{"id":686957,"date":"2010-03-09T12:41:41","date_gmt":"2010-03-09T17:41:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/business\/archive\/2010\/03\/chart-of-the-day-our-upside-down-food-policy\/37235\/?rss=37235"},"modified":"2010-03-09T12:41:41","modified_gmt":"2010-03-09T17:41:41","slug":"chart-of-the-day-our-upside-down-food-policy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/686957","title":{"rendered":"Chart of the Day: Our Upside-Down Food Policy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Nutrition pyramids exist to give us a sense of how much we&#8217;re supposed to eat from each food group. The federal government&#8217;s food subsidy policy exists to manage supply and protect prices for farmers with excellent lobbying groups. These two things share as much in common as the fast food industry and PETA. So when turn them into pictures and put them side-by-side, we get this:<\/p>\n<p>:<br \/>\n<img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/graphics8.nytimes.com\/images\/2010\/03\/09\/business\/economy\/pyramid.jpg?w=780\" alt=\"DESCRIPTION\" \/><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m sympathetic to the argument that taxing &#8220;bad&#8221; food is too blunt an instrument to use in the war against obesity (food isn&#8217;t like cigarettes, because we don&#8217;t need tobacco to live, etc&#8230;). But let&#8217;s be clear: the federal government already has a tax policy affecting what we eat, and it dramatically distorts the price of our food &#8230; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/business\/archive\/2009\/07\/this-is-why-youre-fat\/21684\/\">and the size of our waists<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>[via <a href=\"http:\/\/economix.blogs.nytimes.com\/2010\/03\/09\/why-a-big-mac-costs-more-than-a-salad\/\">Economix<\/a>]<br \/><br clear=\"both\" style=\"clear: both;\"\/><br \/>\n<br clear=\"both\" style=\"clear: both;\"\/><br \/>\n  <a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href='http:\/\/www.pheedcontent.com\/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:82852a8544d929986647c11ed69a4a53:SAZ9YNDSkDAie7rROEciPZBzJb2CZXKqD9fvE1QWzerqs3pb0mu3ClysXS7d44XGqGB41zoUEW7v'><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" border='0' title='Email this Article' alt='Email this Article' src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/images.pheedo.com\/images\/mm\/emailthis.png?w=780\"\/><\/a><br \/>\n  <a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href='http:\/\/www.pheedcontent.com\/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:20b56ccc83e6c16fc402e1256f5b7791:iJp45JJ8uZYvzSOwG9yhXdty0UTl88nbwWtCTb5X1jy5RZ3f4xYJ50Zl5gh%2B7On4L1imUL1wt7Eg'><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" border='0' title='Add to digg' alt='Add to digg' src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/images.pheedo.com\/images\/mm\/digg.gif?w=780\"\/><\/a><br \/>\n  <a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href='http:\/\/www.pheedcontent.com\/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:111e9fba50ae9b459c870825885641f7:Q9Bc5AU1kjYboin5asfKpm2y5fhSK5c8dllX0NYtmp907wxP37q6PfDDrMiKoiYDme%2BYNa8JteML'><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" border='0' title='Add to Reddit' alt='Add to Reddit' src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/images.pheedo.com\/images\/mm\/reddit.png?w=780\"\/><\/a><br \/>\n  <a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href='http:\/\/www.pheedcontent.com\/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:4b7a109ff5fb2e73b29675e035b99c75:3hmjXG9wPahJgFBZVuArM2KVjdScMue0wrqdgwvoaY%2BDriO0X3RDvZOcyZAwaJzB7uotxVxNC2MePg%3D%3D'><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" border='0' title='Add to Twitter' alt='Add to Twitter' src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/images.pheedo.com\/images\/mm\/twitter.png?w=780\"\/><\/a><br \/>\n  <a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href='http:\/\/www.pheedcontent.com\/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:387987947b30701a8f36b580d3d721e0:oUCdJ8MMKLuKxJF3u2Ge9B2UnDxOoXtb5CKyZ0T1%2B3blWAsxbUWmgrUQSuv1%2BQpDQIuFCKI%2BXI62'><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" border='0' title='Add to del.icio.us' alt='Add to del.icio.us' src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/images.pheedo.com\/images\/mm\/delicious.gif?w=780\"\/><\/a><br \/>\n  <a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href='http:\/\/www.pheedcontent.com\/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:01ed51dae8ec268bc4b71356bd26d1df:3ckh4XbMC0tv06hW4P4LwjyW%2FOrGvnJp8yO05pRmU5pxUCcBeMi0Rbgz%2FW%2BpKWotDsqvDa6lHvME3g%3D%3D'><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" border='0' title='Add to StumbleUpon' alt='Add to StumbleUpon' src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/images.pheedo.com\/images\/mm\/stumbleit.gif?w=780\"\/><\/a><br \/>\n  <a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href='http:\/\/www.pheedcontent.com\/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:cfafd030f0d9dd22a6e73e3a4a859f3e:pVzbpoSLQOjZ7r8yXcF9nA1Krdoz1L45dv72MjiSzQEqeqdfBUPXj321tDx1h4EUeJWjzRgiwauIWw%3D%3D'><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" border='0' title='Add to Facebook' alt='Add to Facebook' src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/images.pheedo.com\/images\/mm\/facebook.gif?w=780\"\/><\/a><br \/>\n<br clear=\"both\" style=\"clear: both;\"\/><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/ads.pheedo.com\/click.phdo?s=039179fa3e4de63f0c55526f391d8545&#038;p=1\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" style=\"border: 0;\" border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/ads.pheedo.com\/img.phdo?s=039179fa3e4de63f0c55526f391d8545&#038;p=1\"\/><\/a><br \/>\n<img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" height=\"0\" width=\"0\" border=\"0\" style=\"display:none\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/a.rfihub.com\/eus.gif?resize=0%2C0\"\/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~r\/AtlanticBusinessChannel\/~4\/eJPt0n50Wtc\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Nutrition pyramids exist to give us a sense of how much we&#8217;re supposed to eat from each food group. The federal government&#8217;s food subsidy policy exists to manage supply and protect prices for farmers with excellent lobbying groups. These two things share as much in common as the fast food industry and PETA. So when [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":942,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4821],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-686957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9NivD-2SHX","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/686957","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/942"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=686957"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/686957\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=686957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=686957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=686957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}