Here is What the Food Industry Doesn’t Want You to Know

Dear Fellow Vermonter, 

Last week, as Chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP), I led a hearing to discuss the horrific twin-epidemics we are experiencing in obesity and diabetes. You can watch the full hearing here. 

For decades, Congress and the FDA have allowed giant food and beverage corporations to make huge profits by enticing children and adults to consume ultra-processed foods and beverages loaded up with sugar, salt, and saturated fat. The result: the health of our kids and all Americans is being undermined.

Some facts:

• The rate of childhood obesity in America has TRIPLED since the 1970s. It has become so bad that one out of every five kids are now obese.
• Over 40 percent of adults in our country today are obese.
• More than 35 million Americans have Type 2 diabetes – which is over 10 percent of our population. About 90 percent of Americans with Type 2 diabetes are also obese.
• In Vermont, 8.4 percent of our adult population is living with diabetes, and 26.8 percent is living with obesity. Every year in Vermont, an estimated 3,100 adults are diagnosed with diabetes.
• Diabetes is not only a serious illness unto itself, but it is a contributing factor to heart disease, stroke, amputations, blindness, and kidney failure.
• The cost of treating diabetes is also staggering. The total cost of diabetes in the U.S. was nearly $413 billion last year – up 27 percent over the past six years. This amounts to about 10 percent of our total health care expenditures as a country. This is an extraordinary and unsustainable amount of money.
• There is growing evidence, that these foods are deliberately designed to be addictive – similar to cigarettes and alcohol – and lead to a higher risk of Type 2 diabetes. Shockingly, studies show that ultra-processed foods make up an incredible 73 percent of our nation’s food supply.
  
  

Getty Images, Justin Sullivan

Let’s be clear: None of this is happening by accident.

The food and beverage industry is spending $14 billion a year on advertising to push these unhealthy products onto the American consumer. Even worse, $2 billion of this money is spent to directly advertise these unhealthy products to our kids in order to get them hooked at an early age.

Studies show that children and teens view about 4,000 food and beverage ads on television each year, an average of 10 advertisements each day. Last year, for example, Coca-Cola spent $327 million on advertising in the United States alone, while it raked in more than $9.5 billion in profits.

Yet, not one of their ads will tell you that a 20-ounce bottle of Coke contains more than 15 teaspoons of sugar – over twice the recommended daily limit for kids. Not one of their ads will tell you that drinking one can of Coke a day could increase your chances of getting Type 2 diabetes by up to 26%.

We must take on the food and beverage industry, just as we took on the tobacco industry. Nearly 30 years ago, the FDA and Congress had the courage to take on the tobacco industry whose products killed over 400,000 Americans every year. And, as a result of these actions, smoking rates among adults dropped from 43 percent in 1965 to 12 percent in 2023. Smoking rates among teens dropped even more significantly. It is time to show that kind of courage again.
  
To start, we must put strong warning labels on unhealthy foods and beverages and we must ban junk food ads targeted to kids. The National Institutes of Health has estimated that if the United States banned fast-food advertising marketed to children, we could cut the childhood obesity rate by up to 18%. In April, I introduced legislation to make this a reality. 

Other countries have taken action like this and seen major results. In the 1980s, Quebec banned junk food advertising to children under 13. Today, Quebec has the lowest childhood obesity rate in Canada and the highest consumption of fruits and vegetables of any Canadian province. Last summer, the World Health Organization called for countries to substantially reduce the marketing of junk food to children, and Norway announced that it would be banning all food and beverage advertisements to children. Ireland, Portugal, South Korea, Spain, Taiwan, and several other major countries have also either seriously restricted or banned junk food ads targeted to children. 

Bottom line is this: We cannot continue to allow large corporations to put their profits ahead of the health of our children. It’s time to take action.  

Sincerely,