, but I don't see as any sort of solution
government mandated single-serving food packages. That seems like too much
government intervention in the marketplace. It seems doomed to failure,
confusion, high prices, etc.

It would be better to just convince companies that there was *demand* for
such things. If there was demand they would make the stuff, like Nabisco
does with those "100 calorie snack packs" of things like wheat things and so
on.

doug


On 3/11/06 10:32 PM, in article ,
"Dave Head" wrote:

Casino gambling is wildly popular among a significant percetage of the
population - IOW, there is "demand" for it - but many think it a bad thing and
therefore there are laws against it most places.

So, just because there is a demand for something, does that mean its a good
thing? Are those that offer something that is not necessarily in the best
interested of the customer to be cosidered blameless while America largely
loses a battle with a deadly health menace?

Its like cars - the law doesn't say you can't build a big one, it just says
you
have to build some small ones so your Corprate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) is
28 mpg (or whatever it is now.) Why? Because its good for the nation.

Just out of "doing the right thing", the food sellers _ought_ to offer
_reasonable_ sized packages of their products. If Joe Jellybelly wants to buy
a 6 oz, 960 calorie bag of peanuts, that's fine, but I want to buy a 1 3/4 oz
bag or 2.5 oz bag, and believe it is a bad thing for the food sellers not to
offer it just to sell more product without regard to the health impact on the
population.

Dave Head wrote:

I'm just not happy with having the country get fatter and fatter, simply
because some corporations want to make more money.

ALL corporations want to make more money. They do that by offering a
product that other people want to buy. The basic premise of capitalism
is that they are free to offer it and you are free to refuse it.

People do not get fat because they can only buy 1400 calorie burgers.
They get fat because they EAT 1400 calorie burgers. This is not a fault
of the supply chain: you could preplan your meals so that you aren't
forced to buy convenience foods. You CHOOSE convenience foods. There's
no reason in the world why you can't cook up a mess of black-eyed peas
in the crockpot during the day instead of eating fast food.

You have your head so far up your ass about whose to blame for why
you're fat that I doubt you'll be able to get the weight off, much less
keep it off.

Dally
244/168/155

Karstens Rage wrote:

The temptation is
force fed to us by the corporations who have no motivations other than
money. They would literally squeeze us dry if they could.

Right. Corporations will profit from you unless you don't let them.
They will literally squeeze you dry IF YOU LET THEM. Employees who
can't leave are maltreated without unions. The environment is raped in
the name of corporate profits without environmental laws (and
enforcement.) Products will be sold that are bad for you (i.e.,
cigarettes). The role of a corporation is to make money for its
shareholders. Period.

Your role as a consumer is to choose products that you wish to consume.
Just because they offer it doesn't mean you need to buy it.

You have agency over your life. You can quit working for an employer
whose terms aren't acceptable to you. You can get environmental laws
enforced (whistleblowing helps.) You can buy products that you wish to
have.

This isn't about what corporations do or don't do, this is about what
YOU do or don't do.

Dally

Dave Head wrote:

I can go along with that. But wouldn't it be nice to have a situation where
other people (corporations) are working to _help_ us maintain our health,
instead of working against us.

http://www.jonamacorchard.com/
http://www.lightlife.com/
http://www.amys.com/
http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/

I conclude that you're looking at the wrong corporations. Choice
exists. Instead of choosing it, you're whining about what other people
ought to do for you, instead.

Look to your OWN behavior. No one force feeds 40 ounces of nuts down
your throat.

Dally

nkd_one wrote:

why blame the giant food corporations...they only do to food what our
govt. allows and the need to make a porfit...blame our lawmakers for
not passing tough food laws to keep americans from becoming obese...get
involved...vote

What would that law look like? Gas stations can only sell 2 ounce
packages of nuts? What happens when my husband, three kids and I stop
by for a snack - we have to buy excess packaging? Is that good for the
environment? What happens if the baby only wants 1 ounce of peanuts and
the teen-ager wants 2.5 ounces? Who determines the exact serving size
for each person in each situation they might find themselves in? The
Guvmint?

Go on, write this law. What would it look like? Will you reflect the
consumers's culpability at all, perhaps by imposing a calorie limit on
people? How will you enforce this law - with food police? What redress
will there be for inappropriate application of the law - will you and
then make them have to go to court to contest over-eating tickets if
they get pulled over with a Slurpee that they're eating because they've
got a sore throat that needs ice and their blood sugar is dangerously
low so they needed sucrose?

Who, exactly, is in a position to best judge how much and what each
person should eat? Congress? The President? The Supreme Court? Maybe
your town council? The police? Sheriff's office? Or perhaps that
should fall into the domain of the individual who OWNS and OPERATES that
body.

So - go ahead and write that law. Right now. What would it look like?

Dally

On Sat, 11 Mar 2006 21:54:17 +0100, Mxsmanic wrote:

Dave Head writes:

I drove around until I found the 2 1/2 oz, 400 calorie bag of
peanuts.

Try skipping the 400-calorie bag of peanuts, and go for a walk instead
of driving around.

That was breakfast. I was tired of eating high cholesterol eggs...

But should it be that hard to do the right thing?

How hard can it be to sit behind the wheel of a car?

Its not hard, but its harder than to find it where you want it at the 1st
store. It also got me 20 minutes later to work than I would otherwise have
been, which meant going home 20 minutes later than I otherwise would have.
Since this was Saturday anyway, that sucked.

Its not about _me_ doing or not doing anything, its about the vast amount of
fat in this country that can be attributed to the placement of profit over
health, and the removal of sane portions of food from store shelves.

No, the vast amount of fat comes from vast amounts of overeating.

Or a little overeating spread over years.

Who the hell needs 20 oz of soda, anyway.

Nobody, but apparently a lot of people want it, at least in the U.S.

Do they want it, or are they just deprived of opportunities to buy the size
that they actually want? I almost never want even the 20 oz DIET cokes and
pepsis - its just too much. But, I can usually not find the 12 oz cans any
more.

People know they want a Coke or a Pepsi. They buy what they can find on the
shelf. The corporations are making sure they only find (the more expensive) 20
oz bottles.

Well, don't buy that much in the 1st place ...

So what is the motivation behind your crusade? Public service?

This is a National health crisis, right? Don't you think this near-universal
obesity is a health crisis? If so, why should we not be condemning the actions
of coporations that contribute to the problem instead of trying to help solve
it?

I guess it just ****es me off...

Dave Head

On Sat, 11 Mar 2006 21:56:21 +0100, Mxsmanic wrote:

Dave Head writes:

Its about all those people that just buy a Coke or Pepsi, and all the stuff
that's there is in 20 oz. bottles, where 10 years ago it would have been in a
12 oz can, and 40 years ago it would have been in an 8 oz bottle. Why is
America getting so fat? That's one of the big reasons.

No. The big reason is that they are _drinking_ 20 oz of Coke instead
of just 8 oz.

Well... yeah.

But nothing about the size of the bottle forces them to
drink any particular amount.

Yes there is. You either drink it down when you buy it, or you're stuck with a
warm bottle of Coke if you try to drink it later in the trip. I'm mostly
addressing travel-related snack-food consumption, because the at-home stuff
_does_ have much better options. The smaller portions _are_ available for home
consumption, but the travelling person is fairly abused by this situation.

Restaurants have tanks filled with
Coca-Cola, but nobody is drinking 20 litres at a time from the taps.

Yeah, but you don't have buy the whole thing at once like a 20 oz bottle of
Coke or Pepsi.

Its driven by
corporate self-interest at the expense of the American health situation, and
that's just not right.

What's not right is the lack of personal responsibility in America.
Nobody wants to accept any responsibility for anything--it's always
Someone Else's fault. Fat people are among the worst offenders.

This is all true, of course, but that doesn't mean that the companies that
_only_ offer out-sized portions of popular foods and drinks are helping to
solve the problem. They aren't. But they should be.

Dave Head