Almost 100 years ago, Americans were spending over 40 cents of every dollar on food. Now, we’re just spending 10 cents of every dollar. When prices are low, people would tend to eat less and therefore avoid obesity. But now, when the food is comparatively cheaper we are loading ourselves with so much of it that it is causing us to be overweight. Going by the same logic, could it be possible that by increasing the prices of bad food, unhealthy foodstuffs like fat and sugar, we can control obesity?
The average American spends just 6.5 percent of his or her household budget on food consumed at home. And if we’re eating out, the spend rises to 11 percent. When incomes are high as in our case and food purchases do not amount to a lot, we are eating more and growing overweight. By contrast, countries where people have low income and spend a large amount of their income on food, they eat less and stay thinner.
In China, people spend 25.5% of their household expenditure on food and therefore one out of 30 people in China are obese (there are 46 million obese people in China). Compare that with our country and we have one in every three people suffering with obesity. There are exceptions to this observation. Japan and South Korea have both affordable food and low obesity rates. But, apart from this, the trend is similar – cheap food means more obesity.
Healthy food in our country is expensive and only the high-income households can afford it. But the low-income households, although they have less money to spend, opt for cheap, unhealthy foods and therefore end up being overweight. Lower-income Americans spend more on food which should make them less prone to obesity, but since they spend on cheap, unhealthy food, they have slightly higher obesity rates in our country.
So, instead of eating Kale and fresh foods, we are eating sugar and pasta which is making us overweight. Time to sort this out – make fresh fruits and vegetables cheap and make McDonald’s stuff expensive.
