Getting Real About the High Price of Cheap Food [View All]

[nadinbrzezinski]

Horror stories about the food industry have long been with us — ever since 1906, when Upton Sinclair's landmark novel The Jungle told some ugly truths about how America produces its meat. In the century that followed, things got much better, and in some ways much worse. The U.S. agricultural industry can now produce unlimited quantities of meat and grains at remarkably cheap prices. But it does so at a high cost to the environment, animals and humans. Those hidden prices are the creeping erosion of our fertile farmland, cages for egg-laying chickens so packed that the birds can't even raise their wings and the scary rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria among farm animals. Add to the price tag the acceleration of global warming — our energy-intensive food system uses 19% of U.S. fossil fuels, more than any other sector of the economy.


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A food system — from seed to 7‑Eleven — that generates cheap, filling food at the literal expense of healthier produce is also a principal cause of America's obesity epidemic. At a time when the nation is close to a civil war over health-care reform, obesity adds $147 billion a year to our doctor bills. "The way we farm now is destructive of the soil, the environment and us," says Doug Gurian-Sherman, a senior scientist with the food and environment program at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS).

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So what's wrong with cheap food and cheap meat — especially in a world in which more than 1 billion people go hungry? A lot. For one thing, not all food is equally inexpensive; fruits and vegetables don't receive the same price supports as grains. A study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that a dollar could buy 1,200 calories of potato chips or 875 calories of soda but just 250 calories of vegetables or 170 calories of fresh fruit. With the backing of the government, farmers are producing more calories — some 500 more per person per day since the 1970s — but too many are unhealthy calories. Given that, it's no surprise we're so fat; it simply costs too much to be thin.

(more)
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1917458-1,00.html

As I have said i recent discussions, our current food system is not cheap... as much as it seems to be. And eating healthy, due to the way subsidies work... is not cheap either.

Now this also means that Americans have to just NOT vote with their wallets, but also get involved in the debate over the AG bill. It is coming, and it is high time we completely revise our views on food, how we eat, how we take care of the land, and dam it what is supported and what is not. Government has a role at the policy level. That is the AG bill, the Agricultural bill and it is revised every five years.

So time to do your homework because what we are doing, for multiple reasons, is not sustainable. Obesity is just the main VISIBLE consequence of this.