Harold Goldstein

Executive Director, California Center for Public Health Advocacy

A casual drive through nearly any California community vividly illustrates one cause of the obesity epidemic. You're four times more likely to come across a fast food restaurant or a convenience store than a grocery store or farmer's market, according to Harold Goldstein,
executive director of the California Center for Public Health Advocacy in Davis.

The challenge of improving our food environment is what gets Goldstein up in the morning.

"What we choose to eat is influenced by the environment in which we live, and the role of public health and public policy is to help insure that our environments, our communities, support us in making healthy choices," Goldstein says.

California's two public health associations established the center in Davis in 1999 to design policy solutions to critical public health challenges. Its top priority has been promoting a healthy food environment for all Californians, especially children. "We see it as the focal point for chronic disease prevention," says Goldstein. "It's really all about healthy eating and physical activity. Between those two health behaviors, we're addressing two-thirds of the leading causes of death."

Among the legislative victories for which it claims partial credit is the 2008 law - SB 1420 -- that made California the first state in the nation to require restaurant chains with 20 or more California locations to post calorie information on menus and indoor menu boards.The center called upon California lawmakers to require restaurants to post nutrition information, to implement policies that would increase grocery stores and produce vendors in poor communities, and to use federal nutrition assistance programs to make fruits, vegetables and other healthy foods more affordable.

The 2008 law was the center's third major legislative achievement. In 2005, California banned junk food and soda from schools, six years after the center first pushed for it. The following year, the center worked with the governor to add $85 million to the state budget to strengthen physical education programs and hire more physical education teachers. With the 2008 law, the center moved beyond schools and into communities.

The center's January 2007 report, "Searching for Healthy Food: The Food Landscape in California Cities and Counties, provided persuasive evidence that the proliferation of fast food restaurants -- and consumers' lack of knowledge about the calorie counts of their offerings -- were factors in the obesity epidemic.

The report included the results of a 2007 survey that found that Californians' perceptions of the nutritional value of food were wildly inaccurate. The poll asked respondents to indicate which of four menu items contained the fewest calories, the least salt, the most fat, or the most calories.

On one question in the survey of 523 registered California voters, not a single respondent answered all four questions correctly. For instance, a chicken Caesar salad from a chain restaurant can have more fat than lasagna or a chicken barbecue pizza.

"Common sense is actually detrimental to getting these questions right," says Goldstein.