by James Walvin
Best of all, from the companies’ viewpoint, the new sweetener dramatically slashed production costs for soft drinks. The Coca-Cola Company also implemented a critical marketing change that was to have equally far-reaching results – they increased the size of their bottles and cans. While the cost of producing their drinks had fallen substantially, the company charged only a few cents more for a much larger volume of drink. Because corn syrup was cheap, ‘it paid to go big’. The sizes of servings of soft drinks rose: first to 12fl oz, then 20fl oz containers, and even to 64fl oz ‘buckets’. All this went hand in hand with Coke’s great ally McDonald’s, which had 14,000 outlets in the 1990s, and their own invention of ‘supersizing’ of their own food products.
In the 1950s, McDonald’s served only one size portion of French fries. In 1972, they offered ‘large size’ and, in 1994, ‘supersized fries’. They even promoted their products with the phrase ‘Supersize It!’ and the pattern was adopted by rival fastfood chains.
In the 1980s, the companies launched their supersized products (2ofl oz bottles with fifteen teaspoons of sweetener; one litre bottles with twenty-six teaspoons; and even a 64fl oz version with a massive forty-four teaspoons). As these servings got bigger, children were drinking more and more. By 1995, two out of three American children were drinking a national average of 2ofl oz every day. And at its height, a large serving of Coke contained 310 calories.23
The end result – in addition to rising profits – was a massive increase in per capita consumption of soft drinks from 28.7 gallons in 1985 to 36.9 gallons in 1998. HFCS now represents 50 per cent of all sweeteners consumed in the USA. It had also become the focus on its own increased medical and scientific scrutiny, with concerns raised about its impact on a range of health issues.
What lies behind these statistics about diet and drink was little less than a human revolution. Americans had begun to consume many, many more calories than they needed. In 1950, the per capita consumption of calorific sweeteners was just over 100lb. Thirty years later, it was over 125lb; by 2000, that had reached 153lb. Bizarre as it seems, the link between this and American agriculture was inescapable – America’s farmers were being subsidised to fuel an unhealthy trend towards overconsumption of carbohydrate-rich sweeteners’.24
What made this trend all the more potent and far-reaching were the major social changes taking place in the nature of US society itself, especially in employment and residential locations. Americans had become a nation of city-dwellers, and much of America’s employment was non-manual and sedentary, with 80 per cent of America’s city workers employed in service industries. An increasing proportion of the labour force worked in less labour-intensive occupations which required fewer calories than earlier generations. One simple example is the daily commute – fewer people walked to work. In the last forty years of the twentieth century, the number of Americans driving to work increased from 40 million to 110 million, and the average return journey took fifty minutes. In 2003, less than 20 per cent of Americans had some form of daily exercise. As the people of the USA became more sedentary, their food became cheaper and they were consuming ever more calories.25
The irony behind all this was that the process was highly subsidised. Soft and fizzy drinks were cheap and very sweet – courtesy of the American taxpayer. Billions of tax dollars ($5.7 billion in 1983 alone) went to subsidise corn production, so American obesity was itself subsidised by American taxes. In 1971–74, only 14 per cent of Americans were obese. By the mid-1990s, that had risen to 22.4 per cent and, by 2008, more than one third of the US population was obese. The formula seemed simple: Americans were turning excess sugar into fat.’26
American obesity was clearly linked to the consumption of highly sweetened soft drinks. This pattern was, of course, spread unevenly throughout the population. Minority communities – especially the poor – were disproportionately obese. A cheap hamburger and a fizzy drink was often the only affordable way of eating in many communities where incomes were low, welfare high and modestly priced food outlets distant or inaccessible. Nor was this a uniquely American pattern. The dietary revolution taking place in the USA was to be seen in all corners of the globe, and the impact on global health was massive. Millions of people all over the world were consuming increasing volumes of mass-produced, processed drinks and food – all saturated with excessive amounts of sweeteners – and many millions of them were getting fatter. Sugar, once a luxury, then a necessity, had now become the enemy.
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Coca-Cola’s remorseless promotion of its product, especially among the poor at home and in less developed nations, finally even alienated one of its senior executives. Jeffrey Dunn, once President for North and South America, spoke openly about the doubts he – and many others – now had about the impact of carbonated drinks (and industrialised foods) on health. The company was directing massive efforts towards selling more and more drinks to those who could ill afford them in the USA and around the world, who had barely enough resources to procure the basic nutritional needs for a normal life. So powerful had their advertising become that they could persuade the less well off, at home and abroad, to buy Coke at the expense of more vital commodities. The poor were staying poor – yet they were also getting fatter. It was a remarkable historical upheaval. For centuries, it had been the rich who tended to be overweight; the indulgent wealthy had been portrayed as obese. Now, the reality had been turned on its head; the poor were becoming the fattest people on earth. Jeffrey Dunn had no doubts about the correlation between rising obesity and the per capita consumption of sugary soft drinks.
The importance of sweetness had been confirmed even in the fierce rivalry between the two soda giants – Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola – in the 1980s. They fought each other to a standstill, one sometimes overtaking the other, one claiming to be sweeter or more delicious than the other – but both were carried along by a rising tide of consumption. Despite the rivalries, both companies thrived and sold more and more drinks to their fans. It didn’t seem to matter what they said about each other – both sides thrived. And both thrived on selling their sweetened drinks.
When the Coca-Cola Company switched from more expensive refined sugar to the cheaper, high-fructose corn syrup in 1980, their profits rose even higher. So, too, did the marketing budget. By 1984, it reached $181 million. The drive by Coca-Cola was to persuade people to buy ever more Coke, and it worked. By 1997, Americans were drinking 54 gallons of carbonated drinks a year – Coke controlled 45 per cent of the overall market – and sales rose to $18 billion. But because Diet Cokes accounted for only 25 per cent of the sales, people were overwhelmingly drinking sugary drinks – more than 40 gallons a year, or 60,000 calories, equivalent to 3,700 teaspoons of sugar per person.27
The consumption of Coca-Cola seemed a perfect confirmation of the ‘Pareto Principle’ – the theory that 80 per cent of consequences stem from 20 per cent of the causes. In this case, 80 per cent of Coke’s consumption was accounted for by 20 per cent of the population. More alarming still, however, that 20 per cent was located at the lower end of the social scale, among the poor and dispossessed who could ill afford to spend rare resources on a drink that added little nutritional value to their diet. Yet the company’s marketing policy was to persuade those very people to drink more.
The other market targeted by the companies was the young – the people who would become lifelong Coke drinkers. Although the company developed a policy about not advertising to under-twelves, there were many ways of stimulating an interest in a drink without direct TV appeals. The name, logo and images of Coca-Cola were ubiquitous in the very places where children spent much of their formative leisure time. That and, via careful research and marketing, locating branded drinks dispensers and outlets where the young were likely to shop. The drink was to be placed at the most strategic positions, in corner shops and supermarkets, to persuade people to buy impulsively.28
Behind this lay a forensic analysis of shopping habits, market and s
ocial research into the shopping and consumer habits of the US population, by every conceivable category – rural and urban, socio-economic class, age, gender and ethnicity, and so on. They were thus able to reach their target groups not merely in the nation’s major supermarkets but, critically, in local convenience stores. There, too, drinks were located precisely to catch the eye and the cash of customers – children, say, at nearby schools. The corner shops of the late-twentieth-century USA therefore became lucrative enterprises, their profits flowing primarily from the sweetened drinks and snacks loved by their young customers. The results led to a proliferation of corner stores – and an ever-rising flow of soft drinks and snacks out of their doors in the hands of ever-younger customers.29
It was here, in the convenience stores, that drinks companies were developing a powerful loyalty for their brands among the nation’s young – get them young, and you had them for life. It was a revival and confirmation of the principle first advocated by Robert Woodruff decades earlier. For critics, as if all this were not bad enough, all the major manufacturers of soft drinks and snacks were making powerful incursions into much poorer countries, nations that were, in some cases, developing rapidly, but nonetheless had swathes of their people suffering serious deprivation. To reach those people, the major international companies began to produce small versions of their drinks and food, offering drinks and snacks that were significantly cheaper because they were sold in smaller sizes.30
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Sugar, then, has been at the very heart of the long history of American soft drinks. In the post-war years, it had sweetened the powdered fruit drinks which Americans had mixed with water and served to their families. At their peak, those powdered drinks brought in $800 million. Towards the end of the twentieth century, fruit flavours were added and children were targeted via leafleting and junk mail. When the same drinks were repackaged and sold in small cartons, the drinks became hugely popular, all supported by images of health and nutrition and, above all, they were fun. But food scientists were also at work, devising new fruit flavours, and finding sweeteners. The answer was pure fructose, which was much sweeter than sugar itself. Once the imperfections had been eliminated, food manufacturers could turn to fructose in their products and claim it was good for you. This happened when sugar was under serious attack as the source of worrying health issues, and played into the food industry’s hands. Pure fructose seemed to be the answer to the growing band of critics of sugar. It was to take another decade or more before further research began to suggest that sucrose and corn syrup were also likely to encourage health problems, notably heart disease. Today, with the scientific jury still pondering the issue, fructose is seen by many critics to be as dangerous as cane sugar itself.31
Other sources of sweetness were, however, also available to the food manufacturers. ‘Fruit juice concentrate’ emerged by the beginning of the twentieth century as another powerful weapon in the ongoing battle to find sweeteners that were commercially viable and safe. Here, once again, science and advertising concocted another alchemist’s dream – until tested in the courts. We now had another sweet additive that, in many cases, had been stripped entirely of its nutritional value.
Sweetness was the essential hook used to target and catch American children. There seemed little that the major corporations would not do to secure a child’s loyalty to the sweet products pouring from American factories and into the aisles of supermarkets and corner shops, and ultimately into the hands of the young. The evidence of the success of the food corporations was to be measured, however, not merely in the financial returns of the companies involved, but in the expanding waistline of the American people. As the food corporations grew fat on their sweet products, their customers simply grew fat. And so, too, did millions of consumers the world over. What the USA had pioneered, they exported – sweet-tasting soft drinks and unprecedented levels of obesity.
What could be done about it? One stock reply, a mantra of defenders of the food industry, was that individuals had a choice – no one was forced to buy sweetened food and drink. Consumers could resist the blandishments of the modern diet, and look to their own physical well-being. Millions took this route of self-control and, over time, there emerged another rival industry – that of personal fitness, diets, gyms, food fads and bogus claims – much of it in pursuit not merely of a healthy body, but of an idealised body. For all that, it was obvious that more, much more, was needed to turn the tide of global obesity.
16
Turning the Tide – Beyond the Sugar Tax
THERE HAVE BEEN a bewildering assortment of reactions to the growing awareness of the problems of obesity. International organisations – notably the World Heath Organization – have launched global initiatives against excessive sugar, while a number of individual governments, feeling the strain on their medical facilities, have turned to the idea of a ‘sugar tax’ on sugared drinks, which seem to be the main culprit.1 At an individual level, millions of people have set out to counter, in their own distinctive fashion, the problems of obesity and inactivity by following regimes of diet, exercise and the pursuit of general physical well-being. In the process, new industries have emerged to cater for their needs – healthier foodstuffs and shops, diets and exercise programmes, costly fitness centres – a whole culture has been developed as an antidote to the forces that have produced worldwide obesity.
Diets now abound of every conceivable kind and variety, some sensible and medically approved, others rooted in ever more esoteric – and downright dangerous – philosophies and beliefs. Specialist magazines, diet books by the yard, TV programmes, specialist outlets and shops, regimes, diet pills, gymnasiums – all and more offer themselves as an alternative lifestyle and counter-balance to the world of sweet obesity.
The arguments about obesity have even spilled over from medicine and nutrition into a wider social discussion about environmental issues and even about the future of the planet. It also formed an important turning point in the history of the women’s movement when Susie Orbach’s book – Fat is a Feminist Issue – focused attention on weight and body image as key issues in the question of gender politics.
Standing in sharp contrast to obesity, then, is the opposing cult of athleticism and the pursuit of a healthy, ever more beautiful body. Streams of people of all ages, shapes and sizes run, jog, walk, swim and cycle – all bearing witness to a determination to counter obesity and its threat of ill health. Gymnasiums dot the urban landscapes, many of them with plate-glass windows which allow lesser mortals to glimpse the activity within, and wonder at the sweat being expended on the vast array of costly machines designed to keep body and soul in a more acceptable shape. And, of course, to keep weight at an acceptable and healthy level.
In 2015, an estimated one person in eight in Britain – 1.5 million of them in London alone – belonged to a gym. There were an estimated 6,312 ‘fitness facilities’ around Britain, and their market value stood at an estimated £4.3 billion. The phenomenon is now openly discussed as ‘an industry’, its supporters and investors relishing the healthy state of their financial returns year by year. In the USA, naturally, the figures are even more striking. The current estimate of about 36,000 facilities generated an annual income in 2016 of $25.8 billion, and were used by 55 million members. The sporting equipment sold to such places amounted to $ 5.12 billion. Worldwide, an estimated 151 million people used such fitness centers in 2015.2
The evidence for the worldwide diet industry is, if anything, even more astonishing. The British diet industry alone is now worth £2 billion a year, at a time when the NHS spends £2.33 billion on accident and emergency services. In the USA, the industry is worth an annual $60 billion. But we need to consider this alongside some financial snapshots from the fastfood industry. The advertising budget for McDonald’s, for instance, is $2 billion. Another $3 billion is spent each year on packaging breakfast cereals aimed at children.
These figures provide a glimpse into the colossal financi
al and commercial forces at work around us. On the one side, food and drink industries, and their vital advertising allies; on the other, a huge medical alliance and its supporters – the people who have to deal with the problems of obesity – in league with a fitness lobby offering commercial alternatives to obesity. So great is the problem, so powerful the commercial forces at work behind the question of obesity, that even governments hesitate over how best to tackle the problem.
It was clear enough by the early years of the twenty-first century that obesity was yet another consequence of the wider impact of globalisation. In this case, it was a universal damage wrought by modern food and drink, all disgorged by the world’s corporate giants. Yet the problem manifested itself more directly – and worryingly – at the national level; it was up to individual governments to find solutions to their own national problems of obesity. Their reactions varied from country to country. In the case of England, the matter came to a head with the publication in 2015 of a major report by Public Health England: Sugar Reduction: the Evidence for Action. The report pulled no punches, offering a withering review of the problem and a stark outline of the evidence. Along with many other countries, England found itself plagued by obesity on an unprecedented scale, with all the familiar health threats.
The 2015 report blamed sugar. The opening sentence set the tone: ‘We are eating too much sugar, and it is bad for our health.’ The evidence to support the case was stark; almost 25 per cent of adults, 10 per cent of 4–5-year-olds and 19 per cent of 10–11-year-olds in England were recognized as obese, with significant numbers also being overweight.3