The Muck of Ages

NY Times: "School Lunch Proposals Set Off a Dispute"

emer:

Another reason, albeit a bit less obvious, to Occupy Wall Street - Agricultural corporations dictating the nutrition of our future generations:

“…the battle is shaping up as a contentious and complicated fight involving lawmakers from farm states and large low-income urban areas that rely on the program, which fed some 30 million children last year with free or subsidized meals. Food companies have spent more than $5.6 million so far lobbying against the proposed rules.”

The free/reduced cost school lunch program is a cornerstone of food insecurity prevention among children.  Corporations have been pushing their interest in producing cheap food with low nutritional quality for higher profits (something not discussed in the article but widely undisputed) for a long time now, and it’s clear that it’s directly impacting the health of economically disadvantaged children in this country.  I don’t think it’s a hard stretch to assume that the politicians arguing against changes to the school lunch program (including my state’s own Senator Collins) are those whose pockets are lined (and campaigns funded) by agricultural and food service corporate interests.

It’s no wonder that the economically disadvantaged are also those suffering from higher rates of chronic disease when the corporations dictate nutrition policy.  They’re put at a health disadvantage from the get-go.

And, believe me, as a public health worker (go us!), I’m fully aware that a myriad of reasons factor into health and chronic disease.  Just because those reasons exist doesn’t mean we can’t—and shouldn’t—push forward evidence-based policy and practice.  In many ways, the basis of public health IS about pushing back against corporate interests (to name a few: tobacco, pollution, tainted food, access to health care).

Bottom line?  We’re all in this together.  We have to be—our life(lives) depends on it.