Recently I was invited to participate in a Roundtable debate sponsored by the Museum of Food and Drink in New York City. Participants included Michele Simon, Derek Yach, Howard Moskowitz and myself. Click here for the full audio of the Roundtable.
The goal of the Roundtable was to bring together experts to answer a motivating question I’ll pose here:
What role should the food industry play to address obesity?
It’s a tough question. I think the food industry has an important role to play in addressing obesity, but I believe the path to success will largely be through policy. As a society we have agreed that government has some role to play to protect the health and safety of its citizens. We are supposed to wear seatbelts; there is fluoride in our water; children must be immunized; and we tax cigarettes and alcohol. We enact policies when there are strong forces influencing people to make choices that are not in their self-interest. In the case of obesity, most people want to be a healthy weight and be disease free. But many factors outside our control influence us to eat poorly. This is the time – when environmental forces and self-interest are at odds – when policy can level the playing field to help people make responsible food choices.
Food companies can of course change buying and eating contexts to promote healthier choices and some have done so. But the reality is that they currently lack strong financial incentives to do much differently. Given the magnitude of the obesity problem, it seems unlikely that a few voluntary changes by some companies will lead to major, sustained changes in population eating habits. Certainly we need efforts from diverse stakeholders, including the food industry, to reverse obesity. But more than anything, I think we need policy changes.
If you’d like to read more about this topic, you can check out a commentary I wrote this year with Jennifer Pomeranz and Jennifer Fisher for the Journal of Consumer Psychology. If you’d like a copy of the article, email me at croberto@hsph.harvard.edu.
You can comment on this post through the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Human Capital LinkedIn page.
