The Latest Food Crisis: “Food Insecurity”

Dees Illustration

Karen De Coster, Contributor
Activist Post

Here is a paragraph from a story in the Columbus Dispatch:

A little more than 17 percent of Franklin County residents met the government’s definition of “food insecure” in 2010, which means they didn’t always know whether they could put a decent meal on the table. 

…The U.S. Department of Agriculture says the national food-insecurity rate remained relatively unchanged in 2010 at 16.1 percent — or nearly 49 million people.

The notion of food insecurity is a creation of government. ’Tis the same old story – obese Americans are “hungry,” and they need more food. The story is that children are hungry, rural people are hungry, the seniors are hungry (I thought they ate dog food?), and thus, more public assistance programs are needed. Here is a photo the organization uses to display “hungry Americans.” These people, like a majority of the poster children for “hunger,” are fat and undernourished on processed foods and fast foods that are scarcely fit for human consumption.

Government is always in the business of creating and exacerbating crisis, and so governments partner with phony charity fronts and corporate state powers to distort the facts with sham statistics and spread the fear mongering. These food insecurity stats are being used to show how people need additional food subsidies to “nudge” them out of that category. This article is based on a report released by an organization, Feeding America, which sounded might suspicious and very quasi-governmental. I wondered who the sponsors or partners of this organization would be, and it took me a whole sixty seconds to turn up all of the usual suspects: ConAgra Foods, Kellogg’s, Kraft Foods, Nestle’s, PepsiCo, and General Mills.

More welfare, more food stamps, and more “defeat hunger” programs mean more food sales, more market power, and more government alliances for these mega-corporate state giants. Meanwhile, there exists the hunger-obesity paradox. That is, the fact that some of the poorest people are the most obese because of the low-quality processed foods and fast foods on which they consistently feast. There also exists the time preference problem. Meaning, poor and uneducated people have higher time preferences which leads to their poor food and eating choices, and a lack of concern for long-term health.

The solution, then, is to give the government’s Corporate State-Big Food-Big Agra partners that have played a major role in expanding the obesity crisis – such as ConAgra Foods, Kellogg’s, Kraft Foods, Nestle’s, PepsiCo, and General Mills – more market power through government redistribution programs to intensify the problem. Surely this crisis of nutritional deprivation hunger can be eradicated through more Lucky Charms, Kraft Mac & Cheese, Doritos and Cheetos, frozen waffles, Chef Boyardee ravioli, and 10 for $10 Banquet frozen dinners.

Both ConAgra Foods and General Mills are experiencing the pains of commodity inflation and lowering forecasts for 2012 profits. Meanwhile, all of the Big Food powers are poised to grow their market share for snacks, one of the fastest-growing segments for Big Food-Big Agra. An executive for PepsiCo stated: “We’re maniacally focused about gaining share in all of these segments in 2012.” Part of that strategy involves the giganta corporations lobbying for and sponsoring government redistribution programs and quasi-government “charity” organizations that use government redistribution schemes and taxpayer loot to help grow their market share and product popularity among the segment of people who are most easily fooled and hooked – those who are poor, uneducated, and dependent.