Monday, February 27, 2012

The American Way of Eating: Undercover at Walmart, Applebee's, Farm Fields and the Dinner Table

Tracie McMillan spent 3yrs working undercover in the food industry.  She learned a lot about the industrial food system off which we subsist.  Her pursuits' results are in her new book: "The American Way of Eating: Undercover at Walmart, Applebee's, Farm Fields and the Dinner Table"
Her nine debunked perceptions are summarized here:
Tracie McMillan spent 3yrs working undercover in the food industry.  She learned a lot about the industrial food system off which we subsist.  Her pursuits' results are in her new book: "The American Way of Eating: Undercover at Walmart, Applebee's, Farm Fields and the Dinner Table"
1. Everybody Wants Good Food (85% of 1,500 low-income families surveyed said eating healthy food was a priority.)

2. Poor people spend more on food than the rich. (households earning $5k-35k year, spent 16-35% of their income on food. households earning $70,000 a year or more--spent 8 percent)

3. You can't eat a balanced diet from food grown here (42% of the nation's $18 billion in farm subsidies is spent on commodity crops, most of which are the grains that get turned into sweeteners, animal feed, and, grain--and just 5 percent on fruits and vegetables.)

4. Higher wages don't mean unaffordable food (Farm workers get about 2% of  the cost of food, if we gave them a 40% raise it'd cost us $16 more/year on our grocery bills)

5. Hamburger Helper is expensive (the same ingredients made from scratch is 69% cheaper)

6. The biggest predictor of how much time a woman spends in the kitchen is whether or not she's married (Women who go to work full-time spend 36 to 48 percent less time in the kitchen)

7. Walmart isn't always cheaper (produce can be cheaper than you'd expect at a smaller store.)

8. Supermarkets were designed to sell us junk (Supermarkets create a 'natural oligopoly,'and are explicitly designed to sell industrial food)

9. Eating like the French requires changing more than our meals (The French see food as a much highre priority- result is they spend 6% more than avg US household.  --note, their min wage is 66% higher.)

For more detail, read her entire article here

1 comment:

  1. The Western diet is so messed up. Seems only about 5% of any large grocery store is comprised of real food... the rest is crap. To eat right, you need to learn to cook, learn to shop.. and ideally grow your own stuff or buy local.

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