6 — True Cost & Fair Price of Food

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Episode Transcript

This is the Eat Ancestral Podcast number 6. So, one of the things that bugs me the most about people these days, and something I hear quite often is that it's too expensive to eat healthy foods. Now, I think there's a way for us to work our way through this problem and come out the other side. I think it starts with us talking about how we've become very habituated to paying cheaply for our food and even to seek it out, and to make a lot of our purchasing decisions based on the shelf price. But I think this kind of behaviour comes at a rather high price, notably to our personal health, to public healthcare systems and to the health of our ecosystem. So one of the first things to ask ourselves here is; does the shelf price, the price you pay at the checkout reflect the total and true cost of that item? Now, when it comes to cheap 'food', the short answer to that is no, it is not being paid for at the checkout. If we borrow a concept here from economics, something called an externality refers to the downstream consequences, and costs of a product that are not captured by the shelf price. So a good example, here are cigarettes, which were once very cheap, for the consumer at the checkout. However, once governments began to understand the enormous burden, health and economic burden, that cigarettes caused, they began imposing heavy taxes in order to try and capture some of the longer term costs, or what in economics is referred to as a negative externality, which was caused by the production and consumption. So another way of thinking about this is that you, as a taxpayer, are funding or subsidising other people's poor health behaviours. And the true cost of cigarette use from decades ago, is still being absorbed by taxpayers, who fund public health care systems today. Now, it's not just a problem for our generation, future generations will also have the same claim. And we're seeing similar initiatives today for things like carbon and sugar, to help curb behaviour and to hopefully pay for some of the downstream consequences of climate change and things like diabetes and obesity, chronic disease at- large. Anyway, the moral of the story here is that just like cigarettes, the total cost of a bottle of, for example, Coca-Cola, or a 'meal' at McDonald's, is not being captured by the company or the consumer at the checkout. Ultimately, it's taxpayers and Nature, who will foot the bill. So what a lot of people will say to that is like; "yes, yes, I understand, but isn't it expensive, on my wallet, on my personal bank account, to eat healthy, to eat high quality foods?" Now, the answer here is not so simple. It depends on a lot of things, but not necessarily. So for context, I'll use myself as an example here. I currently live in London, England–it's not the cheapest place to live, to say the least. We get most of our groceries and household items from a store called Farmdrop, i'll put the link in the show notes, which is an online store dedicated to working with small scale food producers and to provide ethical, sustainable, high-quality options to consumers. Now, on the surface, it's not 'cheap', as the prices are much higher than most supermarkets. This is partly because the farmers get a fair price. The employees have paid a living wage. They're not leveraging economies of scale. And so the prices reflect more appropriate costs for the production and distribution of high-quality food. But even then, I don't think the food is that expensive. Now, again, expensive is a relative term dictated by our budget and our perceptions, things like our buying history, the market price, our understanding of food quality, and thus the value we place on it. But I'll try and bring this down to more absolute terms. Here's a common irony I've come across; people decrying these 'extortionate' prices of services like Farmdrop, but then they're seemingly happy to turn around and pay more elsewhere, even for stuff that is so low quality, that we don't even consider it real food. So i've got a case study here for us to run through: the price of quality food versus fast food. And if you want to see some extra details, the mathematics, to check my numbers, again, check the show notes. I'll skip a few of them for the sake of this audio. But to give you a rundown here on Farmdrop, beef mince ranges from £10 to £15 per kilo. If we take their dry-aged, free-range beef mince, which sounds rather fancy, at £10.50 a kilo, a kilo will give us four servings, so you're going to pay £2.70 per generous portion, or serving of beef mince. Now, let's say we're not carnivores, let's say we add serving a butter, organic carrots, organic broccoli and some pesticide-free potatoes to our plate. If you tally it up, beef mince + broccoli + carrot, potatoes, broccoli, equals a total cost of £4.53 per home cooked meal. So less than five pounds, organic, local, sustainable, and all that. I don't think that's too bad. The only catch here is that you have to cook it yourself. But in terms of the price, quite reasonable. Now, if your priorities lie elsewhere, and you 'don't have time' to cook, then you could order something 'cheap' instead. Now at the local McDonald's, a Quarter Pounder Deluxe meal, which comes with a burger, fries and soft drink will set you back £5.39. And remember, you're lazy and you don't have time, so this doesn't include the delivery fee. £4.53 for the home cooked meal, £5.39 for the McDonald's, it seems like home cooked meals can actually work out to be more cost effective than buying pre made foods, even some of the worst and very cheap kinds. And recall that the total cost of the home cooked meal is actually being captured by the shelf price and thus paid for by the customer, which is unlike the fast 'food' option, which has a lot of externalities, the downstream costs and health consequences associated with the production and consumption. So corporations like McDonald's are leaving many of these costs to the taxpayer, healthcare systems and our ecosystem to absorb. But anyway, back to the objective budget side of things. Good food is not necessarily that expensive. It costs what it should cost, I think five pounds for a meal is quite reasonable. And I'm very happy to pay that. Now if you're happy to pay extra for pre-prepared meals, that's fine. But please don't moan about how 'expensive' or 'extortionate' it is to buy quality whole foods–it's simply not true. Our priorities more than our budgets tend to dictate our perceptions around the true cost, value and what is a fair price for food. So I think all told, coming to the end of this one here today, quality food is actually much cheaper than highly-processed, 'cheap' food. And if you're so savvy with your food sourcing and willing to cook at home, you can keep your food budget within reason. If you're not a good cook right now then that's okay make some time to upskill your cooking and food preparation. This will give you a lot more options in life. And it also gives you complete oversight over what ingredients go into your meals. Even fancy restaurants are putting cheap rancid seed oils into your food. Just something to note. So anyway, quality food costs less in many many ways, especially if we consider the long- term implications. nature will be less burdened by our waste products and ignorance. Healthcare systems will be less burdened with another patient, and families will be less burdened with the psychological trauma of losing loved ones to preventable diseases. What is the cost of that, I ask? So these are some of the hidden costs that do not factor into most shelf prices of cheaply available 'food'. Now, you know. So I hope you got some value out of that. My name is Ben, you've been listening to the Eat Ancestral Podcast and we have been talking about the true cost of our food choices. Until next time, take care. 

Transcribed by https://otter.ai