Grand Rounds: Briefing the Next U.S. President

One Response to Grand Rounds: Briefing the Next U.S. President

1. RonF says:

   January 17, 2008 at 1:34 pm

   First of all, it’s amazing to me that anyone would think that it’s up to the President of the United States to have anything to do with a number of the issues presented.

   This one, though about the relative inflation rates of prices for junk foods vs. fruits and vegetables did strike me:

   General inflation rates for food is about 5%, but the inflation rate for fruits and vegetables has gone up 20% in recent years. Foods that are rich in refined grains, sugar, and fat hardly went up at all in price. Unfortunately this is making it more difficult to follow the advice of health professionals. This kind of news is what is leading Americans to be undernourished from a perspective of nutrients but overfed from calories from sugar and fat. The result is a population suffering from overweight and obesity and not having the energy to get ourselves out of this dilemma!

   They give a link to commentary on the farm bill, which I confess I didn’t read, but here in Illinois it’s a general topic. Seems to me that one way to deal with this is to stop providing corporate farming subsidies for raising the kinds of foods that go into junk food and to stop providing price supports for sugar. Stop taking money out of my (and your) pocket so that the makers of sugar- and starch-rich junk food can make their products cheaper than unfettered market prices would otherwise enable. Of course, that requires leadership from the entire Congress; it’s not something that can be established by Presidential fiat, and Congressional votes on such things in the farming states are more likely influenced by their constituents than by their party “leadership”.

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