When it comes to food, America is of two minds. We love our baby-back ribs, Big Macs, Big Gulp Cokes and Emeril. We also jump on the latest diet craze, counting carbs, asking the waitress to hold the bread, and lending an ear to Dr. Phil. South Beach, The Zone, Atkins, CortiSlim have all taken their place as famous brand names, along with McDonald's and KFC.

The emergence of diet fads is, in a way, a reaction to our love of food. These days it's hard not to hear that America's super-sized appetite is bad news for our health. Everyone is calling America Fat Nation, a nation that, as a result of its love affair with food, is risking diabetes, heart disease and even cancer.

At the same time, as we await the "Diet Pill of All Time," we manage to spend millions on fitness products, gym memberships and all of the gadgets that go into sculpting our American bodies, either to meet the strictures of the Body Mass Index or the fleeting ideal of Paris Hilton. Forbes recently reported that sales of treadmills, exercise bicycles, weight benches and other exercise equipment amounted to $5.8 billion in 2000, versus $1.9 billion in 1990. Americans have latched onto the Atkins Diet craze (a $40 billion a year industry) that's revolutionized caloric intake.

French fries have been banished, their sin being that they're complex carbohydrates. Pasta companies are going bankrupt and liquor stores are stocking the shelves with low-carb beer. Even the Food and Drug Administration is turning the fabled food pyramid upside down, suggesting that lean meat might not be such a bad thing after all. It looks as though even Uncle Sam is counting carbs.

Despite all this carb-consciousness and despite the high impact aerobic classes at the YMCA, Americans are getting fatter and fatter. Nearly 31% of U.S. adults are now considered obese and a stunning 65% are overweight, based on data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys. Just 20 years ago, only 15% of adults were obese. In March 2004, the Center for Disease Control predicted that if current trends continue, obesity will overtake smoking as the leading cause of preventable deaths in the Unitd States by 2005. Last year alone, Americans spent an estimated $75 billion treating obesity-related illnesses (nearly half covered by taxpayers).

Americans can take some comfort in knowing that obesity is not bounded by U.S. borders. The abundance of food along with the increase in leisure and more sedentary lifestyles is clearly creating an obesity epidemic among highly industrialized nations. The UK, Germany, and Australia all record 15% or more of their adult population in the obese category. Sweden, which strictly regulates school lunches and limits the consumption of soft drinks, also faces an obesity problem.

So what's behind this disturbing trend? To put it simply, Americans, for one, are consuming too much and exercising too little. Why? Because we can! A prime-rib dinner with a baked potato and a Caesar salad, a glass or two of wine, a few rolls with butter, and a selection from the dessert cart totals over 3,000 calories, just for this one meal. For a busy two-income household, a calorie-laden feast of this kind can prove to be all too-tempting a pleasure.

After this delightful meal ask yourself, “Am I going to be burning 3,000 calories at the gym any time soon?”

To put this calorie amount in context, walking moderately for 45-60 minutes per day will expend 2,000-2,500 calories per week. If you balk at this, you’re most likely to be one of the 58% of adults, according to the CDC, who do not engage in any vigorous physical activity lasting more than 10 minutes. Add to this a daily routine that requires not walking but jumping into an SUV to get to the mall, and the calories quickly turn into pounds.

Researchers at the National Center for Smart Growth at the University of Maryland found that people in sprawling counties weighed more than those in more compact ones. And a survey of Atlanta residents showed that, for every hour people spend in their cars, they are 6% more likely to be obese. For every kilometer – just over a half-mile – they walk in a day, they are 5% less likely to be obese. And, if they live in a mixed-use environment (one in which there are shops and services near their homes), they are 7% less likely to be obese. The links between physical activity and health outcomes are well established. And health concerns become greater, the more sedentary the lifestyle.

Pour some sugar on me

Obviously, though, it is not only what you expend in the physical activity department that determines how far that bathroom scale climbs, but what goes in your body.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Economic Research Service states that average daily calorie intake increased by 24.5%, or about 530 calories, between 1970 and 2000. Over a similar time span, the average weight for American men increased from 168 to 180 pounds, while the average weight for women increased from 142 to 152 pounds.

It was only a few years ago that the raging fad was to watch your calorie intake. The awful truth is that most low-fat products tasted awful so the food industry had to add a ton of sugar. The problem with added sugars is that if you do not burn them off they get stored as fat.

Throughout much of the 1990s, the food industry kept pushing low-fat and no-fat products upon us as if these were a panacea for the Calorie-Challenged Generation. But it wasn't selling for long. In 2001, sales of fat-free ice cream were down nearly 17%, low-fat cookies were down 10.8%, and sales of low-fat sausage were off 8.6%.

Probably the most important cause of America's “obesity epidemic” has been the surge in consumption of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS). This is the sugary substance found in almost all soft drinks and fruit beverages and a wide variety of processed foods.

According to the USDA, average per capita consumption of HFCS increased by over 4000% since the early 70s. And today, the country consumes more sweeteners made from corn than from either sugarcane or beets.

Researchers from Louisiana State University released a study in April that related the emerging obesity epidemic to the dramatic increase in HFCS consumption. While the findings do not provide a conclusive link (and have been heavily criticized by the corn industry), HFCS has emerged as a serious target for America's health conscious. Maybe Kevin Costner had it right in Field of Dreams; it’s better to turn yourcorn field into a baseball diamond.

Bumper crops of corn with no place to go

U.S. corn production is extremely efficient: the average yield per acre has nearly doubled since 1970, and production has more than doubled. In fact, the United States produces so much corn that we have had to find more and more uses for it and HFCS was the new marketing vehicle for farmers.

Today, about five percent of domestically produced corn is used to make HFCS; 57% percent of the corn produced in the United States is used as inexpensive animal feed. What's left is consumed domestically or turned into ethanol or exported. Corn is our nation's largest agricultural export, yielding billions of dollars to corn producers. Corn, you might say, is doing alright.

While inexpensive animal feed keeps beef prices low, meat from a corn-fed steer may have up to twice as much fat as a comparable cut from a grass-fed animal. Fatter cattle lead to fatter consumers and fatter consumers, we know, lead to $75 billion in medical expenditures per year. Why, then, one might ask, have taxpayers been forced to spend well over $35 billion since 1995 subsidizing such an efficient industry? And do we know that such subsidies may be contributing to America’s obesity problem?

Since 1977, sweeteners and fats in foods have increased 20%, largely because of farm subsidies. These subsidies have kept retail price increases for snacks, sweets, and similar items well below price increases for fruits and vegetables, which now are sorely lacking in our diets.

So why the subsidies? Is there any reason to encourage the production of agricultural goods at the expense of others? Do we want to promote farming at the cost of, say, manufacturing or services?

Today, most crops are grown on large commercial farms and most of the subsidies land there too. Indeed, according to the Environmental Working Group, in 2002 the top 10% of U.S. farms received 65% of all farm subsidy payments; the top 20% received 81%. These are not small farmers in need of a loan to struggle through the lean years, but large Fortune 500 companies riding the backs of federal taxpayers. Why then are we still subsidizing these corporations? The truth has more to do with political clout and powerful lobbies than protecting small farm income. In fact, average farm household income in 2000 was $61,947, nearly nine percent higher than the U.S. average.

Clearly, today's farm subsidies are a mess; total USDA agricultural subsidies reached an astounding high of $23.5 billion in 2000, for an average cost of $233.22 per American household. They fell two years later only because of higher commodity prices. Nonetheless, according to the Cato Institute, more than 90% of direct federal subsidies were distributed to just five crops: corn, wheat, soybeans, rice and cotton.

This becomes highly relevant when you examine the economics of diets. Dr. Adam Drewnowski, the director of the Center for Public Health Nutrition at the University of Washington says that in today’s market it is simply cheaper to eat an unhealthy diet packed with energy-dense foods than one with lean meats, fish, and vegetables.

This helps explain the somewhat paradoxical relationship observed between poverty and obesity. One might expect wealthier Americans, with more disposable income and, theoretically, leisure time, to be more obese. In reality, this is not the case. Obesity tends to be found in higher rates among those with the highest poverty rates and the least education.

As New York Times columnist Michael Pollan explains in an October 12, 2003 article, we, as a nation, have a conflicted agenda:

“While one hand of the federal government is campaigning against the epidemic of obesity, the other hand is actually subsidizing it, by writing farmers a check for every bushel of corn they can grow...undermining our public-health goals by loosing a tide of cheap calories at home.”

Agricultural subsidies in the United States are inefficient, poorly designed, and amount to a transfer of wealth from working Americans to profitable corporate farms. This outrageous spending (see the $190 billion farm bill enacted in 2002) is simply not justified. Given the growing costs of obesity, America’s handout to agribusiness are no longer defensible.

Just say no to the Twinkie Tax

Removing subsidies is a step in the right direction. But one irrepressible idea that won’t work is more government involvement. Taxing snacks and sugary foods is not the answer.

Nations with higher taxes are no better at battling obesity. Last December the Wall Street Journal found that the number of children in Sweden who are overweight has tripled in the past 15 years. This statistic is noteworthy because Sweden regulates things like school lunches and the availability of soft drinks.

Ironically, Swedes, like others, find ways to avoid the heavy hand of government. McDonald’s sales in Sweden have tripled since 1992, Coca-Cola’s ad spending has risen 15 fold since 1994 and calorie consumption has risen by 10% over the last decade. Norway levies the world’s highest soft-drink tax yet still manages to guzzle more than 300 cans of Coke a year per person. So much for government intervention solving that problem.

In July, the federal government declared that overweight Americans covered by Medicare will be able to file medical claims for treatments such as stomach surgery and diet programs. One can conclude that American tax dollars for bottles of Slim Fast are right around the corner.

With government subsidies making bad foods cheap, personal responsibility is going the way of the Dodo bird. The obesity epidemic, rather than providing an opportunity for legislative intervention or lawsuits, should be seen as the outgrowth of a misguided policy of subsidizing the production of calories.

Format revised on 30-Aug-2004 3:21 PM