Chew on this...

"Absurdly, while one hand of the federal government is campaigning against the epidemic of obesity, the other hand is actually subsidizing it, by writing farmers a check for every bushel of corn they can grow. "
--Michael Pollan, writing in the New York Times Magazine. (Full Article)

Apparently, there is a very elegant solution for both the domestic obesity epidemic and much of the anti-American sentiment in developing nations: stop paying American farmers to grow more food than we need.

Farmers have managed to grow 500 more calories per person per day than they grew in the mid-70's, and, although only about 200 of those wind up in our bodies (check your gasoline, sunscreen, and prescription drugs for the rest of the corn), that still works out to a potential weight gain of about 22 pounds per year. The increased yeild is made economically feasible by agricultural subsidies that pay farmers by the quantity of crop they produce--kind of like when we pay welfare mothers more for having more children.

Those of us who can't remember the mid-70's or before might not know that the farm subsidy program was not always like this. The (Franklin) Roosevelt administration created a system that set and supported a price for crops based on the production costs, without directly paying farmers to grow the crops.

The current overproduction of crops also angers developing nations. Overproduction, prompted by subsidies-by-the-bushel, depresses the prices of the commodity worldwide. Understandably, farmers who aren't getting a check from their government are not so keen on having to sell their crops for artificially low prices. You know, the same anger we are currently feeling for China because they are keeping the value of their currency artificially low, giving them a comptetitive advantage.

In sum:
1. The government pays farmers to grow too much food for us to eat.
2. They government then spends money trying to figure out how we can lose the weight we have gained from eating the food they have paid farmers to grow for us.
3. By paying farmers to grow too much food, the government lowers the worldwide prices of crops.
4. When artificially depressed prices make it difficult to impossible for other country's farmers to make a living, they become upset at us.
5. People who are upset at us tend to want to harm us. Thankfully, to our knowledge, these nations are too busy trying to eke out a living to develop offensive weapons.