Ezra points to a new study that finds that the cost of "healthy" foods has by about 20 percent over the past two years, while food prices overall rose by just 5 percent. But the page title of the ABC News piece -- "Obesity Among Poor May Be Unavoidable" -- is a bit misleading. As Ezra notes, we pretty much guarantee this reality by using tax dollars to subsidize meat, corn, and all the products derived there from, making them cheaper and therefore more accessible. We don't offer any subsidies for the good foods (vegetables, fruits) grown on American farms, and which has helped make them more expensive and harder to come by. So it's not unavoidable -- it's just how we've constructed the system.
This year's farm bill, which passed the Senate last week, includes for the first time $2 billion to support "specialty crops," which despite what the term might imply are the types of crops humans should actually be eating in large quantities. It's a landmark move for Congress, but that's $2 billion of a $286 billion package, meaning we're still by and large pushing all our tax dollars toward foods that make Americans obese. Really changing that dynamic would take a much bigger investment.
Moreover, the degree to which our cities are highly segregated by class has only furthered this trend. Stores with more healthy foods -- Whole Foods and its ilk -- are located in wealthy parts of town while other neighborhoods get corner stores stocked with Twinkies and Doritos. The solution to this, of course, is to improve the economic realities for all Americans and raise the standards in depressed communities, making them places where companies might want to go and people might actually be able to shop. But it will also have to come through public investment in community agriculture programs in urban areas as well as rural revitalization programs to make it so farmers can actually sell their products to people who live in their community. Sure, releasing Big Ag's grip on American politics is going to be a long, arduous process, but chipping away at it helps make obesity more avoidable.
--Kate Sheppard
