Food Matters Part 3

A Brief History of Overconsumption Everything I've discussed so far-the overproduction and consumption of meat, the omnipresence of junk food, our declining health, the contribution of agribusiness to global warming and other environmental horrors-happened gradually: A hundred years ago, none of this was in sight. But though it began slowly, the process accelerated wildly following World War II, and went out of control 20 or 30 years later.

Meat's industrial revolution How did meat production became industrialized? How did the family farm become the factory farm?

In 1900, 41 percent of American workers were employed in agriculture; now, that number is less than 2 percent. Many of us still live in or near rural areas, though, and even city dwellers can sense the familiarity, obligation, affection, and grat.i.tude traditional farming families must have felt. There's no time off from farm work but the payoff-whether eggs, milk, meat, or all of these, plus hides, leather, fertilizer, pillows, and more (companions.h.i.+p, too, of course)-made raising animals a natural part of life.

Animals killed each year in the U.S. for food: 9 billion CHICKENS100 million PIGS250 million TURKEYS36 million COWS Until the early twentieth century most animals were treated in much the same way they had been for a couple of thousand years. Raising more animals than your family could use was always a way to augment the family income; but it was to feed an increasingly urban population in the twentieth century that farmers starting raising chickens for meat as well as eggs, and moved cattle and pigs into feed-lots, the progenitors of the modern confined and feeding operations (CAFOs).

As should be expected in a society with few limits on business, there was an opportunity to make real money on food animals. Since they were destined for death anyway, it made sense-from a purely economic perspective, at least-to raise them as efficiently as possible. For better or worse, the human mind is malleable enough to consider raising animals destined for the table not much differently from making plastic, even while keeping pets in the house.

Perhaps no one could have seen the result. But today's factory farm is a living h.e.l.l that has far more in common with factories-places where things are ma.s.s-produced in the quickest and most cost-efficient manner possible-than it does with people working the land and raising animals. This kind of farming is accelerating globally, but it's a mature industry in the United States, where nearly all of our food requires some form of mechanization, synthetic chemicals, drugs, refrigeration, heating, cooking, radiation, freezing, long-distance transportation-or a combination of any or all of these.

The number of animals killed in the United States each year is staggering, something like 9 billion chickens, 36 million cows (including 1 million for veal), 100 million pigs, and 250 million turkeys. These numbers swell further when you consider the dairy cows (9 million) and egg-laying chickens (300 million), which aren't intentionally put to death but live in conditions that most Americans would consider unbelievably cruel if they were applied to dogs, cats, parakeets, or any other animal not customarily eaten.

Cheap soy and cheap corn yield cheap meat (and cheap lives) There are, at first glance, advantages to all this, or at least one advantage: even with rapidly rising costs, meat remains relatively inexpensive. At an average of $1.69 per pound for chicken, $2.85 for pork, and $4.11 for beef, with double cheeseburgers still going for 99 cents and meat-based "casual dining" meals at around $10, the vast majority of Americans can easily afford to eat meat at least once a day, and often more.

More than 50 50% of the corn grown in the United States is fed to animals.

But neither factory farming nor our junk food habit could exist without cheap corn and soybeans (wheat plays a role, too, but a slightly lesser one).

There's nothing intrinsically wrong with corn or soy; whole cultures have relied on each as their main source of nourishment. But in the United States, and increasingly around the world, an overwhelming proportion of farmland is devoted to growing these two crops, not for us to eat directly (the most commonly grown varieties are not fit for human consumption), but to feed to animals or convert to oil or sugar. So dominant have these crops become (wheat, rice, and cotton are the other giants), that America no longer grows enough edible fruits and vegetables for everyone to eat our own government's recommended five servings a day. Were we all to do so, we'd be dependent on imported vegetables!

More than 50 percent of the corn grown in this country is being fed to animals; of the remainder, most finds its way into junk food (usually in the form of high fructose corn syrup), corn oil, and ethanol.

The story of soy is similarly dismal: Nearly 60 percent finds its way into processed food; the rest is used to make soy oil and animal feed (globally, 90 percent of soy meal is fed to animals). This makes it easy to understand why more than 1 billion people around the world are overweight. (The trendy term for this phenomenon is "globesity.") 1 billion people in the world are chronically hungry; billion people in the world are chronically hungry;1 billion are overweight. billion are overweight.

Even more distressing is the sheer waste of feeding corn and soy to animals and using it to produce junk food. There are nearly a billion chronically hungry people on our planet, and we have the means-the food, even-to nourish them. According to the FAO, "world agriculture produces 17 percent more calories per person per person today than it did 30 years ago, despite a 70 percent population increase" (emphasis added). The researchers estimate that's about 2,720 calories per person, per day. To help visualize this absurdity, consider that the beef in one Big Mac is equivalent-in terms of grain produced and consumed-to five loaves of bread. But instead of feeding the hungry with grain, a lot of it is going to the waistline of people in wealthy countries-often to their detriment. today than it did 30 years ago, despite a 70 percent population increase" (emphasis added). The researchers estimate that's about 2,720 calories per person, per day. To help visualize this absurdity, consider that the beef in one Big Mac is equivalent-in terms of grain produced and consumed-to five loaves of bread. But instead of feeding the hungry with grain, a lot of it is going to the waistline of people in wealthy countries-often to their detriment.

It's no exaggeration to say that soy and corn are killers, whether directly (soy oil is used to make trans fat, and high fructose corn syrup is about the most useless form of calories ever created) or indirectly (their cultivation is an environmental nightmare, and as animal feed in factories they're perpetuating a destructive system). And their use in these capacities is depriving millions of the food they desperately need. If we simply s.h.i.+fted resources to growing crops that fed people directly, we'd go a long way toward resolving many issues of health, agriculture, and the environment.

Soy, corn, and American farmland Traditional farming-regenerative farming, as it's sometimes called now-relies on crop rotation to rest and replenish the soil. This method goes back thousands of years, and is mentioned in the Bible, which mandates that fields remain fallow one year in seven, to give them time to recover.

Different crops use different nutrients, so that planting certain crops sequentially may actually improve soil quality. "Cover" crops, another part of this plan, are grown primarily to return nutrients to the soil. With care, this kind of farming can be done productively and organically, without the aid of man-made chemicals.

Planting only one or two crops is called monoculture, and this type of farming is typically used for commodity crops, like corn (which accounts for 27 percent of the harvested crops in the United States) and soy (another 25 percent). Monoculture doesn't return nutrients to the soil, so it can't be effective without the aid of chemical fertilizers, which in turn consume huge resources of energy because they're based on fossil fuels that must be refined and usually transported long distances.

Plus, chemicals do nothing to replenish micronutrients or the beneficial characteristics of the land. Our soil, once this country's most valuable resource, is not only becoming depleted, it's literally vanis.h.i.+ng. In other countries, so is the forest: Demand for soy, primarily for animal feed, is a princ.i.p.al agent in deforestation in South America.

Together, soy and corn account for 50 50% of the total U.S. harvest.

So, you have two crops coming to dominate first U.S. farmland and then global farmland. You have forests destroyed to grow more of these crops. As a result, you have diminis.h.i.+ng resources. These two crops produce food that is either next to useless or damaging to humans when consumed in large quant.i.ties. When it is fed to animals, it is inefficient (remember, up to 40 times as much energy is needed to produce one calorie of meat as to produce one calorie of grain) and environmentally destructive.

Furthermore, cows were never meant to eat soy or corn; the digestive system of cows developed to eat gra.s.ses. But you cannot possibly raise as many cattle as are sold on pasture, or as many pigs in sties, or as many chickens in yards, so producers had to figure out another, more "efficient" way to raise these animals. That way is confinement: sometimes in pastures, sometimes in cages, sometimes in concrete, almost always with soy and corn as feed. (It's actually even worse: Although chickens, pigs, and cows are herbivores, naturally foraging for plant food, we've turned them into carnivores, often supplementing their grain with ground-up animal parts.) 50% of the antibiotics administered in the United States go to animals.

The combination of crowded living conditions and unnatural feed makes the animals vulnerable to disease, so they're often given subtherapeutic antibiotic treatment to keep them just healthy enough to survive, put on weight, and get to market-fast. (Half of the antibiotics administered in the United States go to animals, not humans; cattle are also routinely given growth hormones.) Feeding animals antibiotics increases antibiotic resistance in humans, and though the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) says hormones do humans no harm, other people believe the jury is still out on this one.

In fact, unless you're one of the people making millions or billions of dollars from this system, it's all bad.

Why we can't (yet) be nice to animals I'm going to skip most of the deplorable stuff about factory farming. In fact any detailed description of growing animals industrially (the word "raising" is really misapplied here) would sicken anyone who has even the slightest feeling for other species (this includes all pet owners who are not extreme hypocrites), or who believes that the earth is to be shared by all creatures (except maybe mosquitoes), or who believes in fairness, justice, or kindness.

Let's cut to the chase. From conception to death, everything about the living conditions of animals raised in confinement is horrific. And the food these animals produce is unnatural, drug-tainted, and-compared with food from traditionally raised animals-tasteless. Furthermore, the impact on the environment and our bodies is, if not yet catastrophic, then certainly damaging.

Yet as much as we may despise this situation, we cannot resolve the plight of our fellow animals simply by deciding to be kind. We may be able to improve their existence slightly slightly, for example by mandating an increase in the s.p.a.ce allotted for each individual animal (though it's hard to imagine any government agency doing so). But even this wouldn't help much, because such changes cannot possibly be significant at our current levels of consumption.

At first look, gra.s.s-fed beef is an attractive alternative, since pastured cattle are in a more natural environment than those raised in confinement. But regardless of whether gra.s.s-fed beef is better for the health of the planet-and it's not entirely clear that it is-the world's pastures cannot even come close to supporting the 1.3 billion cattle currently being produced.

And as demand for meat is increasing, any additional gra.s.s-fed cattle would not replace those raised in confinement but just add to their numbers. Since about 70 percent of the world's farmland-one-third of the ice-free land surface of the earth-is dedicated to livestock, directly or indirectly (by indirectly I mean, for example, growing feed), to raise the amount of beef on gra.s.s that is currently being produced in confinement would mean destroying nearly all existing forests and farmlands.

About 70 70% of the world's farmland is dedicated to livestock production.

There isn't enough room. Factory farming was developed in large part to consolidate resources and make it possible to raise enough animals to meet inflated demand. If you hate factory farming (and you should), your primary concern should be reducing consumption.

Even if we could could treat animals more humanely and maintain current production numbers-logically impossible, but let's pretend-if we were to give the animals more s.p.a.ce, better food, fewer drugs, access to outside, and so on-the environment would still suffer, to their detriment and ours. treat animals more humanely and maintain current production numbers-logically impossible, but let's pretend-if we were to give the animals more s.p.a.ce, better food, fewer drugs, access to outside, and so on-the environment would still suffer, to their detriment and ours.

Production will not decrease as long as it's profitable, so we need to reduce it, and we can do so only by reducing demand. (Production would be less profitable with stricter laws and law enforcement, and with lower subsidies for corn and soy, but the federal government, no matter who's running it, shows no inclination to move in that direction.) It's much like energy: Successive governments have encouraged and supported an oil-based economy while discouraging more sustainable forms of energy, knowing all the while that the result would be pollution, war, and rising costs. And still, it's clear there isn't enough oil for all.

As with oil, our governments have supported the production of meat and the transformation of grain into refined carbohydrates, knowing that high consumption of both would use farmland that could be better used in other ways, that it would damage the health of individuals and, now, that it has contributed to global warming. And still there isn't enough for all.

Production will not decrease so long as it's profitable-we need to reduce demand.

Even if the America-first argument were pragmatic, no one with a conscience could seriously argue that Americans are ent.i.tled to eat more meat than people in other countries, just as no one can argue that only we should have the freedom to drive cars. And just as we must reduce our consumption of energy-and we will, either by planning to do so, by increased demand for limited resources by developing countries, by seeing a worldwide energy crisis, or most likely by all three-we must reduce our consumption of meat and dairy food. In fact, if the developing world increases its meat consumption to a level approaching ours, that would amount to committing global suicide.

Until just a couple of years ago, when people talked about the effects of industrialized meat production on the environment, they were talking about rampant antibiotic usage; contamination of local land and water by fertilizers used to produce feed; the impact of pesticides and herbicides; the devastation of the world's forests, cleared for land on which to raise more livestock, or for their feed; the stink created by (in particular) pigs grown in confinement, and the effect this has on human (and other) neighbors; water usage; and a host of less well-publicized issues.

Livestock produce more greenhouse gas than the emissions caused by transportation.

These are all important, but the creation of greenhouse gas trumps them all. Livestock produce more greenhouse gas than the emissions caused by transportation or anything else except energy production. Add to this the humane and human health issues and one could easily and sensibly argue that it makes more sense to cut down on eating meat than it does to cut down on driving.

Selling the Bounty Factory farming, the overproduction of corn and soy, junk food-these are just the most obvious examples of an agricultural production and marketing system gone awry: one that promotes consumption of foods that are detrimental to health, rather than real and wholesome foods.

Food companies, agricultural marketing boards like the National Chicken Council, and huge public relations and advertising firms (what was once loosely referred to as Madison Avenue) form a powerful alliance-Big Food meets Big Ad-promoting consumption of their products in obvious ways like advertis.e.m.e.nts and branding, and in much more devious, subtle ways, like funding research and paying supermarkets for shelf s.p.a.ce.

That Big Food uses all the marketing tools at its disposal is no surprise; so does every other profitable producer, from Exxon Mobil to Pfizer. In the food world, as elsewhere, advertis.e.m.e.nts, licensing arrangements, and promotional campaigns are omnipresent. They're successful, too: A 10-year deal between McDonald's and Disney was worth about $1 billion; a similar alliance between Pepsi and the Star Wars Star Wars movies was estimated to be worth $2 billion. movies was estimated to be worth $2 billion.

The Web has made promotion easier than ever, offering infomercials in the form of recipes (usually a little scary; for instance, look at www.kraftfoods.com), so-called health updates (often questionable, like the yogurt promoted on www.activia.us.com, with its two-week challenge to improve "intestinal transit"), and online communities (always blatantly self-serving, like McDonald's African-American "community" site, www.365black.com).

Advertising in disguise No one, of course, is forced to look at this junk. But it affects not only children (who, though many people insist they be "protected," often become true believers), but obviously adults as well, most of whom are ill-equipped to fend off the greatest marketing a.s.sault in history.

It's the promotion that flies under the radar that is really insidious. Few Americans know that almost all foods grown in the United States are promoted through nonprofit marketing organizations known as commodity boards, which are ostensibly regulated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)-a perfect example of the fox guarding the chicken coop.

Most of us are ill-equipped to fend off the greatest marketing a.s.sault in history.

The idea is that all producers contribute proportionally to a fund, usually called a checkoff. This money finances research, public "education," lobbying, advertis.e.m.e.nts and other promotions to increase consumption of the food in question in the United States and abroad. (The boards also develop standards of labeling, handling, and safety, but by far the largest amount of their revenue goes to promotion.) You've seen these boards' work everywhere, probably without knowing it: "Got Milk?" "Pork-The Other White Meat," "The Incredible Edible Egg," and "Beef: It's What's for Dinner" are among the best-known examples, and among the most successful marketing campaigns in history.

Almost every food you can think of, from avocados to walnuts, has a marketing board. The more sales a product generates (beef, $71 billion per year; avocados, $489 million per year), the bigger the marketing program. The goal, as always, is to increase sales by whatever means necessary, and these means include huge budgets for nonstop lobbying to affect policy and legislation. The lobbying arms, usually called government affairs committees, can have a powerful effect on legislation. (It helps when industry members become government officials, too, in a typical revolving-door policy that demonstrates the power industry has over and in government.) Food manufacturers add or change ingredients to make their products appear healthier.

Just like food corporations, food boards use every means at their disposal to convince us of the "health" of their products and the benefits of consuming ever more of them, even when there's evidence to the contrary. Nearly every move the boards make is aimed at skewing public perception, with the goal of increasing sales.

A quick look at www.gotmilk.com demonstrates this. Want to "rebuild muscle" or "increase stamina"? You don't need soy protein or Gatorade (or, G.o.d forbid, water); milk or chocolate milk is what you should reach for. Want an excuse to drink more coffee, or eat more cookies (specifically, in one recent campaign, Oreos)? Add milk. Want to make sure your daughters don't suffer from loss of bone density later in life? Make sure they eat a "healthy" breakfast-with plenty of dairy food. Want to sleep better? Drink milk before bedtime.

Just about every food board stresses the results of studies (often funded by the board itself;) showing that in one way or another, their food is "good and good for you"-even when it isn't.

Food manufacturers take a similar route. They add or change ingredients to make their products appear healthier; they'll sneak their "healthy" product into otherwise less desirable foods; they make health claims that are borderline nonsense.

Food boards stress studies that show their food is "good and good for you"-even when it isn't.

In short, they'll do whatever it takes to sell the product. Take, for example yogurt, long considered a healthful food containing beneficial bacteria. Most yogurt is now flavored and sweetened so that it's more akin to ice cream than to regular milk, and the beneficial live cultures are often killed during processing.

Yogurt and Ice Cream-What's the Difference?

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Yogurt has been added to cereals, snack bars, fast-food-chain menus, makeup, and toothpaste. It's been altered to emphasize its "health" benefits: DHA and omega-3 have been added to some brands, and Dannon's Activia contains a proprietary bacteria that the company claims is "clinically proven to help regulate the digestive system."

All this works: Yogurt consumption has more than doubled in the last 20 years.

Then there's cereal. Once upon a time, cereal meant oatmeal, or even relatively benign corn flakes or puffed rice. But many of today's packaged cereals have long lists of ingredients. You may see a brand that touts itself as "multigrain," which means nothing more than having "more than one flour." Though the word implies some health benefit, it can be as simple as putting oat flour into a cereal that is effectively a boxful of small cookies-this can hardly have an impact when a cereal contains 30 percent sugar, as many do. Yet a claim like "may help reduce the risk of heart disease" may be featured on cereals that contain less than a gram of fiber, even though many experts believe that 25 grams a day is a desirable target-so it's like adding vitamin C to a candy bar and maintaining that the candy is good for you.

The marketing of cereal and many other foods is often shamelessly aimed at children. Like Big Tobacco, Big Food is relentless in its quest for an impressionable, long-term base, and children are the perfect target. The strategy works, too: in 2007, a couple of much-touted studies showed that when children were offered the same food in two packages-one labeled McDonald's and one unbranded-they preferred McDonald's. Similarly, children preferred the taste of carrots and milk if they thought these were from McDonald's.

The marketers have invaded every possible s.p.a.ce. Food companies pay supermarkets marketing allotments or "slotting fees" to ensure optimal shelf s.p.a.ce or store location. These fees buy the looming structure of sodas or chips at the valuable end cap-the end of an aisle-or the row of branded snack foods on a shelf at eye level.

Children preferred the taste of carrots and milk if they thought these were from McDonald's.

It doesn't stop there. Nearly three-quarters of all middle schools and just about every high school in the nation has vending machines, stores, or snack bars, and the most common snacks are soda, imitation fruit juices, candy, chips, cookies, and snack cakes.

The news about school lunches is equally grim. The government spends nearly $1 billion to buy commodities from farmers each year and gives them to the National School Lunch Program, which is supposed to provide healthy, affordable meals to kids. Schools get free food, farmers are ensured regular income, and the government helps prevent prices from sagging.

Doesn't sound that bad, does it? But according to a recent study by the USDA, school lunches routinely fail the government's own nutritional standards, school lunches routinely fail the government's own nutritional standards, even when the food is being provided by the government. In fact, fewer than one-third of public schools offered lunches that met the USDA standards for total or saturated fat. even when the food is being provided by the government. In fact, fewer than one-third of public schools offered lunches that met the USDA standards for total or saturated fat.

And the government's role in supporting Big Food is not limited to school lunches. It's enormous, and mostly disappointing.

Does the Government Help or Hurt?

Overproduction and marketing drive excessive consumption: The food is available; we're bombarded with "information" about why we should be craving it, or why we'll be healthier or s.e.xier or smarter or richer if we eat it, and we respond by purchasing and eating more.

But why processed processed food? Why not food? Why not whole whole food, real food, basic food? Why not corn instead of corn chips? Yogurt instead of yogurt bars? Chicken instead of McNuggets? Water instead of c.o.ke or Gatorade? food, real food, basic food? Why not corn instead of corn chips? Yogurt instead of yogurt bars? Chicken instead of McNuggets? Water instead of c.o.ke or Gatorade?

It's easy enough to scorn Big Food or specific individuals who-compelled by greed or simply opportunity-have exploited land, air, water, animals, and humans in order to make their fortune.

But societies evolved to provide mutual protection. And in theory at least, a democratic government exists to protect the citizens who elect it-not just from external threats but from internal ones. This makes looking at our government's role in food policy especially painful. Much of the blame goes to the Department of Agriculture (USDA), which is responsible for administering the farm bill, the common name for a well-established group of laws that set agricultural policy. (The most recent version is "The Food Conservation and Energy Act of 2008.") This sweeping legislation largely determines what food is grown and also-in theory-provides us with nutritional guidance.

The USDA has consistently favored individual and corporate profits over public health.

There's a serious conflict of interest there, and it costs the public plenty. For something like 70 years the USDA has consistently favored corporate profits over public health, producers over consumers, and-in effect-lies over truth. Public food policy has not been all bad, but by and large the USDA has not done right by the majority of the citizens.

It's no exaggeration to say that public health has been sacrificed at the altar of profits, and that current food policy, although not quite the worst it's ever been, is sorely lacking. (The current farm bill, just pa.s.sed by Congress as of this writing, is not much better than its predecessors. Perhaps by the next go-round-in 2012 or 2017, depending on what's determined now-we'll have another shot, and by then public opinion may be strong enough to bring about real changes.) A very short history of American nutrition advice Starting in the mid-nineteenth century, when the British government mandated that seamen be given lime juice (hence the nickname "limeys") to prevent scurvy, there have been attempts by government to set dietary guidelines. The USDA published its first recommendations in 1894; the author, W. O. At.w.a.ter, advised moderation: "The evils of overeating may not be felt at once, but sooner or later they are sure to appear-perhaps in an excessive amount of fatty tissue, perhaps in general debility, perhaps in actual disease."

Smart guy; things went backward from there. By 1916, the USDA had divided foods into five groups: milk and meat, cereal, fruit and vegetables, fats and fatty foods, and sugars and sugary foods. In the 1930s, the USDA was studying the nutritional requirements of Americans, and came out with the precursor of today's recommended dietary allowances (RDAs). The USDA added 50 percent to what it believed was the average requirement for "normal adult maintenance," and thus set the stage for recommending what became a national habit: overeating. By the mid-1950s, we were presented with the cla.s.sic "basic four" food groups: milk, meat, fruit and vegetables, and grains.

We take this grouping for granted now, but in fact it was arbitrary. (Why, for example, are dairy and meat different, but not meat and fish and not fruit and vegetables?) By giving equal weight to these four groups, the USDA was a.s.suring all farmers that their interests would be promoted; and by making distinct categories for milk and meat, the agency made certain not only that the two biggest lobbies would be satisfied but that Americans would "understand" the "importance" of consuming plenty of each. Evidently no one important was making money from fis.h.i.+ng.

The USDA declined to address the single most destructive element in the American diet: sugar.

And by ignoring sugar (did you notice?) the USDA declined to address what has become the single most destructive element in the American diet. By lumping together fruits and vegetables, by making no distinctions among carbohydrates (whole grains, cookies, and white bread were all the same as far as the USDA was concerned), it downplayed the critical differences among these kinds of carbohydrates, and ignored the distinctions among carbohydrates, meat, and dairy products.

Less than 20 years later, the government blew it again. In the 1970s, the Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs convened to eliminate malnutrition and declared that there was also a need to confront excess in the American diet. That mission was met and aggressively opposed, as you might guess, by the agricultural and food industries, whose interest lay not in confronting excess but rather in promoting it.

The kind of fat we eat is far more important than the overall amount.

So in 1977, when the committee released "Dietary Goals for the United States," the battle lines were clear. The committee found-or seemed to have found-that eating too much of certain foods, specifically meat, was linked to chronic illness. It intended to report this, and to recommend an overall reduction in meat eating.

No sooner had the recommendations been written than the lobbyists came out in force, and before the recommendations could even be made public they were revised. So what the committee reported, in what appeared to be a compromise but has since proved to be a victory for Big Food and a defeat for public health, was that Americans should avoid fat in general and saturated fat in particular. Thus the committee created the now familiar mantra: Keep total fat to less than 30 percent of caloric intake; concentrate on polyunsaturated fat; decrease cholesterol intake, and so on.

Thirty years later, it seems safer to say this: We need fat to live, and the kind of fat we eat is far more important than the overall amount.

It's not entirely clear that either saturated fat or cholesterol on its own is harmful.

When polyunsaturated fat is hydrogenated, as it is in margarine and shortening, it's dangerous to our health.

Monounsaturated fats, like those in olive oil, are accepted as the best ones to consume for heart health.

The only foods whose value seems unquestioned, and which can do you no harm (unless they're bathed in pesticides, of course), are what we think of as plants-vegetables, fruits, legumes, nuts, and grains.

Nutrition advice meets food policy At the same time as the Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs was working on its report, changes in government farm policy encouraged boosting meat production as well as that of the grains that were increasingly used to feed livestock. Grain could be much more easily raised for profit than gra.s.s, even though cattle are natural grazers ("graze" and "gra.s.s" have the same root) and their stomachs cannot easily digest grain.

Back in the 1930s, the Roosevelt administration established a program to help people who made their living off the land cope with the falling prices that resulted from overproduction. The Commodity Credit Corporation, as it was called, set a target price based on the cost of production for corn and other storable commodities. When the market fell below the target price, farmers could take out a loan for the value of the crop, using the crop as collateral. They would then store the corn until the market rebounded, and use the proceeds to repay the loan. If the market didn't improve, the government bought the grain and sold it when prices recovered.

Changes in government farm policy have encouraged increased meat production for at least 35 35 YEARS. YEARS.

In theory, the program had several benefits. It regulated production to prevent surpluses, and it created a national grain reserve that could stabilize prices during droughts or other disasters. It also kept farmers from abandoning their land as had happened widely during the early 1930s, when a couple of b.u.mper years that lowered prices were followed by a series of droughts in which crops could barely be grown.

Fast-forward to 1973, when President Nixon made a deal to sell grain to the Soviet Union just when a bad growing season was about to produce domestic shortages. The result was prices so high that many consumers boycotted meat. Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz, in an attempt to drive prices down again, encouraged farmers to plant "fence row to fence row" while replacing some loans with direct payments. In other words, farmers were encouraged to grow wheat, feed crops, cotton, and other designated commodities, then guaranteed payment for them.

Agricultural subsidies cost taxpayers $19 billion a year and benefit only billion a year and benefit only 3100 3100 farmers. farmers.

Thanks to this complicated system of price supports, loans, and deficiency payments (the government even paid producers the "balance" when market prices fell below preset levels) subsidies have evolved beyond their original intent into farm bills that require months of congressional haggling every few years.

This was a recipe not only for overproducing like mad but for making some farmers rich. Today, this program costs taxpayers about $19 billion a year, and benefits only about 3,100 farmers, mostly big growers of-guess what-corn, soy, and other subsidized crops.

The force-feeding of America Someone had to eat all that food, and it wasn't the Russians. In fact, it wasn't being offered to them, because producers found that the way to make the most money possible was to grow grain that would not be eaten directly (we don't eat much grain anyway) but processed into profitable and easily transportable things like animal feed, white flour, high fructose corn syrup, and oil. (Michael Pollan, in a depressing, amusing, and brilliant article written for The New York Times Magazine The New York Times Magazine in 2003, reminds us that surplus grain was once converted to alcohol; now, in a nation that would rather eat than drink, much of it is converted to sugar and oil.) in 2003, reminds us that surplus grain was once converted to alcohol; now, in a nation that would rather eat than drink, much of it is converted to sugar and oil.) Thus commodity foods have remained artificially cheap. As a result, we're eating about 25 percent percent more calories per day than we were in 1970. We're also eating about 10 percent more meat, 45 percent more grains (mostly refined), and about 23 percent more sugar.

Consumption Rates of Various Foods (in pounds per capita) [image]