The federal government has announced its new health goal: Americans will be slimmer by the year 2020. That’s according to Healthy People 2020, a plan recently released by the Department of Health and Human Services.

If any reader believes there’s a snowball’s chance in hell of that happening, please raise your hand.

As a physician and nutrition researcher, I share your skepticism. When America steps on the scale a decade from now, I predict that we will be even heavier – and more unhealthy – than we are today. And the federal government itself will deserve a good portion of the blame.

Here’s what I mean. Even as the government released its new health goals, the Department of Agriculture was already getting ready to renew its subsidies for fatty cheese, sugar and feed grains for livestock, all of which will make Americans fatter than ever. In the new year, Congress will take up the farm bill, which aims to shore up these fatty-food subsidies even more.

It’s time to wake up and smell the lard. Our diets are killing us. The average American now eats 75 pounds more meat and 30 pounds more cheese each year, compared with a century ago. We’re eating more sugar and oils, too. Where are we putting it? The inevitable result is ever-worsening obesity.

Ten years ago, the Healthy People 2010 plan aimed to reduce the toll of obesity, which then included one in four Americans. Ten years later, obesity prevalence had climbed to one in three.

For a glimpse of where we are headed, look at children today. One in three is now overweight. One in five teens has an abnormal cholesterol level. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one-third of everyone born in the year 2000 will eventually develop diabetes.

The toll is not just personal. It’s also financial. Unhealthy people make for huge health care expenditures. The current health-care budget is enormous and threatens to overwhelm our ability to afford it.

An analysis released just before Thanksgiving estimates that more than half of all Americans will be either diabetic or prediabetic by 2020, costing our health care system $3.35 trillion.

Yes, trillion.

It’s abundantly clear that if current trends continue, we will be an even fatter, sicker nation – with an even more strained health care system – a decade from now.

If the government is serious about getting America in shape by 2020, it must update the farm bill based on what we know about diet and disease. The new legislation must facilitate the production and consumption of fruits, vegetables and whole grains – foods that fend off disease and protect our health. And it should end all payouts for animal feed.

If the government wants to reduce obesity by 2020, it should start by not subsidizing it.

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ABOUT THE WRITER

Neal Barnard is a nutrition researcher and president of the vegan organization Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, 5100 Wisconsin Avenue NW, Suite 400, Washington, D.C. 20016; website: www.pcrm.org.

This essay is available to McClatchy-Tribune News Service subscribers. McClatchy-Tribune did not subsidize the writing of this column; the opinions are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of McClatchy-Tribune or its editors