Good Food More Expensive?

A new study published in the Journal of the American Dietetic Assocation- not an organization I'm usually very fond of- has found that healthy food is becoming more expensive nationally, while junk food is becoming cheaper.

The average price of the lowest-calorie foods- like, for example, tomatoes, berries and green veggies- went up by almost 20 percent over 2 years. Meanwhile, there was a slight dip in the cost of potato chips, cookies and candy.

Researchers are speculating that this is one reason why obesity rates are soaring among the poorest Americans.

I think there are a lot of reasons why obesity rates are soaring, and this may in fact be one of them, but its not the only one. Education about health is a factor, as is access to good food (think school cafeterias or the absence of fresh produce in a lot of poorer neighborhoods). And so is what psychologists call "modeling"; if some sports and music stars started showing up in commercials eating vegetables, and calling chips and fries "food for losers" you'd see a shift in the nations eating habits faster than you could can say "American Idol".

Getting good food on the plates of Americans in reasonable portions requires a complete overhaul of our national psyche when it comes to food and its relationship to health. Want to fix the health care system? Start by gutting the farm bill which pays farmers to grow wheat, corn, soybeans and rice, food which winds up being the core of enough junk food to pack the Mall of America food court hundreds of times over.

As Michael Pollan wrote in the NY Times, "Americans have begun to ask why the farm bill is subsidizing high-fructose corn syrup and hydrogenated oils at a time when rates of diabetes and obesity among children are soaring, or why the farm bill is underwriting factory farming (with subsidized grain) when feedlot wastes are polluting the countryside and, all too often, the meat supply. For the first time, the public health community has raised its voice in support of overturning farm policies that subsidize precisely the wrong kind of calories (added fat and added sugar), helping to make Twinkies cheaper than carrots and Coca-Cola competitive with water".

So does the cheapness of junk food make eating for life, energy and health more difficult? Eating well takes a change in attitude first and foremost. But if we are going to subsidize food, it wouldn't hurt if we made kale and berries and nuts at least as cheap and easy to get as boxes of mac and cheese.