Junk Food Subsidies—Twinkies Versus Apples

In con­trast, only $637 mil­lion has gone to sub­si­dies for apples since 1995. That’s enough to buy 77 mil­lion apples per year on average—just half of one apple per taxpayer.

At the same time, child­hood obe­sity rates have tripled over the last three decades, with one in five kids aged 6 to 11 now obese. These increases in obe­sity rates will trans­late into kids who are at greater risk for heart dis­ease and dia­betes, under­min­ing the health of our coun­try and dri­ving up med­ical costs by hun­dreds of bil­lions of dol­lars. The rise in obe­sity has many causes, but one of the most impor­tant is the increased preva­lence of high-fat, heav­ily sweet­ened junk food.

Between 1995 and 2011, American tax­pay­ers spent over $277 bil­lion in agri­cul­tural sub­si­dies. Most sub­si­dies went to the country’s largest farm­ing oper­a­tions, mainly to grow just a few com­mod­ity crops, includ­ing corn and soybeans. 

Most of these com­mod­ity crops are not sim­ply eaten as-is. Among other uses, food man­u­fac­tur­ers process them into addi­tives like high fruc­tose corn syrup and veg­etable oils that pro­vide a cheap dose of sweet­ness and fat to a wide vari­ety of junk food products.

Thus, Americans’ tax dol­lars directly sub­si­dize junk food ingredients.

Key Findings:

• Between 1995 and 2011, $18.2 bil­lion in tax dol­lars sub­si­dized four com­mon junk food additives—corn syrup, high fruc­tose corn syrup, corn starch, and soy oils (which are processed fur­ther into hydro­genated veg­etable oils).
• Healthier agri­cul­tural prod­ucts receive very lit­tle in fed­eral subsidies.
• Since 1995, tax­pay­ers spent only $637 mil­lion sub­si­diz­ing apples, which is one of the few fresh fruits or veg­eta­bles that have a sig­nif­i­cant fed­eral subsidy.
• If sub­si­dies for junk food ingre­di­ents went directly to tax­pay­ers to allow them to pur­chase food, each of America’s 141 mil­lion tax­pay­ers would receive $7.58 to spend on junk food and 27 cents to spend on apples each year—enough to buy 21 Twinkies but just half of one Red Delicious apple.
• The $18.2 bil­lion in sub­si­dies for junk food ingre­di­ents that tax­pay­ers have shelled out since 1995 is enough to buy 49 bil­lion Twinkies. Placed end to end, they would cir­cle the globe 125 times.
• Since 1995, the lion’s share of agri­cul­tural sub­si­dies has gone to a very small num­ber of large operations—75% of sub­si­dies go to just 3.8% of U.S. farmers.

The fact that so many tax dol­lars are being wasted on junk food demon­strates the need to reform fed­eral agri­cul­tural sub­si­dies and end this waste­ful spending.

Click here to down­load the com­plete report.