At every level, from the farm to the store or the restaurant, the food business has always been very competitive, sometimes brutally so. If you couldn’t accept that, you didn’t belong in the business.
But now food companies have more things to worry about besides their competitors.
Krispy Kreme, for example, has just reported that it was mugged. And the No. 1 suspect is the low-carb fad, typified by the Atkins, Scarsdale and South Beach diets, which prescribe very low carbohydrate intake.
Just a short while ago, it wasn’t at all unusual to find long lines of people waiting to buy boxes of fresh Krispy Kreme doughnuts, still warm from the oven. Now, apparently, there is no waiting, and the firm has had to reduce its sales forecasts and dampen down its financial projections.
The idea that someone who wanted to lose weight might consider cutting back on doughnuts isn’t exactly rocket science, but this is not the first time Americans have paid money to have someone explain the obvious. The growing awareness of how fat we are, as well as the health risks and medical costs that come along with the added weight we’re packing, have provided additional incentives for people to change their diets.
Whether people really will change their eating habits, or simply jump from this fad to the next one that comes along, remains to be seen.
In the meantime, unlike previous weight loss fads – such as the grapefruit diet – virtually every company in the food business seems to be in a race to produce low-carb this or low-carb that. Most food companies are very worried about repositioning themselves within this trend, and companies with fewer options, such as doughnut producers or pasta makers, are very, very worried.
But the food industry has more to be concerned about than a dietary shift. The real threat is in the courtroom. If Americans are fat, someone has to be to blamed, and that someone is not going to be the individual who decided to eat all those cheeseburgers. It’s going to be the companies and the industry that made that food available.
Their very success makes them the target because our economy rewards success with money. They’ve got the money, and in the tort-guilt-victim industry, that makes them the targets.
Last year, McDonald’s survived two class-action lawsuits that in form resembled the litigation against the tobacco industry. The first suit argued that its food caused obesity and other health problems in children. After the first lawsuit was dismissed, a second was launched claiming that the restaurant company knew its food was bad for children and used false advertising to cover this up. This lawsuit, too, was dismissed.
But most of the early lawsuits against the tobacco industry also were unsuccessful.
And there is action on another front.
The documentary “Super Size Me,” now in theaters, depicts a young man who eats exclusively at McDonald’s for a month. Not surprisingly, he gained weight – nearly a pound every day.
By the company’s count, the average person eats at McDonald’s twice a month. So, by our calculation, the young man who ate three meals a day for 30 days at its restaurants would have consumed their fast food at a rate that was 90 times greater than the average American.
Still, that won’t matter. And it won’t matter that the movie isn’t very interesting. It isn’t entertainment. It’s “evidence.”
The devaluation of individual responsibility, the buildup of victimization (especially of “the children”), the depiction of the food industry as deceptive, knowing evildoers, and the class-action litigation are all depressingly similar to the attack on the tobacco industry.
In March, the General Accounting Office released a study of what the 44 states were doing with all the money they are getting from the tobacco industry settlement (nearly $5.2 billion in 2004). Not surprisingly, states seem to have lost their stated interest in the children and don’t seem as intent on health issues or anti-smoking campaigns, either.
Increasingly, what states are using the tobacco funds for is to shore up their general funds – to underwrite what state governments do best: spend money.
There are many good reasons to regret the tobacco money settlement, even if the industry is an unappealing one. The pretense that states cared about children, or about anything other than their cash flow, brought tort litigation to a new level of crassness. It was especially hurtful since it was done in our name.
But if we cannot undo that harm, at least we can avoid repeating it. In our search for svelte shapes, we shouldn’t have to transform the food industry into a monster whose money we covet.
James McCusker is a Bothell economist, educator and consultant. He also writes “Business 101,” which appears monthly in The Snohomish County Business Journal.
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