Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Updated: 8:13 p.m. Monday, Jan. 30, 2012
Posted: 8:06 p.m. Monday, Jan. 30, 2012
It's fascinating to see Florida's lawmakers take a stand against sugar.No, not Big Sugar. Not the industry that's a government-sanctioned cartel that has been allowed to denigrate South Florida's water resources while costing taxpayers billions of dollars in price supports.
Let's not get crazy here. Nobody's suggesting that. Florida's got a sweet tooth when it comes to making life easier for Big Sugar.
No, I'm referring to Little Sugar that our intrepid lawmakers have zoned in on. I don't think the expression Little Sugar actually exists, but it seems an apt term to describe the sugar that's consumed by the poorest Floridians.
Snack measure reeks of hypocrisy
Yes, the folks addicted to Big Sugar are considering whether to tell poor folks in the state that it's not fair for government to support their sugar habits.
It's all part of a public assistance bill that got approved in the House Health and Human Services Access Subcommittee on Monday, even though those who passed the bill admitted that government shouldn't be trying to take sweets from the poor.
But even if the let-them-eat-cake faction leads to a revision down the legislative trail, the fact that this is even being considered says volumes about the current political climate.
Florida's Department of Children and Families is in charge of distributing $450 million a year in federal food stamps received by more than 3 million state residents.
The federal government mandates that food stamps may not be used for buying alcohol, tobacco, paper products, pet foods, vitamins, medicine, or foods eaten in the store.
States are compelled to abide by the federal guidelines for this program, which is completely funded by federal dollars. And any state that wants to impose its own restrictions on the federal food stamp program, formally known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, must get waiver approval from the federal government.
And that's what the Florida bill aims to do.
It would impose tougher restrictions on federal food stamps for Florida residents, prohibiting stamps from buying sweetened drinks, sodas, Jell-O, candy, ice cream, pudding, popsicles, muffins, sweet rolls, cakes, cupcakes, pies, cobblers, pastries and doughnuts.
Yes, we won't stand for poor people using federal dollars to eat sugar, not when those federal dollars are better spent on paying the sugar producers for making the sugar.
It's a frontal assault against Little Sugar. A Florida Senate version of the bill passed the Children, Families and Elder Affairs Committee last week.
The House bill's sponsor is Rep. Scott Plakon, R-Longwood, who, like so many of his colleagues, has accepted campaign contributions from Big Sugar.
You might think this constitutes a disconnect.
But I suspect this legislation has nothing to do with sugar. It's all about boogey-manning the poor again - a popular tactic these days.
Similar effort has failed
The Little Sugar crackdown bill amounts to nothing more than political symbolism. After all, an attempt to ban sugar for food stamp recipients has been tried by another state.
Eight years ago, Minnesota requested a waiver from the federal program, after lawmakers there said they wanted to ban recipients from using the stamps to buy candy and soft drinks.
The federal government denied the waiver.
"Implementation of this waiver would perpetuate the myth that (food stamp) participants do not make wise food purchasing decisions," USDA Regional Administrator Ollice Holden explained in a letter to Minnesota's Department of Human Services.
"A substantial body of research has shown that program participants are smart shoppers, and that there is little difference in nutrient intakes between low-income participants and higher-income consumers."
So Florida's attempt to wade into this territory again has more to do with class warfare waged by people who've got the victims confused with the perps.
Sugar is unhealthy. But not just to poor people. And Florida lawmakers might be better off to leave Little Sugar alone - which involves no state dollars - and focus instead on their own addiction to Big Sugar.
4 comments:
TAX SUGAR NOW!
Time to tax sugar to combat health crisis: experts
(AFP) – 1 hour ago
PARIS — Sugar should be identified alongside alcohol and tobacco as a health danger, and governments should tax sweetened drinks and food as part of their efforts to combat it.
So says a commentary, published on Thursday in the journal Nature as part of a widening debate among doctors and policymakers about food fiscality and health.
Around 35 million people die each year of non-communicable diseases such as heart disease, cancer and diabetes and a wave of obesity is unfurling from rich countries to developing economies, say three US academics who authored the piece.
Tobacco and alcohol are already regulated by governments to protect public health, "but one of the primary culprits behind this worldwide health crisis (is) unchecked," they say.
A levy on added sugars would help meet the growing costs of meeting sugar-related health problems and discourage consumption, they suggest.
In the United States, the government is currently considering a soda tax that would raise the price of a can of fizzy drink by around 10-12 US cents, bringing in some 14 billion dollars a year of revenue.
But "statistical modelling suggests that the price would have to double to significantly reduce soda consumption -- so a one-dollar can should cost two dollars," say the trio.
Other suggestions include restricting the sale of added-sugar food and drinks in schools and letting states curb the number of fast-food outlets and convenience stores in poorer neighbourhoods and provide incentives to set up grocery stores and fresh-food markets.
The authors are pediatrics and obesity specialist Robert Lustig and health policy researchers Laura Schmidt and Claire Brindis, all at the University of California at San Francisco.
Consumption of sugar worldwide has tripled in the past 50 years, adding hugely to daily average colorie intake, especially in the United States.
More and more scientific evidence, says the commentary, suggests chronic sugar consumption has a slow-moving, complex but devastating role in metabolic syndromes such as hypertension and diabetes.
This class of diseases cost the US alone 65 billion dollars a year in lost productivity and 150 billion in medical care, it says.
I'm all for eliminating the sugar subsidies. There is no logic in providing low-cost sugar to consumers. On the other hand, there is logic in providing low cost grains to consumers. However, most of the sugary shit on the shelves at your local grocery are sweetened with high fructose corn syrup.
The Miami Herald is now down to only a couple of reporters so don't expect much from them. On the other hand, they do have a full-time reporter-activist on their payroll whose sole job is to write a blog on gay news.
Talk about misplaced priorities.
Big sugar hides behind the skirts of corn fructose.
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