Federal government chooses voluntary actions over regulations to curb obesity

First Lady Michelle Obama unveils the findings of the Childhood Obesity Task Force report with cabinet officials.

Although the Obama administration was willing to take on the health care insurance companies, he and his agency heads are less willing to regulate the food industry.

Tuesday the Childhood Obesity Task Force unveiled the task force action plan: “Solving the Problem of Childhood Obesity Within a Generation.”

The report sets out an implementation plan for First Lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! campaign launched in February.

The action plan seeks to solve the problem of childhood obesity in a generation by returning to a childhood obesity rate of 5 percent by 2030, which was the rate before childhood obesity began to rise in the late 1970s.

Rather than proposing regulations on food ingredients and advertising to children, the report presents 70 recommendations, which include voluntary actions or the continuation of current policies. Among them are:

• Getting children a healthy start on life with good prenatal care for their parents; support for breastfeeding; adherence to limits on “screen time”; and quality child care settings with nutritious food and ample opportunity for young children to be physically active.
• Empowering parents and caregivers with simpler, more actionable messages about nutritional choices based on the latest Dietary Guidelines for Americans; improved labels on food menus that provide clear information to help parents make healthy choices for children; reduced marketing of unhealthy products to children; and improved health care services, including BMI measurements for all children.
• Providing healthy food in schools through improvements in federally supported school lunches and breakfasts; upgrading the nutritional quality of other foods sold in schools; and improving nutrition education and the overall health of the school environment.
• Improving access to healthy, accordable food by eliminating “food deserts” in urban and rural America; lowering the relative prices of healthier foods; developing or reformulating food products to be healthier and reducing the incidence of hunger, which has been linked to obesity.
• Getting children more physically active through quality physical education, recess, and other opportunities in and after school; addressing aspects of the “built environment” that make it difficult for children to walk or bike safely in their communities; and improving access to safe parks, playgrounds, and indoor and outdoor recreational facilities. 

The campaign relies on persuasion and education rather than new federal laws or regulations.

“A regulatory approach is certainly not where we want to start,” said Federal Trade Commission Chairman Jon Leibowitz at the press conference on the report. “You start by pushing self-regulation, by pushing your bully pulpit; sometimes shaming companies that don’t do enough.”

I don’t think relying on the food industry to voluntarily take positive actions to reduce obesity is the right approach.

The Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity says the proof is in the science. “Children’s food advertising is massive, has a negative impact on nutrition, and is contributing to obesity. Industry self-regulation on children’s food advertising is ineffective at protecting children but is used repeatedly by the industry to argue that outside regulation is not necessary.”

I think the amount of salt, sugar, and fat in food needs to be regulated. The dietary guidelines need to clearly state that consumers should limit these items in their meals and snacks. The sugar industry has fought for years to keep statements weak in the dietary guidelines about sugar.

American consumers eat three times the amount of sodium that they need, which is a major contributor to high blood pressure that can increase the risk for heart attacks, strokes, heart failure, and kidney failure. See my post on “FDA Needs to Regulate Salt in Food Now” for details.

I also wrote about The Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation – a coalition of 80 retailers, food and beverage manufacturers, sporting goods, insurance, and trade associations, and nongovernment organizations – after I received a flood of e-mails about an educational campaign it was undertaking.

Rather than lecturing consumers about how to eat, I think the food industry needs to cut the amount of salt, fat, and sugar in food, curtail significantly advertising unhealthy food to children, and stop selling junk food in schools. See my post “Obesity Reduction Initiative by Food Industry Lacks Credibility” for more information.