Yes, federal law drives up the cost of food (with tariffs on lower-cost foreign supplies–also with Marketing Orders that limit production) and drives it down (with subsidies). Grok readers want the market to determine prices.
Congress has no opinion on the price of anything, only on how best to please donors and lobbyists. A law in either direction doesn’t evidence intent.
Yes, given the substitution from sucrose to MORE EASILY DIGESTIBLE fructose, we would all get fatter, ALL OTHER THINGS BEING EQUAL. But they never are. Some of us step on the scales and adjust our diet. THINGS don’t cause MISHAPS. Not fructose, not guns, not SUVs. The wide availability of good-tasting, zero-calorie sweeteners should have made us all bony wraiths by now, except that we don’t care.
Tim Worstall at the Adam Smith Institute argues that obesity is a long-term trend fundamentally caused by so few people having to do physical labor (not even washing clothes by hand!) or living in chilly homes. But a short-term aggravator is society’s tendency toward excuse-making. Handicapped parking placards are a big reward for being fat.
Yes, the farm bill is pure racketeering, sometimes playing industry against industry, and should be opposed merely for keeping the government involved in decisions it can’t make well. But federal farm policy doesn’t cause poor health. Anyone who thinks subsidizing corn farmers is unhealthy must believe that the national ethanol boondoggle, which diverts their output to dilute our gasoline, is a health masterpiece!
