As Government Bloats Up, We Get Fat Along With it

by Hannah Brunet

Obesity in America is skyrocketing at levels unseen in history, causing an epidemic in diabetes and heart diseases. Americans are eating less healthy, eating out much more often and are passing on their bad habits to their children. The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index shows that a whopping 63% of us are either overweight or worse, obese. 

You'd think an issue with such a simple solution of eating less and exercising more could be easily solved, but it's near impossible when families have to choose a night out at Burger King with a receipt of $1.50 per person against a wholesome “organic” meal, which lacks the convenience and is often double or triple the cost. The choice is easy. Especially for families on a tighter budget. It 's a discouraging and frustrating topic.

Good news America, it's not our fault we're so fat! It's the government's!

Corn subsidies began in 1930 during the Great Depression and were meant to lend aid to struggling farmers at the time. However as we all know, whenever government sticks its nosy nose into where it doesn't belong, no matter how good the intentions, unforeseeable consequences occur. As aid increased for corn subsidies in the 90s, outdoing tobacco subsidies by a factor of 70, corn substitutes in products have strangely began popping up everywhere. Just read the ingredients. Corn became so cheap that manufacturers could not resist taking advantage of it, incorporating it into everything. Unsubsidized or significantly less subsidized products like sugar cane can simply not compete in the face of corn. Sodas, plastics, paper products, paints, batteries, animal food, the list goes on and on. Naturally, the prices of these products dropped as corn is so cheap to obtain. Eating or drinking high fructose corn syrup soda drinks and candies too often are obviously detrimental to the health, but it's so so hard when that soda costs $1.50 with free refills and when that Whopper burger is on the dollar menu. Don't get me wrong, I am in no way getting angry at these industries for producing products using corn. I could blame them, after all they are the ones advertising their commodities and they are the ones putting their sugar dense nutrient void products into pretty, colorful and appealing packages. But that would be completely circumventing the problem. They are simply doing what people have always done, using their surrounding resources to it's maximum potential and making profits in their own self interests. Is a company really going to ignore using corn as a substitute when all of their competing partners will soon outdo them with lower prices and more colorful packages?

Of course, the government gets angry when we get fat off their subsidies and pretend as though it isn't their fault at all. It's our fault really, since we are all so stupid and need the government to provide <a href="http://reason.com/blog/2011/04/12/chicago-school-bans-some-lunch">our children with school lunch meals</a> because their parents pack foods that are considered to be much too unhealthy. I don't know about you, but I feel a person who lives with the child on a daily basis and is aware of their allergies, likes and dislikes of various foods can pack a much better lunch than a bureaucrat sitting in an office can. After all, isn't one of the basic obligations of having a child ,you know... feeding them? If you can't even do that, don't have a kid, period. I always thought that was a given. What I don't get is that the government is taxing us for subsidies on corn, and then using our tax money to pay for these school lunches so that we don't buy the subsidized corn products.

Additionally, the government is looking to raise taxes on sodas repeatedly in hopes of reducing sales of sodas, ending American obesity and saving the entire world from themselves. In reality, the soda tax would be a double tax, as we are paying for it's artificially low prices through corn subsidies and then receiving a penalty for buying it because we like the artificially low price.

Somewhere, some politician is going home with a smug grin on his face because he just convinced a bunch of citizens he'll lower the obesity rate by raising taxes on unhealthy products like sodas and taking away happy meal toys from children, without actually addressing the real problem. If corn subsidies were slashed, so many other problems would mysteriously vanish too. Our food could be healthier, our cattle and poultry meats could be healthier (because of a switch back to feeding them with grass, it would no longer be more expensive than corn) and more food could be available for eating instead of going to animal feedlots are just a few of the many, many issues that politicians propose other “solutions” for, ones that 100% of the time call for more government.