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Are Fruits and Veggitable Subsidized?
To hear food pundits talk you'd think that growers of fruits and veggies don't receive subsidies from the government. Indeed, the pundits often argue vegetables should receive subsidies because they don't receive them now. Just to give one example, here is Mark Bittman writing in the New York Times:
Simply put: taxes would reduce consumption of unhealthful foods and generate billions of dollars annually. That money could be used to subsidize the purchase of staple foods like seasonal greens, vegetables, whole grains, dried legumes and fruit.
It might come as a surprise, then, to hear that many fruits and vegetable growers already receive (implicit and explicit) subsidies of one form or another. Here is an issue, for example, that came to light during the fiscal cliff debate:
Many folks have picked out the extension of "market loss assistance" for asparagus farmers, for example, but this dates back to the farm bill from the last year of the Bush administration. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) brags about it on her website and Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA) was talking about fighting for it back in 2007, so I think we can gather than a lot of asparagus is grown in Washington State.
This is said to be needed because American asparagus farmers have been "devastated" by cheap imported Peruvian asparagus.
The reality of farm and food policy and its impacts is much more complicated than is often made to appear in foodie books and blogs.
Better Hope Your Child Isn't Obese
Jerri Gray may spend the next fifteen years of her life in a South Carolina prison. She is not a drug dealer or a serial rapist. She has not robbed anyone or committed grand theft auto—she simply has an obese son
Those are the opening sentences of this article by Elizabeth Ralston in the Seton Hall Law Review entitled KinderLARDen Cop: Why States Must Stop Policing Parents of Obese Children
The Consumer is King
On this blog, I often defend (or at least try to explain why farmers use) a variety of food and agricultural technologies. My goal is often to try to get people to think a little more deeply about the benefits of technology rather than succumb to knee-jerk reactions against anything "unnatural."
On the other side, however, it is useful for agricultural producers to remember they won't be existence for long if they can't grow something consumers are ultimately willing to buy. This point was made made forcefully by Adam Smith in the Wealth of Nations over 200 years ago (HT: Cafe Hayek):
Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production; and the interest of the producer ought to be attended to only so far as it may be necessary for promoting that of the consumer. The maxim is so perfectly self-evident that it would be absurd to attempt to prove it. But in the mercantile system the interest of the consumer is almost constantly sacrificed to that of the producer; and it seems to consider production, and not consumption, as the ultimate end and object of all industry and commerce.
Is it Time to Reconsider High BMI as Dangerous?
An article in the most recent issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association by Flegal et al. presents some serious evidence to question the hysteria over the rise in obesity (see also the commentaries here and here and here).
Apparently being "normal" weight isn't optimal if your goal is to live longest. In fact, being a bit overweight (and even a bit obese) might add a few years to life. As Jacob Sullum over at Reason suggests, perhaps we aught to re-define what is meant by "normal" weight given that the majority of people have BMIs that are beyond the "normal" cagetory. Not only do people weigh more than "normal" - their weights are such that they are living longer too.
I've received quite a lot of flack from various folks over the comments in my TEDx talk a couple months back, in which I argued that the rise in the rate of obesity had declined or even stopped. Yet, when I provide incontrovertible evidence to support my statements (see here or here), I'm often met with dismay, disbelief, and even claims of dishonesty. This is not to mention the fact that heart disease and other such ailments have fallen dramatically.
We have a well entrenched narrative that: 1) obesity is uncontrollably rising and 2) something must be done because obesity is killing people and increasing medical costs. The cites in my TEDx talk disputes the first argument. The results in the current issue of JAMA dispute the second. There are those who derive their meaning (and power) by pushing for public health interventions to combat obesity. My hope is that that the reasonable scientists in the group will rationally update their priors with this new information.