Why aren't healthier foods priced lower than junk foods?
Replies
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I must be vitamin deficient because I reheat leftovers.
http://www.beyondveg.com/tu-j-l/raw-cooked/raw-cooked-2e.shtml
Honestly, you should be getting far more than your RDA of all vitamins and minerals through a varied diet. Especially if your other foods are fortified with water-soluble heat-sensitive vitamins and minerals (like cereals, fortified with folate [folic acid], or milk).
But what about extra credit for eating beyond your body's nutritional needs?!0 -
But what about extra credit for eating beyond your body's nutritional needs?!
I did that a lot, once, and I ended up being really fat :frown:0 -
Again, you're making arguments based on false assumptions.
Fitness is a continuum. Genetics, lifestyle, and diet as well as injuries and illnesses place people at different places on the continuum, but fitness is a lifelong journey, not a destination.
No, you're making arguments based on your opinion or motivational posters or something.
It's not a "journey".
It's not a "continuum"
It's a choice.
Actually notwithstanding the rest of the nonsense I do agree with the continuum and journey analogies.
When I think back over my life thus far I can relate my health and fitness to various stages and influences. When I was younger I was very active, when I joined the workforce my fitness choices changed, but I was still generally describable as a bit of a racing snake, or naturally thin if you like. I moved into a more sedentary job, but didn't really reduce my consumption. While I was still doing a fair amount of phys I was eating as if I was in a job where I was on my feet all day every day. I put on weight and my performance reduced.
I suffered Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and through another influence ended up going through a period of clinical depression. Less exercise, more weight piled on.
Then a job where I was commuting five hours per day..
Choices yes, not always informed choices. Not always really choices; I could have skipped the five hours of commuting and gone for no job at all. I have a feeling that I'd have been sufficiently depressed that I wouldn't have done much phys anyway.
And as far as coming back is concerned, yes it's a journey. The first time I ran since I started addressing this issue I struggled. Now I'll do 12-14 Km without worrying too much about it. I did think at one stage that my choice of running as a sport was going to leave me with a permanent, life altering, injury.
We've all got to fit our lifestyle choices into our lifestyle. I'd love to have the time to do as much phys as I'd like, and the types of phys that I'd like. Equally I need a job.
The rest of the stuff about canned goods is bollox0 -
That isn't just attributable to the canning process.
It's ANY heating process.
Again, I didn't assert that heating was only in the canning process. Canned peas, if heated by the consumer prior to eating, have undergone a minimum of three heating processes - over and above heat they have expereinced during transport and storage. All of that is on top of the fact that they have the longest lag time between being picked and reaching the consumer.
Again, if you go back an read, what I asserted was that flash frozen vegetables are overall more nutritious than fresh vegetables, and fresh vegetables are more nutritious than canned vegetables. It doesn't mean any of them are going to kill you, assuming you don't have a rare pea allergy.
Again, you're making arguments based on false assumptions.
Fitness is a continuum. Genetics, lifestyle, and diet as well as injuries and illnesses place people at different places on the continuum, but fitness is a lifelong journey, not a destination.
No, you're making arguments based on your opinion or motivational posters or something.
It's not a "journey".
It's not a "continuum"
It's a choice.
Certainly, illnesses happen, people have food intolerances, etc.
But people who don't have "pre-existing conditions" absolutely DO NOT NEED to eat "clean" to achieve and sustain physical fitness.
You'll notice you're the only one referring to "clean eating."
Please, not the pre-existing tangent again. It has nothing to do with the relative quality of junk foods and healthier foods.
And the relative quality of junk foods and healthier foods has little to do with actual fitness.
But hey, if those extra vitamins & minerals that you urinate out makes you feel special, knock yourself out.
Please.
Oh,
And congratulations for having the healthiest septic system ever.0 -
Again, you're making arguments based on false assumptions.
Fitness is a continuum. Genetics, lifestyle, and diet as well as injuries and illnesses place people at different places on the continuum, but fitness is a lifelong journey, not a destination.
No, you're making arguments based on your opinion or motivational posters or something.
It's not a "journey".
It's not a "continuum"
It's a choice.
Actually notwithstanding the rest of the nonsense I do agree with the continuum and journey analogies.
When I think back over my life thus far I can relate my health and fitness to various stages and influences. When I was younger I was very active, when I joined the workforce my fitness choices changed, but I was still generally describable as a bit of a racing snake, or naturally thin if you like. I moved into a more sedentary job, but didn't really reduce my consumption. While I was still doing a fair amount of phys I was eating as if I was in a job where I was on my feet all day every day. I put on weight and my performance reduced.
I suffered Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and through another influence ended up going through a period of clinical depression. Less exercise, more weight piled on.
Then a job where I was commuting five hours per day..
Choices yes, not always informed choices. Not always really choices; I could have skipped the five hours of commuting and gone for no job at all. I have a feeling that I'd have been sufficiently depressed that I wouldn't have done much phys anyway.
And as far as coming back is concerned, yes it's a journey. The first time I ran since I started addressing this issue I struggled. Now I'll do 12-14 Km without worrying too much about it. I did think at one stage that my choice of running as a sport was going to leave me with a permanent, life altering, injury.
We've all got to fit our lifestyle choices into our lifestyle. I'd love to have the time to do as much phys as I'd like, and the types of phys that I'd like. Equally I need a job.
The rest of the stuff about canned goods is bollox
Here's what I meant:
It's not like fitness has to "evolve" from deciding to make your body better (whether through weight loss, cardio strength, muscular strength, etc.) into "optimizing" every bite you take.
You can improve your body, maintain that then just stop. You'll still be fit.
You don't have to become a body builder or devise some esoteric diet.
IMHO, those are specializations that go beyond just simple "fitness"0 -
Here's what I meant:
It's not like fitness has to "evolve" from deciding to make your body better (whether through weight loss, cardio strength, muscular strength, etc.) into "optimizing" every bite you take.
You can improve your body, maintain that then just stop. You'll still be fit.
You don't have to become a body builder or devise some esoteric diet.
IMHO, those are specializations that go beyond just simple "fitness"
You just keep making assumptions and inferring things no one here has actually said. If you want to have nothing but strawman arguments knock yourself out. Some of us prefer our septic systems on the other end.
The choice one makes is not fitness or unfitness. The choices are about what you do. My of health, fitness, and physical capacity is dictated by genetics and by your environment. The only choices you have are the things you actually choose to *do* or not do. You can certainly improve your body to a certain point and then attempt to maintain that without improving, compensating only for age related changes. Some people do not just shoot for a goal of having a relatively normal BMI. Everyone is at a different point on a spectrum of fitness.
There are people here who are morbidly obese, for which the fitness journey is much more long term endeavor. Some of them will put in the work to get back into a normal body composition and just try to saty there, some will continue thier fitness journey. There are people here who have normal body compositions, but are dealing with deconditioning issues or injuries, or illness. It's not a value judgement of the individual, it's simply acknowledging that improvement is about the work you put into it and that the more fit you get, generally the more work you have to put in to see improvement from that point. Not everyone wants to keep improving and there's nothing wrong with that.
I'm not into elitist eating, as you repeatedly imply. I simply have fitness changes that I am working on to improve performance. One of the many things I do is track my micronutrients. I work toward getting as many of them from food rather than supplementation. It's just easier to do with less depleted foods, because unfortunately while vitamins and minerals degrade, calories don't decrease proportionally.
Some people only ever track macros, and they see the results they want. I choose to track micros. Other people need to track micros to address chronic deficiencies or ongoing health issues that impede their weight loss and fitness goals.
What you eat and how you work your body mentally and physically are choices Different people make different choices based on what they want. You don't have to "become" anything.0 -
Not sure what weight waters are either?
Not their responsibility. The choose is on you, me and everbody else to either buy or not buy.Have you noticed that most buy one get one free and special offers are on junk food and high in fats and sugar? We have an obesity problem in this country and the supermarkets and government are not helping the situation.
Food is not an addiction. People my be addicted to surgar or to fats, in general people are not addicted to food.Food is an addiction just like smoking and drinkingIf the government are not going to support us
They wont at the end of the day it is the people who choose to buy what they buy.. but don't worry, I predict that the government will tax higher the junk food.
You have no idea what weight waters is..I'm not prepared to pay the high prices of weight watchers and slimming world just to weigh in and talk about food when we can do that for nothing.0 -
I don't know what it's like where you come from, but one kg of fresh vegetables (at least here) is much cheaper than a box of sweetened cornflakes or any other type of premade food (trust me, I did like those things, but had to give them up not for health but because I couldn't afford them). You just have to buy ingredients and cook for yourself. It's much cheaper than buying junk food.0
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I'm guessing that junk foods can be a mash of all the "not pretty" produce plus added flavor chemicals that are cheaper to produce than a decent piece of fruit, or potato, or spinach, or whatever. Americans expect their produce to be perfect and so it's very expensive.
Personally, we just eat the apples right off our not sprayed trees. They aren't as pretty but they're a lot less expensive. Once we run out we buy left over apples that were going to be used for cider - cheap but not pretty.
But it's tough to find cheap produce because everybody wants it to be perfect. Perfection costs money. So my celery, carrots, etc all cost more than they might.
That's my theory.0 -
If the government are not going to support us then
...gee, we might just have to take responsibility for ourselves! Imagine that!0 -
I think you will find food is now acknowledged as an addiction. Watch the news this morning, plus it's not just sugar, it's far more than that
Acknowledged by people who just want excuse for being obese. An excuse under the 'Anybody/Anything else's fault but mine' category, right next to the metabolism excuse and the people who label obesity as a disease.
While I may sound insensitive, the excuses do just not help. People need to be tough with themselves for getting themselves into the way of life they are in.
Food is not an addiction. Obesity is not a disease. Everybody has willpower towards something in life and to people who struggle with food, it is up to them to harness their willpower.
If not, then how long is it before 'lack of willpower' in general is classified as a disease?0 -
Read "Your Food is Fooling You." It's written by a former head of the FDA. It was a HUGE eye-opener for me.
Yes, food is an addiction. Particularly foods high in sugar, fat & salt. These chemicals light up the reward center in our brain, making us want more and more.
In the early '90's, a study was done where children aged 3-7 were given a high-calorie snack in the mid-afternoon. 80% of the children ate less at dinner in order to auto-regulate their calorie intake for the day.
In 2008, the same study was conducted and only 20% of the children ate less, and ALL of them over-ate for the day. It is genetic, it is evolving, and unless you re-train your body, it WILL get worse.
The food companies know this and profit off of it.
The ability to make chemicals taste like food (i.e. strawberry syrup, cheese doritos, etc) has become a multi-billion dollar industry.
The reason for this being it is in fact CHEAPER for the companies to make "junk food' than it is for them to make healthier food.
Grocery stores don't dictate bulk prices of food: the individual food companies who sell it to them do. The store's price is based on the bulk price.
That is why.
This is just mentality. If it was an addiction, the whole world would have an obesity epidemic. It doesnt. Countries such as Spain are considerably healthier.
It is not an addiction for restaurants in the US to incentivise excessive eating with their so-called 'legendary eating challenges'. Portion sizes are to blame, not sugar or fat. You can still eat healthily eating sugary and fatty foods.0 -
Have you noticed that most buy one get one free and special offers are on junk food and high in fats and sugar? We have an obesity problem in this country and the supermarkets and government are not helping the situation. Food is an addiction just like smoking and drinking, yet the amount of help available is nil in comparison. I've just started getting together with other people who need to lose weight. If the government are not going to support us then people need to get into small self help groups and support each other. I'm not prepared to pay the high prices of weight watchers and slimming world just to weigh in and talk about food when we can do that for nothing. Get like minded people together near you. I only mentioned it last Monday in our area and we have 9 already signed up to meet weekly and we have a FaceBook page called Ibs for £'s. Some of us are raising money for charities by getting sponsors too to give more incentive to slimming. Start a support group near you and write letters to the supermarkets and government asking for them to help the obesity issues that are draining the NHS in the country. Together we can make a difference.
Yes many buy one get one free offers are often on cheap, poor nutrition products however supermarkets run these offers as loss leaders, products to get you in. If you compare foods at normal prices, the vast majority of foods, then you will find it is just as easy to each fresh as eat junk and that is just shopping in a place that has both junk and healthy. Obviously if you can shop around do but really it is not the fault of supermarkets if you choose not to buy healthy as there really is enough on offer at both levels!!0 -
Have you noticed that most buy one get one free and special offers are on junk food and high in fats and sugar? We have an obesity problem in this country and the supermarkets and government are not helping the situation. Food is an addiction just like smoking and drinking, yet the amount of help available is nil in comparison. I've just started getting together with other people who need to lose weight. If the government are not going to support us then people need to get into small self help groups and support each other. I'm not prepared to pay the high prices of weight watchers and slimming world just to weigh in and talk about food when we can do that for nothing. Get like minded people together near you. I only mentioned it last Monday in our area and we have 9 already signed up to meet weekly and we have a FaceBook page called Ibs for £'s. Some of us are raising money for charities by getting sponsors too to give more incentive to slimming. Start a support group near you and write letters to the supermarkets and government asking for them to help the obesity issues that are draining the NHS in the country. Together we can make a difference.
Yes many buy one get one free offers are often on cheap, poor nutrition products however supermarkets run these offers as loss leaders, products to get you in. If you compare foods at normal prices, the vast majority of foods, then you will find it is just as easy to each fresh as eat junk and that is just shopping in a place that has both junk and healthy. Obviously if you can shop around do but really it is not the fault of supermarkets if you choose not to buy healthy as there really is enough on offer at both levels!!
PS though your plans to work together with others for support etc is a good one, just don't blame the govt for what you choose to eat!0 -
When I am living in India, I buy a whole weeks worth of fresh fruits and vegetables for 11 dollars.
The same amount of food in Charlotte NC costs me 50. I stood at the cash register and almost cried. Needless to say, my trip back to India at the end of the month can not come fast enough for me. Not to mention, fresh young coconuts are a quarter.
But this is all relative to the currency/earnings in that particular country..... I could but a whole weeks worth for less than that... in third world countries who are even less privileged.0 -
You are so right. Fresh fruits and vegetables cost more than junk food. This is the reason America is overweight!!! Please post a copy of your letter; hopefully, we can all begin support groups in our area. Good Luck!!!
Really? Does a freshly prepared chicken and vegetable pasta dish made at home cost more than the double burger served at your local fast food restaurant with treble lashings of cheese and a kilo of french fries?
I know which in general an obese person would rather go for.0 -
You are so right. Fresh fruits and vegetables cost more than junk food. This is the reason America is overweight!!! Please post a copy of your letter; hopefully, we can all begin support groups in our area. Good Luck!!!
Lulz.0 -
To answer the topic, not going to read the full question paragraph since there's no stops or breaks:
Because it's bulk-made making it cheaper,
because some 'junk' food isn't even really food,
because when making the 'junk' food, many ingredients are added, allowing 1 meal to be made from less of everything. (if that makes sense.)
This^^
To add, fresh food tends to have a much shorter shelf life, doesn't travel was well so it is effectively more "rare".
We, as consumers, also require food to be "pretty" and uniform so that reduces the amount of food that a grower can sell.0 -
The choice one makes is not fitness or unfitness. The choices are about what you do. My of health, fitness, and physical capacity is dictated by genetics and by your environment.
There are people here who are morbidly obese, for which the fitness journey is much more long term endeavor.
A morbidly obese person on MFP is interested in fitness... Becoming fit... Getting body composition into normal ranges, and most are interested in being able to do those basic things that not-obese people take for granted.
These things are almost always dependent on choices, not genetics and environment.
They are not here for optimization (unless they have special dietary needs), so they should be able to eat canned food or McDonald's (within reason) and still become fit.
Some of them will put in the work to get back into a normal body composition and just try to saty there,
There are people here who have normal body compositions, but are dealing with deconditioning issues or injuries, or illness.
Still seeking fitness. Can still eat canned food, etc. without saying its "bad"
I'm not into elitist eating, as you repeatedly imply.
I simply have fitness changes that I am working on to improve performance.
So you're optimizing.
Canned foods and McDonald's are off-limits.
Gotcha.
Then they (like me) have health issues that they are addressing.
Other people need to track micros to address chronic deficiencies or ongoing health issues that impede their weight loss and fitness goals.
Address the health, then they can address the fitness.
What you eat and how you work your body mentally and physically are choices Different people make different choices based on what they want. You don't have to "become" anything.
True.
I've been trying to explain to you is that you are pursuing "dietary optimization", not fitness.
You're getting all upset when people talk about portion control... But that actually applies to people trying to GAIN weight to become fit, to LOSE weight to become fit, and to MAINTAIN FITNESS, not to optimize.0 -
I love the farmer's market. Great deals, fresher food and, often, less chemicals. The people great as well on both sides of the table. And, with no middleman means better economics for both of us. However, kinda tough in the winter months.
I shop the perimeter of the grocery store. Stay away from the middle section and the cans/bottles.
Make your own choices. If you are careful, you can always find deals. Eg, I know when meat goes on sale at the local Publix.
OP, I don't share your belief that junk food is cheaper. It might be easier and more convenient but it is not cheaper.
Best to all!0 -
There's nothing about buying foods and preparing and cooking them that is "dietary optimization." The rest of the world calls it cooking.0
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I love the farmer's market. Great deals, fresher food and, often, less chemicals. The people great as well on both sides of the table. And, with no middleman means better economics for both of us. However, kinda tough in the winter months.
Indeed.
My challenge is actually knowing when the farmers market is during the summer and going there before they're over.0 -
because the doctors visits and medications are needed less when eating better foods...0
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U are right!!! It has always been more expensive to eat healthy than" junky"--if u need a reference point think of how much it cost to now put on a Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner--all food that u prepare from scratch---pre-made dinners that u heat up and throw on the table are so much cheaper than doing from scratch. You sacrifice taste as well as nutrition in these!!!! I know that homemade food gets a bad wrap but at least I know what is going in my meal nutrition and calorie wise. I guess u could say I am very old school in my thinking!!!!0
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WRONG! Ever see a huge bag of dry beans at the store, like the size of your pillow? Its like less than a McDonalds meal and you could live for weeks on it! Super cheap and super nutritious!0
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Not sure if anyone's given an actual response to this question or if everyone is just arguing and flailing about as usual.
In America, the 'junk' foods are cheaper than organic produce because the government is currently subsidizing crops like corn and soy, which make up the majority of ingredients in 'junk' food.
If the government instead switched to subsidizing organic produce, the prices would flip. A bunch of organic celery would be 50 cents at Whole Foods instead of $2-$3, and the box of Hamburger Helper would be something like $5 instead of $1.0 -
Honestly, I don't need the supermarkets or the government stepping in to get me to make healthy choices. The government already insinuates themselves into every aspect of our lives already, why invite them to do it further? It is possible to eat healthy without spending a fortune.0
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That's easy... because they use ingredients that THEY MAKE to produce it, so its all within a manufacturer's control. Now take fruit and meat for example.... fruit is dependent upon weather, soil conditions, etc. which is out of everyone's control. Meat is dependent upon fertility (to have baby cows, etc) and the care of the ranchers to keep them healthy and alive.
The more "real" a food is... the more expensive it is. Also remember that when it comes from the US its more expensive than stuff that comes from overseas because we have minimum wages when other countries pay pennies on the dollar.0 -
Well, it's certainly not the case everywhere. Where I live, junk foods cost quite a bit more than better quality foods. Chips, sodas, and cookies-- even the store brand versions-- cost less than nearly all the fruits and vegetables at the grocery store I visit. The only exceptions are for exported speciality items. If I went to buy enough food from a fast food restaurant to feel satisfied, I could spend about five to six dollars on a meal whereas if I cooked a meal for myself from fresh groceries, it would cost less than two dollars.0
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