Fast-Food Enabler: Subsidized Corn

Woman Up is waging a fast-food fight (Delia, Jan, Domenica), and I'm all for it, especially after my husband and I stumbled across the documentary, "Food, Inc.," about the hidden dangers found on our collective dinner plate. Let's just say that no Quentin Tarantino film has ever made me cover my eyes so often.
I don't want to give the film away, because I want you to go see it. Let me just recount a vignette I found to be among the most poignant -- about a family whose food budget is stretched thinner than a slice of bologna. The four of them (mom, dad, teenage girl, and 'tween daughter) are in the car choking down fast food because the dollar meal is about all they can buy. Broccoli at their local supermarket, at $1.29 a pound, is too expensive, and though the youngest child squeals happily as she dashes over to a pile of pears, upon weighing them her big sister tells her that two for 99 cents isn't a good deal. So much for fresh vegetables.

Contrast that with Domenica's exultation at being at a farmers market.

Next, the teenager goes to a health seminar/class, where the leader asks the kids to raise their hand if they know one person with diabetes. All but about two hands shoot up (in "our" family, the dad, and maybe the younger sister, are diabetic). Asked to keep their hands up if they know two people, only a couple of kids drop out. Three? Still about three-fourths of people in the room keep an arm in the air.

The movie reminded me that it's not only health care that's multi-tiered; so, too, is what we eat. I'm lucky, because though a hefty proportion of our family income goes toward fresh, organic food, we get to make a decision about it, even if it means forgoing something else. It's not that different than going out of your health-care network so that your sick child can see a specialist. It costs more, but sometimes you just gotta do it.

We learn in the movie that corn, which is subsidized by the government and is therefore cheap, now shows up in an untold number of foods, masquerading, say, as "maple syrup" or mayonnaise. It sweetens our soft drinks. Cows eat corn; heck, even farm-raised fish are being trained to swim after it.

It got me thinking: if we were to subsidize our food supply in other, more healthful ways, all of us could eat better. A lot of food suppliers would have to tighten their belts, but that little girl might get a juicy, drippy pear in her lunch box -- and she might stave off diabetes. As it stands, she doesn't seem to have much more choice than one of the cows being led to slaughter.