Food Fight!: The Legal Debate Over The Obesity Epidemic, Food Labeling, And The Government's Involvement In What You Eat
SUBSIDIZING OBESITY: THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT'S ROLE IN INCREASING THE DEMAND FOR BACON DOUBLE CHEESEBURGERS
Americans love their bacon double cheeseburgers, and why wouldn’t they? For a few bucks anyone can enjoy a juicy burger. The price of meat is cheap in today’s world because the federal government has decided that meat is an important and necessary staple in the American diet. As such the government has been subsidizing meat production for decades, using taxpayer money to supplement the cost so that everyone can afford bacon double cheeseburgers. But what about fruit and vegetables? They are an important and necessary staple in the American diet as well, but the agricultural subsidies are not as substantial as the subsidies awarded to the meat industry.
The balance of government subsidies is surprisingly skewed in favor of the meat industry, while fruit and vegetable farmers receive comparatively small and disproportional amounts of government aid. As a result, it is difficult to make health conscious choices at a restaurant, or at home. A burger at McDonald’s costs dollar, while a salad costs five dollars. It is much more cost-effective for someone to order a fatty cheeseburger than it is for them to choose a healthy salad.
Other issues arise when the cost of meat is remarkably low. The reality is that red meat is terribly unhealthy and linked to an abundance of health issues ranging from heart disease to high cholesterol and colon cancer. With the awareness of the health risks associated with eating red meat and doctors increasingly advising their patients to eliminate the food from their diets, why is the government continuing to help finance the industry?
Perhaps Americans would not be battling with obesity and heart disease if the cost of a burger reflected the actual production costs involved in raising a cow and bringing it to your dinner table. Certainly fewer families would purchase hamburger meat if it cost them $40 to make spaghetti bolognaise. Because the price of meat is so low, the demand is high; thus cattle ranchers and slaughterhouses resort to inhumane practices to meet the demand for their products. Today’s meat comes from factory farms that are only capable of meeting the demand by overcrowding and injecting the animals with hormones and antibiotics so as to produce more pounds of meat. Such unnatural practices raise questions as to the health effect this will have on people in the future.
Perhaps the government would do better to address the issue of obesity if it were to limit the overabundance of cheap processed meat by allowing the market to dictate what people eat. If the price of an unhealthy bacon double cheeseburger reflected what it actually costs to make, less Americans would be inclined to order them. The government should not be spending taxpayer dollars to help fund factory farms. The justification for the subsidies, that meat is a necessary component to a healthy diet, is not necessarily true. Further, the meat subsidy is not in the best interests of the health of the American people. If anything, more subsidies should be allocated to the production of healthy food, such as agriculture farmers.
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It is interesting to learn that there is substantial subsidies for meat that can affect the market value of meat. It is then reasonable that so-called junk food costs much less than fresh-vegetable dishes, which may be why high-end restaurants serve more vegetables. It makes me wonder if vegetables and fruits can become a luxury.
I am also surprised that the U.S. government determined meat as a staple diet for its people. It is a country where people are allowed to choose a variety of food consumption styles, and the decision on meat seems to separate people who do not eat any meat or certain meat in their ordinary course of life. It is ironic that the government, although perhaps not intentionally, formulated the U.S. nationality in that manner.