EWilfried Bommert and Christina Sartori must be incredibly angry at the food industry. In scathing words, the agronomist and biologist blame companies like Nestlé, Danone, Kraft Heinz and Mondelez International for the fact that so many people are overweight in their book “Silent Killer”. We are not to blame for our fat rolls, but the companies that make us addicted to unhealthy food and thus make “fat profits”.
The authors consistently refer to obesity—commonly obesity or obesity—but do not explain what it actually is. Even if they suggest that obesity is an addiction, this question has not yet been scientifically clarified. Bommert and Sartori also claim that being overweight is not a personal problem. In fact, it develops from a combination of various causes: the hereditary tendency, the behavior of the mother during pregnancy, lack of exercise and poor nutrition. The book says that those affected have been “made fat” by an “obese system”, there is talk of advertising campaigns and a pandemic fat wave.
As in a political manifesto
It is true that the food industry produces food with unhealthy ingredients that increase the risk of obesity. But do the authors think that the only way to get their point across is with drastic language? Numbers would have been better: 2.8 million deaths per year worldwide are due to the consequences of overweight and obesity. Bommert and Sartori discuss how “Big Food” could become so big. You can find out in detail how the food companies began to influence our eating habits, how they finance themselves, what tricks they use in their “witches’ kitchen” to increase sales, and why the Germans are so receptive to their products.
The “fast food cartel” could be brought to its knees, the authors suggest, if one took the fight against the tobacco industry as a model: taxes on unhealthy products, lawsuits against the industry, sensitizing parents, offering help for losing weight, Create laws, controls and sanctions. The way out of the authors sounds like a political manifesto: We have to fight for healthy nutrition, yes, there needs to be a human right to healthy nutrition. In addition, junk food-free zones would have to be created, an independent food policy secured and a United Nations convention adopted: “There will be losers and some must fear losing everything that guarantees them power and profits today.”
Wilfried Bommert and Christina Sartori: “Silent Killers”. How big food endangers our health.
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Image: Hirzel Verlag
Less would have been more in this book. This also applies to the 705 literature sources, for which the authors sometimes lacked care (or knowledge?). There are now newer studies on some statements that Bommert and Sartori could have known about. Again and again they quote daily newspapers or websites – such as the “Tagesspiegel” or the “New York Times” – instead of the primary study to which they are actually referring. In fact, a stomach reduction surgery can have disadvantages. However, these would be taken from the medical studies and guidelines and not from the advice pages from Norddeutscher Rundfunk. And the benefits of this, for some obese people, the only way to get their excess weight under control could have been compared.
Civil society must step up its game
According to the authors, a study from Switzerland measured “significant reductions” in important nutrients in six common types of vegetables compared to those offered thirty to fifty years ago. That’s true when it comes to magnesium, copper, vitamin B2 and vitamin C. But the demand is still adequately covered by vegetables, according to the original study. The actions described by some countries to reduce unhealthy food are exemplary. What is missing, however, is the classification that says nothing about whether people there now live healthier and no longer get as fat.
At the end, the authors quote doctor Rudolf Virchow as saying that “the statesman of ‘great style’ can recognize from the epidemics that “there is a disturbance in the course of development of his people which even careless politics must no longer overlook”. Bommert and Sartori are optimistic that the Medical Council will still be heard, provided that civil society does its utmost.
Wilfried Bommert and Christina Sartori: “Silent Killers”. How big food endangers our health. Hirzel Verlag, Stuttgart 2022. 240 pages, illustrations, brown, €20.
