While agro subsidies in the US lead to overproduction of corn and soy which in turn leads to processed food based on the same, the connection between relatively cheap processed food and the obesity epidemic is tenuous.
First, processed food does not necessarily decrease the cost of food overall. For example, pop will always be more expensive than water; people dont need to drink pop daily; and yet they buy in bulk and do so. Second, fresh produce in supermarkets is expensive when compared to processed food since it has to stored, refrigerated and shipped across continents; but local fresh produce (sold in the like of farmers markets) is often cheaper than frozen or canned produce even in the US. Local produce has less variety, is seasonal in availability and has a shorter shelf life even when refrigerated but is more flavorful and probably healthier. Obesity occurs for most part is because or relative over-eating driven by cultural eating habits, generic fast food and advertising. In the US for example, people eat anywhere at anytime and on the go. In addition, eating is often rushed or goes on with other activities; this leads to massive over eating. On the other hand, people in cultures that have fixed times for meals, fixed places for meals, and time to focus on the meal, do not tend to over eat that much. Eating on the go or not having enough time for a meal leads to rushed eating and which in turn leads to overeating since by the time the brain signals satiation considerable extra food has already been swallowed. Generic fast food is calorie dense and is mostly processed food since it is produced in large quantities and then distributed to the outlets. A key advantage of fast food is that the chain hamburger is guaranteed to taste the same everywhere in a country because people on the go prefer to eat the same meal most of the time. Competition in the fast food business has led to increasing size of portions; because marketers discovered that the easiest way to increase price that is acceptable to consumers is to double the portion size (which hardly increase the production cost). When portion sizes increase people tend to consume the larger portion. Food and pop advertising is the most insidious. A pop a day alone is guaranteed to lead to overweight in a few short months. The margin on pop is so high that variation in the cost of raw materials, mostly water and corn syrup or some other sugar, matters very little. Finally, genetics play a very important role in how a race adapts to increased caloric intake. The pima Indians, for example, have obesity rates around 70% and diabetic rates of around 50%. There is some evidence that south Indians do not adapt well to increased caloric intake; for example in Chennai the rates of diabetes has sky rocketed in the past decade [wasnt there a NYT editorial on it?]. - Shyam __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com
