Obesity/ Hunger

see obesity back for 12/15 recovery

see school lunch

see snap social safety net is a buffer resilience

11/17 see famine for int'l large scale

bak

-=-=

-=-=

-=-=

-=-=

AN 10 26

Rural West Virginia town voted 76 percent for Trump — now it’s starving

BITE ASS

The Republicans' "One Big Beautiful Bill" ushered in such significant budget cuts that one rural West Virginia town is experiencing a hunger crisis.

Dunlow, West Virginia, has been hit particularly hard by cuts to two programs: the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and federal food-purchasing cuts.

The GOP's budget bill mandated new eligibility and work-reporting requirements that have been particularly difficult in rural coal country, where jobs and training programs are scarce. While Trump claimed he'd bring back coal jobs during the 2024 campaign, he hasn't delivered. So, those who counted on those jobs are still struggling. Then Congress cut whatever safety net was left.

NBC reported Friday that approximately 24,000 West Virginians, including 8,000 children, have lost food-stamp benefits since last summer. Those are statewide figures, not counts specific to Dunlow or Matewan, but GOP Rep. Carol Miller, who covers that district, voted in support of the cuts. The state's senators, Jim Justice (R) and Shelley Moore Capito (R), also supported the legislation.

In fact, Wayne County, where Dunlow is located, voted 76 percent for President Donald Trump in 2024.

The second problem comes from the food-purchasing cuts. The GOP eliminated a $400 million program that purchased food from local farmers and put it in food banks to ensure that the needy could have access to healthy food. It also helped American farmers. The hit was twofold, hurting the food banks and farmers, who are also now suffering under tariffs and high diesel prices.

Facing Hunger told NBC News that its federal food supply has fallen by one-third. In Dunlow, that means the food pantry only has 2.5 pounds of USDA food per household in the entire month of August, said Bill Likens, who runs the pantry. A few years ago, that number was closer to 20 pounds a month.

The report noted that it isn't entirely the fault of the federal officials, however. Separate reporting by Mountain State Spotlight reported that West Virginia’s state allocation for food banks fell from $10 million annually under a previous funding to just $1.4 million in the current budget.

At a time when folks have less money for groceries because fuel costs and grocery prices have spiked, families are also losing programs designed to support them.

Speaking with residents, NBC News highlighted Washington D.C.'s distance from these kinds of communities and the struggles that they face. Dr. Mehmet Oz fumed at Molly Martinez of Gray Media's Washington News Bureau in an interview this week when she cited sweeping Medicaid spending cuts totaling $911 billion over the next 10 years. That includes $137 billion for rural America.

Now that hospitals and clinics are starting to close, the government is rushing to throw in $50 billion, but it hardly makes up for the $87 billion shortfall. The only response from the celebrity doctor was to allege the reporter was "deliberately duplicitous."

Retired school bus driver Bonnie Newsome told NBC News she remains affectionate toward Trump but admitted he has disappointed her. Without the food pantry, she said, couldn't survive.

Joanne Girvin, 73, told NBC that she has lost 20 pounds so far because she cannot afford enough food. She has started relying on eggs from backyard chickens and deer meat.

In an economically depleted region with limited jobs, significant disability and persistent child poverty, neighbors are sharing milk and redistributing pantry supplies.

White House spokesperson Anna Kelly claimed, “President Trump is strengthening SNAP for the Americans who need it by ensuring these programs are sustainable for future generations." Thanks to him, she said, they can "crack down on waste, fraud and abuse.”

===

===

-=-=

MMA

Myths and facts about SNAP

As the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program runs out of funds, right-wing figures have suggested food insecurity is an “illusion” and called program recipients “entitled”

Written by Noah Dowe

Research contributions from Helena Hind & Jane Lee

Published 10/31/25

With SNAP benefits set to expire on November 1 due to the ongoing government shutdown and the Trump administration’s refusal to shift emergency funds, many right-wing media figures have seized the opportunity to spread false claims about the program and its users.

These figures have claimed, contrary to government data, that food insecurity is overblown, and suggested the program leaves taxpayers being “ripped off by the poor.”

They have also wrongly suggested that “a lot” or even “most” of SNAP recipients are “not even Americans,” arguing the program is “redistributing the wealth away from productive Americans to foreigners.”

As SNAP funding runs dry, the Trump administration has decided not to use emergency reserves to maintain it

• • SNAP is set to “exhaust its remaining funds” by November 1, and the administration is refusing to save the program by using “billions of dollars left over across multiple federal accounts, including money in an emergency reserve specifically for SNAP.”In a hearing for a lawsuit filed against the administration by 25 states, a federal judge commented that it was “hard for me to understand how this isn’t an emergency, when there’s no money, and a lot of people are needing their SNAP benefits.” The judge later gave the administration until Monday to come up with a plan for expiring benefits, and said “the Agriculture Department must use emergency funds to keep SNAP going.” The New York Times, [10/30/25; NPR, 10/31/25]

• • Axios: The U.S. Department of Agriculture “told states it would not provide November's SNAP payments” in “an apparent departure from its Sept. 30 shutdown plan (which has since been taken down) that stated, ‘Congressional intent is evident that SNAP's operations should continue since the program has been provided with multi-year contingency funds.’” The USDA’s initial shutdown plan also stated: “These multi-year contingency funds are also available to fund participant benefits in the event that a lapse occurs in the middle of the fiscal year.” Axios, [10/27/25; U.S. Department of Agriculture, “Lapse of Funding Plan (as of September 30, 2025),” accessed 10/31/25]

• • The USDA website later posted a notice blaming Democrats for its refusal to pay out the benefits, declaring that “the well has run dry.” United States Department of Agriculture, accessed [10/31/25; Axios, 10/27/25]

• • The Project 2025 play book,Mandate for Leadership, which has heavily influenced the Trump administration, called for sweeping changes to SNAP and other food assistance programs that would cut many Americans off from aid. These include implementing work requirements, ending automatic eligibility for those receiving other forms of welfare, reducing the purchasing power of SNAP over time, and closing the “heat-and-eat loophole” which allows those in the Low-Income Heat and Energy Assistance Program to receive more benefits. Axios, [10/2/25; Media Matters, 10/29/24]

• ## MYTH: Food insecurity is overblown, and people will not go hungry without food stamps

• • Newsmax host Rob Schmitt: “This whole idea that there's food insecurity in this country, what an illusion that is.” Schmitt declared, “I don't think there's a food security problem at all -- or food insecurity problem.” Newsmax, *Rob Schmitt Tonight*, [10/28/25]

• • MAGA influencer TheQuartering: “I refuse to believe there are 43 million Americans in need of me to pay for their Mountain Dew.” Twitter/X, [10/28/25, 3/26/25]

• • Conservative Political Action Conference Chair Matt Schlapp said it was “sad to watch Republicans saying that SNAP funding delays will lead to widespread starvation.” He explained, “There are truly needy poor people in America. But these programs are riddled with waste and people here illegally seem to be first in line.” Twitter/X, [10/28/25]

• • Right-wing host Steven Crowder claimed SNAP recipients “spend TWICE what the average worker does on groceries,” arguing the program is “rewarding people who abuse the system.”Twitter/X, [10/28/25]

• • Right-wing YouTuber Benny Johnson said, “This is not the Great Depression. There are not food shortages in this nation.” He then attacked SNAP recipients, calling them “able-bodied Americans and illegals who refuse to work” and “ want to just leech off the productive class.” YouTube, The Benny Show, [10/31/25]

• • Daily Wire host Matt Walsh questioned whether anyone has “ever starved to death” in modern America, adding, “There are so many other lines of defense that should mean that you're not going to starve” and listing family, friends, soup kitchens, charities, churches, food drives, and other welfare programs. He then attacked SNAP recipients, saying when you consider their pleas they come off as “entitled, lazy,” and “barely literate,” arguing that “some of them are just frankly bad people.” The Daily Wire, *The Matt Walsh Show*, [10/28/25]

• ## FACT: SNAP is an essential program protecting against food insecurity and severe hunger, and food banks “will not be able to fill the gap”

• • USDA data shows that “47.4 million people lived in food-insecure households” in 2023. The agency noted that food insecurity was worst in Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Texas. U.S. Department of Agriculture, “Food Security in the U.S. - Key Statistics & Graphics,” [1/8/25]

• • A 2019 study published in the Health Affairs journal found “groups whose SNAP benefits were reduced or cut off had significantly increased odds of household and child food insecurity.” Health Affairs, [5/19]

• • According to CNBC, 73% of SNAP recipients “live below the poverty line, which is currently $32,150 or less for a family of four.” The article notes that “Google search interest for ‘food banks’ and ‘food stamps’” have surged “as SNAP beneficiaries look for alternatives.” CNBC, [10/29/25]

• • The New York Times interviewed “several food bank directors” who warned that “they will not be able to fill the gap if funding for SNAP does not come through.” As reported by the Times, “For every nine meals that were supplied by federal food assistance, food pantries can provide only one on their own. No matter how thin they stretch their resources, they will not be able to fill the gap if funding for SNAP does not come through.” The New York Times, [10/26/25]

• ## MYTH: SNAP is rife with “fraud”

• • Rob Schmitt: “12% of Americans are on food stamps. I think just purely about how much fraud there must be in that, because we do not have 12% of Americans that aren't able to work.” Newsmax, *Rob Schmitt Tonight*, [10/22/25]

• • :{:{Matt Walsh claimed the shutdown’s impact on SNAP “has finally drawn attention to the scale of this fraud” and “exposed a vast network of criminal activity that needs to be shut down.” Walsh continued, “And beyond that point, if the food stamp program is going to continue to exist at all, which I'm not convinced it should, it needs to have standards, strict standards. It needs to have a reason to exist.” The Daily Wire, *The Matt Walsh Show*, [10/29/25]}:

• • Walsh later said taxpayers are “getting ripped off by the poor and the rich at the same time.” Twitter/X, [10/30/25]

• • Right-wing commentator Mike Cernovich: “SNAP is fraud, it's for people to buy sugar soda and junk food.” Twitter/X, [10/28/25]

• • Right-wing influencer Phillip Buchanan, who posts on social media under the moniker “Catturd”: “The Government shutdown has exposed how many millions of people are scamming the SNAP program.” Daily Dot, [7/25/23; Twitter/X, 10/29/25]

• ## FACT: SNAP fraud is rare, and nearly 40% of recipients are children

• • Citing the Congressional Research Service, PBS reported in 2023 that “for every 10,000 households participating in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), about 14 contained a recipient who was investigated and determined to have committed fraud.” The article continued, “Within SNAP, for every $10,000 paid in benefits, about $11 is determined by state agencies to have been overpaid due to recipient fraud.” PBS, [5/15/23]

• • The Urban Institute found that “the maximum SNAP benefit did not cover the cost of a modestly priced meal in 99 percent of US counties.” Urban Institute, [7/16/25]

• • MSNBC: Nearly “half of SNAP households contain elderly or disabled people. Of the others, about half are currently employed while most of the rest are relying on SNAP during relatively short periods of unemployment.” MSNBC, [10/30/25]

• • According to USDA data from 2023, about 39% of SNAP recipients were children, and about 11% of recipients were under 5 years old. USDA, [7/24/25]

• ## MYTH: SNAP is used primarily by “noncitizens or foreigners”

• • Newsmax host Rob Finnerty: “Most of the people getting food stamps from the U.S. government and the U.S. taxpayer are not even Americans.” Finnerty continued, “We can confirm tonight that millions of Joe Biden illegal aliens, people who crossed the border when Joe was president, are now collecting food stamps from a program funded by hard-working American taxpayers.” Newsmax, *Finnerty*, [10/27/25]

• • Turning Point USA’s Alex Clark: “While we are here-let’s look into the amount of illegals using SNAP benefits over Americans.” Twitter/X, [10/27/25]

• • Fox host Laura Ingraham claimed “a lot” of SNAP recipients “are noncitizens or foreigners.”Fox News, *The Ingraham Angle*, [10/28/25]

• • Townhall senior columnist Kurt Schlichter said SNAP users are “bums” who should “go back to the garbage homelands.” Twitter/X, [10/28/25]

• • Newsmax guest James Fishback: “We are essentially redistributing the wealth away from productive Americans to foreigners and subsidizing their way of life.” Newsmax, *Carl Higbie Frontline*, [10/29/25]

• • :{Matt Walsh: “We import the third world and force working class Americans to feed and house them at gunpoint. Civilizational suicide.” Twitter/X, [10/26/25]

• ## FACT: The overwhelming majority of SNAP recipients are citizens

• • Wired: “USDA data shows that almost 90 percent of SNAP recipients are American-born citizens. 1.1 percent of recipients are refugees, and 3.3 percent are other noncitizens.”Wired, [10/30/25]

• • ABC News: The One Big Beautiful Bill Act “cuts off [SNAP] access completely for refugees and other immigrant groups in the country lawfully,” although “states are still awaiting federal guidance on when to stop or phase it out.” As reported by ABC, “One of the first provisions to take effect under the law removes SNAP eligibility for most refugees, asylum seekers, trafficking and domestic violence victims, and other legal immigrants.” ABC News, [10/30/25]

• ## MYTH: SNAP recipients are using the program to live unhealthy lifestyles

• • Far-right commentator Stefan Molyneux: “You should not be fat on government food.” Twitter/X, [10/27/25]

• • Right-wing social media account End Wokeness: “Every single fat person on food stamps is an indictment of the entire program.” Twitter/X, [10/28/25]

• • :{:{Matt Walsh: “75% of these people are obese.” Walsh used this to claim that “the massive number of people who receive these subsidies … clearly don’t need them, for the most part.” Daily Wire, *The Matt Walsh Show*, [10/29/25]}:

• • Podcaster Adam Carolla: “The average female who gets no free food from the government is 146 pounds. The average SNAP recipient is 211 pounds. … Nobody could benefit from a nice fast more than the SNAP recipients.”Twitter/X, [10/29/25]

• • Rob Schmitt: “Why are people who weigh 300 pounds on SNAP? Is there no weight limit for a free food program in this country? Are you kidding me?” Schmitt added, “A perfect diet plan would be no more EBT cards.” Newsmax, *Rob Schmitt Tonight*, [10/29/25]

• ## FACT: SNAP recipients sometimes see improved health outcomes as compared to nonrecipients

• • Usage of SNAP is associated with “better self-reported health, lower risk of heart disease and obesity among adults who had access to SNAP as children, and greater medication adherence among older participants.” According to The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, “Early access to SNAP among pregnant mothers and in early childhood improved birth outcomes and long-term health as adults. Elderly SNAP participants are less likely than similar non-participants to forgo their full prescribed dosage of medicine due to cost. … Infants and children in families participating in SNAP are more likely to see a doctor for periodic check-ups. Low-income adults participating in SNAP incur an average of about $1,400, or nearly 25 percent, less in medical care costs in a year than low-income non-participants. The difference is even greater for those with hypertension (nearly $2,700 less) and coronary heart disease (over $4,100 less).” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, [12/14/22]

• • PBS: “Anti-hunger advocates point to research that shows SNAP recipients are no more likely than other low-income Americans to buy sugary drinks or snack foods. And they say that limiting food choices undermines the autonomy and dignity of people who receive, on average, about $187 per month — or about $6.16 per day, according to latest figures.” PBS, [2/19/25]

//

1. ### The Trump administration previously indicated it would pay SNAP benefits during a shutdown. Fox is defending its new refusal to do so.

:{10/30/25

2. ### The split in the right over SNAP and food stamps: Some attack the program and its recipients, while others try to use cuts as a cudgel against Democrats

:{10/29/25

3. ### Newsmax's Rick Santorum says Kevin Roberts “just sort of missed it a little bit” in his response to Tucker Carlson's “softball” interview with Nick Fuentes

11/04/25

---

---

an 5 25

:{:{During the House’s marathon markup of President Donald Trump’s historic budget bill, the Chairwoman of the powerful Rules Committee lashed out at Democrats for plainly describing the legislation’s sweeping consequences. Officially dubbed the “One Big, Beautiful Bill Act,” the measure narrowly passed in the early hours of Thursday by a 215–214 vote. }:

It removes $800 billion in funding from Medicaid, would lead to $535 billion in cuts to Medicare, and is projected to cause an estimated 8.6 to 13.7 million Americans to lose their health care. It will also add $3 trillion to the federal deficit—fueled by tax breaks heavily tilted toward the wealthy and the nation’s first-ever $1 trillion defense budget.}:

“I am concerned about what has been said about this bill and what it’s going to do,” Chairwoman Virginia Foxx (R-NC) told the members of her committee Wednesday night. “The extreme comments that have been made about it, and how I believe that it is scaring people out there in the country unnecessarily.”

“The words I’ve heard, particularly today, are ‘cut,’ ‘rip,’ ‘gut,’ ‘kill,’ ‘cruel,’ ‘stealing food,’ ‘losing coverage,’ ‘jammed through,’ ‘biggest transfer of wealth from vulnerable to wealthy people,’ ‘irresponsible’.”

“That is not the way we ought to be talking about this bill.”

READ MORE: ‘Sovereignly Appointed’: Trump Praised in Pentagon Prayer Event Led by Hegseth and Pastor

IFrame Content

IFrame Content

IFrame Content

Many appear to disagree.

MSNBC columnist Michael A. Cohen, just after the bill passed Thursday morning, wrote: “What we do know about the legislation the GOP is calling the ‘One Big Beautiful Bill Act’ is genuinely terrifying.”

“What makes this situation even worse is that Republicans, from the president on down, are consistently lying about what the bill would do,” Cohen charged.

“The House Republican budget plan would eviscerate Medicaid and food assistance and shift resources toward the wealthiest Americans,” the Center for American Progress (CAP) warned ten days ago, adding that it “would implement the largest cuts to both Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) in history—kicking millions of Americans off their health insurance and taking food away from hungry children.”

“It would raise household electricity costs while trapping most middle-class and poor students in greater student loan debt to afford a higher education,” CAP’s Bobby Kogan, Senior Director for Federal Budget Policy wrote. “And it would make all these changes as a means to partially offset tax breaks that disproportionately go to the richest Americans, giving households in the top 0.1 percent a multihundred-thousand-dollar tax break on average while increasing deficits by trillions of dollars. Taken as a whole, the bill would add trillions of dollars to structural deficits despite these enormous cuts to critical services.”

“If enacted,” Kogan warned, “this would be the largest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in a single law in U.S. history.”

READ MORE: ‘Get Out of Here’: Trump Erupts, Calls for NBC Probe After Reporter Asks About Qatari Jet

“Taken as a whole, this bill would harm Americans—particularly the most vulnerable people—and leave the country worse off. It would lead to preventable deaths by taking health care away from millions of people. It would worsen food insecurity by taking food away from the hungry, particularly kids.”

“Budgets showcase our morality because they force governments to decide how to prioritize limited resources. The House Republican budget plan would shift funding away from the sick and hungry and, instead, toward the wealthiest Americans.”

U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-TX) responded to Foxx, saying, “In other words, ‘please don’t call this bill what it is or say what it does’.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

---

---

an 3 25

the Trump administration is cutting over $600 million from a program designed to help schools and child care facilities buy healthy food from local farmers, the GOP’s latest attack on poor families. The administration is also cutting a similar program that helps local food banks and other organizations feed people. In total, Politico reported, the cuts come to over $1 billion.

“Roughly $660 million that schools and child care facilities were counting on to purchase food from nearby farms through the Local Food for Schools Cooperative Agreement Program in 2025 has been canceled, according to the School Nutrition Association,” Politico reported. “State officials were notified Friday of USDA’s decision to end the LFS program for this year.”

Coincidentally, last week the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) celebrated National School Breakfast Week:

The decision by the USDA to eliminate funding for healthy food from local farmers also comes as congressional Republicans target programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) for cuts.

READ MORE: Democrat Schools Musk on ‘What Makes America Great’ After He’s Called a ‘Traitor’

“Late last month,” Axios reported on Saturday, “House Republicans voted to pass a budget resolution that sets the stage for $230 billion or more in cuts to agriculture programs, with a large chunk expected to come from SNAP.”

The move to ax funding for programs that help children eat healthy foods appears to conflict with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s claim to want to “Make America Healthy Again.”

That slogan has led RFK Jr. to announce he wants to curtail the types of foods families can buy through SNAP, which could especially affect Americans living in rural areas or “food deserts,” as Axios also reported last month.

According to The Guardian, “more than one in eight households say they have difficulty getting enough food.” SNAP, “formerly known as food stamps, helps more than 42 million people fill those gaps, and is considered the country’s most effective tool to fight hunger. But now, the USDA-run program is facing attacks from House Republicans who see deep cuts as a way to pay for an extension of the 2017 tax bill that benefits the very wealthy.”

READ MORE: ‘Chilling’: Amid Recession Alarms and Market Nosedive Trump White House Blames Biden

Critics are blasting the cuts.

“Taking $230 billion out of the food economy hurts the farmers who grow our food, the truckers who move it, the processors who package it and the grocery stores that sell it,” House Agriculture Committee Ranking Member Angie Craig (D-MN) said in a statement in February. “Cutting farm bill nutrition programs does not make life affordable for everyday people. Instead of cutting SNAP to pay for handouts to wealthy donors, Republicans should prioritize helping working people and rural economies.”

Melanie D’Arrigo, executive director of the Campaign for New York Health remarked, “Trump is cutting $660M meant for local farmers to provide healthy food for kids in schools. Big win for the giant processed food corporations who poured millions into Donald Trump’s campaign. How does hurting farmers and kids make America great again?”

Zach Rodvold, director of public affairs at Second Harvest Heartland, a hunger-relief organization, wrote: “With hunger rates soaring and the farm economy under threat, now is not the time to cut funding for local farm-to-school and food bank programs. (In fact, we should be doing just the opposite.)”

“This is absolutely unacceptable. They’re literally taking kids’ lunch money and farmers’ incomes so they can give tax cuts to billionaires,” observed U.S. Rep. Josh Riley (D-NY).

“Cutting food aid hurts kids, farmers and struggling folks,” noted U.S. Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA). “Why is Trump doing it? To help pay for his tax cut for the rich. Heartless.”

an 12 24 mojo

I was a rotten high school student, a shirker and smart-ass of the first rank. I even found myself purged from a typing class for bad behavior—an event I regret to this precise moment, since touch-typing is obviously a convenient skill for someone in my profession. Afterward, I had to choose another "elective." Naturally, I seized upon home economics—in which, I hoped, I'd spend my time amusing girls with wisecracks and whipping up desserts from boxed mixes. If memory serves, that's exactly how it played out—especially the bit about the just-add-water confections. Mmmm, instant cake.

In other words, I retained just as much from my home ec class as I did from my failed stint as a student of the keyboard: which is to say, nothing. Yet Ruth Graham's recent Boston Globe essay "Bring back home ec! The case for a revival of the most retro class in school"strikes me as spot on. Graham isn't talking about the home ec of my misspent '80s youth, nor that of quaint stereotypes featuring "visions of future homemakers quietly whisking white sauce or stitching rickrack onto an apron."

She means a revitalized, contemporary home economics for all genders, one capable of at least exposing youth to basic skills that so many adults (i.e., their parents) lack: "to shop intelligently, cook healthily, [and] manage money." And I think such a reimagined home ec should move from the shadowy margins it now occupies—the field has been rebranded as "Family and Consumer Science," Graham reports—and become mandatory for all high school kids, and—why not?—even elementary school ones.

I have witnessed firsthand the vexed state of basic cooking skills among the young. When I helped run the kitchen at Maverick Farms for seven years, I noticed that most of our interns couldn't chop an onion or turn even just-picked produce into a reasonably good dish in a reasonable amount of time. And these were people motivated enough about food to intern at a small farm in rural North Carolina. If I had their cooking skills, I'd be tempted to resort to takeout often, just to save time.

It's true that in my home ec class nearly a quarter century ago, we weren't taught how to handle a knife or follow a simple recipe for a from-scratch dish. But home ec wasn't always so vapid. Graham points to New York Times reporter Michael Moss' great 2013 book Salt Sugar Fat, which contains a brief history of the home ec trade in US public schools.

The convenience food industry that's so powerful and entrenched today was just taking root in the 1950s. And as it began to aggressively market its products to a growing US middle class, it "faced one real obstacle," Moss writes: the "army of school teachers and federal outreach workers who insisted on promoting home-cooked meals, prepared the old fashioned way."

Home ec teachers explicitly battled against the industry's claims of convenience, Moss shows. In 1957, he writes, the American Home Economics Association conducted a demo pitting a commercial cake mix against a homemade batter, Moss reports. "As reported in the association's journal, the homemade cake not only cost less and tasted better, it took only five more minutes to prepare, cook, and serve." Plus the batter could be made in advance and stored, "for quick parceling out when a cake was needed." Home-ec teachers also schooled their charges in frugal shopping, teaching them to "avoid buying things they didn't need."

Graham drops a bit more history:

If any single person could be said to be the founder of home economics, it is the formidable Ellen Swallow Richards, a Bostonian who was the first woman admitted to MIT. She served as the first president of the American Home Economics Association and was instrumental in coming up with the term "home economics," officially adopted at a conference "for the betterment of the home" in 1899, just in time for the dawn of a scientifically minded century. Though it may now seem impossible, the discipline was originally rooted in progressive and even feminist thinking. The idea was to bring scientific rigor into the home, and to professionalize women’s domestic work, bringing dignity and efficiency to both.

To rebuff this cadre of holdouts within America's schools, the food industry mobilized in two ways, Moss reports. First up was rolling out a school marmish figure called "Betty Crocker"—invented by the marketing department of the company that would become General Mills to extol the wholesomeness and ease of processed crap. The other move was a kind of leveraged buyout of the home ec trade itself: first by pouring money into grants and fellowships for the American Home Economics Association—$288,250 in 1957 alone, Moss writes—and then by "sponsoring candidates for the organization's top leadership posts, candidates who would bring a decidedly pro-industrial view to home economics."

And that is how home ec became the piece-of-instant-cake elective that I so idly enjoyed in the '80s.

But imagine a home ec that taught basic skills like how to prepare a simple pureed vegetable soup, whip up a quick, easy, and much-cheaper-than-bottled salad dressing, or stock up a pantry with inexpensive bulk staples?

Food isn't the only sphere in which millions of American adults—and the kids they are raising—find themselves swimming in a sea of ignorance, at the mercy of an industry peddling dubious wares. Another one is personal finance, as Helene Olen shows in her indispensable 2013 book Pound Foolish. Over the past two decades, what Olen calls the "personal finance industrial complex" has fooled Americans into such follies as leveraging their futures with deceptively pricey credit cards, dumping hard-earned savings into that casino called the stock market, and buying houses they can't afford and too often can't hold on

In doing so, the industry has made personal finance into something that seems impossibly complex—what the hell is a variable annuity?—and then presented gurus who simplify it along lines convenient for itself. All of that is nonsense, Olen shows. After an interviewingher about what he sees as the "financial industry's most basic dilemma," that the "best advice fits on a 3×5 index card and is available for free at the library," University of Chicago social scientist Harold Pollack actually scribbled out that card. Check it out—it's mostly about saving as much as possible and avoiding the fees of Wall Street charlatans. If those simple principles could be drummed into the heads of high school students, imagine the misery that could be avoided. And what better forum for it than new-wave home ec? After all, the home ec curricula of yore included lessons on household finance.

A revived curriculum could be broader than just food and money, Graham notes. "Even sewing is gaining a certain relevance, as consumers grow increasingly wary of disposable garments made in unregulated factories overseas," she writes. "An ambitious class could also include things like basic household plumbing or car repair." I certainly could have used those skills (though auto mechanics have gotten so complex that I think "How to choose a reliable car you can afford—or get by without one altogether" might be a better theme.)

The main obstacle between where we are now and home ec nirvana is funding, as Graham notes. Public school systems are so strapped that they're already slashing equally worthy classes like art, music, and PE. But producing generation upon generation of people who don't know how to feed themselves healthily or manage their finances is generating massive, cascading societal costs—and the pennies we pinch by not revitalizing home ec seem like a classic false economy, much like those boxed cakes the food industry was already peddling by 1957

---

an common dr 5 24

echoing early May criticism of U.S. House Republicans' blueprint for the next Farm Bill, anti-hunger and green groups on Friday fiercely condemned the GOP's discussion draft text of the Farm, Food, and National Security Act of 2024.

Released by U.S. House Committee on Agriculture Chair Glenn "GT" Thompson (R-Pa.), the draft is competing with a Democratic proposal—Senate Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry Committee Chair Debbie Stabenow's (D-Mich.) Rural Prosperity and Food Security Act.

While Thomspon claimed that his bill "is the product of extensive feedback from stakeholders and all members of the House, and is responsive to the needs of farm country through the incorporation of hundreds of bipartisan policies," Rep. David Scott (D-Ga.), the panel's ranking member, said that the draft "confirms my worst fears."

"House Republicans plan to pay for the farm bill by taking food out of the mouths of America's hungry children, restricting farmers from receiving the climate-smart conservation funding they so desperately need, and barring the USDA from providing financial assistance to farmers in times of crisis," he warned, referring to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The economic impact of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) cuts alone "would be staggering," Scott emphasized. "A $27 billion reduction in food purchasing power would not only increase hunger, but it would also reduce demand for jobs in the agriculture, transportation, manufacturing, and grocery sectors."

Leaders at advocacy groups on Friday similarly slammed the Republican bill. Ty Jones Cox, vice president for food assistance at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, reiterated her previous condemnation of GOP attempts to cut the benefits of hungry families, saying that "this is unacceptable; Congress should reject it."

"Every SNAP participant would receive less to buy groceries in future years than they would under current law, putting a healthy diet out of reach for millions of people. This would be the largest cut to SNAP since 1996 if enacted and these cuts would grow even deeper over time," Jones Cox explained, debunking Thompson's description of the changes.

"And the cut to future SNAP benefits isn't the only harmful policy in this bill. For example, it would allow states to outsource SNAP administration to private contractors. But prior privatization efforts delayed benefits for people in need, worsened errors, and increased costs," she continued. "Congress should reject Chair Thompson's harmful proposal and instead work to pass a farm bill that truly protects and strengthens SNAP." Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner, executive director and CEO of MomsRising, argued that "at this time when skyrocketing food prices have increased hunger and food insecurity, forcing tens of millions of U.S. families to make impossible choices between food and other essentials, it would be mean-spirited and shameful for Congress to cut the SNAP benefits moms and families rely on; and it also would be damaging to our economy."

Describing the benefits, formerly called food stamps, as "the nation's first line of defense against hunger," Rowe-Finkbeiner highlighted that "more than 42 million people count on SNAP benefits each month and nearly four in five of them are children, seniors, people with disabilities, or veterans."

"In contrast, the bipartisan Senate Farm Bill—the Rural Prosperity and Food Security Act—aids farmers and treats hunger in America as the emergency it is," she noted. "It is a bold bill that would protect SNAP benefits and increase access to this essential program for groups that have long been excluded, reducing barriers to participation for older adults, military families, some college students, and others. It is an easy choice. Without question, the Senate Farm Bill is the version that should become law." The GOP's efforts to restrict food assistance aren't limited to the United States, as Gina Cummings, Oxfam vice president for advocacy, alliances, and policy, pointed out Friday, declaring that "at a time when over 281 million people are suffering from acute hunger, any proposal to undercut crucial international food assistance programs is damaging."

As Cummings detailed:

The resilience-building programs housed in Food for Peace are vital to preparing frontline communities for future shocks that could impact their food security—whether it be from climate change, conflict, or economic downturns.

Oxfam has raised concerns about the American Farmers Feed the World Act, which is where many of the cuts to Food for Peace originate from—since its introduction last summer. The bill has proposed gutting funding for resilience-building activities that ensure communities can build up their local markets, withstand the next drought, flood, or conflict, and not go hungry. The House Farm Bill as it is currently written includes some of the most concerning provisions of the bill and would render these vital interventions inoperable, resulting in as many as 3 million fewer people being reached by these programs based on their current scale.

The House must reject the provisions of the American Farmers Feed the World Act included in the House Farm Bill draft as the bill goes for markup. The inclusion of such provisions is a threat to global food security and a shift towards a less-efficient model of international aid by the United States.

The AFL-CIO said on social media that it "strongly opposes" the Republican proposal, adding: "Families rely on Food for Peace—and also SNAP, SNAP's Thrifty Food Plan, and other federal nutrition and food security programs. We cannot support making harmful policy changes or funding cuts to any of them."

In addition to calling out the GOP for trying to leave more people hungry, advocates denounced Republican efforts to gut climate-friendly requirements from the Inflation Reduction Act and enact the Ending Agricultural Trade Suppression (EATS) Act.

"The Farm Bill is a seminal opportunity to reform our food and agriculture sector away from factory farms and corporate greed," said Food & Water Watch managing director of policy and litigation Mitch Jones. "Instead, House Republicans want to double down."

"Some of leadership's more dangerous proposals would take us backwards on animal welfare, and climate-smart agriculture—both the EATS Act and support for factory farm biogas must be dead on arrival," he asserted. "It's time Congress put the culture wars aside and got back to work on a Farm Bill that puts consumers, farmers, and the environment above politicking and Big Ag handouts." Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said that "weakening safeguards that protect people from pesticides, slashing protections for endangered species, and recklessly expanding industrial logging should have no place in the Farm Bill."

"It's unfortunate that chairman Thompson has put forward such a destructive farm bill to appease the most fringe members of Congress," Hartl added. "This bill can't pass the House and it's a waste of everyone's time."

In a joint statement released Friday after a meeting with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) and Democrats on Thompson's panel, Scott and Statenow stressed that members of their party are "committed to passing a strong, bipartisan Farm Bill that strengthens the farm and family safety nets and invests in our rural communities."

"America's farmers, families, workers, and rural communities deserve the certainty of a five-year Farm Bill, and everyone knows it must be bipartisan to pass," the pair said, blasting divisive GOP proposals. "Democrats remain ready and willing to work with Republicans on a truly bipartisan Farm Bill to keep farmers farming, families fed, and rural communities strong."

==

Floridians could have gotten $120 for each child to help feed the underprivileged — but the state wasn’t interested - Alternet.org

https://www.alternet.org/us-families-hunger-escalates-cuts/

an common dr 5 23

an 4 23

Republican supermajority in the North Dakota State Senate recently approved a measure boosting their meal stipends just days after they rejected funding for providing free school meals to poor students, Heartland Signal reported on Tuesday.

GOP lawmakers "passed Senate Bill 2124, which raises the amount of money state senators and their staff can receive from meal reimbursements. Just days prior, the same body voted down House Bill 1491 23-24, a bill that would cover lunch for school children whose parents’ income falls 200% below the poverty line," according to the outlet.

Social media exploded with outrage and disgust.

READ MORE: Watch: North Dakota Republican blames 'parents being negligent with their kids' for students going hungry

Sonny J Lewis: "Zilch for the kids but up to $55/day if I'm reading the law right. They should be more than ashamed of themselves."

:{:(style="background-color:initial"):}:Linda Hillemann: "Who says there’s no such thing as a free lunch? Oh, and anyone who knows these people should remind them of Jesus’ story about the rich man and poor Lazarus. (Luke 16: 19-31) It doesn't end well for the rich guy. Or in this case, legislators who steal from children."

badger person: "Pick 50 of those students at random and they'd do a better job running the state."

Elon Sucks: "The cruelty is the point."

an 2 23 edit bd

The Iowa Republican party is proposingdraconian new restrictions on what food can be purchased with the state’s food stamps, or Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

This attack on the poor at the state level is coming at the same time as the national GOP has successfullyblocked the continuation of the Child Tax Credit, a program which substantially, demonstrably reduced child poverty.

The GOP’s priorities are clear. They don’t want to reduce poverty. They want to police, control and torment the poor. The party that constantly touts liberty doesn’t want liberty for all. They want liberty for the powerful to impose their will on the most vulnerable.

READ MORE: 'Everyone in the territory is disenfranchised': Washington DC should replace Iowa as first presidential nominating contest

Republican ire

SNAP is a crucial safety net and the country’s most effective anti-hunger program. In 2021, itensured that 41 million Americans — 12 percent of the population — could afford an adequate diet every month.

SNAP also provides valuable emergency economic stability. SNAP enrollment increases in downturns, putting money into the economy to combat recession and boost recovery.

Despite its importance, or because of it, SNAP has long been a target of Republican ire.

READ MORE: Mike Pence teases a presidential run in Iowa stump speech for Republican midterm candidates

Matthew Gritter’s 2017 monographUndeserving: SNAP Reform and Conceptions of the Deserving Poor chronicles how politicians have moved to regulate food stamps in recent decades. They’ve tried to put limits on what foods could be purchased and to prevent people without disabilities or dependents from getting aid.

They’ve also pushed drug testing — an ideaintroduced by former KKK leader and Louisiana Senator David Duke, and instituted in states like Florida and Utah.

Gritter concludes in an earlier paper that the goal of these interventions appears to be to replace “a safety net of last resort” with “a costly method to impose punitive measures on the poor.”

“Evidence suggests that reforms will reduce enrollment without changing the circumstances that led people to seek assistance,” he says.

Iowa is the latest attempt to target SNAP.

Canned tuna and salmon

The new bill,House File 3, would putharsh limits on what low-income families could purchase in Iowa when receiving federal SNAP food stamp funds for healthy food options.

It wouldrestrict purchases to those covered by the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program, which uses federal funds for food assistance to pregnant people and new parents.

According to theIowa Hunger Coalition, “this bill would restrict SNAP participants’ ability to make their own food choices, take food away from Iowans, and increase hunger and food insecurity in our state.”

Families under House File 3 could no longer buy white bread, American cheese, coffee, snack foods, canned fruit and vegetables, bottled water, crackers and more.

They also couldn’t buy any meat except canned tuna and salmon. This despite the fact that meat, poultry and seafood is thetop expenditure category for SNAP recipients, accounting for 19 percent of money spent on food.

The Iowa GOP also wants a limit of $2,750 on household assets for receiving SNAP benefits; the cap is raised to $4,250 in assets if one family member is over 59 or is disabled. Houses and one vehicle would be excluded. Children’s savings accounts would not.

These low caps mean that people could not save for emergencies, because doing so would mean they would lose SNAP benefits. Nor could they own a second vehicle — a necessity for getting to work in many rural areas.

Historic low

The assault on SNAP is ugly because we have just conducted a sweeping experiment demonstrating that no-strings assistance to the poor is wildly successful at lifting children out of poverty with virtually no downsides.

The expanded Child Tax Creditinstituted in 2021 provided monthly cash payments to low-income families with children. It closed a loophole that prevented the poorest families from receiving assistance, and increased payments for everyone.

The result? Child poverty dropped to a historic low of 5.2 percent.

Lawmakers allowed the expanded CTC to expire.

Inevitably, child poverty rateswent back up.

Lawmakers refused to renew the expanded CTC in part because, mirroring attitudes towards SNAP, they believed that the people receiving the money were not deserving.

West Virginia’s conservative Democratic Senator Joe Manchin saidhe was worried parents would use benefits to buy drugs. He also wanted to institute work requirements for recipients.

But increasing restrictions prevents the neediest people from receiving benefits. It also mayprevent people from working.

A study of those in line to receive CTC funds found that recipientsbelieved the additional money would allow them to pay for childcare and increase their work hours.

Sure enough, in studies of the program conducted after it expired, there wasno evidence that CTC payments reduced workforce participation.

Undeserving

We know that SNAP is effective at reducing hunger. We know that simply giving people money, without conditions, is an incredibly effective means of pulling children out of poverty.

But conservatives don’t care. That’s because they’re not actually concerned with helping the poor.

They are concerned with policing them.

Conservatives want a poverty policy that is focused onpreventing people from accessing benefits. The goal is to punish the undeserving. And all poor people are assumed to be undeserving.

The success of the CTC shows that poverty and hunger are not intractable problems. They are deliberate policy choices.

The wealthy and powerful impose misery on the poor because they believe desperate people are more tractable and less able to organize.

Or perhaps they attack the poor simply because they don’t like the poor and believe they should suffer.

In any case, the expiration of the CTC, and the Iowa GOP’s assault on the SNAP program, shows that neither the pandemic nor the 2022 midterms have changed Republican commitments. GOP politicians like to cosplay as champions of the working class.

But the truth is they hold people of modest means in contempt and relish the chance to take food out of their mouths.

READ MORE: 'This is on you': NRA-backed Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst blasted following mass shooting at Iowa church

https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/grotesque-deadly-failure-usda-slammed-for-allowing-millions-of-pounds-of-produce-to-rot-as-food-insecurity-surges/

no lnx

‘Grotesque, deadly failure’: USDA slammed for allowing millions of pounds of produce to rot as food insecurity surges

Migrant workers harvest Beets at Lakeside Organic Gardens in Watsonville, CA on Tuesday, Aug. 27, 2013. USDA photo by Bob Nichols.

Written by Jake Johnson / Common Dreams April 27, 2020

With food insecurity on the rise across the U.S. as the coronavirus pandemic continues to drive unprecedented job losses and economic disruption, the U.S. Department of Agriculture is facing backlash from lawmakers, farmers, and advocacy groups for its failure to act with urgency as millions of pounds of produce rot in fields across the nation.

“While other federal agencies quickly adapted their programs to the coronavirus crisis, the Agriculture Department took more than a month to make its first significant move to buy up surplus fruits and vegetables—despite repeated entreaties,” Politico reported Sunday, noting that the USDA’s belated response came “as food banks across the country scramble to meet a massive surge in demand.”

On April 17, as Common Dreams reported, Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue unveiled the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program, a $19 billion plan purportedly aimed at providing relief to farmers and making “mass purchases of dairy, meat, and agricultural produce to get that food to the people in need.”

But critics say the federal agency’s plan doesn’t come anywhere close to matching the scale of the crisis, which has fueled calls for a fundamental overhaul of the U.S. food system.

“This thing is a joke,” Tony DiMare, owner of the Florida-based produce distribution company DiMare Fresh, told Politico of the USDA’s plan, which includes $3 billion to purchase and distribute surplus produce.

“DiMare’s company… has donated over a million pounds of tomatoes to food banks in his area,” Politico reported, “but he still had to leave some 10 million pounds in the field.”

Nikki Fried, Florida’s commissioner of agriculture in Florida, told Politico that she asked Perdue a month ago to take action to prevent mass waste of produce but received no response. “Unfortunately, USDA didn’t move until [last week],” Fried said.

As early as March 23, a coalition of produce industry groups wrote a letter (pdf) to Perdue warning that “there is at least $1 billion of perishable commodities without a dedicated destination as a result of the unanticipated closure of foodservice establishments, including restaurants, hotels, schools, and universities.”

“There is no reason these high-quality, nutritious, farmer-grown products should be left in facilities to rot when there are so many American families who are suddenly faced with food insecurity,” the letter stated.

Another grotesque, deadly failure. https://t.co/SEoXdXjVFy

==

https://theconversation.com/obesity-second-to-smoking-as-the-most-preventable-cause-of-us-deaths-needs-new-approaches-129317

https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/trumps-troll-presidency-takes-another-pointlessly-cruel-action/

no lnx

Trump’s troll presidency takes another pointlessly cruel action

Trump eating McDonald's fast food/InstagramTrump eating McDonald's fast food/Instagram

Written by David Atkins January 19, 2020

There is so much news happening in the last 24 hours that it feels like drinking from a fire hose. Others like our own Martin Longman can analyze the situation around Lev Parnas better than I can—and it’s a very busy weekend for me, so apologies in advance. But I would be remiss not to highlight one of the more minor stories of the day that might otherwise escape attention, if only because it puts in sharp focus the pointless, petty cruelty of this administration.

The Trump Administration decided to roll back the amount of fruits and vegetables given to school children. This is obviously terrible, so why do it? Well, because it was a Michelle Obama initiative, that’s why. Why do it now? It was Michelle Obama’s birthday.

No, seriously.

The Trump administration moved on Friday to roll back school nutrition standards championed by Michelle Obama, an effort long sought by food manufacturers and some school districts that have chafed at the cost of Mrs. Obama’s prescriptions for fresh fruit and vegetables…

Combating childhood obesity was Mrs. Obama’s signature issue, a rallying cry for her supporters and a lightning rod for conservative critics who saw it as epitomizing the liberal “nanny state” of the Obama era.

The administration says, of course, that it was just a coincidence and not intentional:

A spokeswoman for the department said that it had not intended to roll out the proposed rule on Mrs. Obama’s birthday, although some Democratic aides on Capitol Hill had their doubts. Food companies applauded the proposal, while nutritionists condemned it, predicting that starchy foods like potatoes would replace green vegetables and that fattening foods like hamburgers would be served daily as “snacks.”

Sure. The folks at Red State are certainly celebrating it as an act of aggressive trolling.So even in the unlikely event it wasn’t intentional, Trump’s base is reveling in the meanness of it nonetheless. Which is further astonishing since…don’t some of these people also have kids who go to public schools? Certainly they must. Do they not care about their own children’s health? Apparently not as much as scoring a point against their hated political opponents.

It’s just another reminder that we don’t actually have a government. We have a cult of grievance orchestrated by a cable news network for bitter, angry bigots with a cruelty streak.

==

==

Half of All American Adults Could Be Obese in 10 Years, Study Finds

PUBLIC HEALTH

ew 1219

https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/punishing-the-poor-for-being-hungry/

no lnx

Punishing the poor for being hungry

Written by David K. Shipler / Washington Monthly October 11, 2019

The United States might be the only country in the world where poverty is considered a moral failing—on the part of the victims, not the society. When conservatives are in charge of government, this judgment infiltrates policy. Republicans move repeatedly to twist regulations around an assumption that the poor don’t want to work and don’t make sound decisions. And when this bias affects children’s nutrition, it can cause lifelong impairment.

In the last year alone, the Trump administration has taken multiple shots at food stamps, now called SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), which helped feed about 40 million people last year. The latest change, one week ago, would cut benefits by $4.5 billion over five years. Even in a booming economy, one in seven households with children were considered “food insecure” last year, according to the Department of Agriculture’s 2018 survey, meaning that they weren’t sure of having enough food for everyone.

Research in the rapidly advancing field of neuroscience has documented the severe biological assaults caused by inadequate nutrition during sensitive phases of brain development. Numerous studies, compiled in a lengthy National Academy of Sciences report, From Neurons to Neighborhoods, portray a devastating landscape of cognitive deficiency resulting from nutritional deprivation. The insufficiency of healthy food during a pregnant woman’s second trimester can reduce the creation of neurons, the brain’s impulse-conducting cells. Malnutrition in the third trimester restricts their maturation and retards the production of branched cells called glia.

Iron is essential to promote the growth of the brain in size and the creation of the nerve-transmitting myelin sheath around the brain’s nerve fibers. The impact of iron deficiency in a baby, therefore, never disappears, even once the deficiency is eliminated. One longitudinal studythat followed children from infancy through adolescence found that they scored lower “in arithmetic achievement and written expression, motor functioning, and some specific cognitive processes such as spatial memory and selective recall.”

Teachers reported that such children displayed “more anxiety or depression, social problems, and attention problems.” It is no great leap of logic to see learning disabilities as one result of malnutrition. And a child who can’t do decently in school, who can’t follow half of what a teacher is saying, is more inclined to drop out.

For those Republicans who are moved more by self-interest than empathy, it’s worth noting that high school dropouts earn less that those with degrees, pay less in taxes, have more serious medical problems, and are at higher risk of ending up in jail.

Yet Trump’s people have sought to saddle the $68 billion-a-year SNAP program with   restrictions and cuts to the monthly benefits, which now come on debit cards with declining balances, and typically last a family only two or three weeks. Certain regulations that the Trump administration has either enacted or has openly considered would treat needy Americans with suspicion and distrust. For instance:

Officials have considered imposing a drug-testing regime on SNAP recipients (although not on farmers who receive huge federal subsidies as part of the same legislation).

The Agriculture Department, which administers the program, published a rule in July to eliminate states’ option to raise eligibility limits above the federal ceiling, which is 130 percent of the poverty line.

Previously, states could get waivers to enroll families earning more if their housing and child-care expenses soaked up a big percentage of their income. More generous housing subsidies would help, because in many parts of the country, where rent can consume 50 percent or more of a family’s budget, the money for food gets squeezed. The comment period on the rule change ended in September; once adopted, it will cut off about 3 million recipients.

In last week’s action, the administration effectively took away $75 in benefits from one out of every five families by recalculating how housing and utilities costs are figured.

The Trump administration tried to tighten work requirements in this year’s budget, Congress refused, and officials have gone ahead anyway to partially evade the legislative intent. Since 1996, single able-bodied adults with no dependents, up to age 49, could get SNAP benefits for only three months in a three-year period unless they worked or were in job training at least 80 hours a month. States could waive the rule in areas with acute joblessness. Trump wanted to expand the requirement to age 59 and, more harmfully, apply it to those with children over six years old. That was rejected by Republicans and Democrats in Congress. So last December the Agriculture Department did what it could administratively by making it much harder for states to get waivers.

In his 2019 budget, Trump proposed replacing half of a family’s cash grants with a food package of cereal, pasta, peanut butter, canned fruit and vegetables, meat, poultry, and other items deemed good for them. Sending such packages to 40 million people would have been so costly and impractical that the idea collapsed of its own weight. But the notion seemed borne of a patronizing attitude toward the poor, who suffer from a disparaging stereotype that they do not act responsibly.

Clinics treating childhood malnutrition see a broad array of causes. Lack of money is the centerpiece, but lack of knowledge about healthy eating can also contribute to some cases. Health providers find that some parents don’t know how to cook with relatively inexpensive ingredients. New immigrants unfamiliar with American food can be fooled by ads into thinking that Coke and Cheetos are healthy. So can Americans themselves. Lots of junk food is cheap and filling, hence the nation’s epidemic of obesity, which can be a sign of malnutrition.

Supermarkets with fresh, healthy food are scarce in many low-income neighborhoods. A child’s food allergies can be baffling without the funds and information required to have a large assortment of choices on hand. Single parents doing shift work can’t keep track of what their kids are being fed by multiple caregivers. Nor do they usually have the orderly life that allows them to sit children down calmly to feed them, or have a regular family meal.

In other words, childhood malnutrition is created at the confluence of problems and disabilities that magnify and reinforce one another. They must all be addressed. The cognitive impairment that results cannot be attacked by a country that keeps electing officials who entangle the safety net in a set of punitive impulses.

David K. Shipler is a Washington Monthly contributing writer, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author of seven books, and a former foreign correspondent for The New York Times. He blogs at The Shipler Report.

==

NJ school district debates whether or not to feed kids who owe more than $20 in school lunch ‘debt’

Marissa Higgins / Daily Kos

Another day, another school debating whether or not to punish hungry kids because they can’t afford to pay for their lunches. Today’s horror brings us to New Jersey.

aN 619

1 in 12 senior citizens didn’t have enough food in 2017 — and the Trump administration is threatening to make it worse

Joan McCarter / Daily Kos

==

'Vindictive Behavior': Trump Complains Puerto Rico Getting 'Too Much' Disaster Aid as Over a Million Face Food Crisis

https://www.alternet.org/world/theres-growing-international-alliance-right-wing-demagogues

no lnx few

There’s a Growing International Alliance of Right-Wing Demagogues

From Brazil’s Bolsonaro to the Philippines’ Duterte to the leader of them all, Trump.

By Vijay Prashad / Independent Media Institute October 23, 2018, 12:06 PM GMT

Lula in His Cell

Lula da Silva—Brazil’s former president—is sitting in his prison in Curitiba, a small town southwest of São Paulo. He should not be there. Evidence of corruption against him hangs on the words of a felon. Lula should have been on the ballot. But the oligarchy refused to allow this most popular man to run for the presidency. Lula is visited by Pastor Anete Roese of the Evangelical Lutheran Confessional Church of Brazil. The pastor steps outside the prison and makes a statement. She says that Lula is concerned about the escalation of violence in Brazil. People are being murdered when they express their political support for the Workers’ Party candidate for president—Fernando Haddad. “The gates of violence are opening,” said Pastor Roese. The election—on October 28—will signal an “unprecedented avalanche of violence,” warned the pastor. Lula, sitting in his cell, unjustly incarcerated, worried with her. It is the poor who will suffer. It is always the poor who suffer.

Bolsonaro’s Fraud

Jair Bolsonaro, the candidate of the far-right who is now the candidate of the oligarchy, leads in the polls. He is nostalgic for Brazil’s military dictatorship(1964-1985) and wants to use unconstitutional force against those whom he sees are a problem for Brazil. His targets are the poor and the social minorities—Afro-Brazilians, Gays, Leftists. The oligarchy flooded the Bolsonaro camp with money. Democracy needs lubrication, and money does the trick. Some corporations used their money to create WhatsApp groups that carried fraudulent messages about Haddad, who is running against Bolsonaro. This is illegal. The hashtag #Caixa2doBolsonaro zipped across the internet. The whiff of fraud should have triggered an immediate investigation. It did not happen. It is Lula in prison. Bolsonaro hides his fangs behind his smile.

Bannon’s Fascist International

Steve Bannon said as he left the White House that the shackles were off his hands. He was no longer imprisoned by propriety. He wanted to be in the trenches, building his white supremacist, fascist international. Bannon calls his group The Movement. One of Bolsonaro’s sons said that Bannon has advised his father’s campaign, that Bannon—in sum—has drawn Bolsonaro into The Movement. Bolsonaro hastily denied this claim. To be linked to Bannon is not an advantage. Nor to Bannon’s fascist international directly. Nothing Bolsonaro says is varnished. He called people from the African continent, from Haiti and from the Arab-speaking world the “scum of humanity.” Bolsonaro’s moral geography mirrors that of Donald Trump, who called many of these places “shithole countries.” Of Afro-Brazilians, Bolsonaro called them lazy and obese, saying, “I don’t think they’re even good for procreation anymore.” Another member of the fascist international—Marine Le Pen of France—said that Bolsonaro’s comments are “extremely unpleasant.” Bolsonaro distressed her. This is Bannon country. Precise and clearly articulated hatred and venom.

Gunmen

Bolsonaro has been proud to say that he is “Brazil’s Trump.” But this is not a good comparison. It is clearer to say that Bolsonaro is Brazil’s Duterte.Rodrigo Duterte is the president of the Philippines. He came to office with a gun in his hand.Duterte was the mayor of Davao, where he empowered death squads to kill anyone deemed to be a criminal. “Kill them all,” he said in 2015 in reference to criminals. “Kill a drug dealer and I’ll give you a medal,” he said. He likes to be photographed with a gun in his hand, preferably a machine gun. Duterte would like to give out 42,000 guns to deepen the civil war in his society. Violence is the antidote to social problems. No policy of economic and social reform is sufficient. Gunfire is Duterte’s solvent. It is the glue of the Bolsonaro family. Jair Bolsonaro’s son—Eduardo—won re-election to the Federal Assembly on October 7 with a massive margin. In a video from last year, Eduardo holds a 50-caliber Barrett sniper rifle and says of the school shootings in the United States, “Thanks to you who support gun-free zones and this initiative to disarm people—you are responsible for these massacres.” Duterte also likes high-caliber sniper rifles, the M-4 Armalite being a favorite. These are men with guns, men who believe that guns make good policy.

Money and Monsters

In August, Steve Bannon told New York magazine that the rise of Trump—and the other neo-fascists (or monsters)—can be directly linked to the financial crisis of 2008. “The legacy of the financial crisis is Donald J. Trump,” Bannon said. “You know why the deplorables are angry? They’re rational human beings. We took away the risk for the wealthy.” Wall Street dislikes this analysis. They would like to maintain a firewall between their shenanigans and the rise of what they like to call “populists.” Bannon is both right and wrong. He is right that the neoliberal “moderates” drove a policy from the 1980s onward that allowed the rich to avoid paying taxes and to avoid investment, while the working people failed to earn their share from the gains of productivity and technology. High inequality rates around the world drained the legitimacy of the neoliberal “moderates.”

The neo-fascists that emerged with acid on their lips did speak clearly about the fraud of the system, the theft from ordinary people by the oligarchy. But they did not point their fingers at the oligarchy or at high finance. Instead, true to form, the neo-fascists pointed their guns at migrants and refugees, at the urban poor and the rural distressed. For them, social marginality is the crime. Under cover of the monsters’ corrosive rhetoric, the oligarchy and the bankers have continued their plunder. None of these neo-fascists wants to implement Basel-III, a framework to regulate banking by increasing capital holdings. Nor do they want to make sure that corporations bear the downside of risks, rather than take the profits and burden taxpayers with losses. None of these elementary reforms are on the lips of the neo-fascists. They are too busy oiling their guns.

Hunger and Illiteracy

Hunger hangs heavily over the Brazilian poor. In 1960, the Afro-Brazilian writer Carolina Maria de Jesus wrote in her diary, “What a surprising effect food has on our organisms. Before I ate, I saw the sky, the trees, the birds—all as yellow. But after I ate, everything became normal to my eyes.” Hunger is blistering. It is what Lula’s government focused upon with its Fome Zero (Zero Hunger) program. According to the UN, hunger was almost eradicated by Lula’s government. Haddad was Lula’s education minister. They used public funds to expand Brazil’s public university system. Food and reading were at the heart of the Workers’ Party agenda. Poverty was reduced by 55 percent, while extreme poverty was reduced by 65 percent. No guns were needed. Lula’s agenda was to expand democracy. Bolsonaro’s agenda is to deepen neo-fascism.

No Neutrality

Five hundred people of good sense—from Bernie Sanders to Angela Davis, from Noam Chomsky to Pablo Iglesias—signed a short document, an international declaration against fascism in Brazil. The document calls upon the Brazilian population to reject Bolsonaro, whose presidency would be a “threat to any free, tolerant and just society.” Brazilians will have to choose between “liberty and pluralism” on one side and “retrograde authoritarianism” on the other. “There can be no neutrality,” the signatories write, “in the choice between democracy and fascism.” This is a document. It might have a small impact. But it will not be able to compete with fake news and with hatred. Hatred is a more powerful emotion than love. It is what so easily undermines democracy. If Bolsonaro wins, asks the Portuguese political theorist Boaventura de Sousa Santos, will Brazil still be a democracy?

This article was produced by Globetrotter, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

==

==

https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/trump-has-plan-even-further-demonize-food-stamps

In an attempt to find new ways to make life worse for people receiving any government benefits, the Trump administration is seeking to lump together all government benefit programs into a renamed and reorganized Department of Health and Human Services. And you can be sure that the word “welfare” will be emphasized in any new organization.

According to a story that ran first in Politico, the White House Office of Management and Budget soon will release a new report outlining a plan to move all safety-net programs into HHS and to give the federal department a new name, emphasizing the “welfare” moniker that used to be part of the department’s name. A big reason for this recommendation is to lump the $70 billion Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, more commonly known as food stamps, in with Medicare and Medicaid. SNAP would move out of the Department of Agriculture, where it is now housed.

The reasoning is likely that once these benefits are combined under one departmental roof, it will be easier to cut them all.

==

recent study that snap ppl who can work already are?!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/04/18/the-republican-plan-to-tighten-food-stamp-work-requirements-is-advancing-without-a-single-democrats-vote/?utm_term=.99fcf53900a2

House Republicans pushed forward Wednesday with a plan to strengthen work requirements for food stamps, even as Democrats excoriated the proposal as an “ideological crusade” that would hurt the poor, burden state governments and endanger the passage of major food and farming legislation.

The plan, introduced last week as part of the 2018 Farm Bill, would dramatically expand mandatory state workfare programs in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), better known as food stamps, and require that most adults between 18 and 59 enroll or work at least part time to receive benefits.

[GOP proposes stricter work requirements for food stamp recipients, a step toward a major overhaul of the social safety net]

In a 26-to-2o vote on party lines, the House Agriculture Committee moved to advance the Farm Bill, with the SNAP proposals, to the House floor. Republicans have pitched it as a common-sense revision that would refocus services on the neediest families while providing opportunities for adults who are work-capable.

But over the course of more than five hours, Democrats on the usually placid committee denounced the Republican plan as “heartless” and “deceitful” and accused Committee Chairman K. Michael Conaway (R-Tex.) of shutting them out of negotiations.

Farm groups have begun to fear the divisions could delay or prevent passage of the 2018 Farm Bill, the $867 billion package that covers the bulk of the country’s agricultural and nutrition programs, including crop insurance, farm credit, trade, conservation, agricultural research and rural development.

“What are we doing here? Is this half-baked effort what passes for bipartisanship in our chamber?” asked Rep. Collin C. Peterson (D-Minn.), the ranking Democrat. “We used to be able to get stuff done, but the way the chairman has gone about this is turning friends into enemies.”

The current law expires Oct. 1, and a number of rural development and agricultural research programs will lose funding if a farm bill is not passed before then. The House likely will not vote until next month.

Both sides have indicated they are unwilling to negotiate on the Republican plan.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates more than 1 million people would leave the SNAP rolls over the next 10 years because of the new work requirements, mandating 20 hours a week of training or work, and stricter eligibility guidelines for low-income families who qualify for SNAP through other welfare programs, a practice known as Broad-Based Categorical Eligibility.

Republicans on Wednesday said their proposals would focus benefits on people who truly need them, eliminating payments to families with incomes significantly above the poverty threshold and helping work-capable adults find work and afford food for themselves.

“Today’s vote was about America’s farmers and ranchers. It was about a better future and greater opportunities for SNAP recipients,” Conaway said in a statement.

“I’m disappointed,” he continued, “that my Democrat colleagues have turned their backs on America’s heartland.”

But Democrats accuse Conaway of preparing the SNAP proposal in secret instead of allowing staff from both parties to hash out the issue together, as they did for the rest of the bill. The minority did not offer any amendments during the hearing because, Peterson told one farming talk show Monday, “you can't put lipstick on a pig.”

“This is the most partisan Farm Bill in 20 years,” said Rep. Cheri Bustos (D-Ill.), who later tweeted that the proposal should be called the “#HarmBill.”

Democrats maintain that the SNAP program already contains sufficient work rules and that tightening them further may cut off adults who have legitimate reasons for not working.

They also argue that the $1 billion per year budgeted for the new mandatory employment and training programs would fall short. The mandatory program will also overburden poor families and state welfare offices, Democrats said.

In one tense exchange, Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) peppered Conaway and Rep. Glenn Thompson (R-Pa.), the chairman of the nutrition subcommittee, with questions about how many government employees would be needed to manage the workfare programs and how Republicans plan to track the employment status of all 42 million people on SNAP.

“If we had a hearing on this stuff we could go into this in more detail,” he said, as Thompson began to answer one of the questions. “But I only get five minutes.”

The Farm Bill now moves to the House floor, where the acrimony is likely to continue. House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) has championed the Republican food-stamp plan, which dovetails with his agenda to reform welfare programs.

Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), meanwhile, said on Wednesday that her party could not support what she called a “radical, harmful bill.”

Read more:

GOP proposes stricter work requirements for food stamp recipients, a step toward a major overhaul of the social safety net

The Trump administration takes its first big step toward stricter work requirements for food stamps

'Blue Apron for food stamps' already exists. And some recipients hate the powdered milk.

no linx

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/09/16/health/brazil-obesity-nestle.html

...Nestlé’s direct-sales army in Brazil is part of a broader transformation of the food system that is delivering Western-style processed food and sugary drinks to the most isolated pockets of Latin America, Africa and Asia. As their growth slows in the wealthiest countries, multinational food companies like Nestlé, PepsiCo and General Mills have been aggressively expanding their presence in developing nations, unleashing a marketing juggernaut that is upending traditional diets from Brazil to Ghana to India.

Planet Fat

Articles in this series are exploring the causes and the consequences of rising obesity rates around the world.

NESTLÉ GOES DOOR-TO-DOOR

How Big Business Got Brazil’s Poor Hooked on Junk Food

A New York Times examination of corporate records, epidemiological studies and government reports — as well as interviews with scores of nutritionists and health experts around the world — reveals a sea change in the way food is produced, distributed and advertised across much of the globe. The shift, many public health experts say, is contributing to a new epidemic of diabetes and heart disease, chronic illnesses that are fed by soaring rates of obesity in places that struggled with hunger and malnutrition just a generation ago.

The new reality is captured by a single, stark fact: Across the world, more people are now obese than underweight. At the same time, scientists say, the growing availability of high-calorie, nutrient-poor foods is generating a new type of malnutrition, one in which a growing number of people are both overweight and undernourished.

“The prevailing story is that this is the best of all possible worlds — cheap food, widely available. If you don’t think about it too hard, it makes sense,” said Anthony Winson, who studies the political economics of nutrition at the University of Guelph in Ontario. A closer look, however, reveals a much different story, he said. “To put it in stark terms: The diet is killing us.”

Even critics of processed food acknowledge that there are multiple factors in the rise of obesity, including genetics, urbanization, growing incomes and more sedentary lives. Nestlé executives say their products have helped alleviate hunger, provided crucial nutrients, and that the company has squeezed salt, fat and sugar from thousands of items to make them healthier. But Sean Westcott, head of food research and development at Nestlé, conceded obesity has been an unexpected side effect of making inexpensive processed food more widely available.

“We didn’t expect what the impact would be,” he said.

Part of the problem, he added, is a natural tendency for people to overeat as they can afford more food. Nestlé, he said, strives to educate consumers about proper portion size and to make and market foods that balance “pleasure and nutrition.”

There are now more than 700 million obese people worldwide, 108 million of them children, according to research published recently in The New England Journal of Medicine. The prevalence of obesity has doubled in 73 countries since 1980, contributing to four million premature deaths, the study found.

Obesity’s Spread Across the World

Obesity rates in the United States, the South Pacific and the Persian Gulf are among the highest in the world — more than one in four Americans is obese. But over the last 35 years, obesity, defined as having a body mass index over 30, has grown the fastest in countries throughout Latin America, Africa and Asia.

Percent of

population with obesity

U.S.

10%Brazil

7%China

0.7%Mali

0.7%1980

U.S.

27%Brazil

18%China

5%Mali

11%2015

510152025

Change in obesity

rates since 1980

U.S.

2.3xBrazil

1.8xChina

5xMali

10.2x2005

1x1.5x2x3x6x

By Audrey Carlsen | Source: Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. Data not available for French Guiana and Western Sahara.

The story is as much about economics as it is nutrition. As multinational companies push deeper into the developing world, they are transforming local agriculture, spurring farmers to abandon subsistence crops in favor of cash commodities like sugar cane, corn and soybeans — the building blocks for many industrial food products. It is this economic ecosystem that pulls in mom-and-pop stores, big box retailers, food manufacturers and distributors, and small vendors like Mrs. da Silva.

In places as distant as China, South Africa and Colombia, the rising clout of big food companies also translates into political influence, stymieing public health officials seeking soda taxes or legislation aimed at curbing the health impacts of processed food.

For a growing number of nutritionists, the obesity epidemic is inextricably linked to the sales of packaged foods, which grew 25 percent worldwide from 2011 to 2016, compared with 10 percent in the United States, according to Euromonitor, a market research firm. An even starker shift took place with carbonated soft drinks; sales in Latin America have doubled since 2000, overtaking sales in North America in 2013, the World Health Organization reported.

The same trends are mirrored with fast food, which grew 30 percent worldwide from 2011 to 2016, compared with 21 percent in the United States, according to Euromonitor. Take, for example, Domino’s Pizza, which in 2016 added 1,281 stores — one “every seven hours,” noted its annual report — all but 171 of them overseas.

“At a time when some of the growth is more subdued in established economies, I think that strong emerging-market posture is going to be a winning position,” Mark Schneider, chief executive of Nestlé, recently told investors. Developing markets now provide the company with 42 percent of its sales.

For some companies, that can mean specifically focusing on young people, as Ahmet Bozer, president of Coca-Cola International, described to investors in 2014. “Half the world’s population has not had a Coke in the last 30 days,” he said. “There’s 600 million teenagers who have not had a Coke in the last week. So the opportunity for that is huge.”

Industry defenders say that processed foods are essential to feed a growing, urbanizing world of people, many of them with rising incomes, demanding convenience.

“We’re not going to get rid of all factories and go back to growing all grain. It’s nonsense. It’s not going to work,” said Mike Gibney, a professor emeritus of food and health at University College Dublin and a consultant to Nestlé. “If I ask 100 Brazilian families to stop eating processed food, I have to ask myself: What will they eat? Who will feed them? How much will it cost?”

In many ways, Brazil is a microcosm of how growing incomes and government policies have led to longer, better lives and largely eradicated hunger. But now the country faces a stark new nutrition challenge: over the last decade, the country’s obesity rate has nearly doubled to 20 percent, and the portion of people who are overweight has nearly tripled to 58 percent. Each year, 300,000 people are diagnosed with Type II diabetes, a condition with strong links to obesity.

There are now more obese than underweight adults in the world. Sales of ultraprocessed foods have more than doubled over the last decade — even spreading into developing countries. Here's what the junk food transition looks like in Brazil.

By Neil Collier and Ora DeKornfeld

Brazil also highlights the food industry’s political prowess. In 2010, a coalition of Brazilian food and beverage companies torpedoed a raft of measures that sought to limit junk food ads aimed at children. The latest challenge has come from the country’s president, Michel Temer, a business-friendly centrist whose conservative allies in Congress are now seeking to chip away at the handful of regulations and laws intended to encourage healthy eating.

“What we have is a war between two food systems, a traditional diet of real food once produced by the farmers around you and the producers of ultra-processed food designed to be over-consumed and which in some cases are addictive,” said Carlos A. Monteiro, a professor of nutrition and public health at the University of São Paulo.

“It’s a war,” he said, “but one food system has disproportionately more power than the other...

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/13/health/colombia-soda-tax-obesity.html

Planet Fat

Articles in this series are exploring the causes and the consequences of rising obesity rates around the world.

NESTLÉ GOES DOOR-TO-DOOR

How Big Business Got Brazil’s Poor Hooked on Junk Food

RESHAPING AFRICAN PALATES

Obesity Was Rising as Ghana Embraced Fast Food. Then Came KFC.

THE SODA TAX SHOWDOWN

She Took On Colombia’s Soda Industry. Then She Was Silenced.

A U.S.-STYLE DIET

A Nasty, Nafta-Related Surprise: Mexico’s Soaring Obesity

STRANGE BEDFELLOWS

In Asia’s Fattest Country, Nutritionists Take Money From Food Giants

A FATHER'S FIGHT

One Man’s Stand Against Junk

She Took On Colombia’s Soda Industry. Then She Was Silenced.

The debate over taxing sugary drinks has turned into a ferocious global

policy brawl. In Colombia, proponents faced intimidation and censorship.

Leer en español

By ANDREW JACOBS and

MATT RICHTEL

NOV. 13, 2017

BOGOTÁ, Colombia — It began with menacing phone calls, strange malfunctions of the office computers, and men in parked cars photographing the entrance to the small consumer advocacy group’s offices.

Then at dusk one day last December, Dr. Esperanza Cerón, the head of the organization, said she noticed two strange men on motorcycles trailing her Chevy sedan as she headed home from work. She tried to lose them in Bogotá’s rush-hour traffic, but they edged up to her car and pounded on the windows.

:{

}:

“If you don’t keep your mouth shut,” one man shouted, she recalled in a recent interview, “you know what the consequences will be.”

The episode, which Dr. Cerón reported to federal investigators, was reminiscent of the intimidation often used against those who challenged the drug cartels that once dominated Colombia. But the narcotics trade was not the target of Dr. Cerón and her colleagues. Their work had upset a different multibillion-dollar industry: the makers of soda and other sugar-sweetened beverages.

Their organization, Educar Consumidores, was the most visible proponent of a proposed 20 percent tax on sugary drinks that was heading for a vote that month in Colombia’s Legislature.The group had raised money, rallied allies to the cause and produced a provocative television ad that warned consumers how sugar-laden beverages can lead to obesity and diet-related illnesses like diabetes.

...

Planet Fat

Articles in this series are exploring the causes and the consequences of rising obesity rates around the world.

NESTLÉ GOES DOOR-TO-DOOR

How Big Business Got Brazil’s Poor Hooked on Junk Food

RESHAPING AFRICAN PALATES

Obesity Was Rising as Ghana Embraced Fast Food. Then Came KFC.

THE SODA TAX SHOWDOWN

She Took On Colombia’s Soda Industry. Then She Was Silenced.

A U.S.-STYLE DIET

A Nasty, Nafta-Related Surprise: Mexico’s Soaring Obesity

STRANGE BEDFELLOWS

In Asia’s Fattest Country, Nutritionists Take Money From Food Giants

A FATHER'S FIGHT

One Man’s Stand Against Junk

She Took On Colombia’s Soda Industry. Then She Was Silenced.

The debate over taxing sugary drinks has turned into a ferocious global

policy brawl. In Colombia, proponents faced intimidation and censorship.

Leer en español

By ANDREW JACOBS and

MATT RICHTEL

NOV. 13, 2017

BOGOTÁ, Colombia — It began with menacing phone calls, strange malfunctions of the office computers, and men in parked cars photographing the entrance to the small consumer advocacy group’s offices.

Then at dusk one day last December, Dr. Esperanza Cerón, the head of the organization, said she noticed two strange men on motorcycles trailing her Chevy sedan as she headed home from work. She tried to lose them in Bogotá’s rush-hour traffic, but they edged up to her car and pounded on the windows.

“If you don’t keep your mouth shut,” one man shouted, she recalled in a recent interview, “you know what the consequences will be.”

The episode, which Dr. Cerón reported to federal investigators, was reminiscent of the intimidation often used against those who challenged the drug cartels that once dominated Colombia. But the narcotics trade was not the target of Dr. Cerón and her colleagues. Their work had upset a different multibillion-dollar industry: the makers of soda and other sugar-sweetened beverages.

Their organization, Educar Consumidores, was the most visible proponent of a proposed 20 percent tax on sugary drinks that was heading for a vote that month in Colombia’s Legislature. The group had raised money, rallied allies to the cause and produced a provocative television ad that warned consumers how sugar-laden beverages can lead to obesity and diet-related illnesses like diabetes.

The backlash was fierce. A Colombian government agency, responding to a complaint by the nation’s leading soda company that called the ad misleading, ordered it off the air. Then the agency went further: It prohibited Dr. Cerón and her colleagues from publicly discussing the health risks of sugar, under penalty of a $250,000 fine.

Dr. Esperanza Cerón, director of Educar Consumidores, a group that campaigned for a tax on sugary drinks. Colombia’s consumer protection agency barred her from talking about the link between sugar and obesity. Credit Juan Arredondo for The New York Times

The battle over taxing sugar-sweetened beverages is becoming one of the world’s most ferocious policy brawls — a clash of science, politics and money in dozens of countries and cities.

“The industry sees sugary-drink taxes as an existential threat,” said Dr. James Krieger, executive director of Healthy Food America, which tracks beverage tax initiatives.In the United States, the industry has spent at least $107 million at the state and local levels since 2009 to beat back soda taxes and beverage warning labels, a new study found. Compared to the domestic tactics, Dr. Krieger said, overseas, “it’s much dirtier, much more bare-knuckled.”

The harassment of Dr. Cerón and her colleagues was never proven to be carried out by the industry, and federal prosecutors declined to investigate. In response to questions from The New York Times, Coke and Pepsi said they were not involved, and Postobón, the soda company that filed the complaint about the organization’s ad, deferred comment to The National Business Association of Colombia. The association, which represented national and international beverage makers on the soda tax issue, said it had nothing to do with the episodes.

The International Council of Beverages Associations, the parent organization of trade groups around the world fighting the taxes, would not directly answer the question about whether its allies in Colombia were connected to the alleged harassment, but it condemned such actions.

“We reject under any circumstance the improper influence or harassment of any individual or organization for any purpose, at any time, in any way,” Katherine W. Loatman, executive director of the organization, said in a statement.

The experience in Colombia may be the most extreme, but a juggernaut of industry opposition has killed or stalled soda tax proposals around the globe, including in Russia, Germany, Israel and New Zealand.

Nevertheless, the idea is gaining momentum; such levies have been enacted in 30 countries, including India, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Thailand, Britain and Brunei. More than a billion people now live in places where such taxes have driven up the price of sugar-sweetened beverages.

The battles have been particularly intense in emerging markets as the industry seeks to make up for falling soda consumption in wealthier nations. Latin America has surpassed the United States as the world’s biggest soft-drink market, according to the World Health Organization, with sales of carbonated soft drinks doubling there since 2000 while they declined in the United States.

The beverage industry asserts that soda taxes unfairly burden the poor, cause higher unemployment by squeezing industry sales, and fail to achieve their policy goal: reducing obesity. Studies of soda taxes have shown they lead to a drop in sales of sugar-sweetened beverages — a 10 percent sales decline, for example, over the first two years of Mexico’s tax — however, such measures are so new that there is not yet evidence of their impact on health.

“Slapping a tax on our products and walking away won’t do anything about obesity in this country or globally,” said William Dermody, spokesman for the American Beverage Association, an industry trade group.

The soda industry claimed a tax on sugary drinks would harm mom-and-pop shops like this one in Bogotá. Credit Juan Arredondo for The New York Times

But public health organizations, including the W.H.O., cite soda taxes as one of the most effective policy tools for cutting consumption of what nutritionists call a “liquid candy” that has contributed to an epidemic of obesity and related health conditions around the world. Dr. Kathryn Backholer, an expert on the issue at Deakin University in Australia, said taxes on soda were “low-hanging fruit” in the fight against obesity, diabetes and other weight-related diseases because such drinks are easily categorized to tax and sensible to target because they “have little or no nutritional value.”

Dr. Backholer and other experts said the turning point for soda tax proponents came in 2014, when Mexico — Coca-Cola’s biggest consumer market by per capita consumption — approved a 10 percent tax.

Mexico also showcased how dirty the fight could get.

:{

}:

Last year, numerous advocates of a proposal to double Mexico’s tax to 20 percent received strings of upsetting and fraudulent texts from unknown numbers. One man got a message saying his daughter had been seriously injured; another found a text saying his wife was having an affair; a third received a link to a funeral home. Spyware was found on the phones. The proposal failed....[phones hacked? ad tweaked, censored ppl gag]

==

https://www.democracynow.org/2017/10/25/headlines/climate_change_war_fuels_rising_hunger_worldwide

Report: Global Food Chain Increasingly Threatened by Corporate Consolidation

https://www.ecowatch.com/corporations-global-food-2504858599.html

http://www.alternet.org/personal-health/fat-political-issue

There are now more than 700 million obese people worldwide, 108 million of them children, reported the New York Times recently. In Brazil, food giant Nestle sends vendors door to door hawking its high-calorie junk food and giving customers a full month to pay for their purchases. Such a deal. Nestle calls the junk food hawkers, who are themselves obese, "micro-entrepreneurs." Right.

Big Food is increasing targeting poor countries as "emerging markets" to please shareholders, supplanting their indigenous diets with fast food, packaged goods and soft drinks. In addition to creating obesity, diabetes, heart disease and chronic illnesses, the junk food supplants subsistence agriculture crops with sugar cane and GMO corn and soybeans. Even philanthropic groups like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation have drunk Big Food's Kool-aid about GMOs "feeding the world." Actually, GMOs drench the fields of poor communities with toxic pesticides and pollute their waters.

Nestle's exploitation of the poor goes back more than 40 years when it convinced poor mothers to reject their own breast milk––the one thing poor mothers actually have to give their babies–– in favor of its infant formula. Activist groups say babies die in poor areas of Asia, Africa and Latin America because their mothers bottle-feed them with Western-style infant milk.

In Brazil, meat giant JBS and Coca-Cola have donated millions to congressional campaigns and McDonald’s $561,000, effectively burying dialogue about the health of junk food and its role in obesity. A few years ago, Reuters reported that the World Health Organization's Pan American Health Organization takes hundreds of thousands of dollars and "obesity" advice from junk food and soft drink companies. No wonder the advice stresses "exercise" and gives junk food ubiquity and its marketing to children and a pass.

Big Food also keeps America fat. A 2014 movie by Katie Couric called "Fed Up" exposed how the U.S. government admonishes people to eat right, while pushing the foods that make them fat, and how school lunchrooms have been bought by Big Food.

The film reveals how the egg, sugar and other Big Food industries revised guidelines generated from the 1977 McGovern Report that recommended people eat less foods high in fat and sugar to favor them and overruled Sen. McGovern.

In 2006, a similar Big Food triumph occurred. Faced with the United Nation’s WHO food recommendations that were similar to the McGovern Report, then Secretary ofHealth and Human Services (HHS) Tommy G. Thompson actually flew to Geneva to threaten WHO that if the guidelines stood, the U.S. would withdraw its WHO financial support. Yes––U.S Ag was––and is––more important than world health.

In July, the New York Times revealed the devastating toll that junk food, obesity and diabetes have on poor people in Appalachia most of whom have minimal or no health care. People in Appalachia are sicker than in Central America, said Dr. Joseph Smiddy, a health volunteer in Virginia. “In Central America, they’re eating beans and rice and walking everywhere. They’re not drinking Mountain Dew and eating candy. They’re not having an epidemic of obesity and diabetes.” At least not until Nestle gets there.

In Chicago, there is a bitter fight over a recently instituted penny-per-ounce tax on sweetened beverages. The beverage industry has spent more than $1.4 million on television ads trying to reverse the decision and cast the desire to drink high-calorie, obesity-, diabetes- and dental cavity-producing soft drinks as "consumer choice."  Poor communities, in Chicago and in the world, are the ones most hurt by soft drinks and the ones the beverage industry is now most desperately trying to enlist in the fight against the tax.

Someone on a typical 2,000-calorie-a-day diet should derive only 200 calories a day from sugar—equal to one 16-ounce soda. Yet most Americans consume at least twice the recommended amount and few people who have the soda “habit” only drink one soft drink a day.

Once upon a time, “sugar” meant sugar from sugar cane or sugar beets. But since 1980, soft drink producers have favored high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) and they have been followed by most major food producers and processors. Trade restrictions in other countries to protect local sugar production made sugar more expensive to use even as U.S. farmers were growing copious amounts of corn because of farm subsidies. HFCS is also cheaper to produce, store and ship.

While HFCS is linked to obesity, diabetes, liver damage, memory problems and even possible mercury contamination, artificial sweeteners are not clearly better. An increase in the use of aspartame, found in Diet Coke, and sucralose, found in Pepsi One, actually correlated with a rise in the number of people who are obese, reported the Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine.

Whether in Brazil or Chicago, Big Food is succeeding in adding "poor health" to the plight of poor people.

==

==

hawken drawdown says food #1?

http://www.alternet.org/environment/new-law-new-jersey-combating-climate-and-hunger-same-time

A new law in New Jersey aims to shrink the state’s climate footprint and feed the hungry by drastically reducing the amount of wasted food that ends up in landfills.

The law requires the state to develop a plan over the next year to cut the state’s food waste by half by 2030. The bipartisan measure, which passed the state legislature without a single dissenting vote and was signed last week by Gov. Chris Christie, mirrors an Environmental Protection Agency goal for the entire country set under the Obama administration in 2015.

“The beauty of the bill is it’s going to get at two long-festering problems—climate and hunger—at the same time,” said Eric Goldstein, a senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council in New York City. “The states are going to have to take the lead on issues like climate and this new law holds the hope of tackling one piece of that problem.”

Up to 40 percent of the food produced in the U.S. ends up uneaten and tossed into the garbage. So much food is thrown away every year that it adds up to the equivalent of about 20 pounds of food per person every month. Discarded food also wastes cropland and energy that are used in the production of food.

Worldwide, processing wasted food generates about 3.3 billion tons of greenhouse gases annually. That means if food waste were a country, it would be the world’s third-largest climate polluter after China and the U.S., according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.

When leftovers and rotting fruit and vegetables are tossed out and end up in the dump, they become a major climate problem. Decomposing food pollutes the atmosphere with methane, a greenhouse gas 34 times as powerful in warming the climate as carbon dioxide over the course of a century.

Larry Hajna, spokesman for the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, said that while New Jersey has implemented more effective methane emissions controls at its landfills over the past 30 years, much of the state’s garbage is shipped to landfills out of state where New Jersey officials have no control over emissions.

Less methane will be emitted from those landfills and the climate will benefit if the amount of food New Jerseyans discard is cut drastically, he said.

At least five states either ban organic waste from landfills or mandate food waste recycling to some degree, according to the Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic.

California mandates organic food waste recycling and requires businesses to cap the amount of food they send to the landfill each year. Connecticut and Rhode Island also require many businesses to cap the amount of food thrown out. Massachusetts and Vermont have a weight limit on food waste both individuals and businesses can throw away....

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-foodlobby-idUSBRE83Q0ED20120427

James H. Davidson believes in the First Amendment. The former college newspaper editor turned lawyer turned Senate aide is now one of the most powerful lobbyists in Washington.

For two decades, Davidson has been the point man for the advertising industry in free speech issues. More recently his clients have also included food and beverage companies in alliance with advertisers. They have joined forces to lead the fight against the proposedgovernment guidelines on sugar, salt and fat in food marketed to 2- to 17-year-olds.

Davidson also says there is no proof that food marketing causes obesity, and without it, there is no legal basis for restricting the ads.

"The First Amendment protects this type of speech," he said.

Other lobbyists pointed to the role of potentially unlimited political donations in explaining how industry has been able to so thoroughly defeat the proposed salt, sugar and fat guidelines.

In 2009, Congress passed a measure proposed by Harkin and Senator Sam Brownback (R-Kansas) to ask the FTC and three other agencies -- the CDC, the Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration -- to draft voluntary nutrition standards for children's food marketing. The two senators were motivated by studies showing that children develop lifelong preferences from watching ads that target them with saltier, sweeter foods than adults.

==

8/16

http://ww2.kqed.org/forum/2016/07/12/one-in-five-uc-students-struggles-to-pay-for-food-study-finds/

==

http://www.alternet.org/food/county-worst-childhood-hunger-america

...

“You’d think he would be more concerned about getting an Xbox. But he was really excited about oranges. A kid should be excited about learning and playing and growing, not worried about where their next meal is coming from.”

When Feeding America issued its annual Map the Hunger Gap, Apache and four other counties atop the northern part of Arizona—stretching the full expanse from the eastern state line to the west—were the darkest shade of green included on the map’s legend. The color indicated that more than 30 percent of kids in those areas are food insecure, meaning they live in households that experience limited or uncertain availability of nutritionally adequate foods. Apache County, a long, narrow strip in the northeast corner of Arizona, includes parts of the Navajo Nation as well as the Zuni and Fort Apache Native American reservations. There, 42 percent of children—9,050 kids—are food insecure, twice the national rate.

There isn’t much out there in Northeast Arizona, Martinez explained. “When I say ‘rural,’ most people think farms and ranches. Arizona rural is very desolate, especially in the northeast part of the state,” he said. “You really don’t get a grasp of how rural these parts are until you see it.” He described a beautiful but sparsely populated landscape with communities clustered in chapter houses, towns, and villages—some of which are thousands of years old. Traveling to a major population center can be a substantial drive—an hour or two, or more—and those destinations may not have a grocery store.

“There’s still very few amenities. There are not very many grocery stores. Running water is very limited,” Martinez said. “It is definitely a different world.” In recent years, some extra federal money coming to schools and antihunger groups have helped to make up some of the difference—but that funding may dry up if Congress makes proposed changes to the federal Child Nutrition Programs.

That world includes schools where 100 percent of the children qualify for subsidized lunches. Martinez, who previously taught middle school, said he could identify hungry children in the classroom by their appearance: brittle hair, sallow skin more apt to bruise and break, weight loss or, conversely, obesity—and behavior that can be, in turns, aggressive, anxious, or distracted.

“They’re wondering where their next meal is coming from instead of being a kid,” he said. Oranges over Xboxes. “And that’s even if the child makes it to school in the first place.”

The United Food Bank, which also provides food aid throughout the state, sends kids home from school on Friday with packs of food to get them through the weekend, but those individual rations end up being split among a family. “This is really the Third World among us,” Ginny Hildebrand, the nonprofit’s CEO, told USA Today.

Nearly half a million children in Arizona meet the income eligibility requirements for the free and reduced lunch program, yet less than 15 percent of them are able to access meals during the summer months when school is not in session. Agencies like St. Mary’s Food Bank Alliance were able to provide more meals to more hungry kids after 2010’s Child Nutrition Reauthorization bill. Five years ago, St. Mary’s served 1,500 daily after-school and summer meals. Now it serves 6,000, Martinez said.

But that progress is now in jeopardy. Congress reviews and reauthorizes federal child nutrition programs every five years, and the passage of the 2015 Child Nutrition Reauthorization is already overdue—and the version written by House GOP leaders threatens, among other things, to undercut the Community Eligibility Provision. One of the most successful components of the bill, that provision allowed high-poverty schools or districts to serve all students free meals, regardless of their eligibility, by demonstrating that at least 40 percent of their students were certified for free meals through other federal programs, such as food stamps. It fed more kids with less paperwork and zero stigma.

The House Child Nutrition Reauthorization bill would jack up the qualifying threshold from 40 percent to 60. Because that 40 percent threshold doesn’t come close to capturing all the needy kids, Politico calculated the change would mean even “schools with between 65 and 96 percent of their students qualifying for nutrition assistance would likely have to drop CEP.”

Matt Herrick, director of communications at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, is highly critical of the proposed change. He issued a statement, published in full by The Lunch Tray, saying the reauthorization plan is, “harmful to children’s health, heaps administrative costs on schools, and plans to bury parents in more bureaucratic red tape, all while subsidizing well-off children at the expense of our less fortunate kids who need help.”

Proposed measures like this make it harder for agencies like St. Mary’s to do their real work, Martinez said. “We’re trying to make it as easy as possible for smaller nonprofits, to remove as much paperwork as possible, so that we’re able to focus less on pushing paper and more on feeding hungry children,” he said.

==

Obesitybk

See also Food Insecurity for geo-political aspect; also sugar lobby and fast food and beverage

===

ore than one-third of American adults are obese. That's more than 78 million people — more than the populations of Spain, Italy and the United Kingdom. Add the number of adult Americans who are overweight to that figure and the statistic is staggering: More than two-thirds of the population are not at a healthy weight.

The nation's future doesn't look much thinner: The American Heart Association says that about one in three American children and teens are overweight or obese, nearly three times the rate in 1963. And a recent by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that the U.S. obesity rate rose to 38 percent from 32 percent about a decade earlier. 

It's a vicious and deadly cycle that often starts early. Parents who let their children overeat create a fait accompli, since being overweight in youth has been linked to higher and earlier death rates in adulthood.

There are two proximate causes: Poor diets marked by overeating and eating fatty and sugary foods and drinks, and a lack of physical activity. According to the Physical Activity Council, more than 82 million Americans aged six and up — around 28 percent of the population — were physically inactive in 2014.

The ultimate cause may be connected to Americans' addiction to fast food, which plays, literally, an outsized role. And this addiction — maintained and expanded by the industrial food industry — cuts sharply across race and economic lines. A CDC analysis of surveys conducted between 2006 and 2008 found that non-Hispanic blacks had the greatest prevalence of obesity (35.7%), followed by Hispanics (28.7%), and non-Hispanic whites (23.7%).

“Fast food restaurants cluster in poorer neighborhoods and obese adults eat more fast food than those who are normal weight,” according researchers of a study conducted in 2011 by UC San Francisco.

But while America's obesity epidemic isn't merely a problem of overeating and under-exercising, much of the conversation tends to overlook sociocultural factors that for many people, come into play at a young age.

"This is what people don't understand: obesity is a symptom of poverty," said restaurateur and "Top Chef" judge Tom Colicchio, who testified before the House of Representatives in 2010, advocating for H.R.5504, the Improving Nutrition for America’s Children Act. "It's not a lifestyle choice where people are just eating and not exercising. It's because kids — and this is the problem with school lunch right now — are getting sugar, fat, empty calories. Lots of calories, but no nutrition."

When kids start becoming overweight, it's easy to slide into a cycle of dependence that is difficult to escape. “Once obese,” write the UCSF researchers, “many individuals meet criteria for psychological dependence. Stress and dieting may sensitize an individual to reward. Finally, fast food advertisements, restaurants and menus all provide environmental cues that may trigger addictive overeating.”

All of this eating and sitting around translates to a host of obesity-related health conditions, such as heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes and a range of cancer types, including breast, colon, uterine, kidney, esophageal, pancreatic and thyroid. Sadly, these are some of the leading causes of preventable death.

The cost of treating all these ailments is extraordinary: In 2008 (the last year for which figures are available), the estimated annual medical cost of obesity in the U.S. was $147 billion. On average, the annual medical costs for obese people were $1,429 higher than those of normal weight.

Though the nation as a whole is undergoing an obesity epidemic, the rates vary by state as well. To determine exactly where weight issues are most prevalent, analysts at WalletHub, a personal finance social network, compared the 50 states and the District of Columbia across 12 key metrics, including the percentage of adults and children who are overweight and obese to the sugary-beverage consumption among adolescents.

Some of their findings:

• The percentage of adults who are obese in West Virginia is two times higher than in Colorado
• The percentage of children who are obese in Mississippi is two times higher than in Oregon
• The percentage of residents who are physically inactive in Mississippi is two times higher than in Colorado
• The percentage of people with diabetes in West Virginia is two times higher than in Utah
• The death rate due to obesity in New Mexico is three times higher than in Alabama

The states with the biggest weight problems are:

1. Mississippi
2. Louisiana
3. West Virginia
4. Tennessee
5. South Carolina
6. Arkansas
7. Kentucky
8. Alabama
9. Oklahoma
10. North Dakota

The states with the least weight problems are:

1. Minnesota
2. Oregon
3. Vermont
4. Connecticut
5. Montana
6. Utah
7. Massachusetts
8. New Jersey
9. Colorado
10. Hawaii

In the graphic below, a rank of No. 1 corresponds to the state with the biggest weight problems:

http://www.alternet.org/food/americas-obesity-epidemic-where-does-your-state-rank

==

from klobachar

==

Special Report: How Washington went soft on childhood obesity

Related News

• U.S. Republican urges Obama push on Russia trade bill

Thu, Apr 26 2012

• Mad cow disease found in California; no human threat seen

Wed, Apr 25 2012

• Nestle wins pricey battle for Pfizer baby food unit

Mon, Apr 23 2012

• Republicans eye health plan should court overturn reform

Sun, Apr 22 2012

• Nestle sees tough 2012 after price hikes help sales

Fri, Apr 20 2012

Analysis & Opinion

• Undernourished and anaemic – the plight of India’s teen girls
• Essential reading: Amazon will collect Nevada sales tax, debating tax cuts, more

Related Topics

• Special Reports »

Related Video

Food Fight: How the food industry outsmarted Washington - Reuters Investigates

Thu, Apr 26 2012

Related Interactive

Food industry lobbying: Money on the menu

By Duff Wilson and Janet Roberts

Washington, D.C. | Fri Apr 27, 20129:03am EDT

(Reuters) - In the political arena, one side is winning the war on child obesity.

The side with the fattest wallets.

After aggressive lobbying, Congress declared pizza a vegetable to protect it from a nutritional overhaul of the school lunch program this year. The White House kept silent last year as Congress killed a plan by four federal agencies to reduce sugar, salt and fat in food marketed to children.

And during the past two years, each of the 24 states and five cities that considered "soda taxes" to discourage consumption of sugary drinks has seen the efforts dropped or defeated.

At every level of government, the food and beverage industries won fight after fight during the last decade. They have never lost a significant political battle in the United States despite mounting scientific evidence of the role of unhealthy food and children's marketing in obesity.

Lobbying records analyzed by Reuters reveal that the industries more than doubled their spending in Washington during the past three years. In the process, they largely dominated policymaking -- pledging voluntary action while defeating government proposals aimed at changing the nation's diet, dozens of interviews show.

In contrast, the Center for Science in the Public Interest, widely regarded as the lead lobbying force for healthier food, spent about $70,000 lobbying last year -- roughly what those opposing the stricter guidelines spent every 13 hours, the Reuters analysis showed.

Industry critics also contend that the White House all but abandoned a multi-agency effort that recommended healthier food be marketed to children, even after First Lady Michelle Obama told a grocery trade group two years ago that food manufacturers needed to "step it up" to protect children.

"I'm upset with the White House," said Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), chairman of the Senate Health Committee. "They went wobbly in the knees. When it comes to kids' health, they shouldn't go wobbly in the knees."

The White House disputed the characterization. Sam Kass, an assistant chef there and senior policy adviser on food initiatives, said in a statement: "We are incredibly proud of the commitments that many food companies have made, and are continuing to work with others to advocate for even more change to make sure our children are getting the healthy, nutritious food they need."

The political battles over what children eat and drink are crucial to the nation's health, experts say, because the tripling in childhood obesity in the last three decades foretells diabetes, heart disease and other illness in decades to come. America is one of the fattest nations on earth, and the Institute of Medicine, in a 2006 report requested by Congress, said junk food marketing contributes to an epidemic of childhood obesity that continues to rise. The institute is the health arm of the National Academy of Sciences.

SHORTER LIFESPAN?

Health experts and Harkin say the food industry has employed some of the same tactics as Big Tobacco in its efforts to fight stricter regulations -- chief among them the argument that the industry should regulate itself.

Although no major legislative action on childhood obesity is pending during this election year, the public debate is expected to resume next month. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will hold a conference in Washington from May 7-9 called "Weight of the Nation." It will include an Institute of Medicine update and the premiere of an HBO documentary series of the same name. Health advocates also plan a "Sugary Drinks Summit" in Washington from June 7-8.

"We haven't reversed the epidemic," Dr. William H. Dietz, director of the division of nutrition, physical activity and obesity at the CDC, said in an interview. "This may be the first generation of children that has a lower life span than their parents."

Food and beverage manufacturers and advertisers say they aren't to blame for obesity. Indeed, they say they are part of the solution.

The American Beverage Association says its members have cut 88 percent of the calories shipped to schools since 2004 by offering less sugary drinks and emphasizing water, low-fat milk and juice in elementary and middle schools. The drinks now list calories on the front of labels.

Sixteen major companies with about 75 percent of the food ads on TV aimed at children under 12 are regulating themselves under the Children's Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative of the Better Business Bureau. They are limiting ads for certain foods and adopting nutrition standards.

"It's made a big difference," said Elaine D. Kolish, the initiative director and a former head of enforcement at the Federal Trade Commission. More than 100 products have been changed or created to cut salt, fat, sugar or calories, she said. Tougher self-regulation is promised by 2014.

At the same time, Kolish said, there is no proof of "a causal effect between food advertising and obesity."

The Institute of Medicine had found strong evidence that TV watching was associated with child obesity. But researchers have found no proof that obesity is directly caused by ads for sweets or junk food.

Armed with those arguments and a bulging political war chest, the $1.5 trillion food and beverage industry has defeated soda taxes and marketing restrictions in cities and states across the nation, mounting referendums to overturn the taxes in the two states that passed them and persuading 16 states to prohibit lawsuits over fatty foods.

Reuters analyzed spending reported by more than 50 food and beverage groups that lobbied against the federal effort last year to write tougher -- but still voluntary -- nutritional standards for foods marketed to children.

The groups have spent more than $175 million lobbying since President Barack Obama took office in 2009 -- more than double the $83 million spent in the previous three years, during the Bush Administration.

The totals do not include broader lobbying efforts by theChamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, and media and advertising interests that also opposed the federal plan. Those groups lobby on other issues, and lobbying disclosure reports do not specify how much they spent targeting the food marketing proposal. The Reuters analysis was based on records from the Federal Election Commission, the Secretary of the Senate and the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan group that tracks money in politics.

In a stark example of lobbying muscle, PepsiCo Inc, Coca-Cola Co, bottlers and the American Beverage Association spent more than $40 million lobbying in 2009 when Congress was considering a soda tax. That was more than eight times the $4.8 million they had spent the previous year, the analysis showed. After the proposal died, the groups cut spending to $24 million in 2010 and $10 million in 2011.

In recent interviews, lobbyists, lawmakers, policy leaders and industry insiders described the power of money in politics and the appeal of self-regulation to explain how they have been so successful countering legislation backed by public health interests that they portrayed as overreaching.

The public health advocates "hit a nerve," said Marshall Matz, a Washington lawyer and industry lobbyist who advised the 2008 Obama campaign on agricultural issues. "There's a bipartisan feeling you can tell someone to eat less fat, consume more fiber, more fruits and vegetables and less sugar. But if you start naming foods, you cross the line."

WHITE HOUSE WITHDRAWAL

The effort to defeat the tougher food standards heated up late last spring and summer, when lobbyists said they went on high alert.

On July 12, White House visitor logs show a who's who of food company chief executives and lobbyists visited the White House. The group met with Valerie Jarrett, Obama's senior adviser, and Melody Barnes, then director of the president's Domestic Policy Council. Among the group at the meeting: CEOs of Nestle USA, Kellogg, General Mills, and top executives at Walt Disney, Time Warner, and Viacom, owner of the Nickelodeon children's channel -- companies with some of the biggest financial stakes in marketing to children. Those companies have a combined market value of more than $350 billion.

Two people who attended -- lobbyist Scott Faber of the Grocery Manufacturers Association and Kolish of the Better Business Bureau -- said the group told the White House that it opposed government action and favored voluntary initiatives. Other participants and the White House have declined to describe the meeting or did not respond to requests for comment.

Advocates for tougher standards tried to counter the lobbying surge, calling, emailing and visiting the White House scores of times last year.

Margo Wootan, director of nutrition policy at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, recalled an October 31 White House visit that included 11 other representatives of nonprofit groups who supported the food standards. The group met with Barnes, White House visitor logs show. Among the advocates there that day: the American Heart Association and Children Now.

The effort by the advocacy groups had little effect.

In the weeks after the meetings, proponents of tougher standards said, neither the president nor the First Lady spoke out for the work on healthy food guidelines that had been drafted by the administration's own agencies. And industry representatives said their White House lobbying -- which also included calls, letters and visits to the White House -- proved successful on a hot political issue.

Wootan concedes as much. "There was so much industry pushback that it led to a lot of foot-dragging," she said. "The president and White House were as much to blame as House Republicans."

Meanwhile, Michelle Obama's childhood-obesity campaign pivoted from criticizing foodmakers toward promoting exercise.

"We need you all to step it up," she told the Grocery Manufacturers Association in a March 2010 speech. "We need you not just to tweak around the edges but to entirely rethink the products that you're offering, the information that you provide about these products and how you market those products to our children."

By last November, Mrs. Obama was praising the manufacturers for product improvements -- "a fundamental shift in the Let's Move campaign," according to the widely cited blog Obama Foodorama. Instead, the First Lady (with free advertising from broadcasters) emphasized exercise -- a favored cause of companies that lobbied against stricter food guidelines.

Nicholas W. Papas, a spokesman for the White House, disputed the notion that it had failed to champion the work of its own agencies. "The Obama Administration consistently supported the Interagency Working Group and we were disappointed when Congress granted the food industry's requests and placed new demands on the working group," he said in a statement.

But Papas could not point to any specific example of the president or First Lady voicing support for the working group report. Lobbyists on both sides of the issue and two key members of Congress said the administration stood back at crucial junctures, allowing Congress time to thwart the effort.

Kelly D. Brownell, a Yale professor and director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity, said he believes the First Lady has become too friendly with industry even as she has been a passionate, effective advocate for healthier food and exercise. He pointed to the possible influence of a 2010 Supreme Court decision, criticized by the president, that removed limits on corporate and union campaign spending.

"It does seem that there's been a shift in priorities in the Let's Move campaign in an election year," Brownell said. "And with the Citizens United case and the companies being able to lobby almost without limit, it's not surprising that the White House is more friendly toward the industry."

Wootan had a similar view: "I'd focus more on exercise, too, if my husband was up for re-election."

The First Lady's office declined to respond publicly to questions about its support for the agencies' proposed standards for foods marketed to children, or charges that Let's Move had changed focus. Kass, the Let's Move policy adviser, responded to similar criticism last year from New York University nutrition professor Marion Nestle by saying the emphasis on exercise added to previous work on nutrition and was not a pullback from topics that the industry opposes.

BIG TOBACCO'S PLAYBOOK

Although food and beverage companies say they are making dramatic strides in self-regulation, their critics say they are moving too slowly and trying to influence public opinion by using some of the same approaches that tobacco companies used to defend their products.

Kraft Foods, the nation's largest food company, was owned by Philip Morris, the nation's largest tobacco company, from 1988-2007. Philip Morris makes Marlboro cigarettes.

Brownell and Kenneth E. Warner, a professor and former dean of the University of Michigan School of Public Health, have written papers comparing Big Food to Big Tobacco.

Both industries dispute links between their products and ill health, Brownell said -- tobacco companies claiming cigarettes don't cause cancer and food companies saying there is no proof that sugar causes obesity. Both have rewritten product labels without making major changes, he said. And both emphasize self-regulation -- to Brownell, an effort to preempt government standards.

"I can't think of a single thing the food industry is doing that the tobacco industry hasn't done," Brownell said.

Both industries also have relied on marketing to kids, he said, and both use what Brownell called "front groups" with consumer-oriented names that would not show their industry connections.

The Center for Consumer Freedom is a nonprofit group led by Washington lawyer and public relations executive Rick Berman. Formerly known as Guest Choice Network, it was founded in 1995 with a $600,000 pledge from tobacco giant Philip Morris. Today, the center attacks "food radicals" and runs websites including obesitymyths.com. The group says it is funded by food and restaurant companies but declines to name specific benefactors.

A group called Americans Against Food Taxes, calling itself a "coalition of concerned citizens," was formed in 2007 and has been financed by sugary beverage makers to fight soda taxes. It bought a 30-second ad during the 2011 Super Bowl.

Spokesmen for the food and beverage industries say comparing their tactics to tobacco's is unfair.

"Food processing is not an evil thing," said Derek Yach, PepsiCo's senior vice president of global health and agricultural policy and a former World Health Organization official who was well-known as an adversary of sugar and tobacco interests. He was hired by Pepsi, which also owns snack-food maker Frito-Lay, five years ago.

"I might not agree with a lot of things we do, but are we on a track where we're struggling to get to the right place? Absolutely," Yach said. The industry is well-intentioned, he said, focused on improving products and transparent in its fight against higher taxes and marketing restrictions.

CANNING THE SODA TAX

Beverage companies showed their political clout in 2009 when they faced a proposed penny-an-ounce tax on sugary drinks in a Congress eager to raise money to pay for obesity-related health care costs. The soda tax died in committee.

Other plans to tax soda have fizzled from coast to coast in the past two years. Twenty-four states and five cities considered them, according to the beverage association. None passed except in Washington state, where legislators approved a 2-cent-a-can soda tax on the last day of the 2010 session.

Within a month, a trade group for Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and Dr. Pepper Snapple mounted a referendum campaign. It spent $16 million, a state record for an initiative effort, to gather signatures and flood the airwaves. The public voted 60 percent against the tax.

The pro-tax group, outspent $37-to-$1, grumbled that the soda group misled voters with TV ads that the Seattle Times concluded were "mostly false" because they suggested a wide range of grocery items also would be taxed. The beverage industry mounted a similar $3.5 million campaign that knocked out a soda tax in Maine in 2008.

When Governor David A. Paterson of New York proposed an 18 percent tax on sweetened drinks in 2009, he said he wanted to raise money to treat obesity-related disease. Soda makers spent $12.8 million lobbying and advertising against it, and PepsiCo said the tax could affect its decision on whether to move more than 1,000 bottling jobs to Connecticut. The governor withdrew the proposal, and the company decided to keep its headquarters in New York.

"We got smashed," Paterson said in an interview. Labor unions had joined the attack because they worried about losing the Pepsi jobs, he added, comparing the soda lobby to a Mack truck. Paterson also said soda makers "bought off" lawmakers with donations and advertising even in districts where 40 percent of minority children were overweight or obese.

"We ran into the machine the way anti-smoking activists did in the early '60s," he said. "It's not a fight you're going to win right away."

Pepsi spokeswoman Gina Anderson said the proposed soda tax was "a serious concern and consideration" in the company's siting plans before the proposal died. The company decided last year to renew its lease through 2015.

Michael Jacobson, executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, also compared the industry tactics with those of alcohol, tobacco and nuclear power.

"It's all the same playbook, isn't it?" he said. "You lobby. You make campaign contributions. You buy advertising. You threaten to move your plant. You use your workers as lobbyists."

The beverage association rejects the analogy. Its website says, "If anyone is using the ‘tobacco playbook' in their tactics, it is some of these activists." The group pointed to two recent examples, both involving the New York City Department of Health and both first reported by The New York Times.

In one, an email showed a city official asking, "What can we get away with?" in anti-soda advertising. In the other, a photo was altered on a subway poster that warned of the risks of diabetes from sugary soda. It portrayed an overweight man as an amputee. His right leg had been photographically removed. The city health department declined to comment further on these incidents.

Christopher Gindlesperger, a spokesman for the beverage association, explained the group's success in staving off soda taxes this way: "People feel very confident they can decide what to eat or drink without government help."

SEMPER FRIES

Public health officials thought the least nutritional items would drop off the government's $10.5 billion school lunch program last year when they announced the first menu overhaul in 15 years. White bread: gone. Milk: low or no fat only. Fruits and vegetables: doubled. Portions: smaller.

Then Congress got involved -- at the behest of potato and pizza companies -- to preserve French fries as a menu staple and to declare pizza, with its tomato sauce, to be a vegetable.

Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) was one champion of the pizza rollback.Minnesota is home to Schwan Food Co, a private company with nearly $3 billion in sales and 70 percent of the school frozen pizza market. Klobuchar, who is running for re-election this year, wrote a letter last June to the Department of Agriculture. One sentence in it was identical to that in a Schwan official's later testimony before a Senate committee. The similarity was first reported by Minnesota Public Radio.

Both documents contained this statement: "By changing the crediting, many tomato-based sauces and salsa-type applications would no longer be factored into the weekly requirements for vegetables."

Klobuchar's spokesman, Linden Zakula, said he could not explain how the same language was used in the senator's letter because the aide who drafted it had left. He said Schwan was among many constituents to contact the office. Schwan declined to comment.

In fighting the menu change, the American Frozen Food Institute spent $543,000 lobbying last year, up from $334,000 in 2010; Schwan spent $50,000, and ConAgra Foods Inc spent $400,000. The companies also financed a group called the Coalition for Sustainable School Meal Programs.

House Republicans, citing "overly burdensome and costly regulations," added language to a budget bill in November to keep French fries and frozen pizza on the school lunch menu. The measure took effect earlier this year.

FIRST AMENDMENT PROTECTION

James H. Davidson believes in the First Amendment. The former college newspaper editor turned lawyer turned Senate aide is now one of the most powerful lobbyists in Washington.

For two decades, Davidson has been the point man for the advertising industry in free speech issues. More recently his clients have also included food and beverage companies in alliance with advertisers. They have joined forces to lead the fight against the proposed government guidelines on sugar, salt and fat in food marketed to 2- to 17-year-olds.

Davidson also says there is no proof that food marketing causes obesity, and without it, there is no legal basis for restricting the ads.

"The First Amendment protects this type of speech," he said.

Other lobbyists pointed to the role of potentially unlimited political donations in explaining how industry has been able to so thoroughly defeat the proposed salt, sugar and fat guidelines.

In 2009, Congress passed a measure proposed by Harkin and Senator Sam Brownback (R-Kansas) to ask the FTC and three other agencies -- the CDC, the Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration -- to draft voluntary nutrition standards for children's food marketing. The two senators were motivated by studies showing that children develop lifelong preferences from watching ads that target them with saltier, sweeter foods than adults.

"We are calling on the food industry to tackle this threat and boldly reinvent the food marketplace," FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz said at a hearing in December 2009. As for kids' marketing, he noted, not only Congress but some companies wanted government guidance. "We will have such a uniform framework in place, we expect, by this summer," Leibowitz said.

Summer came and went. Brownback left the Senate at the end of 2010. When the draft guidelines were finally published in April 2011 -- to praise from health groups -- business interests say they were shocked by the low sugar and salt suggestions.

"These are voluntary guidelines," Harkin said. "What's the industry so afraid of?" The companies said the recommendations could become requirements and kill marketing of 88 of the 100 most popular food products, including Cheerios, whole wheat bread and yogurt.

The industry mobilized. Food and media companies hired Anita Dunn, former White House communications chief under Obama, to run media strategy. The industry created a group called the Sensible Food Policy Coalition. And it paid for a report that said the restrictions would result in 75,000 lost jobs and $28.6 billion in lost revenue to companies -- estimates based on the supposition that the guidelines would cut one in five food ads.

Not true, government officials and public health advocates said, arguing that industry had five years to improve the products. A review of the report by three marketing professors for the website politifact.com and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution termed its findings "false."

Nonetheless the report was widely circulated in Washington and repeatedly cited in letters to the administration signed by about 200 members of Congress from both parties. As the effort gained momentum, congressional staff members and lobbyists described calls and visits from chief executive officers of companies.

The industry's campaign, lobbyists say, focused on Representative Jo Ann Emerson (R-Mo.) and Senator Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), who chaired the appropriations subcommittee in each chamber that funded the FTC.

Emerson knew Davidson, who had attended college in Missouri and who had worked for Senator Stuart Symington (D-Mo.). In an interview, Emerson said she opposed the food guidelines because they would inevitably become mandatory. She said she learned how that could hurt business while working for the National Restaurant Association in the early 1990s. "I felt very passionately about anything that's voluntary," she said.

Last December, Emerson wrote the budget bill provision that stopped the guidelines, and she insisted on keeping the language as the bill moved through a House-Senate conference committee. It was a 55-word sentence in a 130-page omnibus budget bill, requiring the agencies to do a cost-benefit analysis of their recommendations before finishing the report. The agencies said such a requirement was unprecedented for a voluntary guideline and would prove far too expensive.

In the Senate, a lobbyist involved with the issue told Reuters, Durbin simply needed to stay quiet so as not to make it a partisan issue and eventually nudge Harkin into accepting Emerson's House provision. A Durbin spokesman, Max Gleischman, said the senator agreed to the House language because the industry was moving to regulate itself.

Durbin's home state of Illinois is home to Kraft. Its political action committee has been a regular contributor to his campaign committee, donating $14,000 since 2007.

"There was an outcry across the spectrum of the business community," said Dan Jaffe, executive vice president of the Association of National Advertisers. The proposal was too extreme, Jaffe said, and in the end, "It fell of its own weight."

Said Jeff McIntyre, policy director for the advocacy group Children Now: "We just got beat. Money wins."

Harkin also pointed to the power of corporate money. "They've scared some Democrats," he said in an interview. "It just shows you how heavy the lobbying is on the part of the industry."

Food and beverage groups targeting the proposed marketing restrictions had given Harkin's campaign more than $75,000 from 2007 through 2009. In 2010, after he helped initiate the push for food marketing restrictions, they contributed nothing. They gave him only $3,000 in 2011.

Comparing the last three years of the Bush administration to the first three years of Obama's, total campaign contributions from the more than 50 food and beverage groups and companies analyzed by Reuters were about the same. But during the Obama administration, the contributions increased substantially to some candidates who played key roles in warding off regulation.

Klobuchar, whose state is home to a number of large food companies, benefitted most. Her campaign received more than $160,000 in donations from 19 food and beverage groups during the last three years, double what they had given her in the three years prior. Her spokesman said there is no link between the donations and policy.

Food companies tripled their contributions to Emerson, who received more than $88,000 from the groups from 2009 through 2011. She received $39,000 in 2010 alone as she was poised to become chair of a key House appropriations subcommittee.

Emerson said most Republicans probably got more contributions when they became the House majority. However, the Reuters analysis shows the food and beverage groups strongly favored Republicans over Democrats, both before and after the 2010 election. On average over the last six years, they gave GOP political committees $2 for every $1 donated to Democrats.

== 

The University of Colorado School of Medicine recently announced it was returning a $1 million gift from Coca-Cola after it was revealed that the money was used to fund the Global Energy Balance Network, an industry pressure group that has worked to play down the link between sugary drinks and obesity. Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University and the author of Soda Politics, called the network a "front group" for Coca-Cola and said she was pleased that the money was returned.

The world's largest beverage company has been criticized for pushing a misleading message to the public, blaming the obesity crisis on Americans' lack of exercise and denying that sugary beverages are a main cause of the problem. The company said the returned money would be donated to the Boys & Girls Clubs of America.

==

 Della Curry is now the former kitchen manager at Dakota Valley Elementary School in Aurora, Colorado. Last week she was fired for giving out school lunches to elementary school kids who did not have money.

“I had a first grader in front of me, crying, because she doesn’t have enough money for lunch. Yes, I gave her lunch,” Curry said.

In the district, students who fail to qualify for the free lunch or reduced lunch program receive one slice of cheese on a hamburger bun, and a small milk.  6/15

lee f

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/history/2015/02/isis_isn_t_medieval_its_revisionist_history_only_claims_to_be_rooted_in.single.html

Until a few weeks ago, Joel Leftwich was a senior lobbyist for the largest food and beverage company in the United States. During his tenure at PepsiCo—maker of Cheetos, Lay’s potato chips and, of course, Pepsi-Cola—the company had played a leading role in efforts to beat back local soda taxes and ensure that junk food remained available in schools. But PepsiCo also faced new challenges at the federal level. The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, championed by Michelle Obama, had placed new nutrition standards on school lunches. PepsiCo sent teams of lobbyists to Capitol Hill, deluged political candidates with donations, and fired off letters to regulators asking them to weaken the new rules. One such PepsiCo letter requested the redefinition of a “school day” so the company could continue to sell its sugary sports drinks at “early morning sports practices.” Leftwich, a former congressional liaison for the Department of Agriculture, was well positioned to help PepsiCo shore up its allies in the House and Senate.

Last April, Leftwich paid a visit to one such friend, Democratic Senator Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, then chairwoman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, to thank her for opposing nutrition guidelines for food stamp purchases.

Now Leftwich will have far more access to such friends. As the newly appointed staff director of the Senate Agriculture Committee, now under GOP control, Leftwich will have wide sway over the law that funds school lunches, which is up for reauthorization this year. PepsiCo can rest easier, confident that the guidelines already in place are unlikely to be strengthened—and may be weakened instead. Leftwich’s new boss, Republican Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas, who took over the Agriculture Committee gavel in January, has set his sights on dialing back school lunch nutrition requirements, which he has called “Big Brother government that’s out of control.”

While all eyes were on the changing of the guard in Congress as Republicans seized control of the US Senate in January, there was an equally profound change taking place among Capitol Hill staff, as many GOP lawmakers handed over the keys to corporate lobbyists like Leftwich.

“We’ve seen a dramatic uptick in K Street moving into congressional staff positions since the Citizens United decision,” says Craig Holman, Public Citizen’s expert on lobbying and ethics. House Speaker John Boehner, he notes, has “encouraged new members to employ lobbyists on their personal and committee staff.”

On almost any big issue coming up for debate during the final two years of the Obama administration—surveillance, trade, healthcare, entitlements, tax reform, climate change—corporate lobbyists will now be attempting to influence their own former colleagues, whose salaries are now covered by US taxpayers.

==

kpfa 7am 6/12/14  ketchup as veg back: lobbyists(potato, tomato?) get exception to new usda rules 7 yrs coming ;  PO'd at setbacks/progress so going for loopholes

sch lunch org i saw the other day seems legit grassroots (but buyable tho humble?)

Reba

===

AlterNet [1] / By Alex Henderson [2]

The 10 Most Obese States in America (And the Right-Wing Policies That Promote Poor Health)

April 16, 2014 |  

Obesity is a problem all over the country, but the problem is worse in some states than in others. A recent Gallup study presented state-by-state obesity stats [3]and while the research didn't get into politics, one need only scratch the surface to notice that many of the more obese states lean Republican. Of the 10 states Gallup cited as the most obese, eight went for Republican Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential election: Mississippi, West Virginia, Louisiana, Arkansas, South Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky and Oklahoma (the exceptions in that top 10 are Ohio and Delaware, both of which Obama won). And except for Montana—which came in at #1 for thinness—all of the 10 states Gallup cited as the least obese are states Obama carried (including Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Mexico, California, Hawaii, Minnesota, Nevada, Colorado and New York).

This is no coincidence: Republicans promote policies that tend to entrench poverty, and obesity and poverty often go together. The Republican-dominated states where obesity rates are the highest are states where one is more apt to find more poverty, weak union protection, an abundance of people who lack health insurance and a strong opposition to the Affordable Care Act of 2010. 

The obesity epidemic in the U.S. can be attributed to a wide variety of factors—not only poverty, lack of health insurance and inadequate access to healthy food, but also everything from sedentary lifestyles to stress. Obesity can’t be blamed exclusively on the conservative policies; there is plenty of obesity in Philadelphia, Baltimore and other Democrat-dominated cities. But Gallup’s poll clearly demonstrates that obesity is widespread in red-state America, and GOP policies, from opposition to healthcare reform to union-busting to cutting food stamps, only exacerbate the problem.

Below are the 10 most obese states with analysis of the economic and political conditions in those states.

1. Mississippi

Mississippi topped Gallup’s list of the U.S.’ most obese states with a 35.4% obesity rate. In other words, one in three Mississippi residents is obese (which is defined as having a body/mass index of 30 or higher). And Mississippi is as Republican as it gets: not since Jimmy Carter’s victory in 1976 has a Democrat carried Mississippi in a presidential race. The U.S.’ most obese state is also its poorest, and Mississippi’s healthcare crisis only makes matters worse: one in five Mississippi residents lacked health insurance in 2013. Regardless, Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant (a Republican) remains a vehement opponent of the Affordable Care Act, refusing any type of Medicaid expansion [4] via Obamacare in his state. The people who need healthcare reform the most in Mississippi—the obese, the uninsured, the poor, the unemployed or underemployed—are the very people Bryant and other Republicans have turned their backs on.

2. West Virginia

West Virginia has long been a poster child for white rural poverty in the United States, and it isn’t hard to understand why. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, West Virginia (which was 92% white in 2012) had a poverty rate of 17.6% [5] from 2008-2012 compared to 14.9% nationwide. In some West Virginia counties, life expectancy is only slightly higher than it is in Ghana or Haiti—and the fact that West Virginia has the second highest obesity rate in the U.S. (34.4% in Gallup’s poll) certainly isn’t helping West Virginia residents live longer. West Virginia does have a Democratic governor (Earl Ray Tomblin) and Democrats (many of them center-right Blue Dogs) presently dominate West Virginia’s state senate. Nonetheless, Republican ideas are widespread in West Virginia, and Republican Evan Jenkins (a candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives) has been campaigning on repealing the Affordable Care Act [6]. Given West Virginia’s obesity and poverty rates and frighteningly low life expectancy, rolling back healthcare reform is the last thing that state should be doing in 2014.

3. Delaware

Although the least obese states in Gallup’s poll were generally either swing states or blue states (including California, Hawaii, New York and Connecticut), Gallup considers Democrat-dominated Delaware the third most obese state [7] in the country thanks to an obesity rate of 34.3%. Very much a blue state, Delaware hasn’t given its electoral votes to a GOP presidential candidate since George H.W. Bush, Sr.’s victory over Michael Dukakis in 1988. Delaware’s obesity problem cannot honestly be blamed on Republicans, but arguably, it reflects the growing inequality in the Democratic side of America. Democratic America ranges from ultra-gentrified, upscale places like Seattle, San Francisco and Manhattan to the most blue-collar parts of Delaware, and blue-collar America has been slammed hard by the current economic downturn.

In September 2013, Democratic Sen. Robert Marshall of Wilmington asserted that Delaware needed to start creating a lot more high-paying jobs that don’t require a college degree. Though Marshall didn’t mention obesity, his point was relevant to a discussion of obesity because a lack of quality blue-collar jobs contributes to poverty—which in turn, leads to obesity.

4. Louisiana

Right behind Delaware when it comes to obesity is the heavily Republican Louisiana, which has an obesity rate of 32.7% in Gallup’s study—and Louisiana has also had, according to the U.S. Census Bureau in 2012, a poverty rate of 19.9% [8] (the third highest in the U.S.). A state with as much poverty and obesity as Louisiana is a prime example of why healthcare reform needs to go forward, yet Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (a possible candidate in the 2016 GOP presidential primary) has called for repealing Obamacare. Obesity and all the problems that go with it, from heart disease to high blood pressure to Type 2 diabetes, are better controlled when one has adequate access to healthcare, and Republicans like Jindal only make it harder for the poor to see a doctor.

5. Arkansas

Although Arkansas’ current two-term governor, Mike Beebe, is a Democrat, the state on the whole remains very Republican-leaning—and according to Gallup, it has the U.S.’ fifth highest obesity rate: 32.3%. The fact that obesity and poverty go hand in hand is evident in Arkansas, which had a poverty rate of 18.7% in 2011 [9] (according to the U.S. Census Bureau). Arkansas children, according to the 2011 Kids Count Data Book, are facing thesecond highest child poverty rate [10] in the United States. In a state with all that obesity and poverty, Republican State Sen. Nate Bell’s “solution” to those problems is to fight Medicaid expansion [11] and discourage Arkansas’ uninsured from singing up for Obamacare.  

6. South Carolina

The sixth most obese state in the U.S., according to Gallup, is South Carolina (a Republican-leaning state that Obama won in 2008 but lost in 2012). South Carolina has a poverty rate of 17.6% [12], according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Around 764,000 South Carolina residents lacked health insurance in 2011 (according to a study conducted for the South Carolina Department of Health and Human Services), but Republican Gov. Nikki Haley hasrejected Medicaid expansion [13] via Obamacare in her state. In addition to helping keep South Carolina’s poor uninsured, Haley has contributed to their poverty by being fiercely anti-union: Haley infamously said, “I love that we are one of the least unionized states in the country.”

7. Tennessee

The state Gallup cites as the seventh fattest in the U.S. is Tennessee, which has an obesity rate of 31.3 percent. And like other southern states, it is very Republican-dominated. Republicans aren’t big on anti-poverty programs—which, in effect, are also anti-obesity programs given the relationship between poverty and obesity—and in Tennessee, the U.S. Census Bureau found a poverty rate of 17.3% for 2008-2012 [14]. Plus, Tennessee is a so-called “right to work” state, meaning it’s very weak on union protection. Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam has rejected Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion in his state, where around one million residents [15] lacked health insurance in 2013. To make matters worse for Tennessee residents who are obese, poor and uninsured, Tennessee Republicans have proposed legislation that would outlaw Obamacare exchanges [16] throughout the state.

8. Ohio

Ohio, which Gallup considers the eighth fattest state in the U.S. with an obesity rate of 30.9%, is very much a swing state in presidential elections. Obama carried Ohio (where Republican Gov. John Kasich is seeking reelection this year) in 2008 and 2012, but it took a lot of hard and aggressive campaigning. So why is there so much obesity in Ohio? A lot of it has to do with the fact that Ohio, like other parts of the Rust Belt, has been hit hard by the outsourcing of manufacturing jobs to developing countries. Outsourcing has created a lot of poverty in Ohio (which, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, has a poverty rate of 15.3%).

According to Mary Nally, executive director of Community Food Initiatives in Athens, Ohio, 20% of the people living in Athens County suffer from food insecurity—and Nally has said that “There’s a [17].” Nally has noted that in some rural parts of Athens County, the poor suffer from inadequate access to fresh fruits and vegetables and are more likely to eat an abundance of unhealthy processed food. Underscoring Ohio’s swing-state outlook is the fact that Kasich is among the few Republican governors who has agreed to a Medicaid expansion under Obamacare [18].

9. Kentucky

When health insurance companies send out literature encouraging Americans to get more exercise, eat healthfully and lose weight, they aren’t doing it out of the goodness of their hearts. They realize that if Obamacare is going to bring them a lot of new customers, it will cost them less if those customers are taking better care of themselves. But embracing a healthy lifestyle can be harder if one is poor, and Kentucky is a “red state” with a lot of poverty and a lot of obesity. According to Gallup, Kentucky is the U.S.’ ninth fattest state with an obesity rate of 30.6%—and according to the U.S. Census Bureau, Kentucky’s poverty rate increased to 19.4% in 2012 [19]. But Ron Crouch, director of research at the Kentucky Education and Workforce Development Cabinet, has predicted that Obamacare will create a lot of new healthcare jobs in Kentucky, possibly helping offset the loss of so many manufacturing jobs in that state, where Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear, a Democrat, has been a strong Obamacare supporter.   

10. Oklahoma

The 10th most obese state in the U.S., according to Gallup, is Oklahoma, where there is an obesity rate of 30.5% and poverty reached a 10-year high in 2012. Oklahoma is also a hardcore red state where Republican Gov. Mary Fallin has refused Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion even though many people lack health insurance there. Oklahoma is a textbook example of why healthcare reform is desperately needed in the U.S. According to a report by the Kaiser Family Foundation, about 144,000 poor, uninsured Oklahoma residents [20] would be eligible for Medicaid assistance under Obamacare, but thanks to Fallin and other Oklahoma Republicans, they are being left out in the cold.

See more stories tagged with: 

obesity [21]

Source URL: http://www.alternet.org/personal-health/10-most-obese-states-america-and-right-wing-policies-promote-poor-health

Links:

[1] http://alternet.org

[2] http://www.alternet.org/authors/alex-henderson

[3] http://www.gallup.com/poll/167642/mississippians-obese-montanans-least-obese.aspx

[4] http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-25441654

[5] http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/54000.html

[6] http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2014/03/27/gop-repeal-stance-runs-into-complications-in-deep-red-west-virginia/

[7] http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/health/Obese-Delaware-248394271.html

[8] http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2013/09/louisiana_has_high_poverty_rat.html

[9] http://www.arkansaseconomist.com/?tag=poverty

[10] http://www.wrfoundation.org/beyond-grantmaking/newsroom/wrf-post/child-poverty-rate-in-arkansas-is-second-highest-in-the-nation1.html

[11] http://thinkprogress.org/health/2014/02/18/3303871/arkansas-lawmaker-medicaid/

[12] http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/45000.html

[13] http://www.greenvilleonline.com/article/20131117/NEWS/311170023/South-Carolina-s-uninsured-figures-remain-high

[14] http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/47000.html

[15] http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/03/27/tennessee-medicaid-health-care/2024599/

[16] http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/01/15/tennessee-bill-would-make-obamacare-exchanges-illegal/

[17] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THE1h8s1pso

[18] http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/ohio-medicaid-expansion

[19] http://www.kentucky.com/2013/09/19/2831627/kentuckys-2012-poverty-rate-increased.html

[20] http://newsok.com/the-impact-of-obamacare-on-oklahomas-uninsured-population/article/3921955

[21] http://www.alternet.org/tags/obesity-0

[22] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B

===

The Huffington Post / By Amy Traub [1]

Food Stamps Don't Keep Walmart's Prices Low, They Keep Its Profits High

April 5, 2014 |  

"The same company that brings in the most food stamp dollars in revenue [2] -- an estimated $13 billion last year -- also likely has the most employees using food stamps."

The name of the mammoth food stamp-reliant company is no secret: Walmart.

As journalist Krissy Clark notes in Marketplace's valuable new series "The Secret Life of the Food Stamp [3]," Walmart benefits from food stamps in multiple ways, as taxpayers both underwrite the company's food sales and also subsidize its payroll costs.

There is no doubt that food stamps (and a host of other public subsidies from Medicaid to home heating assistance to the Earned Income Tax Credit and beyond) reduce Walmart's employment costs substantially. A study[4] released last year by staff of the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce found that a single 300-employee Walmart Supercenter may cost taxpayers anywhere from $904,542 to nearly $1.75 million per year.

Consider that the working people who turn to food stamps to supplement inadequate wages are demonized as society's lazy "takers" -- a young Walmart employee who enrolled in food stamps to help support his pregnant partner told Marketplace that previously "I'd always considered people who use food stamps as just taking advantage of the government." Yet the company itself continues to be seen as a paragon of free enterprise, notwithstanding the tens of billions of dollars in subsidies through the same program.

Marketplace has done a great service by shining light on a key public misperception, illuminating the low-wage employers who benefit most from programs like food stamps. Yet an important part of the story still gets missed. It's probably intended to be a rhetorical question when part II of the food stamp series asks: "Are Walmart's prices so low because its employees are on food stamps?" But the answer is no.

In reality, it's not Walmart's low prices that taxpayers are subsidizing -- it's the company's mammoth profits.

Walmart made $17 billion in profit in 2013, and spent $7.6 billion buying back shares of its own stock -- further consolidating the company's ownership in the hands of the Walton heirs, already among the wealthiest people on the face of the earth. As my colleague Catherine Ruestchlin and I explain in our 2013 study [5], these stock buybacks did nothing to boost Walmart's productivity or bottom line. They contributed zilch to cutting consumer prices or keeping those prices low. But if, for example, funds from this financial maneuvering were redirected to Walmart's low-paid employees, workers would each see a raise of $5.83 an hour [5]. As a result, the overwhelming majority of Walmart workers would no longer need to turn to food stamps to supplement their wages. Other observers have found additional ways [6] the company could substantially boost pay (and reduce reliance on food stamps) without increasing prices. Yet Walmart has made a decision to continue its dependence on food stamps and other public subsidies.

It's no surprise that Walmart itself works to obscure the pivotal role of its corporate decision making. David Tovar, Walmart's vice president of communications, told Marketplace that since Walmart is the nation's largest employer "its work force is bound to reflect the country's current economic realities, including growing rates of food stamp use." This statement passes the buck impressively, overlooking the role that Walmart has played in shaping the country's current economic realities -- in creating an America where millions of people who get up and go to work each day are nevertheless paid too little to feed themselves.

The truth is that Walmart and all the other large and profitable retailers [7], fast food companies [8], and other corporations that fatten their bottom line by letting the public feed their employees have made a business decision to shrink their payroll on the taxpayer's dime. It's up to us to decide whether to continue allowing them to do it.

See more stories tagged with:

walmart [9],

food stamps [10],

minimum wage [11],

economy [12]

Source URL: http://www.alternet.org/labor/food-stamps-dont-keep-walmarts-prices-low-they-keep-its-profits-high

==

berman ccf bs:

CF launched 2005 ad campaign challenging "myth" of obesity crisis. CCF purchased ad space in Washington DC's Metro rail during the summer of 2005 and ran ads charging that the obesity epidemic in the United States is a myth propagated by the "food police."

2004 CCF ad campaign was critical of nutritionists. In 2004, CCF "ran television ads that featured the Soup Nazi of 'Seinfeld' fame ordering overweight people to eat salad -- a clear jab at what the group considers pushy nutritionists who are trying to suck the joy out of eating."

CCF attacked researcher's study on childhood obesity. CCF "trashed a seminal 2001 Harvard study co-authored by Dr. David Ludwig, director of the obesity program at Children's Hospital Boston, as 'dubious science.'" The study found that every additional can of soda kids drink daily increases their risk of becoming obese by 60 percent. Ludwig asserted that his own research techniques were "commonly used," and that his "methodology has been validated, and can provide important and useful information if used accurately." He also said that Berman and his staff never contacted him to clarify his research before widely attacking it.

• "Highly selective quoting"- Dr. Ludwig, director of the obesity program at Children's Hospital Boston asserted that Berman and the Center for Consumer Freedom engaged in "highly selective quoting" of his research.
• "Missed main point"- Dr. Ludwig also suggested that Berman's extrapolations from his research "missed the main point." Berman criticized Ludwig's study, which found that every additional can of soda kids drink daily increases their risk of becoming obese by 60 percent.
• "Nobody in academia takes their arguments seriously."- Dr. Ludwig also argued that CCF makes "a lot of noise, but nobody in academia takes their arguments seriously. They stand for food industry freedom, not Consumer Freedom."

==

9/13

mma

The House Republicans are gearing up to **slash nearly $40 billion** from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), knocking up to 3.8 million people off the food stamp rolls over the next two years. As far as benefit programs go, SNAP is pretty effective, and can **be indispensable** in hard economic times. The Republicans, however, are raising the specter of rampant waste and fraud within the program, and the centerpiece of their PR campaign to cut the program's funding is a terrifically misleading **Fox News special** from August hosted by Special Reportanchor and "straight journalist" Bret Baier. 

That special, called "**The Great Food Stamp Binge**," made a right-wing celebrity out of Jason Greenslate, an unlikeable surfer from San Diego who refuses to work and proudly abuses his SNAP benefits. Greenslate is a rarity. The vast majority of SNAP households (75 percent, **according to the Congressional Budget Office**) have a child, a person over the age of 60, or a disabled person. Greenslate's yearly benefit represents 0.000003 percent of the annual SNAP budget. He is in no way representative of SNAP recipients, and his behavior is atypical -- waste and fraud within the SNAP program is actually pretty rare.

In spite of all this, Greenslate ate up nine minutes of the hour-long special, divided between two segments. Offering no data or fact-based justification of any kind, Baier proclaimed Greenslate "the new face of food stamps." Baier's intention was clear: to create the (false) impression that SNAP is rife with abuse, and to transform Greenslate into a punching bag for conservative politicians and pundits who want to slash the social safety net. 

And it worked. Reporting on the House Republican efforts to **dramatically cut funding** for SNAP on September 18, NPR's Tamara Keith quoted Rep. Tom Cotton (R-AR) saying "we should reform the food stamp program so we can get the aid to those who need it most in their hour of need without the kind of rampant waste and abuse that you see." Keith noted that Cotton was embellishing the degree to which waste and fraud exist, and pointed out that the House Republican messaging on SNAP has been shaped by Baier's special (and its focus on Greenslate), which was "circulated to GOP lawmakers."

As Keith alluded, Fox News has been making a concerted effort to turn their special into political action. Politico **reported** on September 4 that copies of the special were "distributed by Fox staff to House members" ahead of the SNAP debate. "POLITICO inquiries to Fox News regarding the videos have gone unanswered since Saturday. But both Republican and Democratic offices confirmed that copies have been dropped off unsolicited in recent days, and the broadcast has already provided colorful fodder in promoting the Cantor package."

GOP leaders seized on the Fox special. According to ***Roll Call***, Greenslate played a starring role in a memo sent around by the House Republican leadership laying out SNAP talking points:

The surfer, unnamed in a memo Cantor circulated to GOP lawmakers earlier this month, is Jason Greenslate, 29. A Fox News report in August highlighted Greenslate, an unemployed musician perpetually in a cap and sunglasses, buying lobster rolls with $200-a-month benefits and laughing at the idea of a 9-to-5 job.

Conservative bloggers quickly cited Greenslate as a prime example of a flawed government program. But Democrats will counter that Greenslate is atypical of SNAP recipients, and they are expected to highlight more sympathetic beneficiaries.

An Associated Press **fact-check** of the memo quotes it as citing "newscasts" that "tell stories of young surfers who aren't working, but cash their food stamps in for lobster."

The House Republicans have this "surfer" to kick around because Bret Baier created a false and derogatory caricature of SNAP recipients and presented it as investigative journalism. And then his network pushed out his slanted and misleading "investigation" in an effort to tip the SNAP fight in the Republicans' favor as part of their campaign to cut funding to a program that helps keep millions of hard-up Americans out of poverty and starvation. Baier's work was less "journalism" than it was pre-fab GOP talking points.

But Baier's reporting, terrible as it may be, can have this sort of influence because of Baier's reputation as the "serious journalist" on Fox News. Back in 2011, NPR's David Folkenflik **profiled** Baier and noted that "like fellow Fox anchor Shepard Smith, Baier is presented by executives as evidence of the network's fairness in its news coverage."And people tend to swallow this line: Politico's Mike Allen also **profiled** Baier -- "A Boy Scout with a very sharp knife," per the headline -- and quoted Baier saying "I'm not soft on either side."

Baier's reputation as a straight-shooting, down-the-middle avatar of fairness notwithstanding, "The Great Food Stamp Binge" shows that he's just as capable of the sort of partisan chicanery the cable news-watching world has come to expect from the uniformly conservative, pro-GOP Fox News commentary division. The difference is that Baier does it under the banner of journalistic integrity, which gives his reporting an audience and a reach the average Sean Hannity diatribe doesn't have, and the dangerous potential to wreak havoc on the livelihoods of America's less fortunate.

Attempting to solve homelessness by making life harder for the homeless is common -- and similarly unsuccessful -- around the country. As Adam Peck notes in  Think Progress, shutting down the center is one example of a larger pattern of the criminalization of homelessness and poverty. Instead of investing in resources to aid the needy, authorities restrict the activities of homeless people and groups that offer services. Ironically, when they lead to fines and arrests they cost cities much more than it would cost to provide adequate housing.

Laws that ban sitting or lying down in public, camping, and panhandling enable police to move the homeless out of the nice parts of town.  Going after groups who feed or shelter the homeless can serve a similar function, preventing them from assembling in certain spaces. 

In several cities, authorities have cracked down on groups who give out food to the hungry, as Peck points out. In Raleigh, North Carolina volunteers were threatened with arrest over the summer. No one was led away in cuffs, but that's not unprecedented. In 2011, over 20 Food Not Bombs :{volunteers:(style="background:#ffffff"):}: were arrested when they refused to comply with an ordinance that limited food-sharing in parks to only twice a year. The Mayor called them "food terrorists." 

More than 30 citiesnow have or have sought to establish laws that restrict food sharing and penalize groups that feed the needy in public places the New York Times reported, even as more Americans go hungry. ...3/14 alternet

==

Mississippi poised to pass ‘Anti-Bloomberg’ bill banning healthy food regs

By Susie Cagle

Mississippi is just the kind of place one might expect to find a backlash against the ��organic agenda.” Apparently spurred on by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s (newly tossed out) pet ban on big sodas, Mississippi is currently on the verge of passing a bill that would bar every local government in the state from requiring that restaurants post calorie counts or cap portion sizes.

A far-reaching, big-government bill to counter other far-reaching, big-government bills? Uh, sure, Mississippi.����NPR has the full scary deets:

“The Anti-Bloomberg Bill” garnered wide bipartisan support in both chambers of the legislature in a state where one in three adults is obese, the highest rate in the nation.

The bill is expected to be signed by Gov. Phil Bryant, a Republican. It was the subject of intense lobbying by groups including the restaurant association, the small business and beverage group, and the chicken farmers’ lobby.

����The chicken farmers’ lobby���� could be a caption for an unfunny New Yorker cartoon, but in Mississippi it’s also apparently a powerful business group — though hardly the only one with skin in this game.

Mike Cashion, executive director the Mississippi Hospitality and Restaurant Association, says the bill is a direct reaction to Bloomberg-style government intervention in public health.

“If you look at how menus have changed, whether it be in fast food or family dining, you are seeing more and more healthy options,” Cashion says. “Not because of legislative mandates or regulatory mandates, but because of consumer demand. Our industry has always been one to respond to the marketplace.”

Cashion is on a real free-market trip! But free markets and consumer demands always seem to go hand in hand with business profits, and Cashion’s loyalties are with the restaurants, not with the people who eat at them. The Mississippi Hospitality and Restaurant Association’s website proclaims that the “industry is represented by a team of government affairs experts that is dedicated to protecting you from harmful legislation while promoting legislation that will benefit the industry. We estimate that our Government Affairs victories have saved the average restaurant over $10,000 over the past 4 years.”

This isn’t a story about how Mississippians don’t want to know what they’re eating. It�����s yet another example of business buying government — the food business has proven to be pretty good at that over the years. And in that way, it’s hardly news at all.

http://grist.org/news/mississippi-poised-to-pass-anti-bloomberg-bill-banning-healthy-food-regs/

==

The Progressive [1] / By Christopher D. Cook [2]

http://www.alternet.org/print/food/how-big-food-has-co-opted-americas-top-nutrition-group

How Big Food Has Co-opted America's Top Nutrition Group

July 17, 2013 |  

When thousands of the nation’s nutritionists gathered in Philadelphia for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics’ 2012 annual conference, they plunked down $300 apiece to hear the latest thinking on food and health. Many were surprised to find that this thinking included a hefty portion of nutritional advice from food corporations that were major sponsors of the event. The conference featured panel sessions led by industry groups such as the National Dairy Council, and some twenty-three speakers with documented industry ties, while the conference center sported tent-sized informational booths featuring an array of America’s top food and beverage corporations, which had ponied up thousands of dollars for the chance to share their opinions on nutrition. As longtime dietitian Debra Riedesel explains, the Academy’s conferences feature “involvement in educational sessions by the very corporations responsible for creating the worst foods and beverages available on the planet. ... These multinational corporations were actually teaching the sessions to those of us responsible for educating the public.” 

The Chicago-based Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics describes itself as “the world’s largest organization of food and nutrition professionals,” devoted to educating the public and safeguarding the dietetics profession. But a list of its top funders and sponsors reads like a who’s who of the American food and beverage industries—the same corporations that many experts blame for causing chronic, often life-shortening diseases among millions of Americans each year. The group’s growing roster of corporate backers includes the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, processed food giants ConAgra and General Mills, and Kellogg. Other major funders are Kraft Foods, Nestlé, Coca-Cola, and PepsiCo. A recent in-depth report from the group Eat Drink Politics, called “Now a Word from Our Sponsors,” found that between 2001 and 2011, the Academy’s food industry sponsors shot up from ten to thirty-eight.

* * *

Industry involvement in the Academy is far-reaching—from sponsorship of the institution and its conferences, to co-branding of educational materials and products, to designing curriculum used to certify registered dietitians. 

The public health stakes of this influence are high: heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and other diet-related ailments “are among the most common, costly, and preventable of all health problems,” according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention—killing millions each year and saddling the nation’s health care system with costs in excess of $100 billion annually. As the chief institution producing diet-related advice for Americans, the Academy plays a major role in shaping nutritional opinion and practice. The Academy’s messages “are all science-based,” says media relations manager Ryan O’Malley. 

In a detailed response to the Eat Drink Politics report, the Academy stated, “Sponsors do not influence the Academy’s decision-making process nor do they affect policy positions. All materials are reviewed by registered dietitians within the Academy as well as outside member experts in areas of specialization, as needed.” But a closer look at the group’s conferences and educational materials shows extensive corporate involvement, often in ways that benefit the products they sell. The Academy’s charitable foundation sells “nutrition symposia” sponsorships at its annual meeting for $50,000 apiece, according to the Eat Drink Politics report.

In 2012, Nestlé, a top marketer of bottled water, presented a session on “Optimal Hydration.” And at the annual meeting of the Academy, the Corn Refiners Association (lobbyists for high fructose corn syrup) sponsored three informational sessions. The Academy’s “Kids Eat Right” program features kids’ meal menus and advice from corporations such as Kellogg and PepsiCo, both makers of products widely criticized for being too sugar laden. “Through this sponsorship, the companies are attempting to counter any potential criticism by positioning their products as being healthy for children,” the report says. 

The Academy also allows major food corporations such as Coca-Cola, ConAgra, Kraft, Nestlé, and PepsiCoto teach accredited continuing education courses to dietitians as part oftheir professional development and credentialing process, the report says. “The food industry’s deep infiltration of the nation’s top nutrition organization raises serious questions not only about that profession’s credibility, but also about its policy positions,” the report argues. “The nation is currently embroiled in a series of policy debates about how to fix our broken food system. A 74,000-member health organization has great potential to shape that national discourse—for better and for worse.” 

When the report gained coverage in The New York Times, Academy president Ethan A. Bergman responded, “For the record, I support the Academy’s [corporate] sponsorship program, as does the Board of Directors and our members. . . . Let me make it clear that the Academy does not tailor our messages or programs in any way due to influence by corporate sponsors, and this report does not provide evidence to the contrary.” However, independent surveys of dietitians show that support for the Academy’s corporate sponsorships is mixed, at best. In one survey, a majority of respondents agreed that corporate sponsorship has a “negative impact on the public’s perception” of the Academy, their profession, and their “personal credibility.” Another found that while only 13 percent of dietitians opposed corporate sponsorship categorically, 68 percent said their view would depend on who the sponsors are—and a majority found three current sponsors, Coca-Cola, Mars, and PepsiCo, to be unacceptable.

* * *

The Academy’s top funders, called partners and sponsors, not only gain significant access for their dollars. They also get to brand themselves as leaders in health and nutrition. Coca-Cola’s “Heart Truth Campaign,” for instance, involves fashion shows of women wearing red dresses with Diet Coke logos displayed prominently in the backdrop—a high-visibility marketing event promoted by both the Academy and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. 

Another instance of partner cobranding is the National Dairy Council’s “3-Every-Day of Dairy Campaign,” which the report calls “a marketing vehicle for the dairy industry disguised as a nutrition program.” The partnership consists of several fact sheets that bear the Academy logo, demonstrating the value of the group’s seal of approval. The Academy insists this cobranding doesn’t compromise its integrity: “All materials that contain the Academy logo are reviewed by the Academy to ensure messages are consistent with Academy positions, statements, and philosophies.” 

Other privileges of major funders include marketing and P.R. opportunities like Academy conference field trips to company headquarters. At a pre-conference “workshop” last year, dietitians were invited to “take a trip to Hershey, Pennsylvania, to experience the science of chocolate at the Hershey Company’s Chocolate Lab ... [and] visit the Hershey Story Museum,” according to a brochure on the Academy website. The visit was billed, “From Nature to Nutrition: A Hands-on Exploration of Natural Cocoa from the Bean to Health Benefits,” and was listed in the program as “Planned with Academy Partner: Hershey Center for Health & Nutrition.”

The Academy offered dietitians continuing education units for this full-day field trip to the corporate chocolate factory. The Academy says the event was “planned in collaboration with Hershey but was funded by the Academy and its Center for Professional Development.” Educational credit, it says, “was given only for portions of the program that met the Academy’s established educational criteria.” Educating dietitians and nutritionists is one of the Academy’s foremost endeavors: In fact, to become a registered dietitian one must take Academy-affiliated credentialing classes, some of which are provided by food and beverage corporations. 

One of the Academy’s many offshoots, the Commission on Dietetic Registration, provides dietitians with Continuing Professional Education credits from a roster of “accredited providers.” These accredited educators include some of the nation’s largest food and beverage corporations, such as Coca-Cola, ConAgra, General Mills, Kraft, Nestlé, and PepsiCo. Coca-Cola’s Beverage Institute for Health and Wellness, for instance, offers an accredited continuing education course called “Addressing Questions about Aspartame and Stevia Sweeteners.”

Among the course learning objectives: “Communicate science-based information about the potential roles of low- and no-calorie sweeteners in a healthful diet.” Another Coca-Cola continuing ed class, “Promoting Healthy Bones:

Sorting Out the Science,” obscures the negative role of caffeinated and carbonated beverages in bone health. In one piece of required reading, Coca-Cola interviews an osteoporosis expert about whether caffeine prevents proper calcium absorption and thus diminishes bone health. The doctor responds, “A moderate amount of caffeine isn’t harmful to bone health as long as people also consume enough calcium.” 

Later in the interview, Coca-Cola asks the doctor, “Some people believe that sparkling soft drinks, particularly colas, adversely affect bone health. Is this true?” Her answer: “No.” The industry’s growing influence on the Academy has sparked a rebellion among many dietitians, both current and former members of the group. They say the Academy’s acceptance of corporations’ dollars and nutritional advice is hurting the dietetics profession—and has realworld impacts as well.

Registered dietitian Carla Caccia echoes what many of her colleagues are asking: “How can consumers trust us when our professional organization partners with junk food companies?” In one high-profile battle detailed in the report, the Academy gave a cold shoulder to New York City’s initiative to limit soda sizes to combat obesity and related health problems. In May 2012, the Academy issued a press release titled “In Wake of New York Soda Ban Proposal, Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics Encourages Education, Moderation.”

Instead of supporting actions to combat the health effects of soda consumption, the nation’s largest nutrition and dietetics institution called for ongoing study, saying it had “convened a working group to examine the effectiveness of measures like proposed bans and taxes that are designed to influence consumers’ purchases and their potential impact on people’s health.” But piles of scientific research may not be enough to convince the group. As the release went on to say, “Even after we have more science-based information about measures like New York’s, it is vital that we as registered dietitians educate consumers about the components of a healthful eating plan and help people make informed decisions that will positively affect their health.” 

The Eat Drink Politics report added momentum to resistance among dietitians and nutritionists to industry influence over their profession’s most prominent institution. One nascent group, Dietitians for Professional Integrity, launched a Facebook page this February that now boasts more than 3,900 “likes” and features daily stories and statements from dietitians who are criticizing—and sometimes parting ways with—the Academy. The dissident group, the brainchild of Las Vegas dietitian Andy Bellatti, says it represents current and future dietitians “who do not support the current model of corporate sponsorships held by the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. We believe these sponsorships pose a serious conflict of interest for a nutrition organization, and harm our credential and reputation.” 

Academy spokesman O’Malley isn’t worried about industry influence. Members, he says, “are educated, experienced, and dedicated health professionals who base their advice and services on peer-reviewed science—and nothing else. As the nation’s food and nutrition experts, they can distinguish facts from spin, and they follow the facts.” But Eat Drink Politics president Michele Simon says that since the report, “I’ve heard from many registered dietitians who are disgusted and are either not joining or refusing to renew their memberships in protest. 

In time, the Academy’s leadership will have no other choice but to pay attention to its own constituents’ complaints and remove these conflicting sponsorships, or else risk going out of business altogether.” Denise Julia Garbinski, a California-based dietitian, says the Academy’s “ongoing demonstration of being in bed with agribusiness big food . . . just disgusts me to the point where I am choosing to vote with my dollars against supporting” it.

“I don’t attend their functions and am seriously considering withdrawing my membership next year.” Nancy Bennett, a veteran dietitian with more than thirty-six years’ experience, says she’s also unlikely to renew her membership: “They need to hear the wake-up call from their membership before they are crushed by the stampede of registered dietitians leaving their organization.” Bennett says all the corporate influence is destroying the credibility of her profession. 

The Academy claims that its engagement with the food and beverage industries is constructive, but a growing number of dietitians aren’t buying it. “For all the talk about the Academy sitting at the table with the food industry, I have yet to see one example of the Academy having a positive influence on the industry and public health,” says Bellatti. “When you sit at the table with the food industry, they set the table and the menu and leave you with the check.”

See more stories tagged with:

health [3],

food [4],

academy of nutrition and dietetics [5],

kellogg [6],

pepsi [7],

food giants [8]

Source URL: http://www.alternet.org/food/how-big-food-has-co-opted-americas-top-nutrition-group

Links:

[1] http://www.progressive.org

[2] http://www.alternet.org/authors/christopher-d-cook-0

[3] http://www.alternet.org/tags/health-0

[4] http://www.alternet.org/tags/food-0

[5] http://www.alternet.org/tags/academy-nutrition-and-dietetics

[6] http://www.alternet.org/tags/kellogg-0

[7] http://www.alternet.org/tags/pepsi

[8] http://www.alternet.org/tags/food-giants

[9] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B

==

:{:{Agribusiness and the Farm Bill: Wayward Dems Benefit from Contributions:(style="background:#ffffff"):}::(style="font-weight:normal"):}:

By David Steinbach on July 16, 2013 12:29 PM

Last week, the House of Representatives finally passed a farm bill -- although it didn't approve the comprehensive bill that has been a mainstay of the chamber for roughly a half-century.

:{That effort failed mid-June, when the House voted to reject legislation containing various program modifications and funding for food stamps under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. The bill that passed by a narrow margin last Thursday made no mention of a nutrition title.:(style="background:#ffffff"):}:

One reason the larger farm bill failed was that lawmakers were unable to compromise on funding for crop insurance policies, which we :{previously reported on:(style="background:#ffffff"):}:, and food aid. In the days leading up to the final vote, Rep. **:{Jim McGovern:(style="background:#ffffff"):}:** (D-Mass.) proposed an amendment that would have reduced crop insurance funding to avoid cuts to SNAP. A largely party-line vote ensured the amendment's defeat.

But it wasn't just the GOP that sank the measure: Eight Democrats -- Reps. **:{Collin Peterson:(style="background:#ffffff"):}:**(D-Minn.), **:{John Barrow:(style="background:#ffffff"):}:** (D-Ga.), **:{Sanford Bishop:(style="background:#ffffff"):}:** (D-Ga.), **:{Cheri Bustos:(style="background:#ffffff"):}:** (D-Ill.), **:{Sean Maloney:(style="background:#ffffff"):}:** (D-N.Y.), **:{Mike McIntyre:(style="background:#ffffff"):}:** (D-N.C.), **:{Bill Owens:(style="background:#ffffff"):}:** (D-N.Y.), and **:{Tim Walz:(style="background:#ffffff"):}:** (D-Minn.) -- joined the Republican majority and helped reject it. It turns out that many of these Dems have received significant political contributions from agricultural organizations that benefit from crop insurance subsidies,according to an :{OpenSecrets.org:(style="background:#ffffff"):}: analysis.

(:{Continue Reading:(style="background:#ffffff"):}:)  

Leave a comment | Comments (3)

==

...jh

Take greed, for example. The Wall Street barons who wrecked our real economy with their greed-fueled casino games are playing the same games again, while pushing Washington to let them keep their public subsidies, fat bonuses, and special low-tax rates. So, our Congress critters turned their legislative guns on avarice. Unfortunately, their aim was a bit off. Instead of popping overprivileged, Congress hit the most un-privileged Americans: People on food stamps.

Too many families are getting food stamps, they shrieked, driving the cost of this poverty program to record levels. Yoo-hoo, knuckleheads, record numbers of our people are on food stamps today because – guess what? – record numbers of them are unemployed or underemployed, and have been knocked all the way down into poverty.

Yet, the tea party Republicans now ruling the US House are demanding cuts of as much as $25 billion a year in food stamp benefits, which would prevent some 13 million Americans – half of them children – from receiving the program's groceries. Rep. Michele Bachmann rose to a Biblical falsetto to rationalize this: "If anyone will not work, neither should he eat." Hello, Michele: That's not quite what Jesus said. Also, many of these people are working, but not paid enough to make ends meet. And many more are desperately seeking jobs that aren't there.

In fairness, though, the GOP did vote to give these food stamp applicants something: Drug tests. Hmmm – I don't recall that Jesus, at the Sea of Galilee, required anyone to pee in the cup before getting fishes and loaves. And if he had done so, he would've required the bankers to take the first cups.

"House rejects farm bill; food stamp cuts at issue," Austin American Statesman, June 21, 2013.

House Defeat Of Farm Bill Lays Bare Rift in G.O.P." The New York Times, June 21, 2013.

"Collision Over the House Farm Bill," The New York Times, June 21, 2013.

"Michele Bachmann Says If You Are Unemployed, You Should Starve,":{www.addictinginfo.org:(style="background:#ffffff"):}:, November 8, 2011.

"Food Stamp Cuts Derail Farm Bill," :{www.huffingtonpost.com:(style="background:#c4d393"):}: , June 20, 2013.

==

Congressman Stephen Fincher (R-TN) really wants to cut food stamps … a lot. He rants from the House floor that the poor should starve, and we shouldn’t spend “other people’s money.”

Fincher is also a farmer, who gets $3.5 million in subsidies from the federal government. And the Farm Bill that House Republicans—including Fincher—support would increase farm subsidies by $9 billion while cutting food stamps by $21 billion over the next ten years.

===

US FOOD BILL  GMO CLIMATE

WASHINGTON (AP) — The House Agriculture Committee on Wednesday approved a sweeping farm bill that would trim the $80 billion-a-year food stamp program.

The panel rebuffed Democratic efforts to keep the food stamp program whole, as debate on the farm bill turned into a theological discourse on helping the poor.

The House bill would cut about $2.5 billion a year — or a little more than 3 percent — from the domestic food aid program, which is used by 1 in 7 Americans. The committee rejected a Democratic amendment to strike the cuts 27-17, keeping them in the bill.

The legislation would achieve the cuts partly by eliminating an eligibility category that mandates automatic food stamp benefits when people sign up for certain other programs. It would also save dollars by targeting states that give people who don’t have heating bills very small amounts of heating assistance so they can automatically qualify for higher food stamp benefits.

Republicans argued that the cut is small relative to the size of the program, now known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, and that people who qualify for the aid could still sign up for it, they just wouldn’t be automatically enrolled. They defended the cuts after Rep. Juan Vargas, D-Calif., quoted the Book of Matthew in opposing them: “When I was hungry you gave me food. When I was thirsty, you gave me drink.”

Several Republicans talked about their Christianity and said the Bible encourages people to help each other but doesn’t dictate what the federal government should do. “We should be doing this as individuals, helping the poor,” said Rep. Doug LaMalfa, R-Calif.

Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., offered the amendment to do away with the cuts. He said taking the hunger assistance away from people will just make the poor “more vulnerable and more miserable.”

“Christians, Jews, Muslims, whatever — we’re failing our brothers and sisters here,” McGovern said.

The cuts are part of massive legislation that costs almost $100 billion annually over five years and would set policy for farm subsidies, rural programs and the food aid. The Senate Agriculture Committee approved its version of the bill Tuesday, and the full Senate is expected to start work on the bill next week. House action is expected this summer. Current programs expire Sept. 30.

Last year more than 47 million people used the SNAP program with the cost more than doubling since 2008. The rolls rose rapidly because of the economic downturn, rising food prices and expanded eligibility under President Barack Obama’s 2009 economic stimulus law.

Republicans criticized Obama in last year’s presidential campaign for his expansion of the program, and many House conservatives have refused to consider a farm bill without cuts to food stamps, which make up about 80 percent of the bill’s cost.

The Senate approved much smaller cuts to the program, about $400 million a year. House Agriculture Committee Chairman Frank Lucas, R-Okla., will have to appease all sides as he tries to push the farm bill through for the third year in a row, balancing calls from House conservatives to cut the program with Senate Democrats who are reluctant to touch it....

:{http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/farm-bill-moves-ahead-food-stamps-get-big-cuts.php:(style="background:#ffffff"):}:

 ==

JH:

The count

The Census Bureau found that 31 million people lived beneath the poverty line in 2000. That was 11.3 percent of our people-- bad enough. But in the next decade (spurred by the Bush-Cheney regime of wage-busting corporatists and Koch-headed ideologues in Congress), the percentage moved steadily up, reaching 15.1 percent in 2010, or more than 46 million of us--the highest number in the half-century the Bureau has been reporting poverty figures. This despite the fact that America's wealth grew astronomically in those same 10 years (yes, there was the Wall Street crash of 2007-08, but the Great Recession it caused officially ended in mid-2009, and more wealth than ever quickly began to be generated. Yet in 2010, another 2.6 million of us plummeted into poverty).

This reality was politically awkward for the plutocrats, so their congress critters, lobbyists, and front groups insisted on a new reality. Claiming that the official poverty stats were out of whack, they demanded that such non-cash benefits for poor people as food stamps, child tax credits, and school lunches be counted as income for them, thus statistically shrinking the number of folks who would be counted as poor. In a classic case of "be careful what you wish for" however, the Census tallyers agreed to include those non-cash benefits--BUT, they also decided it was time to factor in previously ignored costs that whack the poor, including ever-growing outlays for health care, housing, taxes, utilities, commuting, and child care.

Using this more accurate "supplemental poverty measure," the 2010 count was redone and, sure enough, the old number was wrong. Instead of 46.2 million poor Americans, the recalibrated formula showed that 49.1 million of us were below the line that year--16.1 percent of our population.

The Bureau has since also completed its poverty computations for 2011, again using the improved method for the tally. Voila--the ranks of the poor grew by another 600,000 of our fellow citizens that year, led by a spike in the number of working people who had been reduced to poverty wages. Included in this latest official count are 18.1 percent of America's children and 15.5 percent of all working adults.

The forces shoving down the incomes of the great majority in our country are not abating, so the deluge of new inductees into poverty continues. Already, the USofA has crossed an embarrassing threshold of economic infamy: 50 million poor people. "Poor" means they are trying to make ends meet on $11,000 or less a year for an individual, $15,000 a year for a single mom with one child, and $23,000 for a family of four. Fifty million Americans! That's literally a nation of poverty in our midst--roughly equivalent to the entire population of South Korea.

Then add 51 million additional Americans classified as "near poor"--an individual, for example, making between $11,000 and $17,000 a year (perhaps one of the "associates" stocking shelves at your local Walmart or serving you at Pizza Hut). In all, more than 100 million of our people--one out of three of us--are either poor or perched precariously on the brink of that abyss. By the way, more than half of today's near poor landed there from higher income levels--people who had a better paying job that was moved offshore or downsized, uninsured families suddenly zapped by a major medical cost, or recent college grads saddled with debt and unable to find a higher-paying job in the field of their degree, so now they're plopped behind a car rental counter or espresso machine and paid a near-poverty wage.

Abandoning the poor

With so many Americans caught in the hellish vortex of low wages, joblessness, and poverty, you might assume that our leaders would respond with an urgent effort to lift them up--not out of compassion, but out of respect for what they could be contributing. In other words, just as the poor need us, we need them--our society urgently needs the intellect, creativity, and productivity those millions have within them.

But that would require actual leadership. Instead, those in power today are responding with a toxic blend of ignorance, indifference, contempt, and bullshit. For instance, ponder the thinking of Andre Bauer, South Carolina's former lieutenant governor. In 2010, he shared this uplifting ethic, supposedly taught by grandmother: "She told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. You know why? Because they breed. You're facilitating the problem if you give an animal or person ample food supply... You've got to curtail that type of behavior."

Call Andre an ick, but he's only mouthing the collective wisdom of today's far-right Republican Party. Indeed, this year, the party is unabashedly and aggressively espousing a policy of curtailing the eating behavior of low-income human animals. In particular it's working to gut the enormously successful food stamp program, claiming that it's an out-of-control government entitlement that is neither affordable nor needed. Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal went after it in a March article bearing this headline: "Use of Food Stamps Swells Even as Economy Improves." Hey, who needs food stamps in good times?

Can Rupert even spell o-b-t-u-s-e? As The Atlanticmagazine's Jordan Weissman wrote, "Repeat after me: There are record numbers of Americans on food stamps today because there are record numbers of Americans in poverty."

Still, such boneheads as the GOP's budget sorcerer, Paul Ryan, are out to shred food stamps: His "budget blueprint," adopted by the House in March would cut $125 billion (and 13 million poor people--nearly half of them children) out of the program during the next five years.

This is only one piece of an insidious agenda of abject austerity being pushed in Washington, on Wall Street, in the corporate media, and in many state capitals--a cold demand that governments abandon the poor. The pushers are the usual cabal of 1-percenters who view themselves as "the creators" and everyone else as moochers.

Through PR campaigns, hoked-up "studies" by for-hire academics, targeted outlays of political donations, and various voodoo incantations, those austerians have been able in the last couple of years to fabricate a climate of crisis--almost a panic--over government deficits. They screech in unison that the sky is falling, that America faces imminent financial ruin unless federal and state budgets are balanced, pronto.

The place to start, declared the "deficit scolds" (as they were dubbed by New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, who has been a splendid and tenacious debunker of their doomsday cries) is with those "wasteful" welfare programs that "entrap" the poor in an "immoral" dependency on government "largesse." No less of a social scholar than Newt Gingrich has offered a specific example of the austere Dickensian utopia that the plutocrats envision for poor people: "It is tragic what we do in the poorest neighborhoods, entrapping children in child [labor] laws which are truly stupid," he clucked in 2011. "These schools should get rid of unionized janitors, have one master janitor, pay local students to come take care of the school."

Right-wing governors in Wisconsin, Ohio, Maine, Florida, Indiana, Arizona, Texas, and elsewhere have gleefully embraced the austerity flimflam, using it as a cudgel not only to bust unionized janitors, but also to crush all public employee unions and eliminate hundreds of thousands of good jobs.

Meanwhile, Ryan's budget bludgeoners and such goofball governors as Rick "Oops" Perry have teamed up to hammer Medicaid, leaving millions of low-income Americans (about 75 percent of them children) without the basic human right of a civilized society: Health care. Also, tens of thousands of children have already been cut from Head Start; untold numbers of homebound seniors had to be dropped by Meals on Wheels; and hundreds of thousands of low-income veterans (many of them homeless) have had their housing, tuition, job-training, and suicide-prevention assistance eliminated.

Abandoning America's most vulnerable people in a time of both rising poverty for the many and rising wealth for the few is economically stupid, socially destructive, and utterly immoral. And to assert that such shameful austerity is necessary for the nation's economic health is a lie. In fact, even Wall Street analysts are now alarmed over the damage being done by the austerians. One leading financial firm reports that extreme budget cutting "has detracted from growth in five of the past seven quarters," while also adding at least a percentage point (more than two million people) to the ranks of the unemployed.

moyers: I always expect the worst from the House Republicans when it comes to SNAP (food stamps) and the Farm Bill. So while much attention and anger has been focused on the $20.5 billion cut proposed by the House Agriculture Committee — which would take food stamps away from nearly 2 million people and result in several hundred thousand low-income children no longer receiving free school meals — my reaction was more along the lines of… yeah, what did you expect?

I was actually more disturbed that the Democratic Senate Agriculture Committee would vote for a $4.1 billion cut in food stamps — even though the average benefit is about $1.46 per person, per meal, and a recent Institute of Medicine report demonstrates that benefit levels are already too low to stave off hunger. The cut “would mean $90 less a month for 500,000 families already struggling to make ends meet,” according to Joel Berg, executive director of the New York City Coalition Against Hunger. Berg noted that an amendment by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand would have prevented the SNAP cuts “by instead cutting subsidies for crop insurance companies, many of which are foreign owned.” 

Unfortunately, the committee failed to pass Sen. Gillibrand’s amendment, and Senate Democrats proved yet again that the party’s commitment to those who are the most economically vulnerable is about as thin as Republican cut proposals are deep.

===

Wisconsin Bill Would Treat Organic Milk, Sharp Cheddar, Brown Eggs as "Junk Food"

by Rebekah Wilce [1] — May 6, 2013 - 11:55am

• Topics: Food [2], Politics [3] 

• Projects: Food Rights Network [4] 

:{Share this:(style="background:#ffffff"):}:[5]

Wisconsin ranks 44th in the nation for new job creation. Rather than rolling up their sleeves and finding new and innovative ways to help create jobs, the Wisconsin legislature is spending its time telling people needing food assistance what they should be eating. AB 110, which will be up for a vote in the Assembly on Tuesday, May 7, is geared toward limiting "the amount of food stamp benefits that could be spent on junk food [6]." But some of the fine print of the bill, bizarrely, would ban people from choosing more healthy and less expensive options for their families. The bill is one of many being considered that are unduly punitive of the poor.

Restricting Access to Organic and Other Whole Foods

As of March 2013, 858,000 Wisconsinites receive FoodShare benefits. The bill, AB 110 [7], would limit FoodShare, Wisconsin's food stamp program funded through the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). As the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) has reported [8], Governor Scott Walker has already proposed to require all "able-bodied adults" who receive food stamps (and don't have dependent children) to train or search for work in order to continue receiving those benefits. This even though Walker has failed to create the 250,000 jobs he promised when running for office in 2010.

Now Representative Dean Kaufert (R-Neenah) is sponsoring another bill to further limit FoodShare. Kaufert told [9] the Wisconsin Radio Network that the bill would make it so that a benefit recipient "can't buy six bags of nachos and four cases of soda." WHY ISN'T THIS NANNY STATE?

Specifically, the amended [10] program would allow only a third of an individual's FoodShare benefits to be spent on a full range of food as they currently can be. The remaining two-thirds would be subject to the same restrictions as the federal Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) nutritional program, with some small modifications. (Both programs, of course, bar restaurant food, cigarettes, alcohol, and pet foods.)

WIC is a federal program intended to supplement food stamp benefits for a particularly vulnerable population of women and young children. As such, it has strict -- and at times very odd -- guidelines [11] to focus these supplemental food dollars on nutritionally dense staple foods.

Wisconsin's AB 110 would mandate that two-thirds of a person's FoodShare benefits could be spent only on foods on the WIC-approved list. Exemptions have been added so recipients can also purchase fish, beef, pork, chicken, and potatoes. Strangely, exemptions were not added so that the "healthy" two-thirds could also be spent on a full range of healthy Wisconsin farm products and fresh food.

The result is that the bulk of your FoodShare dollars can be spent on milk, but not organic milk; on eggs, but only on white eggs by the dozen, not on brown, free-range, or organic eggs; on 100 percent whole wheat bread, but not on gluten-free bread for those with Celiac disease; on slices of American cheese, but not sharp cheddar. FoodShare dollars can be spent on dry beans, but not if they come from a money-saving bulk bin at your local food coop. You can get juice boxes for your children, but only Juicy Juice brand juice boxes.

In order for the state Department of Health Services to implement changes to FoodShare purchasing guidelines, it would need to attain a federal waiver from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). But when Minnesota tried to prohibit purchase of candy or soda in 2004, and New York City tried to ban purchase of certain sugary drinks in 2010, both waiver requests were denied [6]. The USDA points out [12] the lack of clear standards to define foods as healthy or unhealthy.

===

study shows marketing to kids effect: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB113387976454515095.html

Every new children's movie and TV show seems to bring a new crop of licensing deals: Mike Myers as the Cat in the Hat appeared on Kraft's Lunchables Deep Dish Pizza Mega Pack, and the Hulk appeared on Kraft's Nabisco Nilla Wafers. Kellogg Co.'s K -0.59% Froot Loops features characters from the recent Walt Disney Co. DIS -0.68% animated movie "Chicken Little"; McDonald's Corp. MCD -0.01% gave out play figures of characters from the movie with Happy Meals during the fall.

===

Obesity PR

Jump to: navigation, search

Food Marketing to Kids

"With rising rates of childhood obesity and diabetes, you might think that when the federal government convenes a meeting on how food companies market food to kids, talk of how to regulate industry practices might actually be on the agenda. But you'd be wrong," wrote Michele Simon. [1] In Mid-July 2005 a U.S. government conference on food marketing to kids was dominated by the companies themselves. "By conservative estimates, a full two-thirds of the panelists—hand-picked by the FTC and HHS—had financial ties to either the food or advertising industries. To add insult to injury, from the chairman of the FTC on down, nearly every government official who had the chance made clear that regulation of junk food ads aimed at children was not on the table and wouldn't be anytime soon. ... Only a handful of panel slots were allotted to public health or children's advocates. Even then, their voices were drowned out by the likes of PepsiCo and Kraft, who were each given two separate opportunities to speak, an honor not bestowed on anyone else."

Battle of the Childhood Bulge

"We can't any more argue whether food advertising is related to children's diets. It is," said Ellen Wartella, a co-author of the Institute of Medicine report reviewing "123 scientific research studies spanning 30 years on the effects of marketing food to children." The report concluded that "strong evidence" links TV ads to childhood obesity, and recommended that well-known cartoon characters not be used to sell "low-nutrient and high-calorie" foods, the Wall Street Journalreports. [2]

Marketing to children is a $11 billion industry. The American Advertising Federation responded that companies are already "promoting healthier products and active lifestyles for children." Commercial Alert called on Congress to "expel junk food from public schools, require disclosure of product placement ... and eliminate the federal tax deduction for food advertising to children." The New York Times reports that Center for Science in the Public Interest, with "veterans of successful tobacco litigation," will file a lawsuit in Massachusetts to "ban sales of sugary beverages in schools." [3]

Other SourceWatch resources

• :{American Council for Fitness and Nutrition:(style="background:#ffffff"):}: 
• :{Food Advertising On Television in Australia:(style="background:#ffffff"):}: 
• :{American Dietetic Association:(style="background:#ffffff"):}: 
• :{Beverage Institute for Health & Wellness:(style="background:#ffffff"):}: 
• :{Calorie Control Council:(style="background:#ffffff"):}: 
• :{Center for Consumer Freedom:(style="background:#ffffff"):}: 
• :{Coalition for a Healthy and Active America:(style="background:#ffffff"):}: 
• :{International Association for the Study of Obesity:(style="background:#ffffff"):}: 
• :{International Obesity Task Force:(style="background:#ffffff"):}: 
• :{Kraft:(style="background:#ffffff"):}: 
• :{Media and Childhood Obesity: Today and Tomorrow:(style="background:#ffffff"):}: 
• :{McDonald's:(style="background:#ffffff"):}: 
• :{Obesity APPG:(style="background:#ffffff"):}: 
• :{Obesity Working Group:(style="background:#ffffff"):}: 
• :{Personal responsibility:(style="background:#ffffff"):}: 
• :{Oldways Preservation Trust:(style="background:#ffffff"):}: 
• :{Shaping America's Youth:(style="background:#ffffff"):}: 
• :{Sugar industry:(style="background:#ffffff"):}: 
• :{VERB:(style="background:#ffffff"):}: 
• :{Whole Grains Council:(style="background:#ffffff"):}: 

External links

• Betsy McKay, "Defensive Coke Backs Research That Asks: Is Sugar All Bad?," Wall Street Journal, October 22, 2004. 
• Scott Fields, "The Fat of the Land: Do Agricultural Subsidies Foster Poor Health?," Environmental Health Perspectives, September 2004. 
• Richard Cann, "Media 'let firms off' obesity hook", PR Week, October 22, 2004.(Sub Req'd). 
• Mark Johnson, "Reputation Management: The fast-food fight", PR Week, October 29 2004.(Sub Req'd). 
• Nick Galvin, "Battle to junk food ads hots up", Sydney Morning Herald, January 19 2005. 
• John N. Frank, "Vending machine operators target childhood obesity with new push", PR Week, February 7, 2005. 
• Maja Pawinska, "Analysis: Kids’ TV confronts junk-food fear", PR Week, May 6, 2005. (Sub req'd.) 
• Caroline E. Mayer and Amy Joyce, "The Escalating Obesity Wars:Nonprofit's Tactics, Funding Sources Spark Controversy", Washington Post, April 27, 2005. 
• Julian Lee, "Food giants' involvement causes heartburn", Sydney Morning Herald, July 4, 2005. 
• Michele Simon, "Government Abandons Children to Big Food", AlterNet, July 22, 2005. 
• Sarah Ellison and Janet Adamy, "Panel Faults Food Packaging For Kid Obesity", Wall Street Journal, December 7, 2005; Page B1. 
• Julie Robotham, "Ads for junk food likened to pushing cigarettes", Sydney Morning Herald, September 6, 2006. 

Categories:

• :{Health:(style="background:#ffffff"):}: 
• :{Marketing:(style="background:#ffffff"):}: 
• :{Obesity:(style="background:#ffffff"):}: 
• :{Public relations:(style="background:#ffffff"):}: 

===

Right-Wingers Lying About Food Stamps

March 29, 2013 |  

As you probably know, complaints about the size and cost of the food stamp program (now known as SNAP, for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) has become an ever-more-prominent part of the conservative argument that America is awash in redistributive "welfare" spending (they can't much make that case about cash assistance any more). It was no accident that during his 2012 presidential campaign, Newt Gingrich called Barack Obama the "food stamp president." That's now a quasi-racial appeal along the lines of the old "welfare queen" smear.

Just today, the Wall Street Journal had a :{report:(style="background:#ffffff"):}:[2] on rising SNAP costs, with the provocative title, "Use of Food Stamps Swells Even as Economy Improves," with the planted axiom being that there should be an inverse relationship between food stamps and the unemployment rate.

But as Jordan Weissmann :{points out:(style="background:#ffffff"):}:[3] at The Atlantic, that's a false premise:

[R]epeat after me: There are record numbers of Americans on food stamps today because there are record numbers of Americans in poverty (records begin in 1959.)

As of 2011, there were 46.2 million men, women, and children living below the U.S. poverty line. There isn't much reason to believe that the last year of mediocre job growth has dented that number. And until it plunges, the food stamp rolls are going to stay full -- plain and simple.

One might add that it's more than a bit hypocritical for Republicans to deride reductions in the unemployment rate as meaningless while simultaneously complaining that counter-cyclical assistance programs should be shedding beneficiaries. But it's all kinda beside th point:

Of all the social welfare programs the U.S. has, we should probably be worrying about food stamps the least. Its beneficiaries are overwhelmingly needy. In 2010, about 87 percent were at or below the poverty line and almost half were children. Only 3.5 percent had incomes higher than 130 percent of the poverty line. Meanwhile, the program arguably encourages more work by letting unemployed parents take the first job they can find, even if it won't pay enough to feed their family on its own. It's also hyper-efficient stimulus. The money has to be spent instead of saved, meaning it cycles quickly back into the economy.

Our food stamp rolls are eye popping, but they're not the problem. Poverty is.

This won't be much of an answer to those conservatives who claim that helping poor people is why they are poor in the first place. But that's another issue.

See more stories tagged with:

food stamps [4]

Source URL: http://www.alternet.org/hard-times-usa/right-wingers-lying-about-food-stamps

Links:

[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/ed-kilgore-0

[2] http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323699704578328601204933288.html?mod=WSJ_hp_mostpop_read

[3] http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/03/the-most-important-thing-to-remember-about-americas-food-stamp-boom/274443/

[4] http://www.alternet.org/tags/food-stamps

[5] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B

http://www.alternet.org/food/americas-obesity-epidemic-where-does-your-state-rank?