There is a full blown crisis brewing at The Carron Fish Bar, a fish and chip shop in Stonehaven, a small town on Scotland's northeast coast. Originally known as the Haven Chip Bar, the infamous Fried Mars Bar was said to have been invented there in 1995. As one of the world’s preeminent sources of fat, sugar and calories, The Carron's Fried Mars Bar quickly became a worldwide epicurean phenomenon and spawned a range of wannabes including deep fried Snickers, Bounty and Moro bars. No stranger to controversy, the Fried Mars Bar even had its detractors . Nevertheless, it kept sliding forward, amply lubricated by its own drippings.
Now, however, the Fried Mars Bar faces one of the greatest challenges of its life. The international food giant, Mars, has sent a formal letter to The Carron Fish Bar demanding that a disclaimer be made for the product because it is not in line with their healthy lifestyles marketing code – a code responsible for other products such as Bounty, Snickers, Revels, M&Ms, Maltesers and Twix in addition to their astronomically successful (or successfully astronomical) line of Mars, Milky Way, Magic Stars, Galaxy and the lesser known, Planets.
At this stage, it is not known what will happen if The Carron refuses to display the demanded disclaimer. The restaurant has not responded as yet. It may very well be that they will no longer be able to call their specialty a Fried Mars Bar, however, in keeping with the enormously successful Mars astronomical theme, they may choose to call it a UFO or Unidentified Frying Object!
An obvious irony of the blame game is that it is directed towards the public. If you looking to asses blame, it is very difficult to point the finger at the very public you are trying to convince. This is the reason why so few blame articles focus on self-responsibility. After all, it’s much easier to blame external influences rather than consumers. The traditional whipping boy has been the food industry. They have been blamed for making foods taste too good, for serving up portions that are too large and for making foods that are too cheap. The food industry has countered by saying that this is what the public wants and by trying to modify foods to comply with the nutritional imperatives directed by public health and consumer advocacy groups.
But the blame game has just not resulted in any success on the obesity front.
Perhaps it is time to drop the blame game and start looking at the actual evidence. A recent publication, readily available online , describes an analysis of energy expenditures in the US since the 1960s. In the 1960s, this analysis indicates that almost half the jobs in US private industry required a moderate level of physical activity. This has dropped dramatically to the point where now less than 20% of the jobs require the same level of energy expenditure. The analysis shows that this difference in energy expenditure translates to more than an average of 100 calories per day for both men and women. For men, the difference was 142 calories per day. This difference was then inserted in models that predict weight changes resulting from daily energy expenditures and was found to closely match the weight changes that have actually taken place during the past five decades.
As an example, for anyone weighing 170 lbs. in 1968, a 142 calories per day reduction in energy expenditure would result in a new weight of 198 lbs. today. These figures correspond well with the actual NHANES figures on the obesity epidemic. There is no blame to assess here. Technological development, world economic shifts and a move away from manufacturing towards a service economy has resulted in us pushing pencils more than wheelbarrows – in fact, were not even pushing pencils anymore, we’re tapping keyboards. Northern Europeans have fared somewhat better in this transition because their demographics encourages a greater energy expenditure to get to and from the workplace and pride in appearance is generally greater than it is in the US.
So, if we resist engaging in the blame game and actually try to solve the problem what can we do? If we simply look at the numbers, a walk of ½ hour per day is all that’s needed to reverse the trend and completely make up for the lost energy expenditure which occurred during the last 50 years! While there will always be a few employees physically unable to walk ½ hour at lunch, most can certainly do so. Perhaps employers can subsidize part of the cost of lunch for those employees that walk a mile and a half at lunch. Certainly, we have the technology to track this if the honor system won’t work. The point is that employers prefer healthy employees and obesity is a major obstacle to this. Anything that will serve as a positive incentive would be useful. The small investment in employees’ health would pay significant dividends.
It’s time to end the blame game.
The obesity epidemic has evidence-based causes and using the ideological blame game instead of the actual epidemiological evidence to achieve a solution will only delay it. There are better ways and we must get to them.
