By DOUG SCHMITZ
Iowa Correspondent AMES, Iowa — Two Iowa State University researchers say they have successfully debunked the purported link between U.S. farm subsidies and increased consumption of sweets, which health and food groups have claimed is responsible for rising obesity rates.
“Eliminating corn subsidies would do little to decrease the consumption of sweeteners in foods and its extra calories,” said John Beghin and Helen Jensen in a statement about their study, released Oct. 29. “Critics have charged that the cheap corn-based sweetener used in many snack foods and beverages has contributed to high and rising U.S. rates of obesity and diabetes.”
In their study, Farm Policies and Added Sugars in U.S. Diets, ag economics professor John Beghin and ISU’s Center for Agricultural and Rural Development (CARD) Food and Nutrition Division head and economics professor Helen Jensen, working alongside University of California-Davis researchers, found the current link between U.S. farm subsidies and intake of sweeteners is “tenuous at best,” although a stronger link could be found in earlier years.
According to Beghin and Jensen, in the 1970s food companies began substituting cheaper high-fructose corn syrup for more expensive sugars made from cane and beet sugar, with farm subsidies making the substitutes much more competitive, the researchers contend.
“The increase in consumption of sweeteners has been marked by a change in the sweetener source,” they said. “Until the 1970s, most sugar was obtained from sugar beet or sugarcane, in the form of sucrose.
“However, from the 1970s onward, high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) gained popularity with food processors as a sweetener, a change induced by the relatively higher price of sugar and the emergence of cheaper sweeteners based on corn.”
But in the United States, as well as in many other countries, the ISU researchers said agricultural policies play an important role in the sugar and corn markets, which have led to concerns about the role of agricultural policies in effecting changes in diets and the composition of sweeteners.
“Although U.S. farm policies have favored the substitution of corn-based sweeteners for sugar, two facts suggest a relatively weak link between the farm policies and resulting consumption today,” Beghin and Jensen stated.
“First, the falling and relatively small farm value share of sweeteners in foods today; and second, experience with increased consumption of sweetened foods and beverages in other countries with different or no commodity programs.”
The study also found that countries with no comparable commodity programs had increasing rates of sweetener consumption similar to those in the U.S.
“The farm share of the value of sweetened food items is so small, at roughly 5 percent or less, that the effect of sweetener ingredient prices has become much less important over time,” the study stated.
But D. Patrick Johnson of the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis said that just as U.S. farm policy may have helped American farmers become the most productive cultivators on the planet and contributed to low food prices across the country, “America’s system of crop subsidies also may be contributing to poor health.
“Ninety-percent of all subsidies support just five crops,” he wrote in a study released Dec. 3. “By artificially lowering the price of certain foods in the marketplace, subsidies have encouraged excessive consumption of these foods and have changed the way Americans eat.
“Nowhere is this phenomenon more evident than with corn and corn-based products, such as the now ubiquitous high-fructose corn syrup.”
Johnson said USDA data have shown that the diet for the average American has changed drastically over the past 40 years.
“Between 1970 and 2003, U.S. food consumption rose 16 percent and the average American now consumes 523 more calories per day,” he said. “Low corn prices due to farm subsidies have made corn-based sweeteners, such as HFCS, attractive alternatives to expensive – and import controlled – natural cane-based sugar.
“Because of sugar tariffs, the U.S. price for sugar is over twice the world price. This tariff has helped increase per capita consumption of HFCS from 0.5 pounds per person in 1970 to 73.5 pounds in 2000.”
However, Lois Wright Morton, ISU professor of sociology, said limited access to nutritional food – especially in rural areas – also is a problem, which she has called a “food desert.” In fact, the USDA’s Economic Research Service (USDA-ERS) commissioned Morton to provide input on how to continue this research.
“When we think of food deserts, we think about the gaps in the food distribution system,” she said. “I’m interested in how that distribution affects the health of residents in a given area.”
Morton said the issue is the location of retail food stores, as it relates to public and private transportation in both rural and urban areas, as well as transportation limitations that can create food access problems for the elderly and households with limited incomes.
“We have vans for medical services, which help people get to their medical appointments,” she said. “We need to take one step back and look at getting people to the grocery store so they can purchase affordable and nutritious food.”
For more information on Beghin’s and Jensen’s study, visit www.card.iastate.edu/publications/synopsis.aspx?id=1069 |
