And then, today at work, I sit down to lunch and see this: Getting Real about the Price of Food
Interesting, isn't it?
Excerpt:
So what's wrong with cheap food and cheap meat — especially in a world in which more than 1 billion people go hungry? A lot. For one thing, not all food is equally inexpensive; fruits and vegetables don't receive the same price supports as grains. A study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that a dollar could buy 1,200 calories of potato chips or 875 calories of soda but just 250 calories of vegetables or 170 calories of fresh fruit. With the backing of the government, farmers are producing more calories — some 500 more per person per day since the 1970s — but too many are unhealthy calories. Given that, it's no surprise we're so fat; it simply costs too much to be thin. From Getting Real About the High Price of Cheap Food, by Brian Walsh, Friday, Aug.21, 2009
It makes me think of how much easier it is to pick up a freshly-reddened pack of ground beef at Jewel for a few bucks instead of paying for the better, healthier, homegrown, grass-fed beef variety at our farm market. But at upwards of $5-6 dollars per pound, there's just no contest-- we can't afford it. That's such a shame too, because reading about the atrocious conditions at these CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations) makes me not want to pick up the .99 turkey breast on sale last weekend. Like the article says, sustainable eating is sometimes synonymous with elitism, which is sad and ironic all at the same time, since I grew up in an area where family steers were lovingly raised, proudly showed, and sold to the highest bidder by people who were as far from elitist as you could get. Reflecting back, at the time I thought it was cruel-- death too close to the plate-- seeing that animal grazing one month and then served up for dinner the next. But shouldn't that be how it works?
No comments:
Post a Comment