In 2011, during a debate over the nutritional guidelines for school lunches, Congress decided that pizza counts as a vegetable. And not for the first time.
The American government first proposed that an unhealthy food—if it contains trace amounts of a healthy ingredient—could count as a vegetable in 1981. Looking for ways to cut the school lunch budget, the Reagan Administration suggested that cafeterias include ingredients in condiments like pickle relish and ketchup toward nutritional requirements.
This was not good politics. Democrats and the press had a field day saying that Reagan had just classified ketchup as a vegetable. “This is one of the most ridiculous regulations I ever heard of,” Republican Senator John Heinz, owner of Heinz, told the press, “and I suppose I need not add that I know something about ketchup and relish."
The Reagan Administration dropped the proposal, but it soon became law anyway. When the Obama Administration directed the Department of Agriculture to revise school lunch policies in 2011, experts took aim at the rule that allowed the tiny amount of tomato paste in pizza sauce to count toward the vegetable requirements of each meal.
Any changes made by the Department of Agriculture could jeopardize huge contracts for companies that supply food for school children’s lunches, so the food industry responded with a $5.6 million lobbying campaign. According to Margo Wootan, director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, two multibillion dollar companies spent the most: Schwan and ConAgra, which each had large contracts for pizzas and fries used in school lunches.
Before the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) could make any recommendations, Congress ensured that the push for healthier lunches did not hurt the manufacturers of unhealthy foods. Congress passed an agriculture appropriations bill that would deny the USDA funding to enforce any policies that prevented the potatoes in french fries or the tomato paste in pizza from counting as nutritional elements.
The press again enjoyed declaring that Congress had classified pizza as a vegetable. Cynics shrugged at yet another example of the government prioritizing the bottom line of businesses that manufacture sugary and salty processed foods over public health.
Yet the one-sided nature of the food industry’s lobbying is puzzling. Where were the broccoli, spinach, and carrot lobbies? Why didn’t a member of Congress take to the floor with a set of talking points provided by the leafy green vegetable lobby? Why can’t American farmers, who enjoy huge government subsidies, stand up to the processed food lobby?
Part of the answer lies in the economics of the food industry: the profit margins and scale of processed food makers gives them a heft that growers of healthy foods can’t match.
But it is also because “Big Ag” is not in the healthy food business. American farms with lobbying power don’t grow brussel sprouts; they grow grains used to make the high fructose corn syrup in Coke, the starches in processed foods, and the oil in deep fryers.
This is somewhat inevitable, but it is also a self-inflicted wound: the result of misguided government policy that subsidizes Big Macs and Big Gulps.
The Poor Margins of Broccoli Farmers
The words “food lobby” have become synonymous with unhealthy food.
In 2015, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, processed food manufacturers spent $32 million on lobbying while the fruit and vegetable industry spent a mere $3.7 million. Moreover, top fruit and vegetable contributors include the National Potato Council, which protects potato farmers’ interests in french fries, and a company that grows tomatoes for fast food chains.
To understand why the food lobby is dominated by companies pushing unhealthy foods, a good place to start is the huge imbalance between the amount of fruits and vegetables we should eat and the relative size of the fruits and vegetables market.
According to nutritional guidelines published by the USDA and the Harvard School of Public Health, fruits and vegetables should make up 50% of a healthy diet. But the financial value of the fruit and vegetable market is nowhere near 50% of the food industry. In 2015, American farmers earned under $50 billion in revenue from fruits and vegetables. In contrast, processed food manufacturers like ConAgra, General Mills, and Kellogg each make around $15 billion in yearly revenue.
The meat and carb heavy American diet partially explains these disparities. The Department of Agriculture estimates that Americans eat roughly 50% less fruits and vegetables and over 20% more grains and meat than recommended by its nutrition guidelines.
But it is the economics of the food industry that really explain why the food lobby pushes unhealthy fare.
Processed foods have high profit margins that fund advertising campaigns and lobbying budgets. The importance of branding also leads to consolidation that supports special interest lobbying.
by Alex Mayyasi, Pricenomics | Read more:
Image: Till Krech
The American government first proposed that an unhealthy food—if it contains trace amounts of a healthy ingredient—could count as a vegetable in 1981. Looking for ways to cut the school lunch budget, the Reagan Administration suggested that cafeterias include ingredients in condiments like pickle relish and ketchup toward nutritional requirements.
This was not good politics. Democrats and the press had a field day saying that Reagan had just classified ketchup as a vegetable. “This is one of the most ridiculous regulations I ever heard of,” Republican Senator John Heinz, owner of Heinz, told the press, “and I suppose I need not add that I know something about ketchup and relish."The Reagan Administration dropped the proposal, but it soon became law anyway. When the Obama Administration directed the Department of Agriculture to revise school lunch policies in 2011, experts took aim at the rule that allowed the tiny amount of tomato paste in pizza sauce to count toward the vegetable requirements of each meal.
Any changes made by the Department of Agriculture could jeopardize huge contracts for companies that supply food for school children’s lunches, so the food industry responded with a $5.6 million lobbying campaign. According to Margo Wootan, director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, two multibillion dollar companies spent the most: Schwan and ConAgra, which each had large contracts for pizzas and fries used in school lunches.
Before the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) could make any recommendations, Congress ensured that the push for healthier lunches did not hurt the manufacturers of unhealthy foods. Congress passed an agriculture appropriations bill that would deny the USDA funding to enforce any policies that prevented the potatoes in french fries or the tomato paste in pizza from counting as nutritional elements.
The press again enjoyed declaring that Congress had classified pizza as a vegetable. Cynics shrugged at yet another example of the government prioritizing the bottom line of businesses that manufacture sugary and salty processed foods over public health.
Yet the one-sided nature of the food industry’s lobbying is puzzling. Where were the broccoli, spinach, and carrot lobbies? Why didn’t a member of Congress take to the floor with a set of talking points provided by the leafy green vegetable lobby? Why can’t American farmers, who enjoy huge government subsidies, stand up to the processed food lobby?
Part of the answer lies in the economics of the food industry: the profit margins and scale of processed food makers gives them a heft that growers of healthy foods can’t match.
But it is also because “Big Ag” is not in the healthy food business. American farms with lobbying power don’t grow brussel sprouts; they grow grains used to make the high fructose corn syrup in Coke, the starches in processed foods, and the oil in deep fryers.
This is somewhat inevitable, but it is also a self-inflicted wound: the result of misguided government policy that subsidizes Big Macs and Big Gulps.
The Poor Margins of Broccoli Farmers
The words “food lobby” have become synonymous with unhealthy food.
In 2015, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, processed food manufacturers spent $32 million on lobbying while the fruit and vegetable industry spent a mere $3.7 million. Moreover, top fruit and vegetable contributors include the National Potato Council, which protects potato farmers’ interests in french fries, and a company that grows tomatoes for fast food chains.
To understand why the food lobby is dominated by companies pushing unhealthy foods, a good place to start is the huge imbalance between the amount of fruits and vegetables we should eat and the relative size of the fruits and vegetables market.
According to nutritional guidelines published by the USDA and the Harvard School of Public Health, fruits and vegetables should make up 50% of a healthy diet. But the financial value of the fruit and vegetable market is nowhere near 50% of the food industry. In 2015, American farmers earned under $50 billion in revenue from fruits and vegetables. In contrast, processed food manufacturers like ConAgra, General Mills, and Kellogg each make around $15 billion in yearly revenue.
The meat and carb heavy American diet partially explains these disparities. The Department of Agriculture estimates that Americans eat roughly 50% less fruits and vegetables and over 20% more grains and meat than recommended by its nutrition guidelines.
But it is the economics of the food industry that really explain why the food lobby pushes unhealthy fare.
Processed foods have high profit margins that fund advertising campaigns and lobbying budgets. The importance of branding also leads to consolidation that supports special interest lobbying.
by Alex Mayyasi, Pricenomics | Read more:
Image: Till Krech
