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Originally Posted by fire
I would rather see that money spent on developing more sustainable crops and more healthy, yet still cheap foods.... hell, most of us Americans are fat due to two things- 1- we are reared in such a low impact environment that we have little or no exercise to begin with, and get less as we age- 2 we eat cheap food that is horrible for us- would it be impossible to develop cheap food that is not so horrible???? really, it seems that with our ridiculous amounts of available funding, we should work toward that, for self preservation if nothing else.....
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I don't disagree with this.
The funny thing is, the US already spends the least amount of money on food as a percentage of income than any other nation. It hovers around 8-10%. It would be lower if the trend of eating outside of the home hasn't grown to about 50% of that expenditure (I could be off on that 50% but it's what I recall... the important fact is that since the 60s Americans have increase the amount of money they spend on eating outside the home). Canada is around 14% of food as a percentage of income while many other nations are somewhere between 20% to 50% food as a percentage of income.
The US can afford to spend a little more on better food. It will save the system a lot of money in negative externalities (such as health care and environmental damage).
That said, I don't see the political, personal or any sort of will or interest in making these changes.
Cheaper is better and hang the consequences!
Consume less meat?! When they pry my knife and fork from my cold dead hands!
---------- Post added at 02:28 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:50 PM ----------
A couple of good TED Talks on these issues.
Graham Hill: Why I'm a weekday vegetarian | Video on TED.com
Mark Bittman on what's wrong with what we eat | Video on TED.com