{"id":166776,"date":"2010-01-11T11:03:28","date_gmt":"2010-01-11T16:03:28","guid":{"rendered":"tag:business.theatlantic.com,2010:\/\/3.33259"},"modified":"2010-01-11T11:03:54","modified_gmt":"2010-01-11T16:03:54","slug":"why-is-american-food-so-cheap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/166776","title":{"rendered":"Why is American Food So Cheap?"},"content":{"rendered":"

There are a lot of reasons why obesity has taken off over the last 30 years, but one very obvious reason is that food — especially fat food — is so cheap<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Food is cheaper here than almost anywhere else. In 2007, only about 6.9
\npercent of U.S. consumer spending went for food at home; Germans spent
\nmore (11.4 percent), as did Italians (14.5 percent) and Mexicans (24.2
\npercent). On the other hand, low food prices may contribute to
\nAmericans’ obesity. In 2006, about 34 percent of U.S. adults were
\njudged obese, triple France’s rate (10.5 percent) and four times that
\nof Switzerland (7.7 percent)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But why is food so cheap in the United States?<\/p>\n

As Bryan Walsh explains in this excellent TIME article, it starts with
\ncorn. American corn production has tripled in the past 40 years, from 4
\nbillion bu. in 1970 to 12 billion. Billions of dollars of subsidies
\nhave injected steroids into corn production, and our farmers have
\ninjected chemicals into our fields — “American farmers now produce an
\nastounding 153 bu. of corn per acre, up from 118 as recently as 1990.”
\nMoney might be scarce, but cheap food is abundant. As a result, food
\nexpenditures as a percentage of income have fallen by half in the last
\nhalf-century, and obesity rates have doubled<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Two graphs, just to drive the point home. The cheap food revolution
\nhasn’t just given low-income families cheaper options. It’s come at the
\nexpense of healthier food. A dollar today buys 1,200 calories of potato
\nchips and 250 calories of vegetables or 170 calories of fresh fruit.
\nWalsh gets it right: “it simply costs too much to be thin.”<\/p>\n

\"graph<\/a>The
\ncheap food revolution has aided the fast food revolution. Countries
\nwith fast food chains that piggy-backed on the corn boom have become
\nmore efficient eaters. But we’re learning to be efficient in the wrong
\nways. By cramming as many calories into a dollar and a minute as
\npossible, our evolutionary instinct to maximize our calorie intake is
\nsuddenly working against us.<\/p>\n

\"foodfat.jpg\"<\/a>


\n

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There are a lot of reasons why obesity has taken off over the last 30 years, but one very obvious reason is that food — especially fat food — is so cheap: Food is cheaper here than almost anywhere else. In 2007, only about 6.9 percent of U.S. consumer spending went for food at home; […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1534,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-166776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1534"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=166776"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166776\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=166776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=166776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=166776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}