First Blog post

The main idea that the article, “Bad Food? Tax It, and Subsidize Vegetables” by Mark Bittman is presenting is how the American food system is corrupted with all sorts of junk food which contain huge amounts of fats for people to consume. This has lead to many people obese over the last few years as the continue to seek out this type of food that contains too many calories in it. Bittman goes in depth how the government is continuing to not only address the issue in hand but also not trying to tax every single unhealthy food on the market at a higher price and encouraging people to go out to eat more healthier options that can benefit them in the long run. If they were to tax all the junk food, health care would be more affordable as the costs in which healthcare is accountable for would decrease and that the obesity amongst adults especially the youth which is proven to have been majorly affected by this will drop significantly. Bittman then goes on to talks about how it's much faster and quicker to purchase junk food at a low and reasonable price without taking the time to cook it than to buy groceries at a supermarket and make it at home which in turn is a fresh and safety product. Bittman then justifies his argument by stating statistics from different sources that show how many soft drinks people intake every year. If the government really wanted people to eat more healthy in order to stay fit, the should encourage people more through making it much harder and difficult to access cheap and disgusting junk food that is just there to make you fat. This would then cause people to rethink the product and avoid all sorts of unhealthy food.  Also, the food industry should especially promote food products that can benefit a person’s life greatly and not a product that can cause people to get obese and never have a chance to even play outside. We need the government to be on the side of the people as they lead our country and not let corporations take advantage over us. The main idea that is presented in the article “No Lunch Left Behind.” by Alice Waters and Katrina Heron is how the lunches that are being offered at school are unhealthy and unbeneficial in keeping kids safe and healthy. The National School Lunch Program which was designed for the ‘’public safety net’’ beings out food for students at schools around the country that is just simply junk food and can cause the majority of them to become sick and obese. The program invests itself into providing the students the typical meats and cheeses which is not even as good than what they could be eating like salad or pasta. If the government takes their own time into telling the program to educate the youth more about junk food and its effects in the human body, they would be disgusted by this result and eventually be interested to how healthy food could impact them in the long run. The program should be educating students into eating more fruits and vegetables that could give them vitamins in which it strengthens their immune system from harmful bacteria and parasites. We need the government to really step in on the food that they serve at school and convince them to give us healthy and organic food that we can appreciate as a community and enjoy every last bite of it.  

  

I believe that politics has a significant amount of ties to food as the food industry is all about making money for themselves and whatever product they believe will succeed on the market, they will put out. Most of the products they see that are much more successful is junk food as it's easy to make and can gain them lots of money as they sell it for a cheap price. Junk food is the problem and a way to solve it is by taxing them and allowing the obesity rate to drop and people to appreciate how beneficial it would be to eat healthy foods. Nothing can stop us being who e are. 

This article discusses on how supermarkets and groceries can really cause obesity rates to drop significantly. https://academic.oup.com/ije/article/35/1/100/849977