2014 Farm Bill Becomes Law

Washington passed a bill authorizing nearly $1 trillion in spending on farm subsidies and nutrition programs, setting the stage for final passage of a new five-year farm bill that has been stalled for more than two years.

Negotiators from the House and Senate spent several weeks working out their differences on issues in the legislation, including cuts to food stamps, income caps on farm subsidies and a price support program for dairy farmers. The bill is expected to save about $16.6 billion over the next 10 years. Learn more about the 2014 Farm Bill

Many chronically ill Americans unable to afford food, medicine

(Reuters Health) - One in three Americans with a chronic disease such as diabetes, arthritis or high blood pressure has difficulty paying for food, medications or both, according to a new study.

People who had trouble affording food were four times more likely to skip some of their medications due to cost than those who got plenty to eat, researchers found.

"This leads to an obvious tension between 'milk' or 'med,'" said Dr. Niteesh Choudhry, who worked on the study at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. "If you have a fixed income, should you treat or should you eat?"

The findings are based on data collected by the 2011 National Health Interview Survey, a questionnaire that offers a snapshot of the U.S. population as a whole. Nearly 10,000 people age 20 and up filled out the survey and reported having one or more chronic illnesses like cancer, asthma, emphysema or a psychiatric illness.

Among those participants, 23 percent took their medication less often than prescribed because of the cost, 19 percent reported difficulty affording food and 11 percent said they were having trouble paying for both food and medications. In the end, about one in three had trouble affording food, medication or both. Full Article

Cash or Credit? How Kids Pay For School Lunch Matters For Health

American kids have a problem with obesity, according to the most recent studies. In fact, the closest thing we have to good news about childhood obesity is that kids are not gaining weight as rapidly as they were some years ago.

Researchers may have identified one surprising new factor in why kids are overeating.

Compared with kids who use cash in school cafeterias, kids who use debit cards seem to make more unhealthful eating choices, finds Brian Wansink, a behavioral economist at Cornell University.

"Kids are luch, much, much more likely to take desserts and are much less likely to take fruits and vegetables" when they use their debit cards, says Wansink. "In contrast to that, in schools where kids are paying cash, kids not only buy a lot more fruit but they also buy a lot less dessert."

Not only did three times as many kids buy vegetables when they were paying with cash over debit cards, but they also ate 10 percent fewer calories. Full Article

Kindergarten weight strong indicator of childhood obesity, study finds

The researchers looked at data on children who took part in an Early Childhood Longitudinal Study of the U.S. Kindergarten Class of 1998-1999.

According to a news release from Emory Health Sciences, kindergarten weight is a strong indicator of childhood obesity.

Researchers from Emory's Rollins School of Public Health have learned that overweight kindergartners were four times as likely as normal-weight children to become obese by the 8th grade.

The researchers looked at data on children who took part in an Early Childhood Longitudinal Study of the U.S. Kindergarten Class of 1998-1999. They concentrated their findings on the rate of incidence of obesity in overweight and normal weight children starting kindergarten.

"Although trends in the prevalence of obesity are well documented, there is surprisingly little known about new cases of childhood obesity," says Solveig A. Cunningham, PhD, assistant professor in the Hubert Department of Global Health at Rollins School of Public Health Cunningham. "Examining incidence may provide insight into the nature of the epidemic, the critically vulnerable ages, and the groups who are at greater risk for obesity." Full Article