Nutrition program muddles farm bill

WASHINGTON — As Congress prepares to rewrite farm and food policies next year, lawmakers will have to tackle this seeming contradiction: If the United States faces an obesity crisis, why is the federal government still fighting a war on hunger?

That fundamental question arose Thursday at a House Agriculture Committee hearing on the 2012 farm bill, the five-year bill that outlines nutrition programs, farm policies and rural development. The answer will help determine where Congress steers more money in what lawmakers agree will be an exceptionally tight budget.

"I don't get this — how can you have a hunger problem and an obesity problem?" said Rep. Collin C. Peterson, D-Minn., the committee's chairman. "Does it make any sense?"

Indeed, it does make sense, said Jean Kinsey, director of the Food Industry Center at the University of Minnesota, a witness at the hearing.

"It does exist together," Ms. Kinsey said. Obesity and hunger — or "food insecurity," as some experts call the condition — can occur in the same household and even in the same person, she said.

"When people are hungry, they eat whatever is available," which typically includes cheap food that contributes to obesity, Ms. Kinsey said. Researchers have found that obesity rates are higher, generally, in populations with high hunger rates, she said.

In Northern New York, obesity rates have been higher than state averages, and hunger rates approach 20 percent, studies indicate.

In St. Lawrence County, 67.7 percent of adults enrolled in the federal Women, Infants and Children food program in 2003 were overweight or obese, compared to a rate of 56.7 percent statewide, the New York state Health Department reported.

The region also reports a significant number of households struggling to feed their families, however. The Food Research and Action Center, an organization devoted to fighting hunger, reported that 17.4 percent of households in the 23rd Congressional District were unable to pay for enough food at some point in 2008 and 2009, based upon polling.

That rate matched the New York state rate and ranked the congressional district at 237 among the 436 counties in the United States. The 23rd Congressional District includes St. Lawrence, Jefferson and Lewis counties.

Pollsters asked, "Have there been times in the past 12 months when you did not have enough money to buy food that you or your family needed?"

Not everyone agrees with the idea that the fight on hunger must continue unabated.

"We've moved away from the hunger crisis," said Rob Paarlberg, a political science professor at Wellesley College in Massachusetts, who sat next to Ms. Kinsey at the witness table and came prepared with his own statistics.

Only about 1 percent of U.S. households is "food insecure" on any given day, he said. And while poverty used to be synonymous with undernourishment, now protein intake — as well as excessive calories — is comparable between low-income and middle-income households, Mr. Paarlberg said.

"I don't like the way we redefine poverty as hunger," Mr. Paarlberg said. "The greater problem now is obesity."

The distinction has real policy implications for the Agriculture Committee, which must weigh competing interests among makers and growers of all sorts of food. Already, nutrition programs aimed at feeding low-income families comprise the biggest part of the farm bill.

Rep. William L. Owens, D-Plattsburgh, has joined the committee, but left Thursday's hearing before the exchange on obesity and hunger.

If obesity is the No. 1 issue, lawmakers will face more pressure to focus on the mix of food offered through federal programs, even if overall spending does not rise dramatically. If hunger remains a top priority, the committee may be pressured to increase overall funding for food programs.

Changing the mix of foods might even save the government money, if it helps to reduce obesity and the resulting health-care costs, Ms. Kinsey said.

Mr. Paarlberg said he would like Congress to fund nutrition programs but also remove subsidies for unhealthy food choices.