Twinkies versus Carrots: How Farm Subsidies Buy Obesity and Increase Healthcare Costs

The Twinkie-versus-carrot com­par­i­son can be seen in other foods. Simply start count­ing ingre­di­ents. If it has 40 ingre­di­ents, like the Twinkie, should it really even be called a food? Food has become a mere ingre­di­ent along­side a shelf of tech­ni­cal chem­i­cals cov­er­ing every­thing from taste and mouth feel to color, scent and shelf life. 

We already know that the obe­sity epi­demic is cost­ing hun­dreds of bil­lions of dol­lars in health­care expenses and lost pro­duc­tiv­ity. Farm bill sub­si­dies for com­mod­ity crops sup­port sweet­en­ers like high-fructose corn syrup by pay­ing part of their cost (corn grow­ing) with tax dol­lars. In order to assess the full cost of these crop sub­si­dies, you really need to add the obesity- and diabetes-related health­care costs. 

America is mak­ing indus­trial agri­cul­ture cor­po­ra­tions, along with biotech com­pa­nies and bankers, even more wealthy, all the while increas­ing our health­care costs by a fac­tor of ten or greater! Is this good pub­lic pol­icy or is Washington merely try­ing to keep a bro­ken machine running?

What You Can Do

1. The farm bill for 2012 is still in play in Congress. Let your rep­re­sen­ta­tives know that you expect them to wisely invest your tax dol­lars by cut­ting sub­si­dies for com­mod­ity crops in the farm bill.

2. Vote with your wal­let. When you buy gro­ceries, check the labels to see how many “ingre­di­ents” there are and decide whether what you’re pur­chas­ing is food or not.

Best-selling author, pro­fes­sor and jour­nal­ist Michael Pollan ably con­nects the dots between food pol­icy, com­mod­ity crops and our health in the video below.