

What's wrong with cheap food - bensummers
http://smartpei.typepad.com/robert_patersons_weblog/2010/04/whats-wrong-with-cheap-food.html

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jswinghammer
It'd be nice if the government just stayed out of all this so that people
could decide for themselves what food they wanted to support. Right now the
real costs are all hidden and incentives directed in all the wrong ways. The
food that is cheap isn't actually cheap it just looks that way because the
price signal has been so badly distorted.

I don't want a "smarter" farm policy. I'd like no farm policy. It's clear that
both parties don't actually care about this issue besides making sure that
agribusiness is happy.

~~~
senthil_rajasek
Food is tied to a nations security. If you haven't read Omnivore's Dilemma
([http://www.worldcat.org/title/omnivores-dilemma-a-natural-
hi...](http://www.worldcat.org/title/omnivores-dilemma-a-natural-history-of-
four-meals/oclc/62290639)) I highly recommend it. Michael Pollan, the author
makes a much better and convincing argument.

Imagine having no Farm Policy and we end up having food shortages, there would
be a revolution.

Personally, I try to buy/eat as much local organic food as I can and
experiment by growing food indoors.

~~~
byrneseyeview
_Imagine having no Farm Policy and we end up having food shortages, there
would be a revolution._

I can imagine. After all, this country has no Plate Policy, and I routinely
end up eating off the floor. And I really wish we had a Consumer Electronics
and Computers policy; I'm really jealous of the country that produced the
iPhone and the Macbook because of those attributes.

Fortunately, the country I live in _does_ have a Real Estate Policy and a
Banking System policy, and they're willing to put my money where their mouths
are! It's working out about as well as one would expect.

~~~
MartinCron
Pure capitalist libertarianism like that works really well if you live in a
society willing to stand back and let people die as a result of different
decisions or even circumstances outside their control.

History has shown that's not really the society that civilized humans want to
live in.

~~~
Dove
Pure capitalist libertarianism is a society where _government_ is willing to
stand back and let people die. Not society. There's a difference.

In time of trouble, you can turn for help to family, friends, neighbors,
private charity, or government. In roughly descending order of efficiency and
humanity.

Including government at the end of that chain is a noble attempt to make sure
no one falls through the cracks--like the federal reserve as a "lender of last
resort". The problem is that, like the federal reserve, the guarantee at the
end of the chain changes the dynamics at the front.

We respond to a government guarantee to care for the old and infirm by not
doing it ourselves. Why plan to care for your mother when the government will
do it? Why support private orphanages when you pay taxes to support
institutionalizing them?

The result is emaciated expectations of family, friends and neighbors, and
sickly private charity. Government may be inefficient and inhumane, but it's
cheap--spending someone else's money--and it's guaranteed. So it dominates the
space. And when the other options die away through disuse, it looks like there
_are_ no other options. And all that's left is dependence on the state.

The idea that it's government care or no care is an illusion created by a
couple generations of government dependence. I am convinced that our way --
institutions, beaurocrats -- is really the _inhumane_ way to care for the
poor. I want to get rid of it, not because I don't care, but because I do.

~~~
MartinCron
I like this concept, I really do, but I'm wondering if it's a sort of
idealized utopia. Are there any societies that take care of their most
desperate members without that being a government function?

Almost all of the industrialized nation have some sort of safety net and/or
universal health care. On the other side of the spectrum you get countries
like Somalia, where they, you know, _do_ let people die.

~~~
Dove
I don't honestly know the proper role for government in charity. I reject it
rhetorically to illustrate that rejection of government charity is not
rejection of charity overall, but I do not know if the extreme case is
practical. You do seem to be right that it is not practiced.

I had thought I would find counterexamples in places like the Antebellum
south, or ancient Rome, and while I found a reduced emphasis on the state, I
did not find it completely gone. And while my off the cuff memory is that
there are places in the world, even today, where the obligation for children
to care for their parents in old age is so complete that people have children
for that very purpose, I don't have a citation for it. And I really don't have
the experience to know whether it's preferable.

On a personal level, I see very vividly the evils of institution and
bureaucracy: the people it misses, the way it mistreats even the people it
helps. I have helped homeless friends with transitions from shelter to
shelter, even opened my home to them when it was appropriate; I don't think
highly of the treatment they get, well out of the public eye. And I'm pretty
sure if the city hadn't been there as an option, I'd have done more, and
they'd have been better off. Is it good the city was there? I guess. But I
hate the false dilemma that says it is the only way, and my instinct is that
family, friends, and community are far better.

I do not know what the correct role is for the state, but I cannot but hate
anything that weakens the responsibility of a man to care for himself, or that
seeks to replace the hospitality that family, friends and neighbors owe to
each other.

~~~
MartinCron
Thanks for the thoughtful response. A lot of people don't seem to like to look
to other countries as examples of how individuals, societies, and governments
can interact. Either as examples or as counter-examples.

NPR's excellent Planet Money podcast did a few shows on Denmark, which is like
an economic bizarro-world. Employment law is such that it's really easy to
fire people, but they have a very strong social safety net (2 years
unemployment, or something like that) so the workforce is very fluid.
Employers aren't as afraid to hire people (as they are in countries with
strong labor laws like France) because they don't have the same fear of legal
or interpersonal repercussions. Firing in Denmark is no big deal.

Taxes are progressive, crazy high, support fully subsidized health care, and
the people there are the happiest in the world.

Note: I'm not trying to say every country should be just like Denmark, but
just that the way we've always done things isn't the only way that can work.

On the other hand, you see people who complain about how "government can't do
anything right" and "all regulation is bad" yet they don't realize the only
reason that their houses survive earthquakes without killing them is that
their houses comply with government designed and enforced building codes.
There's a reason the Haitian earthquake killed more people than stronger
earthquakes in other places. Haiti has had "limited government" for decades.

It's easy to paint limited government as a moral ideal, and it's easy to find
prominent examples of government failures. I personally hate bureaucracy as
much as anyone else. The fact remains that a lot of people (often quietly) get
meaningful help from our overall society via democratically elected
governments.

~~~
lionhearted
This has been a really interesting back and forth, just a quick point:

> There's a reason the Haitian earthquake killed more people than stronger
> earthquakes in other places. Haiti has had "limited government" for decades.

That's actually false. Haiti ranks as the 141st economically free country in
the world out of around 200, and 24th out of 29 in the Caribbean. Government
spending is around 20% of GDP, the income tax rates are comparable to the USA,
but the property tax rate is sky high - up to as much as 15%. So no, Haiti
hasn't had "limited government" the way Singapore or Hong Kong has limited
government. They've got quite a bit of government going on, it just happens to
both inept and corrupt.

~~~
MartinCron
Good point. I was thinking of limited in terms of what the government does for
people, but I see that it was a terrible example.

I still like building codes, though :)

~~~
Dove
The earthquake in Haiti was so destructive, in general, because Haiti has been
a land under the heel of grinding poverty for many years. It was the poorest
country in the western hemisphere, a place where children were sold into
slavery to make ends meet, where eating dirt to avoid hunger pains was a
practical enough approach to spawn an industry. And then natural disaster hit.

Building codes have got nothing to do with it. My sister went there a few
weeks ago. I've seen pictures. Some of those houses look to me like they'd
fall over in a stiff rainstorm.

[Edit: The hospital my sister helped build is the subject of the video
featured on this page: <http://heartlineministries.org/EarthquakeNeeds.aspx> .
If you haven't seen Haiti, it's worth looking at the community they served and
the problems they solved.]

------
ajscherer
I agree with maybe half the things the author is saying, but I hate the way he
tries to group them all together into some larger narrative of "the way we
live has become synthetic and corrupted and we need to go back to a more
natural way of life" Appealing to this story is only going to convince people
who already believe it. If he has specific improvements in mind, he should
describe them and make his case for how they will help.

Also, he opens up referring to 1 billion people going hungry, but never
returns to this point. If we embrace techniques that produce less food, what
happens to these people?

~~~
teach
That's probably because the blog linked to is mostly just a cut-and-paste from
the linked Time article
([http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1917458-1,00....](http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1917458-1,00.html)).
This blog post only quotes a part of page 2 of a five-page article, all of
which is worth reading.

~~~
ajscherer
Thanks for pointing that out, I totally missed the attribution to time.com. I
thought the article was just formatted weird.

I agree the full Time article is better, but it still doesn't address the
billion people it mentions going hungry. Ultimately the agricultural system
that is sustainable determines the population that is sustainable, and I am
concerned that the people who aren't going to be sustained won't have much say
in the matter.

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senthil_rajasek
If you don't have the time to read the whole article

Quick summary :

\- subsidized cheap food has adverse health effects and health care is
expensive

\- affects the ecological system and is not sustainable

\- animals raised in meat factories have to be fed a lot of antibiotics that
have consequences on human health.

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goatforce5
Why does a salad cost more than a Big Mac?

<http://www.pcrm.org/magazine/gm07autumn/health_pork.html>

~~~
lotharbot
I first saw the article you linked on a day when I'd made hamburgers and salad
for dinner, and it didn't pass the smell test. I calculated the cost per
person of a whole-dinner-plate salad (made from fresh veggies, including bell
peppers, cucumbers, and tomatoes, with dressing) to be about half the cost per
person of a quarter pound burger. This was right after the Chile quake, which
had doubled the price of some of those veggies.

A McDonalds salad costs more than a Big Mac, not because veggies cost more
than meat, but because _McDonalds salads typically come with meat_
(chicken/bacon) that's as expensive as ground beef, and the salad veggies,
cheese, and dressing are more expensive than a hamburger bun and condiments.
(The prices of non-meat salads are anchored to the prices of the meat-
containing salads.)

I'm all for criticizing food subsidies, but let's do it honestly. Even with
subsidies, ground beef costs about twice as much per pound as the veggies I
commonly buy, and ground beef is at the bottom end of the meat spectrum.
Subsidies don't make a Big Mac cheaper than a salad; price anchoring to
chicken-bacon-ranch salads make McDonalds salads expensive.

~~~
infinite8s
You are forgetting about storage costs. Frozen ground beef, buns and
condiments have a much longer shelf life than the typical salad ingredients.

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davidedicillo
Do you want cheap and healthy food? Eat organic (cost more) but cook yourself
and grow your on condiments.

Cooking yourself it's a no-brainer, and you know exactly what you are eating.
Also I have on my patio all the herbs and few vegetables (I live in a urban
area in Miami, don't think I have fields behind my condo). When you go to the
store you pay $3 for a couple of springs of sage, when you could buy a sage
plant for $3 and keep using it all year long. And the money you save you can
reinvest it in more healthy (and more expensive) food.

~~~
ErrantX
> Eat organic (cost more)

For the most part there is no real extra benefit for Organic food - assuming
you are not opposed to the idea of pesticides and other treatments (which are
mostly benign anyway).

Personally all I require from my food is that it has been farmed ethically and
preferably produced on smaller scales (i.e. no Bernard Matthews Turkey)

That can save you a lot.

(seconded on the cook for yourself part - it doesn't have to take long and
it's a great way to unwind :D)

~~~
bpyne
"For the most part there is no real extra benefit for Organic food - assuming
you are not opposed to the idea of pesticides and other treatments (which are
mostly benign anyway)."

From a nutritional viewpoint, what you said agrees with what I've read. I
think there's real worth, though, in experimenting with different farming
techniques that don't rely on mass produced chemicals. Reliance on these
chemicals makes me think of the "putting all your eggs in one basket" adage.

Recently I heard an NPR piece about nutrition studies done across decades. One
line that struck me is an apple grown in the early 20th century in the US had
the nutritional value of 3 apples grown today. I'm not sure how the
researchers came to that conclusion. But, if it's true and if a similar ratio
applies to other produce, we have the potential for a serious health issue
coming up.

EDIT: Enclosed the quoted text in actual quotes for readability.

~~~
ErrantX
Yes, you're right there.

As I said in my main post I think the real important thing to work on is
ethical farming - regardless of organic or not.

The other thing is that from a sustainability point of view (in terms of the
farming infrastructure) Organic is very cost/labour intensive compared to
other techniques.

There is probably a good balance; as you say we can reach it by experimenting.

~~~
imajes
The problem with saying organic has no benefit is that i can always say,
"DDX", and refute your argument.

~~~
MichaelGG
DDT has done a ton of good, too, saving millions of lives. From the wiki
article:

"For example, in Sri Lanka, the program reduced cases from about 3 million per
year before spraying to just 29 in 1964. Thereafter the program was halted to
save money, and malaria rebounded to 600,000 cases in 1968 and the first
quarter of 1969"

~~~
imajes
True.

it's pretty awesome at retarding growth of some of the most virulent disease
vectors - but at the same time, it's also a fairly awful carcinogen and I
wouldn't want it sprayed on my lettuce to keep away some pesky caterpillars.
:)

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istari
Hated this. Distorted statistics mixed with cliched sound bites and fermented
in rhetoric.

For starters, sugar and starch have more calories than lettuce and fruit not
just for each dollar, but also for every pound.

The author took a couple of well known symptoms(run-off! animal cruelty!
resistant bacteria!), tossed it together in a salad bowl, and chucked it in
the general direction of the nebulous "food industry".

He doesn't offer deeper reasons of why the system is how it is, doesn't
suggest methods of fixing the situation, and goes no further than
regurgitating one sided talking points.

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stcredzero
A lot of it isn't food, but is instead a food-like substance containing some
macronutrients.

------
joubert
Just because something is edible doesn't mean it is food.

~~~
patterned
Especially when it makes you hungry 2 hours later.

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dhyasama
If unhealthy food is cheaper than healthy food on a per calorie basis and we
eat too many calories, than why don't we just eat fewer calories in total,
comprised of healthy food for the same amount of money?

~~~
roc
One, because the math doesn't work. You can live on a few dollars a day if you
eat unhealthy food. If you buy healthy food with those same dollars, you're
going to see people going hungry again.

Two, because the choices aren't equally available. At least in Detroit (the
only city I'm qualified to share anecdotes about) it's not as if healthy and
unhealthy food choices are across the aisle, or even across the street from
one another.

You simply can't make healthy choices without special scheduling, trips and
thus even higher cost. Can people do it? Sure. Do they? Absolutely. The local
gardens and the Eastern market are the absolute brightest spots in this city.
The problem is that they simply can't afford (in time, energy or money) to
make that choice nearly often enough.

So, to me, the question isn't "why don't people make better choices?" nearly
as much as "why do we, as a society, make it so much harder to make better
choices?".

There's certainly a willpower and personal responsibility component to this
problem, but the larger issue is why our society has stacked the deck against
it.

~~~
starkfist
Another issue which is often ignored in discussions about food and health is
that healthy food doesn't keep well. By that factor alone it's going to be
more limited and more expensive, because it's harder to produce, transport and
store.

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frankus
It's funny that there are people who won't put ARCO gas in their car, but will
gladly put AM-PM hot dogs in their stomach.

~~~
jrockway
The government pays to fix your stomach problems, but not your car problems.

~~~
mediaman
I don't think that fully explains it. Government paying for your health care
is not the same as if government were to pay for your car repair. The former
will always carry repercussions for you--diabetes is a very difficult
condition to have, even if the bills are paid by Medicare--whereas there is no
real other pain caused by a car repair, other than financial.

Many of those without health care insurance still eat food that is linked to
detrimental health.

------
bajul
The worst is that cheap food usually tastes great... :)

~~~
imajes
not really. that's the msg which is there to trick you that it tastes good.

~~~
yan
How is being tricked into thinking something tastes good and tasting good
different?

~~~
imajes
It's a shame I've gotten downvoted here, and you got upvoted as much. I guess
hackers like the idea of hacking food too.

Here's the deal, though:

You could conceivably add the right chemicals to a pile of offal cooked in a
skin of some kind and it'd taste like a gourmet sausage. You might have in
fact eaten such a thing. It's also common to add flavorings such as "grandma's
special recipe" or that from a dude in a coat from Kentucky. All these things
make us think that something tastes good, which as also commented in this
thread translates in your brain to mean: "hey, this is good for you, have
more!".

But the reality is, what you're eating is almost certainly mechanically
reclaimed meat (where carcasses with so little meat it's almost pointless to
continue cutting are put through a machine which crushes, juices, minces and
turns out a slushy type 'meat' goo). and MRM is the place where salmonella and
other friends live. It's also not really meat: there's plenty of cartilage
(aka 'gristle') and such that is cut so small, you actually ingest it. It
doesn't cook properly, and it's not really good for you to eat- you just pass
it. But if it's carrying salmonella or e-coli... I hope you didn't have
something important to do for the next couple weeks.

Also, the nutrition recovery from such a meal is incredibly limited. You feel
bright and happy for a short period (the msg et al) and then you have a come
down, a craving, and want some more- for that high again. So in fact, what
you're eating is a bunch of mind-altering chemicals ontop of a bed of
processed waste.

Food shouldn't be like that.

Food should melt in your mouth and be an explosion of flavor and something you
genuinely feel excited about. It should be, you have a meal, which provides
you with some instant energy, and also some which is "slow-burning". Brown
grains (rice, some wheats, etc) are great for this. You will feel full and
energised for longer periods.

Cheap base foods are cheap because they are often subsidized (e.g.: corn) or
because their most common consumer is the cattle, pigs, chickens etc that you
want to eat. This has given a false sense of price - people expect all food to
be as cheap. So supermarkets etc will look to find ways to make everything
else like it. So you'll see battery farmed chickens, who are so close together
they often aren't able to stand up; You'll find chickens who are injected with
water to make extra weight. (yeah, that chicken you just bought? probably a
pound of it is water. You just paid chicken price for water).

Good food is good because it provides great nutrition, is often respectful of
the environment and is sustainable.

Everything else is just yet another sign of man's dominance over everything
else.

(BTW, no, i'm not an enviro-hippy, it's just that i refuse to eat crap if i
can help it- why put yourself through that kind of thing when there's so much
better choice out there?)

~~~
chc
This is all irrelevant to your claim that food tasting good is different from
thinking it tastes good. Taste is entirely a mental phenomenon. Maybe food
should melt in your mouth and be an explosion of flavor and what-not — I can't
tell you what food should be. But if something tastes good to you, it tastes
good to you, whether or not it should.

~~~
imajes
OK, so if we want to get technical...

taste cells on the tongue contain chemoreceptors. Those turn chemical signals
into potential - i.e nervous system signals.

Since normal food has normal type chemicals, whereas manufactured, msg type
food has make-it-taste-nice chemicals. Those are two different sets of
chemicals and so, yes. food which tastes good is different from thinking it
tastes good - they activate different chemical pathways and trigger different
receptors.

~~~
infinite8s
There is no difference between "normal type chemicals" and "make-it-taste-
nice" chemicals. Salt is NaCl, whether it's found naturally or added to your
food. Same with sugar (although it's true that fructose doesn't occur
naturally in the same proportion as processed foods), and fats.

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Tichy
Just wondering, if vegetables were cheaper than corn, would McDonalds invent a
vegetable bun with a small token pancake slipped in with the meat?

~~~
chipsy
They would probably have to find a way to preserve the vegetable buns as well
as the existing bread buns. They're currently loaded with a generous amount of
sugar and miscellaneous preservatives.

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johnrob
I think we have as much a knowledge problem as a food problem. If cheaper food
has more calories, then for heaven's sake eat less of it! Split a supersized
big mac meal into breakfast/lunch/dinner and you'll hit your daily caloric
target right on the button.

Not saying this is healthy, but there's no reason it should cause obesity if
you're smart about it.

------
neonscribe
For those who are wondering, PEI is Prince Edward Island, a small province in
Eastern Canada.

------
setori88
"We have given up control of our food to people from far away" no most of the
grain grown goes to feeding the animals to be slaughtered - not to third world
countries.

------
c00p3r
The mantra is very simple: Fresh. Organic. Seasonal.

~~~
sipior
Technically, I think that's a dogma, not a mantra. In a way, of course, one of
the greatest triumphs of modern civilisation is that we now have so many folks
who can afford to be picky about where their vegetables come from. I think
that's great! More or less. However, I rather like the notion of getting
certain produce all year-round...there's no talking me out of it, frankly.

~~~
c00p3r
In India or Nepal people are consuming exactly this kind of food, because it
is local which means cheap. Locally grown vegetables is the cheapest food
possible.

The main source of food is local markets, which operates at morning and
evening times. Most of goods are managed to be sold the same day, and delivery
agents adopts to this circles. So, each morning it is fresh.

If you enter into some local tea-shop or kitchen and take a look which kind of
dishes they serve and how it was made and from which ingredients you could
catch the idea.

Of course, most of fast foods are using not fresh or organic sources simply to
get more profit, but if you can cook yourself you can choice whatever you want
on nearest market.

~~~
sipior
No, thank you.

