You Are What You Grow

[didymus]

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** You Are What You Grow**

By MICHAEL POLLAN
A few years ago, an obesity researcher at the University of Washington named Adam Drewnowski ventured into the supermarket to solve a mystery. He wanted to figure out why it is that the most reliable predictor of obesity in America today is a person’s wealth. For most of history, after all, the poor have typically suffered from a shortage of calories, not a surfeit. So how is it that today the people with the least amount of money to spend on food are the ones most likely to be overweight?

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. (In the typical American supermarket, the fresh foods — dairy, meat, fish and produce — line the perimeter walls, while the imperishable packaged goods dominate the center.) Drewnowski found that a dollar could buy 1,200 calories of cookies or potato chips but only 250 calories of carrots. Looking for something to wash down those chips, he discovered that his dollar bought 875 calories of soda but only 170 calories of orange juice.

As a rule, processed foods are more “energy dense” than fresh foods: they contain less water and fiber but more added fat and sugar, which makes them both less filling and more fattening. These particular calories also happen to be the least healthful ones in the marketplace, which is why we call the foods that contain them “junk.” Drewnowski concluded that the rules of the food game in America are organized in such a way that if you are eating on a budget, the most rational economic strategy is to eat badly — and get fat.

. . . . .

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.

So Uncle Sam subsidises unhealthy food up front, then no doubt winds up paying much of the health costs resulting from the American diet. Peach and other fruit growers in Georgia were hit by a very bad frost last month and they will not see Federal dollars coming to their rescue.

Heaven alone knows what food prices would be if we allowed the market to operate freely w/o subsidies, price supports, &c, &c. Here in upstate NY a lot of dairy farmers are on the ragged edge because the Federal gov’t simultaneously sets the price of milk too low for them to make a living, then has different programs to try to keep them in business.

 

[geezerbob]

This “researcher” seems to think that the only products which come from soybeans and corn are meats, sugars and fats. To say that farm subsidies for these products is the root cause of obesity in America is such a stretch that it causes me to wonder what his real agenda is.

The temporary farm subsidy programs were started out of necessity but, like most governmental programs, have become eternal, bloated and mismanaged, and have evolved into little more than political pork. On the one hand, I’m against them as a matter of principle, feeling that the government should stay out of business. On the other, I realize that an ample food supply is necessary for our survival and that most of us are incapable of, or unable to, grow and process our own food. Yes, many foods require processing before they reach our tables and it’s not necessarily a bad thing, despite what the author implies. In order to keep enough people “down on the farm” to ensure our food supply, some sort of safety net is probably necessary to compensate them for the vagaries of weather and other uncontrollable events such as unanticipated insect infestations. The subsidy problem, in my opinion, is what this safety net has evolved into.

South Carolina, which is second only to California in peach production, lost about 80% of its crop this year because of the late cold snap. Some single-variety growers will not survive. Others will because they have orchards of early, medium and late blooming varieties and will usually be able to salvage at least some of their crop. Some have also diversified into other crops such as strawberries and broccoli (yuck) to minimize the effects of a failure in their peach crop. Sounds like smart business to me and seems to be much more effective than subsidies and emergency bail outs. The smart farmer also lays aside some $$$ in the good years to carry him through the bad ones which will inevitably come.

On the local level, this state has a law that milk cannot be sold at retail for less than the cost of production and the cost is set annually by the State Department of Agriculture. It keeps the dairy farmers in business and does not require subsidies, but does cause the consumer to pay somewhat more for a gallon of milk than he would in many other states. It’s doubtful that such a program would work for grain crops because of the political influence concentrated in the relatively few large purchasers of these commodities. Local flour and feed mills by local grains but, collectively, they’re nothing compared to just one of the big boys such as ADM, Con Agra, General Mills, Kellogg’s or Pillsbury.

Anyway, back to the premise of the referenced article, personal lifestyle choices are the root cause of obesity in America, not farm subsidies, as much as I dislike them. What exactly is he proposing? Does he think that Big Brother should dictate what we eat at each meal? Kinda scary when you stretch his conclusions to their logical ends.

 

[vern_humphrey]

tinyurl.com/2eg4h7

Here in upstate NY a lot of dairy farmers are on the ragged edge because the Federal gov’t simultaneously sets the price of milk too low for them to make a living, then has different programs to try to keep them in business.

Why should the government set prices at all – the marketplace does that.

 

[GreenJeans]

Why should the government set prices at all – the marketplace does that.

The researcher imlpies the goal of buying food is to maximize caloric intake. That’s what he dscribes the poor doing. If he is correct, we should expect the rich to be even fatter since they can afford even more calories.

I did my own survey the other day. 19 ounces of Tostidos cost $4.49. Four packages of Twinkies cost $4.00. At the same store ten pounds of potatos cost $4.00 in the produce department. So, exactly why does the guy buy chips rather than potatos? Does he contend the rich guy buys the potatos and the poor guy buys the Tostidos and Twinkies?

Twinkies contain about 3 cents of grain, and a few more cents of sugar. The flour from the same field is available in the same store. So is whole wheat bread. Three packages of Twinkies cost the same as one loaf of whole wheat bread.

 

[vern_humphrey]

The researcher imlpies the goal of buying food is to maximize caloric intake. That’s what he dscribes the poor doing. If he is correct, we should expect the rich to be even fatter since they can afford even more calories.

I did my own survey the other day. 19 ounces of Tostidos cost $4.49. Four packages of Twinkies cost $4.00. At the same store ten pounds of potatos cost $4.00 in the produce department. So, exactly why does the guy buy chips rather than potatos? Does he contend the rich guy buys the potatos and the poor guy buys the Tostidos and Twinkies?

Twinkies contain about 3 cents of grain, and a few more cents of sugar. The flour from the same field is available in the same store. So is whole wheat bread. Three packages of Twinkies cost the same as one loaf of whole wheat bread.

The study seems deeply flawed, since it has an unspoken assumption – that the poor have to maximize the number of calories per dollar in order to survive. If that were true, the poor would be thin – since there wouldn’t be any surplus money left over to buy more than the calories necessary for survival.

However, your observations are interesting. What’s the key difference between 19 ounces of Tostidos at $4.49, four packages of Twinkies at $4.00 and ten pounds of potatos at $4.00?

Why, the potatoes have to be cooked! And that’s like, work, man!

 

[GreenJeans]

Here’s a great site that provides a nutritional breakdown of thousands of foods.

nat.crgq.com/mainnat.html

 

[KathleenElsie]

In PA the government sets the price of milk and milk products in the store. The milk price went up 35 cents and the farmer got around 3 cents. So the processors, delivery and store get the majority of the money not the farmer.

 

[vern_humphrey]

In PA the government sets the price of milk and milk products in the store. The milk price went up 35 cents and the farmer got around 3 cents. So the processors, delivery and store get the majority of the money not the farmer.

In the same cooler as the milk, you will find orantge juice and other products whose price is not set by the government. Why should the government set milk prices?

 

[KathleenElsie]

In the same cooler as the milk, you will find Orange juice and other products whose price is not set by the government. Why should the government set milk prices?

My point was that the government should not be in the price setting business. It does not protect anyone not even the farmer that is the one the government says it is protecting. LOL

 

[vern_humphrey]

My point was that the government should not be in the price setting business. It does not protect anyone not even the farmer that is the one the government says it is protecting. LOL

My experience has been that government causes more problems than it solves.