Sen. Cory Booker on Pres. Biden’s plan to improve nutrition, end hunger by 2030

Amna Nawaz:

President Biden today held the first White House conference in 50 years on reducing hunger and improving nutrition in America. The last conference took place in 1969 under President Richard Nixon. It led to the expansion of food stamps, plus the Women, Children's and Infants program, commonly known as WIC.

William Brangham tells us more about the goals of President Biden's conference and what he's proposing.

William Brangham:

Amna, the president released a series of proposals to try and end hunger by 2030, expand nutritional assistance and reduce obesity.

The plan calls for more free school meals and new labels on food and would offer medically tailored meals for those on Medicare. Today's meeting comes amid a significant hike in food prices due to inflation and an increase in food insecurity driven mainly by poverty.

Parts of President Biden's plan would require congressional approval, but he said it was essential to do so.

Joe Biden, President of the United States: In every country in the world, in every state in this country, no matter what else divide us, if a parent cannot feed a child, there's nothing else that matters to that parent. If you look at your child and you can't feed your child, what the hell else matters?

(APPLAUSE)

Joe Biden:

I really mean it.

William Brangham:

Joining me now is Senator Cory Booker, a Democrat from New Jersey. He's a member of the Senate's Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee and has been a leading sponsor of a bill to change food labeling.

Senator Booker, great to have you on the program.

In talking about these seemingly disparate, but linked crises of hunger and obesity, you have talked about a nutrition crisis in America. What do you mean by that?

Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ):

Well, we have seen in recent decades an explosion of diet-related diseases.

Take, for example, diabetes. We now have a country where half of our population is either having either type 2 diabetes or is pre-diabetic. And it has exploded into our economy. Most Americans don't realize that one — almost one out of every three dollars spent by their government is spent on health care or almost one out of five dollars we spend as Americans in our economy is spent on health care.

And 80 percent of the diseases — in health care dollars are being spent on preventable diseases. We have this weird crisis in America where there's an overabundance of highly processed, sugar-filled, salt-filled foods that have empty zero to no nutrition and a shortage of access to actual foods that help — that are healthy for us.

And here's the thing most Americans, again, just don't know, not only the size of the crisis, how much it is costing us, not just in money, but in well-being, but, if you look at our agricultural subsidies, only 2 percent of our ag subsidies go to the things that nutritionists tell us to eat the most of.

So my kids in walk into a community grocery store and find a Twinkie product cheaper than an apple, not because of its true cost, but because we are subsidizing one and making it so much harder to access the other.

William Brangham:

For those people who don't follow food policy in America, what do you mean that we're subsidizing these unhealthy foods?

Sen. Cory Booker:

Well, every few years or so, we have a farm bill. It's coming next year.

And we have billions of dollars of agricultural subsidies that go to lots of different foods. There's a food category, to get really specific, that's left out of most subsidies. It's called specialty crops. But it's a terrible name, because specialty crops are all the fruits and vegetables we eat, not the monocrops, the commodity crops that often go into the corn syrup that's in — ubiquitous in our foods or the sugar that's everywhere in our foods.

And so we have this society that has decided right now — again, this is policy — that we have policies that are making unhealthy, highly processed, sugar-filled foods readily abundant and cheap, and then healthy foods very hard to access or too expensive. And it does not have to be there. It doesn't represent the true costs.

And we pay for it twice. We're paying for the foods that make us sick, and then we're paying the extraordinary health care bills and pharmaceutical bills when we don't make that accessible. We could see, in a matter of decades, half of our government dollars not being spent on education, not science and technology, not innovation, but being spent on the health care costs of our population that has so much diet-related disease.

William Brangham:

I know that the issue of food labeling is a very big one for you. And you're trying to — the FDA is rolling out some new rules this week to try to steer people to better, healthier choices.

But we have been putting calorie counts on menus and better warnings on foods for many years now. And it seems like we haven't really done much to dent the obesity crisis. Why do you think that this would move the needle in a substantial way?

Sen. Cory Booker:

Well, I'm an evidence-based guy. Show me something that's working, and I want to steal those strategies and help them work in my country, my state, what have you.

So, we know from other places that have put front-of-label packaging, warning labels on foods that are very correlated with disease, that that actually does affect consumer behavior. We have seen it with tobacco by putting more prominent labels, letting people know that, again, these are leading to the number one killers in America, heart diseases, certain cancers, and more.

And so I trust consumers. If we provide them information, if we provide them access to healthy, fresh foods, if we shift our subsidies from the stuff that's making us sick to the stuff that makes us well, we will see the cost of taxpayers going way down, because diseases, pharmaceutical costs will go down, and you will see an elevation of well-being of — in the health of Americans.

William Brangham:

You have also-called on the FDA to require mandatory reductions in excessive salt, excessive sugar, excessive saturated fat.

How do you counter the pushback from companies and from consumers who say, if I want to make a really salty product, or I as a consumer want to drink a really sugary drink, that is my business, not the government's?

Sen. Cory Booker:

Well, I'm one of these people that believes in freedom.

And, heck, you and I both have probably gone deep into a pint of ice cream or candy. This is not about taking any of those foods away from folks. It's really about two things. Number one, FDA, if people are going to produce this food, let's label it, so let consumers know that how strongly linked this is to certain diseases.

Number two, let's make sure that we're not subsidizing the stuff that's making us sick and allow the subsidies to go to the things that make us healthy. So it's not about stopping people from eating. But you understand now we have mislabeling. We have people telling us, this food is healthy for us, when we know — and there's no — very little controls on saying this is heart-healthy or this helps you lower your cholesterol, when, clearly, these foods actually are linked to diabetes, to obesity and to heart disease.

We have so much misinformation out there. I want the FDA to put the F back in the FDA, the food back in the Food and Drug Administration. They have been regulating and trying to keep us safe from everything from tobacco to harmful drugs. It's about time we have a food conversation in our country, because we maintain this course, we literally could see, in our lifetime, almost half of our government dollars going to Medicaid, Medicare and other health care-related costs.

William Brangham:

Senator Booker of New Jersey, thank you so much for being here.

Sen. Cory Booker:

Thank you for having me.