Michael Pollan on the Farm Bill

The ever-excellent Michael Pollan pens an op-ed about the farm bill. Good stuff, and important for everyone who’s subjected to a daily onslaught of high-fructose corn-syrup and other highly processed “foodlike products” as a result of it. (Hint: that’s every American.)

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/04/opinion/04pollan.html

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Americans have begun to ask why the farm bill is subsidizing high-fructose corn syrup and hydrogenated oils at a time when rates of diabetes and obesity among children are soaring, or why the farm bill is underwriting factory farming (with subsidized grain) when feedlot wastes are polluting the countryside and, all too often, the meat supply. For the first time, the public health community has raised its voice in support of overturning farm policies that subsidize precisely the wrong kind of calories (added fat and added sugar), helping to make Twinkies cheaper than carrots and Coca-Cola competitive with water. Also for the first time, the international development community has weighed in on the debate, arguing that subsidized American exports are hobbling cotton farmers in Nigeria and corn farmers in Mexico.

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