The Junk 'Food' Wars Continue

Belatedly policy makers have woken up to the fact that the largest disease burden in the world is caused by chronic diseases. They have begun to zoom in on 'food' products known to contribute to obesity. The thing about obesity is that it is linked to a whole gaggle of expensive-to-treat diseases, including diabetes, heart disease and so on and so forth. It is also linked to lower life expectancy and other such niceties. It turns out, soft drinks are a known significant contributor to obesity. Politicians such as New York City's mayor Michael Bloomberg have come up with a plan to reduce the maximum size of the containers that soft drink products are delivered in. They clearly hope that that might reduce soft drink consumption, to some extent at least. Public health experts have lauded Bloomberg's initiative. Others have suggested limiting advertisements for such products to times when children and teenagers ain't watching TV any longer.

When you think about it, Bloomberg's policy proposition isn't that different to what we do with regard to other known health hazards such as smoking and alcohol. If anything his policies are probably not far reaching enough. However, it is reassuring that voluntariness on part of the soft drink producing industry isn't relied on any longer. It cannot possibly deliver the required results, simply because these companies must be interested to sell as much of their products as is feasible in order to satisfy their owners' (ie their shareholders) financial interests, lest they will be punished by the financial markets.

Here are some fun facts related to the issue, 'Several studies have shown that the rate of type-2 diabetes has soared at just the same rate as intake of high-fructose corn syrup -- the favored sweetener in many soft drinks -- has risen. Soft drinks such as Coca-Cola were sold in 6.5-ounce bottles in the 1920s. Now the 12-ounce can is standard but fountain drinks are sold in sizes up to 64 ounces -- or the equivalent of eight of these cans of soda. One 64-ounce drink carries more than 800 calories.'

Well, yesterday Bloomberg's new regulations for New York City were halted in their tracks in court. Nothing new on that front either, cigarette companies also dragged the inevitable out by means of seemingly never-ending court proceedings. Even the arguments deployed during the cigarette wars and those deployed now are eerily similar. One would hope Bloomberg and - more importantly - his successor will keep their nerves on this. I saw Bloomberg last night on the Letterman show (yep, guilty as charged, I watch the Late Show) and he mentioned some staggering figure like 5,000 New Yorkers die every year as a result of obesity related complications. The cost of treating - just in that city - obese people's avoidable health problems reaches multi billion $$ each year.

Here comes the inevitably Onion style response from US Republicans. NPR reported that in Mississippi, a state where 1 out of every 3 adults is about 30 pounds (!) heavier than what would be a healthy weight, state Republicans are moving to legislate that counties and towns must not enact rules like those proposed by Michael Bloomberg, including rules that require calorie counts of meals and drinks to be posted, that cap portion sizes, or that keep toys out of kids' meals. It goes without saying that the restaurant, beverage and chicken producing industry was behind this initiative. Which arguably supports again the point that it ain't public-private partnerships and voluntary industry action that is called for, but government regulation. That industry should lobby to withhold basic information from its customers, in order to prevent them from making informed choices at least about the food products they digest, tells you truly all that you need to know.

Taxing junk food?

Nice story on the BBC World website. Leading UK medical bodies, among them the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, propose that soft drinks should be hit with a special tax (about 20p per litre). The objective, obviously, is to reduce demand for such products. Why would one want to reduce demand for such products? Mostly because they can be linked to the obesity epidemic in the country. According to the BBC report, 'one in four adults is classified as obese and one in three children is already obese or overweight before they finish primary school.' 

Basically these experts propose to treat soft drinks pretty much like smoking and alcohol are being treated in taxation term. The argument is that consumption of such junk food leads predictably to an increase in obesity and a whole range of known, and expensive to treat, illnesses caused by obesity. Reducing obesity would overall result in an increase in individual (and aggregative societal) well-being and longevity. These are clearly all desirable goals.  

To make things look good, their proposal also includes suggestions such as how government should spend the extra tax dollars (well, Pounds). It is proposed that government spends it on subsidies for fruit and school meal improvements in general. Great idea, considering that school meals in many school in that country qualify at best as junk food. 

There is no great risk that the current Conservative/Liberal UK government will run with this proposal. It has been busy trying to get industry to volunteer improvements on the soft drink frontiers. Industry folks claim that the addition of sugar to soft drinks has already decreased significantly. Well, assuming that that is true, I guess soft drinks that ain't directly linked to obesity could be exempted. I don't know, of course, whether there might be other problems with soft drinks beyond the sugar, indeed, I don't even know whether the industry guy who points out that 61% of soft drinks contain no added sugar tells the truth. He also points out that the consumption of soft drinks containing added sugar has fallen while obesity has increased anyway. If he's right, one can't help but think of other worthy targets for higher taxes.

I am not opposed to punitive tax rates on demonstrably unhealthy food products...but, the moment you look at this sentence, you can't help but wonder where this will end? Glasgow's fried Mars bars anyone? Fries with mayonaise anyone? Cake? The list of crap we eat and enjoy is pretty endless. FWIW, I recently had a fried Mars bar, because I wanted to know how this ur-Scottish culinary delight tastes. Well, it's gross. Tax it to the hilt as far as I care. Just kidding :). 

There's a serious point to this though: it seems to me that if one wanted to do this truly fairly one would have to balance the quality-of-life benefits folks derive from gobbling down junk food of any kind against the societal quality-of-life costs. People don't enjoy junk food only because they live in food deserts, or because they're poor and can't help it/don't know better (add your favourite assumption/prejudice about the kinds of people that eat junk food), etc. Many folks enjoy junk food because they enjoy the taste of it. Being a proper continental European I love my fries with mayo. We know our lifestyle choices ain't particularly healthy, and we don't care in the end. Health is only one value among many that make life worth living. It is a very important value, but it isn't uncontroversially on top of anyone's hierarchy of values. So, taking pleasure out of our lives (or making our pleasures more expensive by means of tax policies) requires sound justifications that go beyond pointing to health consequences. 

It seems to me that such taxes can probably be justified - and they might ultimately be a good idea. It should be interesting to see whether this experiment would result in the desirable health outcomes its proponents are hoping for. However, in a just society there should then be equal taxation for other products that are equally detrimental to our health. Guess one could quantify what kinds of damages what kinds of products cause and tax (or insure) accordingly. That is, provided the choices those make who indulge are reasonably their own and not choices determined by forces beyond their control (eg food deserts). 

Anyhow, guess I am just thinking aloud here. One worry I have is clearly to do with the question of where this will end. But then, in philosophy we know that slippery-slope arguments are typically terrible, unsustainable arguments, so I suspect reasonable, definsible lines can probably be drawn in the sand. How and where would you draw them? 

On (Not) Travelling on Delta Airlines between Xmas and NY

Here's a true story befalling some 200 travellers on a Delta Airlines flight from Syracuse to Atlanta on December 22. We were scheduled to depart Syracuse at 6:40 am, accordingly many travellers booked the night before into hotels in close proximity to the airport. We pretty much showed up on time, checked diligently in, even boarded the plane in a timely fashion for our 6:40 am departure. The simple reason for this was that we needed the plane to depart in a timely fashion for most of us to catch our connecting flights to our vacation destinations (or home) in Atlanta. In my case the plan was to head to Fort Lauderdale where hotel and rental car were waiting (and had to be paid regardless of whether I would make it there or not).

Well, it turned out that Delta staff had no problems letting passengers board a plane they knew full well wasn't roadworthy so to speak, given that it arrived with a broken generator the night before. So the charade began. We were stuck for about 2 ours, some fiddling with the engine, the generator, the ice and whatnot. Eventually we were kicked off the plane (could have slept a few hours longer I thought at the time). Well, an hour or two later we were herded back on to the plane only for the crew to discover further mechanical and electrical problems. an hour or so later we were again kicked off the plane.

Meanwhile Delta had ordered a bunch of junkfood items for us, muffins, bagels and tons of the cheapest pizzas available. I understand that by US airline standards that was a kind gesture, and to be fair to Delta, the food outlets at the airport in Syracuse do simply not sell healthy food items (short of overpriced fruit salads).

We waited and waited and waited, only to be eventually told that Delta was trying to get a replacement jet and crew to Syracuse. This, of course, should have happened over night, and not in a haphazard activity late afternoon on December 22. Pretty much everyone on the plane had by then missed their connecting flights, many had in fact decided to return home and forget about their holidays altogether.

Eventually, at around 5:30 pm or so the replacement plane arrived. Delta staff quickly dumped another load of pizza on us, lest it would have to provide us with cash vouchers to purchase proper dinner in Atlanta where virtually everyone was stuck for the night. We eventually departed - irony of ironies - at 6:40 pm, a full 12 hours after our scheduled departure time to Atlanta.

Some people on the plane were stuck in their quest to reach their holiday destination for up to three days in Atlanta - it goes without saying that they were not dressed for winter, yet Delta thought nothing of it to book them into airport hotels instead of nicer downtown Atlanta hotels. So there they were over the Xmas holidays, in airport hotels in Atlanta. Why? Because of Delta's incompetence. The airline knew full-well for a full night that their plane wouldn't be able to take off, yet it chose not to act on this information when it should have (namely over night). Its own ground staff in Syracuse was flabbergasted about the airline's decision not to replace the broken-down plane over night when it could and should have.

200 passengers were severely hit by this airline misconduct during their holidays. We had significant additional costs that were caused entirely by Delta's mistakes. Just to be clear, this cannot be an argument for taking out travel insurance to cover those extra costs, because the fault for these extra costs was Delta's. Why should travellers have to insure themselves against costs incurred due to airline incompetence? Delta offered a voucher of 100$ toward future flights. It goes without saying that that voucher didn't cover the actual additional expenses incurred.

Well, we arrived eventually in Atlanta and ended up receiving a voucher for a truly terrible airport hotel (the restaurant closed early - thanks Sheraton Atlanta airport hotel - despite a large queue of passengers checking in, all of whom hungry for real food after a day's worth of Delta's junk food). True to form the hotel voucher included no meals and no internet access. We continued our trip the next morning, being among the lucky ones able to continue their journey after losing only one full day of their vacation courtesy of Delta Airlines.

This has been a shocking experience, mostly because it became clear to everyone of the 200 passengers on said flight that this all would have been avoidable if Delta had acted on the problem when it should have. Delta clearly chose the course of action it thought would be cheaper, even though this would come at significant cost to about 200 of its passengers. Eventually it saved nothing at all, a replacement jet had to be send after a day's worth of fiddling with the broken equipment in Syracuse, plus there were 200 irate passengers realizing that their all-important vacation plans meant nothing to this airline, a large number of hotel rooms booked, the list goes on.

The lesson out of this all: Delta is probably not much better or worse than any other US airline, so passengers will have to accept such misconduct until these companies are better regulated. The real lesson to me: If Xmas/NY travel is avoidable at all, don't travel during that time of the year. I had two out of two trips during that time of the year stuffed up during the last 4 years. So, it's not only that airlines charge you a lot, they also often don't deliver. A pretty miserable record.

Delta's Twitter guy or girl #DeltaAssist suggested I complain with Delta's 'not my problem', aka its complaints folks. I mentioned that that likely would mean throwing good money after bad, knowing that US airlines could not care less about customer experiences. Against my better judgment I tried anyway. I  received precisely the response that you'd expect from such an outfit:

'I understand the frustration you experienced when your plans were
disrupted due to the delay of our flight for mechanical reasons causing
you to miss your connecting flight.  I can only imagine how dissatisfied
you must have been to have your travel plans disrupted at the last
minute.

Additionally, I am truly sorry you were unhappy with the Electronic
Transportation Credit Voucher (eTCV) and hotel voucher provided.  The
gesture extended was not meant to place a value on your experience;
rather it was an attempt to make amends for your disappointment with our
service.  Respectfully, additional consideration would not be due.  I
apologize, as I understand this is not the answer you were hoping to
receive.'

My truly favorite line is this, 

'I want to thank you, again, for writing regarding flight

irregularity.  We appreciate your interest in our company and look
towards your future travel with us.'

Pretty scary things - comfort food among them

I went with a colleague to a place called Dallas BBQ in Brooklyn. I can recommend it to you as a true local experience. It's usually jam packed with mostly substantially obese folks of all ages - I take that back, not all ages, there are only few elderly people, because obesity leads to the premature death of far too many people. Anyway, Dallas BBQ is a steak, ribs, fried onion rings, fries, margarita type place that serves gigantically oversized portions of essentially junk 'food' at fairly low/reasonable prices. I got to be honest, I greatly enjoyed the atmosphere in this place. The staff were friendly and the folks feasting themselves to death were remarkably cheerful. I particularly 'enjoyed' parents ensuring that their newborns get addicted to the same type of food so that they can also die premature deaths. I mean, if the idea of 'child abuse' makes any sense at all, it needs to incorporate such stuff, too.