A large and growing share of Americans are obese, a phenomenon many health experts are calling an epidemic. Since the late 1970s, the share of adults in the United States who are obese has grown from 15% to 42%, and the similar share of children has grown from 6% to 20%.Obesity imposes large costs on our health care system as it contributes to heart disease, stroke, diabetes and many other ailments.Congress should investigate whether federal food subsidies are feeding the epidemic before it reauthorizes the giant Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program in this year’s farm bill. SNAP — the food stamp program — subsidizes food consumption for 42 million low‐income Americans.The program’s cost has exploded from $63 billion in 2019 to $145 billion this year.Subsidizing low‐income food intake is a peculiar policy given that low‐income adults and children are more obese, on average, than other Americans. Even within the low‐income population, SNAP recipients are more obese than nonrecipients.
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