...Helen Lee, a senior research associate at MDRC, has written a really eye-opening critique of food activism in the new Breakthrough Journal. And though I don’t agree with every aspect of Lee’s article, she makes one observation that really undermines the notion that Earl Butz is the villain behind diabesity. The raw ingredients that are subsidized by the federal government, like corn, are a small fraction of the cost of most processed foods, which are widely considered the main culprits behind rising obesity levels. Processing and marketing costs play a much bigger role. Moreover, the people who eat processed foods in large quantities are doing not mainly because of their low price, but rather because processed foods are delicious and, one might add, easy to prepare. In “Why Have Americans Become More Obese,” the economists David Cutler, Edward Glaeser, and Jesse Shapiro note that that time cost of food has plummeted, thus making it “cheaper,” in terms of hours spent slaving away in the kitchen or at a sit-down restaurant, to eat delicious food. This would be true with or without agricultural subsidies, which is why we shouldn’t expect that doing so will yield huge public health benefits.

Lee’s larger argument is that the anti-obesity policy narrative rests on a mistaken view of the obesity problem as “ecological,” i.e., as a product of agricultural subsidies and food deserts. Rather, she argues that the problems that flow from obesity are difficult if not impossible to disentangle from the problems associated with poverty, and that the best way to combat these problems is to increase health access. She also reports that upper-income Americans have been catching up with lower-income Americans in obesity rates, and high-income men actually have higher obesity rates than low-income men — a fact that would likely change the obesity conversation. In “Is Food the New Sex,” Mary Eberstadt argued that while puritanical attitudes towards sex are now quite rare among the affluent and college-educated, leaving aside the question of how these individuals live in practice, puritanical attitudes towards overeating appear to have taken their place. What is interesting, in light of Lee’s findings, is that high-income American men are nevertheless becoming fatter over time....

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