Nearly half of all Americans will be obese by 2030, researchers reported at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention's Weight of the Nation conference in Washington earlier this month. 42 percent of us are projected to be obese, placing a huge strain on our already compromised health care system. Brian Fung at The Atlantic points out that the health care costs of obesity -- $550 billion over the next two decades -- is more than the U.S. Department of Defense asked for in its fiscal year 2013 budget.
With the new HBO documentary, The Weight of the Nation, out this week, we need to ask one thing: what's making us so fat?
There are a lot of reasons -- chemical, psychological, environmental -- for why people are obese. But explaining societal obesity means looking at what the food system is providing for us to eat -- and how government policies might promote certain foods over others.
"In the political arena, one side is winning the war on child obesity," a new Reuters report on the food lobby begins. "The side with the fattest wallets."
That's entirely true. As Reuters reports, the food and beverage industry has been relentless in Washington lately, more than doubling their spending in Washington during the past three years, completely outpacing public interest groups looking out for children's health:
The Center for Science in the Public Interest, widely regarded as the lead lobbying force for healthier food, spent about $70,000 lobbying last year -- roughly what those opposing the stricter guidelines spent every 13 hours, the Reuters analysis showed.
Obesity is complicated enough on an individual scale, societal obesity even more so. Certainly, we can blame marketing sugary cereals and 2,000-calorie burgers to kids for part of the obesity epidemic. But we can trace the roots of this problem even further, back to the 1930s, when taxpayers started subsidizing American agriculture.
The farm bill, first enacted during the Great Depression and renewed every five years or so, includes food stamps for the poor, international food aid, conservation programs, and subsidies for farmers, which lets them ride out bad crop years and compete with farmers in other countries. Critics have long derided subsidies, noting that they promote the growing of crops like corn and rice over others, like vegetables. The farm bill is up for reauthorization this year.
Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore's Dilemma, is one of those critics. He traced the massive amounts of subsidies received by corn growers  -- $73.8 billion over 15 years -- to the rise of high fructose corn syrup, the fattening substance that Vice President Joe Biden said was more dangerous to Americans than terrorism. Variations of the farm bill over the years have helped make "Twinkies cheaper than carrots and Coca-Cola competitive with water," Pollan wrote in the New York Times during the last debate over the farm bill, in 2007. The 2007 version of the farm bill expires in September.
The 2012 Farm Bill, which recently passed through the Senate Agriculture Committee, seems to reflect some of those criticisms. As part of the federal government's effort to cut spending, the Ag Committee proposed a massive overhaul of the current subsidy program. The Senate bill eliminates $5 billion of annual subsidies in the form of direct payments and counter-cyclical payments to farmers, as well as the Average Crop Revenue Election Program, which started with the last farm bill. This might sound like Congress is actually listening to the concerns of food activists.
But the Senate proposal continues to give away tens of billions of dollars in subsidies to Big Agribusiness, at the expense of programs benefiting conservation, nutrition, and new farmers. The food blog Civil Eats calls the proposal an "all-you-can-eat-buffet for the subsidy lobby":
[L]egislators created an expensive new entitlement program (called "shallow loss") that guarantees nearly 90 percent of the income of farm businesses already enjoying record profits. It also leaves untouched a bloated $9-billion-a-year crop insurance program that pays about 60 percent of farmers' crop insurance premiums, no matter how large the farm, and sends billions to crop insurance companies and their agents.Most of the benefits of these proposed programs would flow to the big five commodity crops (corn, soy, cotton, rice, and wheat) that provide feed for livestock, raw material for processed food and corn ethanol fuel for our cars.
As the 2012 farm bill heads from the Senate to the House of Representatives, it's important to keep in mind that this isn't just a farm bill -- it's a food bill, helping to dictate what kinds of food people can afford. Not everyone on the House Agriculture Committee sees it that way: last month, Republicans on the committee voted to cut $33 billion from food stamps while keeping farm subsidies intact. With recent high crop prices and a record of $136.3 billion in farm exports in 2011, big farmers growing corn and soy don't really need the help (even the powerful Iowa Farm Bureau agrees). Instead, the farm bill should work on making healthy foods, like fresh fruits and vegetables, available at lower prices. Because if there's one thing that the country can't afford, it's having a population that's half obese.
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Bettina Elias Siegel: Congressman Jared Polis Revisits 'Pizza = School Food Vegetable'
Eating healthy for $75 for a family of four is easy. Vegetables. Fruit. Ground beef. Bread. Milk. Juice. PORTION SIZES. Don't buy all the extra crap and it's easy. You don't have to eat until you can't stand up.
How hard can it be to feed a family of 4 for a week for $75? A gallon of milk is $3.50. A loaf of bread is $1. Two pounds of lean ground beef is $6. Three chicken breasts are $6. Fresh sliced deli meat is about $4 a pound. A big bag of green beans is $3. A couple onions are $1. A bag of apples is about $4. A bunch of bananas is about $2. A bag of grapes is about $3. That comes to $33.50. Double that order and tell me you can't eat for a week on that, and you've got an extra $8 to make sure there is butter.
Nutrition doesn't have to be fancy. It doesn't need to be seasoned perfectly and sauteed to a golden brown.
Get smart, shop smart, eat smart. The more people that follow those 3 credos, the less money fast food will have to purchase politicians, the less big ag will be given in subsidies, the more healthy foods will become available. WE are the only ones who can create a new cycle that is not vicious.
The other day at the store, I witnessed a rather obese woman, with two obese children. They kids were clamoring for their mother to buy them apples. She looked at the price, and declared that they were too expensive($2.49 lb, not cheap but not too bad). A few aisles later I watched as she found the Hostess end cap, and gleefully filled the cart with cupcakes, because 2/$4.00 was a good price. I just about died right there. No wonder her kids were fat!
Listen, healthy food is NOT more expensive than fast food/processed food, it simply has less appeal to those accustomed to tons of sugar in their diet, and often needs to be prepared rather than being instantly accessible. Our income has recently been greatly reduces, and we went from having $125 a week for groceries for a family of four, to $75 - $50, and we still eat well. Well and healthy.
BTW, I bought organic apples last night for $1.89/lb in Denver.
We can't afford Organic or Farmers Market prices, sadly. We do grow a lot of our own veggies in my large garden, I compost everything I can, I can and dry to preserve fruits and veggies, and we keep both chickens and bees. On .15 acres. Yes, a tiny city lot and we have a garden, chickens, and bees.
We have not been offered a set of guidelines that encourages health. We operate in the largest capitalistic society on Earth and we are the beneficiaries of incredible wealth derived from the free flow of ideas and investment.
The failing of this system is in its ability to address health & well-being.
whole post here: http://wholefed.org/2012/05/12/obesity-is-simple/
Ian Welch
www.wholefed.org
Occam’s razor is the law of succinctness. It is a principle urging one to select among competing hypotheses that which makes the fewest assumptions and thereby offers the simplest explanation of the effect. According to Occam’s Razor, all other things being equal, the simplest theory is the most likely to be true. In the context of human lifestyle, simplicity can denote freedom from hardship, effort or confusion. Specifically, it can refer to a simple living lifestyle. (Wikipedia)
There are 30 different flavors of Pop Tarts. Each Pop Tart lists at least 50 primary ingredients, if you break those down you are well into the 100′s. That is not a simple food. At its core, at some time in the past, it was likely flour, sugar, water… not anymore.
We need to focus, as individuals, to subscribe to a lifestyle of simplicity. Breakdown your nutritional needs to a group of core ingredients
A simple solution - Don't trust any food that comes in a box.
Of course, this is not the case. Personal Responsibility is hugely important--we must all take command of our own health, for ourselves and for society as a whole, but this can only work if every single one of us has equal access to the things that make healthy lifestyles possible.
It would help a lot of corn subsidies -- which benefit only huge industrial farms anyway -- were transferred to healthier options. It would be far better for the water and soil as well.
I just watched a shocking documentary on Monsanto and their GM foods. They are working very hard to destroy genetic diversity and sustainable agriculture around the world for their own captive market profits. It's time to fight back.
I'm no longer Mormon because the doctrine just finally got to me, but if the U.S. followed their massive welfare plan we'd be solvent today - and not obese.
We know this is a massive problem but the folks in DC change nothing.
End federal control of public education. End federal research grants. End federal agriculture subsidies.
At some point here, we all, including the neo-libertarians, are going to get a lesson similar to the "chicken or the egg." One cannot take personal responsibility without the availability of personal choice. Less availability of personal choice is a hindrance to taking personal responsibility. This will all hit home, especially in regard to our food supply, rather acutely--and not too far in our devastatingly bleak futures.
The rise of Dr. Ron Paul on the back of the Tea Party movement is truly the death of real Libertarianism. So much for political choice as well, I guess- which brings the responsibility/choice paradigm full circle.
We're all responsible for the diminishing choices we have to take personal responsibility for ourselves.
The grain feed lots exist because the government interferes in EVERYTHING and made grain too cheap.
Don;t tell Planned Parenthood.
Just wish I was more of the rule and not the exception, though.