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Sociologist says dominance of ‘pseudo foods' in the marketplace leads to widening of waistlines
BY JENNIFER CHRISTIE SPARK PROGRAM
Location, location, location. The key to a lucrative business or real estate sale may also be the cause of Canadians' expanding waistlines, says a U of G researcher who's been studying the link between the food landscape or “foodscape” and Canada's obesity epidemic.
Prof. Tony Winson, Sociology and Anthropology, says a foodscape is any physical location where consumers buy or consume food. Looking specifically at supermarkets and public high schools in the Kitchener-Waterloo, Cambridge and Guelph area, he is finding that much of the food that's readily available in these environments is a direct contributor to the increasingly unhealthy diets of Canadians.
“There are massive amounts of low-nutrition food everywhere,” says Winson. “There needs to be a realization that the health outcomes of poor eating are so horrendous that they will overwhelm us if not taken under control.”
These outcomes stretch far beyond the obesity issue itself, which the World Health Organization has called a global epidemic. Heart disease, hypertension, gall bladder disease, type 2 diabetes and some cancers are among the serious health risks associated with being overweight and obese.
Winson argues that one of the leading causes of the alarming rise in these health problems is the dominance of “pseudo foods” in the marketplace. He applies the term “pseudo foods” to any high-calorie and high-fat foods that have low nutritional value. This includes anything that lists sugar or fat as its first ingredient, such as certain fruit beverages, soft drinks, ice cream treats and pre-sweetened breakfast cereals.
“Junk food is convenient,” says Winson. “People are urged to snack 24 hours a day by the powerful ad campaigns of junk food and beverage corporations, yet they are getting heavier and don't understand why.”
He says retailers are also accountable for this easy access to unhealthy foods. Pseudo foods command more profit for retailers, which explains their prominence in supermarkets.
Winson's study of grocery stores found that considerable shelf space is devoted to pseudo foods, and “differential profits” determine product location in stores. Low-profit commodity items such as milk and eggs end up in the back of the store, requiring shoppers to walk past disturbing numbers of flashy displays and aisles of pseudo foods to get the essentials. That greatly increases the chance that some of those higher-profit items will also end up in their cart.
Winson notes that profit is also a driving factor behind the easy availability of pseudo foods in the high schools he surveyed. Cutbacks have forced schools to seek their own funding, and most have used vending machines or school cafeterias as a way to get more dollars from their students' pockets.
Soft drinks, industrial baked goods (cookies, muffins, etc.), high-sugar snacks and high-fat foods such as french fries are the most commonly sold items in the schools he surveyed. Most cafeterias reported that they sell only four or five pieces of fruit per week. This offers some insight into why the number of overweight children and adolescents has nearly doubled and tripled over the past two decades.
Winson found that one high school had already taken steps to alleviate this problem by banning soft drinks and replacing them with healthier items. A few other schools were making an effort to provide healthier cafeteria fare. But he believes it will take more to really curb rising obesity among young people.
“Society needs to invest massively in effective education to shift people's attitudes about unhealthy eating. And we need to move quickly and pretty aggressively.”
