Why The Cost of Healthy Food is Worth It
The Effects of “Food Inc.” (Nearly) A Decade Later
Ever since I’ve grocery shopped for myself, I’ve been willing to bite the bullet and pay more in the name of healthy and quality food.
It’s never more obvious than when you’re dropping the food into your own basket. When the good or bad decisions in your basket cling to you as you walk around the rest of the store. It’s not a difficult road map to follow. I need vegetables, fruits, lean proteins. I do not need chips, cookies or candies.
But as I’ll ask myself all the time (even though I know the answer), why is a head of broccoli more expensive than Doritos, and why does a bag of apples cost more than a bag of gummy worms? It’s nonsensical. Yet, that’s our food industry. It’s a system that swarms our road map with land mines. A market that thrives on the perpetuation of bad decisions, demonstrating a willingness to hurt ourselves.
Growing up I knew eating fast food was “bad,” and yet I often chose it over a well-balanced home-cooked meal. Young, fit and athletic, I could get away with shoving garbage into my body. My youthful metabolism was a well-oiled machine, and so I took advantage of having little to no repercussions from what I ate.
The only concern I had ever associated with consuming McDonald’s or Taco Bell was obesity. If you weren’t careful, then unhealthy fast food meals could make you fat and turn you into a lazy couch potato. Obesity was an obvious concern, however it was never my main or immediate concern when it came to eating fast food. I was confident that time and time again my efficient metabolism would pull through.
At a certain point however — around when I stopped playing competitive sports year-round— I noticed that eating fast food burgers and fast food chicken quesadillas wasn’t making me feel physically good like it used to. I would get headaches and other body aches. I felt lethargic and always wanted to nap. My stomach would hurt.
My gastrointestinal problems worsened, and as a mere teenager I found myself taking a daily medication for acid reflux — not to mention I’d wake most nights needing TUMS. A pill can temper most things, including acid reflux, but it’s not advisable to live on medications forever.
To reverse course I re-trained my body to function off of healthy, less-acidic foods. I concocted natural remedies. This wasn’t an overnight fix — it of course took many months to reach a healthy equilibrium.
My eating problems occurred at the beginning of college. A time when I expected to be filled with energy, to go explore the world, not laid-up in bed watching Netflix.
This was the first time in my life when I clearly felt the weight of my own choices. And I wanted to make the right choices, so I cold feel healthy and energetic, which required a better diet.
Making sensible choices at the grocery store, and at the same time avoiding the drive-thru altogether, engendered a new lifestyle. I felt extraordinary autonomy over what I ate and how I felt. One day I suddenly noticed that the acid reflux had disappeared. Headaches became less frequent. I had natural energy.
Ever since, I’ve obsessed over food and where it comes from in a totally different way.
Eating healthy can be an expensive lifestyle for sure. (I’m still baffled checking out at the supermarket, realizing that I’m spending fifty or sixty bucks on mostly fruits, vegetables, eggs, milk, chicken or fish — the essentials.) Food Inc. — a 2008 documentary by Robert Kenner, featuring great food writers like Michael Pollan and Eric Schlosser — reminds us of this fact. It’s more often the poor that suffer dietary-related health issues.
Unfortunately, as we all know, The Dollar Menu will feed a family quicker and cheaper than buying groceries.
Until recently I hadn’t seen Food Inc., though I was very much familiar with the global food problems.
These same problems absolutely ring true (nearly) a decade later. Kenner’s documentary highlights not only the wrenched conditions of factory farms and slaughter houses — akin to what Upton Sinclair wrote about in 1906 — it also focuses on why the food industry is as backward as it is (in as much as one can cover these issues in an hour and a half).
It’s the free-market. It’s capitalism. It’s agribusiness. Fewer people and fewer businesses control what we eat.
The titans of the food industry will argue that they are only responding to market demand. In other words, agribusiness farmers are feeding corn to cows and genetically modifying vegetables because that’s how companies can feed, or meet the demand of, their consumers.
As consumers, Food Inc. reminds us that we have a choice. If we continue to crave fast food burgers and fries, then that’s what will be provided, and it will be provided at lower cost because it’s produced in mass quantities.
According to the documentary (and which I agree with), to buy healthier foods — even if it costs more — is the best way to continuously signal to our food industry and to our economy that we want quality. This is basic supply and demand.
Consciously changing how we eat as a nation — to something more natural like sustainable farming, perhaps — is the only way to fix the entire system.
But as I know from my own eating, it’s much easier as an individual to eschew fast food and choose the good stuff, compared to the shift we would need from our constantly growing nation to catalyze a fix.
Perhaps it’s just more apparent to me now that I’m older and wiser, but it appears to me that the organic food movement has been on the rise in the past decade. I notice more farmer’s markets today than I ever did growing up.
Sustainable agriculture and organic food could be a part of my generation’s identity. Cliché no doubt, but Millennials are driven to make this world better, and we’re more equipped to accomplish that than ever before.
By no means am I an angelic example of this movement — far from it.
I still concede to a delicious fast food meal now and then. I know it won’t kill me. I know it won’t send me spiraling down into eating fast food every single day. But whenever I order from Wendy’s or McDonald’s, I feel my weakness as an autonomous consumer. I wish I were eating a farm fresh instead.
To that end, my individual reform sometimes feels meaningless. Meaningless to the state of America’s food industry.
But I don’t eat healthy meals for the sake of the food industry. I do it for selfish reasons. I have a selfish desire to live a long and healthy life — as everyone probably should.
Maybe, though, I should consider how my dietary decisions impact food economics. Why should I be taking half-measures? Why do I eat healthy just most of the time and not all of the time?
Food Inc. informs us that each time we buy a certain food — be it from a restaurant or a grocery store — we are voting. It’s a valid point. And I’d rather vote consistently for natural foods, foods I believe in…foods that make me feel good.
Voting for the foods we believe in isn’t cheap, nor timely, but to my mind it’s worth it.
This isn’t THE solution, but it’s certainly a part of it. For now it definitely feels like it’s more about the principle of it all, but perhaps in time our votes for better food will materialize into a new system. If in the future drones are going to fly our groceries to our doorstep, then let’s at least hope it’s farm fresh.
