The “Calories vs. Nutrients” Debate

The stage is be­ing set for ma­jor de­bates over hun­ger and nu­tri­tion in the 2018 farm bill.

The latest sig­nal came Tues­day when Farm Cred­it, the na­tion­al as­so­ci­ation of co-op banks that lend to farm­ers and ag­ribusi­nesses, in­vited Al­lis­on Boyd, a former county ex­ten­sion agent in North Car­o­lina who now works for the Farm Al­li­ance of Bal­timore, to be a speak­er at its Na­tion­al Ag­Day event at the Na­tion­al Press Club.

The Farm Al­li­ance helps mostly Afric­an-Amer­ic­an res­id­ents in in­ner-city Bal­timore turn va­cant land in­to small farms that pro­duce and sell fruits and ve­get­ables in the neigh­bor­hoods and to res­taur­ants. Farm Cred­it, which is cel­eb­rat­ing its 100th an­niversary, picked the al­li­ance as one of its 100 in­sti­tu­tions and people of­fer­ing “fresh per­spect­ives” for a vi­brant ag­ri­cul­tur­al and rur­al fu­ture.

The Obama ad­min­is­tra­tion and anti-hun­ger act­iv­ists have de­scribed urb­an neigh­bor­hoods as “food deserts” be­cause they lack big gro­cery stores, but Boyd said she sees the situ­ation dif­fer­ently.

“In Bal­timore one in four people live in a food desert, but I don’t like that term. I prefer to call it a nu­tri­ent desert,” Boyd said. There’s lots of “food” avail­able in the in­ner city, she ad­ded, re­fer­ring to the con­veni­ence stores and oth­er out­lets that sell plenty of soda pop and snack foods. It’s just not healthy.

Sonny Ramaswamy, dir­ect­or of the Ag­ri­cul­ture De­part­ment’s Na­tion­al In­sti­tute of Food and Ag­ri­cul­ture and the event’s fea­tured speak­er, picked up on Boyd’s theme. Ramaswamy, who is in charge of mak­ing USDA’s grants for ag­ri­cul­tur­al re­search, said that “nu­tri­tion­al se­cur­ity” is “an ex­ist­en­tial threat.” One in sev­en Amer­ic­ans haven’t got enough to eat while one in six Amer­ic­ans must take med­ic­a­tions for heart dis­ease, dia­betes, and oth­er ill­nesses “be­cause of the ex­cess­ive amount of cal­or­ies we con­sume,” Ramaswamy said.

This theme of cal­or­ies vs. nu­tri­ents is be­gin­ning to dom­in­ate dis­cus­sions of food and hun­ger as groups pre­pare for the 2018 farm bill.

The House Ag­ri­cul­ture Com­mit­tee has held 12 hear­ings on the Sup­ple­ment­al Nu­tri­tion As­sist­ance Pro­gram, the new name for food stamps. Those hear­ings make Demo­crats and anti-hun­ger ad­voc­ates nervous be­cause they fear that the Re­pub­lic­an-con­trolled House wants to cut be­ne­fits or turn SNAP in­to block grants to the states. But those hear­ings have provided a for­um for dis­cus­sion, in­clud­ing pro­pos­als to make it cheap­er for SNAP be­ne­fi­ciar­ies to buy fruits and ve­get­ables and to use food and bet­ter di­ets in­stead of medi­cine to im­prove health.

Un­der cur­rent rules, SNAP be­ne­fi­ciar­ies can buy any food ex­cept hot food, a policy that the food in­dustry and anti-hun­ger act­iv­ists have de­fen­ded on the grounds that low-in­come people should have the same choices as oth­er Amer­ic­ans.

But the bi­par­tis­an Na­tion­al Com­mis­sion on Hun­ger, which was set up in the 2014 farm bill, re­cently re­com­men­ded that Con­gress “en­act le­gis­la­tion to re­strict the pur­chase of a care­fully defined list of sug­ar-sweetened bever­ages.” The chairs of the com­mis­sion, Mari­ana Chilton of Drexel Uni­versity, and former New York City Hu­man Re­sources Ad­min­is­tra­tion Com­mis­sion­er Robert Doar, told Na­tion­al Journ­al that put­ting re­stric­tions on the sale of sweetened bever­ages was not con­tro­ver­sial among the com­mis­sion­ers.

“In the broad sense, the Amer­ic­an people want SNAP to pro­mote nu­tri­tion and healthy eat­ing. When we have a product that is con­trib­ut­ing to a prob­lem as ser­i­ous as obesity, it is something that should be ad­dressed,” said Doar, who served un­der former New York May­or Mi­chael Bloomberg.

But des­pite the fo­cus on the qual­ity of food, the com­mis­sion also noted that 5.6 per­cent of the Amer­ic­an people still ex­per­i­ence real hun­ger—not just won­der­ing where their next meal will come from—and said that prob­lem should be ad­dressed, es­pe­cially among the eld­erly, single-par­ent fam­il­ies with young chil­dren, dia­bet­ics, vet­er­ans and act­ive-duty mil­it­ary, Amer­ic­an In­di­ans, former pris­on­ers, and im­mig­rants. The com­mis­sion also re­com­men­ded that con­tinu­ing SNAP be­ne­fits for a time after be­ne­fi­ciar­ies find work might make them more eager to find jobs.

At a Bi­par­tis­an Policy Cen­ter event on food and nu­tri­tion last week, former Ag­ri­cul­ture Sec­ret­ary Ann Vene­man noted that there have been sug­ges­tions that the SNAP pro­gram be made more like the Spe­cial Sup­ple­ment­al Nu­tri­tion As­sist­ance Pro­gram for Wo­men, In­fants and Chil­dren, which lim­its foods to those re­com­men­ded by di­eti­cians and med­ic­al pro­fes­sion­als.

At that same event, however, Ag­ri­cul­ture Sec­ret­ary Tom Vil­sack poin­ted out that de­cid­ing what foods to elim­in­ate un­der SNAP would be an enorm­ous un­der­tak­ing that would be sub­ject to lob­by­ing.

The Amer­ic­an Farm Bur­eau Fed­er­a­tion and oth­er farm groups say the first goal for 2018 should be to keep SNAP in the farm bill be­cause Her­it­age Ac­tion and oth­er con­ser­vat­ive groups want to split farm pro­grams and SNAP in or­der to des­troy both. Their con­cerns are un­der­stand­able. But every­one in­volved in farm and ag­ri­cul­tur­al policy should also be pre­pared for a de­tailed de­bate on the im­plic­a­tions of fed­er­al policy for cal­or­ies vs. nu­tri­ents.