Obesebk

Obesitybk

12/15

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

===

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

---

new 220

https://theconversation.com/is-your-city-making-you-fat-how-urban-planning-can-address-the-obesity-epidemic-130858

==

More 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

==

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

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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 Atlantic magazine'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 Journal reports. [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