Why do American taxpayers give billions of dollars to support sugar and meat industries?
Increasing the calorie surplus sufficient to explain the obesity epidemic was less a change in food quantity than in food quality. Access to cheap, high-calorie, low-quality foods explodedand the federal government too played role in making this happen. US taxpayers give billions of dollars in subsidies to support the sugar industry, the high-fructose corn syrup industry, and soybean production, about half of which is processed into vegetable oil and the other half used as cheap animal feed to help produce meat from the dollar menu. You can I see grantee table below and at 0:49 in my video The role of taxpayer subsidies in the obesity epidemic. Why the taxpayers I give nearly a quarter of a billion dollars a year for the sorghum industry? When was the last time you sat down on some sorghum? It’s almost everything i fed in cattle and other animals. “We have was created a food price structure that favors foods, sweets and fats of relatively animal origin”—animal products, sugars and oils.
The farm bill started as an emergency measure during the Great Depression of the 1930s to protect small farmers, but it was weaponized by Big Ag into a cash cow with a pork barrel policy – including the beef and pork producers in question. From 1970 to 1994, world beef prices he fell more than 60 percent. And, if it weren’t for the taxpayers”sweetening pot” at billions of dollars a year, high-fructose corn syrup would cost the soft drink industry about 12 percent more. Then we hand Big Soda billions more through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as the Food Stamp Program, to provide sugar-sweetened beverages to low-income individuals. Why is chicken so cheap? After a Farm Bill, corn and soybeans were subsidized below cost of production for cheap feed. We effectively handed the poultry and pork industries about $10 billion each. It’s not chicken feed — or rather, it is!
This is changes what are we eating.
As you can see below and at 2:03 in my video, thanks in part to subsidies, dairy, meats, sweets, eggs, oils and soda were all Damn it relatively cheaper compared to the overall CPI as the obesity epidemic took off, while the relative cost of fresh fruit and vegetables doubled. This may help explain because, over roughly the same period, the percentage of Americans getting five servings of fruits and vegetables a day dropped from 42 percent to 26 percent. Why not just subsidize production? Because the money is not there.
“To understand what it is conformation Our food today, it is important to understand the importance of differential profit. Whole foods or minimally processed foods such as canned beans or tomato paste are what the food business refers to as “commodity.” They have such small profit margins that “some are routinely sold at or below cost, as “loss leaders,” to attract customers to the store” in the hope that they will also buy the “value-added” products. Some of the most profitable products for both producers and sellers are highly processed, fatty, sugary and salty concoctions artificially flavored, artificially colored and artificially cheap ingredients – thanks to taxpayer subsidies.
Different foods yield different yields. Measured by “profit per square foot of selling space” in the supermarket, confectioneries such as candy consistently rank among the most profitable. Markings are the only healthy thing about them. Fried snacks like potato chips and corn chips are also very profitable. PepsiCo subsidiary Frito-Lay boasts that while its products only accounted for about 1% of total supermarket sales, they may account for more than 10% of operating profits for supermarkets and 40% of profit growth.
It’s no surprise, then, that the entire system is trash-oriented. Increasing the calorie supply was not just more food, but a different kind of food. There’s a silly dichotomy about the drivers of the obesity epidemic: Is it sugar or fat? They are both high subsidies, and they both took off. As you can see below and at 4:29 and 4:35 in mine videoalong with a significant increase in refined grain products that is difficult to quantify, the increase in obesity was accompanied by about a 20% increase in added sugars per capita and a 38% increase in added fats.
More than half the calories is consumed of most adults in the United States are found to come from these subsidized foods, and they appear to be worse off for it. Those who ate more had significantly higher levels of chronic disease risk factors, including elevated cholesterol, inflammation and body weight.
If it really was a government, by and for the people, we’d be subsidizing healthy food, if nothing else, to make fruit and vegetables cheap or even free. Instead, our tax dollars are shoveled into people like the sugar industry or animal feed to make cheap fast food meat.
Speaking of sorghum, I’ve never had it before and it’s delicious! In fact, I wish I had discovered this sooner How not to diet had been issued. Now I add sorghum and millet to my BROL bowl, which was just purple barley groats, rye groats, oatmeal, and black lentils, so the acronym has become unpronounceable BROLMS. Anyway, sorghum is a great rice substitute for those who saw mine Rice and arsenic video series and I was as convinced as I was that we must diversify our grains.
Now on to marketing. After all the taxpayer-subsidized glut of calories on the market, the food industry had to find a way to put them in people’s mouths. So, next: The role of marketing in the obesity epidemic.
We’re about halfway through this series on the obesity epidemic. If you missed any so far, check out the related videos below.
