But that's basically not true, or at least misleading; production subsidies for food are sold as a means of controlling retail prices, as are many policies related to gasoline. That's quite a lot of political pressure which manifests in actual policy for government to actively manage process in both domains, even if the actual policy isn't price controls in the sense of a de jure upper limit on retail prices.
A subsidy is fundamentally different from a price ceiling, both in terms of its economic consequences and its implementation. There's nothing misleading about that. Both have significant political pressures behind them, but price ceilings manifested as rent control are near universally derided among economists.
