The Health Gap

Abstract

Food subsidies are the primary reason why, over the last four decades, the price of processed foods and industrial meat has gone down 20-30%, while the price of fruits and vegetables has increased 40%.When we subsidize junk food, we essentially force the economically poor to eat foods that are nutritional disasters. This makes it much harder for people who are born into families that are struggling financially to ever rise above poverty, and virtually ensures that cycles of intergenerational poverty will persist. And when a vastly disproportionate share of those who struggle financially are people of color, we’ve created one of the conditions that, in effect, perpetuate racial health inequality.