Recently, the LA Times published an opinion article against expensive local and organic food, titled "Keep your self-righteous fingers off my processed food: By demanding we all pay more to fund their agendas in these harsh economic times, foodie snobs and lefty social critics may as well tell us to eat artisanal cake.”
The author argues that “demanding that other people impoverish themselves, especially these days, in the name of your pet cause -- fostering craftsmanship, feeling ‘connected’ to the land, ‘living more lightly on the planet’ or whatever” is unfair and elitist, considering the economic hardships so many people are facing these days. (Interestingly, it appears she missed the LA Times previous article, “Is cheap food really a bargain?”)
One of the author’s targets is Michael Pollan, author of “Omnivore’s Dilemma” and UC Berkeley professor of journalism. I asked Pollan about this issue when I heard him speak at an event in San Francisco a few years ago. “It seems like local, organic food is a luxury for the rich,” I said, asking for a comment.
His response? Cheap food is artificially cheap, through government subsidies and harmful practices that hide its true costs: mainly health problems, pollution, and a loss of food culture (that is, sitting down and eating together, as humans have done for millenia).
Consider a few facts:
*In the US, a 2,000-calorie junk food diet costs as little as $3.50 a day, whereas a strictly healthy 2,000-calorie diet costs as much as $36.30 a day, according to Adam Drewnowski, University of Washington professor. (On average, however, Americans spend $7 a day on food, whereas low-income people spend $4.)
*Almost 25% of NYS residents are obese, which greatly increases the risk of cardiovascular disease, certain types of cancer, and type 2 diabetes, according to the CDC. Low-income people and minorities are disproportionately affected.
*To produce cheap food, the US uses lots of chemicals: more than half a billion kilograms of pesticides each year, up 33 times from 1945. Modern pesticides are more than 10 times as toxic than they were back then, according to Cornell professor, David Pimentel.
Clearly, something is amiss. No one is saying that people with limited funds should go hungry before they buy cheap food. But we use lots of harmful chemicals to produce unhealthy cheap food, and we’re suffering the health and environmental consequences as individuals and as a society.
Is that fair?
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