Food for Thought

Reading a new McKinsey analysis of the most effective ways to fight obesity made me remember that if it weren’t for an inability to metabolize sugar, I would probably be struggling with a weight problem, if not on my way up the first wrung of obesity.

The study quantifies the effectiveness of interventions including areas of personal responsibility as well as education and environmental factors such as labeling, portion control and subsidies and taxes, all of which have spawned a huge “sugar” lobby.

I first felt the hypoglycemic reaction that my body has to the levels of sugar in foods, mostly added, when I was 11 years old, going on 12 and weighed about 84 pounds on a 4’8” frame.

But it wasn’t fully diagnosed for another ten years when by that time I touched the scales at 150 pounds and nudging 6 foot tall.

I descended from a long line of “white food” eaters on both sides, who when they weren’t drawn to sweets and foods that quickly convert to sugar such as mashed potatoes, macaroni and milk, corn, fruit salad laced with whipped cream and bread, even bread and milk.

To my mom, who was a great cook having learned from her mother-in-law, even oatmeal wasn’t right without a layer of sugar across the top.  Maybe it is little wonder that my parents struggled with weight and sought comfort from these foods their entire lives.

Actually, our weight and happiness are on opposite “u” curves during our lives, one with the u bending upward and the other bending downward, but looking at how sugar affects the brain, they seem related.

Our relationship with food is apparently linked to both.

One of the interesting findings in the McKinsey analysis is that obesity is a condition shared now by 30% of the global population.  It is projected to increase to 41% by 2030, but already has the same economic drag as tobacco and armed conflict.

It is far more costly than alcoholism, for instance.

The interventions McKinsey finds most effective can lower obesity by 20% within a five year period when deployed together.

Portion control and reformulation of foods have the greatest impact followed by limiting access to high calorie foods, weight management programs and parental and school education.

A high-sugar tax can also play a role.

In the United States, obesity is the second most significant social burden.

In 1750, sugar consumption was about 3-4 kg or less per person.  It took off in the United States in the late 1800s and then skyrocketed about the time I was born.

About the time I retired five years ago, Americans were powering down 28 kg of “added” sugar alone or about 60 pounds per person.

The obesity epidemic is no surprise.

Normal weight, according to the McKinsey study means keeping the body mass index below 25.  My doctor tries to get me to stay below 19.  Overweight is between 25 and 29.

Obesity comes in three stages beginning at 30% and ranging to more than 40.

Those of us who are overweight push medical costs up 31%, and obesity, depending on the level, pushes costs up anywhere from 58% to 86%.  Click here for the latest pie chart showing where America’s $2.9 trillion health dollars go.

I’ve learned to limit my intake of added sugar to between 6 and 9 grams (about two teaspoons) per day and stay away from foods naturally high in sugar.

Still I am not deprived.  My diet averages around 30-40 grams a day.

One of the advantages to logging my meals, often vetting them in advance using an app called myfitnesspal, is being far more aware of foods high in sugar.

Whenever we eat breakfast at Bob Evans, I like the Border Scramble, substituting a fruit plate instead of potatoes and without bread.

But even without the fruit, that dish has 7 grams of sugar.  The fruit plate has another 13.  Way over my threshold and even with the protein involved risking where, for me anyway,a hypoglycemic reaction would kick in.

My sweet tooth is fed by two glasses of wine with dinner - only red - and on the more “minerally” side.  Each glass has only 1.8 grams of sugar each but is much weightier in calories overall.

But the apple a day I snack on later has 11 grams which is possibly why even when I was young, I learned to eat this fruit as my dessert after dinner, a time of day when any adverse reaction would occur only while I am asleep.

Also being certain to drink two quarts of water a day on top of the water in about 60 oz. of coffee is crucial in my case.  But my point is that even religiously avoiding foods with added sugar, I get a lot in my diet.

Obesity increases in countries along with prosperity.  In in the U.S., the CDC finds it at the same levels for men regardless of income level but in women it affects 42% of low income vs. 29% at high income levels.

This may give finger-waggers more ammunition to lecture the poor about personal responsibility, but it is clear the correlation is to only being able to afford or easily access unhealthy foods and eating leftovers while caregiving, I suspect.

This is another reason that making certain low income people have healthcare insurance is smart.  When it comes to healthcare costs we’re in this together when it comes to our pocketbook regardless of partisan leanings or feelings of superiority.

So whenever someone asks for the mashed potatoes to be passed during holiday meals, we need to be aware of just how incredibly powerful the “white food” lobby is in this country and give thanks if we are less impacted, but less judgmental of those who are.

New research shows that it is more than with fitness and caloric diary apps that smartphones are impacting the way we buy food.  A study shows that 79% of women alone now use their smartphones in stores.

Of those, 35% do it in grocery stores alone, 23% to check barcodes to learn more about products than may be revealed on labels.  By the way, the same percentage use GPS via smartphones to find the store greatly reducing any tiny remnant of rationale remaining for billboards.

I suspect, without my reactive hypersensitivity to blood sugar level, I would be among those judged.  I love mashed potatoes and not just because I’m from Idaho where it is patriotic or because “red states” are more prone to obesity.

Retirement agrees with me.  Although I seem to be getting shorter, I also dropped about 25 pounds (intentionally) over the past six months, more a credit to walking daily and cutting calories, not just a diet low in refined carbohydrates (smile.)

Now for some comic relief about the determination of the sugar lobby, click here to see John Oliver propose that all food labeling regarding sugar added be put in terms of “circus peanuts” (which have 5 grams each.)

Actually, a Gallup poll showing what Americans spent on average for this past Thanksgiving week reveals that it certainly isn’t peanuts nor is it just on food.

Happy Holidays!

An Unlikely End-Run

So much of what is wrong with society today can be traced back to about the time I was just graduating from college in 1972.

Back then there were just 175 registered lobbying firms according to an incredible article published this month by Stanford professor Dr. Francis Fukuyama, one of the neo-conservative founders of the magazine, The American Interest.

Roadside billboard barons back then were busy gutting the Highway Beautician Act but they stood out as exceptions and now I know why.  Today, having pacified virtually any enforcement of that act, a group such as this has become the rule at every level of government.

It is no coincidence that Americans now rank Congress next to last among professions regarding honesty and ethical standards.  Even lower is the ranking for lobbyists.

Reading that the number of lobbying firms increased 14-fold alone during just the first decade of my now concluded four-decade career in sense-of-place economic development before reaching a whopping 13,700 by the time I retired years ago, brought to mind an eloquent rant I listened to on the return leg of a cross-country road trip last fall.

One of the advantages of being a long-time political independent is being free to glean insight from all along the ideological spectrum.  The End Game for Democracy by progressive-leaning journalist and commentator Bill Moyer goes hand in hand with Dr. Fukuyama’s article on the other end of the spectrum.

The conservative columnist, David Brooks recommends that strengthening the executive branch is the solution.  A moderate Republican friend of mine and former local official would probably agree.  He speculates that regulations have become cumbersome and rigid primarily because so many executives fail to enforce them.

Fukuyama’s article appeared a few days after New York Times coverage of a new report by investor-inspired CDP showing that nearly 30 of America’s largest corporations including five major oil companies are not waiting for Congress to break free of special interests blocking it from taking action to control global warming.

Realizing that a market based cap and trade system such as that working so well to reduce Acid Rain will ultimately be the most cost effective way to reduce emissions, these corporations have already begun to incorporate a price on carbon in long range plans.

This hopeful news followed a report a week earlier in The Atlantic magazine about a community of more than 830 businesses across 28 countries and 60 industries worldwide enrolled in B Corps, a way to use market-based, scalable solutions “to compete not just to be the best in the world but the best for the world.”

The authors of the book Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness, who categorize themselves as libertarian paternalists, would likely agree.  These efforts are nudges to do the right thing.

Many states (20 have passed laws including Delaware and 18 more are working on it) are even establishing a new category of business incorporation called Benefit Corporations.  Unfortunately, North Carolina, where I live, lagging behind its neighbors to the north and south, is still one of 15 states failing to make progress, if not moving backwards.

The designation recognizes in a corporation’s legal DNA a signal to investors and consumers that this types of business considers what’s good for the earth and its inhabitants as good for good for business, a new style capitalism.

Together with certification programs such as Durham, NC-based Green Plus and a ground swell toward social entrepreneurism, I have hope that democratic institutions will one day be reclaimed from the stranglehold of “winner-take-all” special interests.

If reading all of this makes you feel as optimistic as it does me, click here for a report disclosing corporate and investor exposure to deforestation in terms of “operational, reputational and regulatory risks and opportunities and the value creation and erosion.”

Deforestation today contributes as much to greenhouse gas emissions as all of the cars, trucks, motorcycles, ships, airplanes and trains put together.  Look soon for “deforestation-free” designations in the marketplace.

And one day soon, this report will also help corporations understand their contribution to deforestation and value erosion from marketing departments that still condone roadside billboards.

Just sayin!

Sure, Blame Everything On Those Survey Drunks

My first understanding of the corrupting influence of lobbying crossed my mind again during my most recent 6000-mile cross-country trip with my English Bulldog, Mugsy.

During that day we had traversed the last leg of the northern plains stretching from Bismarck, North Dakota through almost the entire state of Montana.   I remembered as we drove past the Great Falls of the Missouri River and caught the first glimpse of nearly 9,000-foot Red Eagle Peak that this eastern slope of the Continental Divide was originally intended as the border between Montana and my native state of Idaho.

As I grew up I was told that the area on the map where it looks like Montana took a bite out of Idaho occurred because members of the survey party had been drinking, made a wrong turn and dropped down to the Bitterroot Range far too soon before getting back on track again by picking up the Continental Divide just below the nose in the face carved into Idaho by today's western boundary of Montana.

I guess the nasty habit of blaming humble public servants for the actions of lobbyists and elected officials isn't new nor is it the result of the fact that the amount spent on lobbying Congress more than doubled in just the last 10 years to more than $3.3 billion last year alone.

If not for this so-called mistake nearly all of Glacier National Park along with other scenic places on the western side of the divide such as the Bob Marshall Wilderness Area, Whitefish, Kalispell, Flathead Lake, Libby, Missoula, Lolo and the Bitterroot River Valley should've been included in Idaho where their terrain is far more complimentary than with the plains.

In college I learned that the story about the survey party was legend but the truth about so much of Idaho was placed in Montana instead is much more complicated and, I dare say, fascinating. The before and after land distribution is illustrated by the two maps from the 1860s shown as images in this blog.

All of what was originally intended to be Montana, along with what became the other plains states defined by the boundaries of the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 when the fledgling United States bought the land from France using deficit financing (OMG) from Great Britain and the Netherlands.  That territory today makes up about 23% of the United States of America.

The northwestern boundary of the Louisiana Purchase ran along the Continental Divide which to the west defined Oregon Country and in 1848 the Oregon Territory, then the Washington Territory and then sixty years after the Louisiana Purchase the Idaho Territory created by Congress as the Civil War was winding down.

President Lincoln appointed a Republican, transplanted Ohioan and Union Army veteran named Sidney Edgerton as Chief Justice for the US Territorial Court there. William Wallace, another Republican Ohioan had already been appointed Governor of the Idaho Territory by Lincoln following his completed a term as governor of the Washington Territory.

Apparently Wallace, who had already lived for many years in the Pacific Northwest, shared that region’s resentment of the appointment of outsiders.  In turn, Judge Edgerton was apparently insulted when Governor Wallace assigned him to the then-remote district west of the Bitterroot Range rather than assigning him, as presumed, for the post of chief justice to the district around the then-Territorial Capital of Lewiston west of the Bitterroot mountains.

On a return leg of that same cross-country road trip last year I drove with Mugsy off the Palouse down through the 64 switchbacks of 2000’ Lewiston Hill and into its namesake which had been founded back then in the wake of a gold rush and had just begun its two year stint as the Territorial Capital.

We then headed up the Middle Fork of the Clearwater across the Bitterroot spine of the Idaho Panhandle, up and over Lolo Pass tracing the route used for millennia by the Nez Perce Indians and nearly six decades before Wallace’s snub of Judge Edgerton by the Lewis and Clark Expedition before we dropped down into the Bitterroot River Valley where he was assigned to preside.

Much has been made of the snub and a quick and revengeful trip East by the Judge with pockets full of gold to persuade Congress to alter Idaho’s border by lopping off his judicial district and grafting it instead to a part of the Dakota Territory being used to create the new Montana Territory.

But the issue was further complicated because the divide between those on the west and east of the Bitterroots also reflected the divide between the north and south. Lincoln and the Republican-dominated Congress knew the people populating the three territories of the Pacific Northwest were predominantly Democrats, many from the south and southwest.

So a perfect storm of personal politics, money, lobbying, accessibility and partisanship changed the eastern boundary of Idaho mapped at this link to the one at this link.  Later a similar combination moved the part of eastern Idaho which then embraced both sides of the Teton Range and included the Jackson Hole Valley as well as the resource-rich area from the Star Valley to Rock Springs over into the plains state of Wyoming.

“Too Big To Fail”– Durham Lessons From The Last Recession

There is much more irony than just what was noted last month in Bull City Rising as Durham-bred Greenfire Development struggled with a collapsed roof while Downtown’s showcase American Tobacco filed future development plans on an area encompassed by its other developments and adjacent to the City-built Durham Performing Arts Center (DPAC.)

Ten years and two months ago, the economy entered an earlier, although much less dramatic recession threatening the adaptive-reuse viability of American Tobacco’s abandoned factory buildings that had once produced Lucky Strike cigarettes.

While fully redeemed today by the vision and drive and genius that created the American Tobacco Complex, these same out-of-town developers labored back then under still-fresh Durham memories of a time a decade earlier when they had done everything possible to move the beloved Durham Bulls first out of Downtown Durham and then to another county and city altogether, in a well-thought out plan and for what they sincerely believed were good reasons.

Redemption began almost immediately after a threatened lawsuit by hotels and restaurants put funding for the Raleigh facilities at risk and determined Durham elected officials led by Chuck Grubb immediately engaged the developers in collaboration, resulting in the City’s construction in Downtown of the Durham Bulls Athletic Park and igniting the developer’s interest in the real estate opportunities anchored by the incredible public facility.

Other than the early-adoption, adaptive-reuse that became Brightleaf Square, there may be no more pivotal moment in the revitalization of Downtown Durham, period.

Less than a decade after that failed attempt and approximately a decade ago now, the developers were seeking tens and tens of millions of dollars in additional Durham taxpayer support for facilities related to the project in the midst of that former recession and above and beyond the historic preservation tax credits they would receive.

In stark contrast to what seems like a current lack of empathy, maybe even a little “kick ‘em while they’re down” inflexibility, being shown to Greenfire, American Tobacco development, a decade ago was deemed by many, to use a contemporary phrase, as “too big to fail,” and as we know now, mistakenly viewed by some as the panacea for revitalization of all of Downtown Durham, something that yet burdens still-pending and currently recession-thwarted Greenfire’s redevelopment of the much more complicated City Center District.

As the ever-evolving requests of American Tobacco developers were discussed a decade ago, Durham found itself caught between city managers and economic development directors and with a new county manager coming up to speed. So the burden for bridging the gaps and making sure American Tobacco became a reality fell on then Mayor Nick Tennyson with support from then Commission Chair MaryAnn Black.

Tennyson was facing a tough re-election battle at the time, eventually against, in what is now another irony, current Mayor Bill Bell, who raised serious and thoughtful questions about the huge project during the campaign, but has earned well-deserved credit since for spearheading it to completion.

In addition to the then four year-old Durham Bulls Athletic Park, to meet requirements for financing, especially during a recession, the developers requested several new publicly funded parking decks to be used by tenants. Then, suddenly, the fate of the huge project seemed hinged again to a proposal by the developers for an adjacent publicly-funded 5,000 to 6,000 seat performance venue.

The venue would be certain not to compete for parking with the developers’ tenants during the day but came with the hidden cost of relocating the DATA maintenance yard; and after the developers rejected the idea of self-financing it with a tax on admissions, they proposed instead that the majority of funding come from an increase to the special tax on rates at 60 commercial lodging properties, which had been pioneered a decade earlier to self-fund community/destination marketing organizations.

It wasn’t lost on the hotels that this proposal by the developer might be payback for threatening the lawsuit that ultimately prevented the Bulls from being moved to Raleigh; and it took a tremendous effort to convince these small businesses to look beyond both the seeming unfairness of the request and some desperation-lobbying and to focus instead on the long term interests of the community.

It wasn’t the lobbying that ensured this huge project, now requiring hundreds of millions of dollars, both public and privately financed, to became a reality but the steady, even-handed determination of then Mayor Nick Tennyson backed by other city and county officials.

He narrowly went down to defeat that fall by 366 votes, as his challenger then Commissioner Bill Bell and former City Councilman Chuck Grubb had nearly a decade earlier after respectively merging the schools and saving the Durham Bulls.

Leadership and political courage often seem to not only go unrewarded but are so often punished.

In the end, the success of the project also came down to not only the vision and flawless execution of the developers but the crucial and selfless decisions by organizations such as Duke University and the Tourism Development Authority (TDA), the governing board of the Durham Convention & Visitors Bureau.

Duke committed to relocate employees based in other parts of Durham to be an anchor tenant in the development critical to financing huge projects like this and as it has quietly done for nearly every other adaptive-reuse project in Durham.

The TDA sacrificed being more fully funded for yet another three or four decades that would have in turn yielded even more millions of dollars for the community in would-be visitor-centric economic and cultural development and millions more leveraged as additional local tax revenues when, as only it could do, the Authority asked the legislature to waive public policy and permit funding of what became a much smaller than proposed but extremely successful theater, DPAC.

Everyone should be proud of what the American Tobacco Complex has become not only because of the ongoing toil and genius of the developers in honoring commitments, but because so many with little or nothing to gain personally, who rarely if ever get credit, overlooked the myriad of issues that that would have made it easy to say “no” during that earlier recession and instead made sacrifices to be sure it became reality.

Always generous and philanthropic, in my opinion, the developers of American Tobacco never ask for or seek the adulation which they are rightfully and universally given but are sure to share credit, especially with the City and County. But nonetheless, adulation and redemption often have a way of rewriting or erasing valuable historical context.

Context that today, under significantly more difficult and complex circumstances, may likewise warrant devoting the same Durham measures that were extended a decade ago to a Raleigh developer such as leadership, perseverance, sacrifice, advocacy and even redemption only this time to equally worthy and locally born and bred Greenfire Development as it strives to complete the most challenging aspects of revitalizing the district at this community’s physical heart.