U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) is now in his sixth term, and he’s ready to start a food revolution. Ryan is the author of The Real Food Revolution, Healthy Eating, Green Groceries, and the Return of the American Family Farm. In his book, Ryan offers creative ideas about how to transform the nation’s food system.
When asked about one “big idea” for the food system, Ryan offered this answer:
“Shift subsidies. We’re now subsidizing crops that are leading to highly processed foods made with high fructose corn syrup and soy oil because we’re making those crops and those products artificially cheap with taxpayers’ dollars. That’s leading to a great deal of sickness in our country. In five years, half the country is either going to have diabetes or pre-diabetes. If we took those billions of dollars from subsidizing those particular crops and we shifted them to farmers so that they could grow fresh fruits and vegetables, I think we would move in the direction of having healthy foods be affordable and accessible to all Americans and therefore use that food as our medicine to bring down health care costs.”
Read the full interview by Don Carr at Civil Eats (@civileats).