America’s Obesity Problem Is Due to Violence

HEALTH, 23 Aug 2010

Sarah Spieth – Tucson Citizen

This week’s Tucson Weekly features an article by Jim Hightower discussing the way in which lobbyists of major food manufacturers have successfully abated attempts on behalf of four federal agencies to push for more stringent food labeling regulation. According to Hightower, this regulation would have prevented manufacturers from labeling candy as health food and marketing it to children.  In our culture, we have held the belief for a while now that the food industry shares in the responsibility in America’s surge in obesity, but violence remains overlooked.

We hear the staggering numbers all the time: more than one third of the US adult population and just under a third of children are obese, we hear the projected costs to health care, and, if not in the mirror, we see evidence of this all around us.

When the numbers reach this magnitude, it becomes clear that this is about more than the insatiability of a few individuals, but that there are systemic factors at play. The question of who else was involved in lifting the fork – or jumbo macgreasebomb – to the mouths of roughly a hundred million Americans has led to an outcry for accountability by the food industry, and with good reason. We know that a 900 calorie meal, high in sugars, saturated and Trans fats will leave a person in a nutrient deprived sugar low that will make them want to eat again shortly after because the body craves nutrients and another sugar peak. A most recent example of the way in which the fast food industry is identified as major culprit in the obesity rate is the passing of an ordinance by the Los Angeles City Council prohibiting the construction of new fast food restaurants within a 32 square mile area, home to half a million low-income individuals. But in this supply and demand relationship, the question is, if the incentive to supply fast food is so unabashed and the opportunity for profit so limitless that they must be tamed by government regulation, then what is creating the boundless demand?

As the abundance of unwise meal options on the supply side alone doesn’t justify the surge in obesity, the other major factor at play is one that is lot more uncomfortable than blaming nuggets, one that places responsibility on our collective whole: poverty.

According to Johan Galtung, a pioneer in peace building and conflict resolution, ‘structural violence’ refers to the ways in which a social structure or institution harms people by depriving them of their ability to meet their basic needs. How does this occur in the case of obesity?

Thirty years ago in this country when you were poor you were also hungry, a paradigm that has been flipped like the burger on the grill. But are we poor?

Arizona has a minimum wage of $7.25 per hour, reflecting the federally set national minimum. Once this is adjusted for inflation, it is a 25% decrease from the late 1960s. In other words, a person that is holding $7.25 in their hand today has 25% less buying power than a person who held the same amount in the late 60s (Bloomberg Businessweek). The idea is that the minimum wage ensures that a person doesn’t fall below the federally set poverty threshold which draws the line in the sand between financial struggle and full-fledged poverty.

While we contemplate how we would perceivably support ourselves on $10,830 per annum, assuming a single person household, Bloomberg Businessweek comforts by highlighting that according to the last census, nationally ‘only 3% of workers age 16 and older were paid the minimum.’ While this may be true, paying an employee a single cent more per hour removes them from this arbitrary statistic, and, it is it worth asking whether this statistic has any implication on the state of poverty.

2009 Poverty Guidelines for the 48 Contiguous States and the District of Columbia

In Tucson, currently 18.4% of the population lives below the poverty threshold. Of those, nearly half earn an income of less than 50% of the poverty threshold. Arizona wide, the percentages are 14.2% and 6.6%, respectively (Citidata.com).

If we look how these poverty numbers impact lives, we look at, say, a family of four, earning just above the poverty threshold (>$22,050 per annum), facing the realities of life (rent, utility bills, phones, doctor’s appointments, childcare, car maintenance, etc.), we understand how the idea of acquiring four burgers for four dollars becomes incredibly appealing. Alternatively, at the grocery store, four dollars buys two condiments. Gym memberships, personal trainers and access to educational material about healthy living are most likely out of the question.

Clearly today, our poor, as a whole, are not thin, but potentially starving nonetheless.

Galtung would refer to this dynamic as structural violence – a scenario in which, while absent of direct violence, it is the structure of society (a minimum wage not adjusted for inflation) that prevents people from meeting their basic needs and strive for their fullest potential (healthy lifestyle). No wonder then, that we have a direct relationship between low-income neighborhoods and the demand for fast food. No wonder then, that we have a direct relationship between poverty and obesity.

If one would seriously want to address the sky rocketing obesity rates in this country, one would have to go beyond regulating suppliers and designating no-fries zones. One would have to instead examine ways in which consumers can be empowered to make other choices and this empowerment must go far beyond providing a pamphlet explaining the food pyramid. No pamphlet will make a mother choose whole wheat pasta and a salad over taking her child to a doctor. One would instead have to address the very structures that institutionalize poverty. But would ‘one’ want to do that?

So next time we see an obese person, we may want to see more than the gluttonous individual that lacks any shred of self-control. We may want to see someone who, quite possibly, was failed by our collective whole.

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Sarah Spieth holds an MA in Peacebuilding and Conflict Resolution and a BS in Management from the University of Arizona’s Eller College of Management and has worked with organizations in Sydney and New York City in the areas of disaster response management and community bridge building, Ms. Spieth consults on business efficiency and building sustainable solutions to conflicts.

*Institute for Research on Poverty (http://www.irp.wisc.edu/faqs/faq1.htm)

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