Canned goods, block cheese, cereal. These are the foods I remember my mother bringing home from our small-town food pantry. I was a strange child; I would beg my mother for fresh broccoli and carrots. But we rarely had them because they were expensive.
The food she took from the food bank and other processed foods have become a staple in many low-income communities because they are cheaper, especially Indigenous communities like mine. This is due in part to forced removal from ancestral lands and disruption of traditional foodways, as well as U.S. Department of Agriculture staple food distribution programs., such as the food distribution program on Indian reservations.
Fortunately, generations of my family were subsistence farmers. I saw firsthand where my food came from, and there was always something fresh to eat in the summer. But despite a history of subsistence farming, processed foods have had a significant impact on my home community of Robeson County, NC, with 16 percent of adults suffer from diabetes compared to the national average of 10 percent.
As Durham County’s former first food security coordinator, I helped residents choose between paying their rent and buying groceries. I frequently grappled with the question of how to make nutritious food more affordable. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, food prices have skyrocketed and food insecurity has reached new heights, impacting the physical, mental, and emotional well-being of countless families. As rents skyrocket and wages stagnate, more and more people are finding it difficult to afford basic necessities.
Like many families, my family has chosen quantity over quality when resources are tight, trying to get as much food as possible for as little money as possible. Additionally, time constraints, such as working multiple jobs, limit people’s ability to prepare meals, forcing them to turn to highly or ultra-processed, convenient alternatives that are often cheaper and more appealing due to additives.
One of the reasons why highly processed foods, including those made from corn, soy and sugar, are so cheap is that these products are heavily subsidised by the government. These so-called commodity products, such as corn, soybeans and cotton, account for 90 percent of agricultural subsidies, while “specialty” products, which include fruits and vegetables, account for only 10 percent.
The Agricultural Law, The law, which expires on September 30, 2024, is one of the main sources of these subsidies. Congress is unlikely to pass a new farm bill this year, but it is an important time for United States policymakers to adopt better farm policies and make it easier for consumers to live healthy lives. Better food policies can help people afford healthier foods, including fruits and vegetables.
In Durham County and many other regions across the country, there are local programs that help low-income families access fresh fruits and vegetables. However, these programs have limited funding and are not available everywhere.
But it’s not just food-insecure households that consume ultra-processed foods. According to a study of over 10,000 people from Emory University and the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, about 56 percent of all calories consumed came from heavily subsidized foods, such as sodas sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup and dishes prepared with soybean oil. In addition, a study from Northeastern University’s Network Science Institute found that 73 percent of the U.S. food supply consists of ultra-processed foods, which are on average 52 percent cheaper than less-processed alternatives.
Subsidies have helped make these foods more affordable and widely used in the food industry, but numerous studies show that eating ultra-processed foods leads to poor health and preventable chronic diseases such as type 2 diabetes and heart disease.
The U.S. government spends billions of dollars on subsidies to make unhealthy alternatives the cheapest alternative. At the same time, it invests billions of dollars in public health programs to encourage people to eat healthy and avoid highly processed foods. Having worked for 12 years as an evaluator for government health programs, it’s easy for me to see that these investments cancel each other out. More subsidies for fruits and vegetables would make these foods more affordable and help make the healthy alternative the easy alternative.
It is true that reducing subsidies for crops could make other products more expensive, such as ethanol, gasoline and cotton for clothing. But people can much sooner use less gasoline and cotton than buy less food.
We need an overhaul of current farm subsidies so that people can afford nutritious food and reduce consumption of highly processed foods. If U.S. policymakers prioritize subsidies for fruits and vegetables, we can envision a future where the healthy choice is the easy and affordable choice, and we can reverse the trend of diet-related disease in the United States.
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Photo courtesy of Gemma, Unsplash
