RFK's War on Food Dyes and Food Additives

A brief discussion of what RFK's latest initiative will likely accomplish

In the past week, the grass fire over #RFK’s war on #artificial colouring and food additives has been subsumed by concerns about the nuclear kind. While Iran has seemingly backed away from the brink, the war on #Froot Loops is still on. Will anything wholesome come of all this?

There is no question that Canada and our North American cousins are suffering from an epidemic of ill health. Some of this concerns higher rates of autoimmune disease and allergy. But the bigger problem concerns overweight and obsesity.

Obesity rates in Canada only look good by comparison to the awful figures from the US and Mexico. In the US, 73 per cent of people are overweight and 42 per cent are obese. The rates in Mexico are similar to the US. In Canada, the obesity rate is 30 per cent.

You may have an uncle who lived into his 80s carrying an extra 50 kg, but for the rest of us, obesity carries a host of life-shortening complications: diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, and cancer, to name a few.

A fat comedian who dies young is almost a cliché, but when you of think of John Candy (dead at 43), John Pinette (dead at 50) and Ralphe May (dead at 45), it’s anything but funny.

Every day the Internet offers new alternative explanations of our collective weight problem, but having talked to thousands about their family diets, I think I know something about the answer. Excess calories are a lot of the problem, but it’s a lot more complicated than that.

To begin with, obesity is usually a familial condition. If I’m seeing a kid for problems related to his weight, you don’t have to be a fortune teller to predict that the mother, father and possibly other siblings struggle with the same issues.

In fact, we published a study showing that a lot of parents of overweight kids don’t think there’s a problem. As everybody in the family is carrying some extra weight, little Joey looks like his other relatives. In the parents’ eyes, Joey looks normal and besides, as a young, well-padded kid, he looks kinda cute. Many families conclude that the concern over excess weight is only the doctor’s problem.

This is the point where I take a diet history of the past 24 hours, an exercise which usually takes about five minutes. What did Joey have for breakfast, lunch, and dinner? What did he eat and drink between these meals? As mentioned in a previous column, the actual calories consume typically sound pretty normal. They may be about 10 per cent more than he should consume, but it’s consistency that explains the problem: the consistency of the foods one eats and the consistency with which one eats them.

In earlier articles, I have discussed the role of pasta, potatoes, pizza and pop as food categories that continually pop up in dietary histories.

The poster child for pasta is Kraft Dinner, at about 1,000 calories per box, once prepared. Potatoes, whether mashed or deep fried, are a consistent family favourite. On average, Canadians consume about 70 kg per person every year. That’s 150 calories per day, before you add butter or oil from deep frying.

Pizza, or take-out meals in general, are clearly popular, as Canadians spend $44.8 billion on fast food every year – about $1000 per person.

Rounding out the four Ps is pop, of which we consume about 2.26 Billion litres, or 56 liters per person, each year.

This is where we come back to the artificial food dyes, additive and overly processed food. The food industry (think Tyson Foods, Nestle and JBS) are motivated by generating healthy corporate profits rather than keeping you healthy.

Starchy foods and sugar are simple carbohydrates: cheap to produce, cheap to transport and easy to market. Carbs are digested within minutes and fill you with brief but intense pleasure. The fact that they turn on the pleasure hormones in your brain is what makes them so addictive and it’s the artificial food dyes and additives that make them look appealing.

The argument soon gets simplified to the discussion about eliminating the food additives, preservatives and dyes. The news is that the big corporate food companies such as Kraft, Heinz and General Mills are willing to change, but mostly they only want to tinker around the edges of the problem. If you think that taking the artificial food dyes out of their breakfast cereals is going to help reverse obesity, I have a bridge to sell you.

Changing appetites will take generations. As with many things, change begins with education. In a variation on the lightbulb joke. “How many therapists does it take to change a light bulb? One, but the light bulb has to want to change,” many families are motivated to healthier eating, but the overwhelming barrage of nutrition-related information and misinformation is more than confusing.

Those who can afford it are often attracted to the “natural food” movement. The $6.5 billion per year Canadians spends on natural food products equals the amount Canadians spend on pop per year.

While natural foods minimize exposure to chemicals and preservatives, it’s highly likely that the quantity and the nutritional balance of food will end up being far more impactful than efforts at curbing food additives.

Balanced eating is easier when we practice “#slow eating.”

Having more sit-down, no-media family meals and emphasizing good table manners (no elbows on the table and using a knife and fork) naturally slows down food shoveling.

Preparing family meals from basic ingredients helps to minimize carbs and boosts the consumption of healthier green vegetables, fruit and cereal fibre, and encourages the modest consumption of protein.

When combined and sustained, these habits help us form new habits that can keep all of us in the game much longer.

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