Food for thought (pun intended).

What if we paid one cent per calorie in the foods we eat and drink?

Wouldn’t this drastically change the way most of us eat and drink?  The complaint has always been that healthy food costs more than unhealthy food, which is greatly due to supply and demand.  Also, it would likely make consumers much more aware of their daily caloric intake.  Thus us all making much wiser choices with our eating and drinking habits.

Granted, this isn’t a realistic way of selling and purchasing food due to supply and demand but I could also see this would drastically change our demands and would force companies to change their supply.

From a consumer stand point, I see our food system in America as an frighteningly flawed system.  There aren’t two sides, or three sides, or four sides of this issue.  The best way I have found to visually describe our flawed food system is a big bowl of spaghetti.

One noodle (or perhaps, even the pasta sauce of your choosing) in the bowl would be GMOs (Genetically Modified Organisms).  In recent years, you have possibly heard something about this subject.  Let me begin by saying, I believe (or wish to believe) that the initial creation of GMOs was to help grow food in hostile environments to help feed people in regions that just can’t grow enough food for their populations.  However, these resources are in the hands of very large companies with questionable ethics (ie. Monsanto and its many sub-companies).

If you have ever driven through the midwest, you are surrounded by miles upon miles of beautiful fields of corn and soy beans.  Notice there are few farmers selling their bounty on the corners.  This is because their product is not meant for human consumption.

Spending most of my summers in Iowa, I thought it was odd that none of the corn I ate while I was there was actually grown in Iowa.  Granted, it was not harvest season that time of year but I had learned, and at the time, accepted, that the majority of the corn grown in Iowa, was never meant for us to eat.

Fast forward through the years, I am now in the wellness field and have gradually become more aware of, not only how our bodies function, but also how our food system operates in this country.  We have this large over growth of corn and soy beans to make the huge amounts of processed foods that we as Americans not only eat, but are even addicted to. These processed foods as well as GMO based produce has reduced the price of our “food”.  This should be fantastic, right?  I used the quotes around the word food due to the fact, we should not be considering, for example, Froot Loops food.

So there are a couple of noodles in the bowl of spaghetti to think about.  Now what about this noodle for thought?  Much of the corn and soy beans are grown to feed our other food sources.  If you speak with a farmer in the midwest, they refer to animals as beef, pork, and chicken, rather than cows, pigs, okay, I’ll give them chicken.  These animals were never meant to consume these foods as their base diet, which has reeked havoc on their digestive system and made them sick, (here comes another noodle) plus their living conditions have made their illnesses spread quickly to the other “beef” and “pork”, so enter in antibiotic fed livestock.  We then consume these ill animals as well as the “food” and antibiotics they were fed.

Some more noodles for thought.  These huge GMO and pesticide companies have very wealthy CEOs, presidents, and so on that are salt and peppered within our government and help operate how food is distributed and labeled for us, the consumers.

The details to all of these “noodles” I am listing are truly endless.  So I bring you back to my initial question.  What if we paid one cent per calorie in the foods we eat and drink?  All of these processed, inexpensive foods we eat, would suddenly be much pricier than fresh produce and even some meats.  This would mean our farm industry would have to revise the way they farm to meet the demands in order to remain lucrative. Big corporations would have to find new ways to improve their bottom line.

It is often a financial struggle in our home to feed our family.  A conversation I had with my husband about this was, “Stop comparing the cost of garbage to the cost of food, of course garbage is going to be cheaper,” when he was asking why we couldn’t just eat HamberHelper every day to save money.