听无止境：华盛顿与"垃圾食品"

Washington and cheap junk food
CNN's Lisa Goddard looks at how farm subsidy legislation may affect our waistlines.

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What we eat determines how we’re shaped. But now experts are questioning what shapes are foods choices. Someone are pointing here at congress.

"If you’re concerned about what you eat, you need to be concerned about the farm bill", author Michael Pollan suggested in last month’s New York Times magazine that what we eat is driven by the federal farm bill. It's enormous. Up for renewal now, farm bill subsidies last year were around $18 billion dollars according to the USDA, that's mainly for corn, soy and wheat. Some of the subsidies lead to overproduction and therefore lower prices.

"With the result that, there is tons of cheap sweeteners in the form of high fructose corn syrup."

And that means soda and snack cakes are also cheaper and more tempting.

"The idea is that high calories here start with overproduction here. But farmers say the issue is really on the other end, with processing and what we choose to eat."

"Somewhere we got to take responsibility ourselves for our own actions."

Jamie Jamison farms 5000 acres in Maryland. Today his tractors are planting soil. For decades this farm has depended on subsidies to get through the bad years.

"This is the corn fodder from last year."

Some lawmakers argue the crops themselves aren’t the problem.

"The farmers produce the corn. That's healthy. It's good for you. But someone else puts the fat and salt in it."

North Dakota senator Byron Dorgan says that he is more worried about the survival of small farms like Jamison's, which can depend on subsidies.

"We look at it as a safety net."

Are farm bill subsidies are lifeline to family farms? Or as Michael Pollan and others say "Do they push empty calories on to our tables. Either way they are a massive force, dramatically affec ting our food supply from the ground up."
Lisa Goddard, CNN, Poolesville, Maryland.

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