A large and growing share of Americans are obese. Health experts are calling it an epidemic, and costs to the nation’s medical system are huge. Obesity‐related conditions include heart disease, stroke, diabetes, asthma, joint problems, some cancers, and other ailments.
The chart below shows the share of U.S. adults who are obese has risen from 15 percent in late 1970s to 42 percent today. The share of children who are obese has risen from six percent in the late 1970s to 20 percent today.
Obesity for adults means a BMI of 30 or more. So an average‐height man of 5’ 9” is obese if he weighs more than 203 pounds. Obesity is a higher weight category than overweight, which is BMI 25 to 30.
The rise in obesity may be viewed as resulting from individual choices, but it also raises many public policy issues. One of my concerns is: Are some government programs feeding the problem and making it worse?
This concern should be on the front burner this year because Congress is scheduled to reauthorize the “farm bill.” The farm bill will likely include more than $30 billion a year for farm subsidies and more than $120 billion a year for food stamps, also called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Both programs are run by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).
Health experts point to both farm subsidies and food stamps for contributing to obesity, but there are disagreements given the complexity of nutrition issues. At least, policymakers should investigate the obesity issues before taxpayers are forced to swallow yet another bloated farm bill.
SNAP
The “N” in SNAP is for nutrition, but that is wishful thinking. Recipients can spend SNAP benefits on virtually any food item in grocery stores or local markets except alcohol, hot items, or items for on‐premise consumption. In a 2016 study, the USDA found that 23 percent of SNAP spending is on sweetened drinks, desserts, salty snacks, candy, and sugar. Let’s call that junk food. Thus, the same government that spends billions to encourage Americans to eat healthy is simultaneously spending roughly $25 billion a year or more supporting junk food.
Poverty and health advocacy groups often ignore this reality because they don’t want to undermine support for programs and spending. This annual 92‐page report on obesity, for example, proposes an endless array of new regulations on the private sector and new subsidies to improve nutrition, but it is silent on the $25 billion junk food subsidy. The report proposes new taxes on soft drinks, but fails to mention that the single largest commodity purchased in SNAP is soft drinks.
A recent 31‐page report on SNAP and health by liberal group CBPP says “SNAP is an effective program that helps millions of people in the U.S. access a nutritious diet.” The report uses the word “nutrition” dozens of times, but does not inform readers about the $25 billion junk food problem.
The Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) noted recently that SNAP participants “have lower total Healthy Eating Index (HEI) scores than nonparticipants with both the same and higher income levels.” Similarly, this study found, “Children participating in SNAP were more likely to have elevated disease risk and consume more sugar‐sweetened beverages (SSBs), more high‐fat dairy, and more processed meats than income‐eligible nonparticipants.”
The 2016 USDA study found that SNAP shoppers bought slightly more junk food than non‐SNAP shoppers. For example, 9.25 percent of total purchases by SNAP shoppers were for sweetened beverages such as cola, which compared to 7.1 percent for non‐SNAP shoppers. A 2015 USDA study found that 40 percent of SNAP recipients were obese compared to 32 percent of similar‐income individuals not taking SNAP.
This is a major failure for SNAP, which the statute says is supposed to be“raising levels of nutrition among low‐income households.” To solve the junk‐food problem, BPC proposes an array of new subsidies for people to buy fruits and vegetables. But, instead, why not shrink SNAP to a much smaller program that just subsidizes fruit and vegetable purchases by low‐income households? Ultimately, SNAP should be devolved entirely to the states, but downsizing to a less costly fruit‐and‐veggie program could be a compromise favored by both fiscal conservatives and nutritionists.
Farm Subsidies
Farm subsidies have long raised nutrition concerns, but academic studies come to conflicting conclusions. This study finds, “Government‐issued agricultural subsidies are worsening obesity trends in America.” This study finds, “higher consumption of calories from subsidized food commodities was associated with a greater probability of some cardiometabolic risks.”
This study says that the farm bill influences our health “by effectively subsidizing the production of lower‐cost fats, sugars, and oils that intensify the health‐destroying obesity epidemic.” This study concludes that “a higher consumption of foods derived from subsidized commodities is associated with obesity, abdominal adiposity, and dysglycemia, and further reinforces the potential benefits of aligning agricultural policy with health recommendations.”
However, other researchers argue that subsidies don’t affect consumption much, if at all, because the costs of subsidized crops represent only a fraction of total retail food prices. This study found that “removing US subsidies on grains and oilseeds in the three periods would have caused caloric consumption to decrease minimally.” This study found U.S. farm policies “have generally small and mixed effects on farm commodity prices, which in turn have even smaller and still mixed effects on the relative prices of more‐ and less‐fattening foods.”
Farm subsidy/nutrition issues are hotly debated, and I have not done a detailed research review. If Congress withdrew subsidies from corn, wheat, soybeans, and rice, would U.S. farming shift toward healthier fruits and vegetables? Are the subsidized crops and related oils a cause of obesity, and has the government given Americans bad nutrition advice about these products for decades, as Nina Teicholz argues? Would Americans eat healthier if we repealed farm and food subsidies of all types? These are questions policymakers should be exploring.
Congress should repeal farm subsidies because they distort the economy, harm the environment, and unfairly subsidize high earners. But also, with the growing impact of obesity on society, health concerns are another reason to re‐think passing a huge lobbyist‐driven farm bill in 2023.
Data Notes: the obesity data are from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey results here, here, and here. Surveys have not followed a regular time pattern, so I’ve included years at roughly similar intervals. For the first three time periods, adults are age 20–74.
This piece was originally published by the Cato Institute on April 6, 2023.
Chris Edwards occupies the Kilts Family Chair in Fiscal Studies at Cato and is the editor of DownsizingGovernment.org. He is a top expert on federal and state tax and budget issues. Before joining Cato, Edwards was a senior economist on the congressional Joint Economic Committee and an economist with the Tax Foundation.
After The Blog Thoughts
By Patricia
Chris Edwards points out, “The rise in obesity may be viewed as resulting from individual choices, but it also raises many public policy issues,” and then smartly asked, “Are some government programs feeding the problem and making it worse?”
He gives a brief overview of research connecting government programs to American health. Two striking statistics:
A 2016 study, the USDA found that 23 percent of SNAP spending is on sweetened drinks, desserts, salty snacks, candy, and sugar.
A 2015 USDA study found that 40 percent of SNAP recipients were obese compared to 32 percent of similar‐income individuals not taking SNAP.
Some papers claim that farm subsidies do contribute to poor health, others conclude that the impact isn’t as apparent and requires further study. The cause of the problem is still being argued, but no one can dispute that there is a growing diet problem that will increase health costs for the individual and the government.
Is American food actually different?
Online, especially on TikTok and Instagram, there are lots of videos, with millions of views, made by travelers claiming, “I’m not sensitive to gluten in Italy!” or “I ate more in [any European country] than I do in America and I actually lost weight!”
These idealistic videos play into the excuse that, “Weight gain isn’t our fault, and it’s actually our environment that’s poisoned against us!” There are differences between U.S. food regulations and European Union food regulations, but when traveling, often your eating habits and activity levels are different than when you are at home. Rather than broadly blaming “American food,” people should thoughtfully consider what they are eating everyday and buying at the grocery store.
However, accepting some responsibility shouldn’t discourage people from asking important questions about food ingredients.
Even before these social media apps gained popularity, Gwyneth Paltrow’s wholistic health brand Goop, and plenty of other bloggers, authors and speakers, have been talking about the tradeoffs of consuming processed or otherwise altered (not simply whole) foods. With every recipe alteration or chemical addition, like any decision, there is some ingredient tradeoff. Corn syrup is sweeter and often cheaper, in part due to subsidies, than sugar. This makes corn syrup an appealing ingredient for sweet, low cost, shelf-stable food products.
The government’s involvement in influencing these ingredient tradeoffs, and the grocery store purchases of SNAP recipients, needs to be evaluated with a critical eye.
Lawmakers and policy influencers should strongly consider the following questions:
Some researchers are connecting SNAP participation to a rise in health risk, is there a feature of this program that leads participants to make bad health decisions?
Have certain farm subsides distorted what farmer grow, causing food producers to alter ingredients in their recipes?
Are the U.S. Dietary Guidelines actually informing federal nutritional programs and school lunch programs for the better, considering the notable rise in obesity?
What SNAP-Education pilot programs have improved health outcomes in communities? Are there private, or state run programs that are improving community health comparatively better than SNAP-Ed?
What are the underlying economic problems causing more people to enroll in SNAP?
Check out this research:
Distributional Effects of Selected Farm and Food Policies: The Effects of Crop Insurance, SNAP, and Ethanol Promotion, Mercatus Working Paper by Jayson Lusk. Some findings from the paper:
SNAP increases food prices. SNAP recipients would lose benefits if the program were eliminated. They currently receive only part of the $75.9 billion that would be returned to taxpayers, however, because producers capture some of the benefits and increased expenditures have an inflationary effect by increasing food prices, causing all consumers to pay more.
SNAP provides inefficient farm support. SNAP may be included in the Farm Bill in part to support agricultural commodity prices for producers, but the evidence shows that it is an inefficient form of support: for every dollar spent by taxpayers, farmers benefit by only one cent.
Congress Must Address SNAP’s Contribution to Poor Health, By Angela Rachidi