Word: usda
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...like much--you spend $104.40 now for a cartful that was $100 a year ago--it's a huge deal to food producers and to budget shoppers, who are making lots of casseroles. The Department of Agriculture anticipates that grocery prices won't significantly fall before January; if the USDA is right, you would have to go back to 1990 to find a bigger single-year increase...
...postwar race to the lowest possible price, farmers applied oceans of pesticides and fertilizers--but obesity is the most obvious. A common objection to ending subsidies is that people will go hungry, and indeed some Americans can't afford to eat: in 2005, according to the USDA, 2.9% of households had at least one member who went hungry at least once the previous year. But the U.S. has a bigger problem with overnutrition. More than half of us are overweight; we spend something like $94 billion annually treating ailments related to overeating...
...food is more expensive, won't we simply eat more cookies and fewer raspberries? In the short run, yes, although the USDA has launched programs to teach people that while convenience foods have more calories, they usually have fewer nutrients. On a dollar-per-nutrient basis, healthy food is not more expensive. Lab studies have shown that fruits and vegetables are also more satiating--they make you feel fuller than junk food even though they have fewer calories. In short, we should stop subsidizing junk. To address hunger more directly, we could take that money and use it to increase...
Every five years, Congress writes a massive farm bill that impacts the economy, trade, conservation and the American diet. In January the Department of Agriculture (USDA) offered "as a focus of debate" wide-ranging recommendations for how agricultural policies might support rather than subvert dietary guidelines spelled out in its new food pyramid, right. While debate on the details of the bill has traditionally been confined to lobbyists and farm-state politicians, this year the discussion is poised to go public. Among the topics to be addressed: How might government crop subsidies be changed...
...every dollar the USDA spends on nutrition edu-cation, the food industry spends $24 on ads and marketing...