By RONNIE CUMMINS
FINLAND, Minn. — America’s industrial food and farming system — dominated by fast-food restaurants and processed, chemical-laden food — has precipitated a public health crisis.
Although nutritionists recommend that consumers avoid eating unhealthy junk foods, every day 75 million Americans “supersize” themselves and damage their health by eating at fast-food restaurants.
Forty percent of American meals are now bought and consumed outside the home, typically consisting of high-calorie, low-nutrition items such as soft drinks, French fries, and low-grade meat laced with fat, cheap sweeteners, pesticide residues, chemical additives and salt.
We have become a Fast Food Nation of bulging waistlines and high blood pressures.
Recent studies link pesticide residues and chemical additives like MSG in processed foods and restaurant fare to hormone disruption and obesity. No wonder 60 percent of Americans are either overweight or obese. Consider these distressing facts:
• One in every three children born since the year 2000 will develop diabetes in their lifetime.
• Diet-related obesity, diabetes and heart disease are now the nation’s No. 1 public health problem, generating an estimated $150 billion in health-care costs every year.
• Millions of youths and adults have literally become addicted to the chemically enhanced junk food served in fast-food restaurants, school lunchrooms and institutional cafeterias.
• In 1972, U.S. consumers spent $3 billion a year on fast food; today we spend more than $110 billion.
The junk-food industry, now under attack by public health advocates and parents, finds itself in a similar position to where the tobacco industry was in the 1990s. After decades of lies and industry propaganda, the truth is finally coming out: junk food kills.
Indeed, despite individual efforts by some states to tax soda pop, require healthier school lunches or mandate calorie information in chain restaurants, obesity rates in the United States are growing.
It is time for the federal government to stop subsidizing, with billions of dollars of public tax money, the factory-farmed crops and animal products such as corn, soybeans, cotton, dairy and meat that create the artificially low-prices that prop up the nation’s junk food industry.
We need to subsidize healthy organic food, not junk food, and promote sustainable food and farming practices.
We need to provide physical education, cooking, nutrition and gardening classes in our schools, and ban or restrict the advertising of junk foods in the mass media.
We need to teach children and adults alike to eat less meat and fatty foods and instead to increase their consumption of fresh fruits, vegetables and whole grains. It is time to put a surgeon general’s warning on junk foods. It’s time to come to grips with the fact that we have allowed the junk-food industry and the mass media to brainwash our youths and turn them into fast-food addicts.
So yes, let’s slap a heavy tax on junk food served at fast-food restaurants and in school cafeterias. A 100 percent tax on junk food and beverages would help pay for the collateral damages of this industry: the $150 billion in diet-related disease and health-care costs now incurred by the public and taxpayers for obesity and diabetes.
But of course we shouldn’t hold our breath for Washington’s indentured politicians, who receive millions of dollars in campaign donations from Big Food Inc., to take action. We’re going to have to organize at the grassroots and local level and fight for public health every step of the way, just like we’ve done with the tobacco industry.
• Cummins is the national director of the Organic Consumers Association.
Comments (21)
Add commentI knew it.
Just a matter of time before another target was located! Welcome to my world.
I kinda like this one
I thought the 10% tanning tax was stupid, I mean really tanning does not cause the health and welfare problems of smoking or drinking. Not remotely on the same scale.
But refined sugars......... just look around. The evidence of the damage is visible to the naked eye. If you want your fast processed foods, cool. Pay the tax, just like the alcoholic pays tax on their booze.
The alcoholic may make the paper with their fast burnout. But the junk food junkie is financially crippling our health care system. Costs are ever increasing for insurance because of the damages caused by obesity and the increased rate of obesity. Uninsured and not paying your bills, those of us who are and do are paying for you still.
Go for it.
I really don't go into junk food, I like my cake without frosting, and I can actually cook from the basics. Leave my store-bought fruits, veggies and occasional porterhouse steak alone.
Infant formula
For some reason they don't have to list added sugar on their ingredients label, but some varieties contain as much sucrose and corn syrup as a milkshake.
So junior gets a taste for the sweet stuff from day one. And once fattened up, he never loses those fat cells.
Europe bans adding sugar to infant formula for this very reason.
Before we get complex tax schemes going, let's tackle the easy stuff. This one's easy.
Wouldn't dream of touching whole food
Please continue to enjoy your produce and meats.
I give into processed foods from time to time. I enjoy a glass of wine from time to time. Or an ice cold beer on a hot day. But I am willing to pay for my sins.
I do think health care would be more accessible with this funding source. It isn't about breaking bad habits, it certainly hasn't done that for smoking or drinking. But it is about funding the clean up.
Ask a diabetic
if food choices affect your health conditions.
stupid idea.
Taxing junk food is a stupid idea.
Who gets to choose what is junk food and what isn't?
Tax tobacco more instead.
FEAR NO CHEESE WHIZ!
Hey lat58 - since you're an
Hey lat58 - since you're an expert on infants now, can you tell us the composition of human breast milk?
It has high amounts of sugar. That's what a tiny, newborn can digest and grow on. God has made it perfectly. Of course manufacturers have tried to replicate infant formula to that of the "perfect" baby food so it has lots of sugar.
You say, "Europe bans adding sugar to infant formula for this very reason." I doubt that's true.
Right on, jo! Chez Whiz rocks!!!
ok lat, I did your research
ok lat, I did your research for you.
Europe has "banned" sucrose from infant formula.
@Calypso: the sugar in human
@Calypso: the sugar in human breast milk is lactose, you ignoramus. In addition to being completely different, structurally, from sucrose or fructose (lactose is a galactose molecule bound to a glucose molecule), babies' brain cells can utilize lactose directly for energy. Fructose, on the other hand. HAS to be processed into glucose by the liver before it can be used, and sucrose (a fructose molecule bound to a glucose) is half fructose.
Good god. Just stop already. You have little to no knowledge in every subject you talk about it.
Quality First.
Let's require manufacturing co to put quality into their products. No more msg, TBHQ, polysorbate, propylene glycol. And the many other toxic substances that do damage to the body. I am not completely against the idea of taxing junk food but who decides what is junk. Many people believe butter and eggs are bad while others do not.
Conflicted
Im conflicted on whether or not there should be a sin tax on food. If it means the difference between a poor kid getting one meal a day, even if its not as healthy as it could be, and that same kid going without a meal at all for the day, I would prefer he get some food, period. At the same time, a container of strawberries at the store was $7.00, a portion of them had to be cut away as they were spoiled. So for a family struggling with finances, do we say they have to pay a sin-tax for a box of frozen chicken because we feel that a $7.00 container of strawberries is better for them...and is it really? What sort of pesticides were they sprayed with. You'd be surprised what they can label organic. I just have really mixed feelings on the issue. On the other hand, in some cases I dont mind a sin tax but what are they doing with the tax? Dont we have an alcohol sin tax already and what is that being used for? Do we have a sin tax for tobacco? What are they doing with it? I dont think either of these taxes are being used to cover the costs of the diseases caused by drinking and smoking which is what the author of this article thinks should happen. Our Congress just recently voted to cut funding for programs such as Meals On Wheels and school lunch programs for poor kids in favor of more Pentagon spending (hopefully it wont pass the Senate). With more and more funding cuts to social programs, Im afraid if we start adding more taxes on food, it will do nothing but make it harder for the programs to survive. I'd rather a senior be able to get a can of Nalley's chili for lunch, if the alternative is nothing.
also
one other thought. If we expect our citizens to do more to eat healthier then shouldnt we also be able to expect the produce or meat we are eating be healthier? Its frightening to read some of the FDA rules and things that are allowed with growers and the meat and food industry. After everything Ive read, I dont know if anyone can say what has caused them to fall ill, the pesticided sprayed head of lettuce shipped in from another country, the gluten full of melamine shipped in from China or the meat full of bacteria shipped in from Texas or the processed food someone eats. I think Ive read too many sites such as eFoodAlert showing all the recalls that happen for various reasons and it aint just processed foods. Or Bill Marlers blog or Food Safety News. Its enough to make you paranoid about anything you buy and eat nowadays. It doesnt even have to be human food that makes you sick. Right now there is a large pet food recall happening that covers at least 13 different brands, 39 states. The food was all processed in the same plant. A rare type of salmonella has been found and people that have handled the food as well as pets have fallen ill. The food industry as a whole is a complicated mess. And if you think what happens to your pets food cant affect you, think again. After the 2007 pet food recall involving melamine and cyanuric acid, the next place melamine showed up in was in baby formula.
The average person has not a clue how
sin taxes are really applied, nor do they really care. It is enough to get the endorphin rush from sticking it to some behavior that 'costs' society as a whole. But the 'rush' is waning and there are so many fresh social frontiers to conquer.
Im guessing
things would get really wild if a sin tax was applied on electronics such as TV's, computers, Iphones, Ipads, video games....because technically obesity isnt caused just by diet but by lack of exercise as well and one could probably say that electronics has led to obesity in our society. We have a newer generation of kids being raised on video games rather than outside riding bikes or playing with Iphones rather than going on a hike. I dont have the answer but our society has changed a great deal over time due to electronics. I would be supportive of stronger education in schools teaching about diet, exercise, how to cook, etc. There are so many younger adults that dont even know how to cook.
@p - is your nastiness
@p - is your nastiness learned or does it come naturally? Do you have any friends?
You're also wrong -
After your lecture on types of sugar in baby formula and breast milk where does lat's statement say anything besides "sugar"? We already know you're smarter than all the rest of us combined but how's your reading comprehension?
Nobody cares, except me, but here's why you're the biggest "ignoramus".
"Every formula (just like breast milk) has numerous ingredients but the three primary ones are a protein source, a fat source, and a carbohydrate source. And what are carbohydrates made of? Sugars. In fact, it's probably easiest to view sugars and carbohydrates as one in the same thing with some examples including lactose (milk sugar), sucrose (table sugar) and even corn syrup. "
He goes on the explain that "in regular milk-protein based formulas, the primary carbohydrate is lactose and not corn syrup. However, there will be times when an infant may not be able to tolerate the regular milk-protein based formulas and alternative formulas are needed. It is these formulas that may include corn syrup so that the infant may have an easier time digesting them until their system matures. So unless your child has a known sensitivity, when it comes to formulas, I would first recommend regular milk-protein based formulas that include lactose as the primary carbohydrate."
In the two primary brands of formula, lactose is the first and primary source of carbohydrates. Interestingly, in one of the major organic brands, lactose is not used, rather sucrose is the primary carbohydrate. For this reason Dr. Jeremy is not a big fan of organic formula.
It is important to point out that corn syrup is not the same as high fructose corn syrup, which some researchers believe may contribute to obesity. Both sweeteners are less expensive than sucrose, so this is probably why corn syrup is used in baby formula, which can already be fairly expensive.
The reality is we don't really know the impact of different types of sugars on infants. It is not likely as big a concern with regards to obesity because infants are not in a metabolic state to be impacted by things such as too much sugar or the glycemic index of foods since they are using every calorie for growth, unlike adults who use excess calories for fat."
I'll wait for an apology tomorrow since it's probably past your bedtime.
And by the way, did you see the latest Rasmussen poll - Romney 50, BO 43. It's rude, progressive attitudes like yours that are going to lose this election. Decent Americans aren't really into the put-downs and tearing another person apart that your side thinks is the norm.
Nice job, Frenchie
That was some good cuttin' n' pastin'. Did you understand all those big words?
But you did get me. I should have said sucrose and fructose instead of sugar. Way to go.
Regarding Obama/Romney polls, who cares? It's May, you imbecile. Alaska will go for the white Obama with pretty hair. We all know that. I'll be focusing my attention on local and state politicians, like Sean Parnell and Cathy Munoz. My vote will might a difference with them.
@lat - "My vote will might a
@lat - "My vote will might a difference with them."
May I say, "you imbecile"?
Please stay home on election day.
Apologize for what? Human
Apologize for what? Human breast milk contains no fructose and only small amounts of glucose. It's obvious from your post you don't understand the difference between different sugars (for starters, look up the differences between monosaccharides and disaccharides), and you're not even making any sense--who cares what different brands of formula have added to them? The point is that YOU equivocated the sugar in human breast milk (lactose) to the sugars specifically banned from being added to infant formula (sucrose, fructose, which Lat did mention).
Take a friggin' chemistry class. I bet you'd argue with Stephen Hawking over the nature of black holes if you could somehow tie it to a political agenda.
@p - how wrong you are - if
@p - how wrong you are - if you only knew...
Continue being the bitter, nasty person you are. No one likes a pretender.
Children
Are too!
Am not!
Are too!!
Am not!!
Are too! ARE TOO! INFINITY!
AM NOT! AM NOT! DOUBLE INFINITY!
Ignoramus! You can't double infinity!!
Imbecile! Yes you can! Neener neener! Fox TV Blonds said so!!!
I'm tellin' mom you said "neener neener!"
MOMMMMMMMM!!!!!!
(mom) WHAT?!!?
He said 'neener neener' to me!!!
JESUS TAP DANCING CHRIST! You kids are driving me NUTS! Calypso! Go to that corner! Persimmon! Go to your room! 30 minutes time out for both of you! If you're going behave like babies, I'm going to treat you like babies!
BUT HE STARTED IT!
DID NOT!
DID SO!
DID NOT!!!
You suck!
(raspberry noise)
(sticking tongue out)
(middle finger)
announcer: However, in Persimmon's defense, Calypso does appear many times to speak on things he knows nothing about, and saying it with confidence, then somehow tying it to a political agenda and making the gaps as wide as the Grand Canyon. or, he repeats buzz phrases from the Fox News Blondes, or as we've seen above, he has learned ctrl c, ctrl v quite well.
Please click me up. I want more points. Thank you.