Schools, Corporations, and the War on Childhood Obesity

How Corporate Philanthropy Shapes Public Health and Education

Darren Powell

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780815355144
• eBook ISBN: 9781351130578
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Challenging the idea that the corporate 'war' against childhood obesity is normal, necessary, or harmless, this book exposes healthy lifestyles education as a form of mis-education that shapes how students learn about health, corporations, and consumption. Drawing on ethnographic research and studies from across the globe, this book explores how corporations fund, devise, and implement various programmes in schools as 'part of the solution' to childhood obesity.

Including perspectives from children, teachers, school leaders, and both public and private external providers on how children's health and 'healthy consumption' is understood and experienced, this book is divided into eight accessible chapters which include:

• Schooling the childhood obesity 'crisis';
• The corporate 'gift' of healthy lifestyles;
• 'Coming together' to solve obesity;
• Learning about health, fatness, and 'good' choices; and
• Shaping the (un)healthy child-consumer

Schools, Corporations, and the War on Childhood Obesity is the perfect resource for postgraduate students and academics working in the public health or education field, or those taking courses on the sociology of education, health and physical education, curriculum, pedagogy, ethnography, or critical theory, who are looking to gain an insight into the current situation surrounding obesity and health in corporations and schools.

1

CORPORATIONS AND THE ‘WAR ON CHILDHOOD OBESITY’

In 2010, I was conducting a research project with a class of children from a primary school in Auckland, New Zealand. On my first day in the school, a group of children were about to take photographs of their classmates ‘in action’ during one of their regular physical education lessons. I dutifully checked the cameras: batteries charged – check; camera works – check; memory blank – no. There were a series of images stored on the camera that seemed out of place; images that initially shocked me. “What's happening in these photos?” I asked Daisy, one of my nine-year-old participants. “Oh”, she nonchalantly replied, “last week Ronald McDonald came to school to take us for fitness”. This is when I first began to think seriously about the troubling notion that having food and drink corporations teach children in schools was a common-sense solution to childhood obesity and children's ‘unhealthy’ lifestyles.

I became increasingly curious about why McDonald's wanted to teach children about fitness (and, as it turned out, about health, physical activity, and the McDonald's brand). A number of other questions also emerged. What other food and drink corporations were in schools? What were they trying to teach children about fitness or health? Who else was involved? After a quick search through corporate websites, educational resources in schools, and academic literature, three things became clear. First, there were a number of private sector organisations, particularly those with links to the food and drink industry, that were producing educational resources and other types of programmes to be used in schools. Second, there appeared to be a global attempt by multinational corporations to ‘teach’ (or at least be seen to teach) children about health, with the expressed goal to not only make children live healthy lifestyles, but also prevent childhood obesity. And finally, there had been little criticism in the media or academic literature about this particular phenomenon. It seemed to have been passed by relatively unnoticed and unremarked on. Given the public and political backlash against ‘Big Food’ and its impact on children's health, I found this rather surprising. How was it that the very companies blamed for the problem of childhood obesity are now seen as part of the solution?

This book emerges from a research project conducted between 2011 and 2015 (see Powell, 2015). The evidence for this project was collected and analysed by using a critical ethnographic approach (Madison, 2012) with three primary schools in Auckland, New Zealand: St Saviour's School, Reynard Intermediate School, and Dudley School¹ (for further details on the approach and the three schools, see the Methodological Appendix). Critical ethnography was a productive and valuable way of conducting research that allowed me to investigate not only what those with the ‘will to govern’ (Li, 2007) want to happen (e.g. fight obesity, change marketing practices, increase consumption), but also what actually happens when these programmes meet their intended targets – children in schools. By gathering together a number of ethnographic methods – spending time in schools, building relationships, talking with participants, observing participants ‘in action’, journaling, and collecting documentary evidence – I was able to interact with members of three school communities and collect evidence about the everyday practices that occurred in these schools. It was an approach that enabled me to pay close attention to place, space, context, and individual subjects; to understand the ‘realities’ of these schools, teachers, and their students; and to examine the knowledge, understandings, and perspectives of those who experienced the corporate ‘part of the solution’ to childhood obesity. What follows is a theoretically informed analysis of the global and local ‘war on childhood obesity’ being fought in schools – a battle that may do more harm than good.

Supersized kids: corporations as a cause of childhood obesity

Corporations, particularly those of the food and drink industry, regularly incur the wrath of anti-obesity campaigners, politicians, public health researchers, nutritionists, children's advocacy groups, journalists, celebrity chefs, and the public. A number of popular books, movies, and television programmes have been published on the topic of food and drink corporations and their links to childhood obesity: Fast Food Nation, Food Politics, Fat Land, Supersize Me, Food, Inc., The Weight of the Nation, That Sugar Film – the list goes on. These critiques of the food and drink industry are based on the idea that ‘junk food’ companies “do everything possible to persuade people to eat more – more food, more often, and in larger portions – no matter what it does to waistlines or well-being” (Nestle, n.d., para. 1). In a nutshell, there is a shared belief that the corporate quest for profit has resulted in increasingly unhealthy lifestyles and an ‘epidemic’ of childhood obesity.

It is hardly surprising that the food and drink industry now rejects and refutes claims that their products and advertising strategies are responsible for causing childhood obesity. Various representatives and lobbyists for Big Food are now vocal about the food industry's relationship with childhood obesity and regularly provide media releases to prove their socially responsible and obesity-fighting activities, such as sponsoring sports events, reformulating products, modifying marketing practices, stopping the sale of sugar-sweetened beverages to schools (directly, anyway), and pledging to support public health initiatives. The public is routinely informed that the marketing practices of food and drink companies are already regulated, albeit only self-regulated, and do not need further government intervention. Children's health, eating, exercise, and fatness are positioned as the responsibility of children and parents, and those who bemoan the place of ‘junk food’ and advertising in today's society are brushed off as the ‘food police’ who “have forgotten the joys of childhood” (Stewart, 2014, para. 14). The food and drink industry continues to reinforce the idea that everyone is to blame for obesity. For instance, New Zealand's former Food Industry Group (now the Food & Grocery Council) stated in their 2011–2012 annual report:

As with many of society's issues, much starts in the home and at an early age. Education needs to increase and attitudes need to change here and in all sectors of society. Only a total community response will result in people taking greater personal responsibility for food and drink intake, energy output and their long-term health. (Food Industry Group, 2012, p. 2)

As Indra Nooyi, CEO of PepsiCo, also argued: “If all consumers exercised, did what they had to do, the problem of obesity wouldn't exist” (Mangalindan, 2010, para. 6). Although food and drink companies continue to emphasise that they are not part of the problem of childhood obesity, what is rather remarkable is how they now promote themselves as part of the solution.

‘Dear Dr Chan’: Big Food's commitment to the World Health Organization

In 2011, the International Food & Beverage Alliance (IFBA), a formalised coalition between the CEOs of multinational giants Nestlé, General Mills, Ferrero, Kellogg's, Grupo Bimbo, Kraft Foods (now Mondelēz International), Mars, PepsiCo, The Coca-Cola Company, and Unilever,² wrote Dr Margaret Chan, the erstwhile Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO):

We all recognize that non-communicable diseases and childhood obesity are major public health problems that require multi-stakeholder solutions. As a member of the private sector, we firmly believe that the food industry has a role to play as part of the solution, and have committed our time, expertise and resources to do our part. (International Food & Beverage Alliance, 2011, p. 1)

This re-positioning of corporations from obesity ‘causers’ to obesity ‘solvers’ has not gone entirely unnoticed. A number of scholars have critiqued some of the promises, pledges, partnerships, and corporate social responsibility programmes designed and/or enacted by the private sector in the name of being ‘part of the solution’ to childhood obesity (e.g., see Herrick, 2009; Koplan & Brownell, 2010; Molnar, 2005; O'Dowd, 2011; Simon, 2006). Few researchers have, however, critically examined how schools or children have been drawn into this new corporate war on childhood obesity. Of course, anyone who dares to challenge the sincerity of the food and drink industry's attempts to make children healthier is criticised by Big Food, its CEOs, spokespeople, and lobbyists. For instance, when Koplan and Brownell (2010, p. 1487) criticised the food and drink industry's response to the obesity ‘threat’ as primarily a means for the industry “to avoid public criticism and forestall government intervention”, PepsiCo-funded researchers (Mensah et al., 2011, p. 361) responded that this assertion was “disingenuous in light of multiple recent calls for the industry to engage in partnerships in the prevention and control of obesity”. Similarly, Katherine Rich, CEO for the New Zealand Food and Grocery Council (2013, para. 6), stated that any claims that the food and drink industry “is not interested in being part of the solution to the obesity epidemic … are made out of ignorance”. This tension between the official intent of Big Food – to genuinely be part of the solution to childhood obesity – and my own supposedly ‘ignorant’ perception that it is actually the food and drink industry that is being somewhat disingenuous was a considerable motivation to research this relatively new phenomenon: the corporate-led, school-based ‘war on childhood obesity’.

Schools, corporations, and childhood obesity

The moral and medical panics about childhood obesity and ‘couch-potato kids’ have resulted in a “rapid proliferation of policies and interventions” (Pike, 2010, p. 82), many of which target children in schools. Despite the perception that schools are an ‘obvious solution’ to childhood obesity (as well as numerous other social, emotional, health, and economic problems), Gard and Vander Schee (2011) caution that this perspective may be naïve and misguided as there is a long history of school-based interventions failing to shape children's body weight. Although I will more closely examine the problematic positioning of schools as effective and appropriate sites to fight obesity in Chapter 2, it is important to point out here the relative ease with which schools and corporations have been brought together to fight the so-called war.

As one example, back in 2008 and 2010, approximately one-fifth of all primary school students in New Zealand participated in McDonald's My Greatest Feat³ pedometer programme (the reason why Ronald McDonald had been in the primary school I mentioned earlier). This programme was widely promoted – on the news, on television, in McDonald's restaurants, online, and in schools. Yet there was not a single news story, opinion piece, or journal article that questioned why McDonald's wanted to ‘teach’ children in schools, what children were learning, or how McDonald's has been ‘allowed’ into these schools. I found it astonishing that a corporation frequently criticised for worsening children's ill health could be effortlessly re-invented as both a health promoter and a health educator.

On further examination I found that the food and drink industry's newfound interest in schools and obesity was closely connected to their reconfigured policies on marketing to children. In 2009, the IFBA introduced a self-regulated Global Policy on Marketing and Advertising to Children, whereby each member agreed to adopt

a global marketing policy to children which covers all of the countries around the world in which it operates. IFBA's global marketing approach has been shown to effectively limit how and what IFBA companies advertise to children under 12 years. (International Food & Beverage Alliance, 2011, p. 2, my emphases)

In addition to the Global Policy on Marketing and Advertising to Children, the IFBA members made – and continue to make – national and regional (self-regulated) ‘pledges’ to reduce childhood obesity and to reduce marketing to children, such as those in the Partnership for a Healthier America, the now defunct Public Health Responsibility Deal in the United Kingdom, the EU Pledge, and the recently launched Healthy Kids Industry Pledge in New Zealand. In countries where no specific pledge is made, the IFBA stated that the Global Policy on Marketing and Advertising to Children would still apply. This policy and the associated promises and commitments signalled a new phase in marketing to children. On the surface, this global policy was promoted as ‘limiting’ how and what these corporations can advertise to “children under 12 years” (even though UNICEF defines a child as someone 16 years of age and under). In fact, the Association of New Zealand Advertisers Inc.⁴ (2014, p. 8) endorsed the IFBA's Global Policy on Marketing and Advertising to Children by stating it was “wrong to suggest that industry is not committed to responsible marketing”. However, there was one industry promise that included a noteworthy exception; an exception that seemed to actually create further opportunities for the food and beverage industry to advertise to children:

We expanded our global policy on marketing and advertising to children by adding a schools policy. IFBA members have committed, at a minimum, not to engage in any commercial communications to students related to food and beverage products in primary schools, except where specifically requested by, or agreed with, the school administration for educational purposes. (International Food & Beverage Alliance, 2011, p. 4, my emphases)

This book interrogates these so-called educational purposes and the purpose they might serve for corporations, schools, principals, teachers, and students. Here I ask a number of questions that are seldom raised or answered in mainstream media or academic writing. What are the reasons schools request corporations to engage in “product marketing communications to students in primary schools”? What forms do these communications take? Why do teachers or school leaders ‘employ’ McDonald's and other private sector organisations to teach children in schools? What do children ‘learn’? How do corporations ‘win’ from their relationships? And how might schools, teachers, and children actually ‘lose’?

There has been much scholarly and public criticism of the impact of corporations, ‘junk food’ and advertising on children's health. There is a plethora of quantitative research on the ‘successes’ of anti-obesity interventions, both in schools and beyond....

Table of contents

• Cover
• Endorsements
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Corporations and the ‘war on childhood obesity’
• 2 Schooling the childhood obesity ‘crisis’
• 3 The corporate ‘gift’ of healthy lifestyles
• 4 ‘Coming together’ to solve obesity
• 5 The new ‘experts’ in children’s health and education
• 6 Learning about health, fatness, and ‘good’ choices
• 7 Shaping the (un)healthy child-consumer
• 8 Conclusions
• Methodological appendix: A critical ethnography
• Index