Cheap Food Isn’t
Food Chain Radio Show #1217
Michael Olson, Author & Urban Farming Agriculturalist
Cheap Food Isn’t!
Guest: Dan Kittredge, Executive Director, Bionutrient Food Association & Spokesperson, The Real Food Campaign
Having hosted over 1200 editions of the Food Chain Radio Show, I have noticed over the years that certain principles hold true. And so, tongue in cheek, I have claimed them as Michael Olson’s Three Laws of the Food Chain.
Michael Olson Food Chain Radio – Farm Technology – Cheap Food Isn’t – Can we combine the best of traditional agriculture with the best of modern agriculture to create the means to carry us on for another forty centuries?
Here is Michael Olson’s Third Law of the Food Chain: Cheap food isn’t!
What I have seen, over the course of the years, is that industrialization has made food cheap by taking the nutrients out, and by subsidizing its true cost of production. Thus the cheap food promised by industrialization is really the expensive food that we find for sale on the grocers’ shelves.
There are many who disagree with my Third Law of the Food Chain. They point to the fact that Americans spend less than 10 percent of their household income on food, while people in the developing nations spend up to 50 percent of their household income on food. They have a persuasive argument!
To discover the true value of industrial food, we would need to calculate how many of its essential nutrients have disappeared, and the extent to which its production has been subsidized. Big job! Fortunately, some of the work is already being done, at least with respect to the disappearing nutrients. And so today we pause to ask…
Leave a comment below: How cheap is food?
Nationally syndicated Food Chain Radio airs live Saturday mornings 9-10AM Pacific.
