First, take a look at this NYTimes article, “For Your Health Froot Loops”, by William Neuman, on the Smart Choices label many processed foods are taking on.

What I found interesting about this article was the mention of the nation’s obesity epidemic. It got me thinking about how the epidemic is related to food security and poverty.

Processed foods and fast foods undoubtedly dominate the diets of the impoverished living in food insecurity and financial insecurity in the United States.  The frame of mind Dr. Kennedy, from the above Smart Choices NYTimes article, works within when stating “You’re rushing around, you’re trying to think about healthy eating for your kids and you have a choice between a doughnut and a cereal”, reflects the reality of how cheap and readily available nutritionally poor products truly are. Although her statement seems outrageous considering a thousand other things are healthier than sugary cereal, the dilemma of a busy mother picking between doughnuts and cereal for her children to eat for a week doesn’t seem far from reality.

So why is unhealthy food so cheap? Find out here, where Andrea Dickson states:

“It is expensive to eat well, even if you are only buying raw veggies. The truth is that lower income shoppers, and other populations that live on junk food, are getting more calories per dollar than the rest of us. It’s economically efficient, if tragically perverse.”

Also, check out what NPR has to say here.

My favorite article on the topic is “You Are What You Grow”, where Michael Pollan discusses the farm bill’s amazing impact on not only global poverty, but also on the environment and immigration. Pollan answers the question of why unhealthy corn and soy based calories are so cheap, explaining:

“This perverse state of affairs is not, as you might think, the inevitable result of the free market. Compared with a bunch of carrots, a package of Twinkies, to take one iconic processed foodlike substance as an example, is a highly complicated, high-tech piece of manufacture, involving no fewer than 39 ingredients, many themselves elaborately manufactured, as well as the packaging and a hefty marketing budget. So how can the supermarket possibly sell a pair of these synthetic cream-filled pseudocakes for less than a bunch of roots?

For the answer, you need look no farther than the farm bill. This resolutely unglamorous and head-hurtingly complicated piece of legislation, which comes around roughly every five years and is about to do so again, sets the rules for the American food system – indeed, to a considerable extent, for the world’s food system. Among other things, it determines which crops will be subsidized and which will not, and in the case of the carrot and the Twinkie, the farm bill as currently written offers a lot more support to the cake than to the root.”

So it seems that hunger and obesity are multi-faceted issues.  Legislation, and in turn food affordability and availability are effecting what food is on our plates, but it doesn’t stop there. Now Froot Loops are taking on the guise of being a smart choice under the “Smart Choices” label. All things considered, how are you supposed to be poor and healthy in this country?