Let them drink beverages that contain milk or milk products, soy, rice, or similar milk substitutes, or greater than fifty percent of vegetable or fruit juice by volume.
Fresh off of his Democratic censure for commuting the sentence of felonious election conspiracy monger Tina Peters, Governor Jared Polis issued an ambitious May 21 MAHA-style executive order (quoted above) urging Coloradans to eat healthier. I don’t think the comparison to health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s “Make America Healthy Again” agenda is a stretch given Polis’s past enthusiasm for RFK.
Unlike, say, Polis’s overreaching orders during the pandemic, the health order doesn’t accomplish much and is mostly aspirational. It is mainly a political document. 9News’s Kyle Clark got a chuckle over Polis munching on a carrot during a media conference announcing the order.
The false premise of accessibility
Polis is absolutely right about this: “A healthier diet and regular physical activity can help prevent, delay, and manage chronic diseases, while also improving sleep, enhancing immunity, and contributing to mental health.”
Diet and exercise are not the only things that matter, of course. Other keys to health are not smoking, limiting or cutting out alcohol, getting good sleep (mentioned by Polis), maintaining strong social ties, cutting risks of injuries, practicing good oral hygiene, getting regular health check-ups, and staying current on vaccinations.
But Polis is right that a quality diet and exercise matter enormously. My family has worked to eat more greens and other vegetables and to walk 10,000 steps per day. Although we still eat desserts, we’ve cut back substantially on sugar and nearly eliminated soda from our diet.
But Polis is wrong to frame the problem as one of accessibility: “Increasing access to healthy foods and activities is critical to improving Coloradans’ health and quality of life and reducing health care costs.”
The basic problem is not that people lack access to healthy foods and activities; it is that they often choose to eat unhealthy foods and laze on the couch instead. Part of the problem is that people’s unhealthy habits tend to influence others’ habits. It’s easy to get stuck in unhealthy patterns. Setting health goals with others can be helpful.
People on the left tend to focus on supply rather than demand. But that seems to be the wrong emphasis. Yes, access matters somewhat, but the simple fact is that almost all Americans could eat healthy foods if they chose to. A paper from a few years back by lead author Hunt Allcott found “that exposing low-income households to the same products and prices available to high-income households reduces nutritional inequality by only nine percent, while the remaining 91 percent is driven by differences in demand. These findings counter the common notion that policies to reduce supply inequities, such as ‘food deserts,’ could play an important role in reducing nutritional inequality.”
However, the paper was much more optimistic about the effects of “means-tested subsidies for healthy food.” This aligns with Polis’s aim to further “subsidize fruits and vegetables purchased with SNAP EBT cards.”
The soda controversy
On the flip side, Polis also calls for a survey to determine SNAP purchases of “less healthy or ‘unhealthy’ food items.”
Previously, Polis called for the outright banning of SNAP purchases of soda, but the human services board rejected that proposal on grounds that the restriction would “limit people’s autonomy to make their own food choices” and create “embarrassment or judgment at grocery stores if they mistakenly tried to use the benefits to buy soda or high-sugar fruit juices,” the Colorado Sun summarizes.
I don’t buy these arguments. If you want “autonomy” then spend your own money, not someone else’s money. I think it’s perfectly reasonable for the taxpayers footing the bill to restrict the funds to healthier foods.
Frankly, it should be embarrassing to spend other people’s money on products that undermine health and exacerbate medical problems for which taxpayers then also pick up the tab. Similarly, you already cannot spend SNAP benefits on alcohol; is that also “embarrassing?” There’s nothing stopping people on food stamps from spending their own money on whatever they want.
Nutrition theater
Polis distinguishes “soft drinks” (soda) from juice, and he bans the former (as well as alcohol) at state functions. However, this contains a huge exception; agencies can order soda and alcohol for the “promotion of the State and our business environment (such as by the Colorado Wine Board), or a statutory obligation.”
Polis’s definitions also are somewhat arbitrary. A 12-ounce coke contains 39 grams of sugar. Okay, I bought a bottle of organic apple juice that contains 36 grams of sugar for a 12-ounce serving. So, for a much more expensive product, you get slightly less sugar and slightly more micronutrients.
Beyond the details already discussed, Polis’ order is mostly about urging state agencies to focus more on health. He wants to Department of Agriculture to “promote and expand its Colorado Proud School Meal Month” (which has little to do with health) and provide “technical assistance” to various groups. He wants the Department of Human Services to continue to tweak SNAP rules and conduct a survey.
Polis also has advice for the Behavioral Health Administration, the Department of Labor, the Department of Health Care Policy and Financing, the Department of Natural Resources (to promote “hunting and fishing”), the Department of Personnel and Administration (for bike to work days), the Department of Public Health and Environment, the Department of Regulatory Agencies, the Department of Revenue (to introduce scratch tickets celebrating Colorado agriculture), the Department of Transportation, the Office of Economic Development and International Trade, the Department of Corrections, the Department of Early Childhood, the Department of Education, and the Department of Higher Education.
If running bureaucrats around in circles produces health benefits then Polis’ order will be a resounding success. Beyond that, it will do almost nothing to improve Coloradans’ health. But maybe the “bully pulpit” effect surrounding the order will do some good. We can (carefully!) drink to that.
Ari Armstrong writes regularly for Complete Colorado and is the author of books about Ayn Rand, Harry Potter, and classical liberalism. He can be reached at ari at ariarmstrong dot com.
