Grumet, Glickman in The Hill: "The politics of food"

BPC President Jason Grumet and Senior Fellow Dan Glickman on The Hill’s Congress Blog: On food hardship:

“For those aspiring to be president, the relationship with food is complex and fraught with challenging contradictions. Despite being the wealthiest nation in the world, 45 million Americans will rely on food stamps this month to put food on the table for themselves and their families. Food hardship, or the inability to afford enough food, affects families around the country, particularly those with children. A recent analysis of Gallup data, released by the Food Research Action Council, reports that nearly one in four of the nation’s households with children suffer from food hardship.”

On the nation’s poor eating habits and lack of physical activity:

“The federal government provides some direction on both nutrition and exercise through both Dietary and Physical Activity guidelines. From there, food choices are affected by multiple factors, including access, price and personal choice. Physical activity is dictated by access to infrastructure and programming, where you live and whether your school has Physical Education. What we know is that childhood obesity rates have increased steeply over the past 30 years and that currently, one in three American children is obese or overweight. These high rates are responsible, at least in part, for chronic obesity-related disease, such as diabetes, high blood pressure and asthma. And the costs of caring for people with these health conditions is staggering. According to one recent study, the health care costs of obesity-related disease reach $147 billion/year.”

Read more here. Learn more about BPC’s Nutrition and Physical Activity Initiative here.