We all know that processed foods aren’t going to help our health in the long run, but as college students, we are all pretty much on a tight budget, which tends to mean that store-brands and instant Ramen have our names all over them. While it’s convenient, cheap and let’s admit it, delicious to sit down to a bowl of Easy Mac and an old-fashioned peanut butter and jelly, we need to understand why the meals we eat in college can be so simple and cheap.
Let’s take it one step at a time.
What’s in your food?
Most food these days has some modified version of corn in it. From Cheerios, peanut butter, bread, granola bars to salad dressings, it seems as if we never fully escape the pervasiveness of corn. Corn has become so common in our foods because of government subsidies. As part of the taxpayer system, the government gives subsidies, either money or tax reductions, to agricultural groups such as corn growers.
What most people don’t know is that their tax money goes towards funding corn so growers will have more incentive to mass produce corn. According to the Environmental Working Group, corn growers received over $84 billion dollars between the years 1995-2012, with Harvest State Cooperatives driving in $49 million dollars of that total. Corn growers, like Harvest State Cooperatives, are given subsidies in the forms of premiums, loans and market loss assistance, all of which protect growers from unprecedented growing conditions.
What’s important to note among the subsidies is the increase in the concern for human health. Headlines released by the Centers for Disease Control tell Americans to “eat less processed foods and sugars” while the government continues to provide money incentives to grow more corn, which eventually ends up on our plate at breakfast, lunch and dinner time.
Now you may be wondering, what’s the big deal about that?
The major problem is that it is paradoxical for government agencies like the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institutes of Health to advocate healthier eating when the government continually pays to overproduce corn.
According to Mark Bittman, nutrition and health writer for The New York Times, the government should consider taxing processed foods and subsidizing fruits and vegetables. This way, healthier foods can be made more available to the average consumer. The changes that can follow financial policy in the agricultural sector include the amelioration of human health.
In the most recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study, the number one killer of Americans in 2013 was heart disease. Heart disease is caused by an inadequate balance of healthy foods and habits in everyday life including high blood pressure caused by high LDL (low density lipids) cholesterol levels and excessive consumption of sugars. Many items in the grocery aisles, oddly enough, contain ingredients, such as hydrogenated oils, butter and meat that add to the bad cholesterol levels.
What’s even more striking is that these products are priced incredibly low. For just $2.50, you can buy yourself a week or two’s worth of crackers while you may only be able to buy three or four apples to last you a few days for the same price.
Fortunately, this can be changed.
The change begins at the consumer level. Society needs more consumers who recognize the paradox of the government subsidizing corn while simultaneously advocating healthy eating. So why don’t we, as millennials, do what we can, by purchasing less processed foods that are subsidized by the government and advocate for new policy so that fruits and vegetables can outnumber the boxes of processed foods in our grocery aisles?