Last month, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) passed stringent new standards intended to boost the production and sale of electric and hybrid vehicles here and nationwide, reports the Christian Science Monitor. The new rules mandate that 15 percent of new cars sold in the state by 2025 run with zero or near-zero emissions. The result would be some 1.4 million electric, plug-in hybrid, and hydrogen cars on California roads within 13 years. Today, there are 10,000 such vehicles in the state. Perhaps surprisingly, automakers appear to be on board.
Super Bowl Ads: Good for Business, Bad for Health
On Sunday, more than 110 million Americans watched the Super Bowl, some for the football but more than half, according to one survey, as much to watch the ads as the game. This year 36 corporations paid about $3.5 million for each 30 second ad that they hoped would drum up business on American advertisers’ biggest day. Total ad revenue is expected to reach $245 million, the highest ever. To entertain themselves during the game, Americans will spend an estimated $11 billion on snacks, game-related merchandise and apparel.
This orgy of commercialism provides a lens through which to examine the health of this country and the power of corporations to shape health behavior and health policy in ways that are good for business but bad for the well-being of the American people.
Previews of the ads shown in Sunday’s games reveal some common themes. One analyst noted that based on these ads, it is clear Americans are desperately seeking their inner child, love animals (especially dogs and chimps) and will buy anything if it is linked to sex. The Mad Men who created these ads have settled on appeals to the lowest common denominator, using their neuromarketing brain scans to decide that the precognitive parts of the brain are more susceptible to persuasion than the frontal lobes that might process real information about the product.
Who advertises on Super Bowl? A business newsletter found that six of eight top advertisers in the last 10 years are Anheuser-Busch, now part of the Belgian-Brazilian alcohol conglomerate InBev (spending $246.million on Super Bowl ads), PepsiCo ($209.7 million), General Motors ($135.2 million), Yum! Brands, a fast food corporation, ($67.8 million), Coca Cola ($61 million) and Ford ($36.3 million). Overall, advertisers have spent $2.5 billion on Super Bowl ads in the last 10 years ; the top four categories are autos, film, food — including snacks and fast food — and beverages, both alcohol and soda.
According to public health researchers, poor diet and physical inactivity were the cause of 365,000 deaths in the United States in 2000, alcohol consumption 85,000 deaths, motor vehicle crashes 43,000 and sexual behavior 20,000. A look at the Super Bowl ads shows they overwhelmingly encourage the behaviors and lifestyles that contribute to these deaths: eating too much food high in fat, sugar and salt; youth drinking and drinking as a way of asserting sexuality and adulthood; driving that emphasizes speed and macho rather than safety; and sex that emphasizes body parts rather than intimacy.
When the ads do mention health, it is often in ways designed to ensure irrelevancy. A Super Bowl ad promoting Doritos (8 gms fat, 200 mgs sodium and 140 calories for each 11 Flamas chips) ends with the tagline “Eat Responsibly”– somewhat like thinking that telling a person with major depression to “Have a nice day” is good therapy.
In a Coca Cola ad, a polar bear urges its companion to drink a bottle of Coke (65 gms of high fructose corn syrup and 57 mg of caffeine) to allay its fears about the Super Bowl. The closing message: “Coca Cola: Open Happiness.” Like some evil Mary Poppins, the polar bears encourage viewers to swallow with 15 spoonfuls of sugar the message that consuming products that contribute to obesity, diabetes and other diet-related health conditions is the road to happiness.
In 1976 and again in 2001, an increasingly pro-corporate US Supreme Court reversed its prior opinions and granted limited First Amendment protection to commercial speech, deciding that advertisements further the societal interest in the free flow of information to allow consumers to make more informed decisions. Viewers of Sunday’s Super Bowl ads would have a hard time finding much information about the products that were advertised. And while the health care industry may benefit from more cases of heart disease, auto accidents and alcohol-related liver disease, it’s tough to imagine the societal interest realized by promoting the chronic diseases and injuries that are overwhelming our health care system and burdening families.
To add insult to injury, corporations can deduct the full cost of the advertisements aired on the Super Bowl – and in all other media — as tax-deductible business expenses. Thus tax payers forego the tax revenue that would come were these expenses not deductible, then pay the heath care costs associated with the consumption these ads encourage.
In today’s economy, it seems churlish, even unpatriotic, to criticize the corporate celebration of consumption represented by Super Bowl ads. But in a country that spends more on health care than any other nation and with poorer results, isn’t it fair to ask whether patriotic businesses would choose to relentlessly promote products associated with premature death and needless suffering? And whether patriotic elected officials would allow food, tobacco, alcohol and auto corporations to become the dominant health educator for the nation, then expect tax payers to foot the bills for the consequences of their messages?
Image Credits:
1. Coca-Cola
World Economic Forum Report Calls for “More with Less” by Scaling Sustainable Consumption and Resource Efficiency
A report released at this week’s World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, highlights “the leading role the private sector can play in scaling sustainable consumption. Business can catalyse scale through transforming interactions with citizens; rethinking business models, value chains and operations; and playing an active role in shaping the policies and investments that define the rules of the game. However, this transformation will not be achieved by the usual group of leading companies or countries: delivery of more resource-efficient growth needs to happen in every business and every country through the aggregation of impacts and a commitment to action.”
GM Looks to Recharge Chevy Volt’s Image With New Campaign
AdAge reports that General Motors has launched a newspaper and TV marketing campaign to reinforce the Volt’s image as a safe, innovative car. In November, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration began an investigation after two incidents in which the Volt’s battery pack either caught fire or emitted sparks following intense crash testing. The NHTSA closed the investigation last week. Congressional Republicans criticized the government’s response, accusing NHTSA of a conflict of interest because the government still owns 26.5 percent of the company’s shares. The GOP released its report at a hearing titled: “Volt Vehicle Fire: What Did NHTSA Know and When Did They Know It?”
Is Walmart’s March into Cities Helping or Hurting?
Cross-posted from Food Safety News.
Having saturated the rural landscape, shuttering local stores in small town America along the way, now, in the wake of stagnant sales and increased competition, Walmart desperately needs to expand into urban markets.
And what better urban market than one full of eight million people? While the big box retailer is eager to enter the Big Apple, challenges loom large. Given the negative reputation Walmart has earned for being hostile to workers among other problems, many New Yorkers are skeptical, to put it mildly.
To counter the opposition, Walmart is positioning itself as the solution to urban food deserts – areas where finding real food is next to impossible. But as Anna Lappé has eloquently argued, the big box chain isn’t the answer: “Let’s be clear, expanding into so-called food deserts is an expansion strategy for Walmart. It’s not a charitable move.”
Research Shows Walmart Kills Both Jobs and Food Access
Now a report released last month by Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer concludes that not only would bringing Walmart to Harlem spell disaster for labor, but it could also make an already dire food access problem there even worse.
Based on data from Chicago’s negative experience, the report found that within two years of a Walmart store opening in New York:
– Between 48 and 66 fresh food retailers could go out of business, representing a net loss of between 56,500 to 82,000 square feet of food retail within a one-mile radius;
– Closure of these stores would represent a loss of 50 to 57 percent of the fresh food retail square footage added in recent years by New York City’s incentive program;
– All of this would negate more than $4 million in public finance investment and four years of effort to improve fresh food access in the area.
As Stringer explained, Walmart shouldn’t be undermining city programs to improve fresh food availability: “Walmart would be a bane, not a boon, to the health food economy of Harlem – or any other New York City neighborhood.”
Moreover, previous economic analysis has shown that Walmart’s promise of jobs doesn’t pan out either. In a report from last summer called “The Walmartization of New York City,” researchers at the City University of New York concluded that, “despite Walmart’s promises of jobs and lower prices for the community, the longer term impact is actually the opposite.”
Assuming Walmart opened the 159 stores needed to reach 21 percent grocery market share in New York City (the same proportion the company enjoys nationally), the impact would be a net loss of almost 4,000 jobs, and a loss of more than $453 million in wages per year for all remaining workers.
What about the new Walmart jobs? According to the report, 4,279 new low-wage Walmart workers would have to “rely on social services to make ends meet, costing New York taxpayers over $4 million per year” in health care benefits alone. This, in a city where the mayor has asked for $2 billion in budget cuts.
Current Walmart Locations Confirm Bleak Outlook
Other areas of the country have already had real world experiences to back up these projected findings. According to New York’s Food for Thought report, of all the employers in Ohio, Walmart has the greatest number of associates and dependents enrolled in Medicaid, which in 2009 cost taxpayers $44.8 million.
Similarly, a 2004 study found that for each of California’s whopping 44,000 Walmart employees, taxpayers had to spend $730 on health care and $1,222 on other forms of state and federal assistance such as (ironically) food stamps.
In 2006, Walmart entered Chicago and recently convinced local officials to approve two additional locations, including (after a long battle) on the city’s South Side. How have things fared so far in the original Chicago location? Not so well.
A three-year study released by Loyola University Chicago in 2010 revealed that Walmart had not enhanced retail activity or even employment opportunities. In fact, “the probability of a local retailer going out of business during the study period was significantly higher for establishments close to Walmart’s location.” Specifically, researchers found that a nearby business had about a 40 percent chance of closing over a two-year period – not very good odds.
If You Can’t Beat Them, Buy Them
Of course Walmart paints an entirely different picture, and is spending a ton of money to hide these sobering facts in a massive PR campaign. According to the Walmartization report, in the first half of 2011 alone, the company spent $2.1 million lobbying in New York, as much as they spent there in the past four years combined. There’s even a dedicated website complete with a “fact-checker” and the heartwarming tagline, “Helping NYC Save Money and Live Better.”
Philanthropy is another time-honored corporate tactic, often used to buy silence from critics, curry favor with community leaders, or, in this case, grease the wheels to gain entry into a reluctant-but-lucrative market.
In December, Walmart announced a combined gift of $250,000 to five various New York City charities, including a home food delivery service and a soup kitchen. Of course $250K is chump change to a company whose net sales topped $405 billion in 2010, but to these five groups it no doubt means a lot. Moreover, in its press release, Walmart made sure to point out the company’s “more than $13 million” in donations in New York City since 2007. (Similarly, Walmart pledged to donate $20 million to Chicago charities.)
But Walmart will need a lot more than a few million dollars in tax-deductible contributions to make up for all the job losses, decrease in available fresh food (and even increased obesity) that could befall New Yorkers.
Other cities should also brace themselves, as the company is opening four stores in Washington, D.C. later this year, with additional area sites planned. Other locations on the agenda include Boston and San Francisco. But mostly the company is keeping quiet about its urban expansion agenda, at least publicly. Last year in Boston, the company was said to be “quietly chatting up city officials” while scouting neighborhoods.
I shudder to think of the consequences to American’s already suffering urban populations if Walmart succeeds in duplicating its rural retail takeover. What to do about it? Support the United Food and Commercial Workers, which has an important campaign called Making Change at Walmart. See also the Big Box Tool Kit, which is chock-full of news and practical resources. Communities can work together to fight back, we just have to act before it’s too late.
———————
© Food Safety News
See reader comments.
Corporations and Health Watch 