Food Reform To Fight Obesity

Food reform to fight obesity.

"The food stamp program was front and center on campus and on the Internet Thursday during a session of The Forum at Harvard School of Public Health, which regularly brings experts together to discuss important issues in the field. The session examined reforms needed in the federal government’s farm bill to improve public health. The farm bill, expected to come up for discussion in Congress in 2012, is the federal government’s major agriculture subsidy program."

"Several panelists blamed U.S. agricultural policy over the past four decades for creating a food system where healthier fruits and vegetables are relatively expensive while high-starch, processed foods and red meats are cheap and widely available."

"With ensuing technological changes in the years after World War II, the United States ramped up its subsidies, steering production toward what at the time was thought to be a healthy diet of starches and meat...The problem, Willett said, is that we now know that a healthy diet is not dominated by processed starches and red meat, but is just the opposite. A healthy diet is composed of whole grains, nuts, beans, fruits, and vegetables, with red meat in moderation and very little refined starches and added sugar. The result is that today two-thirds of Americans are overweight or even obese, diabetes is rising across the country, and in some parts of the country, life expectancy is actually dropping."