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Why Americans Can't Afford to Eat Healthy
The real reason Big Macs are cheaper than more nutritious alternatives? Government subsidies
The easiest way to explain Gallup's discovery that millions of Americans are eating fewer fruits and vegetables than they ate last year is to simply crack a snarky joke about Whole Foods really being "Whole Paycheck." Rooted in the old limousine liberal iconography, the quip conjures the notion that only Birkenstock-wearing trust-funders can afford to eat right in tough times.
(theimpulsivebuy / CC BY 3.0)
It seems a tidy explanation for a disturbing trend, implying that healthy food is inherently more expensive, and thus can only be for wealthy Endive Elitists when the economy falters. But if the talking point's carefully crafted mix of faux populism and oversimplification seems a bit facile -- if the glib explanation seems almost too perfectly sculpted for your local right-wing radio blowhard -- that's because it dishonestly omits the most important part of the story. The part about how healthy food could easily be more affordable for everyone right now, if not for those ultimate elitists: agribusiness CEOs, their lobbyists and the politicians they own.
As with most issues in this new Gilded Age, the tale of the American diet is a story of the worst form of corporatism -- the kind whereby the government uses public monies to protect private profit.
In this chapter of that larger tragicomedy, lawmakers whose campaigns are underwritten by agribusinesses have used billions of taxpayer dollars to subsidize those agribusinesses' specific commodities (corn, soybeans, wheat, etc.) that are the key ingredients of unhealthy food. Not surprisingly, the subsidies have manufactured a price inequality that helps junk food undersell nutritious-but-unsubsidized foodstuffs like fruits and vegetables. The end result is that recession-battered consumers are increasingly forced by economic circumstance to "choose" the lower-priced junk food that their taxes support.
Corn -- which is processed into the junk-food staple corn syrup and which feeds the livestock that produce meat -- exemplifies the scheme.
"Over the past decade, the federal government has poured more than $50 billion into the corn industry, keeping prices for the crop ... artificially low," reports Time magazine. "That's why McDonald's can sell you a Big Mac, fries and a Coke for around $5 -- a bargain."
Yes, it is a bargain, but one created by deliberate government policy that serves the corn industry titans, not by any genetic advantage that makes corn derivatives automatically more affordable for the budget-strapped commoner.
The aggregate effect of such market manipulation across the agriculture industry, notes Time, is "that a dollar [can] buy 1,200 calories of potato chips or 875 calories of soda but just 250 calories of vegetables or 170 calories of fresh fruit."
So while it may be amusing to use Americans' worsening recession-era diet as another excuse to promote cultural stereotypes, the nutrition crisis costing us billions in unnecessary healthcare costs is more about public policy and powerful special interests than it is about epicurean snobs and affluent tastes. Indeed, this is a problem not of individual proclivities or of agricultural biology that supposedly makes nutrition naturally unaffordable -- it is a problem of rigged economics and corrupt policymaking.
Solving the crisis, then, requires everything from recalibrating our subsidies to halting the low-income school lunch program's support for the pizza and French fry lobby (yes, they have a powerful lobby). It requires, in other words, a new level of maturity, a better appreciation for the nuanced politics of food and a commitment to changing those politics for the future.
Impossible? Hardly. A country that can engineer the seemingly unattainable economics of a $5 McDonald's feast certainly has the capacity to produce a healthy meal for the same price. It's just a matter of will -- or won't.
44 Comments so far
Show AllHunger Strike!
It takes me a long time to shop for groceries because I read labels-- and I notice few other people bothering to do so. I can't tell you how many times I put a product back on the shelf because the first ingredient listed is HFCS. I used to buy regular pancake syrup because real maple syrup was too expensive, but until recently I didn't pay attention to the inclusion of HFCS in every other kind of syrup. Even sticking with the nutritionists' advice to stay in the outer sections of the store-- produce aisles, etc., isn't the wisest these days because who knows what's in their fruits and vegetables anymore? Genetically modified foods, grown with pesticides, aren't necessarily a healthier option. But most of us can't afford to buy organic foods either, and very little of the produce I want is grown in the area and available in local farmer's markets.
I wouldn't go that far; Greek yogurt and even packaged organic foods are all labeled.
I definitely prefer fresh fruit and vegetables, but canned fruit and vegetables and frozen vegetables are NOT necessarily over processed. Canned whole tomatoes are a great for cooking and have nothing added but a bit of salt in most cases.
When I purchased canned tomatoes and canned red kidney beans for making homemade Chili con Carne, I make sure that there's a "No Salt Added" label written on the can before buying it. Who needs the extra salt, anyhow?
local farmers need to make a decent wage, not less than minimum wage.
Also all food is not in season all the time so there is always a price change based on supply and demand. This variation can be taken out of industrial food to some extent.
eg.organic free range (pasture fed) chickens sell for approx $15-18 at the local farmers market. I have chickens myself for eggs so I can attest to the time, effort, space and money that keeping them demands. $15 seems a fair price allowing the farmer to make a living.
Compare this to the $5 industrial chicken, that's been soaked in chicken poo and brine before you eat it.....
The downside of this is prices of local organic will be higher than grocery stores.
You could always try growing your own and still spend your allocated food budget buying from local farmers at slightly higher prices.
We reckon , even with our small garden we would spend close to a $1000 if we bought what we grow at the local farmers markets. Probably more now we have fresh eggs.
"the tale...is a story of the worst form of corporatism -- the kind whereby the government uses public monies to protect private profit."
CD, how about save us all alot of time. Just have one permanent post with the title "Why Capitalism/Corporatism/Fascism Sucks". Then file the 75% of CD articles that illustrate the point under it. Man this is a getting boring.
Maybe it's time for you to mosey on over to another site.
Boring?! WTF does that mean. It's either true or it's not.
If you find the truth boring, well.. that's sounds like a personal problem to me.
Most people don't realize how the government uses tax dollars to prop up giant corporations and the MSM isn't going to inform them.
You missed my point entirely...this is yet another article along the lines of "...capitalism/corporatism/etc. is ruining things in America..." It's as if we were on a site about Cancer, and article after article shows us examples of ways cancer can manifest itself. Yes, we all know cancer is bad, and can cause harm in numerous ways. Instead of endless articles about the symptoms, how about devote more space to the cure (and not just a million little cures that simply make things a little better in this or that limited case). I guess I'm just getting bored of seeing articles on CD that basically preach to the choir over and over. And just to clarify, I'm talking about having the article on CD, not that it originally appeared on Salon, which is great.
Okay, thanks for the clarification.
American are so disconnected from growing anything (even though the majority of Americans are descendants of farmers) that we could all easily starve to death if agribusiness decides to sell their products somewhere else. Combined with the fact that more and more Americans are choosing to live in condos, townhouses and other 'land-free' abodes, it's scary to think how far we have drifted from our skill sets for growing our own food.
My father and I have grown our own pesticide free crops in our backyard since I was born. The food is vastly superior to anything we can buy at the store, but it is seasonal and we have to suffer through Californian GM crops during the lean months. We do pickle some stuff and make other preserves and I feel this is a primary reason that the average life expectancy in our family is around 102 years of age.
Most people in my city have never had ANYTHING organic and are shocked at the flavor when I introduce them to their first organic, fresh eggs or a beefsteak tomato from our garden, yet they continue to live off of corn fed, fast food and commercial grocery store produce. The saddest part is in today's society, the majority of people are not in a position to grow their own crops and a large chunk of people who can, simply don't bother to.
Something that could make even a pretty bad item of food a wee bit healthier would be to omit that godawful cheese. They want to add it to everything. It's not really cheese at all. It tastes of nothing, but adds a load of fat to an already fat-soaked burger, melt, sandwich etc.
I've yet to find any decent cheese in this country. The faux cheese lobby must be a strong one.
No good cheese in the U.S.? You aren't looking. U.S. cheeses consistently win gold medals in world competition. They just aren't made by Kraft.
Growyourown: The only cheese I've found in the US anywhere near what's available in England is Canadian Black Diamond cheddar. Everything else (non-Kraft I assure you) available in OK is waxy or rubbery and far too mild. I'm probably in the wrong state - (for a number of reasons !)
Are you able to Get Armstrong Cheddar Cheese in the US? It my own favorite.
Haven't seen that name around here, but will make a point of watching for it whenever we visit other states. Thanks.
David, this article is really going to upset the liberal elitists who like to blame every problem on the dreaded "Fat Lazy Americans."
* The aggregate effect of such market manipulation across the agriculture industry, notes Time, is "that a dollar [can] buy 1,200 calories of potato chips or 875 calories of soda but just 250 calories of vegetables or 170 calories of fresh fruit." *
I am fully supportive of the main point of this article, but do any CD readers beside myself see the logical shortcomings of the above statement?
OK. Now we have the US Government subsizing unhealthy diet for the people in the USA while we have health care which goes up in cost atronomically or so it seems. What kind of reasoning goes on in the US capital with these people who have this power? Have they lost their ever loving minds?
Ok, I'll bite.
1200 calories of potato chips or 875 calories of soda is not a great amount of food because these junk foods are calorie dense but nutrition empty.
Meanwhile 250 calories of vegetables or 170 calories of fresh fruit is an enormous amount of food because these healthy foods are nutrition dense but very low calorie.
For example: 1200 calories of potato chips are 8 oz but 250 calories of broccoli are 25 oz.
The interesting thing here is that if you really look at TIME's ratios of dollars spent to calories purchased as vegetables or fruit, one can conclude that instead of buying a $5 value meal, one can buy for the same amount of money 1250 calories of vegetables, which is more than half of the recommended daily caloric intake for the average person. So, doesn't this mean that buying vegetables is a better value than buying a value meal - making it actually quite affordable to eat healthy?
At my local farmers market a tiny bag of spinach - approx 2 servings - costs $4.
A chicken sandwich at Wendy's costs 99 cents.
The answer is to stop subsidizing large industrial farms and Monsanto and give that money to small family organic farms.
Read my article MONSANTO AN UDDER DISGRACE
Rosemarie--"The answer is to stop subisdizing large industrial farms..." Absolutely, but I think small organic family farms, would do quite fine without taking money from the USDA. We should structure policy to favor small farms and then let them do what they do. They can get crop insurance like the rest of us have unemployment insurance.
But what if you only have 99¢?
While I agree with the main thrust of this article, I can't agree with it's arguments. If we subsidized organic produce from every local farmer at the rate we subsidize corn, the country would go bankrupt. If we subsidize it at the far lower rate possible, then it won't make enough difference. I try to buy organic, but I can afford less and less. It is more expensive from the local farmers' market than it is from Whole Foods. As much as I would like to support local farmers, I can't do it.
Stopping subsidies for crap 'food' is important for health reasons, but it won't do a damn thing for those who can't afford the alternative.
What would happen if we just stopped subsidizing all the food?
I think what you're going back to is the argument that healthy organic food is so much more expensive, when we started out covering some of the the reasons for that. There's nothing expensive about healthy food. It's just not amenable to a highly centralized, industrialized system with profligate waste to enrich the corporate middlemen who are manipulating famers and consumers into accepting the worst they can put up with.
Let's look at the cost of the industrial agriculture system: decimation of food diversity, huge fossil fuel consumption and CO2 emission, and a huge percentage of our topsoil lost. Do you want to let that run until it just stops being profitable for the middlemen? By then oil will be scarce, fertilizers will no longer be cost effective, and good healthy soil will be largely gone. The results would be apocalyptic. Worth the disposable junk food?
"The country" is past the point of doing much of anything that is really in the interests of ordinary folk. The gov/corp subsidies ought to stop in many areas, and when the whole thing implodes they will follow. Things will change, but it will be from the bottom up, and probably outside official regulation. Meanwhile, waiting for Big Brother to put a decent meal on our plate leaves us completely infantilized. You are what you eat, literally, and loading up on garbage is not a good choice, even if it's cheaper. When health is severely compromised, clear thinking itself becomes difficult. Of course, America got started on the junk-food binge long before groceries became so expensive. Now it's a way of life (or death).
According to this article, the value of a food can be judged by its calorie level!!! What a sick standard to judge food value!!!!!
"A country that can engineer the seemingly unattainable economics of a $5 McDonald's feast certainly has the capacity to produce a healthy meal for the same price. "
Quite the contrary.
"Impossible? Hardly. A country that can engineer the seemingly unattainable economics of a $5 McDonald's feast certainly has the capacity to produce a healthy meal for the same price. It's just a matter of will -- or won't."
Of course that is so. Well put, Sir ota.
Then go read "The conquest of bread" by P. Kropotkin:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Kropotkin-Conquest-Writings-Cambridge-Political/dp/0521459907/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1310790914&sr=1-3
I made an entire film about an aspect of this, the genetic modification and subsequent patenting of seeds by Agribusiness. ("Genetic Chile", please put it in your netflix queue).
Even Scahill misses this, admittedly small, point: For the price of that burger/coke/fries for four you can cook a huge pot of organic rice and lentils. There are a lot of cheaper, healthy options, one just needs to be creative.
Also, NPR did a 'fun' little piece on the rise in hamburger sales. They never mentioned the economic drivers and left the audience without details. Details like, what percentage of the increase is due to dollar burger sales?
This is true. They say America was settled on succotash, Corn and Limas. A bean and a grain when eaten together, eazymatically create a whole protein. So we don't even need a burger. It takes 10 pounds of grain to create one pound burger. We should get a clue.
One of the problems is that those foods that were once special treats, like cakes and pancakes, are now eaten on a daily basis by many people. These are not the sustaining foods that the body needs and are best kept for high days and holidays.
As for the rest, buy raw ingredients and cook them, and the problem will be solved. Are potatoes and cabbage really that expensive, and canned tomatoes and pasta are still cheap? And how about eating a smaller volume of food. If any food from a home is thrown away there is bad domestic management going on.
And schools? When I was at school there was no choice at all and we had to eat what was offered, plain food cooked really quite well. Plain water was on the tables, along with plain bread. Carbonated drinks, pizza, deep fried things - never! All the meals were balanced and the only concessions to odd diets was that we had fish on Fridays. Nobody was vegetarian or had food allergies in the 1950s, certainly not in the ordinary middle class English school I went to. And in six hundred boys there were only four fat ones, the rest of us were of normal weight. We also played sport on three afternoons a week winter and summer - no opt outs.
We have become a soft and rather degenerate society and we are paying for this in any number of ways, diet included.
In centuries past even the rich ensured that nothing went to waste and chatelaines ensured that their kitchen staff made the best use of all ingredients.
A Big Mac is a cop out and not really the problem. Cornstarch? Buy raw ingredients and cook them and you will hardly ever encounter it.
Cost? Cut out the cakes and biscuits and fizzy drinks and there wil be plenty of money to eat well. Learn to cook people!
I am on Social Security. I have reduced my meat diet to five onces a day. I eat a lot of wheat. My morning cereal is bulgur, wheat parboiled, cracked, and cooked like oatmeal. Just wheat, nothing added until I cook it. Eleven cents a bowl. A fifty pound bag, at sixty cents a pound, will last me a year. Same price for a fifty pound bag pure organic whole wheat flour. I bake my own bread. Last year I planted some fruit trees. I will have a few peaches and pears next year, and enough to share the year after. I buy sweet corn at the farmers market to put in my freezer.
life of a vegetable
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