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10.13.2005

“HartBeat” is The Hartman Group's FREE online newsletter, providing insight, analysis, information and strategy to give business leaders the knowledge and vision to build sustainable brands.

For more Hartman Group articles on FOOD PYRAMID, click here...

04.21.2005 "Consumer Implications of the New Food Pyramid"

For more Hartman Group articles on KIDS' FOOD CULTURE, click here...

04.14.2005 "Emerging Trends in Parenting the Healthy Eater"

11.11.2004 "What's for Dinner?: Understanding Meal Fragmentation as a Cultural Phenomenon"

09.23.2004 "Asian Dinner Mixes & the Family Meal: Evolving Food Culture"

For more Hartman Group articles on OBESTIY, click here...

03.10.2005 "The Balance Trap"

10.26.2004 "What If It's Not About the Food After All"

08.19.2004 "7 Myths of Obesity in America"

08.05.2004 "Snacking Our Way Through the Day: Food Culture in America"

06.17.2004 "Addressing the Problem of Obesity"

02.11.2004 "Don't Tell Me I'm Obese, I'm Just Big-Boned"

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(food) Pyramid Schemes and The Myth Of Following Nutritional Guidelines

The government's latest attempt at curbing the obesity pandemic in America may be well intentioned, but, once again, the FDA fails to see that food is not the problem. "Playing dress up" doesn't make the food pyramid any more effective for kids than it does for adults. The media feeding frenzy surrounding childhood obesity issues has compelled the federal government to do something, anything to demonstrate its commitment to solving the problem, even if it is to put a new spin on a tired, unsuccessful polygonal chart.

Let's see if I understand the new food pyramids for adults and kids rationale. According to Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns, "people have gotten fatter since the food pyramid debuted in 1992." He is on record as saying that that the original pyramid had become "quite familiar, but few Americans follow the recommendations." So, along comes a new more complex version for adults and now what is touted as a child-friendly version for kids. Sounds like a pyramid scheme to me.

In the classic pyramid scams, the person at the top gets a large number of people down line to "buy-in" to the concept. If no one supports it, the pyramid collapses. The fraud involved in pyramid schemes is due to the lack of real wealth created for each of the investors. The problem with the FDA's new "pyramid schemes" is that people weren't all that interested in following the original guidelines, and now with a more complex set of guidelines, have all but guaranteed low acceptance and support.

This is why the MyPyramid concept for adults and kids is doomed to fail: American consumers simply cannot and will not eat according to a scientific formula, no matter how artfully or kid-friendly it is packaged. In other words, it is not the content, packaging or marketing of the food pyramid that's the problem; it's the pyramid itself. More specifically, pretty pictures and online game gimmickry won't change eating behavior.

The government needs a dose of reality marketing. From their vantage point, people live structured, simple, predictable, routine lives. No matter what they say, the opposite is actually true. As our research has proven over time, people lead complicated, messy lives characterized by irrational purchase/consumption behavior.

When junk (a.k.a. snack) food becomes contraband

You can't blame the Oreo or the M&M or the Lay's Potato Chip for the nutritional problems inside or outside the school. You can remove a vending machine from the school lunchroom, but you haven't effected any real change in eating behavior; you've just postponed it to another time and place. Banning certain types of foods is a logic that targets ingredients contained in the food products rather than understanding the experience of consuming food in the contexts of everyday life.

Treating certain types of foods, such as French fries, as an illegal controlled substance will not delivered intended results. As one student said in an NPR newstory on the subject of healthy eating, "It is not going to stop me from eating them; I like 'em and I'm going to keep eating them."

Today's policy making is about regulating (banning) what is eaten and not about how much is eaten or when it is okay to eat. At the end of the day it really is not about the food. Food manufacturers can make foods "better for you," but that doesn't change consumption behavior.

The family that eats together stays (thin) together

The family meal has always played an important role in helping to maintain healthy weight levels among adults and children. Eating is first and foremost a social and cultural activity. Throughout the history of civilization, we have traditionally shared meals with others be it by family, clan, class or tribe. In this, eating has established itself as one of the fundamental rituals of collective life.

These collective rituals actually fulfill critical functions in social cultures. The bottom line is that we find in the case of food that the physical act of eating together actually serves to regulate food portioning and food consumption, in the process of caloric intake. It is difficult for children to overeat when Mom or Dad dish out the food.

But today's parents and children lead very busy, active lives. Combine this reality with the increasing penchant toward finicky eating - our growing permission for children's own unique food preferences - and it is no wonder that American consumers are struggling to eat together as a family.

Yet now, we are supposed to believe that whomever is in charge of preparing, obtaining and/or serving the family meal is now expected to take into account the unique food needs of each member based on their differing lifestyles and nutritional needs as suggested by these new food pyramids and eating guidelines.

The new government guidelines promoting individualized programs and pyramids actually encourage independent eating while simultaneously discouraging communal meals. It is already a struggle to get American families to eat meals together more frequently in our fragmented lives.

Idle, unregulated snacking is a recent phenomenon. No other civilization in the history of humankind, outside the contemporary West, has had a culture of snacking - especially alone. When parents give children snacks, even healthier snack food alternatives such as a bag of baby carrots to munch on, what they are really doing is educating the kids that it is okay to eat alone without regulation.

We can do better

As with most scientific studies, they stress prevention and treatment as the remedy for what's ailing you. That may be well and good for treating something like, say, high blood pressure. But, when it comes to preventing and treating excessive weight gain the more effective prescription is not medicinal but cultural.

It is apparent that few researchers, government or otherwise, have spent any great deal of time understanding the role that everyday cultural habits and dispositions play in America's obesity rates, especially as they pertain to poor diet and exercise. And it is these cultural drivers of food consumption that have real implications for food marketers.

Rather than creating colorful pyramid charts, dictating formulaic guidelines and preaching about diet and exercise, the government (AND companies) interested in joining the battle against the bulge may do better by developing messaging that shows genuine empathy for the way we eat - such as snacking and indulging - that make self-control of food intake so difficult and by offering innovative social strategies consumers can actually use to transform at-school, in-between-meal and organized meal times into obesity-fighting mechanisms.

Back at the FDA...

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