Eat La Spatial Colon Environments by Companies Precursors of a Healt: Anthony Winson Learning Objectives Through this chapter, you can: 1 Better unde environments such as supermark 2 Introduction Canadian society today, like that of most other developed countnes, 1s facing a looming health nisis related to the characteristics of diets and life- styles as they have evolved over the last several decades. The incidence of weight gain and obesity has reached levels never before seen, as has the incidence of diseases such as diabetes, which is closely associated with excessive weight (Statistics Canada 2002; Tremblay and Willms 2000). The recent Canadian Health Measures Survey provides data on measured (as opposed to self-reported) body composition,’ and gives us the most accur- ate picture in this regard to date. It indicates that between 1981 and 2009, among 15-to 19-year-old boys, those classified as overweight or obese rose from 14 per cent to 31 per cent. Among girls in the same age group, that category increased from jzatio Ps lerstand the socio-economic and political dete! ets and schools Become acquainted with some novel conceptual to what drives unhealthy eating among Canadians h Crisis! rminants of key food ‘ols that help in understanding 14 per cent to 25 per cent. Moreover, between 2007 and 2009, about 1 per cent of adult Canadians were underweight, 37 per cent were overweight, and 24 per cent were obese. The sur vey also notes dramatic declines in fitness levels among adults aged 20 to 39. The percentage of these adults whose waist circumference places them at high risk for health problems more than quadrupled in this period, from 5 per cent 10 21 per cent among men, and from 6 per cent 10 31 per cent among women.* Serious chronic diseases such as type I! dia- betes are strongly correlated with excess weigh! and sedentary lifestyle, Canada, like many other countries, has seen a disturbing increase in the incidence of type 11 diabetes in recent years a there is evidence that its rate of increase has bee"1p cenously underestimated (Lipscombe and 7) The tendenicy of governments so far wt 12 Spar se extent that they have come to te rms hing genous issue, has largely been to focus on issues relaced to sedentary lifestyles and to encourage Fe ur peti mes food environment has not been tackled by policy makers, with very few exceptions Undoubtedly {hus inaction is atleast partly due to the politcal sensitivity of the issue, and the powerful vested smerests that control our food system While various factors shape eati family influences, peer pressures, the physical environment, and 50 on (see Raine 2005), pol- juical economic determinants of diet have yet to receive the full attention they warrant. As Power argues, ‘it is important to explore how the food industry shapes social norms around eating jin Canada; how those in different positions in social space (e-g., class, sex, ethnicity, age, etc.) are targeted by food marketers; and how people take up and act on those marketing messages and thus produce and reproduce food norms and culture’ (2005). This chapter considers the contemporary food environment as a problematic subject in need of critical analysis. It examines Canadian institutional food environments with a view to understanding the key factors shaping the nutri- tional content of their offerings. The focus here is on two institutional domains—the supermarket chain store and the high school food environ- ment, It draws on the authors own recent research and that of others to make the case that the degradation of contemporary food environ- ments in Canada plays a significant role in exacerbating widespread weight gain and obes- ity and their related serious health outcomes. eater physical activity for differents Conceptual Issues In previously published research I argue for the use of several concepts that aid in understand- ing the present content and factors shaping (20 $e Val Colonie a810N OF Food Envronm contemporary { jood Reel environ ments, which are Pseudo-foods, differential oncentration muse diferenaton ne en 2008) In adaiuon’ al auerpt to carly the comea ments and show fe tn ee be used in explonng food emunonmena Food environments, as termed. ty those institutional spheres where food cane Played forsale and/or consumed Unet too-distant past food se analy ERE not consumed within he hose side. This unity of production and cme Preval for thoutnds af ye kets have existed a eat as etl as the Mayan, and classical Greco: ae ances (See Garnsey 1999, ch 2). However, the rise of Indus capitalism undermined this unity 5 what became the developed world, as masses of people were forced off the land and into the industrilizingc incr zing cities. (This pattern has been the perience of much of the global South a well.) The household unity of production and consumption that was a central institution of agrarian societies for millennia has largely been broken. This fact alone has been fundamental 0 the development ofthe food industry. thas also allowed processors, and more recently retailers, to dramatically shift food consumption patterns and shape mass diets ‘Today some noticeable differences distin- guish the procurement of food from its con- sumption. Foodstuflstoday are among the world’ most valuable commodities to be bought, trans- ported, and sold, and indeed a very significant proportion of our labour force is in some way involved with these commodity chains. For most people, in keeping with the long-standing evolu- tion of capitalist economies all over the world, Pi food is procured from private, for-profit institu: tions, which are now dominated by supermarket chain-store operations that increasingly oper ate on a global scale. It had been thought that this situation characterized only the developed countries, but recent research has made clear country- and consumption ars, although food ML mlj “yl HH DLL LAL ieee me paca Cones and eg ps, minerals, and UNS ese er chains sn the 38 Te do-foods are typically snmp the mayor annsads of supermarket has 1 beat ent an what AS been eg " ma 1 ma well, particularly 19 Asta aM pone nd sugar CHESS) foods, wh, sn Ane legue 200 bie : : 1 Berd Boe a er of recent legislation that resin Lan Amenca (Reardon and Re inet al, 2003) food consumption IS Unlike procurement, f ee cull charactenzed by the continuing eso stfor-profit asa spheres AC oe Se? ese and mth phere mare pecures are not yet as intrusive in shaping the Pink we consume Another significant forgot sphere of fod consumpaon the school, where food environments traditionally were run on a not-for profit basis, although this situation 1s rapidly: changing in many jurisdic- ions, with notable consequences. But even in institutional spheres where profit-making, y the influence of s | argue below. constraints do not hold sw: market pressures may be felt, Overall, however, consumption is increasingly taking place in for-profit insututional settings; ume constraints on family life, both parents working away from home, the loss of culin= ary skills, and other influences determine that more and more people find they must eat away from home, or eat food prepared by others elsewhere that 1s then brought home. As Austin etal. (2005: 1575) note, Americans now spend almost half of their food expenditures away from home, and ‘among youths aged 12 to 18 years, the percentage of total energy intake consumed from fast-food and other restaurants hhas increased from 6.5 per cent in 1977-1978 to 19.3 per cent in 1994-1996’. This situation implies loss of control over nutritional content, as decisions around ingredients (e.g , quantities of sugar and salt) and preparation techniques (eg. deep-frying versus steaming vegetables) are alienated to other actors in the food system Pseudo-foods Pseudo-oods ate those nutrient-poor edible Products that are ypiclly high i lat, supe and sat and often provide overabundant ot ones. They are notably low in nuttints sc, 9 ————_ pject of f. fl aay rem to children and youth (iCom adverts atic pseudo-foods include prod, 2006). While renown as junk foode faa moore pe soft drinks, and the like), they a, ae Je products not usually thought of ag. aed rorexample, many ofthe juice'bere jae a today qualify as pseudo-foods because gr heir high sugar content and absence of the utrients associated with products made from pure juices. Many of the frozen dairy produc that are proliferating in supermarkets in recen, years can be considered pseudo-foods, because of their high fat and sugar content and low levels of essential nutrients. [ce cream, the dominant frozen dairy product in supermarkets and one that now occupies more shelf space than fluid milk, typically has around 50 per cent of its cal. ories coming from fat, although in some vatietes this figure is as high ‘as 70 per cent (Nutribase 2001: 309-12).° These and other high-profile supermarket products such as_pre-sweetened breakfast cereals, plus the copious quantities of soft drinks, confectionaries, and sugar- and trans fat-laden baked goods, as well as the pro liferation of salty snack products (which aver. age 50 per cent calories from fat [Nutribase 2001: 460-31), constitute a substantial part of the modern supermarket food environment and are also ubiquitous in other food environments, Table 12.1 provides a graphic illustration of the futtitional differences underlying the pseudo- foodsfood divide are the Differential Profits Differential profit is @ concept that attempts ‘0 account for the fact that where foodstalls LE very highly commoditized, some food and beverage Products attract higher returns, or Profits, for their sellers than others, In a cap- talist economy, Profit, and the rate at which it