Give me my McNuggets!
This report shows a very interesting relation between the poor and obesity.
Drewnowski gave himself a hypothetical dollar to spend, using it to purchase as many calories as he possibly could. He discovered that he could buy the most calories per dollar in the middle aisles of the supermarket, among the towering canyons of processed food and soft drink.
And why, you may ask? Government intervention of course!
For the answer, you need look no farther than the farm bill. This resolutely unglamorous and head-hurtingly complicated piece of legislation, which comes around roughly every five years and is about to do so again, sets the rules for the American food system — indeed, to a considerable extent, for the world’s food system. Among other things, it determines which crops will be subsidized and which will not, and in the case of the carrot and the Twinkie, the farm bill as currently written offers a lot more support to the cake than to the root. Like most processed foods, the Twinkie is basically a clever arrangement of carbohydrates and fats teased out of corn, soybeans and wheat — three of the five commodity crops that the farm bill supports, to the tune of some $25 billion a year. (Rice and cotton are the others.) For the last several decades — indeed, for about as long as the American waistline has been ballooning — U.S. agricultural policy has been designed in such a way as to promote the overproduction of these five commodities, especially corn and soy.
Well, American waistlines are doomed… Doomed I say! I’m going to continue my shopping at the farmers market until I’m poor I guess…
# 18
Corn syrup has been around a long time, (see: karo syrup) but was nowhere near as ubiquitous as it is in foods now. Eating so much processed food may be bad for us, but let’s also keep in mind that we are also exporting food to the entire world, and those “staples” feed huge numbers of people who have no problem with obesity. What happens later is up to them. I must say though, that it disappoints me when I see how many “free market” conservatives are all for huge subsidies to corporate farms and the nuclear energy.
In case it wasn’t clear, I oppose all subsidies for agriculture.
I think at least part of the problem is that there is a lot more prepared food than there was a half-century ago. It’s just so easy to eat these days. You just grab a bag of chips out of the cabinet, or nuke a frozen dinner, or drive down to a fast-food joint, or dial up Chinese or the Hut and have them deliver. None of this spending hours assembling raw ingredients, chopping, mixing and slaving over a hot stove anymore.
Is that a woman or a man wearing the flag shirt?
22. I think your right, people do lose track of what they eat because of the abundance of it. It takes a conscious effort, add it up in your head as you go, be cognizant of what you take in, and EXERCISE. Especially the weight bearing type to increase metabolism, sound boring, it is, too bad.
22,
You know, when I cook, I’m always amazed at how few ingredients I use. I always cook from raw ingredients. 6-8 items in a dish is a lot. Usually, its more 3-5. When I read a box of processed food, it’s just deplorable. I made homeburgers… ground beef and pork, onions, bread crumbs salt-and-pepper, some cayenne and an egg. Even the egg is optional! But that’s it. Delicious!
Pasta salad – pasta, red onion, cukes, red pepper, olive oil, salt-and-pepper, oregano, feta cheese. That’s all! Good food is simple. Simple food is great!
#22, you asked a good question. Why is there obesity now since many of the foods I have mentioned have been around forever? First off, high fructose corn syrup, which is in damned near everything, has only been around since the ’70s. There is a direct correlation between the rise in American obesity and the use of high fructose corn syrup. That is why I said it was the worst. As far as HFCS being “better”, you need to get out more. Almost every other nation in the world uses sugar over HFCS, and I have yet to hear one consumer who prefers HFCS over sugar.
You are right about all the other foods being present way before the obesity epidemic and the rise in prepared foods contributing to obesity but you didn’t get into why. French fries are a simple food. They should be potatoes, cooking oil, and salt. But McDonald’s has just been sued because they advertised their fries were gluten (or wheat) free. A person with Celiac’s disease, who is supposed to have no wheat, ate the fries and had an extreme reaction. McDonald’s later admitted they put wheat and milk in their fries as “seasonings”. To the average person, they think of milk and wheat and say “no problem”. You can imagine what I thought of their “seasonings” and why they lied about it.
The average American has been trained to think that obesity is 99% due to the lifestyle choices of the individual. I think it’s probably closer to 1/3 genetic, 1/3 chemical, and 1/3 lifestyle choices. If it were 99% lifesyle choices, then diet pills and surgery wouldn’t work for obesity, and they do.
But getting back to John’s original point, why are we subsidizing milk, corn, and wheat and not fruit, vegtables, and meats while in the middle of an obesity epidemic? That policy makes no sense.