A LACK of affordable food is creating an even fatter America. The US Department of Agriculture said 49 million Americans, including nearly 17 million children, lived last year in households that could not afford all the food they needed. A third of them at times truly went without food. But the real issue was quality. In a United States flooded with an overabundance of cheap, empty calories, and plagued by “food deserts’’ in inner cities and rural areas lacking fresh fruits and vegetables, families adjusted to the recession by eating fast food and trash food.
This will only accelerate the trends reported last week in the 20th edition of America’s Health Rankings, published jointly by United Health Foundation, the American Public Health Association, and Partnership for Prevention. That report predicts that if obesity rises at its current rate, 43 percent of Americans will be obese by 2018, with several states crossing the 50 percent mark. Even Massachusetts, currently the second-leanest state behind Colorado, will become 34 percent obese over the next decade. Obesity will eat up 21 percent of America’s health care costs by 2018, to the tune of $344 billion a year.
President Obama has made hunger a priority, requesting an additional $10 billion over 10 years for childhood nutrition programs, in a bill Congress is due to take up this spring. Through school lunch and breakfast programs, the federal government serves more than 31 million kids. But Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack told a Senate committee last week that he wants to do more: expand the number of schools that offer lunch and breakfast; increase the number of eligible children; train school food workers to create healthy and appealing meals; and improve the standards for foods in school vending machines.
Vilsack has also undertaken a “Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food’’ initiative that aims to increase local purchasing - including by school systems - and boost small farms. It’s a striking development for an agency that has been accused of a cozy relationship with agribusiness, and a sign that Obama is serious about supporting locally grown food.
Passing the president’s bill would be a great start. But the administration must then keep striving to make healthy produce widely available and priced at a rate competitive with burgers, fries, soda, and candy. Communities themselves can take steps to promote farmers markets and pressure local stores into rethinking product placement - how about apples at checkout counters instead of candy? Spending a little more to promote better eating is the best way to take a big bite out of health care costs.
