The Price of A Healthy Diet

The other day I was talking to a good friend of mine about food, when a touchy subject came up. I said something about how I really only like whole wheat bread and without knowing it I had struck an emotional nerve. My friend started ranting about how there is no affordable whole wheat bread and how poor people cannot afford it and how they are stuck with wonderbread. Although this was something that in the back of my head I was aware of I realized that my access to fresh and nutritional food is just another thing that I take for granted in my life. The way our economy is set up mass produced food is cheaper than fresh ingredients. The more shelf-stable a good is generally the less it costs and generally the less nutritionally rich it is. An article in the Washington Post described why poorer people have more difficulties gaining access to fresh food.

Calorie for calorie, junk foods not only cost less than fruits and vegetables, but junk food prices also are less likely to rise as a result of inflation. The findings, reported in the current issue of the Journal of the American Dietetic Association, may help explain why the highest rates of obesity are seen among people in lower-income groups.

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/12/05/a-high-price-for-healthy-food/

With many families and persons facing a time of economic hardship cutting back of the weekly grocery bill may be the first step to change overall spending habits. When it comes down to eating cheap, unhealthy food or no food at all, of course people are going to choose to eat. However it is exactly this unhealthy eating that in the long run leaves Americans prone to disease and the need for healthcare, only in this day and age access to adequate healthcare is also up in the air.

"People are eating cheaper, more fattening foods; care is more difficult to find; and as a result we're going to have more and more people presenting at a later stage of the disease process," says Roslin. "If you're concerned about paying your rent and making ends meet, it's very hard to think about the future implications of diabetes and other illnesses."

http://www.newsweek.com/id/194980

Now I know that many of you may be sick of me harping about farm subsidies, but the reason why unhealthy food is cheaper than vegetables stems from the subsidies. Cheap corn is processed into cheap additives and calorie dense foods that appear in almost all processed products. Without subsidized corn we would not have the food industry's favorite high fructose corn syrup hidden in so many things. If we subsidized the growing of vegetables and the processing of whole grains then more Americans could afford to buy that whole grain bread that their doctors are saying is good for their heart instead of chowing down on cheap alternatives and crossing their fingers that later down the road all will be well.

Are Our Farm Subsidies Impoverishing the World?

Lately I have been focusing on how U.S. Food/Farm policy effects people living inside the United States. But as we all know, we live today in the age of globalization and through trade we are now dependent on other countries for our livelihood. In the case of U.S. subsidies to farmers it can be debated in circles about whether they are helping or hurting the American economy. What is certain though is that U.S. subsidies are severely harming the economies of the world. Cheap subsidized corn, cotton, rice and other goods flood the foreign market and make it impossible for local farmers to compete with the artificially low prices of U.S. goods. This is a problem that various groups have red-flagged over the past decade, but rarely has been paid any attention by legislature or news corporations. With the recent devastation in Haiti U.S. aid has been flooding in, but some have stopped to question how Haiti got into such a bad economic state to begin with.

In a 2006 report, the Cato Institute, a nonprofit Washington-based research foundation, called rice "one of the most heavily supported commodities in the United States," and argued that several countries including Haiti "could all plausibly claim that the U.S. rice program has driven down global prices to the detriment of their citizens."

"Until the 1980s," the Washington Post recently reported, "Haiti grew almost all the rice that it ate. But in 1986, under pressure from foreign governments, including the United States, Haiti removed its tariff on imported rice."

http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/01/27/us.haiti.rice/index.html?iref=allsearch

A common theme I have found when researching US trade relations in third world countries is that we tend to bully countries into trading with us and then ruin their local economies with our cheap commodities, most often agricultural commodities. This is not an event singular to Haiti. In Mexico the same thing happened with imports of our subsidized corn and in Africa with subsidized cotton. America is simply not playing by the rules and the World Trade Organization has called them out on it on numerous occasions.

“The global trading system depends on countries obeying rules and submitting to orderly dispute resolution,” said Kripke. “Thus far, the US has ignored the ruling of the WTO adjudication and continues large subsidies for cotton production. If the US continues this way, the integrity of the multilateral trade system is at stake.”

http://www.oxfam.org/en/pressroom/pressrelease/2009-08-31/oxfam-reaction-wto-judgement-us-cotton-subsidies

How far are we wiling to go as a country to continue down this route of unfair trade. How many externalities are we going to create with third world country to maintain our system of industrial agriculture in our country?

Agribusiness, Farm subsidies, and the Outlook of Rural America

As we began to discuss the impact of government intervention in the marketplace there was one thought that was running through my mind. Farm subsidies. As someone who would very much like to see more support for the small-scale, local agriculture it is always a twisted somewhat endless search to understand how the U.S. farm subsidies really work and why they are in place. Believe me I have just spent under an hour looking for a quote to put in here and I could spend all afternoon and still not be totally satisfied. When we go to the store and purchase our groceries there are so many factors that play into the price. For one the government subsidizes the production of certain commodity goods to keep the prices down. These goods include corn and soybean, which in turn gets processed into feed for the meat industry or additives in processed food for the most part. That means that the $3.50 you just paid at Meijer for a gallon of milk does not really reflect the producer's cost. The subsidies are, in theory supposed to bolster the agricultural economy while keeping prices low. What it has actually done for decades is to bolster large-scale industrial operations and leave giant swaths of our country in a constant state of depopulation and declining economic situations. I found an article on NPR "How Will an Urban President Handle Farm Policy?"

Farm subsidies are supposed to keep food prices down, and farmers and farm towns thriving. As costs have risen, farming has consolidated. Fewer farmers are working bigger farms. So subsidies are not achieving one goal of farm policy, says Dee Davis of the Center for Rural Strategies, a group that seeks attention to rural issues. "The greatest out-migration in rural areas is [in] the places [that] get the highest agricultural subsidies," Davis says. "The system is not working."[....]"If we are really serious, we can make sure that family farmers are supported, not just big agribusiness," a casually-dressed Obama told a crowd in Amana, Iowa. "I think that we can make sure that subsidies are going to people who need it, not Fortune 500 companies."

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=97309054

If you cannot read the cartoon the pig is labeled "Agribusiness" and the ice cream "Food Subsidy Pyramid". Obviously a reflection on the current distribution of subsidy payments in the country. And its affect on the overall health of the nation.

This all just makes me wonder where is our country going? When bigger is always better in the subsidy arena? When we are paying farmers billions of dollars not to farm to control prices? When the ecology of the land is compensated for maximum output of monocrops?

All just something to dwell on.