| Chapter 1: | Farm Bills, Interest Groups, and Policy Change |
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Public Health Groups
Health—and specifically the impact of cheap, high-fat, high-sugar processed foods on consumers—became an issue for farm bill debates only recently. Public health and social justice advocates began to note that the greater affordability and availability of processed foods, among other factors, correlated with rising rates of obesity and diet-related illnessesin the United States, especially among low-income consumers (Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, 2007; Pollan, 2006). The fact, for example, that the sweetener high fructose corn syrup is relatively cheap, in part as a result of corn subsidies, meant that portion sizes of items such as soft drinks and sweets were increased without a proportional increase in price (Pollan, 2006). In addition, because subsidized corn and soybeans are fed to livestock, the cost of meat remained low, making a relatively large-portion, high-meat diet accessible and affordable for most Americans (Cochran, 2006; Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, 2007). According to the National Institutes of Health, 66% of adults age 20 and older are overweight or obese (32% obese), up from 45% (13% obese) in 1960 (National Institutes of Health, 2006). According to the surgeon general, diet-related illnesses such as heart disease and diabetes are now considered the leading cause of death in the United States, and their costs have reached over $110 billion a year (Imhoff, 2007). Whereas these trends certainly have to do with more than just portion sizes and cheap sugars and fats, the subsidizing of corn and soybeans that are then converted to fats and sugars has made processed foods cheaper and more readily available than they otherwise might have been (Corn Refiners Association, 2006).
Public health and community food security advocates (e.g., Community Food Security Coalition, American Dietetic Association) argued that Americans are paying for their cheap food with both their tax dollars and their health, and they looked to the 2008 farm bill to reshuffle agricultural production incentives so that processed foods were no longer the cheapest and most convenient foods in the grocery store (American Dietetic Association, 2007; Healthy Foods and Communities, 2006; Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, 2007). These groups often