I'm not much of a gourmand, but I do love to play with food. Well, food data, anyway. So when I happened upon the Food System Factoids blog, I totally pigged out.
The menu may not be for everyone, but if you have a craving for analyses of food pricing trends, or evaluations of carbon emissions from U.S. agriculture, you'll find plenty to satisfy.
Take, for instance, this post on the relative change in prices of soft drinks and processed fats vs. fruits and veggies. The data's a bit old now, but what a story. From 1985 to 2000, the real, inflation-adjusted cost of fresh fruits and veggies went up almost 40 percent, while the costs of soft drinks went down by nearly a quarter.
Putting the numbers in context: a dollar's worth of Coke in 1985 cost just over 75 cents in 2000. But a dollar's worth of apples or broccoli rose to almost $1.40.
So the incentives are pretty clear: given that median incomes didn't rise that much over that period, and poverty rates remained constant, there were quite a few folks who pretty much had no choice but to trade apples for Coke. No wonder Americans grew so much heavier over the period.
Comments View as Flat
WWAGD?! Posted 6:59 am
23 Mar 2007
You Confuse Supply With Demand
Like most Gristers, you have an inverted view of human nature. You assume that the prices were maninpulated by some "Evil Invisible Hand" of the Illuminati.
Could a more prosaic explanation be that people like drinking sweetened beverages and don't like eating fruit (or vegetables)? Therefore, demand for colas was high, producers made more, and costs went down through efficient manufacturing. Meanwhile, demand for fruit was low, and they are hard to make and transport and refrigerate so their costs went up.
BTW -- there is some evidence that the fructose in fruits can be just as damaging as any other sugar in terms of high blood pressure and so on.
The Texeme Construct offers international text memetics construction and textcasting services. http://www.you-read-it-here-first.com
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Laurence Aurbach Posted 7:41 am
23 Mar 2007
Price Supports
As the report Food Without Thought: How U.S. Farm Policy Contributes to Obesity describes, US agricultural policy is heavily weighted toward subsidies and supports for the commodity foodstuffs (corn, soybeans) that go into junk food (oils, sweets, industrial meat production).
And from a sidebar titled, "Who benefits?: The role of the food industry":
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VTpowderhound Posted 7:48 am
23 Mar 2007
Whoa, Nellie
Jabailo, you are throwing some very invalid or undocumented stuff out there along with you valid points.
1st, I agree that you can't necessarily say that just because candy bars & soda are less expensive than veggies, that's why veggie consumption is way down, etc. That's part of it, but not the whole story.
But 1st of all, you suggest that demand for fruit was low, and that's part of the reason for the price increase. That's wrong; low demand leads to lower prices, not higher prices. Although you are correct that higher transport & energy costs do raise the costs of distributing fruit, and those costs get passed on to the consumer.
2nd, your assertion that fructose from fruit is (possibly) just as bad as refined sugar/high fructose corn syrup is waaaay out there. You can;t throw that assertion out there without a link to something that backs that up, and I'm guessing that study is highly suspect. People are not getting Type II diabetes from eating too much fruit, that's for damn sure.
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WWAGD?! Posted 8:55 am
23 Mar 2007
Beware The Fruit!
http://www.drweil.com/drw/u/id/QAA348385
Some fruits have very high glycemic indexes:
You wrote:
Wow. Did you, like, miss out on the Industrial Revolution? Demand can create low prices if there's a case where mass production reduces per unit costs. Example: if there are a lot of acres devoted to fruit because of high demand, farmers will -- until the point of decreasing marginal utility -- be able to, say, use the same tractor more efficiently, and so on. Also transportation costs per unit can decrease with more units. Example, there will be more farms so that the chance of one being close to you would cut the distance travelled for the fruit.
But, yes, for a product that has fixed, unchangeable costs, price would do down with demand.
The Texeme Construct offers international text memetics construction and textcasting services. http://www.you-read-it-here-first.com
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WWAGD?! Posted 9:04 am
23 Mar 2007
My Experience
In my neighborhood of Kent East Hill, WA, there are many varied cultures: Somalian, Southern White, Swedish, SoCal Black, Indian, Polish-Russian-Ukranian, Vietnamese...
It is not a super rich area, so there are many low cost restaurants serving foods of many lands.
One of my favorites is India Combo (http://www.indiacombo.com/ ). They have an all you can eat buffet for $6.95 -- including freshly baked nan bread. The food is fresh and delicious with all kinds of veggies and sauces and potatoes and tandoori chicken, fresh fruit and salad. All fresh and healthy.
I go there all the time. I keep thinking -- man, a poor person could go here every day and stuff themselves on delicious, nutritious food for lunch and then snack later on.
But you know what? As many people as go there, the number that are going to Jack In The Box up the street is probably 2 orders of magnitude more.
Is the FDA preventing people choosing this healthy low cost choice? Is George Bush standing there with his finger pointing up the street to McDonalds? Or is it just human nature, and people not wanting to use their brains.
It's plain to me -- it's all in our memes...
The Texeme Construct offers international text memetics construction and textcasting services. http://www.you-read-it-here-first.com
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GreyFlcn Posted 9:43 am
23 Mar 2007
In short
In short, the price of Corn Syrup and Hydrogenated Oils is down.
Or in other words, your tax dollars paying for pork barrel spending for ADM.
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Jason D Scorse Posted 11:38 am
23 Mar 2007
jabailo....you have it completely backwards
increased demand leads to increased price, not lower price, but aside from that, the fast food market is so distorted due to ag subsidies that it's a moot point trying to look at the issue one dimensionally anyway. fruits and veggies have no subsidies and with rising energy and land costs it's no surprise that prices have risen- also, demand HAS rose along with it.
My one quibble with the thrust of the article is the view that somehow poor people are so poor that they have no choice but to buy junk food. In some cases that's true, but I know plenty of not so poor people who eat little but junk and there are plenty of lower income people that have money for cellphones, cars, big tvs, and new sneakers so don't forget that they have choices and chose priorities too.
J.S.
I teach environmental economics and blog at www.voicesofreason.info. I am a proud liberal, who stands on the shoulders of giants.
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SMLowry Posted 5:17 am
24 Mar 2007
stereotypes
There are also plenty of lower income people who don't buy junk food and who do their best to feed their families fresh, whole foods. It's hard and it means they have to make a conscious choice not to buy something else they may want or even need. Poor people buying junk food is a stereotype, and like all stereotypes,sometimes it fits and sometimes it doesn't. I know this is obvious but as a lower income person (which was especially true when my sons were young and still at home), it's frustrating to be seen as a stereotype and not as an individual.
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Nucbuddy Posted 7:33 am
24 Mar 2007
Correlations vs straw men
SMLowry wrote:
Did someone suggest otherwise? The United States has 300 million people.
By the way, Socio-Economic Status (SES) and healthy-diet-choice are positively correlated.
gnxp.com/MT2/archives/000455.html
.Also, SES and IQ are positively correlated. Linda Gottfredson has focused much of her research on the influence of IQ upon health-competency and health-outcomes.
udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/reprints
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