There are ways to make healthy food affordable that don't
require abusing farmworkers.
Healthy
food is expensive and telling people to eat organic, local food is elitist.
Have you heard that argument before?
It’s
true. Healthy, organic, local food is expensive. Calorie for calorie, you get
more for your money at a fast food drive-thru than at a farmer’s market. And
the fast food will be cooked and ready to eat, whereas you might need to take
your fresh, organic produce home to cook it.
Now, you might say, that’s only a short-term calculation. Today, a $5 burger, fries, and large soda looks like a better deal than a few ounces of spinach, a handful of dried beans, and a bunch of carrots for the same price. But that overlooks the health consequences of either meal. One of these meals, if eaten regularly, will land you in the hospital someday. The other won’t.
Factor
the costs of medical care needed to treat diet-related chronic illnesses like
heart disease and diabetes into the equation, not to mention the quality of
life problems. Can you put a price tag on a year of your life? How about
endless hospital visits? Suddenly, the spinach, beans, and carrots look like a
better deal.
Yet,
this kind of logic assumes that you have enough money right now to make either
choice. And millions of Americans don’t. How many families struggling to raise
their children and pay their bills simply lack the cash needed to buy healthy
foods or the time needed to prepare them?
So
what’s the answer? How do we give more Americans the ability to choose healthy
foods? Some say we ought to make them more affordable. I disagree. We need to
pay Americans a living wage.
Working
hard for 40 hours a week should guarantee a living wage. Who does it benefit if
Americans lack the time, money, and resources to feed their families healthy
food?
Economically,
we’ll all fare better if our fellow citizens are able to work and their
children are able to concentrate in school. Poor diets and the health problems
that they cause lead to increased absenteeism and a weaker performance. That is, when
one does show up to work or school.
For
argument’s sake, let’s examine the alternative: cheaper food. We’ve already got
the cheapest food in the world. We spend a mere 9.4 percent of disposable income on food — less than people in any other
country in the world.
How
does one decrease the price of food? Subsidies are one way. Increasing efficiency
is another. But in the United States, we also produce an awful lot of cheap
junk and call it “food.” If you grab a box of anything off the supermarket
shelves, it’s likely full of the same ingredients: corn, soy, wheat, sugar, and
stuff to make it taste better, look appealing, last longer, and appear more
nutritious. But it’s not nutritious. This cheap food is the stuff that’s making
us sick.
Another
way to lower the cost of food comes at the expense of the people who grow and
harvest our food. Journalist Tracie McMillan worked in the fields of
California, where she documented systematic wage theft from farmworkers. The
fruits and vegetables the farmworkers pick are healthy, but exploiting the
people who plant and harvest our food to lower prices for consumers isn’t the
answer.
There’s
no free lunch. Good food costs money, and good health requires healthy meals.
So here’s a recipe for a sounder diet: Equip Americans to afford good food.
OtherWords columnist
Jill Richardson is the author of Recipe
for America: Why Our Food System Is Broken and What We Can Do to Fix It. OtherWords.org