In the forty years since the publication of Frances Moore Lappé’s Diet for a Small Planet, a movement dedicated to the reform of the food system has taken root in America. Lappé’s groundbreaking book connected the dots between something as ordinary and all-American as a hamburger and the environmental crisis, as well as world hunger. Along with Wendell Berry and Barry Commoner, Lappé taught us how to think ecologically about the implications of our everyday food choices. You can now find that way of thinking, so radical at the time, just about everywhere – from the pages of Time magazine to the menu at any number of local restaurants.


To date, however, the food movement can claim more success in changing popular consciousness than in shifting the political and economic forces shaping the food system or in changing the “standard American diet” – which has only gotten worse since the 1970s. Recently there have been some political accomplishments: food movement activists played a role in shaping the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act and the Child Nutrition Reauthorization Act, both passed in the last Congress, and the last couple of farm bills have thrown some significant crumbs in the direction of sustainable agriculture and healthy food. But its greatest victories have come in the media, which could scarcely be friendlier to it, and in the food marketplace, rather than in Congress, where the power of agribusiness has scarcely been disturbed.


The split between the movement’s gains in the soft power of cultural influence and its comparative weakness in conventional political terms is faithfully mirrored in the White House. While Michelle Obama has had notable success raising awareness of the child obesity problem and linking it to the food system, her husband, after raising expectations on the campaign trail, has done comparatively little to push a reform agenda. Promising anti-trust initiatives to counter food industry concentration, which puts farmers and ranchers at the mercy of a small handful of processors, appear to be languishing. Efforts to reform crop subsidies during the last farm bill debate got nowhere. 


The Congressional committees in charge of agricultural policies remain dominated by farm-state legislators hostile to reform. Until big-state and urban legislators decide it is worth their while to serve on those committees, little of value is likely to emerge from them. Whatever its cost to public health and the environment, cheap food has become a pillar of the modern economy that few in government dare to question. And many of the reforms we need – such as improving conditions in the meat industry – stand to make meat more expensive. That might be a good thing for public health, but it will never be popular.


The most promising food activism is grassroots: Local policy initiatives are popping up in municipalities across the country, alongside urban agriculture ventures in underserved areas. Changing the way America feeds itself has become the galvanizing issue for a generation now coming of age. 


The food movement will find allies, especially now that Obama’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act has put the government on the hook for the soaring costs of treating chronic illnesses – most of which are linked to diet. The insurance industry will soon find itself on the hook for the cost of the American diet too. It’s no accident support for measures such as taxing soda is strongest in places like Massachusetts, where the solvency of the state and its insurance industry depends on figuring out how to reduce the rates of Type 2 diabetes and obesity.


We can’t afford the healthcare costs incurred by the current system of cheap food. Sooner or later, we will find the political will to change it.

Michael Pollan is the author, most recently, of Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual.