Mass fat production leads to mass fat consumption

I'm fat.

Well, a little fat.

My body mass index (BMI) comes out at 28. You take your weight, divide it by height. Here's a calculator.

It's not all fat. Muscle weighs more than fat, but technically I need to lose 25 pounds to be "normal."   (This picture of the First Lady jumping rope is from her Let's Move campaign.)

Still, when I go to the YMCA, usually six days a week, they call me stretch. Even neighbors who are trying to follow the First Lady's prescription are fat.

It's not my imagination. According to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Trust for America's Health, 27 percent of Georgia adults and a whopping 37 percent of its kids are obese, meaning they have a BMI of 30 or more.

The only state with an obesity rate under 20 percent last year was Colorado. Nearly all states have higher obesity rates among children than adults. An exception is Oregon, which I profiled at ZDNet Healthcare a few months ago.

A summary of the Johnson Foundation report, titled "F as in Fat," says that the current economic crisis could make the obesity trend worse. It wants government at all level to fight obesity from the demand side, through education programs.

My view is such an approach will fail. Or its success will be very limited. Oregon, whose anti-obesity program is a model for the nation, still has an obesity rate of about 25 percent.

There is already lots of pushback against such plans, with some people actually deciding to get fat in defiance of the policy. I see a lot of it here, in the comments at SmartPlanet. Obesity is a choice, commenters say. Programs aimed at reducing it are anti-freedom.

Now for a shocker. I agree.

Our obesity epidemic is not a demand problem. It's a supply problem. The mass production creates the mass production, as illustrated in the 1955 cartoon (subsidized by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation) "Heir-Conditioned."

Current U.S. Department of Agriculture programs still support low cost, mass production of protein, starch, and corn-based sugar. Some of these specific programs date from the Great Depression.

Because current market incentives, imposed by the government, encourage factory production of protein and mass production of high fructose corn syrup, we have (surprise) super-cheap, mass-produced chicken, pork, beef, and sweet treats.

Changing those policies won't be easy, because there's a vast industry -- much of it now geared to export -- that has grown fat on those policies.

Companies like Tyson Foods, Smithfield Foods and Archer Daniels Midland have grown fat on our current system of subsidies. So have our fast food chains. So have our food manufacturers.

These companies, and others, will argue that any move to bring food production closer to home, to encourage truck farming and vegetables, or to reduce their subsidies in any way threatens mass starvation, here and around the world.

The opposite is the case.

Because we subsidize exports of grain, sugar and protein, African, Asian and South American markets can't develop. And because we subsidize for export, we can't either.

The answer to the obesity epidemic lies in changing our production incentives. Take the price supports off mass produced grain and feed, give them to small local truck farms and sustainable production methods. Then export expertise, which is more valuable than corn syrup anyway.

But what do I know? I'm fat.

This post was originally published on Smartplanet.com