Month: February 2024

Dr. Trevor Hancock

20 February 2024

700 words

Last week I noted the private sector is the key player in the provision of a healthy diet. But the food industry also makes a great deal of money from the production and marketing of unhealthy food. It is estimated that globally, unhealthy diets account for about 11 million premature deaths annually.  

The toll in Canada is also large: A recent Canadian study noted the dominant Canadian dietary pattern is “high in fast foods, carbonated drinks, refined grains, solid fat, and processed meat” and found that “poor dietary pattern is the leading risk factor for loss of life years at the national level”, ahead of smoking, physical inactivity, and alcohol consumption.

The study looked at the effect of five different healthy diet patterns (e.g. the Mediterranean diet) compared to eating the usual Canadian diet. Depending on which healthy diet pattern was being examined, between a quarter and nearly 40 percent of all deaths among Canadian men and between 9 and 23 percent of deaths among women “were attributable to poor dietary patterns.”

The economic costs are also very large. A 2018 study looked at the costs of unhealthy eating in Canada; our collective failure to meet recommendations for five protective foods (vegetables, fruit,  whole grains, milk, and nuts and seeds) and three harmful foods (processed meat,  red meat and sugar-sweetened beverages).

The authors found this resulted in direct health care costs of $5.1 billion and indirect costs (due to early death or disability) of $8.7 billion. But that is an under-estimate because the costs of some chronic disease were not included, nor, importantly, did they include the costs associated with salt, fibre or fat.

It’s not as if we don’t know what makes for a healthy diet. The revised Canada Food Guide, issued in 2019, focused on a more plant-based diet, more whole grains, replacing meats, poultry and dairy products that are high in saturated fat, free sugars or sodium with healthier, less salty, sweet or fatty products, including plant-based protein foods, and reducing our intake of highly processed products and sugary drinks.

And yet large parts of the food industry are dedicated to producing and selling precisely the unhealthy diet – high in fast foods, carbonated drinks, refined grains, solid fat, and processed meat – that we know is causing all these deaths, illnesses and costs. In fact, they spend a huge amount of money on marketing these products, and as I will discuss next week, lobby energetically to prevent changes that would be good for health but perhaps bad for their bottom line.

A 2022 study of food and beverage advertising in Canada noted such marketing “has been identified as a powerful determinant of dietary intake and weight.” The researchers found that in 2019 “an estimated $628.6 million was spent on . . . food and beverage advertising in Canada”, two thirds of which was on television. It probably won’t surprise you to learn that 87 percent of that advertising was for “products and brands classified as ‘unhealthy’”, while only 2.1 percent was spent on marketing fruit and vegetables and less than 1 percent on water.

Also unsurprisingly, a 2019 study of trends in fast-food offerings in the United States from 1986 to 2016 found “broadly detrimental changes in fast-food restaurant offerings over a 30-year span including increasing . . . portion size, energy, and sodium content” – it is not likely to be very different here in Canada.

Indeed, a recent study found that while sodium (salt) intake in Canada is down from 2004 it is still well above the level needed for good health. Moreover, the voluntary sodium reduction strategy adopted by Health Canada in 2012 was ineffective, with only 13 of 94 food categories meeting the 2016 sodium reduction targets.

Also unsurprisingly, a 2015 review by the respected Cochrane Collaborative found  “people consistently consume more food and drink when offered larger‐sized portions, packages or tableware than when offered smaller‐sized versions.”

In short, a large part of the food industry is producing and marketing an unhealthy diet, at great cost to the health of Canadians. Moreover, as I will discuss next week, the way our food is grown is also often harmful to both the planet and to people.

© Trevor Hancock, 2024

thancock@uvic.ca

Dr. Trevor Hancock is a retired professor and senior scholar at the

University of Victoria’s School of Public Health and Social Policy

The food industry – good for health, or bad for health?

• Published as “Reaching goal of Zero Hunger includes improving affordability of healthy food”

Besides ending hunger, Zero Hunger includes improving nutrition and promoting sustainable agriculture

Dr. Trevor Hancock

13 February 2024

698 words

The tobacco industry sells a product that when used exactly as intended prematurely kills half its users – 7 million people every year – as well as indirectly killing a further 1.3 million non-smokers, making it the worst mass killer in human history. Air pollution from fossil fuel combustion is estimated to kill 8 million people annually, but threatens far greater damage as a result of climate change.

So what are we to think about the food industry, when unhealthy diets result in an estimated 11 million deaths annually? This is according to a comprehensive study published in The Lancet in 2019. The authors found “the leading dietary risk factors for mortality are diets high in sodium [salt], low in whole grains, low in fruit, low in nuts and seeds, low in vegetables, and low in omega-3 fatty acids”, and extolled the virtues of “shifting diet from unhealthy animal-based foods (eg, red meat and processed meat) to healthy plant-based foods.”

Now there is no question that the food industry, which is largely in the private sector, is a major contributor to health across the world by keeping most of us fed, and mostly fairly well fed. But there are major problems with our food system, both globally and here in Canada, that need to be addressed.  At a 2023 UN Food Systems Summit, the World Health Organization (WHO) stated: “Although global food production of calories has kept pace with population growth, the common prioritization of quantity and profitability over nutritional value has meant healthy diets remain unaffordable for over 40 percent of the world’s population.”

Goal 2 of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, agreed to by Canada and all the world’s nations in 2015, is Zero Hunger by 2030. But we are a long way  from achieving that goal, and headed in the wrong direction. Addressing the UN Food Systems Summit, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres noted “the number of people facing hunger and food insecurity has risen since 2015, exacerbated by the pandemic, conflict, climate change and growing inequalities.”

He reported that “258 million people in 58 countries faced acute food insecurity in 2022, an increase of 34 percent compared to 2021”, adding that “45 million children suffered from wasting.” Moreover, projections show that by 2030 600 million people – 7% of the world’s population – will be hungry, he added.

But the Zero Hunger goal is not just about hunger; it is, fully stated, to end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture. The second target under this Goal is to end all forms of malnutrition. Now malnutrition takes two main forms that co-exist globally: Under-nutrition, when people can’t access or afford adequate food, and over-nutrition, when their food supply is excessive and unhealthy.

The WHO reported at the Summit that “2.4 billion people suffer from food insecurity, while 670 million adults live with overweight or obesity” and that “478 million children aged under 5 [are] impacted by stunting, while 145 million 5-9 year olds live with overweight/obesity.”

Moreover, the production of food is often done in ways that harm the environment. Hence target 4 of the Zero Hunger goal is concerned with creating ecologically sustainable food production systems. But here too, we have a long way to go. In his remarks at the Summit, Guterres noted: “current food systems continue to generate pollution and degrade soil, water and air, contribute to 28 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, are responsible for as much as 80 percent of biodiversity loss and account for up to 70 percent of freshwater use.”

The WHO’s Director of Nutrition and Food Safety, Dr Francesco Branca, proposed a three-point agenda for food systems transformation: lower the cost of nutritious foods for consumers, increase the availability and affordability of healthy diets, and ensure a fair price for the producer, while reflecting the true costs on environment, health and livelihoods.

While this requires that governments take action on these important steps, it is particularly the responsibility of the food industry to stop producing and selling the unhealthy foods that lie behind those 11 million deaths a year, and stop producing food in environmentally harmful ways. That will be my focus next week.

© Trevor Hancock, 2024

thancock@uvic.ca

Dr. Trevor Hancock is a retired professor and senior scholar at the

University of Victoria’s School of Public Health and Social Policy

If a draft framework is adopted, the B.C. government would commit to the conservation and management of ecosystem health and biodiversity as an overarching priority

Dr. Trevor Hancock

6 February 2024

699 words

As far back as 1964, Paul Sears, an eminent American ecologist and former chair of the graduate program in Conservation at Yale University, described ecology as “a subversive subject” and asked “if taken seriously as an instrument for the long-run welfare of mankind, would it endanger the assumptions and practices accepted by modern societies, whatever their doctrinal commitments.”

Several years later Murray Bookchin, who developed the concept of social ecology, suggested the true subversiveness of ecology is seen when it is applied to the cultural, social, political and economic situation of humankind as human ecology, for then “ecology is intrinsically a critical science – in fact critical on a scale that most radical systems of political economy failed to attain.”

That, of course, is why Green politics is so threatening to the established order. It simply does not accept the ‘givens’ – the core values – of modern society: The primacy of the economy, the belief in perpetual growth and the accumulation of more and more ‘stuff,’ humanity’s domination of and separation from nature, the valuing of the ‘wants’ of the individual over the greater needs of the community, and all that follow from those core beliefs.

But what if we changed our core beliefs? What if we believed:

• Humans do not dominate but are entirely dependent upon nature, of which they are but one small part?
• Perpetual economic growth on a finite planet is, as Kenneth Boulding, a former President of the American Economic Association, suggested way back in 1973, something only a madman or an economist would believe in?
• We can’t have all our selfish wants met, but have to recognise we are part of a community where everyone’s basic needs must be met first?
• The source of happiness is not to be found in the accumulation of even more stuff, that enough is indeed enough?

It seems something is afoot in the body politic and the halls of government, something that might challenge those core beliefs and subvert the assumptions and practices accepted by modern societies: Ecology. Taken seriously and applied to our society, it challenges our current system, which we can see has created massive and rapid global ecological change and high levels of inequality.

Slowly, haltingly, governments and international organisations, including the United Nations, have been groping towards these new core beliefs and values. And now we may be seeing it in B.C., with the publication of the draft B.C. Biodiversity and Ecosystem Health Framework, public comment on which just closed. It is, if taken seriously and implemented, an astonishing document with dramatic implications for government, and for that matter the governance of society and communities as a whole.

The draft framework is commendably clear: If adopted, the B.C. government would commit “to the conservation and management of ecosystem health and biodiversity as an overarching priority and will formalize this priority through legislation and other enabling tools that apply to . . . all sectors.”

An overarching priority, note, and one to be applied to all sectors, not just natural ecosystem and

resource management. The draft framework then lists the sectors it would be applied to: forestry, agriculture, fisheries and aquaculture, energy and mines, oil and gas, tourism, recreation, transportation and housing” (I would add urban development and infrastructure), as well as “other sectors that benefit from biodiversity . . . including health, finance, education, research, training, and innovation.”  

In his opening message, Minister Nathan Cullen notes: “Healthy ecosystems and biodiversity are not only essential for our individual health and wellbeing, but they also ensure that ecosystems, economies, and communities throughout B.C. can flourish.” So if we add ‘equitable human wellbeing’ as an overarching priority we have the two key overarching priorities that will make B.C. a Wellbeing Society.

Note in particular that the finance sector is included; we can’t have a Wellbeing Society without a budget focused on human, social and ecological wellbeing. Note also that the framework recognises that “changing our ways  . . . is complex and challenging and requires all government bodies at all levels to be actively involved” – so this is also about municipal governments, school boards, health authorities and so on. Could B.C. be about to radically transform governance?

© Trevor Hancock, 2024

thancock@uvic.ca

Dr. Trevor Hancock is a retired professor and senior scholar at the

 University of Victoria’s School of Public Health and Social Policy

• Published as “Fossil-fuel industry doubling down, pushing for growth”

In the U.S., the Biden administration approved nearly 10,000 oil and gas drilling permits on public lands in its first three years, while Donald Trump is moronically pledging to “drill baby, drill”

Dr. Trevor Hancock

30 January 2024

701 words

Last week I documented the massive impact of the fossil fuel industry on people and the planet, an impact the industry generally ignores or downplays in its rush to make money and maintain its power, earning it the title of  ‘the new tobacco’.

But astonishingly, in light of the clear and strong evidence of the environmental and health impacts of fossil fuels, the industry and its private sector and government supporters are in many cases doubling down on the harm it does by pushing for growth in fossil fuel production and use.

The 2023 Production Gap Report from a group of leading environmental organisations, including the UN Environment Programme and Canada’s International Institute for Sustainable Development, noted “government plans and projections would lead to an increase in global coal production until 2030, and in global oil and gas production until at least 2050.”

Overall, they report: “Governments, in aggregate, still plan to produce more than double the amount of fossil fuels in 2030 than would be consistent with limiting warming to 1.5°C.” Canada is one of the 20 petrostates highlighted in the report that plans expansion of fossil fuel extraction.

Private sector support comes in the form of investments from banks, pension and investment funds. The 2023 Banking on Climate Chaos report found $669 billion in fossil fuel financing from the world’s 60 largest banks in 2022 alone and USD $5.5 trillion in the seven years since the adoption of the Paris Agreement. Since these levels “are fundamentally incompatible with a safe climate”, the report says, the banks are “choosing profits over a livable future.”

Troublingly, the report finds “the Royal Bank of Canada ranks #1 as the worst financier of fossil fuels. RBC provided fossil fuel companies $41 billion in 2022, an increase over its 2021 financing, making for a total of $252.5 billion since 2016.”

Governments are also major supporters of the industry. In the USA, the Biden administration approved nearly 10,000 oil and gas drilling permits on public lands in its first three years, while Donald Trump is moronically pledging to ‘drill baby, drill”. Meanwhile, in the UK, Rishi Sunak has pledged to “max out” the UK’s oil and gas reserves.

The Canada Energy Regulator’s 2023 Energy Outlook report projects that under current measures Canada’s oil production would increase 25 percent by 2035 and then remain roughly constant to 2050, while gas production rises steadily to be 24 percent above 2022 levels by 2050. The federal and provincial governments continue to support the industry by expanding pipelines, and approving new offshore oil projects and LNG export terminals, while Pierre Poilievere idiotically pledges to ‘axe the [carbon] tax’ and undermine climate policy, cheered on by the Alberta and Saskatchewan governments.

This government support, we are supposed to believe, has nothing to do with the millions of dollars the fossil fuel industry spends on lobbying and advertising – of course not! The scale of lobbying undertaken by the fossil fuel industry to support their ongoing production tells its own tale – although it also hints at the weakness of their case and the growing challenge they face in making it.

The Guardian reported that almost 2,500 fossil fuel lobbyists were accredited to the COP28  meeting in Dubai in December, more than all but two countries (Brazil and the UAE) – yet even so, for the first time in almost 30 years, the COP final statement dared to include the term ‘fossil fuels’. In Canada, a recent analysis of lobbying by Environmental Defence found the industry lobbied the federal government over 1000 times in the first ten monhs of 2023

Meanwhile, here in BC, Dogwood reports that oil and gas lobbyists had more than 1,000 meetings with the B.C. government in the first nine months of 2023. According to Dogwood, Shell alone “has 20 registered lobbyists in Victoria whose job it is to convince decision-makers to greenlight Ksi Lisims”, which is a proposed new LNG plant that will need a new pipeline and produce 12 million tonnes of LNG a year.

It seems clear that if expanding fossil fuel industry profits mean inflicting harm on people and the planet, then the industry and its private sector and government supporters are just fine with that!

© Trevor Hancock, 2024

thancock@uvic.ca

Dr. Trevor Hancock is a retired professor and senior scholar at the

 University of Victoria’s School of Public Health and Social Policy