Marion Nestle "Food Politics"

Marion Nestle Food Politics. com, including Blog

On February 22, 2002, two weeks before Food Politics was due to appear in bookstores, my editor at the University of California Press called with disturbing news. Three highly critical attacks on the book had been posted on the Web site of the Internet bookseller Amazon.com. The re-viewers—all anonymous—accused the book of inappropriately blaming the food industry for matters of personal responsibility.

“Nestle forgot a not-so-little thing called WILL POWER!” said the first review. “Marion Nestle, one of the foremost food nannies in this country, has produced a book that heaps the blame for obesity, diabetes, and heart disease on food producers, marketing executives, and even school principals. Everyone, it seems, is responsible for those love handles except for the very people who are carrying them around.” From reviewer #2:“Individuals incapable of thinking for themselves will truly appreciate . . .Food Politics. [Hasn’t the author] ever heard of personal responsibility, exercise, and appropriate dieting?” And from reviewer #3: “Marion Nestle’s book ‘Food Politics’ makes clear that the political system she favors is dictatorship—with her in command. . . . The author’s motto could be ‘if it tastes good don’t eat it.’

”Because I adore food and make no secret of it, this last comment suggested that these reviewers must not have read my book. But before I could say so, Sheldon Rampton, the coauthor of Toxic Sludge Is Good for You: Lies, Damned Lies, and the Public Relations Industry (Common Courage Press, 1995)—whom I do not know personally—responded for me:

For what it’s worth, potential readers of Nestle’s book should note that the first three “reader reviews” of this book are pretty obviously cranked out by some food industry PR campaign. To begin with, they were all submitted on the same date, February 22—“reader reviews” of a book that isn’t even scheduled to go on sale until March 4! For another thing, they all hit on the same food industry “message points”: that critics are “nagging nannies” whipping up“hysteria” on behalf of “greedy trial lawyers,” etc. February 22 is also the date that noted industry flack Steven Milloy of the “Junk Science Home Page”wrote a review trashing Nestle’s book. Milloy is a former tobacco lobbyist and front man for a group created by Philip Morris, which has been diversifying its tobacco holdings in recent years by buying up companies that make many of the fatty, sugar-laden foods that Nestle is warning about. I haven’t even had a chance yet to read Nestle’s book myself, but it irritates me to see the food industry’s PR machine spew out the usual ( . . . ) every time someone writes something they don’t like. If they hate her this much, it’s probably a pretty good book.

I could not have done better myself. But then a second attack came a few weeks later from a lawyer for the Sugar Association, a group representing the interests of producers of sugar cane and beets. The letter charged me with making “numerous false, misleading, disparaging, and defamatory statements about sugar” such as “the false and inaccurate statement that soft drinks contain sugar.” It said soft drinks “have contained virtually no sugar (sucrose) in more than 20 years,” and if I did not“cease making misleading or false statements regarding sugar or the sugar industry . . . the only recourse available to us will be to legally defend our industry and its members against any and all fallacious and harmful allegations.” Mind you, the ingredient labels of soft drinks say they contain “high fructose corn syrup and/or sucrose,” and both sweeteners are made of glucose and fructose—sugars. Thus, the lawyer’s letter could have only one purpose: intimidation. I wrote back saying so and heard nothing further from this group. Marion Nestle "Food Politics" 2007 edition Scribd

(Marion Nestle "Food Politics" 2007 Scribd introduction only scrambled

Furthermore, I could not find anyone who would speak to me "on the record" for this book. when I told friends in government, food companies, and academia that I was writing a book about how the food industry affects nutrition and health, they offered to tell me anything I wanted to know, but not for attribution. I had to find other ways to document how food companies use the political system, marketing strategies, and nutrition experts to encourage people to buy more of their products— whether or not those products are likely to promote health. (Marion Nestle "Food Politics" 2002 p.viii-ix)

In my 25 years as a nutrition educator in the United States, I have found that food-industry practices are discussed only rarely. The reasons for this omission are not difficult to understand. Most of us believe that we choose foods for reasons of personal taste, convenience and cost. We deny that we can be manipulated by advertising or other marketing practices. Nutrition scientists and practitioners typically believe that food companies are genuinely interested in improving health. They think it makes sense to work with the industry to help people improve their diets, and most are outraged by suggestions that food-industry sponsorship of research or programs might influence what they do or say. Most food company officials argue that any food product can be included in a balanced, varied and moderate diet. They say that their companies help to promote good health when they fund the activities of nutrition professionals. Most officials of US federal agriculture and health agencies understand that their units are headed by political appointees whose concerns reflect those of the political party in power and whose actions must be acceptable to Congress. Members of Congress, in turn, must be sensitive to the concerns of corporations that help fund their campaigns.

In this political system, the actions of food companies are normal, legal, and thoroughly analogous to the workings of any other major industry - tobacco, for example - in influencing health experts, federal agencies and Congress. Promoting food raises more complicated issues than promoting tobacco, however, in that food is required for life and causes problems only when consumed inappropriately. But the primary mission of food companies, like that of tobacco companies, is to sell products. Food companies are not health or social service agencies, and nutrition becomes a factor in corporate thinking only when it can help sell food. The ethical choices involved in such thinking are considered bad too rarely.

Early in the 20th century, when the principal causes of death and disability among Americans were infectious diseases related in part to inadequate intake of calories and nutrients, the goals of health officials, nutritionists and the food industry were identical - to encourage people to eat more of all kinds of food. Throughout that century, economic improvements affected the way Americans ate in important ways: we got access to foods of greater variety, our diets improved and nutrient deficiencies gradually declined. The principal nutritional problems among Americans shifted to those of over nutrition - eating too much food or too much of certain kinds of food. Overeating causes its own set of health problems; it deranges metabolism, makes people overweight and increases the likelihood of "chronic" diseases - coronary heart disease, some cancers, diabetes, hypertension, stroke and others - that now are leading causes of illness and death in any overfed population.

People may believe that the effects of diet on chronic disease are less important than those of cigarette smoking, but each contributes to about one-fifth of annual deaths in the United States. Addressing cigarette smoking requires only a single change in behavior: stop smoking. But because people must eat to survive, advice about dietary improvements is much more complicated: eat this food instead of that food, or eat less. The "eat less" message is at the root of much of the controversy over nutrition advice. It conflicts directly with food-industry demands that people eat more of their products. Thus food companies work hard to oppose and undermine "eat less" messages.

I first became aware of the food industry as an influence on government nutrition policies and on the opinions of nutrition experts when I moved to Washington DC in 1986 to work for the Public Health Service. My job was to manage the editorial production of the first - and as yet only - surgeon general's report on nutrition and health, an ambitious government effort to summarize the entire body of research linking dietary factors such as fat, saturated fat, cholesterol, salt, sugar and alcohol to leading chronic diseases. My first day on the job, I was given the rules: no matter what the research indicated, the report could not recommend "eat less meat" as a way to reduce intake of saturated fat, nor could it suggest restrictions on intake of any other category of food. In the industry-friendly climate of the Reagan administration, the producers of foods that might be affected by such advice would complain to their beneficiaries in Congress, and the report would never be published.

This scenario was no paranoid fantasy. Federal health officials had endured a decade of almost constant congressional interference with their dietary recommendations. Agency officials had learned to avoid such interference by resorting to euphemisms, focusing recommendations on nutrients rather than on the foods that contain them, and giving a positive spin to any restrictive advice about food. Whereas "eat less beef" called the industry to arms, "eat less saturated fat" did not. "Eat less sugar" sent sugar producers right to Congress, but that industry could live with "choose a diet moderate in sugar". When released in 1988, the surgeon general's report recommended "choose lean meats" and suggested limitations on sugar intake only for people particularly vulnerable to dental cavities.

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Since 1988, ....... I have become increasingly convinced that many of the nutritional problems of Americans - not least of them obesity - can be traced to the food industry's imperative to encourage people to eat more to generate sales and increase income in a highly competitive market. Ambiguous and confusing dietary advice is only one result of this imperative. The industry also devotes enormous financial and other resources to lobbying Congress and federal agencies, forming partnerships and alliances with professional nutritional organizations, funding research on food and nutrition, publicizing the results of selected research studies favorable to industry, sponsoring professional journals and conferences, and making sure that influential groups - federal officials, researchers, doctors, nurses, teachers and journalists - are aware of the benefits of their products. (Marion Nestle "Food Politics" 2002 p.2-3)

(Marion Nestle "Food Politics" 2002 variations of excerpts cited at "Profit drive requires force feeding the fat"

Marion Nestle "Food Politics" 2002 Introduction https://utah.instructure.com/courses/284271/files/ ???

Economic pressures force food and beverage companies to expand to tremendous size. In 2000, seven U.S. companies Philip Morris, ConAgra, Mars, IBP, Sara Lee, Heinz, and Tyson Foods—ranked among the ten largest food companies in the world. Nestle (Switzerland) ranked first, Unilever (U.K. (Marion Nestle "Food Politics" 2002 p.12-3)

In 1976, the committee initiated a new series of hearings with the riveting title "Diet Related to Killer Diseases." At the very first of these hearings, more than 30 witnesses described how eating too much of the wrong kinds of food would increase risks for cancer, cardiovascular disease, and obesity.17 "Eat less" recommendations had become inevitable.

Dietary Goals: Issued, Opposed Revised, 1977 On the basis of such testimony, the committee staff wrote the soon-to-be-infamous report, Dietary Goals for the United States, and released it at a press conference in January 1977. (Marion Nestle "Food Politics" 2002 p.40-1)

To the surprise of critics, however the revised Guidelines appeared in 1985 with trivial changes in just three words: "maintain ideal weight" became "maintain desirable weight," and “alcohol” became “alcoholic beverages. USDA Secretary Block, joined by the National Cattlemen's Association, endorsed the new Guidelines, explaining that "all of us have changed in our thinking."43 This reversal came about as a result of a growing agreement that the preponderance of scientific evidence really did support Dietary Goals and Guidelines. (Marion Nestle "Food Politics" 2002 p.48-51)

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YO UNDERSTAND HOW FOOD COMPANIES ARE ABLE TO EXERT : disproportionate influence on government nutrition policy, we must begin with a discussion of lobbying and its integral position in American political processes. Lobbying is any legal attempt by individuals or groups 10 influence government policy or action, a definition that explicitly excludes bribery. Historically, lobbying always has involved three elements: (1) promoting the views of special-interest groups, (2) attempting to influence government laws, rules, or policies that might affect those groups, and (3) communicating with government officials or their representatives about laws, rules, or policies of interest.' Food lobbyists, therefore, are people who ask government officials to make rules or laws that will benefit their clients' companies, whether or not they benefit anyone else.

At their best, lobbyists provide federal officials with well-researched technical advice about proposed legislation, regulation, and public education. The value of this expertise has been the ostensible reason for congressional reluctance to limit lobbying activities. Offering expertise, however, is only one strategy. More important are personal contacts established through meetings and social occasions. Other lobbying methods include arranging campaign contributions, staging media events, organizing public demonstrations, harassing critics, and encouraging lawsuits. Such efforts have been-and are-so successful that lobbyists have sometimes been considered to constitute their own branch of government.

Lobbyists, however, are hired, not elected. They differ from advocates and independent experts in that they are paid to represent private-not Thus lobbying raises questions about undue influence and misuse of power. Our political system must balance the rights of individuals and groups against the rights of society as a whole, and it requires elected officials to listen to groups demanding self-interested actions. What concerns us here is the differential ability of food companies to obtain laws and rules that act in their favor at the expense of public health.

SETTING THE STAGE FOR FOOD LOBBYING:
THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT

That food lobbies are permitted to do what they do derives directly from the long tradition of acceptance of lobbying as an integral part of the American political system. That lobbying would create tensions in that system was known from the outset. In 1787 James Madison wrote of the "dangerous vice" of factions-his term for lobbying groups. He viewed factions as an inevitable result of basic human nature, as well as of the unequal distribution of property. He believed that the "mischiefs" caused by special-interest groups would be controlled inevitably as a natural outcome of majority rule: "There are two methods of curing the mischiefs of faction: the one, by removing its causes; the other, by controlling its effects ... [a faction] may clog the administration, it may convulse the society; but it will be unable to execute and mask its violence under the forms of the Constitution."2

As Madison predicted, public exposures of excessive and dishonest lobbying were followed by investigations and demands for its regulation. For the next 1 50 years, various states and Congress made sporadic but unsuccessful attempts to control lobbying-so much so that beginning in 19 II, nearly every session of Congress involved some attempt to address lobbying abuses. When Congress finally did act on the matter, it made lobbying legal. It required only that persons paid to lobby register and disclose their sources of funds. Furthermore, Congress did not specify enforcement procedures, which may be one reason why the law resulted in only a single conviction-and that in 1959. Lobbying regulations were universally viewed as unenforceable and, therefore, ineffective.

Legislation passed in 1995 closed some, but by no means all, of the loopholes.' That law defines lobbyists as people who spend at least 20% of their time on such activities, have contact with government officials or staff, and are paid more than $ 5,000 in a six-month period for this work. Because all three of these criteria had to be met, people whose activities met just one or two did not need to register." At about the same time, amendments to federal election laws limited the value of gifts and meals that legislators could accept from lobbyists. The House rule barred lobbyists from buying meals for members and aides except at stand-up receptions attended by 25 people (the "toothpick" rule), although small gift items were still permissible. The Senate's rules were somewhat less restrictive. Senators and aides, for example, could not accept paid travel to recreational events, or gifts or meals worth more than $100 from any one individual in a year. Such restrictions were easily evaded.!

Those rules not only led to an increase in registration of lobbyists (which was their intention) but also to an increase in overall lobbying activity. According to data collected by the Center for Responsive Politics, a public-interest group that goes to a great deal of effort to track this sort of information, the number of registered lobbyists increased from 15,000 to more than 20,000 just between 1997 and 1999. The Center estimated that lobbyists spent more than $1.42 billion on behalf of clients in 1998; it calculated that if this amount went just for lobbying Congress, then each of the country's 100 senators and 435 representatives would be contacted by an average of 38 paid lobbyists spending $2.7 million on if! each legislator to do SO.6It must be understood that this army of largesse"~/ dispensing lobbyists represents every conceivable component of Arneriican corporate and private enterprise; no industry is too small, no group too isolated, and no opinion too extreme to forgo paying for its own professional lobbyist. With billion-dollar expenditures, lobbying is a huge industry unto itself. At this point, we can now examine how food lobbies fit into the broader political picture.

!'INFLUENCING THE AGRICULTURAL ESTABLISHMENT

To understand how food lobbying works, we need to know something about the relationships between Congress and the federal agency most responsible for food and agriculture, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). By the end of World War II, a period during which government and food producers worked together in the national interest, farmers and food producers had come to view USDA as their department and its secretary as their spokesman. Food producers, together with USDA officials and members of the House and Senate Agricultural Committees, constituted what was universally understood to be the "agricultural establishment"-an entity so strongly united in purpose that it could ensure that any federal policy related to land use, commodity distribution, or prices would promote the interests of food producers. The control exercised by producer groups over USDA and congressional actions was so complete that this "establishment" virtually excluded the Secretary of Agriculture and even the President of the United States from any significant role in policy decisions. Their jobs, after all, were temporary."

Guaranteeing the perpetuation of this system were congressional seniority and the strong representation on agriculture committees of members from farm states. Membership on such committees gave the appearance of lifetime tenure. Allen Ellender (Oem-LA), for example, chaired the Senate Agriculture Committee for 18 years; his successor, Herman Talmadge (Dem-GA), held the position for 10 more. Most remarkably, Representative Jamie Whitten (Dem-MS) chaired House Agriculture Committees from 1949 to 1992, accumulating so much power during this 43-year period that he was referred to as the permanent Secretary of Agriculture."

In the early 1970s, this system began to break down as new constituencies began to demand influence over agriculture policies. Consumers, for example, complained when a combination of bad weather, poor harvests in foreign countries, and massive purchases of U.S. grain by the Soviet Union caused an increase in food costs. Large processing and marketing companies formed as agriculture gained importance in the U.S. economy, and the interests of these new entities differed from those of smaller food producers. Even more, the expansion of food assistance programs following the 1969 White House Conference on Food, Nutrition, and Health meant that an increasingly large proportion of USDA's funding went for Food Stamps and other such activities. Advocates for the poor became a new agricultural interest group. In response to these new demands, the House expanded agricultural committee membership in 1974 to include representatives from urban as well as rural areas. In 1977 Congress gave the agriculture committees of both houses jurisdiction over policies and programs related not only to agricultural production, marketing, research, and development but also to a wide range of new areas: rural development, forestry, domestic food assistance; some aspects of foreign trade, international relations, market regulation, and taxes; and, as we have seen, nutrition advice to the public. These changes stimulated a huge proliferation of lobbying activities related to the expanded functions of federal agriculture committees."

REPRESENTING FOOD INDUSTRY INTERESTS

In the 1950S just 25 groups of food producers dominated agricultural lobbying, but by the mid-rySos there were 84 such groups, and by the late 1990S there were hundreds-if not thousands-of businesses, associations, and individuals attempting to influence federal decisions related to every conceivable aspect of food and beverage production, manufacture, sales, service, and trade." Although the total number of lobbyists and groups working on food and nutrition issues is uncertain, a 1977 study identified 612 individuals and 460 groups in this category.to A cursory review of the list of all registered lobbyists suggests that less than 5% might be concerned with such issues-perhaps about 1,000 individuals, law firms, and associations representing widely diverse groups with interests in federal policies on food, nutrition, and agriculture. Advocacy groups, professional societies, and universities with agriculture programs also retain lobbyists to work for them, but these groups are usually acting on behalf of public interest or nonprofit goals.

Like all lobbyists, those for food companies gain access to federal officials and staff in ways that extend far beyond technical expertise, although such expertise provides an excuse for regular contact. Among these ways, two are worth particular attention: (I) the evident and not so evident transfer of funds from lobbyists to federal officials through federally sanctioned donations of "hard" money, legal but unsanctioned "soft" money, and gifts and (2) the frequent job exchanges between lobbyists and federal officials known as the "revolving door." Both practices raise questions about undue influence. Because the revolving door sets the scene for later discussion of more obviously commercial transactions, let's examine that method first.

Recruiting Lobbyists: The "Revolving Door"

Charges of undue influence cannot help but arise from the realization that lobbyists and government officials are not always distinct populations. Today's public servant is tomorrow's lobbyist, and vice versa. The revolving-door transformation of government officials into lobbyists and of lobbyists into government officials is not a new phenomenon. In 1968, for example, at least 23 former senators and 90 former representatives had registered as lobbyists for private organizations. More recently, among congressional representatives defeated in the 1992 election, 40% became lobbyists. So did their staff; from 1988 to 1993, 42% of Senate committee staff directors and 34 % of those on the House side became lobbyists. By 1998, 128 former members of Congress were listed as lobbyists-I 2% of all senators and representatives who had left office since 1970. As an example of what is at stake, the firm to which former senator (Rep-KS) and presidential candidate Robert Dole belonged earned $19 million in lobbying fees in 1997. 11

In the food industry, job exchanges between lobbyists and the USDA are especially common because as many as 500 agency heads and staff are political appointees chosen on the basis of party affiliation and support. Some examples are especially striking. In 1971, USDA Secretary Clifford Hardin traded places with Earl Butz, who was then director of Ralston Purina; Mr. Butz became Secretary of Agriculture, and Mr. Hardin went to Ralston Purina. The chief USDA negotiator who arranged for private companies to sell grain to the Soviet Union in 1972 resigned to work for the very company that gained the most from the transaction. A report in 1974 listed numerous assistant secretaries, administrators, and advisers who had joined USDA from positions with meat, grain, and marketing firms or, on the other hand, had left the agency to take positions with food producers.F Later, in the early I990S, the appointment of a former president of the National Cattlemen's Association, Jo Ann Smith, as chief of the USDA's Food Marketing and Inspection Division, raised questions about two of her decisions that seemed to favor the interests of meat producers over those of consumers: she approved the euphemistic designation "fat-reduced beef" for bits of meat that had been processed from otherwise unusable slaughtering by-products, and she opposed an American Heart Association proposal to put a seal of approval on certain meat products that were low in fat, an action that might suggest that low-fat meats were more healthful." The changing administration in 2001 continued this tradition. The new Secretary of Agriculture, Ann Veneman, appointed a lobbyist for the National Cattlemen's Beef Association as her chief of staff, while the former secretary Dan Glickman, went to work for a law firm that lobbies for agriculture and food companies.l"

Similar exchanges apply to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). In the mid-1990s, Dr. John Hathcock, a senior researcher at FDA and an expert on nutritional toxicology, accepted a high-level position with the Council for Responsible Nutrition, a leading trade association for the dietary supplement industry. In 1999 Dr. Fred Shank, former director of the agency's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, became director of government relations at the Institute of Food Technology, a trade organization for academic and professional developers of food products and ingredients. Also in 1999 Dr. Morris Potter left his FDA position as director of the Food Safety Initiative to work for the International Life Science Institute, an organization that represents concerns and interests of the food industry. In 2000 Joseph Betz, an FDA expert on the pharmacological properties of plants, joined the American Herbal Products Association, thereby ensuring that this organization would "continue to play a leadership role in addressing the unique challenges confronting botanical products. "15

When officials of regulatory agencies go to work for industry, they are almost certain to be paid better than they were in their government jobs, and they contribute to industry the valuable expertise that they acquired at the expense of taxpayers. The practice of recruiting industry executives to government work raises questions of conflict of interest, even when they accept lower salaries to do so, because it is difficult to imagine that they can make decisions without keeping their former employer's interests in mind. Revolving-door issues are not always easy to categorize, however, as is perhaps best illustrated by the career of Michael Taylor.

Mr. Taylor is a lawyer who began his revolving-door adventures as counsel to FDA. He then moved to King & Spalding, a private-sector law firm representing Monsanto, a leading agricultural biotechnology company. In 1991 he returned to the FDA as Deputy Commissioner for Policy, where he was part of the team that issued the agency's decidedly industry-friendly policy on food biotechnology and that approved the use of Monsanto's genetically engineered growth hormone in dairy cows. His questionable role in these decisions led to an investigation by the federal General Accounting Office, which eventually exonerated him of all conflict-of-interest charges.l" In 1994 Mr. Taylor moved to USDA to become administrator of its Food Safety and Inspection Service. In this position, he became the hero of food-safety activists for his courageous development of the agency's groundbreaking policies for controlling dangerous microbial contaminants in meat and poultry. After another stint in private legal practice with King & Spalding, Mr. Taylor again joined Monsanto as Vice President for Public Policy in 1998. He resigned that position late in 1999 during the height of public controversy over Monsanto's aggressive promotion of its genetically engineered foods. At the time of this writing, he had returned to the private sector, this time to Resources for the Future, a nonprofit think tank on environmental and natural resource issues in Washington, DC.

This example illustrates the dilemma posed by revolving-door issues. Although former government officials provide expertise useful to food companies, it is also true that former food company employees provide expertise that can help government agencies do a better job of regulation. Mr. Taylor's career demonstrates that the revolving door does not always favor industry, even though it invariably gives the appearance of doing so.

Funding Elected Officials

Less ambiguous is the role of money in interactions between lobbyists and government officials. One of the most unsettling ways in which lobbyists exert influence over federal decisions is by spending money and, insofar as can be determined, lots of it. Despite reporting requirements, it is difficult to find out precisely how much money lobbyists spend on federal officials. A great deal of lobbying takes place in unreportable gray areas of social transaction, such as dinner parties, receptions, meetings, golf games, birthday parties, and weddings. The Center for Responsive Politics estimates that food and agriculture lobbyists spent $52 million in 1998 on issues other than tobacco (on which they spent another $67 million). For example, lobbyists for the Grocery Manufacturers of America reported spending more than $I.4 million, the National Cattlemen's Beef Association $400,000, the National Pork Producers Council $200,000, Kraft General Foods $120,000, and the Cheese Importers Association $20,000 in 1998.4 These are reported amounts, required by law to be revealed. Donations are conveniently classified into two categories of money: "hard" and "soft."

Giving "Hard" Money (PACs) Like other industries, food companies disburse most funds to individual members of Congress through Political Action Committees (PACs). PACs began in the early 1940S when Congress prohibited labor unions from contributing to political campaigns; the unions got around this restriction by collecting voluntary contributions from members to support the reelection of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. In 1974, soon after the scandals of Watergate, amendments to the Federal Election Campaign Act authorized formation of PACs by unions, corporations, and other groups for the purpose of collecting and allocating voluntary campaign contributions. These funds are governed by legislation and for this reason are known as "hard"-legally sanctioned-money. Although the law limits the amount of money anyone individual can contribute to federal candidates to $1,000 each for each election, it permitted PACs to donate up to $5,000 to each candidate. Because the act did not restrict either the number of candidates to whom contributions could be made or the number of PACs to which anyone donor could contribute, individuals could contribute quite large amounts of money. Within just one year, 69S PACs formed and contributed $12.5 million to the 1974-1975 election campaigns. The number of PACs grew rapidly. In 1982, 3,400 PA~s contributed $83 million, and in 1990, 4,700 PACs contributed m¢e than $370 million. In the 1997-1998 election cycle, about the same' number of PACs raised more than half a billion dollars. 17

Most PACs represent businesses, but in the greater scheme of Washington lobbying, relatively few represent food and agriculture interests. A survey in 1978 identified 82 such PACs, 46 of them representing producer groups.!? Data from the Center for Responsive Politics indicate that 211 agribusiness PACs contributed $4.3 million to federal candidates in the 1999-2000 election cycle. For example, the American Meat Institute PAC contributed $56,500, PepsiCo $66,825, ConAgra $86,750, and the Food Marketing Institute $113,308 to various candidates. Agribusiness PAC money is remarkable for its unequal distribution among Democrats and Republicans; $1.5 million went to Democrats but $2.8 million to Republicans in that cycle. Although some types of PACs contribute almost equally to Democratic and Republican candidates, most do not. Republican candidates received nearly 64 % of the funds from egg and poultry PACs, 78% from livestock producers, and 84% from food processors, which suggests that PAC money preferentially goes to candidates most likely to favor particular corporate interests,"

PAC funds also go to where they seem most likely to benefit the donors. Not surprisingly, agribusiness contributions go preferentially to members of House and Senate Agriculture Committees. From 1987 to 1996, 18 of the 25 leading Senate recipients of contributions from meat and poultry processor PACs-and 17 of the 25 leading House recipients-were members of agriculture committees, as were about half of the top 25 recipients of contributions from grocery distributors, wholesalers, and retailers.I 8 As just one example, Table 12 provides a partial listing of food and agriculture PACs that made contributions to Richard Lugar (Rep-IN) in 1997-1998 when he chaired the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry. Mr. Lugar received $316,300 in total PAC contributions, of which 36% came from food and agriculture groups, most of them corporate. Among the few noncorporate exceptions were the American Dietetic Association, which represents nutritionists who hold credentials as Registered Dietitians ($1,000), and the American School Food Service Association, whose members work in school cafeterias that provide federally supported meals to low-income children ($750).4 In general, PACs that represent consumer, health, or public interest groups are very much in the minority.

Most of Mr. Lugar's PAC contributions amounted to $1,000 or $2,000 and ranged from $250 (National Confectioners Association) to $5,000 (Archer Daniels Midland)-amounts too small to seem likely to influence anyone, especially compared to the annual income and advertising budgets of food corporations (refer to Table I). The contributions can add up to substantial amounts, however. In 1997-1998, for example, the ranking minority member of the House Committee on Agriculture, Charles Stenholm (Dem-TX), received $862,000 in PAC contributions all, as required by law, in amounts no greater than $5,000; to this total, 133 food and agriculture PACs contributed $330,000 (38%).4

Because it is not certain whether PAC money goes to candidates who already share corporate interests or to candidates who change their opinions in response to the contributions, observers differ on whether PAC contributions "buy" influence. Some believe the power of PACs to be vastly overrated, whereas others view PACs as an insidious system that makes legislators "more beholden to the economic interests of their committee constituents than to the interests of their district residents or to the President or party."19

Although research on the effects of PACs does not prove that they buy influence, it certainly suggests a strong correlation between contributions and desired outcomes. About 95% of the funds from agricultural PACs go to incumbents. Thus PAC money follows voting records and reinforces them. In the 1980s, researchers demonstrated that members of the House of Representatives who received PAC funds from dairy industry groups were almost twice as likely to vote for dairy price supports as those who did not. Legislators who favored price supports received 2.5 times more PAC funds than those in opposition, and the more money the members received from dairy PACs, the more likely they were to back price-support legislation.P More recently, a study of the connection between PAC contributions and congressional votes on sugar subsidies indicated that the largest contributions from sugar PACs had gone to members who voted for the subsidies and that the larger the PAC contribution, the more likely the members were to support industry positions. Month-by-month analyses of the history of legislation on sugar and peanut subsidies demonstrate an increase in contributions to both parties just prior to votes. Because PACs give more money to legislators who are more likely to vote for their interests, researchers conclude that PAC contributions do have a significant effect on voting decisions.P Given the costs of election campaigns, the lack of public funding for them, and the resistance of Congress to reform campaign finance laws, it is no mystery why legislators might not want to make decisions that displease PAC contributors.

Giving to National Committees ("Soft" Money) Provisions of the Election Campaign Act apply to federal elections; they do not limit the amounts of money that can be contributed to state or national political organizations. This loophole allows for contributions of "soft" money for administrative and other expenses involved in supporting issues that political parties and candidates might favor. This money supports elections indirectly, can come from any source, is unrestricted in amount, and does not need to be disclosed.P Unlike PAC funds, soft-money donations can be substantial; in 1991, for example, several food and agriculture corporations made $100,000 contributions to the Republican Party, and in the 1997-1998 election cycle, agribusiness corporations made softmoney donations of $1.3 million to Democrats and $1.4 million to Republicans. As just one example, the Flo-Sun Sugar Company and its subsidiaries made 21 donations of amounts ranging from $2,500 to $25,000 to congressional campaign committees in 1997-1999, for a total of $202,500 to Democrats and $147,500 to Republicans.'?

Flo-Sun is unusual in distributing more money to Democrats than to Republicans-and to good effect, as I shall soon explain. As I mentioned earlier, most food corporations favor Republicans because members of this party are more likely than Democrats to protect and promote business interests. Dole Food, for example, gave $15,000 in soft money to Democratic committees in 1998 but gave $382,000 to Republican committees. In 1997-1999, food retailers gave nearly $1.1 million to Democrats but more than $3.8 million to Republicans-for example, Coca-Cola (Democrats $21 5,5°0 versus Republicans $394,000), the American Meat Institute ($4,000 versus $142,000), and the Grocery Manufacturers of America ($30,000 versus $290,000). The tangible rewards of such generosity will be evident throughout this book.

Giving Presents Election laws have long permitted lobbyists to give members of Congress small gifts such as lunches, books, awards, liquor, samples, and theater tickets. The lobbying reform law that went into effect in 1996 was designed to limit the value of such gifts. It prohibited House members from accepting all but the smallest gifts from lobbyists and firmly excluded meals and entertainment; it allowed Senate members to accept individual gifts worth no more than $50 each and totaling no more than $100 during anyone year. As might be expected, this law caused much consternation in Congress over how members might continue business as usual while adhering to the letter-if not to the spirit of the law.

That lobbyists might be paying for legislators' vacations particularly attracts scrutiny. Under the terms of pre-1996 ethics rules, members of Congress could take trips and accept speaking fees paid for by lobbyists. An analysis of the travel practices of members of the House of Representatives in 1989-1990, for example, found that collectively they had taken nearly 4,000 sponsored trips, two-thirds of them courtesy of corporations or trade associations; they also had accepted more than $500,000 in honoraria. Agriculture interest groups sponsored 390 trips, 239 of them taken by members of agriculture or appropriations committees. Charles Stenholm (Dem-TX), a senior member of the House Agriculture Committee, for example, had taken 50 trips, 37 of them sponsored by agricultural lobbying groups, and had earned $38,250 in honoraria for these efforts.P

The 1996 law attempted to bar elected officials and their staff from accepting vacations paid for by special-interest groups, but loopholes remained: members of Congress could take trips paid for by corporate lobbyists if the event was sponsored by a political party, was a fact finding mission, or was a conference at which the member was an invited speaker. In 1996-1997, 87 senators, 356 representatives, and 2,020 of their staff employees took paid trips worth about $8.6 million. The leading recipient of trips paid for by the meat industry, for example, had gone on 26 of them worth $18,550.18 Two agriculture concerns-the Florida Sugar Cane League and the Sugar Cane Growers Cooperative of Florida-were ranked 9th (44 trips) and r rrh (39 trips), respectively, among the 20 leading sponsors of congressional travel that year.l"

BUYING ACCESS AND INFLUENCE

Do campaign contributions, trips, and presents buy corporate influence over government decisions? Much evidence suggests that they do, and in proportion to the amounts spent. 25 Here, I present just two especially intriguing examples that involve food companies.

Fighting the Banana Wars

Bananas are the most popular fruit among Americans; per capita consumption is about 75 annually, and nearly all are imported from Central America by Chiquita Brands International. This company, formerly known as United Fruit, has dominated global trade in bananas for a century and has an exceptionally rich history of influence over the U.S. government. The head of Chiquita Brands, Carl H. Lindner, gives generously to both political parties. In 1998, he gave $176,000 in soft money to Democrats and $360,000 to Republicans, ranking him fourth on the Mother Jones list of the top 400 political contributors that year.27 In 1999-2000, his contribution of $500,000 placed him second among the leading donors of soft money to Republicans, but he also gave $250,000 to Democrats. He contributed both donations through the American Financial Group, an insurance business. All told, Mr. Lindner's enterprises were worth at least $14 billion at the turn of the twenty-first century."

In the late 1990S, Chiquita Brands encountered a problem with the European Union (EU). In an effort to strengthen the economies of former colonies, the EU had imposed limits on imports of bananas from everywhere else, a policy that Chiquita Brands believed was responsible for some of its financial difficulties. In response to pressure from Chiquita's sympathetic allies in Congress, the U.S. trade representative filed a formal complaint with the World Trade Organization (WTO), arguing that quotas on bananas violated international trade agreements. When, in retaliation, the United States imposed high tariffs on certain European luxury goods, the WTO supported that action and ordered the EU to comply with trade accords.

The methods through which Chiquita Brands achieved this remarkable victory have been described by investigative reporters for Time magazine who "followed the money" and documented how "$5.5 million in campaign contributions ... bought Chiquita access in Washington" and got the Clinton administration to "mount a global trade war on Lindner's behalf."28 The reporters noted that the government's decision to wage a trade war over bananas differed significantly from its handling of issues related to other agricultural products and was especially noteworthy because Chiquita already controlled 20% of the European banana market, even with the trade restrictions. They considered the unusual intervention an attempt to strengthen the WTO's ability to negotiate international trade disputes. Alternatively, it seemed possible that the White House was engaging in a collegial effort to help the company compensate for having lost $350 million in income from 1999 to 2000 and more than $r.3 billion since the EU imposed the quotas. Late in 2000, the EU offered to drop the colonial preference and establish import quotas, but Chiquita rejected that proposal, blamed the Clinton administration for the company's financial difficulties, threatened bankruptcy, and sued the EU for $525 million. Soon after the Republican administration of George W. Bush took office in 2001, its trade negotiators pushed the Europeans to make concessions to Chiquita, saving it from threatened bankruptcy and, for the moment, ending a nine-year conflict-the latest episode in the company's long history of success in influencing the U.S. government to solve its problerns.P

Getting Sweet Attention

A second example concerns sugar, a top-of-the-Pyramid food that provides calories but no other nutrients. As explained in Part I, government dietary guidelines suggest moderation (meaning limits) in sugar consumption. Nevertheless, for more than 200 years, the United States has controlled the price of sugar, at first to raise revenue but later to protect the economic interests of domestic producers. For this commodity, the relationship between agricultural policy and health is unusually complex. As a result of an elaborate system of price-support programs and import tariffs and quotas codified during the Depression and the early years of World War II, Americans pay artificially high prices for sugar, a practice that cost consumers $r.9 billion in 1998. Since 1985 the price of a pound of raw sugar has ranged from 8 to 14 cents higher in U.S. markets than in world markets, and by the time sugar is sold at retail prices, this difference doubles.l''

From a nutritional standpoint, higher sugar prices might be a useful disincentive to consuming soft drinks, desserts, and candy, but from a financial standpoint, the policy is highly undesirable. Besides the harm it causes consumers, the windfall benefits a surprisingly small number of sugar producers. In 1991, for example, 1,700 farms raised sugarcane and 13,700 raised sugar beets in the United States, but 42 % of the sugar subsidies went to just 1% of these growers.'! The owners of these few farms give generously to both political parties. The Fanjul family, for example, controls about one-third of Florida's sugarcane production and collects at least $60 million annually in subsidies. The Fanjuls contributed more than $350,000 to the two political parties-more to Democrats than to Republicans-through their Flo-Sun companies in 1997-1998. In 2000, Alfonso Fanjul hosted a dinner attended by President Bill Clinton that raised more than a million dollars for the Florida Democratic parry.P

Sugarcane production is concentrated in two Southern states, Florida and Louisiana, where working conditions of migrant cane field workers from Caribbean countries have raised human-rights concerns.P Environmentalists view the Florida canefields as blocking the free flow of water into the Everglades. Sugarcane companies, in particular those owned by the Fanjul family, have successfully resisted attempts to mandate improvements in working conditions or the return of cane fields to marshland in order to protect the Everglades. The same investigative reporters for Time magazine who were mentioned in connection with the banana wars also described how the Fanjuls used their political connections to avoid having to pay for cleaning up the Everglades. Even if their account misrepresented the family's actions (as one critical response has claimed), the Fanjuls indisputably have unusual access to the highest levels of government."

The most stunning example of such access is documented in, of all unexpected places, the Starr Report-the 1998 account by Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr of the relationship of President Clinton with a young White House intern, Monica Lewinsky. According to Mr. Starr, on t the afternoon of the President's Day holiday, Monday, February 19, 1996,

The President told her [Ms. Lewinsky] that he no longer felt right about their intimate relationship, and he had to put a stop to it ... At one point during their conversation, the President had a call from a sugar grower in Florida /.' whose name, according to Ms. Lewinsky, was something like "Fanuli." In Ms. Lewinsky's recollection, the President may have taken or returned the call just ~. as she was leaving ... the President talked with Alfonso Fanjul of Palm Beach, f:·, Florida, from 12:42. to 1:04 p.m. The Fanjuls are prominent sugar growers in Florida.35

Reportedly, Mr. Fanjul had called the President on a federal holiday because Vice President Gore had just announced a plan to tax Florida sugar growers. The proposed tax would help pay for federal efforts to restore parts of the Everglades that had been polluted by sugarcane I runoff. Furthermore, the House was debating whether to phase out sugar ~ subsidies. The Time reporters noted that the tax was never passed. Their account concluded, "That's access."

In these two instances, financial contributions bought access to government officials and resulted in policies favorable to donors. Given that level of connection, it is understandable that agency officials would not want to do battle over a matter so seemingly trivial as the use of the verb moderate rather than limit in guidelines about sugar consumption. The job of food lobbyists is to make sure that the government (I) does nothing to impede clients from selling more of their products and (2) does as much as possible to create a supportive sales environment. We have seen that they accomplish this goal most effectively through personal contacts, established through the revolving door, as well as through financial contributions. In the next chapter, we will see how food companies engage food and nutrition professionals in marketing campaigns by encouraging them to emphasize the health benefits of products or to minimize potentially adverse effects.

In the food industry job exchanges between lobbyists and the USDA are especially common because as many as 500 agency heads and staff (Marion Nestle "Food Politics" 2002 p.100-1)

(Marion Nestle "Food Politics" 2002 p.) PDF Ch 4

The efforts of food companies to influence dietary advice to the public and to establish an image of their products as nutritious extend well beyond lobbying Congress and government agencies. They go right to the heart of nutrition as a profession. Indeed, co-opting experts—especially academic experts—is an explicit corporate strategy. A guide to such strategies explains that this particular tactic “is most effectively done by identifying the leading experts … and hiring them as consultants or advisors, or giving them research grants and the like. This activity requires a modicum of finesse; it must not be too blatant,... (Marion Nestle "Food Politics" 2002 p.111-113)

Whether nutrition professionals are compromised by support from food companies is a troubling issue, but an even more troubling (Marion Nestle "Food Politics" 2002 p.116-7)

The intermingling of advise and advertising does not mean that the association ignores conflicts of interest with food companies, it (Marion Nestle "Food Politics" 2002 p.129-31)

A second example of the friendlier forms of influence exerted by the food industry occurs through "check off" programs that can only be interpreted as federally sanctioned and administered public relations enterprises to benefit certain food commodities. To promote sales, food companies induced Congress to pass a collection of laws that require the producers of certain commodities—among them beef, dairy products, milk, eggs, and peanuts—to deduct, or "check off," a fee from sales to be used for generic advertising and promotion. By 1986, U.S. (Marion Nestle "Food Politics" 2002 p.142-3)

(Marion Nestle "Food Politics" 2002 p.)

(Marion Nestle "Food Politics" 2002 p.)

When such statements succeeded only in increasing public recognition of the boycott and recruiting more people to it, the company asked Senator Kennedy to take the matter to two relevant agencies of the United Nations—the world health organization (WHO) and UNICEF (United Nations Children's Fund)—and ask them to call a meeting to establish guidelines that the company could live with. Nestle also flatly denied the charges, arguing that the issues were complex and were misunderstood by opponents: "All consumer advertising of formula products has been suspended in developing countries . . . (Marion Nestle "Food Politics" 2002 p.152-3)

McDonald's versus London Greenpeace: McLibel

In the late 1980s, London Greenpeace, a small activist group with no connection to Greenpeace International, began handing out leaflets titled What's Wrong with McDonald's? Everything They Don't Want You to Know. The leaflet said that "the more you find out about McDonald's processed food, the less attractive it becomes . . . [and] the truth about hamburgers is enough to put you off them for life."

Cattlemen versus Oprah Winfrey

.....

..... And I'm President of the United States, and I'm not going to eat any more broccoli! ...

With this background, we can return to the case at hand. On April 16, 1996, Oprah Winfrey invited Howard Lyman, a “vegetarian activist” from the Humane Society of the United States, to discuss his concerns about the implications for ... Chiquita Banana versus the Cincinnati Enquirer

In the Banana wars describes in Chapter 4, a different but particularly nasty battle took place over a newspaper investigative report. In 1998 the Cincinnati Enquirer published a lengthy account of a year-long investigation it had sponsored into the Cincinnati-based Chiquita companies “unsavory” practices in banana producing countries. The reporters who wrote the account accused the company of creating secret business entities to avoid local land and labor laws, bribing local officials, using pesticides in irresponsible ways that harmed workers and the environment, and moving plantation residents without their permission. The investigative reporters freely stated that they had used company voice-mail recordings as one source of these allegations.

Rather than deal with the charges, Chiquita lawyers accused the reporters of obtaining the telephone recordings through illegal means and threatened a lawsuit. Rather than defending its reporters and their account, the newspaper quickly conceded that the reporters had acted inappropriately, fired them, published an apology, and paid a $10 million settlement fee. Chiquita then sued one of the reporters for defamation. Later accounts revealed that the judge who assigned himself to the defamation case had received campaign contributions from Chiquita executives as well as from the special prosecutor who was investigating the charges. To the distress of commentators concerned about journalistic ethics, the reporter – as part of a plea bargain – revealed the name of the person who had given him the voice-mail records. This well-publicized drama, in which the behavior of the newspaper, that of the company, and that of the reporters all raised ethical concerns, thoroughly distracted attention from the content of the investigative report itself. Although Chiquita denied the accusations, neither the company nor anyone else produced evidence to suggest that the reporters’ findings were false.

Because Chiquita is based in Cincinnati and might be expected to have close connections with other Cincinnati-based institutions, such as the newspaper and the judiciary, we can only wonder why the newspaper agreed to fund the investigation in the first place. Such investigations take courage, deep pockets, skill, and a commitment to make sacrifices to uphold ethical principles – in short, resources well beyond those of most hometown newspapers. Chiquita’s aggressive actions and the newspaper’s hasty retreat revealed how high the stakes are in such investigations, perhaps convincing other editors that probing the practices of food companies cannot possibly be worth the price. (Marion Nestle "Food Politics" 2002 p.160-9)

To reach children of any age, food marketer employ a variety of methods, all highly successful. (Marion Nestle "Food Politics" 2002 p.178-81)

Participating schools, however, deny that they are selling out to corporate interests and contributing to children's obsessions with brand names. "The kids need something to eat. . . and we want to make it as pleasant for them as we can."49 In such discussions, nutrition hardly ever emerges as an issue. MARKETING TO CHILDREN: IMPLICATIONS Among the many disturbing aspects of food marketing to children is its barely disguised cynicism. (Marion Nestle "Food Politics" 2002 p.194-5)

(Marion Nestle "Food Politics" 2002 p.)

(Marion Nestle "Food Politics" 2002 p.)

(Marion Nestle "Food Politics" 2002 p.)

(Marion Nestle "Food Politics" 2002 p.)

Even when parents promote good dietary practices at home, they may be . too busy to pay attention to what their children eat at school. Whether school officials like it or not, they have been delegated the responsibility for teaching children about appropriate food choices and setting an example in practice.

What is especially disturbing about the commercial takeover of school meals is that it is so unnecessary. For many years, it has been evident that schools are perfectly capable of producing nutritionally sound lunches that taste just fine and are enthusiastically consumed by students as well as teachers.so From my own observations, a healthy (in every sense of the word) school meals program requires just three elements: a committed food service director, a supportive principal, and interested parents. Children deserve a learning environment in which each of these elements is firmly in place. Once school meals get taken over by companies concerned about market share, profit, and stockholders, nutritional considerations inevitably are assigned a lower priority.

Nowhere are these kinds of issues brought into sharper focus than in the debates about the snacks and soft drinks served outside the school meal programs and, therefore, in competition with them. Of particular concern are exclusive contracts between companies that produce soft drinks-forbidden in school lunch programs-and school districts. Because so much money is involved, and because the nutritional implications are so profound, the next chapter focuses on the development and significance of soft drink "'pouring rights" contracts.

CHAPTER 9

PUSHING SOFT DRINKS

"POURING RIGHTS"

I HAD NEVER HEARD OF ·POURING RIGHTS' UNTIL LATE IN 1998 when I received a telephone call from a representative of the New York State School Food Service Association, inviting me to comment on that topic at its next meeting. She explained that the term referred to a recent development in food marketing: large payments from soft drink companies to school districts in return for the right to sell that company's products-and only those products-in every one of the district's schools. I was aware that colleges and universities had negotiated vending contracts with soft drink companies, and I knew that nutritionists and school food service directors had long been concerned that soft drinks and other topof-the-Pyramid foods were sold in competition with the more nutritious foods provided by federally supported school meal programs. Although these contracts seemed to raise special concerns about their effects on children's diets, I had not heard debates about their health implications at professional meetings, nor had I heard discussions of their potential for fostering an environment that might actively promote soft drink consumption at the expense of more appropriate food choices. As I soon learned, the loudest protests against these contracts were coming instead from competing soft drink companies. These companies objected to restraints on their trade and on consumers' "freedom of choice" in the marketplace. As this chapter explains, soft drinks raise nutritional issues that place them at the forefront of present-day dietary concerns. For this reason, pouring-rights contracts illustrate some of the more disturbing consequences of "'eat more" marketing imperatives.

WHY CARE ABOUT SOFT DRINKS?

For the purposes of this discussion, a soft drink is a soda made from carbonated water, added sugar, and flavors. Diet sodas substitute artificial sweeteners for the sugar but are not consumed by children to any great extent. By this definition, a soft drink is the quintessential "junk food"high in calories but low in nutrients. A I2-ounce can contains about 1.5 ounces of sugar and 160 calories, but so little else of nutritional value that the Center for Science in the Public Interest rightfully refers to soft drinks as "liquid candy."1 From a nutritional standpoint, water or almost any other beverage is a better option. As shown in Table 23, a 12 ounce glass of orange juice-even that reconstituted from cans-provides substantial amounts of vitamin A, folic acid, potassium, and other vitamins and minerals along with its sugar and calories, as does an equivalent amount of I % low-fat milk. Worse, soft drinks are the single greatest source of caffeine in children's diets; a I2-ounce can of cola contains about 45 milligrams but the amounts in more potent soft drinks can exceed 100 milligrams-a level approaching that found in coffee.2

TABLE 23. The nutrient composition of soft drinks, per a-ounce serving, in comparison to orange juice and low-fat milk Coca-Cola Pepsi Orange Juice" Low-Fat 1% Milk ~,,-,Calories 154 160 168 153 Sugar, g 40 40 40 18 Vitamin A, IV 0 0 291 . 750 Vitamin C, mg 0 0 146 3 Folic acid, pg 0 0 164 lS Calcium, mg 0 0 33 450 Potassium, mg 0 0 711 352 Magnesium, mg 0 0 36 51 Phosphate, mg 54 55 60 353 ~OURCE: j.A.T. Pennington, Bowes & Church's food Values of Portion' Commonly Used, 16th ed.IPhiladeiphia: J.B. Lippincott Co. 19

TABLE 24. Beverages available, gallons per person per year, a in the U.S. food supply, 1970-1997 Soft Drinks -_.. -.---Diet Regul,:~ ___)uice____________ Milk --. -_.-.----_."_._. 1970 2.1 5.7 22.2 31.3 1975 3.2 6.9 25.0 29.5 1980 5.1 29.9 7.4 27.6 1985 7.1 28.7 8.3 26.7 1990 to. 7 35.6 7.9 25.7 1995 11.8 39.8 8.7 24.3 1997 11.6 9.2 41.4 24.0 SOURCE: J.1. Putnam and J. E. Allshouse. Food Consumption_ Prices, and Expenditures, 19701997· (Washington, DC; USDA, 1999). 'One gallon =u8 ounces. The annual supply o( l1-ounce soft drinks in the United States in 1997 is equivalent to 44' regular drinks and 114 diet dtinks pel capita.

If soft drinks were occasional treats, no nutritionist would be the slightest bit concerned about them. But they are produced and consumed in vast quantities. As shown in Table 24, soft drinks have replaced milk in the diets of many American children as well as adults. School purchases reflect such trends. From 1985 to 1997, school districts decreased the amounts of milk they bought by nearly 30% and increased their purchases of carbonated sodas by an impressive 1,100%.3 From 1970 to 1997, the production of sugar-sweetened sodas increased from 22 to 41 gallons per person per year. These volumes require translation; they mean that the yearly per person supply of 12-ounce soft drinks in the United States is equivalent to 442 regular and 124 diet drinks (total 556). On average, enough regular soda is produced to supply every American adult, child, and infant with 1.2 daily I2,-ounce drinks, or nearly 200 calories per day from this source alone. The production of diet sodas also rose during this period, from 2 to nearly 12 gallons per person per year.

I must emphasize that these are production figures that for the most part overestimate consumption; they do not necessarily reflect the amounts people actually drink. Surveys of actual dietary intake, on the other hand, tend to underestimate consumption, but they too indicate increasing intake of soft drinks by children, and especially by teenagers. As shown in Table 25, children begin drinking these beverages very early in life and steadily increase the amounts they consume through adolescence and young adulthood. One national survey reported that children aged 2-17 increased their average daily intake of sugar-sweetened soft drinks from just under 7 ounces to nearly 10 ounces just from the early to mid-1990s.4 USDA data from 1994-1995 indicated that girls aged 12-19 drank 12 ounces of regular soda (160 calories) on average, and boys drank 21 ounces (280 calories). Diet sodas barely enter into this picture; on an average day, girls were drinking an additional 2 ounces per day of diet soda, and boys I additional ounce.s For children at the higher levels of intake, soft drinks can contribute hundreds of empty calories. One analysis suggests that one-fourth of adolescents drink 26 or more ounces of soft drinks per day (a minimum of 325 calories); these heavy users take in 600 daily calories more from all sources than nonusers, and they drink much less milk and fruit juice.6

The extra calories from soft drinks replace calories from more nutritious foods and are more than sufficient to account for rising rates of obesity and related risk factors among American schoolchildren. Indeed, the relationship between soft drink consumption and body weight is so strong that researchers calculate that for each additional soda consumed, the risk of obesity increases 1.6 times.7 Consumption of soft drinks is well known to contribute to tooth decay especially when it is sipped throughout the day, and adolescents who consume soft drinks display a risk of bone fractures three-to four-fold higher than those who do not.8 Parents of teenagers tell me that their children deliberately use caffeinecontaining soft drinks to stay awake in school. These parents are concerned about the effects of caffeine on their children's behavior and about the potential for "addiction," especially because companies deliberately market caffeinated sodas to children as young as age 9.2

MARKETING SOFT DRINKS TO KIDS

Carbonated soft drinks are big business in the United States; they generated more than $50 billion in annual sales in this country in the late 1990s. Sales are dominated by two companies, Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, whose relentless competition for market share is known as the "Cola Wars." In 1999 Coca-Cola sold 160 brands of soft drinks in 200 countries for worldwide sales of nearly $19.8 billion, on which it earned $2.4 billion in profit, less than in previous years. In the United States alone, Coca-Cola held a 44 % market share worth $7.5 billion in 1999 sales.9 PepsiCo is distinctly number 2, holding a roughly 30% share of the U.S. market. Both companies were doing well, but the market for soft drinks . grew so rapidly in the late 1990s-four times as fast as that for any other food or beverage-that all companies were seeking to expand. 10

To expand its sales base, Coca-Cola's explicit strategy is to put a can of Coke within arm's reach of as many people in the world as possible. The company's most evident marketing strategy is advertising. CocaCola's global advertising budget exceeded $1.6 billion in the late 1990S. In 1999 the company spent $867 million for advertising in the United States alone-$174.4 million for Coca-Cola beverages, $68.4 million for Sprite, $41.4 million for Minute Maid, and $17.6 million for Powerade.9 In addition, Coca-Cola places its logo where it is most likely to be seen by large numbers of people. The company has supported the Olympic games since 1928 and sponsors numerous local sporting events. Its foundation gives away more than $12 million annually for scholarships and educational programs particularly aimed at helping minorities and women.II Over the years, these combinations of activities have firmly established Coca-Cola as an American icon.

Because it is difficult to compete with icons, PepsiCo spends even more on advertising. Its total domestic advertising budget was $1.31 billion in 1999-$165 million for Pepsi beverages, $37.7 million for Mountain Dew, and most of the remainder for Doritos, Tostitos, Cheetos, and FritoLay snack foods. The huge costs of the Cola Wars, and increasing competition from sweetened juice drinks, have forced soft drink companies to seek new markets. Both companies, for example, aggressively target African-American and Hispanic consumers with "guerrilla-marketing tactics" to distribute products in urban neighborhoods.9 As part of this effort, soft drink companies seek consumers among younger and younger children. They approach this task quite systematically through the methods described in Chapter 8. Because the overall strategy is to establish brand loyalty as early in a consumer's life as possible, marketing efforts begin with the parents of young infants. Some soft drink companies go so far as to license their logos to makers of infant feeding bottles. The manufacturer of the bottle shown in Figure 19 (Chapter 8) justifies its use in historical terms; he recalls that soft drink bottles were routinely used to feed milk or formula during the Depression. The company's public relations materials explain that the logo labeled bottles are "designed to be fun and enjoyable ... [such that] the positive effects of the bonding experience will be increased for both parent and child."12 It may indeed seem like fun to feed infant formula to a baby in a Pepsi or other soft drink bottle, but studies show that parents who buy such bottles are much more likely to feed soft drinks to their children than those who do not buy them. 13 Moving up in age targets, PepsiCo states explicitly that its strategy is to expand soft drink consumption among children aged 6-11.14

POURING-RIGHTS CONTRACTS: THE LOGICAL NEXT STEP

An obvious way to reach this younger age group is through schools. In the early 1990S, having sold their products for many years through vending machines on school and college campuses, soft drink companies increased their efforts to reach the student market, at first focusing on colleges and universities but later turning to elementary, middle, and high schools. Pouring-rights contracts emerged as a particularly effective marketing strategy. These contracts usually involve large lump-sum payments to school districts and additional payments over 5 to 10 years in return for exclusive sales of one company's products in vending machines and at all school events. According to the General Accounting Office, about 200 school districts in the United States were participating in such agreements by 2000.

For soft drink companies, a stable base of sales in schools is only the most evident benefit of pouring-rights contracts; the agreements also result in constant advertising through display of company logos on vending machines, cups, sportswear, brochures, and school buildings. In this, manner, all students in the school, even those too young or too difficult -,to reach by conventional advertising methods, receive constant exposure to the logos and products. The use of a single brand is designed to create loyalty among young people who have a lifetime of soft drink purchases ahead of them.

Furthermore, the financial advantages to soft drink companies are substantial. For one thing, sugar and water are inexpensive ingredients. For another, the earlier contracts typically called for a charge of $I .00 for a drink purchased from vending machines, or $24 for a case of 12-ounce cans. In 1999, for example, the wholesale cost of a case was $4.99-half the retail price charged by my local Manhattan convenience store, but still leaving $19.01 to cover supply, labor, overhead, and funds donated to the school district. Even taking the large initial lump-sum payments and sales taxes into consideration, soft drink companies were unlikely to lose money on those deals.

I could not obtain reliable sales figures, but school food service directors laughed at the suggestion that students might consume an average of one case (24 I2-ounce sodas) per year; they thought one soda per day was more realistic, at least for high school students. The quoted comments of a marketing consultant hired by 63 school systems to negotiate such contracts support this higher estimate.H An official of a school district in New York state told me that his students drink so many sodas that the biggest problem is keeping the vending machines stocked, and teachers of my acquaintance give similar accounts. If just half the students in a district of 10,000 students consumed one soda per day, gross sales should have been more than $25,000 per week. To such figures must be added sales of drinks at sports and community events. Yet in one New York state contract, the amount that Coca-Cola guaranteed to the district over the entire 1o-year period came to a total of just $15 for each student. These comparative figures explain why a PepsiCo official described such contracts in 1998 as "a pretty high stakes business development," and a Coca-Cola official said that his company would "continue to be very aggressive and proactive in getting our share of the school business." 17

It must be noted that more recent contracts deal with larger amounts of soda. By 2001, soft drink companies were routinely placing 20-ounce sodas in vending machines, and pricing them at $1.00-1.50' The larger sodas clearly encourage "eat more." They provide 250 calories each and are a better value (5.0-7.5 cents per ounce compared to 8.3 cents per ounce for the 12-ounce can). In addition, they are vended in portable screw-top plastic bottles that permit sipping throughout the day rather than downing in one gulp. This last feature particularly distresses dental groups alarmed about how the sugar and acid in soft drinks so easily dissolve tooth enamel.8

Nevertheless, it is not difficult to understand why administrators of financially strapped school districts would find these contracts irresistible. As the American population has aged, as the gap between rich and poor has widened, and as the proportion of low-income school children has increased, the tax base for public schools has consistently eroded. Schools barely manage to provide for basic educational needs, let alone activities that might appear as frills. It is easy to understand why school districts in Colorado, Ohio, and Texas would contract with CocaCola, Pepsi, or Dr Pepper for pouring rights worth millions of dollars, why larger school districts would auction their rights to the highest bidder, and why school districts would hire consultants to help them negotiate the best possible deals. The Center for Commercial-Free Public Education, an advocacy organization in Oakland, California, announced that nearly 200 school districts in 33 states had entered into such contracts by early 2.000, a four-fold increase in just 2. years.18 In the contract that set the standard, a 53-school Colorado district relinquished its Pepsi vending machines when it signed an $8 million, lo-year agreement with Coca-Cola that included cash bonuses for exceeding sales targets and incentives such as a new car for a senior with perfect attendance and high grades.19

Even smaller contracts might provide sports, arts, or computer facilities not otherwise available from state or local resources. The 1998 contract between the North Syracuse Central School District in New York state and Coca-Cola, for example, is a lo-year agreement that requires all 10 of the district's schools and preschool programs-with a combined population of 10,100 students-to use Coca-Cola products exclusively in all vending machines, and at all athletic contests, booster club activities, and school-sponsored community events. The contract calls for the company to install, maintain, and stock at least 135 vending machines in schools throughout the district, for which it guarantees a payment of $1.53 million-$900,000 upon signing and the rest distributed in annual installments of $70,000. The contract stipulates that the company is to pay additional commissions on purchases that exceed target amounts and is to donate 150 free cases of Fruitopia drinks, provide drinks to fundraising groups for resale, and also include software, coupons, or other premiums for each vending machine placed.20 With the assistance of a powerful state legislator, the district was able to leverage this contract to ,: obtain state aid for a $6.5 million sports facility for the high school. These terms were considered so favorable that the New York State Education Department used them to develop a prototype contract. In 1999, the school district in Albany, the state capital, negotiated a contract with Coca-Cola worth just $667,000 but only for five years, because the school board wanted to retain some flexibility in the marketplace.21

The most questionable aspect of these contracts is that they link returns to the companies and to the schools to amounts that students 205 . PUSHING SOFT DRINKS drink. At first glance, the financial advantages to the schools may seem impressive, especially because a significant part of the funding comes in an immediate lump sum that is not tied to sales. Most schools use the funds for sports facilities-scoreboards seem to be a particular favorite but some buy furniture, sound systems, or computers; support student employment; and occasionally pay for scholarships. But because the contracts provide additional benefits for consumption levels that surpass quotas, school administrators are placed in the position of pushing soft drinks to faculty, staff, and students. Not that they necessarily mind doing so. In a letter widely circulated on the Internet and reprinted in a national magazine, a Colorado district administrator who signed himself "The Coke Dude" announced payments of $3,000, $15,000, and $2.5,000, respectively, to his elementary, middle, and high school principals-along with some ground rules:

We must sell 70,000 cases of product ... at least once during the first three years of the contract. If we reach this goal, your school allotments will be guaranteed for the next seven years.... If 35,439 staff and students buy one Coke product every other day for a school year, we will double the required quota. Here is how we can do it.... Allow students to purchase and consume vended products throughout the day.... I know this is "just one more thing from downtown," but the long-term benefits are worth it.22

Given the financial benefits of such contracts, it is understandable why many school administrators might resist thinking about, let alone dealing with, the agreements' ethical implications or health consequences. School officials justify the contracts as breaking no new ground: soft drink vending machines already exist in schools, soft drinks already pervade American culture, children are not forced to drink sodas, and contracts can be written to safeguard students' rights to drink other brands. From this standpoint, the benefits of soft drink contracts appear to outweigh any nutritional or other concerns they might raise. On this precise issue, the administrator of an Ohio school district with a new PepsiCo contract wrote,

We have worried about whether we're forcing students to pay for their education through the purchase of soft drinks. In the end, though, we have decided that is not the case, because each student has the option to buy or not to buy.... Americans drink 13.15 billion gallons of carbonated drinks every year-which means somebody is making a lot of money. Why shouldn't schools get their share? In the end, everyone wins: the students, the schools, the community. And for once, even taxpayers get a break.23

Early in 1999, at the New York State conference I attended, the participating school food service directors expressed strong disagreement with such views. They were deeply troubled by a broad range of issues related to the length, exclusivity, and financial terms of the contracts, to the lack of adequate federal oversight of foods sold in competition with school meals, and to the widespread failure of schools to enforce even the weak rules that do exist. In particular, they worried about the consequences of pouring-rights contracts for the economic viability of school food service operations and the integrity of the schools' educational mission- all for good reason.

The typical pouring-rights contract period greatly exceeds the tenure of most school boards; boards cannot be held accountable when schools are locked into contracts that may prove unfavorable-financially or otherwise-in later years. Not surprisingly, the exclusivity feature frustrates competing soft drink companies that would like to sell their products to school children. A representative of one such company told conference participants that publicly supported schools have no right to dictate what students eat, when parents and children might want something else. Only in prisons, he said, are brands forced upon populations in this manner.

Indeed, the exclusivity of the contracts leads to situations so patently absurd as to elicit nationwide media attention. In one incident, a high school in Georgia suspended a senior student because he wore a shirt sporting a Pepsi logo to a "Coke Day" rally sponsored by the student government. To avoid such embarrassing attention, New York State Education Department contracts include a noteworthy clause that explicitly permits students, employees, and guests to drink and wear products that bear competing logos on school grounds.

A critical question is whether the contracts encourage greater consumption of soft drinks. People who track trends in pouring-rights contracts think that is exactly what they do: "What we have seen in just about every exclusive contract around the country is a resulting increase in the amount of soda consumed by students..... There's almost always an increase in the number of vending machines, and they're put into schools that previously didn't have them.... They're also putting machines in schools with younger children." 24 If children are drinking soft drinks, they are less likely to be eating more nutritious foods, especially those offered in school meal programs. This brings us to the issue of competition with school meals. As we shall see, pouring-rights contracts affect federal regulations for competitive foods, and we must now turn to a discussion of this otherwise obscure area of federal policy.

COMPETING FOR STUDENTS' COINS AND APPETITES

Soft drinks have long concerned federal regulators. In 1914, for example, Harvey Wiley, then head of the forerunner of today's Food and Drug Administration, said of such products, "While the miscellaneous bottled soft drinks on the market with the exception of those bearing habit forming drugs, such as Coca-Cola (caffeine), cannot be said to be absolutely injurious, they represent to my mind second grade products of miscellaneous composition which does not recommend them for consumption by the young.... Why give your child [these] ... when you can always obtain ... pure fruit juices obtained direct from the lime, the berry, the orange or lemon?"25

Sales of soft drinks in schools, however, are permitted as a result of amendments to the Child Nutrition Act of 1966, which in turn amended provisions of the National School Lunch Act of 1946. As outlined in Table 26, the history of regulations dealing with sales of soft drinks and other "junk foods" (graciously defined by Congress as "foods of minimal nutritional value") is part of a 50-year saga of nearly annual tinkering with the rules that 'govern the school lunch and school breakfast programs. The regulations for sales of soft drinks and other "competitive" foods-foods that children might buy instead of federally supported meals in the school cafeteria-constitute a minuscule part of the saga, but 1'1 they illustrate the way commercial interests dominate congressional decisions about matters that affect the health of children.

For more than 30 years, in efforts to protect the nutritional and economic integrity of federally subsidized school meal programs, groups such as school food service officials, nutritionists, and advocates for children's health sought regulations to restrict sales of competitive foods in public schools. For decades, soft drink companies-often joined by principals, school boards, and state education departments-opposed any "time-and-place" restrictions on when or where soft drinks and other competitive foods might be sold. The results of this historical conflict readily reveal why advocates view the current regulations as promoting the commercial interests of soft drink companies far more than they do children's health.

By the late 1960s, coin-operated vending machines selling soft drinks and snacks were already well established in schools. Parents, school officials, health authorities, and even Congress could recognize as "an obvious fact of life" that sales of such foods directly competed with federally supported meal programs "for the children's coins and appetites." 26 Congress, therefore, asked the USDA secretary "to take a hard look at some of the competition to the balanced meal offered within schools ... [at] the availability of candy bars, soft drinks and a snack line in the school cafeterias."27 In 1970 Congress passed amendments that allowed the USDA to block sales of competitive foods at the same time and place as school meals were offered (that is, in the school cafeteria during lunch periods) but permitted any food ever served as part of a school lunch to be sold at other times and places. This arcane distinction meant, for example, that cake could be sold but soft drinks could not.28

As a result of these rules, soft drink companies lost revenue, but so did the schools. To protect the ongoing income they derived from sales of snack foods, school officials joined soft drink companies in pressuring Congress to allow competitive foods to be sold at any time and place (again, this meant in the cafeteria during lunch periods), provided that the proceeds went to the schools or to approved student organizations. They also induced Congress to remove the USDA's authority to regulate sales of competitive foods and, instead, to delegate decisions about such sales to state and local boards of education. These decisions effectively deregulated competitive foods, leading critics to charge that "profit had triumphed over nutrition."26 After 1972, sales from vending machines and other competing venues increased in many schools. In 1977, during the more liberal Carter administration, Congress viewed sales of competitive foods as an abuse of the school meal programs and restored the USDA's regulatory authority. Yet in doing so, Congress demanded and received assurances from the USDA that the agency would not actually ban competitive foods but would only restrict sales of soft drinks and other foods of minimal nutritional value that "did not make a positive contribution to children's diets. "29

With its newly regained authority, the USDA then attempted to ban sales of foods of minimal nutritional value just until after the end of the last lunch period. Because this plan provoked a deluge of angry public comments, the USDA withdrew it and solicited additional input. Some 4,200 comments were submitted in response, filling a 15,000-page record. In 1979 the USDA again proposed this idea, this time defining foods of minimal nutritional value as those containing less than 5% of the Recommended Dietary Allowances for eight nutrients (protein, vitamin A, ascorbic acid, niacin, riboflavin, thiamin, calcium, and iron) per 100 calories or per serving. This definition meant that the restrictions would apply only to carbonated soft drinks, water ices, certain candies, and chewing gum. Even this revised proposal elicited more than 3,000 comments, of which 562 could be traced to a PepsiCo directive to its employees suggesting that they tell the USDA that its health objectives would be better achieved through nutrition education. Despite these pressures, the USDA held firm; its 1980 final rules continued to ban vending of soft drinks until the end of the school lunch period.30

In the early 1980s, encouraged by the election of a more conservative administration, soft drink producers tried a more aggressive tactic. They took the USDA to court, charging that its regulations were "arbitrary, capricious, and an abuse of discretion ... and in excess of statutory jurisdiction." The District Court dismissed the complaint, stating that "it is an obvious fact of life that a ... vending machine, no matter where located, can act as a magnet for any child who inclines to the non-nutritious."26 Soft drink producers appealed the decision and won. The Appeals Court ruled that the intent of Congress was simply to control sales of "junk foods" during meal service and that the USDA had no right to otherwise restrict the time and place of sales of competitive foods--even those of minimal nutritional value. The court did allow one exception: Competitive foods other than those of minimal nutritional value could be sold in the cafeteria during meal service if the proceeds went to approved student groups. In practice, this decision meant that the USDA could prohibit the selling of soft drinks only in the cafeteria during meal service periods and had to allow sales of sodas at any other time or place.31

As might be expected, this ruling stimulated sales of competitive foods -.( with the equally predictable result that school food service operations lost revenue) leading advocacy groups to renew their efforts to restrict such sales. They encouraged Senator Patrick Leahy (Dem-VT), t~n chair of the Senate Agriculture Committee, to introduce a bill to reinstate a complete ban on sales of soft drinks and other competitive foods of minimal nutritional value until the end of the last lunch period. Predictably, Coca-Cola opposed the bill and organized a letter-writing campaign among school principals, superintendents, and coaches who feared losing revenues generated by vending machines. The New York Times quoted Senator Leahy as complaining that "the company puts profit ahead of children's health.... [K]ids have no money, no political clout, no political action committees.... If Coke wins, children lose."32 In hearings on his bill, the senator charged that "some local officials were being misled by Coca-Cola or other bottlers into believing that they had to allow soda machines in their schools." Congress, he said, should put the health of children above corporate profits.33

According to the New York Times, a spokesman for Coca-Cola argued that his company makes "no nutritional claims for soft drinks ... but they can be part of a balanced diet. Our strategy is ubiquity. We want to put soft drinks within arm's reach of desire ... [and] schools are one channel we want to make them available in." A lobbyist for the soft drink industry explained to a reporter, "You have no evidence that the consumption of soft drinks is in any way harmful. "34 This same lobbyist told a Senate committee, "We question whether there is a need for 'Big Brother' in the form of USDA injecting itself into ... decisions when it comes to refreshment choices."33 School principals also opposed the bill on the grounds that it would interfere with their ability to bring in revenue for discretionary activities.

Such objections convinced Congress to retain the permissive regulations. In discussions of amendments to the School Lunch Act passed in 1994, a Senate committee suggested that the USDA should instead develop "model language" to restrict sales of soft drinks and other such foods in elementary schools before the end of the last lunch period, but it left the decision about whether to adopt that language to the discretion of state and local school authorities. Congress advised the USDA to send a letter to secondary schools reminding them that federal laws restricted profit-making sales of soft drinks in food service areas during lunch periods.35 When advocacy groups called on the USDA to impose tighter controls on vended and competitive foods, officials explained that Congress had given the agency no authority to regulate the sale of foods outside the food service area.36

As had been the case since 1972, the 1994 amendments explicitly invited state and local school authorities to impose more stringent restrictions on sales of competitive foods, and several have done so. New York State regulations enacted in 1987, for example, follow the earlier, more restrictive USDA proposals: "From the beginning of the school day until the end of the last scheduled meal period, no sweetened soda water, no chewing gum, no candy including hard candy, jellies, gums, marshmallow candies, fondant, licorice, spun candy and candy coated popcorn, and no water ices except those which contain fruit or fruit juices, shall be sold in any public school within the state. "37

Although reliable data on compliance are difficult to obtain, advocates, teachers, and school officials tell me that state and federal rules are routinely ignored. To begin with, soft drink companies circumvent the rules by donating sodas to schools for free distribution during school meal periods, a development that prompted Senator Leahy to introduce additional legislation to stop such practices: "Nutrition doesn't go better with Coke or Pepsi at lunchtime ... [T)his is a loophole-big enough to drive a truck through-that hurts our children ... not unlike the old days when the tobacco companies would hand out free cigarettes to kids. "38 Furthermore, the companies developed sweetened fruit "drinks" that can be sold on lunch lines; these contain just barely enough juice (5 %) to get around being defined as a food of minimal nutritional value.

Some evidence, limited though it may be, suggests the ubiquity of rule breaking. A survey of 55 Minnesota high schools found that 95% of the schools that had vending machines left them unlocked and thus accessible during some school hours, 29% left them unlocked all day, and 15% left them open during the lunch period-despite state regulations that discourage sales of soft drinks during lunch periods. The same survey also found that 60% of the vending machines were located in cafeterias and that another 33% were near the cafeterias. 39 A nationwide survey by the General Accounting Office found that 20% of U.S. schools gave students access to vended snacks and drinks during lunch periods and that two thirds allowed other competitive foods to be sold during lunchtimes. 40 A more recent USDA survey reported that about one-fourth of all schools had vending machines located in or near the cafeteria.41 If nothing else, these studies prove that opportunities for violating regulations are readily available.

On this basis, advocates in New York City organized a class-action suit against the board of education, the chancellor of education, and five school principals to enforce a universally ignored city regulation that flatly prohibits "the sale of non-nutritious food, either directly or through vending machines" in public schools. Noting that the money for competitive junk foods in schools "comes from the poorest section of New York City-public school parents-who can least afford it," the suit argued that officials are obligated to comply with existing laws.42 After a two year delay, the court ruled that the Board of Education must comply with the law and stop selling foods of minimal nutritional value until after the last lunch period. If schools wanted to sell foods such as sweetened soft drinks during lunch periods, they would have to ask the head of the city's school food service operations for permission. Whether schools will comply with these directives, which carry no penalties, remains to be seen.

UNDERMINING NUTRITIONAL GOALS

Advocates maintain that if schools are doing their job properly, school meals should contribute to healthful eating habits, should be fully integrated into educational activities, and should receive adequate financial support. They believe such purposes would be best served if food service departments managed sales of all food in schools, rather than administrators or sports officials for whom nutrition and health are not necessarily high priorities. Advocates especially fear that competitive foods jeopardize the economic viability of school meal programs, because these programs are expected to be self-supporting with federal reimbursements and must have adequate sales volume to survive. The short time devoted to lunch periods in many schools also discourages students from eating full meals and encourages the purchase of competitive foods that can be eaten on the run.

This combination of circumstances has forced school food service departments to put substantial effort into recruiting participants through development of in-house food brands, restaurant-type menus, food courts, food carts, and new food items that can be purchased separately from meals. They also are forced to seek ways to improve the image of school meals, stimulate demand for more healthful food choices, and involve students in decisions about how to make school meals more appealing. All of these actions make excellent sense from a business standpoint, but only some of them reinforce the schools' educational mission.43 The dilemma is best illustrated by beverage purchases. In the 1990S, milk and other dairy products accounted for nearly one-fourth of the food costs incurred by schools. Perhaps to reduce such costs, school purchases of sweetened fruit drinks increased by 180%. Fruit drinks cost less than milk, and although they are only marginally more nutritious than sodas, they may be served on lunch lines under the regulations. Using them saves money for the schools.3

That soft drink companies deliberately compete with school meals seems quite evident from testimony at congressional hearings. During hearings for the 1994 School Lunch amendments, for example, a high school food service director testified that when Coca-Cola distributed free 20-ounce bottles of soda, participation in the lunch program declined by half; children drank soda instead. She reported that CocaCola had provided her school with cash incentives, bicycles, computers, and catered events and that it would be difficult for her principal to give up such perquisites. She concluded, "Without government regulations, Coca-Cola will always win." Soft drink industry lobbyists, however, consistently argue that no evidence links the sale of their products to poor nutrition, to any other health problems, or to low participation rates in school lunch programs. Others, however, state frankly that the preferred placement for vending machines is near the cafeteria, just where the Minnesota survey found them to be.

As a side issue, it should be noted that pouring-rights contracts have economic implications beyond school meal service. Because they affect the sales of milk, the contracts also affect the livelihood of community dairy farmers. Milk used to be the only beverage provided to schoolchildren. Once sodas were permitted, milk sales declined. As shown in Table 2.4, this change has contributed to the overall decline in the annual production of milk in the United States from 3I gallons per capita in 1970 to 2.4 gallons in 1997.

From its inception, the purpose of the school lunch program was to improve the nutritional status of children, while providing an outlet for surplus agricultural commodities. Figuring out how to use school meals to promote nutritional goals has not been easy, however, and has occupied Congress since 1966. In implementing the provisions of the 1994 School Lunch amendments, the USDA accepted improved nutrition as a goal when it recognized that school meals could establish "childhood eating patterns that influence lifelong habits" and specified reductions in the fat, sugar, and salt content of the lunches to bring them into compliance with federal Dietary Guidelines.44

In doing so, the school meal programs also were brought into compliance with Public Health Service Io-year plans to improve the health of ~"'-Americans. Since 1980, the plans have called for information about healthful dietary patterns to be included as part of comprehensive health education curricula in elementary, junior high, and'senior high schools. Part of the reason for paying attention to school nutrition education is that it has been demonstrably effective, especially when supported by meals served in school cafeterias. Participants in school meal programs have been shown to consume better diets than nonparticipants. If students replace school meals with competitive foods of minimal nutritional value, the quality of their diets can be expected to deteriorate.45

One goal of the Io-year plan released in 2.000 is to increase the percentage of children and adolescents aged 6 to 19 years whose intake of meals and snacks at schools contributes appropriate proportions of nutrients and calories. The plan specifically recognizes that students today have "increased food options" at school. Thus, creating an environment supportive of healthful diets would help schools promote health as well as learning readiness.46 Because this goal applies to foods served in snack bars, school stores, and vending machines, improving the nutritional quality of competitive foods has now been incorporated as a formal component of national nutrition policy. It is as yet uncertain whether and how government agencies will implement this policy.

PRESERVING "THAT BRIEF SHINING OASIS"

The attention that soft drink companies have recently focused on children in grades K-I2. can be seen as part of the increasing intrusiveness of commercial interests into American schools. Companies routinely market food products to children in and out of school; these activities are now so common as to be taken for granted and accepted with minimal debate. The companies-and the school officials who contract with them implicitly assume that soft drinks are appropriate fare for school-age children, rather than milk, juice, or water, any of which would be a better nutritional choice.

Here too, the level of cynicism is especially disturbing. What are we to make of the comments of a PepsiCo official who casually mentions that "marketing to the 8-to u-year-old set is a priority," as though it were unquestionably appropriate for a soft drink company to direct sales efforts to such young children? 14 And how are we to take the following comment attributed to a consultant who helps schools obtain contracts? He says that pouring-rights contracts make schools more realistic for children: "If you have no advertising in schools at all, it doesn't give our young people an accurate picture of our society. "16

Pouring-rights agreements clearly teach students that school officials are willing to compromise nutritional principles for financial reasons, even when the linking of payments to higher-consumption goals puts them in the position of advocates for soft drink consumption. When a school administrator tells a reporter that "the nutrition aspect is important, but I'm ambivalent about it," he reveals his priorities; such ambivalence contributes to student attitudes that nutrition and health are not important concerns.47 All too rare is the school administrator who is brave enough to say, "Matters involving money properly stop at the schoolhouse door" or to insist that "education and marketing are like oil and water."48 All too few newspapers are willing to admit discomfort with the deals schools make with soda companies, and to argue that "the more things in a school that are for sale ... the less the school can claim to offer that brief shining oasis" from the rampant commercialism aimed at children everywhere else.49

The well-financed promotion in schools of soft drinks and other foods of poor nutritional quality directly undermines federal efforts to improve the dietary intake of children and to reduce rates of childhood obesity. Even though colleges (and now entire cities, such as Huntington Beach, California) have become advertising vehicles for soft drink companies, elementary and secondary school students surely deserve some protection against commercial interests that contribute to poor nutrition outside of school, as well as within.

Soft drinks, of course, constitute just one example of industry marketing to children, but the health effects of this product are becoming increasingly well documented. Thus a good starting place for nutrition advocacy for children is to encourage consumption of water, juices, and low-fat milk but to discourage consumption of sodas and sweetened fruit ~ drinks, except as occasional desserts. In what must be considered a ,. courageous move in this direction, the USDA braved the wrath of the soft drink industry when it pictured "soda pop" at the tip of its 1999 Food It Guide Pyramid for children aged 2_6.50

Anticommercialism advocates urge students to identify and resist school marketing, communities and states to require firm adherence to existing regulations, and school boards to disallow exclusivity agreements and pouring-rights contracts altogether. By the end of 2000, more than 30 school districts in California, Tennessee, and Wisconsin, for example, had refused such deals after protests by parents, students, and ..~~-school officials. Philadelphia refused an offer from Coca-Cola for $43 million over a 10-year period, and Michigan turned down a contract that would have covered 110 school districts encompassing nearly half a million students. IS At the national level, advocates are lobbying for federal regulations to restrict sales of competitive foods in general, and those of minimal nutritional value in particular, and to expand the definition of such foods to include the new "juice" products and other such foods. Others are considering a range of pricing, tax, and other "environmental" strategies to improve the diets of schoolchildren, similar to those that I and others have proposed to address current trends in obesity.51

By 2001, such advocacy was beginning to have an effect. Days before the inauguration of President George W. Bush, the USDA asked Congress to "strengthen the statutory language to ensure that all foods sold or served anywhere in the school during the school day meet nutrition standards."52 Soon after, Senator Leahy introduced a new bill to require the USDA to ban or limit the sale of soft drinks and other competitive "junk' foods" before the end of the lunch period on the basis that "schoolchildren are a captive market for soda vendors ... [and] our kids pay the price when we give soft drink companies free reign to market their products in school."53 In Minnesota, a state senator introduced a bill to ban sales of soda pop while school is in session, but it "failed in the committee BIG TIME" under pressure from lobbyists for soft drink companies and school boards.54

Despite such victories, but surely in response to the threat of legal intervention, Coca-Cola announced that it would no longer require exclusivity in school contracts. Advocates, however, viewed this "retreat" as a corporate decision that would enable the company to remain in schools, and business analysts thought it would have little financial effect on the company, since school beverage sales "only" accounted for I % of its $20 billion in annual revenue.55

Although pouring-rights contracts are only one component of an arsenal of food company marketing techniques, issues related to societal inequities are central to the significance of these contracts as a public health concern. Congressional reluctance to favor children's health above the rights of soft drink producers is a direct result of election laws that require legislators to obtain corporate funding for their campaigns. Like most corporations, soft drink companies donate funds to local and national candidates. More rational campaign financing laws might permit Congress to take positions based on public good rather than private greed.

Similarly, if American public schools were funded adequately, the blatant commercialism inherent in pouring-rights contracts and other marketing efforts in schools would almost certainly be subjected to debate, and departments of education, school boards, principals, and coaches would be less likely to enter into such agreements without far more public discussion than now occurs. As one San Francisco school board official explained, "Education cannot be funded by potato chip contracts.... {C]ome back and talk to me about nothing being wrong with these contracts when there are Coca-Cola banners in the House of Representatives and members of the U.S. Senate can only have a TV set if they watch Channel One for IS minutes a day."56 Pouring-rights contracts may solve immediate problems of school funding, but their social cost is high, not least because they erode efforts to establish adequate federal, state, and local funding for public education. These contracts, therefore, point to the need for much greater public attention to overall commercial pressures on children and for a much greater level of critical scrutiny of such pressures by school officials, legislators, health professionals, and the public.

In these chapters, I have focused on the ways in which food companies use advertising and marketing methods to expand their base of consumers by targeting young people. In the next section, we move on to an even more powerful strategy: resistance to regulation. Part IV examines the ways in which food companies-in this case, those that sell dietary supplements-were able to obtain almost complete deregulation of their products and, in the process, weaken the ability of the Food and Drug Administration to regulate foods, as well.

DEREGULATING DIETARY SUPPLEMENTS

WE NOW TURN TO A NEW TOPIC: HOW A RELATIVELY MINOR segment of the food industry-the makers and sellers of dietary supplements-convinced the public and Congress that its products did not need to be regulated according to the strict standards applied to conventional foods or to drugs. Supplement makers do not need to demonstrate that their products are safe and effective before selling them. What is left of supplement regulation is based on the assumption that supplements are safe until proved otherwise, and Congress places the burden of responsibility on the beleaguered Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to do such proving. The industry also achieved a regulatory system that holds claims for the efficacy of supplements their ability to perform as advertised on the label-to a remarkably low standard.

The industry-driven deregulation of supplements would not concern us so much if its consequences were less profound. Most supplements, after all, do appear safe. Their cost is low compared to that of medications, and most people who take supplements can afford to buy them. I What is of concern is how little we know about the thousands of products available. Research on supplements other than vitamins and minerals is in its infancy, and few products have been tested adequately for safety or health benefits. While investigations are in progress, the supplement industry "jumps the data," makes extravagant claims for the ability of its products to prevent or treat disease, demands less and less federal control over its practices, and goes to court to enforce those demands. The makers of conventional foods, watching sales of supplements increase at a greater rate than they themselves can achieve, also are demanding—and getting—the same kinds of loose regulations for foods. It is difficult to believe that this situation is in the best interest of public health.

(Marion Nestle "Food Politics" 2002 p.200-1)

(Marion Nestle "Food Politics" PUSHING SOFT DRINKS - St. Cloud State University PDF

(Marion Nestle "Food Politics" Fat of the Land - St. Cloud State University PDF

Although the supplement industry has always couched its political efforts in terms of health benefits or "freedom to choose," it most immediate rational was and is economic. Supplement makers do not want to have to conduct lengthy, expensive clinical trials to prove that their products are safe or useful. ...... (Marion Nestle "Food Politics" 2002 p.220-3)

In enacting DSHEA, Congress was responding to an industry led campaign framed as giving Americans the "freedom to choose" dietary supplements. .....

The FDA was not to demand scientific proof of statements of nutritional support as long as they were “truthful and not misleading” and did not use such words as diagnose, treat, prevent, cure or mitigate. (Marion Nestle "Food Politics" 2002 p.204-6)

In deregulating dietary supplements, Congress effectively shifted safety responsibility from industry to the government. The government, therefore, effectively shifted this responsibility to the public. In demanding only semantic restrictions on what marketers can claim about health benefits, Congress weakened not only the FDA's ability to protect the public from supplements that are in fact hazardous but also its ability to control the inappropriate marketing of foods, food additives, and even drugs. (Marion Nestle "Food Politics" 2002 p.230-4)

Dietary supplement industry says “no” to more information for consumers (again) 10/03/2013

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In the spring of 1992, the FDA task force committee released its report on dietary supplement regulation. Noting that 30 years had elapsed since the FDA had first proposed rules for supplements, the committee recognized “that the regulated industry (Marion Nestle "Food Politics" 2002 p.252-3)

With rules for food labels out of the way, the FDA turned its attention to supplements. In June 1993, it expanded its definition of supplements to include not just ...

Letters from supplement users -- by the hundreds of thousands -- poured into congress and the FDA in what appeared to be a large and spontaneous consumer movement, which it most certainly was not. (Marion Nestle "Food Politics" 2002 p.258-9)

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Many scientists and clinicians, aware of the precept "first do no harm," remain uncomfortable about the idea of taking large amounts of one or another single nutrient or of using any nutritional supplement without clear evidence of need.

Considering issues of need, safety, and efficacy, most nutritionists continue to prefer foods to supplements for the reasons given in Table 29. ....

Furthermore, safety is especially difficult to assess in products of inconsistent composition. An evaluation by Consumer Reports of echinacea and ginkgo (Marion Nestle "Food Politics" 2002 p.280-3)

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The potential marketing benefits not the science explain companies' persistent attempts to obtain FDA authorization for health claims.

Psyllium Husk Similar issues of science as opposed to commercial pressures apply to functional foods supplemented with psyllium husk, the dried seed coat of the stemless annual herb plantago ovata. Psyllium is grown in India, where it is commonly used as a household remedy for constipation, and it is the active ingredient in over-the-counter laxatives such as Metamucil. Its bulking action in part explains its ability to cause cholesterol to be excreted rather than absorbed from the intestine. (Marion Nestle "Food Politics" 2002 p.324)

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Objections to the cereal were likely to come from another source as well. Prior to the introduction of Heartwise, the Procter & Gamble (P&G) company had ... (Marion Nestle "Food Politics" 2002 p.327)

The Take Control product uses "helps promote healthy cholesterol levels," followed by the required disclaimer in fine print, "as part of a diet low in saturated fat and cholesterol." The Benecol products just say, "benefits cholesterol." Benecol, however, would get plenty of promotion. Its advertising budget was expected to be $35 million for the initial launch alone, much of it for television commercials. As might be expected, promotional efforts also focused on health professionals. A two-page advertisement that appeared several times in the American (Marion Nestle "Food Politics" 2002 p.332-3)

I was no longer a member of the FDA's Food Advisory Committee during the years when it was considering approval of Procter & Gamble's (P&G) fat substitute, olestra, but I followed its deliberations closely. On June 17, 1998, the committee confirmed a judgment that it had made more than two years earlier. Once again, it agreed that olestra was reasonably certain to cause no harm as a food additive. The members did, however, advise the FDA that foods containing this substance should carry a warning statement: “This product contains olestra. Olestra may cause abdominal cramping and loose stools. Olestra inhibits the absorption of some vitamins and other nutrients. Vitamins A, D, E, and K have been added. .....

.... If olestra indeed produced long-term benefits, there was no way to know about them.

With questions about long-term safety and benefits impossible to resolve with the information available, the FDA approved olestra but required a warning notice. Unlike drugs, which also are approved on the basis of limited testing by manufacturers and must carry warnings of any side effects, olestra does not require a doctor's prescription. (Marion Nestle "Food Politics" 2002 p.338-9)

To these costs must be added expenditures for the 700,000 acres of land used for growing soybeans and cotton to produce olestra's fatty acids and costs of purchasing sugar raw materials.2

Such astronomical expenditures must be understood in context. In 1996 P&G earned $35.3 billion in revenues and spent $3.25 billion to advertise its full line of products, of which $30 million was spent just to advertise pre-olestra Pringles potato chips. That same year, Americans bought 5.5 billion pounds of salty snacks worth $13 billion. (Marion Nestle "Food Politics" 2002 p.350-1)

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