Highly Concentrated Subsidies: Bones in the Closet

If you think it's too early to plan for the 2012 Farm Bill, check again. Some observers have joked that the contentious legislation will lead to civil war. But short of joining the 2012 doom's day bandwagon, observers have good reason to be concerned. Each new Farm Bill offers the chance to sweep out what doesn't work and sign onto a new program. Unfortunately, the skeletons of the past are stacked too high to simply brush away.

According to the Farm Subsidy Database from the Environmental Working Group (EWG), of the quarter trillion dollars of farm subsidies allocated since 1995, 30% has gone to corn growers. In 2009, total corn subsidies fell by only 6% from 2008 even though the number of recipients dropped by nearly 99% from a year earlier. In other words, roughly the same amount of money in 2009 for far fewer companies than in years past (since 2003 at least).

What goes into a corn subsidy? A lot more than money for farmers. The EWG numerates the many facets of corn subsidies, including loans, insurance and warehousing the harvested crops. The subsidy program nurtures corn from its early life as seedlings, through the harsh uncertainty of weather and pests and past harvest to the point of storing and selling. This helps ensure that money be spent where it's needed.

But as many critics point out, the subsidy system is based on an antiquated set of challenges. We no longer have grain shortages. Rather, we have surplus that feeds the junk food machine. There's waste in the food system because crops like corn are too cheap not to process into every food product imaginable.

But there's also waste because the structure of corn subsidies has created dinosaurs: entities that exist primarily to fulfill a single stage of the crop process, such as storage.

Marion Nestles up to HFCS

The trade group for industrial U.S. corn growers recently asked the FDA for permission to rename High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) as Corn Sugar. As a marketing tact, the Corn Refiners Association acted in its best interest to change the name of a much-maligned product. But what’s less reasonable is when a renowned nutrition, food and politics researcher steps in to defend, well, it's not clear what. It seems that Marion Nestle and Nestle USA (along with nearly every other processed foods company) now have something in common. Namely, they both have been ignoring the emerging facts about HFCS.

Ms. Nestle (to distinguish the NYU professor from the foodstuffs peddlers) writes in the Atlantic:

Let's give the Corn Refiners credit for calling a sugar a sugar. I would prefer "corn sugars" (plural) to indicate that it is a mixture of glucose and fructose. But as long as they don't call it "natural," the change is okay with me.

It’s okay with Nestle, but is it okay for anyone else. Sugar is sugar just like fat is fat and stupidity is stupidity. There are many shades to these simplistic descriptions. Here’s how dramatically sugars can vary:

Let's Talk Shit

Everyone poops. If you don’t, there may be a serious problem. It is said often: ‘we are what we eat.’ But it’s tough to study what we eat without relying on subjective reporting, broadly-aggregated stats, or impractical calorimetric studies. Studying what we leave behind, however, is a lot easier, notwithstanding the gross factor. After all, isn’t it just as true that ‘we are what we ate’?

Feces are like Rosetta stones for the body. They help us interpret a complex language of signals and information passing throughout our bodies. We know what we put in, but that doesn’t paint a full picture of what happens inside—an apple may not impact everyone in the same way. Barring subjective reporting, repetitive blood tests or, in extreme cases, autopsies, we know (relatively) little about the daily metabolic grind. In other words, it’s a jungle in there.

Let’s not return to the days of Fantastic Voyage. Instead, studying shit—its frequency, size, shape, color, smell, chemical composition—tells the story of a journey through the body. All we have to do is collect it and study the shit (!) out of it.

We also have to talk more frankly about crap. It makes many people uncomfortable. But that embarrassment may stem from a problem inside. And the only way to know is to talk about it, with a doctor at least.