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Editor’s note: This column by Terry J. Allen was first published by In These Times.
Surely it is paternalistic to bar the poor from using food stamps to buy soda–as New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg is advocating. Clearly they have the same right as everyone else to eat crap. Certainly a soda ban sits on a slippery slope that ends in government-mandated meals of bulgar and kale.
But just as surely, the up to $135 million that New York City’s food stamp recipients spend annually on sugary drinks amount to a government handout to soft drink manufacturers. Nationally, soda companies raked in a $4 billion subsidy last year through purchases by the 41 million Americans on food stamps.
And since soda is in its essence high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) and water, this corporate welfare supplements the $243 million yearly subsidy that America’s HFCS producers reap through skewed farm policies. Corn is so highly subsidized that producers, including HFCS king Archer Daniels Midland, manufactured it at 27 percent below cost between 1997 and 2005, and pocketed a sweet $2.2 billion in government-gifted savings.
Food stamp dollars for soda are also subsidizing widespread obesity, an epidemic of Type 2 diabetes, and other sweetener-linked conditions. If eating and exercise patterns don’t change, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently predicted, nearly half of black and Hispanic children born in 2000 will become diabetic, while other groups will have a 33 percent lifetime risk. And Type 2, (formerly called “adult onset” diabetes) is now increasing rapidly among teens and even children.
As is sweetener consumption–which has shot up by 40 pounds in the last 40 years, a Tufts University study found. Much of the increase comes from soda, with a can of Coke, for example, supplying 10 teaspoons (140 calories) of sweetener.
Noting that New York’s poor have twice the rate of Type 2 as the wealthiest, Bloomberg asked the Department of Agriculture to allow a two-year pilot program that adds soda to the list of items, including tobacco and alcohol, that the city’s 1.7 million food stamp recipients cannot buy with benefits.
The nation’s trendy shift to cane sugar will not matter much. The difference between it and HFCS may be more a matter of profitability than nutrition, although there is some evidence that
HFCS is inherently more harmful. And because of the way it is manufactured, some HFCS contains mercury, a potent brain toxin, at higher levels than those considered safe by the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives, a 2009 article in the peer-reviewed scientific journal Environmental Health found.
While the Minneapolis-based Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy found no mercury in soda in the majority of beverages it tested, it was present in “nearly one in three of the 55 HFCS-containing food products including in such brands as Quaker, Hunt’s, Manwich, Hershey’s, Smucker’s, Kraft, Nutri-Grain and Yoplait.”
In response to Mayor Mike’s proposed ban, the American Beverage Association–not previously known as a defender of civic rights or an advocate for the poor–accused the Bloomberg of going all bad-nanny-state: “This is just another attempt by government to tell New Yorkers what they should eat and drink, and [it] will only have an unfair impact on those who
can least afford it.”
While that corporate spin is as transparent as 7-Up, critics do have a valid point when they argue that the poor turn to junk and fast food not out of ignorance, but because they are generally easier to obtain than fresh produce and other healthier items—and they deliver far cheaper calories. But part of the economic draw derives from farm policies that–through subsidies that create cheap corn-based foods, including soda and meat–inherently disadvantage more healthful items.
So let’s hear it for a slippery slope that would start with a test ban on soda, and slide on down to a national program to ban welfare for corn- and HFCS-producers, and redirect that funding to grow affordable healthier foods and to subsidize food stamp buying power for fruits, vegetables, and whole grains.
The savings in health and healthcare costs would be sweet. And, after all, soda is not food.
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I couldn’t agree more. Those who need food assistance shouldn’t be experiment subjects just because the government has some control over their food dollars. A movement is building to address our skewed national agricultural policies already. Let’s work toward the broader goal of a food policy that is focussed on feeding people, not on crop types. People who are not on 3 Squares Vermont are also obese and getting type 2 diabetes.
This is a public health issue, not a poverty issue.
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I’m in total agreement with the “nanny state” complaint, but that is only one of the slippery slopes. The other slippery slope involves corporate personhood and such as “free speech” that flows from that.
Plain and simple: what we’ve come to call soft drinks are no more food than the manure I cleaned out of my horse stalls this morning. Corporate personhood is the mother of all slippery slopes – end that and then we can talk about the marketing and advertising that leads to such huge sales of unhealthy belly fillers.
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October 26, 2010
Dr. Philip J. Landrigan
Dr. Lisa M. Satlin
Mt. Sinai School of Medicine
17 East 102nd Street
New York, NY 10029
Dear Drs. Landrigan and Satlin:
I read your commentary in today’s New York Times on obesity and I concur that the problem is attributable first and foremost to the price of corn and to government policies that force farmers, who cannot make a profit on the yields they harvested last year, to grow more and more of it.
I enclose a copy of a letter on that subject I sent to your colleague Dr. Derek LeRoith, who wrote an earlier commentary in the same space calling for a tax on soda pop as a palliative for obesity. My letter suggests to Dr. LeRoith that the real culprit is not soda pop but the cheap corn that goes into it: that to reduce obesity, government should levy a tax on fertilizer and reduce the harvest of corn and raise its cost. I received no response from Dr. LeRoith.
My own advocacy here in Vermont has to do with the dairy crisis. The result of concentrating thousands of dairy cows into fewer and fewer larger and larger barns is over production, low prices, lake pollution and farm attrition, all of which the state nominally disparages but, for fear of appearing to impugn farmers, does nothing about.
The Council on the Future of Vermont reported that 97% of Vermonters support farmers. Lately, the farmers themselves, who receive a price well below the cost of production, have been (half-heartedly) asking government for a mechanism to help them cut production. I have proposed, if the state truly wants to help farmers, that it should ban the sale and use of artificial nitrogen fertilizers and petroleum-based herbicides, which would reduce milk yields by 15%. It would simultaneously address concerns about resource degradation and global warming, stanch the flow of agricultural chemicals into the lake and raise the price paid to farmers.
Sincerely yours,
James H. Maroney, Jr.
/jm
Encls.
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I’m not sold on the nanny state argument. That argument was lost many many moons ago when controls started going in place on alcohol and tobacco products. I don’t drink sodas anymore, but I do regularly drink iced tea which I understand is also on the potential tax block. Quite honestly, I’m all for it. Nothing wrong with a consumption tax on unhealthy products.
Speaking of which, I certainly hope all the people vehemently fighting for the rights of the beverage companies will be just as vociferous in the fight to remove restrictions on tobacco, alcohol, and drugs. (Will that be the second phase of “get your hands off my junk?”)
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Keep government out of my diet!
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All things considered, government-mandated meals of bulgar and kale for people on long term welfare is humane, if you ask me. We might as well start thinking about new standards, while our economy rewinds to the conditions of the 1800s.
Under the category of “it could be worse,” I don’t see anyone advocating over-sized grape presses, like Roman entrepreneurs/capitalists used to discipline impudent, lazy, or aging employees. Those capitalists had no constraints on their treatment of involuntary employees. The employees were property in exactly the same manner as any other property. Those capitalists were 100% within their rights to force fellow employees watch as their co-worker was crushed slowly to death, like an insect in a vice. Can we really say those Romans had no right to do that to their slaves?
Regarding the revenue to soft drink makers from food stamps, I think we should impose new regulations, restrictions, taxes, etc.. However, what bothers me about this overall excellent essay is the pretense of reason masking a personal moral perspective. Terry says people have a right to spend food stamps on soda as if it as a god-given right, akin to the right for air, or the right for food. She presents this “right” to soda as if there is no possible argument against this “right.”
Just what are rights, anyway? By now, we all know the famous “inalienable” rights are alienated in most ways, most of the time, for most people. Rich people have a lot more rights than others, showing something closer to the truth about rights than saying people have a right to buy soda with food stamps.
The phrase “inalienable rights” was coined at a time when people had a lot less in the way of information regarding life in former times than we have today. When the term, “inalienable rights” went into the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America, there was no reason to doubt the Earth was 6,000 years old. Now we know every single human on Earth is descended from Africans, that we all literally are cousins of one another, descended in a direct line through our parents, grandparents, all the way up to one woman who lived about 140,000 years ago. We know those Romans crushing people are family members, so we all know our families are capable of the most horrendous acts ever perpetrated (and thankfully, the greatest). We know any right can be taken or given, that any act can be justified by the human mind, that all Americans are part of a global domination scheme, and only winners of military and economic conflict are party to the discussion as to what rights are. For instance, if my Colombian friend were to explain his right to assassinate corrupt leaders in his country, his argument could be defeated only by force, not by reason.
The only real source of rights that have any power are those granted by people. Theoretical, religious, and spiritual rights make for nice conversation, but unless a person is willing to bring into their home all the people without those rights, I think talking about theoretical rights is a distraction from responsibility. The one right that seems to trump all others these days is the right to protect #1, each person for his or her self, no matter how it might damage others, which means none of us has any right to protection from others, when push comes to shove.
Do you think everyone has a right to eat? What about the 25,000 people who die every day from starvation in this world? If they had the right to eat, you think they would be starving. Their problem is they don’t have the right to eat.
What about the millions of people in India who have no right to defecate, except in their public streets? They say it is humiliating, that no person should have to live this way, but they have no rights to use any facility.
When Terry says, “Clearly they have the same right as everyone else to eat crap,” that is true only because local law says as much. It is not some higher authority making that so.
For better or worse, there is no higher source of rights in our land than the laws of the United States government exercised by people with badges and guns. Morality, ethics, religious beliefs, etc. make interesting conversation regarding rights, but their only effect is as they are embraced, accommodated, or resisted by the law of the United States.
We need to stop calling the wrong things “rights,” so we can focus on gaining rights we want but do not have, and so we can take full responsibility for our impositions on others we inflict in pursuit of what we call our rights.
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A slippery slope indeed, but once again, the focus appears to be on a symptom rather than fixing the cause of the problem. Trying to decide where the line is drawn as to what is allowable for food stamp recipients to purchase, essentially misses the point. The real issue is why are we subsidizing the agri giants such as ADM, Cargill, Monsanto, etc. when all they do is produce chemically enhanced crap that is pawned off as food at the local supermarket. Long term consumption will likely lead to chronic diseases which are then treated with virtually worthless drugs that are produced by the Big Pharma subsdiaries of these same companies. I should say they’re worthless in their alleged purpose, but a windfall to the profits of these corporations.
Monsanto will fight tooth and nail with an army of lawyers (at one time consisting of SCOTUS shill Clarence “Uncle” Thomas) to prevent package labels from stating that the ingredients are chemically enhanced GMO based poison because such information might confuse consumers. I find it ironic that most other nations on the planet have outlawed this garbage, or have labels stating where food originated from. What happened to my right to know? What are they trying to hide? Meanwhile, when I buy produce from the local co-ops or farmer’s markets, the farmer I buy it from struggles to survive producing high quality food while the corprorate tentacles contine to suck my tax dollars into subsidies that only benefit the directors and shareholders.
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I think the “nanny state” phrase serves to confuse the argument, and depends largely upon one’s political philosophy – it is not a bright line. If you support state intervention on behalf of the health or safety of the citizens (seat belt requirements, for instance), it’s not a nanny state. If you don’t support such intervention (take motorcycle helmet laws, for instance), it’s a nanny state. To me the question involves the propriety of having the poorer segment of the population become the subject of regulation solely because of their income.
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No one is arguing that the poor should be banned from purchasing soft drinks any more than they are presently banned from purchasing alcohol or tobacco, when using their own private funds. The proposed measure is to prevent the use of government subsidy to purchase these items, and that seems reasonable enough. When public monies are devoted to various expenditures for the public good, there are always certain restrictions and certain requirements. For example, publicly funded highways have speed limits for the sake of safety, even though many of us would like to go faster. I don’t see how health-based restrictions on the purchase of food, when publicly subsidized, is any different.
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“The other slippery slope involves corporate personhood and such as “free speech” that flows from that.”
I agree, Rama. It’s beyond grotesque that we complain about the nanny state when trying to tax a product, for instance, that helps to create conditions enhanced by policy and price breaks, etc. that cost us millions to treat every year, yet enact laws to subsidize the corporations in a nanny like way to create the products (like sodas) that cause these problems to enhance the well-being of CEO’s and shareholders.
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RE: “Corn is so highly subsidized that producers, including HFCS king Archer Daniels Midland, manufactured it at 27 percent below cost between 1997 and 2005, and pocketed a sweet $2.2 billion in government-gifted savings.”
Why are we discussing taxing soda instead of discussing cutting subsidizes? Several research studies strongly suggest that taxing soda does cut consumption. But a tax of these type will be simply hitting taxpayers twice; first by handing over tax dollars to companies like ADM for growing the corn, and again at the cash register for buying a tax-subsidized product.
Won’t cutting the subsidizes to Agribusiness increase the cost of soda to the same point a soda tax will, and therefore lower consumption? While this may also increase the cost of other HFCS base products, cutting down on there use can’t be a bad thing either.
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Terry — Great work. Can I request a source for the facts above, especially the HFCS / ADM data?
Is there any online news source/clearinghouse about agricultural subsidies which any of you find particularly useful?
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Thanks, David.
The source is http://www.ase.tufts.edu/gdae/Pubs/rp/PB09-01SweeteningPotFeb09.pdf
Global Development and Environment Institute, Tufts University
“Sweetening the Pot: Implicit Subsidies to Corn Sweeteners and the U.S. Obesity Epidemic”
By Alicia Harvie and Timothy A. Wise*
[*Harvie is a Masters candidate in Agriculture, Food, and the Environment at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy. She is also a Research Assistant at the Global Development and Environment Institute.
Wise is Director of the Research and Policy Program at Tufts' Global Development and Environment Institute.]
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It’s all about info and if the public doesn’t get the info they won’t know..Does anyone with half a brain realize that the obesity/diabetes onset coincides with the switch to HFCS in the late 80′s, ie:”new coke”? Remove this from your diet and watch the pounds roll away..The mercury referenced above is a BIG problem also as there are NO “safe” levels and we in New England are getting doused with it from unscrubbed coal stacks, so much so that Vt. F&W issued a “do not consume” warning for deer/moose livers/kidneys in Nov. 2008 and yet our AG does nothing and NO one’s testing the forage. God help us..SM