I'm less pessimistic. People in the US, and increasingly the rest of the world are on a diet that just isn't good for them: lots of low quality carbs with cheap

I'm less pessimistic. People in the US, and increasingly the rest of the world are on a diet that just isn't good for them: lots of low quality carbs with cheap fat and artificial flavorings and not a whole lot of nutritional value. Arguably, a large part of the population is eating way more than is good for them and not enough good quality food. And it's not just a money issue: it's a skill and knowledge issue. People literally pay extra for the privilege of growing fat on expensive junk food and they don't even know the basics of taking care of themselves anymore. So, low quality industrial food products getting more expensive isn't necessarily a bad thing. It might prompt people to spend their money more wisely. There are plenty of options for people interested in doing a bit of work to put together a healthy diet for themselves. Buy good ingredients yourself and learn how to use them. You'll save money and eat better. And if you source a bit responsibly, you actually help out some local producers and shops that are currently struggling. It's not that hard. A lot of us here are programmers. If you can put together code that implements a complex algorithm, you can follow a recipe and figure out how making food works. It's not hard. For example, I bake my own bread. I do that using flour that I buy online from a local mill here in Germany. Good stuff. Works out to about 1.60 euros per kg. The supermarkets here don't even sell this quality of bread flour. They mostly sell more processed flours that people use to bake cakes. The flour I bought is locally known as type 812. In the french system it would be T85 (approximately). All that means: lots of protein and other nutrients that you need to make good bread. Unlike the supermarket, I use no additives other than salt. I even make my own sourdough starter (flour + water, let nature do it's thing). So, literally the main ingredients that I have to buy are flour and salt. Works out to less than 1 euro per loaf of bread; including the power I consume to use the oven. And it tastes good. If I wanted to cut the price of this, I'm sure I could source both ingredients even cheaper. Sourdough bread works with all sorts of flour. Even with the cheap low quality stuff. You might be able to go as low as 50 cents per kg of flour. That works out to about 25 cents per loaf. And it will still taste great. Takes a bit of skill and some time. But otherwise it's cheap. People in poor countries tend to know a thing or two about making the most of cheap ingredients. That's why Italian food is so popular. It's quite literally what poor Italians came up with. A lot of their famous dishes are rooted in what poor peasants could do with what they could afford. Pasta is basically flour and water. You work it hard and you end up with the perfect vessel for some sort of stew. As for the stew: whatever cuts of meat cooked for ages with whatever you can pick around you. Plenty of examples around the world of great food traditions rooted in poor people making the most of what they have access to: India, Vietnam, Thailand, Cuba, etc. Almost anywhere you go, people have this rich history of doing great stuff with whatever is available to them. Mostly, it boils down to skill and time to use those skills.