The cost of eating well

Two things have happened recently that got me thinking about the cost of good food. First: one of the people with whom we spent Easter — a disabled, recovering-from-a-bad-divorce church member — told me that she no longer buys fruits or vegetables, because she can’t afford them. Thirty nine cent boxes of mac and cheese? Nutritionally-depleted processed, sugary cereal? These things she can afford. But fresh produce that can help make her healthy? No.

Second was this lovely, sad post from my buddy, Jenn, about how hard it is to fit healthful eating, or even turkey bacon, into their household budget.

Neither of these folks is alone. Many people in the U.S. can’t meet their living expenses, let alone a bag of pesticide-free grapes, or heaps of local vegetables from their Saturday morning farmer’s market.

Which points to something that has been bothering me for a while: the growing food gap between the haves and have-nots (or even the have-somes-but-not-that-much). On one side, we’ve got the Whole Foods shoppers, the farmers’ market browsers, the label-reading, CSA-joining rBGH-free, anti-industrial types. These people talk passionately about voting with their forks, and — like the good folks over at the Ethicurean — remind us why they’re willing to pay more for the food they eat.

(a brief note about why this food costs more: because sustainably-grown foods don’t have external, or “hidden” costs. No antibiotic resistance. No crop subsidies. No environmental damage that will get paid for years down the road. No $300 billion to spend on obesity from all the high fructose corn syrup. No subsidized oil. No ecological dead zones from 100,000+ cows’ manure all flowing downstream in one place. These are all hidden costs that make industrial agriculture seem cheap in the short-run).

And it’s true — there are lots of us who could spend more on better food, but instead devote their household budgets to a bigger home, or gourmet kitchens, or their nice big car, or new clothes from the Gap. But, the thing is, there are also lots of folks who want better food, but for whom paying more for their food in the short run simply isn’t an option, no matter how they reshuffle their budgets. Organic milk? Out of the question. A CSA? No way — they might love to join, but they simply can’t pull together the $500 membership fee. The fact is, Whole Foods is a whole lot more expensive than Wal-Mart in the short run.

Now, I could go on ad nauseum (I have before, and I will again) about our agricultural subsidy program, and how it favors commodity growers and how that impacts the affordability of quality food. I won’t do that here, because for MANY, MANY YEARS, every time someone mentioned agricultural subsidies, I was like “yeah, yeah, whatever,” and as they talked, my mind would wander and I’d think about things like whether Jennifer Aniston and Jim Carrey might make a nice couple, or when was the last time I’d scrubbed my toilet, or, hey, is that the smell of MY underarms or could that be someone else?

But the truth is, our agricultural policy has everything to do with the quality of the food we eat, and the affordability of good food. We spend most of our agricultural resources supporting things like surplus corn from large-scale farmers, which encourages processing and factory farming. Our agricultural policy chooses to support these commodity farmers, instead of subsidizing small farms that could grow whole foods for their community. We make high fructose corn syrup cheap, but leave things like kale and tomatoes and leeks and lettuce something that only the most fortunate can afford.

Anyhow, it worries me that all of this “voting with our forks” will leave many folks in the dust, and we’ll wind up — permanently — with two classes of eaters. While one household will cook up an organic egg from a pastured chicken in their Le Creuset enameled pan lovingly coated with first cold-pressed extra virgin olive oil, there will be twenty times that many eaters who are stuck with boxed, processed, MSG-and high fructose corn syrup-laden Dinty Moore specials.

This is why Christopher Cook reminds us that voting with our forks is not enough. It’s a start, but it’s simply not enough. Cook reminds us that policy change is within our grasp.

There are other things we can do, as well. We can use and support groups like Serve New England, which provides anyone — regardless of income, low-or-high, access to groceries at substantially reduced fees, in exchange for 2 hours of service a month. I love the idea of this group; they encourage a better world, and they allow people to eat more healthfully. The food isn’t part of my utopian, anti-industrial vision of eating, but it goes a long way toward making fruits and vegetables more affordable. (this group is worth supporting, folks. You can even donate your car).

We can enourage our health insurance providers to reimburse for CSA memberships, the way they reimburse for gym memberships. It’s not unheard of. There are already providers who are doing this. Go ahead; call your insurance provider. Have your friends do the same. Then call back in a week. Then in another week.

We can help make sure that our CSA, or our farmers’ markets, accept WIC payments, and that food gets distributed in places where people of limited means can access them. We can support community gardens. We can donate healthful foods to food pantries (along with easy recipes, cooking pots, and measuring instruments).

There are all kinds of things that we can do. But one thing seems certain to me: they all require a sense our being in this together. Because voting with our forks isn’t a possiblity for everyone. But actually changing our food system for the better? We can all do that…better still, we’ll all benefit from that.