I have been tempted several times recently to post another “Food News Roundup,” but somehow I felt suspicious, as if the outpouring of high profile studies and news reports was somehow being manipulated. Perhaps the manipulation was the real food news. I still am uncertain, but I do believe that this all ties together.
What better to get people worked up about in an election year than food? After all… Everybody Eats! 
America is Expanding
The SizeUSA survey, conducted by clothing and textile companies, the Army, Navy and several universities to determine what sizes of clothes should be made and in what quantities — last performed in 1941 in anticipation of having to design military uniforms for World War II — has been recently updated and the findings are that Americans are all a lot fatter than they used to be.
The survey finds that “Nineteen percent of men are ‘portly,’ and another 19 percent have ‘lower front waists,’ meaning, the researchers said, they had to look under a belly to find the waist.” If you are having trouble picturing that, try this: Nearly half of all men cannot look down and see their feet while standing. The average American man stands five foot, nine inches tall and weighs 180 pounds.
The women did not fare much better. Half of all American women should be shopping for “plus size” clothing. The average American woman stands five foot, four inches tall and weighs 148 pounds.
Asked for their perception of how much they weighed, 51 percent of men and 38 percent of women said they were “about the right weight.” Ten percent of men said they were “quite a bit overweight”; among women, 21 percent said the same. [NYTimes]
Being Fat Is Killing Us
A new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that being fat is the number two cause of death in America.
A report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that tobacco use was still the leading cause of death in 2000, killing 435,000 people, or 18.1 percent of everyone who died. But poor diet and physical inactivity caused 400,000 deaths, or 16.6 percent of the total, the report said. [NYTimes]
No More Super Size
McDonald’s is eliminating super size portions from its menu by the end of the year. According to McDonald’s spokesman Walt Riker, “The driving force here was menu simplification… The fact of the matter is not very many Supersize fries are sold.”
While that may be the company line, there may be other reasons as well.
Two lawsuits claiming McDonald’s hid the health risks of eating Big Macs and Chicken McNuggets were thrown out in federal court in New York last year. An award-winning documentary called “Super Size Me” then reaped more unwanted publicity for McDonald’s. [Baltimore Sun]
The Chicago Tribune had this to say about “Super Size Me”:
In the new documentary “Super Size Me,” filmmaker Morgan Spurlock eats only McDonald’s food for 30 days and documents his rapidly deteriorating health.
Interspersed with segments about obesity and processed food in the United States, viewers watch Spurlock pack on 25 pounds, ride out wild mood swings and get warnings from doctors about his rising cholesterol levels and liver toxicity…
The 90-minute movie could cause more people to bring obesity lawsuits against McDonald’s Corp., predicts John Banzhaf, a professor at George Washington Law School. A consultant in lawsuits against McDonald’s, Banzhaf appears in the documentary and was instrumental in building a case against the tobacco industry…
“I would bet a lot of people are working overtime to figure out how to deal with this film,” said Larry Kramer, a crisis management expert with Manning Selvage & Lee, who advised Nike boss Phil Knight in 1998 after a documentary showed children making its shoes in Indonesia. [Chicago Tribune]
What do you suppose the team at McDonald’s working overtime to figure out how to deal with potential product liability lawsuits would come up with?
“The two things are not connected,” said Whitman in response to a question about the film’s potential impact. “However, we recognize that consumers’ tastes and preferences and choices continue to change and evolve. This seems to be a natural step when you recognize the growing trends and recognize the effect it would have on our operations.” [Chicago Tribune]
Manufacturing Food
A little while ago the New York Times covered an interesting tidbit from the Economic Report of the President:
Box 2-2: What Is Manufacturing?
The value of the output of the U.S. manufacturing sector as defined in official U.S. statistics is larger than the economies of all but a handful of other countries. The definition of a manufactured product, however, is not straightforward. When a fast-food restaurant sells a hamburger, for example, is it providing a “service” or is it combining inputs to “manufacture” a product?
The official definition of manufacturing comes from the Census Bureau’s North American Industry Classification System, or NAICS. NAICS classifies all business establishments in the United States into categories based on how their output is produced. One such category is “manufacturing.” NAICS classifies an establishment as in the manufacturing sector if it is “engaged in the mechanical, physical, or chemical transformation of materials, substances, or components into new products.”
This definition is somewhat unspecific, as the Census Bureau has recognized: “The boundaries of manufacturing and other sectors… can be somewhat blurry.” Some (perhaps surprising) examples of manufacturers listed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics are: bakeries, candy stores, custom tailors, milk bottling and pasteurizing, fresh fish packaging (oyster shucking, fish filleting), and tire retreading. Sometimes, seemingly subtle differences can determine whether an industry is classified as manufacturing. For example, mixing water and concentrate to produce soft drinks is classified as manufacturing. However, if that activity is performed at a snack bar, it is considered a service.
The distinction between non-manufacturing and manufacturing industries may seem somewhat arbitrary but it can play an important role in developing policy and assessing its effects. Suppose it was decided to offer tax relief to manufacturing firms. Because the manufacturing category is not well defined, firms would have an incentive to characterize themselves as in manufacturing. Administering the tax relief could be difficult, and the tax relief may not extend to the firms for which it was enacted.
For policy makers, the blurriness of the definition of manufacturing means that policy aimed at manufacturing may inadvertently distort production and have unintended and harmful results. Whenever possible, policy making should not be based upon this type of arbitrary statistical delineation.
While the report carefully refers only to the “value of the output of the U.S. manufacturing sector,” some members of Congress saw this as being not about accurate economic accounting, but rather as a trial balloon for a plan to mask the countries unemployment woes.
Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., offered the choicest retort in a letter to the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers.
“I am sure the 163,000 factory workers who have lost their jobs in Michigan will find it heartening to know that a world of opportunity awaits them in high growth manufacturing careers like spatula operator, napkin restocking, and lunch tray removal,” Dingell said.
Dingell also wondered just how this new policy would play out: “Will federal student loans and Trade Adjustment Assistance grants be applied to tuition costs at Burger College? Will the administration commit to allowing he Manufacturing Extension Partnership [MEP] to fund cutting edge burger research such as new nugget ingredients or keeping the hot and cold sides of burgers separate until consumption? Will special sauce now be counted as a durable good?”
Dingell said the plan also inspired him to come up with a candidate for the recently created position of Assistant Secretary for Manufacturing the Hon. Mayor McCheese.
The proposal could also make it easier for the food police to file “product liability” lawsuits against fast-food chains and leave them vulnerable to complaints being filed with the Consumer Product Safety Commission. [Connecticut Post]
While I sensed that the entire response from the Honorable Gentlemen from Michigan was intended to be sarcastic — the Mayor McCheese comment was a dead giveaway — I was somewhat surprised to turn on C-SPAN the other day to see a heated debate on the house floor about a bill to
ban obesity-related lawsuits against the fast food industry.
House Republicans seeking to curb another potential source of money for trial lawyers decided that eaters hankering for “biggie” portions shouldn’t be allowed to blame their weight on fast-food chains and restaurants.
The House voted 276-139 on Wednesday to ban class action lawsuits that contend food companies and their offerings are responsible for Americans’ putting on the pounds and lurching toward obesity.
Those who overeat should blame themselves, not the fast food industry that employs almost 12 million people and is the nation’s second largest employer behind the government, Republicans said. [NYTimes]
So that is what the team at McDonald’s working overtime to figure out how to deal with potential product liability lawsuits would come up with. Clever.
“The food industry is under attack and in the cross hairs of the same trial lawyers who went after big tobacco,” said Representative Ric Keller, a Florida Republican who is the chief sponsor of the measure. [NYTimes]
…and that is a bad thing… why?
Hawaiian Pizza
In unrelated news, apparently Luigi Amaduzzi, Italy’s ambassador to the UK, considers pineapple pizza a “perversion.”
A pizza base covered with pineapple or with curry is no more Italian than a steak and kidney pie covered with chocolate is English.
Mmmm… Pizza. 