While I do not blindly trust what my own (or any other) government produces, I found this 2007 graph interesting. On the right is the recommended amounts of various food groups for a healthy life. On the left is where the United States government spends its money in food subsidies:

The article behind it is available on the website for the “Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine.”

In this case, “subsidy” means that the government taxes you and then pays part of the price for something. In other words, the government is buying half (or some percentage) of each Big Mac in your name whether you eat at McDonald’s or not. The same goes for Whataburger and White Castle.

This is why I dislike government’s redistribution of wealth. It moves work and production around in an unnatural manner. As a slight tangent, the ethynol (corn alcohol) in your gas tank is also subsidized in order to make it appear to cost less than standard fossil fuels.