Cutting the Cost of Healthy Eating
The Denver Post reports:
As Revisha Martinez pondered the cost of peaches and watermelon at her local King Soopers recently, she became the last stop in a complicated food-production system that critics believe has turned healthy eating into expensive eating.
If Martinez wants each member of her household to have one peach, it'll cost her about $3.
If she chooses Kraft macaroni and cheese, she can get 18 servings — with 400 calories and 580 milligrams of sodium in each — for the same price.
The reasons fresh fruits and vegetables are so pricey compared with processed food in a carton are a complicated stew of government subsidies, politics and the whims of Mother Nature.
But their combined might, say critics pushing for a change in the way money is doled out, moves us away from fruits and vegetables and toward meat, dairy products and the sugar- and sodium-loaded processed foods for which crops like corn and wheat serve as the raw ingredients.
"We've made the unhealthy choice the rational choice," said Merrick Weaver, who, as executive director of Partnership for Healthy Communities, works to improve nutrition among lower-income families in Commerce City.
Weaver was echoing Michael Pollan, whose "The Omnivore's Dilemma" has become a manifesto for those trying to shift discussion about the country's obesity epidemic to include the food-production infrastructure.
In short, "You can buy more calories for your dollar if you buy bad foods," Weaver said.
A chorus of critics say that is no accident but rather the result of long-standing government policies.
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