Fruit and vegetable consumption by state

Real Vermonters eat their fruits and vegetables, do their exercises and don’t care much for Big Macs.

At least in comparison with most other Americans.

It isn’t that plenty of people in Vermont don’t swill sugared sodas, eat in fast food restaurants, or chow down on platefuls of fried foods while sitting in front of the TV. But either they do it less, or fewer of them do it, or both, according to figures compiled by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and collected in the Food Environmental Atlas.

Available for free on line, the Atlas contains detailed county-by-county information about where and what people eat, how much they spend on food, how extensively poverty affects their diet, whether they get much exercise, and the extent to which they have diet-related health problems.

On almost all counts, Vermont emerges as one of the healthier states, in part because Vermonters seem to try harder than most other Americans to eat a healthier diet and get some exercise.

The Atlas does not provide exact national or statewide statistics, at least not as could be discovered by your less-than-brilliant on-line operative, who also failed to reach an Agriculture Department spokesperson.

But the maps, with color-coordinated rankings by county, added to the county-by-county statistics, leave little doubt that Vermonters have relatively healthy eating habits.

Take fast-food restaurants.(Please!). In Lamoille County there are (or were in 2008) 21 of them, or 0.855 per thousand residents. That’s on the high side for Vermont. There were 0.738 per thousand in Chittenden County, 0.793 in Windsor, and only 0.393 per thousand residents of Caledonia County.

Most of the rest of the country seems to need a lot more. Far and away the champ fast-food county is San Juan County, Colorado (Silverton is the County seat), where there are 7.117 fast food restaurants for every thousand people. That’s twice the ratio of the runner-up, Norton County, Virginia (yup, the county seat is Norton, too; nope, I don’t know where it is, either) where there are a “mere” (compared with San Juan County) 3.235 fast food joints per thousand folks.

Perhaps because there weren’t that many fast food places, Vermonters spent relatively little in them, less than $400 per person per year, a level of restraint matched only by their fellow-Americans in Idaho, Wisconsin, Iowa, Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey. The big fast-food spenders. Shelling out more than $500 a head, were in California, the Southwest, the Midwest, the deep South, and – go figure – Massachusetts.

Along with Maine, Wisconsin, and several states in the northern Rockies, Vermont has the highest percentage of adults (more than 70 percent)  deemed to be “exercising enough,” though it was not clear what constituted “enough” or who determined what constituted it.

At any rate, exercise is one of those areas in which Vermont might look good only in relation to the rest of the country. Statewide (because the number was the same for every county) 48 percent of Vermont high school students are physically active. That put Vermont in the top rank, along with North Dakota, Wyoming, Utah, Oklahoma, and Iowa.

But less than half of high school students are physically active?

That’s scary. Throw away their computers, or at least their computer games.

There is too much information in too many categories in every county to deal with it all here. Anyone who is interested can find the Atlas, either at the Agriculture Department site through usa.gov, or just by Googling Food Environment Atlas, and find out all sorts of stuff about his or her county and its eating/spending/exercise habits.

Suffice to say that Vermont comes across as the state whose residents drink less soda, eat less meat and more vegetables, buy food directly from a local farm, and take care of themselves than most other Americans.

Raising some troubling questions: Do Vermonters enjoy themselves? Of are they a bunch of eat-your-spinach, life-is-serious, let’s-find-only-the-nutrition-and-not-the-flavor-in-our-food wimps? Do they spend so much time at the gym (remember, the adults seem to exercise more than the teenagers) that they’ve forgotten the joy of sitting around a fine dinner table covered with a touch of wretched excess (in moderation, to be sure)?

The Food Environment Atlas does not directly answer that question. But the Atlas does contain one hint, and it’s a hopeful one. Vermonters may spend less money than most Americans at fast food joints, but it ranks high in full service restaurants per thousand people, and is one of only 21 states where folks pay more than $500 a year per capita in restaurants.

Where they might actually be enjoying themselves over good food and drink.

Before state boosters get what the late, great boxing trainer Whitey Bimstein used to call “a swelled head,” the Atlas shows that while Vermonters may be less likely to be obese or diabetic than most other Americans, neither are they all that unlikely to be obese and diabetic.

In Windsor County, 7.1 percent of adults are diabetic, according to the Atlas, and 22.8 percent obese. Almost ten percent of low-income pre-schoolers are obese. Those numbers are higher in Caledonia County.

And however low Vermont’s obesity and diabetes rates may be compared to other states, they are higher than they used to be, according to figures released last week by the Attorney General’s office and the Department of Health.

There’s nothing peculiar to Vermont about these increases, and according to Kelly Brownell of Yale University’s Rudd Center, who was in Montpelier last week, one reason is that more people are eating more fatty, sugary, processed foods, and for good reason. They’re cheaper.

Between 1985 and 2000, Brownell said, the price of fruits and vegetables rose 117 percent, compared to 46 percent for sugars and sweets and only 20 percent for soft drinks. Markets work. When a commodity’s price goes up, consumption of it goes down. When the price goes down (relative to inflation and alternative prices) consumption goes up.

Markets, but not free markets. Soda is cheap because of government subsidies to agriculture. Having, so to speak, sown, Americans now reap, even Vermonters, if a little less so.

There is a political campaign going on right now in Vermont, and we can’t say we haven’t been told about it.

No, this has nothing to do with who’s going to be governor come next year. This is a campaign which ends Tuesday, and while it has regional – perhaps even statewide – ramifications, the electorate is confined to the residents of one town: Lowell, where 550 voters are on the checklist.

Any doubts about this being a political campaign were erased in the Burlington Free Press the Sunday before last, in an excellent front page story by the estimable Candace Page., who explained how Green Mountain Power Co. was employing standard political devices to convince Lowellites to approve a wind power development on three miles of their town’s ridge lines.

Among the classic campaign maneuvers being used: voter registration, direct mail, living room meetings, and a get-out-the-vote campaign including driving voters to the polls.

And what, one may ask, is wrong with any of that?

Not a thing. And there wouldn’t be a thing wrong with it even if the wind project opponents weren’t employing the same tactic (albeit on a smaller scale because they have less money). Among the words that could be applied to this process is ‘democracy.’

But there’s another, to which the Free Press story alludes, but without using the word.

The word is ‘bribery.’

Perfectly legal bribery, to be sure, meeting the dictionary’s (American Heritage Second College Edition) second definition of the word “bribe”: “something offered or serving to influence or persuade,” not the first definition, in which the “something” is given to induce him or her to “act dishonestly.”

In this case nothing is being sought from the recipients of largesse but their ‘yes’ vote, which violates no law. Furthermore, there is nothing covert about the gift. Green Mountain Power is openly offering to give the town between $400,000 and $535,000 every year, which would enable the town to cut its town tax rate to zero or pretty close to it.

Lowell residents and businesses would still pay the statewide school property tax of course. But according to the Free Press’s calculations, the owner of a $200,000 home could save close to $1,000 a year.

Enough, it would seem “to influence or persuade” a homeowner.

All of the above should be taken as observation, not condemnation. In fact, the point of today’s post is neither to censure nor to reveal information kept hidden from the general public. Instead, it is to ponder why information that is known to the general public is so widely accepted by that public under it euphemistic – rather than its real – label: an ‘incentive, not a ‘bribe.’

There’s a difference?

Consider the new wood pellet plant to be created not far east of Lowell, in Island Pond, but only thanks to $10 million of federal loans, $9 million of it guaranteed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Or the extra $15 million that a special legislative panel – at the request of Gov. Jim Douglas – added to an economic development program to entice four businesses to move into the state (see January 13 post, VEGI Burgher). Again, there might be nothing wrong with this. There certainly isn’t anything unusual about it. Almost every state, county, and city in America offers loans, loan guarantees, or outright grants to firms who pledge to expand or relocate, even though the evidence that any of this spending creates a single job that would not otherwise be created is skimpy at best.

It may be good policy. But another thing it is is bribery, however legal and respectable. And one thing it is not is free enterprise, at least not as taught in the Economics 101 textbooks. There, firms open or expand because their leaders think they can sell enough goods or services to earn a profit after meeting their costs, which include interest on loans from the private banking system.

Outside the textbooks, some firms, at least,  hold out for an inducement from the government, often playing one state or city off against another. The result is a form of socialism which is never called by that name, especially by the recipient entrepreneur, who often spends much of his spare time railing against government profligacy.

Except, of course, when he’s the beneficiary.

As mentioned, this is a national phenomenon, but perhaps especially pertinent to Vermont these days. The national-state connection was evident the other day when President Barack Obama proposed $9.8 billion in loan guarantees for new nuclear power plants just as Vermonters debate the future of the only one they have.

Again, let’s stipulate for the purposes of today’s discussion that Obama’s policy is wise, or at least defensible, and that the defenders of Vermont Yankee have a point. There is a case to be made for nuclear power (and against it, as is true with wind power).

But one of the arguments made by the plant’s supporters is that it is unsubsidized, contrasting its independence with the de facto subsidy the Legislature gave “sustainable” (wind, solar, hydro, methane) power last year when it passed a bill granting those producers higher rates.

That bill (H 446) is effectively a subsidy. But nuclear power plants aren’t subsidized? Give us a break. For more than half a century the Price-Anderson Act has limited the nuclear power industry’s liabilities from lawsuits. And all – all – of the initial research and development costs for nuclear power were borne by the taxpayers in a program that was secret at the time but has since become widely known: The Manhattan Project.

This is not an argument against nuclear power. It’s an argument against self-delusion.

Possibly for competitive reasons (don’t give the other guys any ink) most of Vermont’s media has ignored the new poll commissioned by WCAX-TV (Channel 3), WDEV radio, and the Vermont Business Magazine.

Too bad. Almost all the poll results are interesting, and at least one of them might have  immediate consequences.

Not, though, the one about the governor’s race, with which Channel 3, foolishly, led its poll coverage on its six-o-clock news last Wednesday

Foolish not because there was anything wrong with the report, done by the always-capable Kristin Carlson, but because when it comes to the governor’s race, the poll had…well, not quite nothing to say, but not much.

Certainly not much about who is likely to win the election, the subject of the report. In fact, the only reasonable conclusion to draw from the results is that neither Republican Lt. Gov. Brain Dubie or whichever Democrat wins the right to run against him is in the lead.

Neither is any one of the five Democrats over the other four, though one of them may be a bit behind the other four, a tentative conclusion considering that pollsters did not ask respondents about their preferences in the primary.

So the gubernatorial results require some intricate (meaning debatable) interpretation. Not so the results Channel 3 revealed the next day about what the state’s voters think about the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant. They want it gone.

Not tomorrow. But just about half of the 400 respondents do not want to allow the plant to keep running beyond the expiration of its original license in  2012.

The important figure here, though, is not the 49 percent that answered “no,” to the question, “Do you think Vermont Yankee should get another 20 year extension to operate in Vermont?” The important figure is that only 27 percent answered the question with a “yes.” The other 24 percent? They said they were “not sure.”

Politically speaking, though, the result is not 49-27-24. Politically speaking, the result is 76-24.

That’s because the State Senate is scheduled to vote on Yankee relicensing Wednesday, and it’s reasonable to assume that the senators took a look at the poll to see what might be the political consequences of their votes.

No, the News Guy is not so cynical as to suppose that Vermont lawmakers cast their votes according to nothing but the public’s whim. Still, at some point in their decision-making cogitation, lawmakers are bound to wonder, for instance, what the political price might be for voting against Yankee’s re-licensing.

Now they know: Little or nothing. Because most of the pro-Vermont Yankee responders were Republicans, 57 percent of whom said they favored relicensing. Presumably those Republicans vote for Republicans, anyway. So the 68 percent of all lawmakers (and 75 percent of senators) who are not Republicans don’t worry about them anyway.

The bottom line: whatever the merits of the case, voting against Vermont Yankee is the politically safer option.

That’s because, politically speaking, the “not sure” answerers can be lumped in with the “no” answerers, leaving only the 27 percent who answered “yes” for “no”-voting senators to worry about.

Now to the somewhat more complicated interpretation of the poll’s findings on the election.

On its face, the poll was good news for Secretary of State Deb Markowitz, the only Democrat who finished ahead of Dubie. But it was barely ahead — 43 percent to 41 percent – which really means the two are tied. With only 400 respondents, the margin of error is plus or minus four points.

And remember, that’s not plus or minus the two-point spread between Markowitz and Dubie. It’s plus or minus each candidate’s support. Markowitz could “really” (meaning if all voters were polled) be ahead by 48-36, or behind 38-44, and the poll still wouldn’t be wrong.

The same holds for Dubie margin over Sen. Doug Racine who gets 38 percent to Dubie’s 43 percent, a five-point lead for Dubie, but still within the margin of error.

The other Democrats are farther behind. Against former state Senator Matt Dunne, Dubie leads 44-36. He leads Senate President Peter Shumlin 45 to 35, and Senator Susan Bartlett 48-30.

All of which means that…..(Tah Dah!)…more Vermonters have the foggiest notion of who Deb Markowitz and Doug Racine are than are familiar with the other three, Only 24 percent of the respondents had “no opinion” favorable or not, of the long-time Secretary of State. Thirty-two percent had no opinion about Racine,  a former lieutenant governor who has run for governor in the past, while the “no opinion” response for Dunne and Shumlin was in the mid-40s and for Bartlett a whopping 63 percent.

Some political observers were surprised that so few voters seemed familiar with Shumlin, who is, after all, the Senate leader. Some political observers keep forgetting that while they and their friends and colleagues follow the doings of the State Legislature, they are in a small minority, in Vermont and elsewhere.

It’s early. Whoever wins the Democratic primary will, by that very accomplishment, become far better known, and therefore probably competitive with Dubie.

Unless, of course, they start sniping at one another. Voters, especially middle-of-the-road swing voters, don’t like intra-party bickering, and the danger to the Democrats is that they will squabble like alley cats, leaving the winner scratched and scarred.

Perhaps aware of this danger, the Democrats have been polite toward one another until…well, perhaps until last night, when Bartlett released a statement opposing the scheduled Senate vote on Wednesday.

The timing, she said, is “more political theater than making good public policy,” a not too subtle swipe at Shumlin, who scheduled the vote.

A bit of a gamble on Bartlett’s part. She might win by calling attention to herself, which, as the least known contender, she has to do. She might lose by seeming to agree with Gov. Jim Douglas, an association not likely to please Democratic primary voters. To be sure, she only agrees with Douglas on the timing; Bartlett is as opposed to re-licensing Vermont Yankee as Shumlin. Still, it’s a gamble.

And we probably won’t know how well it worked until July. That’s when Research 2000, the respected outfit which did the survey, will poll Vermonters again. This time, company president Del Ali said, the sample would be 600 voters, with an “over-sample” of 400 Democrats.

When those results come in, we might have some idea of who is really ahead. Right now we know only that Vermont Yankee is not.