Obesity is hurting the nation's health, but the pain is not evenly spread. Those who have low incomes are the most dependent on processed foods sweetened with high fructose corn syrup, a product kept cheap through taxpayer subsidies to the corn industry.
Meanwhile, writes public-health specialist and consumer advocate Gary J. Stein, the cost of healthier and leaner foods -- vegetables, fruits and dairy products -- keeps going up. They become less and less affordable to families who need them most.
Which is why the dumbest move Congress could have made was to cut food stamps, Stein argues in a column in the e-magazine Context Florida.He says poor families need more help buying food, not less.
(Learn more about Stein here.)
