Michael Pollan explains what’s wrong with the food bill. In short: everything. We heavily subsidize crops that nobody eats, which get turned into cheap, processed foods, which make people unhealthy. There is no broccoli subsidy, no tomato subsidy. But corn syrup probably wouldn’t exist if the government didn’t pay farmers to grow it.
That was depressing. Try as I might to buy all my meat and produce from farmers markets, it’s just too expensive. After a couple years of reading labels, though, I’ve just about memorized what products I can buy at Food Lion and Ukrop’s and never bring HFCS into my house.
Hopefully, over time, if more and more people learn how utterly horrible corn syrup and HFCS are for them, they’ll stop buying it, and the market will do what it’s supposed to do. Of course, stopping those idiotic subsidies would be a good start.
Posted by I.Publius on 12 November 2007 @ 10pm
I just saw this through the eatlocal mail list. It is a very interesting response to Pollan’s article.
It’s the Agronomy, Stupid
Why gutting subsidies shouldn’t be the focus of Farm Bill reform efforts
http://www.grist.org/comments/food/2007/11/08/index.html?source=friend
Posted by Malena on 16 November 2007 @ 10am
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