We Already Know That Taxpayer Subsidies To Unhealthy Food Industry Giants Are A Rip-Off–Here’s The Proof That They’re Killing Us Too
If 70 percent of your countrymen were at risk of contracting a deadly disease, or already dying from it, and you found out who was secretly paying to make them sick, you would want that person prosecuted to the full extent of the law, wouldn’t you?
Turns out that’s exactly what is happening with on particular industry in the U.S., however we don’t seem particularly interested in going after the murderer who is providing the cheap, easy-to-get weapons that are killing us.
Perhaps that’s because the guilty party is you, the taxpayer.
The fact of the matter is, with 70 percent of Americans overweight or fighting obesity, there has been considerable ink spilled and hand-wringing over how to get Americans to choose healthier foods.
But one thing that goes conveniently unmentioned is that the poor choices people make when it comes to diet are largely due to the availability and price of the food in question.
And these cheap, readily available foods are subsidized by you the taxpayer.
A study published in JAMA Internal Medicine has shown that consuming high quantities of subsidized foods leads to cardio-metabolic risk in American adults.
The study’s authors “…used data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey from 2001 to 2006 to calculate an individual-level ‘subsidy score’ for consumption of subsidized food commodities as a percentage of total calorie intake. They used body mass index (BMI), ratio of waist circumference to height, circulating high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (a marker of inflammation), blood pressure, non-high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol level, and glycated hemoglobin to characterize cardiometabolic risk.”
The study found that people who ate the most foods from the sponsored commodities list have a higher tendency to become obese, to develop increased blood sugar levels and unusual cholesterol levels as well.
The list of the most highly subsidized foods in the U.S. includes wheat, soybeans, rice, beer, milk, and beef. But the granddaddy of them all is corn, raking in a cool $77 billion a year in taxpayer subsidies to help the poor industrial farmers and manufacturers make all that high-fructose corn syrup and other commodities that are choking the life out us and our children.
The cynical politician joke says: if you’re going to screw me, at least buy me dinner first.
Sadly, the only thing we’re buying is our own demise–and we didn’t even get a kiss.
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http://www.hngn.com/articles/202359/20160709/subsidized-american-foods-causing-obesity-adults-cdc-confirms.htm