Tobacco's nemesis sets sights on sugar, fat, salt

Several years ago, when Congress and the courts were cracking down on cigarette smoking, some defenders of tobacco warned that food would be the next battleground over behavior. They were dismissed with a chuckle.

They might have been right. Dr. David Kessler, who as FDA commissioner led the Clinton administration's fight against tobacco, has a new book and a new whipping boy: fatty, sweet food. Kessler was on NPR's "Diane Rehm Show" Wednesday and also was featured on NPR's "All Thing Considered" last week. Kessler claims America's epidemic of obesity and Type 2 diabetes is the result of deliberate, coercive and clandestine collusion by the food and advertising industries. In his radio interview Wednesday, Kessler portrayed American consumers as helpless and hopeless victims of this conspiracy to addict them to sugar, fat and salt. He compared the brain's reaction to sugar, salt and fat to its reaction to heroin or nicotine. Consumers are conditioned to eat unhealthy foods so that the big food companies, fast-food joints and expensive restaurants can make more money off of them as they addictively return for their sugary soft drinks, their fat-dripping bacon double cheeseburger and their fat-marbled steaks.

Stimulated by the release of the brain's pleasure chemicals and manipulated by devious advertising showing healthy, happy people having fun over their sweet, fatty food and drinks, consumers are unable to resist, Kessler claims. Consumers are not responsible for their own actions. They can't resist that chocolate-covered pretzel or that 24-ounce sugary drink. They are putty in the hands of Madison Avenue and the sugar lobby. The conspiratorial industries, not consumers, are responsible for America's health problems.

If this sounds familiar, it is the argument made in lawsuits against the tobacco industry: Its sly advertising and addictive nicotine left consumers no choice but to become two-pack-a-day smokers. Personal responsibility and self-discipline, whether talking about tobacco or obesity, are not part of the equation, in Kessler's view.

Kessler is getting a lot of attention with his book despite his difficult-to-swallow leap that sugar is heroin and fat is nicotine. His theory feeds on another addiction common in modern American society: the idea that individual responsibility is not a factor in life. If you can't stop smoking, it's not your fault; blame the tobacco industry. If you can't stop eating and gaining weight, food processors, restaurants and supermarkets must be conspiring against you. If you make bad grades in school, it's not because you failed to study or work hard; it must be because the teachers don't like you or the textbooks are culturally biased. If you're not rich but other people are, it couldn't be because they worked harder, had more talent or hit the market at an opportune time; the cards must have been stacked against you.

Personal responsibility: American society is against it, and Kessler's new book feeds the culture of denial.