Washington — To their critics, they are known as the food police. That's the polite term. Other sobriquets include "the cookie cops," "the grease Gestapo" and, given the times, "the vegetarian Taliban."
But the academics, scientists and consumer activists who have targeted the evils of unhealthy foods for decades are used to the name-calling. With American obesity a growing health hazard -- two-thirds of adults, according to the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, are now overweight -- the food crusaders are energized. Where once their ideas seemed far-fetched, they now believe they are knocking on the door of the mainstream.
Kelly Brownell, a Yale University psychologist, suggested in 1994 that Americans should get more exercise, that schools should get rid of soft drinks and vending machine snacks and that government should subsidize healthy foods like fruits and vegetables by taxing undesirable ones. This was promptly dubbed the Twinkie Tax by the media, and Brownell's life has never been the same.
"The tax idea became a lightning rod," he said, recalling the epithets from conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh. Now, he thinks, "we're reaching the tipping point" in food politics.
John Banzhaf III, a law professor at George Washington University, agreed. With a 30-year record of suing tobacco companies, Banzhaf now is plying that expertise to the cause of blaming the food industry for America's expanding waistlines. "This is the way movements start," he said. At first, "Brown vs. Board of Education seemed to many a frivolous case," he said of the landmark lawsuit that launched efforts to end racial segregation in public schools, "but it helped bring on the civil rights movement."
Not everyone is convinced that the food crusaders have the answer to excess poundage. At the American Council on Science and Health, a New York-based consumer education consortium, Dr. Elizabeth Whelan and her colleagues favor "variety, balance and moderation" in eating. "Twinkies and milk after school is not a crime when it is a snack in an otherwise balanced diet," she said. "But food has become very mystical. Everybody who eats three times a day thinks they are an expert."
The food industry has responded to the food crusaders by setting up its own Washington, D.C.-based organization -- the Center for Consumer Freedom -- dedicated to exposing what it says are their distortions.
"These people are creating hysteria about foods, like movie popcorn," said Richard Berman, the center's executive director. "Why are we heavier? Is it food or a sedentary lifestyle? We believe in freedom of choice and the concept of personal responsibility. The zealots are distorting science."
Still others, far from the high-stakes lobbying in Washington, marvel at the power of the advocates, believing the solution is much closer at hand. Chazz Weaver, an economist in Costa Mesa, was so annoyed by film director Morgan Spurlock's documentary "Super Size Me" that he mounted a counter-campaign to demonstrate that exercise is far more important than food in maintaining weight. Now he is getting a degree in nutrition, eager to burnish his credentials and join the debate full time.
If this is a food fight, the warriors for intervention are a varied lot. One is a scientist who eats mostly whole grains and vegetables, fish, fat-free dairy products, a bit of sugar and is "not afraid of flavored yogurt." Another is a psychiatrist, a committed vegan who believes that a no-meat, low-fat diet can cure many ills, including diabetes. A third is a California-trained nutritionist who believes that government health policy has been corrupted by food industry greed.
What they share is a certainty that we are what we eat, that we are conditioned by culture and capitalism to consume more than we need, that somebody should do something about it.
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Michael Jacobson
His exposes have targeted hidden risks, and when he fought for nutrition labels, he won
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No one has been proselytizing for longer and with more zeal than Michael Jacobson, the microbiologist who was one of the founders of the Center for Science in the Public Interest in 1971, back when calorie-counting and the new diet soft drink Tab were all the rage.
