News about UC Agriculture and Natural Resources
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
Published on: September 11, 2009
A Michael Pollan opinion piece that appeared in yesterday's New York Times is reverberating in the ag community. Pollan contends that the United State's high spending on health care can be explained by the country's obesity crisis, and that fact will eventually pit health care interests against agribusiness.
". . . Our success in bringing health care costs under control ultimately depends on whether Washington can summon the political will to take on and reform a second, even more powerful industry: the food industry," Pollan wrote.
Here are some comments from Pollan about a brewing bout between health insurers and agribusiness:
- Reforming the food system is politically even more difficult than reforming the health care system
- Agribusiness dominates the agriculture committees of Congress, and has swatted away most efforts at reform
- In the same way much of the health insurance industry threw its weight behind the campaign against smoking, we can expect it to support, and perhaps even help pay for, (food-related) public education efforts
- The health care reform bill is only the first step in solving our health care crisis
- It's easy to imagine the (health care) industry throwing its weight behind a soda tax
He points to a 2007 UC Davis research report that disputes the strong connection between obesity and farm policy.
"Given that consumers generally show limited responses to retail food price changes, eliminating the corn subsidy would reduce corn-based food consumption by at most 0.2 percent," Bogard quoted the report.
In closing, Bogard coined the phrase: "What's obesity got to do with the price of corn in Iowa?" Not much, he concludes.
(Photo by John Stumbos)
Tags: food systems (3)
Comments: 1
At Burger King for instance, a Double Whopper Value Meal can have 1800 calories. One of their breakfast meals (Croissanwich and Hash Browns) is in the 1200 calorie range. So I figure 1200+1800+1800 (no dessert) for a total of 4800 calories per day.
Now let's figure this is consumed by a person burning 2500 calories daily- we have 2300 leftover calories every night. Multiply that by 361 (Thanksgiving, Christmas, 4th of July, New Years they are closed) and you have 830,300 calories leftover in a year.
Divide that by 3500 calories per pound of fat and you have 237 extra pounds in a year.
Of course, very, very few people would actually gain this in a year- but it is quite conceivable over time. For my example plastic statues, it actually sounds about right.
Add the 237 to a normal 160 pound person, and now we have 397 pounds. It would be VERY easy to imagine a person weighing 397 pounds from eating too much Burger King.
A plastic statue representing a 397 pound person out in front of the restaurants would be truth in advertising. I think it would give potential customers a good idea of what waits for them inside.