Is it the speed or the ingredients that drive us to fast food? And does the Farm Bill enable our addiction?

US News & World Report

I had two encounters with convenient food (including both junk food and fast food) yesterday, neither of which...thankfully...resulted in my consuming it. First, at a regular morning meeting in my office, someone had brought donuts, ostensibly as a gesture of generosity and camaraderie.  The second encounter happened as I left the train station and caught sight of the convenience store stocked to the brim with a variety of snack foods but no fruits or vegetables.  In each case, I wondered what would happen if the offerings consisted of foods considered "healthy" instead of the sugar/fat/salt laden food stuffs.  Would the sense of enjoyment or convenience be the same?

This question rings true now because of the current debate over the role of government in our food economy as reflected through the Farm Bill that the Senate will pass today.  This bill contains the subsidies and economic protections to farmers who grow certain types of "necessary" food products, as well as supplemental nutrition assistance to people who cannot afford to purchase food.  The latter has sparked significant debate, and will likely result in cuts to the program and more people ending up going hungry in this country.  However, the former drives - at least to a point - the prevalence of unhealthy food in our society.  The subsidies for corn and soy drive the prices down, and create a market for secondary products like high-fructose corn syrup and soy lecithin.  Use of these additives allows for the cheap production of vast amounts of snack products, and with large supply comes low prices.  When grabbing a package of Twinkies costs less than an apple, the economics win out.

But can that really be all there is to it?  Would repealing the subsidies, or switching them to fruits and vegetables change the dynamic?

Although part of me would like to believe that given the choice between an apple and a package of Twinkies, that most would choose the apple if it cost less, I do not believe it to be that simple.  The popularity of these types of junk foods comes not just from their price, but the way they play on our base desires for sugar, fat, and salt.  People can develop sugar addictions just as easily as other forms of addiction, and with the same outward signs.  An apple has sugar in it (in the form of fructose), has a strong convenience factor, and even the organic varieties compete economically with other snacks.  Yet how many people pass over the apple for a package of Oreos, or a bag of Doritos?

In this context, I wonder how much success a line of new vending machines will find.  In concept, the easy dispensing of a salad should take care of the convenience factor, however at around $8 per salad, the economics does not favorably compare with the $1 menu at fast food locations.  But even if the Farm Bill removed the subsidy for junk food, and replaced it with a subsidy for fruits and vegetables, would that change anything.  A nation that still has binge drinkers,  chain smokers, and drug users after years of solid evidence shows the dangers of all of these, gives us little hope that even economics will drive our decisions.

In the end, we will have to change if we want to avoid the catastrophe ahead.  Looming costs for treating an America that is heavier and less healthy weigh heavily on our future economic forecasts.  To mitigate this, we need to change policies like providing subsidies that promote junk food, and instead switch them to subsidies for healthy foods.  More importantly, we need to work on changing our approach to business and our approach to personal responsibility.  Although this presents a chicken and egg, if industry can find alternative, more healthy ways to market our snacks to us, and we can respond by consuming less of the unhealthy and more of the healthy, we can change the market and flip it to one more dependent on healthy choices.

We no longer buy gasoline or paint with lead in it, building products with asbestos, or aerosol cans with CFCs.  We have shown the ability to make changes that improve our health.  Food choices may be too personal for us to make the leap...but it is in our best interest to try.