The cost of Healthy Food vs. Junk Food

I live in the US and junk food is wayyyy cheaper.

I too live in the US. I have lived in California and Missouri. Prior to that, I live in England. I have quite a number of data points.

Eating healthy is more expensive if you also wish to eat conveniently (barring an all raw diet). If you are prepared to put in the time to cook, eating healthy is not more expensive except in comparison to the absolutely most nutritionally barren diets.

Putting aside the "Is healthy more expensive?" question, you must also factor in %age of income spent on food. The developed world has been spoiled rotten with readily available food, and spends significantly less on nutrition as a %age of income. In short, even the base line by which you are starting to compare is horribly, horribly, skewed.

I can get days worth of food for two people from a chicken, say. I have been skint many times in the past.

Day 1: Roast chicken (eat both breasts if you must)
Day 2 : The legs make some kind of chicken risotto/stew etc
Day 3: The remainder of the carcase is picked as clean as you can (wings, oysters etc) and you make soup
Day 4: What is left is boiled with veg/water to make stock, with which you will strain and reduce and drink half as soup (add veg, barley etc) and use the remaining half to make your next batch of 'day 3' soup.

Normal veg is way cheaper than tinned here. Buy loose is always cheaper than packets.

I can make meals for pennies.

Edited to add: lentils are not as cheap as split peas. You can put them in soup.

If you buy 'proper' cuts of meat (as opposed to convenient ones, ie steaks etc) then they seem expensive up front but you have more meat and bones etc for stock making.

I used to get beef bones from my butcher (supposedly for dogs) had quite a bit of meat on em.

Offal is cheap - I love liver.

Talk to your congressfolks and senators. It's that way because of the farm bill.

My neighbors make more money on subsidies to grow corn and soy than they make selling the corn and soy they grow. Then, the transportation of said commodities to the CAFOs and food labs is also subsidized. Then the CAFOs and production of highly processed foods is subsidized.

Meanwhile, I grow my little 2 1/2 acres of veggies, and 10 of fruits, and receive nothing in the way of subsidies, but have to pay higher property taxes because the fruit trees and whatnot are "improvements."

The junk is not actually less expensive. It takes more energy (particularly fossil fuel energy) to produce the commodity crops that go in to the processed foods than it does to produce real food. Then it takes more energy and people to move it around, and to process it into the chemical ingredients for the processed food, then still more put them together into your pop tart or soda or wonder bread, then still more to package it, and still more to transport it a second (or more) time. The difference, however, is that everyone is paying the lion's share of the cost of those foods, whether they buy them or not, through taxes. When you buy a head of broccoli or a carrot, for the most part you're actually paying something close to what it cost to produce that, because the production and transportation of those items is almost completely unsubsidized.

Sad thing is, while you're paying more for the unprocessed food, the people growing it are getting paid less. Even more sad thing is that even when you stop buying the processed food, you're still paying for it. That's how you get Michael Pollan giving presentations where he tries to see how many calories you can buy for $1 (at the presentation I saw, it was 90 calories of broccoli for $1, or 1200 calories of cookies).

Our food industry is actually designed to make people unhealthy (it's designed to essentially addict people to "bad" foods, and making them eat far more calories with far less nutritional benefit than is healthy), and our government's policies are designed to support that industry. Your taxes at work.

QFT

I live in the US and junk food is wayyyy cheaper.

Agreed, and anyone who says different is lying through their damn teeth. I think some junk food (namely chips, cereals, and convenience meals) are more expensive, but the majority of it is ridiculously cheaper than fresh veggies and fruits and meats.

I'm sorry, but no one wants to eat dry beans and lentils everyday! Shut up about the damn lentils. (I'm assuming that it's already been mentioned or will be mentioned in the next few minutes, because it ALWAYS is.)

First, I don't appreciate being called a liar, even indirectly, and even on an internet forum.

Second, no-one said you must eat dried lentils everyday. My family eats extremely well, extremely healthy, and without breaking the bank by a long shot.

Third, have you actually tried lentils? I used to eschew lentils as "goddamn hippy crap" until I made lentil soup one day and it was frikking delicious. Now I make it up once every couple of weeks in a twelve serving batch and always have a few servings in the freezer for go-to lunches.

Perhaps you just don't know how to shop well, prepare good meals and minimize waste? I'm not saying that as a dig, there's no shame in it. Everyone has to learn sometime, and it's taken me ten years to figure it out. I'm sure in another ten years I'll be even better at it.

Offal is cheap - I love liver

mmmn, second that

There is some healthy foods that you can get relatively cheap :

Oats ( I don't mean instant flavored oatmeal)
Legumes ( lentils, beans..) when purchased dried are really cheap
ect.

but I agree that buying a lot of fresh fruits, veggies, meats is very expensive.

I said that buying "real" food was expensive didn't I? Lentils are cheap... it's a fact. Lentils are gross ( to me) that's a fact as well.

And there they are: the damn lentils and beans.

I live in the US and junk food is wayyyy cheaper.

Agreed, and anyone who says different is lying through their damn teeth. I think some junk food (namely chips, cereals, and convenience meals) are more expensive, but the majority of it is ridiculously cheaper than fresh veggies and fruits and meats.

I'm sorry, but no one wants to eat dry beans and lentils everyday! Shut up about the damn lentils. (I'm assuming that it's already been mentioned or will be mentioned in the next few minutes, because it ALWAYS is.)

First, I don't appreciate being called a liar, even indirectly, and even on an internet forum.

Second, no-one said you must eat dried lentils everyday. My family eats extremely well, extremely healthy, and without breaking the bank by a long shot.

Third, have you actually tried lentils? I used to eschew lentils as "goddamn hippy crap" until I made lentil soup one day and it was frikking delicious. Now I make it up once every couple of weeks in a twelve serving batch and always have a few servings in the freezer for go-to lunches.

Perhaps you just don't know how to shop well, prepare good meals and minimize waste? I'm not saying that as a dig, there's no shame in it. Everyone has to learn sometime, and it's taken me ten years to figure it out. I'm sure in another ten years I'll be even better at it.

^^ I totally agree.

You can make eating healthy not be expensive. It's about shopping smart. I buy most of my fruits and veggies frozen-they last longer and are always ready when I need them. Chicken and fish is a great protein and fairly cheap. We are not "lying thru our teeth." We pay attention to what we buy. Spinach, broccoli, rice, whole wheat pasta/breads and lean meats can often be purchased at a lower cost then unhealthy, prepackaged, sodium and fat loaded "unhealthy" foods. Buy the crown of broccoli for dinner instead of the box of Mac N Cheese-It makes the same amount of servings-costs the same if not less and is healthier.

Processed food is absolutely less expensive here (US), regardless of whether it's junk food or nominally nutritious food. Take, for example, something simple. Marinara sauce. Hit the sales cycle right, have a coupon, and you can pretty easily buy a jar of Ragu, for example, for $.75. Sometimes less. I've actually gotten it for free before...

Now, purchase tomatoes, bell peppers, oregano, onions, garlic, carrots, salt, and bay leaves to make your own. Even if you're buying in season, and pro-rate the ingredients to match what goes in an equivalent amount of sauce as is in that jar, you're going to spend at least twice as much on tomatoes. Even if you grow them yourself (I know - I grow almost all of the food we eat, and because I also sell our produce, I track production costs closely. And I've got a some economy of scale a home gardener wouldn't, though not as much as a big producer).

Of course, you couldn't actually replicate the ragu, because you're not going to be able to make high fructose corn syrup, soybean oil, cheese cultures (OK, I have cheese cultures, but most folks don't...), "Enzymes" or "Natural Flavors."

Or, people like lentils, let's do something realistic. I'm making Lentil soup for dinner tonight:

Lentils - $2.29
Carrots - $1.40 *
Cellery - $.20
Onion - $.30 *
Garlic - $.32 *
Vegetable stock~ $3 **
diced tomatoes - $.89
Balsamic vinegar - $.15
Spinach - $2.50 *

Total - $11.94
8 servings = $1.94 per serving

* I grew all of these, and that's my cost of production. To buy would be more expensive most of the time
** I canned my own veggie stock, with stuff I grew. That's an approximate figure, because it does not take into account the energy to pressure can the stock, and because the recipe varies depending on what I have available


A single-serving can of Progresso lentil soup? $.50 (on sale w/ coupon). And the amount I need to spend on energy to prepare the canned soup is much less - 2 or 3 minutes on the stove, or a minute in the microwave. Versus simmering for hours in the crock pot. Granted, if I were home to keep the wood stove at the right temp, I could simmer the soup that way with free energy. But I could also heat the canned soup on the wood stove, too.

In a perfect world, a shopping trip would consist of a woman breezing throuh the grocery store adding fruits, veggies, and organic stuff into her cart. Reality is a woman adding snack cakes, white bread, canned fruits, etc., etc. into her cart. because that it all she can afford. In order to eat healthy, you really have to starve to death because the prices make it impossible to purchase more of what you need. I have a family of 5, and it is so much cheaper to buy the bad stuff. They should lower the prices of healthy foods and increase the price of junk food so that it would help us all out.

You are dead on.

That is why the NUMBER ONE predictor of obesity in the United States is personal income.