A piece in the NYT Sunday Review, Is Junk Food Really Cheaper,
provoked some interesting discussion among my culinary friends, many of
whom are almost evangelistically committed to food awareness and to
reduction of obesity and other food-related illnesses in America.
It’s often taken for granted that junk food is in fact cheaper than healthy home-cooked food. Those who are content with eating it — or with others feeding on the wide array of readily available but admittedly unhealthy foodstuffs — can point towards the comparative costs and shrug their shoulders and reach for another bite. Those who are against that situation get ready villains for verbal effigy-conflagrations, usually pretty emotionally satisfying: either the government for providing the tangled net of subsidies, or the big food corporations for lobbying for and benefiting from them — or both.
It’s often taken for granted that junk food is in fact cheaper than healthy home-cooked food. Those who are content with eating it — or with others feeding on the wide array of readily available but admittedly unhealthy foodstuffs — can point towards the comparative costs and shrug their shoulders and reach for another bite. Those who are against that situation get ready villains for verbal effigy-conflagrations, usually pretty emotionally satisfying: either the government for providing the tangled net of subsidies, or the big food corporations for lobbying for and benefiting from them — or both.
