...on the bridge, a little
bit slow right now on the lower level.
Upper level
looking much better.
Thanks, Al.
8:05 on this Wednesday morning.
Time now for a check of your
Mathis Brothers...
The bottom line is,
you know, the epidemic here, Susan,
is worse than previously estimated...
probably much worse.
We have this new report
coming out overnight
from the Journal of the American
Medical Association...
...of Doctors has described this week
what it calls an emerging epidemic.
Military leaders called
that a threat to national security.
If it doesn't
affect you personally,
it will affect you indirectly by someone
you know, someone in your family.
It is just going up
much faster than we thought.
The problem
just keeps getting worse.
This is a terror from within.
It is a global epidemic.
Epidemic.
Clearly something's gone wrong.
Kids are being told the biggest
lie they will ever hear in their lives.
She cannot... literally
cannot calm herself down.
In the past quarter century,
the number of overweight
children has grown from
one in 20 to nearly
one in five.
Used to be you'd have one or two
heavyset kids in a class.
Now we get eight or 10.
This year, for the first time
in the history of the world,
more people will die from the effects
of obesity than from starvation.
This has ramifications
far beyond obesity itself
It is worse than even smoking.
The cost of this is about...
Half a trillion dollars
in additional health care cost...
half a trillion.
The American Academy
of Family Physicians
partnered up with Coca-Cola.
Isn't this a conflict of interest?
Hope that the American
Academy of Family Physicians
is looking for...
Researchers say obesity is causing
more and more cases of cancer.
and is now catching up to
smoking as the leading cause...
It started out as a small story,
I had no idea I'd be talking about
weight gain and obesity
my entire career.
We've been covering the problem
and solutions for over 30 years.
It's sweatin' time.
In that time, entire industries
have ignited over the weight problem.
I will never
look like that again.
First came the magazines,
then the talk shows-
And how was the diet for you?
This is the miracle
we've been waiting for.
And now our epidemic is entertainment
on network television.
How is this still an issue,
much less a worldwide epidemic
We get new solutions
every day
Everything in the grocery store is made
with less fat and fewer calories
and yet our kids keep
getting bigger and sicker.
It makes no sense.
Is there a link between our
ever-expanding waistlines
and the government's
own dietary guidelines?
And that got me thinking,
what if the solutions
weren't really solutions at all?
The Bush administration
is resisting a plan
from the World Health
Organization to fight obesity...
What if they were
actually making things worse?
There are a very high percentage
of young people overweight
because of a number of things
that have happened in our country
in the last several years.
What if our whole approach
to this epidemic has been dead wrong?
Sorry. Okay.
Uh, let me fix this.
You know, one person told me
that fat people
were just made to be fat.
And I don't think that's true.
And I know it's hard,
'cause I'm still overweight.
And right now I feel
like I always will be.
Why do you not eat vegetables, Taylor?
- 'Cause I do not like them.
- Why?
- I don't.
- Why not?
'Cause I don't.
You just say you don't,
but you don't have a reason.
- Yes, I do.
- What's the reason?
I don't.
Being in the South,
we eat a lot of fattening things.
We eat macaroni and cheese,
fried cube steak, fried chicken.
And that's what we're used to.
That's what I've grown up doing.
I've done what my parents done.
My parents have done what they've done.
It's passed on from generation.
And once you start overeating,
it becomes the worst habit,
and it just grows.
The first time
that I think he ever mentioned
the teasing...
calling him fat or something,
I think it was probably
around the age of eight.
Some girls told him they wanted
to see how fast he could run,
and he ran.
And later, another girl
came to him and told him..
that they were laughing at him,
and they just wanted him to run
so they could see his fat shake.
He stayed upset
about that for so long.
- We ready to eat, Mama?
- Mm-hmm.
I'm 15, and I weigh
around 215 pounds.
If you like it that way.
I'd like to lose
about 50 to 55 pounds.
I could do so many more things.
Maybe I could play football
or play baseball.
I've always had an interest
in baseball.
We talk about it a lot...
about, you know, the weight thing and
I've always been overweight.
And I was overweight at his age.
And I don't want him to be having
to obsess about weight his whole life.
You know, I want him to be able to focus
on other things that are more important.
I really think
he wants to lose weight.
I just think he doesn't
know how to do it.
Everybody else doesn't look
at it the same way as I do.
I look at it as I'm failing,
and they just look at it
as he's just another fat kid
Kids are obese for two reasons...
They have voracious appetites,
and they don't exercise enough.
Americans view
overweight people as lazy,
unambitious
and lacking willpower.
All we have to do is have
people eat less and exercise more.
Not a very big problem.
The subtle message is
"It's your fault you're fat."
All you need to do
is eat less, exercise more.
It's all about personal responsibility,
about willpower.
That's the message
that's been pushed on us.
I want to see you all moving,
all right?
Forget about it.
"Eat less, exercise more".
has been the common sense
answer to unwanted weight
for more than half a century.
This was the science.
And it started with a mouse.
The year was 1953.
Up until this point,
exercise had been considered taboo.
Doctors even warned it would cause heart
attacks and diminish your sex drive.
Then came Dr. Jean Mayer,
a French physiologist
who would become the foremost
expert on obesity in the U.S.
He noted that large lab mice
ate virtually the same amount
as smaller mice.
But the big ones weren't
nearly as active afterwards.
Mayer's conclusion,
lack of exercise must be related
to weight gain.
His finding sparked
a fitness revolution.
This is where you come
and punish yourself for fun...
or rather, for your health.
Here we go now.
We're gonna step apart together
To the right. Apart...
By the time Jane Fonda
became the face of fitness,
Americans were spending billions
of dollars trying to lose weight.
Let's get physical
Physical
I wanna get physical
But as more and more people
began exercising,
more and more waistlines
grew out of control.
Between 1980 and 2000,
fitness club memberships more than
doubled across the United States.
During that same time,
the obesity rate also doubled.
A decade later,
two out of every three Americans
were either overweight or obese.
So how is it possible...
that the enormous rise
of the fitness revolution.
almost exactly mirrored
the rise in obesity rates.
Something is making that happen.
The question is, how is that happening
in Malaysia, Saudi Arabia,
Sweden, Norway, South Africa
and everywhere else.
And we have obese
six-month-olds.
You want to tell me that
they're supposed to diet and exercise?
So, how our politicians
can continue
to espouse this same mantra...
"Diet and exercise,
you are what you eat, it's your fault"
is absolutely beyond me.
I am 12 years old,
and I weigh 212 pounds.
My doctors have said
that I am a statistic.
I don't really know what it means.
I think it has something
to do with my weight.
They normally say that
I'm just supposed to eat healthier
and exercise a lot more,
which is what I am doing.
I swim four days a week
and then walking my dogs
on the weekends.
We didn't really start to worry
about it until I think she was eight,
um, when the doctor wanted us
to seek a nutritionist
to kind of address the issue.
And I just remember at that time
we called the nutritionist
that he wanted us to
and we were told, "We don't
see children that young."
It has to do
a lot with their self-esteem,
especially with girls once they hit
their teenage years
because, "Oh, I'm the fat kid,
and I always have to
consciously watch what I eat."
My doctor, um...
he told me to join
Weight Watchers,
um, and I can't,
because I'm not old enough yet.
Then we stopped at that point
and said, you know what?
We know... We have the tools.
We know what we're supposed to do.
Let's just try
and do it ourselves.
Some of the things that I do
when I look for healthier choices
is doing the reduced fat...
It's got more fiber in it.
It's made with more whole grains.
I look at the fat content,
but cereal, by its very nature,
is generally pretty low in fat.
So cereal's a good go-to
for pretty much any meal replacement.
I know what my family will eat,
and I try and consider that
when I'm purchasing things.
I would expect that, since I'm
eating healthy and exercising a lot,
that I would be able to lose
more weight than I am.
But my weight has mostly
stayed the same.
So, sometimes it gets
a little bit frustrating.
This whole generation of kids,
they're doing their best.
They're torturing themselves
to do the cure that we tell them,
and it's the wrong cure.
And we're blaming the willpower,
the moral fortitude of these kids,
and it's a crime.
There is a solution to obesity.
It's energy balance.
It's balancing calories in
and calories out.
We're eating and drinking too
much and not getting enough exercise.
We will have
to have greater emphasis
on getting that energy balance.
Nowadays there's this phrase,
"Let's practice energy balance."
Okay, we're gonna make sure
that we know how to match
the calories in
to the calories out
so that we don't get fat.
It's nonsense.
You eat, say,
110 bites of food a day,
and you only burn off 109 of them,
you're gonna get obese in 20 years.
Even if there's a Guinness world record
holder of calorie counting,
calories in to the calories out,
nobody can do it.
3:40.
- What do you have next?
- Next I have swim team.
We certainly don't want to discourage
people from exercising
or underplay the importance
of physical activity to health,
but we are not gonna exercise
our way out of this obesity problem.
To burn off just one 20-ounce Coke,
a child would have to bike
for an hour and 15 minutes.
Most people don't have
that much time in their day.
So if you burn
a calorie sleeping,
or you burn a calorie exercising,
it's still a calorie burned.
The question is, is a calorie eaten
a calorie eaten.
And for that we have
really good data.
And it says a calorie
is not a calorie.
Why is a calorie not a calorie?
All right.
Let's give you an example.
Let's take an easy one.
Let's take almonds.
If you consume 160 calories
in almonds,
because of the fiber
in the almonds,
the food is not going
to get absorbed immediately.
So your blood sugar rise
is gonna be a lot lower,
it's gonna be for longer.
So what's the opposite of the almond?
Well, the opposite of the almond
would be a soft drink.
Because there's no fiber,
they get absorbed straight
through the portal system to the liver.
The liver gets this big sugar rush.
And when your liver
gets that onslaught,
it has no choice but to
turn it into fat immediately.
So, 160 calories in almonds,
or 160 calories in soda.
You tell me which is better.
For over 125 years,
we've been bringing people together.
And yet we are
continually being sold
a message contrary to the science.
...on something
that concerns all of us... obesity.
Our weight, we're told,
comes down to calories
in and calories out.
One simple, common sense fact.
All calories count, no matter
where they come from,
including Coca-Cola
and everything else with calories.
And if you eat and drink more calories
than you burn off, you'll gain weight.
Well, one thing
we need to understand,
that the food industry is really
at the heart of this problem.
We're handing the industry a big gift
in that they get to confuse the issue
by talking about exercise.
It's all about the spin, right?
So the food industry is good at
kind of taking half-truths
and then stretching them.
Food companies are interested
in selling more food.
That's their job
as a corporation.
And one way to do that
is to co-opt potential critics.
The soft drink companies
fund research in universities.
They donate
to professional societies.
And, in fact, I just saw
a new major analysis
that says that soft drinks
have nothing to do with obesity.
And the study was sponsored
in part by Coca-Cola.
We haven't heard this
kind of association before.
It's the American Academy
of Family Physicians.
They have partnered up with...
Coca-Cola, which...
You know...
Yeah, definitely a head-scratcher.
Immediately after Coke's announcement,
a group of 20 doctors who helped make up
the American Academy
of Family Physicians publicly resigned.
How can any organization that claims
to promote public health
join forces with a company that promotes
products that put our children at risk?
But not all doctors
see it the same way,
particularly those whose research
is funded by the industry.
Even though
study after study has shown soda
to be a significant contributor
to America's staggering obesity crisis.
Dr. Allison says there's not enough
"solid evidence."
But his critics say Allison
is motivated by something else...
by all the money
he has repeatedly taken.
from Coca-Cola, Pepsi.
and the American Beverage Association.
I know you've received a lot of
money from the food industry in general.
Was there evidence that said the
ingestion of sugary beverages
actually contributed
to the obesity problem?
Ingestion of all calories
contributes to the obesity problem.
One question you might ask
is whether sugary beverages
contribute more so
than do other calories.
That's a very
challenging question to ask.
Well, let me ask you that.
Do they?
It's a good question.
There's reasons to believe they might.
But I don't think the evidence
is quite clear. For example...
And what would be
the science behind that?
Well, the ideal study might be
requiring people to, uh, uh...
Excuse me. Let me start again on that.
Let me just get my thoughts together.
Okay.
We know sugared
beverage consumption
is producing diabetes and obesity.
It's just ridiculous
to think otherwise.
And, of course, research shows
it to be the case.
And people are getting wise
to industry-funded studies
that show the opposite.
If you're peddling Coca-Cola,
Pepsi, sugar water, Gatorade,
you don't want your food to be
considered inherently fattening,
just as the tobacco industry
would have preferred
that their product not been considered
inherently capable of causing cancer.
But just like cigarettes
literally cause lung cancer,
certain foods literally
make you fat.
This is a big bag.
What did you have for lunch?
- Let's tell the truth.
- Um...
Hamburger. French fries.
Milk and juice.
- Milk and juice?
- They give them both.
If you ever go on a diet,
and you try to eat healthier food,
your brain's still
telling you "Eat, eat, eat.
It's not what I want.
No, get something else."
You're still used to
that fattening stuff.
That's why it's hard
to go on a diet.
You ain't got
but a few more to go.
This time of night
you don't eat that many.
- Gotta savor the flavor.
- You gotta savor the flavor?
You gotta savor the flavor
'cause you only get so many chips.
I'm trying to lose weight.
My weight is pretty heavy. 180.
I'm a pretty heavy dude.
That's why I try to get exercise in,
eat some healthy food every day.
We, um,
started eating different things,
more fruits and vegetables.
We limit our starches.
We limit our breads.
We keep healthier snacks.
He loves Hot Pockets.
So they have Lean Hot Pockets.
So I make sure to have the lean ones
versus the regular ones.
It costs more to eat healthier.
So we slip. And I'm not
gonna say we don't.
Because it's easier to go in there
and buy the cereals with sugar in it.
It's easier to buy chips,
because it's cheaper.
And that's what the food industry
wants them to think.
They want them to think
it's cheaper.
KFC Family Feast.
Nine pieces, any recipe,
three large sides,
six biscuits, 19.99.
Do not give up on dinner. Mm.
"You deserve a break today."
You can get a "value meal."
These are messages that have
kind of gotten embedded
into our culture,
into their thinking.
But there is well-documented
scientific proof
that you can eat well for less,
and they don't know that.
Okay, we're gonna be
in room number nine.
Just come right in.
And it'll be just a moment, okay?
How is the diet control going?
Diet control for him
is getting... is better.
At first it was rocky,
but it's a lot better.
I'm happy to hear that you think
things are going so well,
but it's a bit concerning,
because when I look at Wesley,
he doesn't look any thinner.
In fact, he actually looks bigger
than he did a few years ago.
And what I see from the data is...
is that he's continued
to gain weight
even faster than the rate
that he was before.
His weight is even higher
than it was last time.
I've eaten less than I usually have.
I've exercised more.
And I don't really know
why I'm getting more weight.
Mom, have you noticed
that his skin here...
is starting to get a little bit dark
and a little bit thick.
It's part of what we call
metabolic syndrome.
Oh. Okay.
His body is already starting to show
some of the adult signs
of overweight and obesity.
I worry about that I might have
a heart attack or a seizure,
or something like that
I've seen these things on the news.
And I've seen my family
have had it too.
And I'm worried
myself might have it.
So relax your arm and your leg.
And take some deep breaths.
And here we go.
It's not just genetics.
We're seeing strokes in eight-year-olds.
We're seeing heart attacks
in 20-year-olds.
We're seeing kids at 30,
by their 30th birthday needing
renal dialysis for kidney failure
because of these problems.
Genetics are a very
important part of this
and certainly
there are people
who are genetically susceptible
and genetically prone.
But genetics is not
what this is about.
When I was young,
the obesity rates
were actually pretty rare
among children.
There's been a stunning increase.
We haven't had this situation
throughout the whole history of mankind
until the past 30, 40 years.
Most experts say the obesity epidemic
really has taken place
in the last 30 years or so.
Looking back, do you think
there's anything
that your administration
or other administrations
could have done to prevent this?
I don't know.
I missed it sort of.
We knew that...
We had an effort to try to increase
the exercise programs in the schools
and improve the cafeteria requirements
but I don't think we appreciated
the magnitude of it.
We've got all these kids, even preteens,
with type 2 diabetes now.
That used to be called
adult-onset diabetes.
It was unheard of
for young people to get it.
And it's becoming a big problem
in other parts of the world.
Second-fastest growing area...
Middle East and North Africa.
It's not only a personal tragedy
for a lot of young people
and interferes with their quality
of life, their mobility,
but it will lead to
enormous complications for us.
As physicians, we know how to take care
of a 50-year-old or 60-year-old
with type 2 diabetes.
What none of us have done is to
take care of that 10-year-old
with type 2 diabetes
for five, six, seven decades.
We don't know
the consequences of that.
And that scares me greatly.
If there's a moment
in time marking the start
of the obesity epidemic,
it's 1977, the McGovern Report.
The Senate Special Committee
on Nutrition
is looking into the connection
between heart disease and diet.
Expert testimony before the
committee on nutrition and human needs
warned Senator George McGovern
that obesity would soon be
the number one form of malnutrition
in the United States.
When we get the kind of
overwhelming consensus
that has developed
before this committee
it seems to me we have some obligation
to share that with the American people.
With predictions
of rising medical cost,
the committee issued the very first
dietary goals for Americans
noting that our diet had become
overly rich in fatty meats,
rich in saturated fats
and cholesterol,
and rich in sugar.
The egg, sugar, dairy
and beef associations
with sales of their products
in danger, united,
and flat-out rejected
the McGovern Report.
They even demanded a rewrite.
The byzantine politics
that I saw taking place here
the last couple of weeks had to do
with the power of lobbies.
Despite McGovern's best intention,
the dietary goals were indeed revised
and the words "reduced intake" were
removed from the report for good.
Instead, they encouraged Americans
to buy leaner products
and buy more food with less fat.
And so, the 1980s began
with a new health doctrine,
and a brand-new market,
every food product imaginable
reengineered to be low in fat.
When you take the fat
out of the food, it tastes nasty.
Tastes terrible.
Tastes like cardboard.
Food industry knew that.
So they had to do something
to make the food palatable,
to make it worth eating.
So what did they do?
Dumped in the sugar.
Sugar
Aw, honey, honey
You are my candy girl
And you got me wanting you
Honey
Aw, sugar, sugar
You are my candy girl
And you got me wanting you
Between 1977 and 2000
Americans have doubled
their daily intake of sugar.
Sugar is poison.
It is a chronic... not acute...
chronic dose-dependent...
depends on how much you eat,
because there is a safe threshold,
hepato... "liver"... toxin.
The metabolic diseases that are
associated with obesity,
the diabetes,
the heart disease,
the lipid problems,
the strokes, the cancer...
those diseases
are being driven by sugar.
Fructose,
the sweet part of sugar
can only be processed in the liver.
When your liver is pushed to the max,
the pancreas comes to the rescue
by producing excess amounts
of a hormone called insulin.
Insulin is
the energy storage hormone.
Insulin turns sugar
into fat for storage.
That's insulin's job.
High levels of insulin
can also block your brain
from receiving the signal
that you're full.
Problem is your brain
thinks you're starving.
So how do you feel
when you're starved?
Crappy, tired, slothy.
Sit on the couch,
don't want to do anything.
And, of course, hungry.
Well, I've just described
every obese patient.
The behaviors that
we associate with obesity...
the eating too much, the exercising too
little... the gluttony and the sloth,
they are the result of the biochemistry,
not the cause.
All right.
I'm at the grocery store with my mom
and so far our buggy's got Cheez-Its,
cookies, pudding...
The problem is sugar
isn't just in cookies and desserts.
If you go to the supermarket,
there are 600,000 food items in America,
and 80% of them have added sugar.
Sugar can hide behind
many names on nutrition labels,
like sucrose, fructose,
glucose, dextrose,
lactose, maltose, invert sugar
and turbinado sugar.
And the most well-known of all,
high-fructose corn syrup.
You'll absorb them
exactly the same.
And so, all of the studies that have
pitted high-fructose corn syrup
against sugar
show no difference between the two.
They're both equally bad.
So, too much sugar,
in any form, is dangerous,
even if the high-fructose
corn syrup is replaced
with any of these
other varieties.
It's not just all of
the excessive sugars
but the processed
starches too,
white bread, white rice,
potato products,
prepared breakfast cereals,
are digested into glucose literally
in an instant in the digestive tract.
You can eat a bowl of corn flakes
with no added sugar
or you could eat a bowl of sugar
with no added corn flakes.
They might taste different,
but below the neck,
they're metabolically
the same thing.
When you consume
sugar naturally,
that is, in fruit,
you're getting the fiber that you need
to mitigate the negative effects.
Am I worried about fruit? No.
But am I worried about fruit juice?
Oh, you bet.
Because when you take the fiber out
you might as well be drinking a Coke.
I drink diet soda all the time
and I want to know if diet soda
is good for you or bad for you.
A lot of people think
that they can just switch
from sugar to artificial sweeteners,
"diet" this, "diet" that,
Splenda, aspartame...
but it triggers hormonal responses
that cause you to produce more insulin.
They make you crave more.
They make you hungry.
You think sugar's on the way.
Your brain's like, "Wait a minute,
I think sugar's coming.
I tasted it."
So, low sugar, low fat, diet foods,
they're dangerous, and they're actually
disease producing as well.
Disease doesn't
happen with one meal,
but it happens with a thousand.
But that's what we have, because
now sugar is with every meal.
Good morning. I am just getting ready
to go to school this morning,
and I just ate cereal.
Sweet on the tip
of my tongue
You taste like
Sunlight
And strawberry bubble gum
I have everything I need
here to make my healthy lunch.
Some peanut butter.
You spike my blood
And you make my heart
beat faster
Own me, you own
And rattle my bones
You turn me over and over
Till I can't control myself
Make me a liar, yeah
One big disaster
You make my heart beat
Faster
'Cause you make
my heart beat
Faster
You make my heart beat
Faster, yeah
So, 10 years
of sugar in the morning,
sugar in the evening,
sugar at suppertime,
you've got this
veritable tsunami
of obesity and metabolic
disease we see today.
My name is Joe Lopez.
I'm 14 years old.
And I'm in ninth grade.
Right now
I'm about nearly 400.
I've tried
a lot of things, but...
none of them really work.
I would lose some weight
and then gain it back.
All of us in my family
have always been heavy... all of us.
I guess it's culture.
You know. It used to be...
Grandma used to say,
"You don't get off of that table until
you eat everything you have on there."
And we kind of thought that
that's the way it's supposed to be.
It's not as easy
to just stop eating,
because I have a huge appetite.
for Twinkies and all that sweet stuff.
Yes, I know, you're gonna say
I'm putting him in harm's way...
by giving him all the food
that he wants and stuff,
but I know he sneaks stuff,
cookies and cakes and all that.
Or he gets stuff at school, or he
gets stuff with his brother, and, uh...
You don't have
no control over it.
I wish I did,
but, uh, you don't.
You don't.
Processed food
is much more powerful
than we ever realized.
For decades, we had the science
to show that drugs of abuse
can hijack the neural circuits
to get us to come back
for more and more.
We now have the science to show
that you can make food
hyper-palatable too
and that gets us to come back
for more and more.
Researchers
at Princeton University
have been studying how rats
change their eating behavior
if they're allowed
to drink sugar water...
In a recent study,
43 cocaine-addicted laboratory rats
were given the choice
of cocaine or sugar water
over a 15-day period.
Forty out of the 43 chose the sugar.
In another study,
rats on a sugar water diet
exhibited telltale signs of addiction,
binging, craving and withdrawal
when the sugar was taken away.
Food addiction is a real thing.
It's not a metaphor.
It's a biological fact.
The studies show that your brain
lights up with sugar
just like it does
with cocaine or heroin.
In fact, sugar is eight times
more addictive than cocaine.
So, if you start your baby
early on addictive highly sugary foods,
they're gonna become addicted.
Take a look at formula.
Certain formulas,
especially lactose-free formulas,
they substitute with sucrose.
The food industry knows that the earlier
they introduce these foods to people,
to children, to infants,
the more likely they will have
branded them for the future.
And every generation
of kids born after 1980
has grown up surrounded
by these highly addictive foods.
I see food, I get hungry.
It's... I don't know what it is.
I just...
When I see it, I get hungry.
My stomach's telling me I'm not really
hungry, but my mind's telling me, "Eat."
If you eat foods that are addictive...
You can't just have one line of coke.
You can't just have, you know,
two cigarettes.
You're gonna become an addict.
Once you pop, you can't stop.
We have to understand
that the willpower idea,
that personal responsibility,
doesn't work in the face of addiction.
A lot of times people wonder
why it's so hard to lose weight.
But a big reason might be because
you actually have those foods...
the chips and the brownies and the
cookies and cakes and ice cream...
in your house.
It's just like being an alcoholic.
Do you think an alcoholic could
withstand from drinking that alcohol
if he had a bottle of gin
sitting next to him?
It'd be tough to do.
When you're close to it, you want it.
And it's the same way with food.
We like to think
we make rational decisions
but the fact is our brains
are getting constantly hijacked.
You can't walk, in most cities,
most places
more than a hundred feet
without having your brain
being activated in some way.
Gas stations used to sell gas.
Now they're all convenience stores.
And there's junk food
at the checkout everywhere,
at toy stores, at drugstores.
Go to buy stationery supplies,
linens, electronics...
Every store these days has junk food
right at the eye level of your kids.
And then you add the emotional gloss.
You add other things.
You add favorite cartoon characters.
You make it into entertainment.
You add toys.
And then you add
the carnival-like features.
You add all these
other layers of stimuli.
And in the end, you end up with
one of the great public health
epidemics of our time.
Sometimes it's hard.
I see... chocolate,
and I just want to eat it.
I wish there was a pill I could take
that would just make me thinner.
If a foreign nation was causing
our children to become obese,
that's going to affect their health
and hurt their happiness
cause them to be depressed,
to have poor self-esteem...
If a foreign nation
were doing that to our children,
we'd probably go to war.
We would defend our families.
So why do we accept this
from our own country.
Do you think
the government is behind
when it comes to helping Americans
reduce their sugar intake?
- Yes. I do.
- Why? Why are they doing this?
- I think that...
- Or why aren't they doing more?
I can't answer that,
particularly since corn
has been turned into fructose.
and is a sweetener for soft drinks,
which I don't think
is a good use of corn.
Um... but I think that America
is still insufficiently alert
to the damage we are doing long-term
to our collective health
by too much sugar intake.
In 2002,
the World Health Organization
put together a document
known as TRS-916,
Technical Report Series 916.
And in that document
they say, very specifically
that sugar is a major, if not the cause
of chronic metabolic
disease and obesity.
The W.H.O.
is the division of the United Nations
responsible for setting
global health standards.
The World Health Organization
wanted to really restrict
sugar intake to a level
that scientists recommended.
They recommended no more than
10% of calories
in a diet should come from sugar.
Well, the sugar groups
hit the roof over that one.
There was a very strong push back
in Washington by the industry.
Senators Larry Craig
and John Breau,
a Republican and a Democrat,
asked then secretary of Health
and Human Services Tommy Thompson
to stop the report.
The Bush administration
is resisting a plan.
from the World Health Organization to
fight obesity on an international scale.
The administration says it is too tough
on the food industry.
Tommy Thompson
actually took a jet to Geneva
and basically told
the World Health Organization
that if they published this document
we would withhold the $406 million
that we were going to pay them
as our contribution to the W.H.O.
In other words, we extorted
the W.H.O. to bury this document.
The sugar recommendation was deleted
from most
World Health Organization reports.
going forward up to this very day.
Lobbyists
for the sugar industry
recommended that 25% of calories
in your daily diet
should come from sugar,
two and a half times
the W.H.O. recommendation.
While food nutrition labels
list government-recommended
daily amounts of various nutrients,
today when you look
on any food labels,
you will not find sugar listed with a
percentage for the daily recommendation.
The question is whether
or not our government
has been complacent or even
complicit with this food debacle.
And the answer is absolutely.
The sugar industry's
extraordinarily powerful
and there's a lot of money involved.
We have a food industry
that's feeding America
mostly highly processed, sugary foods
that are killing us...
that are making us fat and sick.
This is the fundamental problem that
nobody's talking about in the society.
Thank you, everyone.
We're all here today
because we care deeply
about the health and well-being
of not just these kids up here
but for all kids like them
all across the country.
And clearly we're determined
to finally take on
one of the most serious threats
to their future,
and that's the epidemic of
childhood obesity in America today.
We've got some talented chefs
and nutritionists here
to teach us how to make
healthy breakfasts.
Farmers' markets do more than just
help Americans feed their families
healthy meals, they help...
We're issuing a call to action.
We need you not just to
tweak around the edges,
but to entirely rethink the products
that you're offering.
In the first months
of the Obama administration
she was exhorting the industry to change
its products and to
cut its children's marketing
and to really make substantive
changes that way.
My guess is when the food
industry heard Michelle Obama
launch her Let's Move campaign
they reacted in terror
Our kids don't choose
to make food products
with tons of sugar and sodium
and super-sized portions
and then to have those products marketed
to them everywhere they turn.
That's a terrifying discussion
for the food industry.
So what did they do?
They volunteered to help her.
I am so pleased to announce
a major agreement
on the part of the private
sector corporations.
to improve the nutrition of the food
that we put on the table
or that we grab on the run.
The Healthy Weight Commitment
is a partnership
between 16 corporations...
Pepsi, Coca-Cola...
everybody's offering to help.
But you have to look at
what they're offering to do.
We're very fortunate that the first lady
has taken on this initiative
so people are starting
to talk about it more.
In the schools, we have a program
where we have P.E. teachers and
nutritionists working together,
teaching the kids about calories in
and calories out
and really paying attention
to what you eat
and then paying attention
to the exercise you do every day.
Also, we went to the White House, and
we did an announcement with Mrs. Obama
that our companies would be pulling
1.5 trillion calories
out of the marketplace in 2015.
And so we're very happy that we can
provide healthier choices
for moms as they're shopping
for their kids.
Fourteen calories
a day is a single bite of food.
It's a couple sips of a soda.
It's a bite of an apple.
It's nothing.
They've agreed to reformulate
their foods in a number of ways.
All the food manufacturers
drew her into a very long, complicated,
intricate discussion
about processed food,
how we can make
processed food better.
But whatever they do to processed foods,
it will be used to sell us
more processed foods
than we should probably eat.
That's the beauty
of a processed food.
You can dial up the carbs,
dial down the carbs.
Same with the proteins.
Same with the sugars.
All these changes become marketing
claims designed to get you to buy more.
The food industry
has bamboozled and hoodwinked us
into thinking that there
are healthier alternatives.
Junk is still junk,
even if it's less junky.
It's about making money.
That's their bottom line.
They're in business to make money
not to keep America healthy.
Well, the companies
actually have three options
to participate in the calorie
commitment.
They can change the recipe
of existing products,
they can introduce new products
into the marketplace
and they can also introduce portion-size
products into the marketplace.
So, if they're... So...
You're going to be introducing new
lower and zero-calorie products.
Well, you have a significant transition
that's taken place in the last 10 years,
and I think that, uh, most moms and dads
know when you walk through
the grocery store
and you're making that selection as to
what products you want to buy
you have options that are
zero-calorie options,
lower-calorie options
and full-calorie options.
It feels like we're
avoiding the question.
That's the industry's response.
Change the conversation from real food
and cooking and going to
the farmers' market
to reengineer processed foods
and exercise.
Before too long, the first lady
was emphasizing more and more
the "exercise" part
of the Let's Move campaign.
Shouldn't be so hard to get them
to run around and play, right?
This isn't forcing them
to eat their vegetables.
It's getting them to go out there
and have fun.
It's about how active our kids are.
This isn't about demonizing
any industry or any, you know...
It's not about demonizing parents
and it's not about
demonizing businesses.
From the beginning
the name "Let's Move"
was not meant to evoke exercise.
It was meant to evoke action
on the issue.
Issuing a call to action.
But what a food industry
person hears is
their interpretation
of the obesity epidemic
which is that
we are too sedentary.
It's our own damn fault because
we're sitting, watching TV too much.
It's not the food.
And I think that was a very unfortunate
message for the White House to put out
because it is the food.
And the food, especially
the abundance of cheap, processed,
sugar-laden products is a direct result
of government policy.
Mainly the United States
Department of Agriculture.
The U.S.D.A.
was initially created
to help farmers thrive
by promoting their products.
But in the aftermath
of the McGovern Report
the U.S.D.A. inherited
dietary guidelines as well.
When obesity
became a problem,
the Department of Agriculture
was put into conflict of interest.
Because on the one hand
it was telling people to eat less
in order to prevent obesity,
and on the other hand it was
telling people to eat more
to promote consumption of
American agricultural products.
They can't do
a good job of both,
and because of lobbying dollars
and where the money really is,
it's doing a much better job
of promoting U.S. agriculture
than it is in teaching us
and helping us how to eat well.
One clear example of this conflict
is the curious case of cheese.
Remember back in the 1980s
when the food industry began
taking out the fat from its products
after the McGovern Report?
Women, and girls especially,
became a little bit more
health-conscious
and started drinking skim milk.
Did you ever stop to think
what happened
to the fat in the milk
when it became skim?
Well, one way
to make use of milk fat.
is to turn it into cheese.
As the demand for low fat milk
increased over the years,
the government found itself
with a lot of cheese
they didn't know what to do with.
Instead of pushing
the dairy industry
to cut back on the production,
Washington came up
with this other idea.
Why don't we help the industry
sell more cheese
by getting people
to eat more cheese?
Cheese, glorious cheese
Tastes mighty inviting
Cheese, glorious cheese
It's so tantalizing
Dairy Management
was created in 1995.
to act as a marketing arm
of the dairy industry.
Financed by the farmers,
with oversight by the U.S.D.A.,
Dairy Management helped flood the
marketplace with good-looking cheese.
Now walk into
the dairy aisle,
and the cheese section is bulging
with packages of cheese...
shredded, cubed, diced, grated...
made as simple as possible
for adding to other foods.
Some of the things
that Dairy Management did
to encourage the consumption of cheese
were so clever that the U.S.D.A.
actually bragged on them
in its annual reports to Congress.
In 2007, for example,
it noted how the industry was able
to sell 30 million more pounds
by designing things like
Pizza Hut's Cheesy Bites Pizza,
Wendy's Dual Double Melt
sandwich concept
and Burger King's
Cheesy Angus Bacon Cheeseburger.
So at the same time the Agriculture
Department is promoting
consumption of cheese, its small unit,
charged with protecting
consumers and fighting obesity
puts out these little brochures
that encourage people
to eat less cheese.
If the U.S.D.A. really wants to
increase cheese consumption
and promote a healthy lifestyle,
here is an easy solution,
cheesercize.
Just grab a set of baby bells
and really work those "goudes".
Oh.
The problem is,
it's not just cheese.
This conflict between public health
and promoting agriculture
plays out across the board.
The U.S.D.A. says
to limit your sugar intake,
yet has provided
over $8 billion in subsidies
for corn-based sweeteners
since 1995.
It's fair to say that the government
is subsidizing the obesity epidemic
inadvertently,
through its subsidies of corn
which gets turned into
high-fructose corn syrup
and all those weird ingredients
that you see in processed food,
the maltodextrin, the xanthan gum,
all those words you can't pronounce.
So you have the government
in this crazy, schizophrenic situation,
where, on the one hand
they're subsidizing precisely
the foods that are making us sick,
and then on the other are now
on the hook to set the standards
for school lunches for our kids.
Chili cheese fries,
nachos, fried chicken...
all these fattening
and greasy foods
are just clogging up our schools.
School, we're supposed to be healthy.
My school has nachos
every day for school
and three-fourths of our students
in high school choose nachos.
All my bad decisions
are when I'm at school,
at lunchtime, at breakfast time.
'Cause there's no other choice.
Either you eat or you starve.
Today at lunch we had hamburgers.
You either had a chance to get
a cheeseburger or a sloppy Joe.
Neither one of them's
really that healthy.
Other options that they had
were this place called
the student store.
They have a daily special like Monday
is Papa John's pizza.
Tuesday is Chick-fil-A.
Wednesday is Arby's.
Thursday is Pizza Hut.
and Friday is McDonald's.
And then this is the slushie machine
that they have.
The school lunch program
has evolved in such a way
that it really is serving
the food processors
much more than it is
serving the students.
The government got
in the school lunch business
after World War II.
1946.
President Harry Truman signed
the National School Lunch Act
after a huge number of military recruits
were rejected because of malnutrition.
On February 18, I will present in detail
an economic program to Congress
reducing the growth in government
spending to reduce unemployment.
In 1981,
President Ronald Reagan
looking to limit the role
of government cut $1.46 billion
out of the child nutrition budget.
It will propose budget cuts
in virtually every department
of the government.
Many schools got rid
of their cooking equipment
and turned to the food industry
to make lunch cheap and simple,
kid-friendly favorites
that could be heated and served.
In 2006,
80% of all high schools
operated under exclusive
contracts with soda companies
and by 2012 more than half of all
U.S. school districts served fast food.
The food industry infiltration
of the schools is deplorable.
The schools have become
dependent on the money
and it's a bargain with the devil.
Some schools have become
like a 7-Eleven with books.
We are thrilled to be here
with all of you
as I sign the Healthy,
Hungry-Free Kids Act,
a bill that's vitally important
to the health and welfare of our kids.
In 2010 President Barack Obama
signed the bill
authorizing the U.S.D.A.
to come up with new standards
for the federally funded
school lunch program
in an effort
to make it healthier.
This had the effect of possibly
eliminating pizza from school.
Well, the Schwan Company in Minnesota
is a $3 billion private company
which accounts for 70% of the pizza
market in the U.S. school lunches.
They could not have pizza
eliminated from school.
So their senator in Minnesota,
Amy Klobuchar
wrote a letter to the
Department of Agriculture
to protect their frozen pizzas
in school lunches.
It had kind of
a complicated process
where the effect was to count
a slice of pizza as a vegetable.
It's common sense.
It's not a vegetable.
What's next? Are Twinkies gonna
be considered a vegetable?
Rather than having
a deliberative effort,
we have special interests inserting
these provisions into these bills
contrary to the public health.
In terms of the pizza issue,
we proposed a set of guidelines
and Congress essentially suggested
that they wanted
a slightly different approach.
Was that frustrating for you?
Well, it's a little
frustrating, sure.
- But at the end of the day...
- Tomato paste is a vegetable?
- Really?
- Well, it's... Well, uh...
Not in my household,
but, uh... but, I mean,
somebody could probably
make the, um,
the scientific argument that it is.
But it's not how
I perceive a vegetable.
By 2012, the revised
regulations were issued.
The U.S.D.A. increased
the lunch budget
for the first time in 30 years...
by six cents,
set a new maximum on calories
and doubled the required amounts
of fruits and vegetables,
which still includes
french fries and pizza.
It doesn't look like
the lunches have improved that much.
They have hamburgers and cheeseburgers,
chicken-fried steak and pizza today.
We have a main dish
every day that is very healthy.
We probably did about 25 of those...
out of, like, 350.
They kind of like...
"I'll have the pizza." And they'd
rather get fries and cookies.
But you can't choose for 'em.
They have to choose for themselves.
I don't know any child
who would rather have
vegetables over a candy bar
when both are placed
in front of them.
A lot of these
fast food restaurants
are still operating in school
cafeterias all across the country.
And it's...
it's not a good thing.
I don't agree with
all the new guidelines.
I wish they'd gone
a little further.
We could cure literally 80% of
the problem for children in school
if we went back to school cafeterias
where they prepared the food
in the school.
- What can I get for you, babe?
- Can I have a cheeseburger, please?
You sure can.
Thank you.
Have you lost any weight?
It's just kind of aggravating...
because...
I mean, my weight's not really going
the way it's supposed to go.
When we release our children
into the care of schools,
we expect that they're not
going to drink unsafe water
that will make them sick, we don't
expect them to breathe unsafe air
that will make them sick,
and we shouldn't expect them to eat
unsafe food that will make them sick.
The industry, I think, cares less
about what they sell in schools
than the opportunity they have
to market their brand.
We're paying a very dear price
for letting the food industry
act at will
in recruiting our children
as loyal customers.
I remember I went
to a preschool once
and the kids were sitting on
little chairs...
little red-and-white chairs.
that said "Coca-Cola."
What do they think?
Well, Coca-Cola's good.
It's part of preschool.
I should be drinking more Coca-Colas.
Marketers want to start
to target kids as early as they can.
Studies show that children
as young as two and three
start to recognize brands.
The problem is,
they don't see any commercials
for bananas, strawberries,
zucchini and broccoli.
It shapes the whole way
they think about food,
what they think food is.
There have been attempts to
regulate how we market food to children
since the very beginning
of the obesity epidemic.
1977... the same year
as the McGovern Report.
Consumer advocates lobbied
the Federal Trade Commission,
the government arm
in charge of advertising
to regulate ads
for sugar-laden products.
It's grr-r-reat.
The executive director of
the Federal Trade Commission
says the group is slowly
coming to the conclusion
that television advertising
aimed at children is unfair.
The cumulative effect
of the thousands of hours
of advertising viewed by children
is that kids are being told the biggest
lie they will ever hear in their lives.
It's not fair to use the public airwaves
to encourage children
to develop health habits
and buying patterns
which they will probably
keep up in adulthood
that are hazardous to health.
The F.T.C.'s
proposed restrictions
have been defended as vital to protect
the health of America's children
and assailed as an attack on
free enterprise, free speech
and as a dangerous intrusion by the
federal government into family life.
Broadcasters, advertising
agencies and toy companies
all banded together to prevent
the F. T.C. from regulating
children's television.
And an official
of Quaker Oats
said one of the best uses
of sugar he could think of
was getting children
to eat their cereal.
Big Food won the battle.
No regulations were put in place.
But marketing to kids really took off
a few years later with processed foods.
And with the advent of corn syrup,
a cheaper alternative to sugar,
the big food makers
had more money to spend
on bigger sizes
with better prices
and on ad campaigns
with corporate tie-ins
and high-priced
celebrity endorsements.
You're a whole new generation
You're a whole new generation
Now food advertising
is everywhere.
- Diet Snapple?
- I know!
It tastes just like
regular Snapple, doesn't it?
Dr. Pepper's unbelievably satisfying.
We in this Congress
have a responsibility
to protect America's children
from the sophisticated, aggressive,
relentless marketing of junk food
to our children.
With obesity rates skyrocketing,
Congress tried again in 2004
to regulate food industry
marketing to children.
Big Food and Fast Food responded
much like they did 20 years before.
When I hear this discussion,
I hear "marketing to children,"
which really you're saying
"advertising to children."
and you're also saying,
"It's all bad."
And that's just not true.
Ronald McDonald never sells to children.
He informs and inspires
through magic and fun.
Industry under threat
of government regulation...
will say "We can police ourselves."
And they launch into this series
of self-regulatory promises
that we'll market less to children,
we'll pull our products out of schools.
When you hold them accountable
and study whether changes have
been made, what do you find?
It's not a pretty picture.
Keeps 'em full,
keeps 'em focused.
- Get a spectacular Spider-Man toy!
- Made with real fruit!
Thanks, Mom.
With the fox
guarding the henhouse,
children's exposure to junk food ads,
including online
increased 60% from 2008 to 2010.
The Federal Trade Commission
has less authority
to regulate advertising to kids
than it does to adults.
You would think that would be
just the other way around.
There are several studies
that show
that when children
are watching television,
especially with food commercials,
they're primed to eat more.
One study had kids watching TV
and they gave them a bowl
of Goldfish crackers to munch
on while they were watching.
The kids that watched TV, while
they showed also food commercials
they ate 45% more Goldfish crackers
compared to kids watching the same TV
program with nonfood commercials.
I showed the data
on how our neural circuits and the
neural circuits of our kids
are getting sensitized
to all these food cues
to a group of leading diabetologists
and their conclusion,
when they saw that
and they realized that these circuits
get laid down for a lifetime,
is that we're toast as a country.
Hearings begin today on a proposed law
that would ban giving away toys
with meals high in calories,
fat, sugar and salt.
The trouble is, every time the
government tries to regulate Big Food
again and again
the industry protects itself
by sparking a larger public debate
over the role of
government in our lives.
The food police striking again.
They have a predictable script
that they roll out every time
these things come up.
This is the most ridiculous
sort of nanny-statis.
- "Nanny state."
- It is the nanny state.
These nanny-state people
want to tell you what to eat.
"Government doesn't belong
in our private lives."
Apparently now we need
government food cops.
"You're discriminating against us."
To single out one food or beverage.
The mayor of New York City,
Michael Bloomberg
wants to outlaw what he calls
super-sized sodas
and other sugary drinks.
"You don't need the police. Just look
at all the good-guy things we're doing.
You know what Ronald McDonald
is also known for.
For 35 years he's been known
for the Ronald McDonald Houses.
Exactly.
The script is so reliable now
and the lobbying dollars
that are aimed at legislators
from the food industry are enormous
and as a consequence they're pretty good
at fighting things off.
Who should be making
the decisions what to eat
and school choice
and everything else.
Should it be government, or should it be
the parents? It should be the parents.
The fact that parents
have a role to play
does not change the fact that targeting
young children is simply immoral.
I think we need to really
get straight in this country
the difference between
parental responsibility
and the corporation's role in exploiting
the vulnerabilities of a young child.
He's been having many more
problems now with his legs.
He's going through therapy, and he's
still having a hard time with it.
- So you've been having knee pain?
- Yeah.
This bariatric program
came to the hospital,
and my doctor considered me for surgery
that'll change my life for the better.
I don't want it.
I kinda need it.
I've gotten to a point
in my weight where
if I... if I keep
gaining weight like I am,
I'm gonna probably
be dead by 20.
The surgery has complications.
There's no question about it.
But as we've talked about,
you always look at what the risk
is of doing the surgery
and compare it to what the risk
is of not doing the surgery.
And we've all agreed that the risk
of not doing the surgery
is that we're gonna
decrease your life span,
increase your risk of diabetes
and all of these complications.
And so we know that even though
there's risk with the surgery,
there's a bigger risk
of not doing it. Okay?
I've never heard of, you know,
a 15-year-old having this surgery.
Um, you know...
I guess I'm still
kind of against it.
Thing could go wrong, and...
then I wouldn't have my Joe.
That wouldn't be right.
I would feel that one.
It's the people who are least able
to know what's good
for their health..
who are the ones
that certain industries cater to
and try to focus
their advertising toward.
We're selling these products
to the people who are most vulnerable
and they're also the people that society
has to provide health care for
because they don't have
the money to do it themselves.
I didn't even want to be at the
hospital and see him going through that.
It sounds selfish, but, um...
It was hard.
But, uh, he-he's...
a tough little guy.
Yeah.
There's probably a limited role
for gastric bypass, or bariatric surgery
in the most extreme circumstance
to avoid life-threatening complication.
But what does it say
about our society
if we would rather send children
to such mutilating procedures
but yet lack the political will
to properly fund school nutrition
and ban junk food advertising
to children.
It reflects a systematic
political failure.
We're the richest society
in the world.
We've failed because we've placed
private profit and special interests
ahead of public health.
This is
a vitality medical center.
Fixing to get our body scans.
It's hard for us
teenagers to try to be healthy
'cause you see all your friends
eating fattening chili cheese fries
and nachos
and all this fattening fried chicken
and all these fattening, greasy foods,
and they're skinny,
and they look good.
My brother can eat all he wants
and still be skinny,
and I look at him and say,
"Well, he can do it. Why can't I?"
And that... I hold on to that.
And that's how
I-I don't lose weight.
Many people think that
if you're thin, you're healthy
but that's not
necessarily true.
You can be fat on the inside
and skinny on the outside
or metabolically obese
normal weight.
It's very dangerous, and it leads to all
the same consequences as being fat,
such as heart attacks, strokes, cancer,
dementia and diabetes.
Dr. Jimmy Bell, who is
a neuroimager in London, England,
coined the term "Tofi"...
T-O-F-I.
Thin on the outside,
fat on the inside.
Because when you slide somebody into an
M.R.I. and you actually visualize
the fat they might as well be obese.
- There! X-ray!
- Yeah.
Nuke sign.
Brady and his brothers went
to the doctor for DEXA scans,
a type of X-ray that measures
internal body fat.
The beauty of it is,
you can see where the fat is.
Because a lot of fat is distributed
in different places
and the worst fat
is the belly fat.
Kids who are normal weight should be
between 10 and 20% belly fat.
Brady's results
were by far the worst...
47% of his body is fat,
most of it in his belly,
which is 60% fat.
The belly fat
is a dangerous, lethal fat.
And his insulin levels are high.
The insulin is
the fat storage hormone.
While his youngest brother,
Nicholas, had normal results,
10-year-old Chandler
had 22% belly fat
and the 19-year-old,
Joseph, had 28%.
Almost all of these skinny-fat
kids are prediabetic.
Even though the junk food
doesn't make them fat, necessarily,
it makes them sick.
The question is, do you have it?
You might, and you don't know.
Based on the statistics
we know that
30% of America is obese.
Let's talk about
the thin people.
Up to 40% of these people
have the same metabolic dysfunction.
They're just not obese.
So when you do the math, that's
more than half the U.S. population.
This is not just
a problem of the obese.
This is a problem of everybody.
There are so many industries
that make profits
off of people being unhealthy
that it's in their interest to have
people continue to be unhealthy.
And so that's why you don't see
an enormous national effort
to try to improve the quality
of the American diet
or people's food choices.
Is that why you see
health insurance companies
buying stock in fast food companies?
That is exactly why you see
health insurance companies
buying stock
in fast food companies?
They're just
covering their bets.
Unless we address this as a
society and stop blaming the fat person,
we're gonna be in big trouble.
We're gonna have
huge health consequences
and huge economic consequences,
as well.
We've been down
this road before.
This isn't the first time our children
have been sold a bill of goods
that leads to addiction
and disease.
What's been the great
public health success to date?
It's tobacco.
Smooth and fresh
Is the Newport taste
We used to view
the cigarette as our friend,
something that was sexy, that was
glamorous, something that we wanted.
What did we do with tobacco?
We demonized the tobacco industry.
We changed how
we perceived that product.
We knew as early as 1950
that there was a link
between smoking and lung cancer.
Do you swear that the testimony
you are about to give
is the truth, the whole truth
and nothing but the truth?
I do.
But Big Tobacco would deny
the science for the next 50 years.
Cigarettes and nicotine
clearly do not meet
the classic definitions
of addiction.
The public finally saw
that they were doing deceptive
and misleading things
and so we took them on.
Government took them on.
The media took them on.
It's been 30 years since the first
report linked smoking and cancer.
There's disturbing news
about teenagers and smoking.
The U.S. was the first
to require warning labels
on every cigarette pack.
But we didn't stop there.
A number of decades ago
there was something around
called the Fairness Doctrine and
for every tobacco ad that got run
the networks had to free up time
for anti-tobacco advertisement.
Smoke now, pay later.
Whatever you do,
just don't smoke.
The tobacco industry found
it was getting battered by these
advertisements and said
we will voluntarily take
our advertising off television.
Come to where the flavor is.
It wasn't long before
smoking ads were removed
from almost all public space.
And with greater public awareness
smoking was banned
from all airlines.
And as early as 1975
individual states began regulating
smoking in public places
and taxing packs of cigarettes.
After we banned it,
all of Western Europe went smoke-free.
You would tell me in a million years
the Irish, the Italians,
the Spanish, the English, the French...
they don't smoke indoors anymore.
Today we view
the cigarette for what it is,
a deadly, disgusting, addictive product.
As a result of this
critical change in perception,
the number of American high schoolers
who smoke has been cut in half
in just the last 20 years.
Where would we be
if we hadn't acted?
The Flintstones
has been brought to you by Winston,
America's best-selling,
best-tasting filter cigarette.
Winston tastes good
like a cigarette should
Junk food companies are acting
very much like tobacco companies did
30 and 40 years ago.
I need your Fruity Pebbles!
Really fruity!
Post Fruity Pebbles cereal,
part of this complete breakfast.
Years from now we're gonna say,
"I can't believe we let them
get away with that."
There is no evidence
that the consumption
of soft drinks in secondary schools
is inconsistent
with sound nutrition science
The argument you're making is to advance
the sales of your soft drinks
with the hopes that these students
will get used to them enough...
I hesitate to use the word
"hooked on 'em" enough.
I'm suggesting, Senator,
that in a well-balanced diet
we all need to consume
two liters of liquid.
Soft drinks can certainly supply
part of that liquid intake
and I would reject entirely any argument
that they are in any way
harmful for you.
Sometimes I just wanna say,
"Don't you have any shame at all?"
Isn't there something
inside of you that says,
"You know,
what we're doing is not right."
They have to know,
just like the tobacco companies.
How could these people
sleep at night for years
knowing they were lying through
their teeth about tobacco and cancer
and yet they just kept pushing
those tobacco products out there?
It's the same way
with big food companies
I just... I don't know how...
I-I don't know how
they can live with themselves.
Soda is the cigarettes
of the 21st century,
and the sooner
we get that clear
the sooner we get rid of
these idiotic arguments about
free speech allows us
to sell things that are poisonous.
The obesity epidemic,
the diseases that fast food places...
hamburgers, soda pop, whatever...
cause.
We've had this information
for decades...
and we've failed to act on it
until now it's catastrophic.
I'm trying...
I'm trying to save my life...
and protect myself from dying
of heart attack, seizures,
anything... diabetes, anything.
I just want y'all to realize...
that y'all killin' yourselves.
'Cause I've already realized it.
I'm just making sure y'all do,
you guys do.
At our current rate
over 95% of all Americans will be
overweight or obese in two decades.
By 2050, one out of every three
Americans will have diabetes.
As we look to
the work force of the future,
where will the soldiers and sailors
and first-responders... cops, firemen...
Where will they come from when we have
a generation of children
that will be physically unfit
and saddled with a lot of disease
that's all preventable.
The financial aspects
of this are staggering.
75% of our health care dollar goes
to the maintenance or treatment
of chronic metabolic disease.
If you think the national debt
is a problem right now,
wait till you see the tsunami
of debt that's coming
from the health care impact of obesity.
It's going to be
an enormous burden
that we are going to be placing
on the shoulders of our children.
I want people to know
that childhood obesity
isn't as simple as TV
and the press make it seem.
And even Mrs. Obama.
It's like, no matter how hard you try,
it's always going to be
an ongoing battle.
When Michelle Obama
launched her "Let's Move" campaign,
she said this isn't about
demonizing any food industry,
which is a very politically
sensible thing to do.
The problem is,
if you want to cure obesity,
you have to demonize
some food industries.
Let's move! Let's move! Let's move!
I think Michelle Obama
has been a wonderful force
in the nation's attempt
to address childhood obesity.
Um, but my guess is that she and
other people in the administration
have to be aware of the lobbying
might of the food industry
and have to go easier on them
than they may want to.
I hope with time, because of the
public support for these initiatives
that the politicians will have
the courage to take on the industry
the way it really needs to happen.
There are other countries now
who have prohibited
junk food marketing to kids
stopped serving junk food in schools,
started taxing soda...
These are things that I'd like to see
us leading the way on.
Instead, we're leading the way on
producing the world's deadliest diet
and basically exporting it
to other countries.
I think the thing that has
frustrated me more than anything else
in my now almost 30-year
campaign against obesity
and trying to get healthful lifestyles.
The most frustrating thing is just
the way the deck is just stacked
against being healthy.
Right now healthy eating
is like swimming upstream.
If you want to eat better,
you have to work so hard
against the food environment
which is always pushing you
to eat more.
I think the attitude
that someone else is gonna change it
is the wrong attitude.
If we want better conditions
each of us has to do something
to make that happen.
We need to come together
as a society to protect our children
just like we have with seat belt laws
and car seat laws.
We're not gonna tell anybody what
they're gonna feed their kids.
We're just gonna try to make it
easier for parents
to do what they already want to do,
which is feed their child
more healthfully.
Some people are already
trying to change the environment
and improve the conditions
for our children.
There are even some kids
who are taking on their own schools.
in order to remove sugar-sweetened
beverages from the cafeteria.
There are also
revolutionary food fighters
who are not waiting
on government action.
I want to tell you
about what is in some of these products.
- Okay, everyone...
- Four scoops of sugar.
They're educating kids
on the toxic effects of sugar.
They are all the same.
Reimagining how you can feed kids
real food on a budget.
By serving the local fresh beans
we're saving about $4,000 a year.
Our business model is to go
into under served areas
into food deserts and try
to make them food oases
and make sure we bring access
to fresh, affordable healthy food.
Many of these places
have seen modest decreases
in their childhood obesity rate.
So we've made some progress.
It's not as much as we'd like,
it's not as much as we need
but therein lies some hope.
This is supposed to be the
first generation of American children
expected to lead shorter lives
than their parents did.
So we have to ask ourselves,
what legacy are we leaving our children?
What kind of conditions are we exposing
them to that would make this come true?
It's a call to action to do something
pretty courageous against this problem.
What if every can of soda
came with a warning label
from the Surgeon General?
What if fast food chains were banned
from all public schools?
What if every time you looked
at a nutrition label
you'd actually see
the percentage next to sugar?
What if every time
a celebrity sold a soft drink,
they also had to pitch
a vegetable?
How would academics improve?
How much more productive
would we become?
How much money and how many lives
could we save?
I think the government
has a leading role to play here.
We just got
a long way to go.
Now, you can wait around
for the ideal day
when government regulation
will be perfect.
Meanwhile, you gotta keep working
the food industry
to get them to change.
But you have to change
the diet of America.
That's the most important thing.
The exercise is important.
All these things are important.
But we've gotta change the way
we produce and consume food.
My mom always said people
make time for what they want to.
It's a matter of priority, you know.
Being willing to put forth the effort
and the time that it takes to change.
The kids' health, my health,
my husband's health,
definitely more important than any
chocolate I have in the cabinet,
more than any piece of cake.
And even as much as I want to
take the chocolate and hide it,
it still has made me think.
I've gotta choose.
I've gotta choose between
helping Brady or...
or getting rid of the chocolate.
I know what's more important in here.
It's just hard.
But it's a matter of priority
and I really want to change.
- Ohh!
- What?
This is our new recipe
we're fixin' to taste.
I am excited. I can't believe
how different I feel.
And I'm so happy that, um,
a light switch just came on.
It's not an easy transition
to real food, but it starts locally.
It starts, really,
as local as our fork.
And everybody has a choice three times
a day what they put on that thing.
The most important thing
you can do...
and it's challenging for
many people... is cook real food.
You can forget about nutrients.
You don't have to worry about sugars.
If you cook real food, your family
will be eating much better.
Does it look like
it comes from nature?
Or is it a product with a long list
of artificial ingredients?
That's a distinction between
real and fake foods
that even a five-year-old can get.
Lot of sugar, huh?
Third ingredient.
That's not real.
I thought I knew
the way it was supposed to be
but in truth I had no idea
what the truth was.
And I think so many kids in America
don't even know
what it really means to eat healthy.
Nicholas, you are eating
asparagus, I'm so proud of you.
This is the way we're
supposed to eat all the time.
Not just for a diet or detox.
We're supposed to eat like this
for the rest of our life.
And that's what I want it to be.
John is eating
his sweet potatoes.
It started out
as such a small story...
about weight, diet and exercise.
For the majority of kids,
there is no happy ending.
It's time for a new story
about the food we eat...
and the environment
we want for our children.
This has to be about the food,
not the weight.
I mean, why don't diets work?
Sure, for 30 days, 60 days,
90 days I can deprive myself,
I can lose the weight.
But then I go back in the environment,
I get cued again,
my brain gets hijacked.
So of course I'm going
to gain the weight back.
Unless we dramatically change the
environment, take away all these cues,
we're never gonna be able
to protect our kids.
How long have you waited
For someone to come
to your rescue?
Called up
and calculated
Some kind of hope
to hang on to
Will the wait be over soon?
Feelin' so fascinated
Set on a course to continue
Discussed and demonstrated
With all the sight
to see right through
Another world created
Another life belongs to you
When you're surrounded by
Something strange
And so brand-new
It's not complicated
It's just another
point of view
So now let's celebrate it
A change is so long overdue
And we should be home by now
And we should be home
By now
I know we'd find a way
Forever starts today
We should be home by now
We should be home by now
We should be home by now
If time permitted
I know we'd find a way
Forever starts today
If time permitted
I know we'd find a way
Forever starts today
Forever starts today
Forever starts today
Forever starts today