Not Much Cash for Food in the US: No Problem!
It used to be that if you didn’t have much money for food, you probably were not overweight. This is still the case in many places in this world but not here in the US. Now we are in the processed food age: cheap food, bad food, at a cheap price.
On June 4th’s episode of the Colbert Report, an Illinois Congresswoman was on discussing the inverse relationship of wealth and weight. The average person on food stamps receives about $3 a day for food. Regardless of how you feel about this, know that not everyone on food stamps is lazy and not working, many are working hard to get back on their feet or to support their kids. They just aren’t currently making enough to get by and therefore qualify for food stamps. Some of these people just need a bit of time and they’ll be off food stamps.
Because of this, some legislators feel that people on food stamps should receive more than $3 a day. Can you eat on $3 a day in the US without starving? Yes, but it’s not healthy. To get the maximum food off $3 a day you would have to load up on breads, pastas and cheap processed food. On $3 a day there really isn’t much give for fresh food if you don’t want to be hungry.
And regardless of whether or not you are on food stamps, this very much applies. It’s become a reality in this country that there are more overweight poor people than people with money. If you have money you have expendable income for fresh foods and therefore you can eat healthier and have more energy to get things done.
Let’s say a person has a food budget of $5 a day. This person might be very busy and doesn’t always have time to cook something. So can they eat out on this low amount? Sure, McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s and others all have $1 items. But can this person be like Jared and eat Subway to lose weight? Probably not. Subway doesn’t have anything close to a dollar menu and therefore this is not a good option for even the $5 a day food budget.
This article in the NY Times gets into specifics of what $1 buys you at the grocery store. In short, it buys a lot more fat! But hey we do things big here in the US: big cars, big pollution, big hotel rooms and big meals. And in the land of the free even poor people have the power to be big.
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7 opinions for Not Much Cash for Food in the US: No Problem!
Xalem
Jun 7, 2007 at 12:44 am
Why do we assume that healthy food is expensive? Going by prices in my store, some of the cheapest foods by weight are fresh cabbage, carrots, bananas, onions, potatoes always less than a dollar a pound. They are some of the cheapest foods in the store by weight. I keep hearing that processed food is cheaper than fresh food, but except for pasta, I can’t think of any processed foods that you can get for less than a buck a pound (to use imperial units) or 20 cents per 100 grams (to use the units listed in my store)
Food in June
Jun 7, 2007 at 7:00 am
[…] at Sirened gives us a look at the economics of food and healthy eating, and challenges us to think about what […]
Alex
Jun 8, 2007 at 2:35 am
Excellent points Xalem. Yes there are a fair few fruits and veggies that are quite cheap. People can eat healthier on $3 if they have the time and know how but that can be a stretch. $3 can buy hearty healthy foods like beans and things that you mentioned but it can’t buy much meat and dairy for a balanced diet.
As for processed foods Chef Boy R Dee and that are roughly $1 a can and that’s a meal. And that’s something easy and simple for people to get with $3 a day.
But yes, very good points, what you brought up is a totally seperate piece.
Tech Bee
Jun 8, 2007 at 9:03 am
@xalem and Alex
Yes, some fruit and vegetable are relatively cheap (not in Europe, not anymore), but cooking them means having a home in decent order: pots and pans and electricity or gaz, a place to cook, a fridge, a stove, and a well organized life with regular meal times, which is not the case for most of poor families. A survey in France, where obesity strikes the poorest, revealed the importance of eating together as a family or group to fight over weight. Most underpriviledged overweight kids eat alone (soft drinks and potatoes chips) in front on the tv.
Alex
Jun 8, 2007 at 9:50 pm
Another excellent point. To cook a healthy meal for super cheap you have to have the tools, time and some education about food. Yeah, that’s just not the case for most poor people.
So this is a problem in France too, not surprising, I’m sure it’s a problem in the UK and some other developed nations.
Xalem
Jun 9, 2007 at 9:42 am
I read the New York Times article, and I wasn’t that impressed. The writer compared how many calories you get with cookies versus carrots. Carrots are one of the least dense sources of calories. Had the comparison been between, say, beans and cookies, the dollar of beans would have seemed much more reasonable. There is an article on the net which compares 200 calories of many different types of food. http://www.wisegeek.com/what-does-200-calories-look-like.htm Very informative and surprising. Milk more energy dense than coke. Wheat flour has as many calories as an equal weight of sugar. Bread has as many calories or more than the same weight of meat. (We forget that grains like wheat, rice, corn are seeds which are very energy dense) While junk food has an advantage in terms of calorie density much of that advantage is lost when factoring the higher cost per gram of junk food.
I think, the theory that the poor are forced to purchase unhealthy foods to get sufficient calorie intake is not supported. The poor are dying of obesity, not scurvy, so, it is possible to get too many calories, and too much food. I think the problem is taste and convenience. Chips taste better and are more convenient than the kinds of very cheap meals my mom used to prepare for us. (back then, even though we were middle class, we always felt that pop and chips and restaurants were luxuries we could seldom afford) Now, I feel richer, and I succumb to the temptation of quick easy food more than my mom ever would. It is never a case of saving money to maximize calories, it is a splurge. I don’t think the problem the poor face is that they don’t have enough money for food, the problem is that they have too much. (or alternatively, food is too cheap–which was a point raised by the article) It is too easy to buy back food prep time with cash (a choice the third world can’t make) And while the poor in the third world are limited to an inadequate supply of staples (millet, cabbage, flour, rice, beans) , even the poor in the West have access to so many alternatives. Why the poor are more profoundly affected by obesity, I don’t have a good answer.
Alex
Jun 11, 2007 at 7:38 pm
Thank you for all the constructive feedback Xalem. That is an interesting site with visuals of what 200 grams of food looks like.
Your right, that NY Times article was certainly flawed but I still think good points were raised. And like I said, $3 a day can’t buy much in the way of dairy and meat for a balanced diet. People here may not be dying of scurvy but still…
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