While listening to NPR the other day on the way to pick up my kids, there was some discussion on Michelle Obama and her campaign against obesity, which I suppose is a noble goal. Obesity in the US is a national embarrassment, not to mention a costly health problem.
However, something about elites and their solutions to dealing with it rubs me the wrong way. Take NYC mayor Bloomberg’s ban on soft drinks over 16 ounces for example. Billionaires like Bloomberg seem to think that it’s a simple matter of banning the stuff, as though the sole source of the problem is the companies selling sugary drinks. Of course the people who drink them are responsible as well, but there’s a big factor being left out here:
Healthy food in the US is much more expensive and less accessible than salty, oily, sugary crap.
It’s no problem for Bloomberg to send his personal assistant to shop at Whole Foods and buy him the healthiest, tastiest organic food on offer. For some below-average urban food stamp recipient, however, spending $18 for a pound of fish and $6 for a loaf of artisan bread is simply not feasible. If you have a limited budget, you’re going to get your calories on the cheap.
One could say that finer products should rationally cost more, but having lived and traveled in Europe, I know that isn’t the entire story. Rye bread, which is healthier than white bread, has more vitamins and minerals, and does not cause a spike in blood sugar, is the cheapest stuff on offer in Eastern Europe. Herring and sprats, both of which are full of vitamins and healthy oils, are also cheap snacks throughout Northern Europe. Dairy is a staple, but it is generally processed according to tradition so that it serves a variety of purposes, and not spiked with sugar. Organic vegetables are cheap and locally produced, and stores are located within walking distance.
So, elite Americans pay a premium to eat what is the food of the common European, while fast food in Europe is generally more expensive than the home-prepared variety, and even a number of healthy restaurants. The situation is essentially the same in Asia as in Europe. European peasant food, which on the east side of the Atlantic is the staple of the masses and quite healthy, is only realistically available to the upper class in the US.
This is great for businessmen who produce these foods in the US, as they can charge much, much higher prices for the same stuff that would sell for a fraction of the price in France, Germany or Poland, but for the American underclass it’s a disaster. Let’s face it: low-class Americans are essentially being subsidized to eat like cattle at a feed lot, and that’s the real problem.
Banning sugary drinks or taxing the stuff isn’t going to help anyone, but it will put more money in the hands of the elites who are overregulating and monopolizing the food production industry and herding Americans like livestock into a low-maintenance consumption mode.
I’d suggest that since this is just the way things are in the US right now, young men who are seeking a trade might want to go into craft foods. Too many “organic” food producers are frauds, and if you can produce the real thing and market yourself well, there’s an awesome opportunity out there in catering to the spoiled, overmoneyed types who like to stand up at a podium and propose stupid, doomed-to-failure measures to “fix” a situation that they profit from. Just use the simple, healthy foods you can buy on the cheap from the source, process them, put them in pretty packages, and sell them in places like Manhattan and Silicon Valley.
