3 ms·

It's just not that simple. While I don't want to eat bad food, and I'm thankfully rich enough to be able to choose, food additives and technologies have had an

by zpeti 4y ago

It's just not that simple. While I don't want to eat bad food, and I'm thankfully rich enough to be able to choose, food additives and technologies have had an insane impact on the cost of food, and have probably bought quality foods to many many more people. The last 50 years have bought really fast change in the food industry, but it's also reduced the number of starving people by billions in the world. You are definitely going to have collateral damage in that, and some technologies will be harmful over the long run, but you still might save many more years of people's lives by just making the food available. People seriously underestimate just how much disinflation there's been in food prices when compared to the rest of the market. And that actually means there's more food. For everyone.

rhaway84773 4y ago
[flagged]
- zpeti 4y ago
  > US supermarket shelves are probably the worst in the world. By what definition? I went to cuba 3 years ago and supermarket shelves were empty. Is that better? On a more serious note, I've travelled a lot and $1 menus and such are extremely rare, especially ones with actual vegetables and meat, and this was a big feature of the US only a few years ago (not sure about now with the inflation). $1 menus go a long way in feeding a lot of poor people.
  - q3k 4y ago
    > $1 menus go a long way in feeding a lot of poor people. Right, and then you’re effectively pushing the worst quality, most processed, possibly carcinogenic and likely causing obesity/diabetes food on a group of already vulnerable people. High quality and healthy food should be the least concern to people already struggling to make ends meet. How else do you want to lift them out of poverty otherwise?
  - houseinthesky 4y ago
    I don't think "feeding poor people food that gives them diseases and harms their quality of life" is success. The US could feed people cheaply without using harmful additives. Instead of a $1 McBurger made possible through subsidies, environmental destruction and cancer-causing chemicals we could be eating $1 McChanaMasala or McDal or McLocalSeasonalVegetables. Billions of people around the world eat rice, beans, legumes, root vegetables with small amounts of locally sourced cheese, meats, fruit, vegetables etc. America's poor eat high fructose corn syrup, highly processed wheat, vegetable oil and the meat from cows and chickens raised on unnatural diets in horribly unhealthy conditions. That's not an improvement.
    - zpeti 4y ago
      You don’t get it. If you didn’t have these processed foods burgers would cost $10 and millions even in the us wouldn’t eat them. You might think that’s a good thing, but most people don’t actually want to subsist on rice and beans, otherwise that’s what McDonald’s would sell. And I’m not just talking Ajtony the US. The same preservation technologies that allow $1 menus in the us also pulled almost a billion people out of starvation in the last 30 years. Again, read my original post, I’m not saying this is ideal, and I’m rich enough to choose what to eat. But for many it’s a choice of eating things with bad chemicals or eating nothing. And that’s not because it’s a choice that evil capitalists make. If you can’t mass produce food it doesn’t just become more expensive, there’s less of it, and people starve. You’re basically saying it’s better if people starve than if they get cancer in 50 years. Edit: see the sister comment: Definitely. In 1900, the typical American family spend 43% of its income on food. In 1950, it was 30%. By 2003, it had dropped to 13%
      - houseinthesky 4y ago
        I completely understand the point you're arguing, I'm trying to articulate the problems inherent in the system and a way forward. Nobody would starve, they'd just switch to healthier foods. This would be a good thing. America has a crisis of obesity. Our life expectancy is actually going down despite amazing medical advancements. Our food system today incentivizes horrible health outcomes, we should be looking at cheap soda, fries and burgers as akin to cheap cigarettes, cheap vodka and cheap opium have done to populations in the past.
Turing_Machine 4y ago
> People seriously underestimate just how much disinflation there's been in food prices when compared to the rest of the market. And that actually means there's more food. For everyone. Definitely. In 1900, the typical American family spend 43% of its income on food. In 1950, it was 30%. By 2003, it had dropped to 13%. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/04/how-america-spends-money-100-years-in-the-life-of-the-family-budget/255475/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/04/how-ame...

by zpeti 4y ago

rhaway84773 4y ago

[flagged]

zpeti 4y ago
> US supermarket shelves are probably the worst in the world. By what definition? I went to cuba 3 years ago and supermarket shelves were empty. Is that better? On a more serious note, I've travelled a lot and $1 menus and such are extremely rare, especially ones with actual vegetables and meat, and this was a big feature of the US only a few years ago (not sure about now with the inflation). $1 menus go a long way in feeding a lot of poor people.
- q3k 4y ago
  > $1 menus go a long way in feeding a lot of poor people. Right, and then you’re effectively pushing the worst quality, most processed, possibly carcinogenic and likely causing obesity/diabetes food on a group of already vulnerable people. High quality and healthy food should be the least concern to people already struggling to make ends meet. How else do you want to lift them out of poverty otherwise?
- houseinthesky 4y ago
  I don't think "feeding poor people food that gives them diseases and harms their quality of life" is success. The US could feed people cheaply without using harmful additives. Instead of a $1 McBurger made possible through subsidies, environmental destruction and cancer-causing chemicals we could be eating $1 McChanaMasala or McDal or McLocalSeasonalVegetables. Billions of people around the world eat rice, beans, legumes, root vegetables with small amounts of locally sourced cheese, meats, fruit, vegetables etc. America's poor eat high fructose corn syrup, highly processed wheat, vegetable oil and the meat from cows and chickens raised on unnatural diets in horribly unhealthy conditions. That's not an improvement.
  - zpeti 4y ago
    You don’t get it. If you didn’t have these processed foods burgers would cost $10 and millions even in the us wouldn’t eat them. You might think that’s a good thing, but most people don’t actually want to subsist on rice and beans, otherwise that’s what McDonald’s would sell. And I’m not just talking Ajtony the US. The same preservation technologies that allow $1 menus in the us also pulled almost a billion people out of starvation in the last 30 years. Again, read my original post, I’m not saying this is ideal, and I’m rich enough to choose what to eat. But for many it’s a choice of eating things with bad chemicals or eating nothing. And that’s not because it’s a choice that evil capitalists make. If you can’t mass produce food it doesn’t just become more expensive, there’s less of it, and people starve. You’re basically saying it’s better if people starve than if they get cancer in 50 years. Edit: see the sister comment: Definitely. In 1900, the typical American family spend 43% of its income on food. In 1950, it was 30%. By 2003, it had dropped to 13%
    - houseinthesky 4y ago
      I completely understand the point you're arguing, I'm trying to articulate the problems inherent in the system and a way forward. Nobody would starve, they'd just switch to healthier foods. This would be a good thing. America has a crisis of obesity. Our life expectancy is actually going down despite amazing medical advancements. Our food system today incentivizes horrible health outcomes, we should be looking at cheap soda, fries and burgers as akin to cheap cigarettes, cheap vodka and cheap opium have done to populations in the past.

Turing_Machine 4y ago

> People seriously underestimate just how much disinflation there's been in food prices when compared to the rest of the market. And that actually means there's more food. For everyone. Definitely. In 1900, the typical American family spend 43% of its income on food. In 1950, it was 30%. By 2003, it had dropped to 13%. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/04/how-america-spends-money-100-years-in-the-life-of-the-family-budget/255475/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/04/how-ame...