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Green New Deal Democrats Should Focus on Food Policy
Overhauling every structure in America? We’re not ready. Removing food corporations from national food policy? Long overdue.
The United States has certain things they just don’t have in other countries; call it American exceptionalism.
For instance, we are the only country that allows pharmaceutical companies to set their own prices based on whatever they think the “market will bear”, with predictable results.
That is why pharmaceuticals are cheaper in Canada- and everywhere else.
The United States, unlike our wealthy counterparts in Europe and around the world, has also allowed large food companies to set national food policies, with similarly predictable results.
Allowing food companies to dictate a nation’s food policy is obviously a major conflict of interest. Big food corporations don’t exist for the public good; they exist to sell their products. They are very good at it.
And that’s why America- along with other countries with diets Americanized by fast food and over-processed frankenfood- is suffering from skyrocketing rates of obesity and obesity-related health conditions like heart disease and diabetes.
To its credit, globalization is exposing some of the damage big food corporations have…