Americans Eat the Cheapest Food in the World, But What is It Really
Costing?
Posted By
Dr. Mercola |
April 14 2012
Story at-a-glance
-
In 2010, Americans spent just over 9 percent of their
disposable income on food (5.5 percent at home and 3.9
percent eating out); this is less than half or more of
most any other country on the planet
-
The “faster, bigger, cheaper” approach to food
production that the United States has mastered is
unsustainable and is contributing to the destruction of
our planet and your health
-
Easy access to cheap, poor-quality food is contributing
to the rising rates of obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart
disease and other chronic disease
-
Nearly all cheap processed foods in the United States
contain genetically modified (GM) ingredients and come
from confined animal feeding operations, which
contribute to environmental destruction, animal cruelty
and the spread of antibiotic-resistant super-germs
-
To protect your health and the environment, strive to
make 90 percent of your diet non-processed, whole
organic foods; it may cost more to eat this way
initially, but the amount it will save you in the long
run is immeasurable
By Dr. Mercola
In 2010, Americans spent just over 9 percent of their
disposable income on food (5.5 percent at home and 3.9
percent eating out).i
This is a dramatically lower percentage spent just
decades ago in the early 1960s, when over 17 percent was
spent on food, and even more of a "bargain" compared to
1930, when Americans spent over 24 percent of their
disposable income to feed their families.
When you compare what Americans spend to what people in
other countries spend, you'll also notice some great
disparities.
On the surface, having cheaper food may seem like an
advantage, but in reality while Americans may be saving a
few dollars on their meals, they're paying big time in terms
of their health, and the health of the planet.
No Place on the Planet Has Cheaper Food Than the United
States
As reported in TreeHugger, professor Mark J. Perry stated
on his Carpe Diem blog:ii
"... compared to other countries, there's no
other place on the planet that has cheaper food than the
U.S. The 5.5% of disposable income that Americans spend
on food at home is less than half the amount of income
spent by Germans (11.4%), the French (13.6%), the
Italians (14.4%), and less than one-third the amount of
income spent by consumers in South Africa (20.1%),
Mexico (24.1%), and Turkey (24.5%), which is about what
Americans spent DURING THE GREAT DEPRESSION, and far
below what consumers spend in Kenya (45.9%) and Pakistan
(45.6%)."
Unfortunately, the "faster, bigger, cheaper" approach to
food production that the United States has mastered is
unsustainable and contributing to the destruction of our
planet and your health. Michael Pollan, author of The
Omnivore's Dilemma and a number of other bestsellers,
said it best:
"Cheap food is an illusion. There is no such
thing as cheap food. The real cost of the food is paid
somewhere. And if it isn't paid at the cash register,
it's charged to the environment or to the public purse
in the form of subsidies. And it's charged to your
health."
In other words, pay now or pay later. American food may
be cheap, but that's about the only "compliment" it
deserves, because when you rely on cheap food, you typically
get what you pay for.
Why are So Many Americans Fat and Sick?
In many cases, easily the majority, it is due to dietary
factors! Millions of Americans live in "food deserts" where
fresh produce is hard to find but processed food and fast
food is available everywhere. If your meals consist of $1
burgers and super-size drinks, your diet may be cheap, but
it is also excessively high in grains, sugars, and
factory-farmed meats. This is a recipe for obesity, diabetes
and heart disease, just to name a few calamitous conditions
that befall those who consume the standard American diet!
You have the U.S. government to thank for this cheap
food, as
farm subsidies bring you high-fructose corn syrup, fast
food, animal factories, monoculture, and a host of other
contributors to our unhealthful contemporary diet. A report
comparing federal subsidies of fresh produce and junk food,
prepared by U.S. PIRG, a non-profit organization that takes
on special interests on behalf of the public,
revealed where your tax dollars are really going, and
it's quite shocking.
If you were to receive an annual federal subsidy
directly, you would receive $7.36 to spend on junk food and
just 11 cents to buy apples. In other words, every year,
your tax dollars pay for enough corn syrup and other junk
food additives to buy 19 Twinkies, but only enough fresh
fruit to buy less than a quarter of one red delicious apple.
Heart disease is a direct reflection of poor dietary
choices. Heart disease costs us $189.4 billion per year.
However, statistics show that by 2030, these costs will
triple, resulting in a mind-bending $818 billion!iii
Meanwhile, as TreeHugger reported:
"If Americans continue to pack on pounds, obesity
will cost us about $344 billion in medical-related
expenses by 2018, eating up about 21 percent of
healthcare spending, according to an article in USA
Today.iv
Not to mention the unseen health issues associated with
a genetically modified and pesticide-bathed food
system."
What's the "Cost" of a Food System Based on Genetically
Modified Foods?
The damage is quite simply immeasurable. Nearly all
processed foods in the United States contain genetically
modified (GM) ingredients, particularly Bt corn and Roundup
Ready soy. These crops and other GM varieties are now
planted on nearly 4 billion acres of land throughout 29
countries, as their makers (primarily Monsanto, Dupont,
Syngenta) continue to praise their worth. These companies,
which have created patents and intellectual property rights
so that they now control close to 70 percent of global seed
sales, extol the virtues of GM crops as though they are a
panacea for ending world hunger and solving the food crisis.
But in fact, as a report coordinated by Navdanya and
Navdanya International, the International Commission on the
Future of Food and Agriculture, The Center for Food Safety
(CFS) and others, has stated, GM crops are surrounded by
false promises and failed yields, to the extent that they
are now
destroying the food system with superweeds, superpests
and more.
Scientists have discovered a number of health problems --
like changes in reproductive hormones, testicular changes
and damage to the pituitary gland -- related to genetically
modified foods, however these studies have been repeatedly
ignored by both the European Food Safety Authority and the
U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). GM foods are
typically regarded as equivalent to their conventional
counterparts. This, however, is flawed logic because GM
foods contain foreign genes that have never before been
introduced into the food supply, and are universally
contaminated with toxic GMO-specific herbicide residues.
Behind Virtually Every Cheap Burger is a CAFO
It cannot be ignored that the animals raised on confined
animal feed operations (CAFOs) pay one of the highest prices
for Americans' cheap food. The typical CAFO can house tens
of thousands of animals (and in the case of chickens,
100,000) under one roof, in nightmarish, unsanitary,
disease-ridden conditions.
Animals raised at CAFOs are treated like objects, not
animals -- stuck in cages, overcrowded, often covered in
feces -- which is not only hard to watch, but also hard to
stomach. It is not at all unusual for animals to be abused
in these circumstances; the very conditions in which they
live are abuse in their own right. For those who aren't
aware, about 80 percent of all the antibiotics produced are
used in agriculture -- not only to fight infection, but to
promote unhealthy (though profitable) weight gain in
animals. Unfortunately, this practice is also contributing
to the alarming spread of antibiotic-resistant disease -- a
serious problem that is costing tens of thousands of
Americans their lives.
CAFOs have been highly promoted as the best way to
produce food for the masses, but the only reason CAFOs are
able to remain so "efficient," bringing in massive profits
while selling their food for bottom-barrel prices, is
because they substitute subsidized crops for pasture
grazing.
Factory farms use massive quantities of corn, soy and
grain in their animal feed, all crops that they are often
able to purchase at below cost because of government
subsidies. Because of these subsidies, U.S. farmers produce
massive amounts of soy, corn, wheat, etc. -- rather than
vegetables -- leading to a monoculture of foods that
contribute to a fast food diet. As written in "CAFO: The
Tragedy of Industrial Animal Factories":v
"Thanks to U.S. government subsidies, between
1997 and 2005, factory farms saved an estimated $3.9
billion per year because they were able to purchase corn
and soybeans at prices below what it cost to grow the
crops. Without these feed discounts, amounting to a 5 to
15 percent reduction in operating costs, it is unlikely
that many of these industrial factory farms could remain
profitable.
By contrast, many small farms that produce much
of their own forage receive no government money. Yet
they are expected somehow to match the efficiency claims
of the large, subsidized megafactory farms. On this
uneven playing field, CAFOs may falsely appear to
"outcompete" their smaller, diversified counterparts."
As it stands, the book notes that "grazing and growing
feed for livestock now occupy 70 percent of all agricultural
land and 30 percent of the ice-free terrestrial surface of
the planet. If present trends continue, meat production is
predicted to double between the turn of the 21st century and
2050." Does this sound like a good deal to you?
Allocating More Money to Your Food is Investing in Your Most
Valuable Asset...
You... and your family (including those who are yet to be
born)! If you want to optimize your health, you simply must
return to the basics of healthy food choices. And, as more
and more people begin to grasp this concept and demand
healthy, unadulterated foods, the more must be produced, one
way or another. There is just no way around it -- if you
want your family to be healthy, someone in your household,
or someone you pay, must invest some time in the kitchen
preparing your food from scratch, using fresh, whole
ingredients.
Avoiding processed food requires a change in mindset,
which is not always an easy task. It CAN be done, however.
Rather than looking at processed foods as a convenience that
tastes good or saves money, try thinking of it as:
- Extra calories that will harm your body
- A toxic concoction of foreign chemicals and
artificial flavors that will lead to disease
- A waste of your money
- Likely to lead to increased health care bills for
you and your family
- Not something to give to children, whose bodies are
still developing and in great need of nutrients
Your goal should be to strive for 90 percent
non-processed, whole food. Not only will you enjoy the
health benefits—especially if you buy mostly organic—but
you'll also get the satisfaction of knowing exactly what
you're putting into your body, and that in and of itself can
be a great feeling. It may cost more to eat this
way, but then again it might not. (And in the long
run the amount it will save you in the long run is
immeasurable.)
You may be surprised to find out that by going directly
to the source you can get amazingly healthy, locally grown,
organic food for less than you can find at your supermarket.
This gives you the best of both worlds: food that is grown
near to you and sold with minimal packaging, cutting down on
its carbon footprint and giving you optimal freshness, as
well as grown without chemicals, genetically modified (GM)
seeds, and other potential toxins.
Restaurants are able to keep their costs down by getting
food directly from a supplier. You, too, can take advantage
of a direct farm-to-consumer relationship, either on an
individual basis by visiting a small local farm or by
joining a food coop in your area. To find these types of
real foods, grown by real farmers who are eager to serve
their communities, visit
LocalHarvest.org.
Simple Strategies to Eat Well Without Spending More
There are many strategies available to stretch your food
dollars while feeding your family healthy foods. Rather than
wasting money on expensive cereal boxes and bags of chips,
put your money toward foods that will serve your health
well, such as raw organic dairy, cage-free organic eggs,
fresh vegetables and fermented foods you make at home
(fermented foods are incredibly economical because you can
use a portion of one batch to start the next).
The following strategies will also make it easier to eat
well on a tight budget:
- Identify someone to prepare meals.
Someone has to invest time in the kitchen to prepare
your meals, or else you will succumb to costly and
unhealthy fast food and convenience foods. So it will be
necessary for either you, your spouse, another family
member or someone you pay to prepare your family's meals
from locally grown healthful foods.
- Become resourceful: This is an area
where your grandmother can be a wealth of information,
as how to use up every morsel of food and stretch out a
good meal was common knowledge to generations past. Seek
to get back to the basics of cooking -- using the bones
from a roast chicken to make stock for a pot of soup,
extending a Sunday roast to use for weekday dinners,
learning how to make hearty stews from inexpensive cuts
of meat, using up leftovers and so on.
- Plan your meals: If you fail to
plan you are planning to fail. This is essential, as you
will need to be prepared for mealtimes in advance to be
successful. Ideally this will involve scouting out your
local farmer's markets for in-season produce that is
priced to sell, and planning your meals accordingly.
But, you can also use this same premise with supermarket
sales or, even better, produce from your own vegetable
garden.
You can generally plan a week of meals at a time,
make sure you have all ingredients necessary on hand,
and then do any prep work you can ahead of time so that
dinner is easy to prepare if you're short on time in the
evening.
It is no mystery that you will be eating lunch around
noon every day so rather than rely on fast food at work,
before you go to bed make a plan as to what you are
going to take to work for lunch the next day. This is a
simple strategy that will let you eat healthier and save
money, especially it you take healthy food from home in
with you to work.
- Avoid food waste: According to a
study published in the journal PloS One,
Americans waste an estimated 1,400 calories of food per
person, each and every day.vi
The two steps above will help you to mitigate food waste
in your home, and you may also have seen my article
titled
14 Ways to Save Money on Groceries. Among those tips
are suggestions for keeping your groceries fresher,
longer, and I suggest
reviewing those tips now.
- Buy organic animal foods. The most
important foods to buy organic are animal, not
vegetable, products (meat, eggs, butter, etc.), because
animal foods tend to concentrate pesticides in higher
amounts. If you cannot afford to buy all of your food
organic, opt for organic animal foods first.
References:
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