Lifestyle changes and food crisis

As published in The Hindu Business Line
August 1, 2008
Written by A. Srinivas

People in the developed world are eating more than what is good for their health. The increase in demand for meat products, thanks to the popularity of fast food and eating out, is the single biggest reason for the depletion of grain supplies that has precipitated the food crisis, argues A. Srinivas.

Dietary shifts such as snacking and eating on the move, the norm in many developed countries, are on the increase in India too.

The debate on the ‘food crisis’ has overlooked an important issue — that lifestyle-related factors are playing a big role in expanding the demand-supply gap. The availability of cheap food in the post-War years, spurred an extraordinary rise in calorie intake in the rich countries, in particular.

Now, an impression has been created that, with the onset of diminishing returns in intensive agriculture, demand has outpaced supply, as a result of which hunger and starvation will loom large, unless further land is brought under modern agriculture. However, in advancing such a view, the factors underlying the rise in demand have not been fully understood.

While there can be no excuse to promote ethanol, given the poor rate of energy conversion from food to fuel, the real problem lies elsewhere: people in the developed world are eating more than what is good for their health. Such behaviour confounds the consumer choice theory, which says that individuals buy what is best for them. The answers to the food problem cannot be sought within the framework of conventional economic theory.

For instance, a rise in income does not explain why people in the developed world (and now the well-to-do in India and China) generally prefer to consume more sugar, fats and refined grain than fruits and vegetables — that too, in greater quantities than their bodies need. There are a number of influences that distract an individual from eating the right kind of food in the right quantities. Two of them stand out: the popularity of processed, fast food and the inclination to eat out in restaurants.

Dietary shifts

Since the 1950s, the US and Europe have moved away from home-made food, instead buying their packaged, largely meat-based, takeaways and snacks from supermarkets and eating out in restaurants that offer a range of cuisines.

For a number of psychological reasons, such a lifestyle shift has led to people eating more than before, impacting grain availability in poorer regions.

The demand for meat products is the single biggest reason for the depletion of grain supplies. Of the two billion tonnes of cereals produced annually, nearly half goes to feed the animals meant to be eaten.

Growing non-vegetarianism in places such as India is a recent, additional factor. Therefore, to label the food crisis as ‘Malthusian’, or one of shortage is to miss the point. Dietary shifts occur in all populations as they urbanise and industrialise. For example, in China, per capita availability of cereals has remained flat since 1980, with pulses declining since then. But the per capita availability of eggs, fish, meat, cooking oil, fruits and vegetables has increased sharply. Per capita availability of food (all categories) varies from less than 2,000 kcal in malnourished regions to above 3,500 kcal in the US, and between 3,000-3,500 in Australia and most of Europe, with countries like China lying between these extremes.

According to the US Department of Agriculture, average daily consumption in 2000 was 300 calories more than in 1985. Attempts to regulate the fat content in packaged food in the 1980s and 1990s spurred a backlash in the form of higher consumption of meat and other fat-rich foods.

In his book, The Challenge of Affluence, Avner Offer, an economic historian at Oxford, explains how snacking and eating out led to an increase in obesity in the US and the UK between 1950 and 1990. Offer points out that the proportion of overweight men (those with a body mass index over 25) in the US increased from 51 per cent in 1970 to 67 per cent in 2000. In the case of women, the increase was sharper, from 41 per cent to 62 per cent.

People ate more over this period because more was available, even though their levels of physical activity had fallen. They would regret their choices later for reasons of health and appearance, and resort to dieting — now a billion-dollar industry, which, like drug de-addiction, has a very low success rate.

‘Emotional tranquiliser’

The impact of eating out on obesity has generally been overlooked. Offer points to a high correlation between the density of fast food restaurants and the rise in BMI.

He cites a US study which says that if the density of restaurants were to rise by 10 per cent, BMI would rise by 1.74 per cent. Besides restaurant density, lower price of food and decline in smoking pushed up weight, but not as much as restaurants.

Delving into “psychology of craving”, Offer says that restrained eaters, or those on a diet, tend to let go when they eat out. Eating can restart despite satiation when the food on offer is exciting, particularly in the case of restrained eaters. Offer explains: “Restrained eaters typically turn to food in search of comfort and relief. Food acts as an ‘emotional tranquilliser’.

Distress is the most reliable precipitant of a binge. Here, again, there is a difference: in response to stress, ‘normal eaters’ hold intake steady or reduce it, while ‘restrained’ eaters increase it. In company, people eat more. Noise, itself a form of stress, stimulates eating; hence the ubiquity of background music in restaurants and pubs.”

Eating outside the home claimed less than 10 per cent of food outlays in the UK in 1955, but that share touched about 25 per cent by 1995. In the US, eating out constituted more than 45 per cent of food outlays in 1995, as “the appeal was convivial as well as culinary”. The per capita number of fast food outlets in the US doubled between 1972 and 1997.

“The calorie-dense, palatable, fat-rich hamburger, pizza, fried chicken and ethnic take-out cuisines rose from 3 per cent to 16 per cent of US food outlays between 1963 and 1993,” Offer says. Portions also increased, typically of fast foods. Snack foods accounted for 34 per cent of all food purchases in the UK way back in 1987.

Unhealthy habits

How did eating habits go awry? The disintegration of the family meal system, which started in the 1950s in the US and the UK, coincided with the rise of packaged, processed food, take-away joints and unhealthy eating habits. In the 1950s, people ate at home thrice or four times a day. Six out of every 10 men in the UK took their main midday meal at home.

With a greater variety of food becoming available in the marketplace, this custom fell by the wayside. The time spent on preparing meals fell sharply. British multiples increased their shares from a fifth to three-fourths of the grocery market between 1950 and 1990. American supermarkets increased their share from 15 per cent to 61 per cent of the food retail business in the same period. In the 1950s, they stocked 5,000-8,000 items, rising to more than 25,000 different items by the 1980s.

Snacking, eating on the move, became the norm. American sales of sugared soft drinks increased from 21 gallons per head per year in 1968 to 40 gallons in 1994. There are indications that dietary distortions are on the increase in India as well.

The size of the global processed foods industry is estimated at $3.6 trillion. Restaurants and hotels make up another $1 trillion, according to the International Hotel and Restaurant Association. India’s food processing sector accounts for about 7 per cent of its gross domestic product, or about $70 billion, while the restaurant sector’s size is estimated at $20 billion ($110 billion in China) — figures that could be underestimates, given the size of the unorganised sector in these categories.

The share of trade, hotels and restaurants has risen from 14.3 per cent of GDP in 2000-01 to 25.1 per cent of GDP in 2007-08.The packaged food industry is growing at about 20 per cent per annum. Worldwide data on food consumption does not adequately take into account intake outside the home.

Given the changing lifestyles of the 300 million consuming class, particularly in urban areas, this might hold true for India as well. In sum, a growing number of people are not taking the right decisions on how much and what to eat.

Modern lifestyles induce people to eat more than their bodies need, even if they are aware of the pitfalls. At the crux of the food crisis is a psychological disorder arising out of affluence — people being out of tune with their own bodies.