Over the past several months my wife has had a growing interest in macrobiotic cooking, also called whole foods cooking, as an alternative to the typical fast fare that most people eat today at home and on the run, so she grabbed a couple of books on the topic not too long ago to help us give it a go – Cooking the Whole Foods Way (not affiliated with the grocery chain) and The Hip Chick’s Guide to Macrobiotics. (I have to admit that the title and subtitle of the latter book make me feel a bit like Jules Winnfield, although that’s not really accurate in my case since I’m willingly trying this as opposed to trying it by association.) So far it’s been great – I could very well be a victim of the placebo effect, but I’ve felt very good physically and mentally since we started it, and I have to give her credit for researching it and suggesting it.
This weekend I began thinking about the amount of fresh, natural, and unprocessed foods that you buy for such a lifestyle and it got me to thinking about the intersection of two food-based phenomena – the availability and affordability of unhealthy foods in the U.S. and the impact of the current global food shortage. Regarding the first issue, I wrote a bit about food availability in a previous blog, but the basic message is that research suggests that healthier food options (among other healthy lifestyle facilitators) are harder to come by in lower-income neighborhoods than higher-income neighborhoods, and other research tells us that healthier food is also more expensive. As for the second issue, the global food shortage is not likely to hit the U.S. in the form of an actual shortage, but rather in the form of higher prices, which we’ve already been experiencing in recent months due to this, weather-related crop loss, and the misguided push for ethanol. These two factors are related because continued inflation in food prices will drive our society even more toward processed and/or unhealthy (some would say those terms are not separable) foods. Sure, some unhealthy foods may be affected also, such as those with high-fructose corn syrup, but the overall increase in the grocery bill will continue to come via those staples that can be a part of healthy eating – bread, milk, eggs, fruits, vegetables, meat, poultry, and pork.
If this inflationary trend continues, we’re going to see in fairly short order and for a long time to come the reversal of any progress we’ve made in recent years in people making healthier lifestyle choices. Sometimes, as much as people would like to make smart decisions, the checkbook has other ideas.
0 Responses to “Trapped Between Supply and Demand”