U.S. Federal Nutrition Policy and the Legal Geographies of Precision Welfare

Abstract

Produce prescriptions are nutrition incentive programs that focus on specific populations diagnosed with chronic diseases. Since 2010 these programs have multiplied across the United States, with much of this growth attributed to expanded federal funding in the 2014 and 2018 Farm Bills. Framed as both “commonsense” solutions and a novel approach to food access and public health, they have been institutionalized within the Gus Schumacher Nutrition Incentive Program. Although framed as novel, prescriptions and dietary interventions are not new areas within nutrition policy. This article brings nutrition policy into the realm of legal geographic inquiry to examine how recent federal appropriations relate to not only social anxieties over diet and nutrition, but historical and contemporary concerns over public use of, and government spending on, federal benefit programs for targeted populations. This examination expands legal geographies literature through discussions of the “body” within law and how federal power comes to govern specific contexts. It argues we are seeing a new enclosure of federal benefits through the precision welfare of targeting individual bodies and their metabolic functions.