Healthy Eating Shouldn't Be Political... But It Is

Healthy eating, especially in schools, shouldn't be a political hot potato. But it is... very much so. Anyplace where vested interests and big money collide with progress you can count on an explosion. And few groups short of Wall Street, the Medical Industrial Complex, and the Military Industrial Complex have been as adapt as AgriBusiness in molding public policy to its own special interests. Since 1990 AgriBusiness has poured $339,822,615 into congressional races. In addition, AgriBusiness has spent an astronomical $1,280,824,983 on lobbying since 1998! And they're very strategic with their investments. Although they're on both sides of the aisle, most of their money goes to Republicans and most of the Democrats who get the big bucks are Blue Dogs and other corrupt conservatives. AgriBusiness' contributions, thinly veiled bribes, have amounted to $215,510,053 for Republicans and $123,201,065 for Democrats. Their top half dozen recipients (among those still in office) have been

John McCain (R-AZ)- $123,201,065
Saxby Chambliss (R-GA)- $3,682,059 (Ranking Republic on Senate Agriculoture Committee)
Blanche Lincoln (D-AR)- $2,515,452 (Chair of Senate Agriculture Committee)
Barack Obama (D)- $2,312,149
Mitch McConnell (R-KY)- $2,278,472
Collin Peterson (D-MN)- $2,009,713 (Chair of House agriculture Committee)

And Agriculture policy-- as well as food policy, of course-- has been intractable and very much oriented away from family farms, away from consumers, away from health concerns and focused like a laser beam on the bottom lines of a few huge corporations.

Michelle Obama has come up against a great deal of criticism just for planting an organic garden at the White House. Her championing healthy school lunches means slaughtering even more sacred cows-- and the toxic corporate food industry is coming after her with all guns blazing.

Yesterday the L.A. Times reprinted a White House press release about the encouragement Mrs. Obama is giving schools to serve fresh produce in the form of salad bars. The object is to get children to eat more fresh fruits and vegetables, which is more healthy than eating the cheap, mass-produced processed foods normally available in schools. Obesity is a national problem that politicians are afraid to address, even though obesity-related health care costs are about $147 billion per year. Monday the First Lady was in Miami celebrating the first delivery of a free salad bar to a public school.

Only about 15 percent of public school cafeterias have salad bars. Dozens of schools want to add them, but can't afford the $2,500 equipment display or the produce to stock it, said Lorelei DiSogra, vice president of nutrition and health for the United Fresh Produce Association. The organization is donating 6,000 salad bars to schools, mostly in low-income neighborhoods, over the next three years as part of Obama's Let's Move Salad Bars to Schools initiative.

...On Monday, she encouraged members of Congress to "do their part," referring to the stalled child nutrition bill that aims to improve school lunches and expand feeding programs for low-income students. Anti-hunger groups and more than 100 Democrats protested the use of food stamp dollars to pay for it.

The proposed new nutrition standards call for using leaner meats and whole wheat buns in school lunchrooms and stocking vending machines with less candy and fewer high-calorie drinks.

Congressional passage of the bill would be only the first step. Decisions on what kinds of foods could be sold-- and what ingredients might be limited-- would be left to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The vested interests have been successful in encouraging the conservatives who they finance to make light of healthy eating and to attack these kinds of initiatives as waste and fraud and part of the Nanny State. But a report this week from UnitedHealth underlines why the issue of food policy needs to be a national priority. Even the Pentagon has been complaining that there are fewer and fewer physically fit recruitment possibilities.

Diabetes or prediabetic conditions will strike half of all adult Americans by the end of the decade unless people drop extra weight, said UnitedHealth Group Inc., the largest U.S. health insurer by sales.

The disease will cost the nation almost $3.4 trillion, more than 60 percent paid for by the U.S. government, in the 10 years through 2020, according to a study released today by the Minnetonka, Minnesota-based insurer. The number of Americans with high blood sugar will rise 44 percent to 135 million in 2020, from 93.8 million in 2010, researchers said.

Diabetes is growing as the U.S. population skews older and fatter, said Simon Stevens, executive vice president for the company’s Center for Health Reform. About 12 percent of about 235 million adult Americans are diabetic, and 28 percent are prediabetic, the study found. Prediabetics can lower the odds of getting the full disease by losing weight, he said.

“There is nothing inevitable” about the rise in diabetes, Stevens said in a telephone interview. “Even quite modest changes, like losing 5 percent of body weight, have the potential of producing decreases. If we don’t take obesity seriously, we risk our children living shorter lives than we parents have lived.”

First lady Michelle Obama started a campaign aimed at reducing childhood obesity as a way to make Americans healthier. Former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin criticized the government intervention into daily life when she brought cookies to a Pennsylvania school she was visiting, Bloomberg Businessweek reported Nov. 18.

This is an “epidemic that is larger than breast cancer and HIV together,” said Deneen Vojta, a physician and senior vice president at the UnitedHealth center. “Yet it doesn’t feel like an epidemic in this country because of the real under-awareness of the situation.”

So what do you think... would people rather have one of Palin's sugary, fatty, unhealthy cookies or some veggies? Just look at the election results from 3 weeks ago.