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The Unbearable Burden of "Proof"

‘The Shocking Truth of Childhood Obesity’ trumpeted the front page of the Sydney Morning Herald on 22-3 April - perhaps it was a shock to the SMH, but most people with half a brain already knew that a diet of junk food will lead to obesity. The health folk have spent years working to prove the obvious about junk food, and finally it is 'news'. With statements of the obvious being greeted as news, it is tempting to think that commonsense has been lost to us, but this enthusiasm does reveal the almost imaginary line between something that is known and something that has been 'proven'.

This is a familiar story to me. I have lived through this situation over the last twenty five years, in my fight against Big Tobacco. I am old enough to remember the shock and outrage when it became mandatory to advise people that their smoking was likely to kill them. In the twenty five years or so since that time, research paper after research paper has piled up on the deadly side of the scales. When the files from the tobacco companies were finally forced open during the late 1990's, it was revealed that these findings were very old news to Big Tobacco. The eminent researchers who had produced a mountain of papers were asked if they thought that they had wasted their lives, and in more than one way, it would appear that they have. While smoking is the most researched health subject in the world, and the guilty verdict has been in for decades, it seems that disease and millions killed are not sufficient reasons to stop business as usual for cigarette manufacturers.

Likewise, there is no guarantee that any number of negative findings about junk food will make any kind of impact on the ability of Big Junkfood to advertise and sell their poisons. As with cigarettes, a great deal of weight is put on the argument that people can choose these products and that the responsibility is passed onto the consumer once they make that choice. Right now, we are hearing about the responsibilites of parents to do the right thing, but it is just as difficult to avoid junkfood advertising as it is to breath smoke-free air.

Like smoking companies in the early eighties, Big Junkfood is interested in long-term pay-offs and is willing to invest in kids sporting activities as a way of improving their brand recognition from a very early age. Rothmans set up the Rothmans Sport Foundation and sponsored kids athletics, paying for coaches with Rothmans uniforms. A memo was found in one of their garbage bins in 1971 and leaked to the protest group BUGA UP (Billboard Utilising Graffitists Against Unhealthy Promotions). The memo said that the Foundation was set up to get around the ban on cigarette advertising. Thirty five years later, it is McDonald’s that sponsors Little Athletics, and Coca Cola that sponsors Soccer and Rugby League. Fundraising campaigns promote Krispy Kreme donuts (see my speech from 2005 on the health values these confections), and chocolate gets added to everything from muesli bars to hot-cross buns. All the while, health groups are busy proving the obvious, and if its a quiet news day it will get into the papers.

Now that we have finally started to acknowledge a relationship between junk food and obesity, we might be able to look more squarely at the place that advertisements have in encouraging kids to eat junk food. But here, once again we are faced with the task of pointing out the obvious. Anyone who turns on a TV during a weekday afternoon sees the junk food advertising. One assumes that the ads are aired during this time to make an impact on the children who are watching - why else spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on the ads and the air space? One can only wonder... but as the political argument rages, the public purse continues to pay a fortune for diabetes treatment and untimely deaths caused by totally preventable obesity.

The question is, do we have to wait for a mountain of medical 'evidence' to build up on junk food, advertising and obesity before we expect our leaders to do the right thing? I certainly hope not, because if smoking is anything to go by, actual evidence doesn't seem to make much difference. The lesson we need to learn from the fight against tobacco is that this war will go on for years if the public continues to believe that government inaction is a sign that something is safe or healthy. Unless we demand action, the junk food companies will continue to make their fortunes and the public health system will pay for their profit margins. At home we will be looking at a much more frightening situation - obesity, diabetes, heart disease and the spectre of a generation that will be outlived by their parents.

Yours,
Dr Arthur Chesterfield-Evans M.L.C. (ACE)