Why many can’t afford to eat healthy

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I have always wondered why healthy food cost so much more than unhealthy food and now I know. Today I watch the movie Food, Inc. I have to say it was an eye-opening experience.

Many years ago the small farmer became an endangered species and he was replaced by the corporation. Much of the beef, pork, and chicken we eat in America is provided by a small handful of companies (less than 10). In the 1970′s there were hundreds of slaughterhouses in America now there are 13!

The animals are raised in very close proximity which leads to disease and to combat that the animals are fed huge doses of antibiotics, antibiotics which end up in us. Chicken are genetically engineered to have larger breast (because consumers buy more breast meat), they also grow so fast that they can’t even stand up on their own. Their internal organs can’t support how fast their bodies are growing.

Cows raised for beef have similar problems. First off they are fed corn. Cows are supposed to eat grass not corn. It has been discovered that cows that eat corn develop a specific antibiotic resistant form of e-coli that grass eating cows don’t get. It also true that taking these cows out of the feedlot and into a grass field for a few weeks clears out 80% of that bacteria. Great, right? A solution to the problem….Well the corporations that manage the beef production came up with another solution. They treat the meat with ammonia! The beef that you buy at the store has likely been doused with ammonia to get rid of the e.coli.  Did you know that? I didn’t

Years ago you could only get certain vegetables when they were in season. Now you can get them all year long, do you ever wonder why? They are often picked early and ripened using techniques like exposing them to Ethylene gas(which occurs naturally in apples). They are then often trucked thousands of miles from wherever they are season so that you can have them whenever you want.

All these things have one thing in common: money. Corporations want to give you what you will buy. They will genetically engineer chickens with bigger breast if that is what you will buy. They will make cows grow fatter and fatter and do it quicker if it means you will buy more meat. They will truck vegetables halfway around the country or the planet if they know you will buy it. The problem is that to give you what you want, when you want it, trade-offs have to be made. Unfortunately, you are often not informed of those trade-offs. In many cases laws are made specifically to keep you in the dark.

Ok, so this post is about healthy food vs cheap food where does all this fit in. Well, antibiotic filled genetically engineered chicken doesn’t sound healthy to me. Nor does cows infected with antibiotic resistant super e-coli. All of these tradeoff allow you to purchase cheap beef and chicken. Vegetable are picked early and artificially ripened which keeps them available all year and actually lowers cost.

To grow smaller non-engineered chickens is slower and results in a smaller chicken. To raise cows on grass takes a lot of land and longer to get to a harvest-able weight. Leave vegetables on the vine until they ripen and doing it without pesticides means smaller crop yields and less crop yields per year. All of this means it cost more.

Now you can buy all the grass fed beef, free range chicken, and organic vine-ripened vegetables you want at Whole Foods. The problems is that Whole Foods has a well-deserved nickname “Whole Paycheck” because it will cost you a LOT more to shop there.  You can also shop at the local farmers markets but they suffer from much of the same problem. Here lies my dilemma. What is a person of modest income to do? If you can’t afford to shop at Whole Food and want your family to eat healthy how do you do it? If you want to support your local framers, ranchers, and growers but have a Wal-Mart budget what do you do?

The people in the middle suffer the most. Many farmers markets now accept food stamps. So if you are really poor and qualify for food stamps you have that option available to you. For the majority who make too much to qualify for assistance and not enough to pay the higher premium there is no solution.

If you understand what I’m talking about please leave a comment.

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