I beg to differ with the article's author on the percentage of income spent on food, I know I spend way more than what they say, ( I don't buy adulterated food) but this article makes you take a good long look at our society and our food etc.

I suspect this article might generate some lively discussion too !! :-)



++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


Cavemen Ate $12 Burgers: A Historical Perspective on Food Prices

Posted: 23 Sep 2013 10:33 PM PDT

While I maintain that eating according to the Primal Blueprint doesn’t have to be expensive, it is generally true that with food – as with most other things in life – you get what you pay for. So when our friend David Maren of Tendergrass Farms offered this guest article, I took him up on it..

As a percentage of your income, how does your grocery bill compare to the grocery bills of people in different countries and eras? Are ever-lowering food costs always a good thing, or do they tend to come with trade-offs?
Enter David…
One of the greatest challenges facing small grass-based family farmers today is the American expectation of low priced food. As a culture, we’re now accustomed to spending only about 6.8 percent of our income on daily nourishment – the lowest figure in human history. At the same time, health problems and obesity rise every year. These two realities create a striking correlation between wellness and food investment. Studying U.S. trend lines over the past century shows a direct link between cheap food and poor health..

While historical meal price comparisons can be tricky due to changing exchange rates, inflation, or even currency availability, finding a consistent unit of value can help our understanding. For the sake of discussion, let’s use the value of work as that unit. We’ll measure the value of food in hours worked and real prices – prices adjusted for inflation. While this comparison may not be perfect, it can help us understand historical food prices in today’s context.
For example, if workers today earn about $15.59 per hour (Census Bureau’s average per capita annual income statistic of $27,915 divided by the OECD’s average annual hours worked per US worker of 1,790) and spend an average of $1.75 on each meal (based on the fact that Americans now spend only 6..8% of their income on food according to a report by Washington State University), we could say they spend about 7 minutes working for each meal.

About That $12 Burger

Before we get down to the real analysis of food prices over the last century I thought it would be fun to take a playful look at hunter-gatherer early caveman Grok to see how much he “spent” on food. Bear with me if this seems a little bit silly. It’s just my creative attempt at a way to show how hard Grok had to work for his food.

The numbers would vary but it’s safe to assume that Grok hunted and gathered at least 3 hours per day for a bare minimum of 5 days a week. That’s an extremely conservative estimate of 15 hours of work for his 21 weekly meals. (if he ate 3 meals a day) This translates to almost 45 minutes spent working for each meal instead of the 7 minutes mentioned above. If we convert those 45 minutes that Grok spent “on the job” hunting and gathering food for each meal into modern day wages of $15.59/hour we could say that Grok spent about $11.69 on his primal burger and fries instead of the $1.75 that we spend today for ours off of the Dollar Menu.

Yes, I know Grok didn’t eat three meals a day and he may not have eaten hamburgers with ketchup. Just hang with me, mister anthropologist. Those numbers are imperfect, but the stark contrast between today’s food spending and that of Grok is undeniable.

“Okay”, you say, “So Grok spent a lot on food. I spend less because I’m not a hunter-gatherer. Agriculture makes stuff cheaper.” Sure. But let’s not stop with Grok. Simply consider the fundamental principle that when it comes to food, you almost always get what you pay for. This is true even in agricultural societies. Let’s take a look at more recent times for comparison’s sake.

The 20th Century and Industrial Food

Consider the early 20th century American. In 1913, feedlots didn’t exist, so cows ate grass and the fat composition of beef was more balanced and rich in Omega-3’s and CLA. Crisco and margarine hadn’t inundated the market yet, so everyone had lard in their larders. If you ate chicken at all, your mother cooked up her laying hen that was pecking around near her doorstep eating clover, crickets, and table scraps. Sausage ingredient lists were so short that the butcher could tell you his recipe by memory without mispronouncing a single word. Modern GPS-driven 18-row corn harvesters and government subsidies didn’t exist yet, so grain was expensive and you generally didn’t feed it to animals. Farmers grew vegetables regionally and seasonally without the use of off-farm chemicals like Roundup and anhydrous ammonia. Hired hands picked tomatoes when they were ripe because the gassing technology used to make them red today was not available. Pre-packaged, brand-name foods were unknown in the supermarket. In fact, in 1913, supermarkets didn’t exist.

But here’s the shocker: that stuff wasn’t as cheap as you think. A dozen eggs in 1913 cost about $8.73 in 2013 dollars versus about the $1.93 that they cost in Wal-Mart today. Changes in price vary dramatically, but on average food prices have come down a lot.

That’s a decrease of 82% in hours worked for groceries.


Why Is Our Food So Cheap?

Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that average food prices have dropped as much as 82% over the last century. What could possibly have caused such a dramatic change in real food prices? In short, food prices have fallen because the composition of our foods has been compromised by the industrialization of our food system.

Ham, which averaged (in 2013 dollars) about $5.90/LB a hundred years ago averages only $2.69/LB today.3 Doesn’t the fact that we now pay less than half the price that our great grandparents paid for “ham” seem to suggest that we’re possibly not eating what they ate? Taking a closer look at this example, it’s not hard to see that the very definition of “ham” has indeed changed significantly since the early 1900’s. Genetically modified Roundup Ready corn and soy laced with ractopamine is now fed to the pigs from which the ham is made. Huge 2,400-head confinement buildings house the pigs before they are taken to centralized slaughterhouses that kill them by the thousands. Ham recipes now include water, Sodium Phosphates, Carrageenan, Sodium Erythorbate, and Sodium Nitrite. I’d be willing to bet that your great grandmother would notice a significant difference between our 2013 “ham” and the hams that she ate that were cured by a trusted neighbor with salt and brown sugar. Simply put, the changes in the American food system that have enabled food prices to fall as much as 82% over the last century have, as an unintended consequence, altered the composition, lowered the quality, and decreased the healthfulness of our food. Let’s take a little walk through the last 100 years and see how this gradual change occurred.

The effect of cheap margarine and Crisco on lard consumption in the US.

Lard is now known to be one of the healthiest fats available to man, surpassing even olive oil in terms of healthy fat composition.
Beginning in the 1930s and 40s, increasing mechanization of food production and the advancement of food science technology started to change the American foodscape. At the turn of the 20th century a process was developed for the hydrogenation of liquid oils and by the 40s margarine had taken the place of butter and lard in many American homes. Chemical fertilizers became popular which, in conjunction with the advent of the self-propelled combine harvester, increased crop yields and lowered the prices of grains which eventually lead way to the feedlot model of beef production that we have today..

The signing of the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956 enabled the construction of the Interstate Highway System which made national food distribution possible. This created a need for further advancements in food technology as Americans were, for the first time, buying huge amounts of foods from thousands of miles away. Preservatives were needed to keep foods tasting like they came from just down the street. National markets justified staggering investments in food processing equipment now that food companies could operate at a much larger scale. As the supply chain got longer, customers lost the direct ability to hold their farmers, butchers, and bakers accountable. Transparency of production was now a thing of the past.

Fierce competition between national food corporations arose which lead to price wars fought with cost cutting measures that often lead to lower quality ingredients. These cheaper ingredients didn’t taste like the real McCoy so food scientists concocted additives, dyes, and artificial flavorings to make up for the difference in taste and appearance. Companies found that product shelf life and margins could be increased by adding chemicals like BHT to packaging. Industrial food processing required processing aids like silicon dioxide to be added to spices to help them flow through the production line. The USDA did its part by allowing these additives to be treated as non-ingredients and therefore not requiring them to be listed on labels. Meat products were infused with water to reduce their price per pound and stabilizers were added to make up for the loss in texture.

Eventually international sourcing of foods became the norm because produce from Mexico, fish from China, and even grass fed beef from Tasmania was cheaper. With this development, even less accountability was possible and fears about food safety became the norm. Americans voted with their forks for cheaper food at any cost and prices continued to decline while rates of obesity, heart disease, cancer, and hypertension exploded.

You Get What You Pay For

This is where we find ourselves today. The effects of our modern food system touch nearly every part of this country from ecology to economics. But in short, we got exactly what we paid for: cheap food that wasn’t good for us. Food that wasn’t good for our rivers, our fields, our farmers, or our bodies. But this new “food” was indeed cheap. Very, very, cheap.

But there are alternatives. As I mentioned, Americans spend about 6.8% of their income on food. That is an anomaly from both a historical and a geographic perspective. In Portugal, most people spend twice that much on food. In France that figure is nearly at 13.5%. In both Japan and Italy, it’s more than 14.4%. And these countries are, in many other ways, quite comparable to the US. They just make eating good food a higher priority than we do and this choice is reflected directly in lower rates of obesity.

You may say that you can’t afford those pastured eggs for $7.50/dozen at the farmers market. I’d be willing to bet that with your current lifestyle choices, that may be true. For some people, scraping together enough money to eat three solid meals of meats, eggs, and veggies of any kind at all is very difficult and after all it is much better to eat low quality meats, eggs, and veggies than Chef Boyardee. But for most of you reading this, there are choices you can make in other areas of your life that will make those delicious pasture raised orange-yolked eggs affordable.

Do you really need two iPads? Would you be better off going on another vacation this year or staying home and spending that extra 5% of your salary on food that makes you feel good? We talk about the ancestral lifestyle rather than just the ancestral diet. Lifestyles are comprised of a series of choices that go far beyond not eating Frosted Flakes for breakfast. I can assure you that grass fed beef raised by American farmers who are struggling to survive in the modern marketplace will hands-down cost more than any other option you have. And it’s worth every last 2013 penny.

It’s up to you. You get what you pay for. As one Tendergrass farmer, Joel Salatin, puts it, “Have you priced cancer lately?” Joel may be blunt, but he makes a very good point. In the long run, cheap food might not actually be quite as cheap as we think.

http://www.marksdailyapple.com/#axzz2fpzFFnn6

Ol' Grok sure didn't have to worry about federal and local taxes, insurance on house, cars etc. and so on, which are MY biggest categories of spending.

It's ridiculous to try to equate his spending with that of today. And Grok sure didn't have to save for his 'retirement'.

On 9/24/2013 2:49 PM, ImStillMags wrote:
> I beg to differ with the article's author on the percentage of income spent on food, I know I spend way more than what they say, ( I don't buy adulterated food) but this article makes you take a good long look at our society and our food etc.
>
> I suspect this article might generate some lively discussion too !! :-)
>
>
>
> ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>
>
> Cavemen Ate $12 Burgers: A Historical Perspective on Food Prices
>
> Posted: 23 Sep 2013 10:33 PM PDT
>
> While I maintain that eating according to the Primal Blueprint doesn’t have to be expensive, it is generally true that with food – as with most other things in life – you get what you pay for. So when our friend David Maren of Tendergrass Farms offered this guest article, I took him up on it.
>
> As a percentage of your income, how does your grocery bill compare to the grocery bills of people in different countries and eras? Are ever-lowering food costs always a good thing, or do they tend to come with trade-offs?
> Enter David…
> One of the greatest challenges facing small grass-based family farmers today is the American expectation of low priced food. As a culture, we’re now accustomed to spending only about 6.8 percent of our income on daily nourishment – the lowest figure in human history. At the same time, health problems and obesity rise every year. These two realities create a striking correlation between wellness and food investment. Studying U.S. trend lines over the past century shows a direct link between cheap food and poor health.
>
> While historical meal price comparisons can be tricky due to changing exchange rates, inflation, or even currency availability, finding a consistent unit of value can help our understanding. For the sake of discussion, let’s use the value of work as that unit. We’ll measure the value of food in hours worked and real prices – prices adjusted for inflation. While this comparison may not be perfect, it can help us understand historical food prices in today’s context.
> For example, if workers today earn about $15.59 per hour (Census Bureau’s average per capita annual income statistic of $27,915 divided by the OECD’s average annual hours worked per US worker of 1,790) and spend an average of $1.75 on each meal (based on the fact that Americans now spend only 6.8% of their income on food according to a report by Washington State University), we could say they spend about 7 minutes working for each meal.
>

I can't be sure of and won't argue the exact numbers, but yes, food is
cheaper today. They are basing the percentage on a $15.59 hourly wage
so the percentage will fluctuate according to your actual wage too.
Using their percentage, I come up with $2205 per year. Assuming that is
"per person" and not family, I guess it can be done.

Low income people are buying the cheapest they can find, but some foods
will always be the same, regardless of income. A gallon of milk or head
of lettuce is not going to vary at the same store. The higher income
person may eat steak while others struggle to put hamburger helper on
the table.

I don't know what I spend on food. When we go to BJ's we get paper
goods and stuff so while I can tell you exactly what I spent thre, only
a portion is food. They get about $300 a month from us, but that may
include a dozen pairs of socks and laundry detergent. I pay cash at
most other places so I don't really track it.

I'm willing to pay more for better food and do so when I have a choice.
Not everyone can though.

In article >,
says...
>
> I beg to differ with the article's author on the percentage of income spent on food, I know I spend way more than what they say, ( I don't buy adulterated food) but this article makes you take a good long look at our society and our food etc.
>
> I suspect this article might generate some lively discussion too !! :-)

"As a culture, we?re now accustomed to spending only about 6.8
percent of our income on daily nourishment"?

That's not the figure given by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics
in their Consumer Expemditure news release for 2013.

Janet UK

"Kalmia" wrote in message
...

>Ol' Grok sure didn't have to worry about federal and local taxes, insurance
>on house, cars etc. and so on, which are MY biggest categories of spending.
>It's ridiculous to try to equate his spending with that of today. And Grok
>sure didn't have to save for his 'retirement'.

And if food gives us cancer, at least we can try to cure it. If you got
cancer in 1913 (and cancer has been around a very long time) you were really
screwed.

"ImStillMags" > wrote in message
...
I beg to differ with the article's author on the percentage of income spent
on food, I know I spend way more than what they say, ( I don't buy
adulterated food) but this article makes you take a good long look at our
society and our food etc.

I suspect this article might generate some lively discussion too !! :-)



++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

<read but snipped>

Very interesting but I think they missed out on some points. For instance,
better technology allows us easier ways to harvest some foods. Produce is
no longer necessarily seasonal. Sure if you only eat locally grown stuff,
it is. But we can now transport stuff from all over and it doesn't cost an
arm and a leg to do so like it used to.

Many grocery stores (at least in this area) have self check registers and
they have automated things like coupons. You either load them to your card
or print them on your computer.

But as far as the food being eaten, my food for the most part is cheap. It
is based on beans and other vegetables. Yes, I buy some canned. Yes, I
drink diet soda but am adding in a lot more black tea so that will lessen
the cost there. Really, I can pay for my own food with the small amount of
money I make on surveys, product testing and by using Swagbucks.

Daughter's diet is almost as cheap. She also eats eggs and dairy foods and
more fruit than I do. She is no longer eating meat. She does like faux
meats but I am steering her towards eating those infrequently and beans more
often.

Where I really notice our grocery bill go up is when husband is home. He is
a *big* meat eater. He will eat vegetabes but his preferred ones are not
necessarily the cheap ones. Asparagus for instance. He also insists on
certain processed foods. I do try to buy these things when they are on sale
but the amount I spend on his food far exceeds what daughter and I eat on a
daily basis.
Cavemen Ate $12 Burgers: A Historical Perspective on Food Prices

Posted: 23 Sep 2013 10:33 PM PDT

While I maintain that eating according to the Primal Blueprint doesn’t have
to be expensive, it is generally true that with food – as with most other
things in life – you get what you pay for. So when our friend David Maren
of Tendergrass Farms offered this guest article, I took him up on it.

As a percentage of your income, how does your grocery bill compare to the
grocery bills of people in different countries and eras? Are ever-lowering
food costs always a good thing, or do they tend to come with trade-offs?
Enter David…
One of the greatest challenges facing small grass-based family farmers today
is the American expectation of low priced food. As a culture, we’re now
accustomed to spending only about 6.8 percent of our income on daily
nourishment – the lowest figure in human history. At the same time, health
problems and obesity rise every year. These two realities create a striking
correlation between

"Ed Pawlowski" > wrote in message
...
> On 9/24/2013 2:49 PM, ImStillMags wrote:
>> I beg to differ with the article's author on the percentage of income
>> spent on food, I know I spend way more than what they say, ( I don't buy
>> adulterated food) but this article makes you take a good long look at our
>> society and our food etc.
>>
>> I suspect this article might generate some lively discussion too !! :-)
>>
>>
>>
>> ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>>
>>
>> Cavemen Ate $12 Burgers: A Historical Perspective on Food Prices
>>
>> Posted: 23 Sep 2013 10:33 PM PDT
>>
>> While I maintain that eating according to the Primal Blueprint doesn’t
>> have to be expensive, it is generally true that with food – as with most
>> other things in life – you get what you pay for. So when our friend
>> David Maren of Tendergrass Farms offered this guest article, I took him
>> up on it.
>>
>> As a percentage of your income, how does your grocery bill compare to the
>> grocery bills of people in different countries and eras? Are
>> ever-lowering food costs always a good thing, or do they tend to come
>> with trade-offs?
>> Enter David…
>> One of the greatest challenges facing small grass-based family farmers
>> today is the American expectation of low priced food. As a culture, we’re
>> now accustomed to spending only about 6.8 percent of our income on daily
>> nourishment – the lowest figure in human history. At the same time,
>> health problems and obesity rise every year. These two realities create a
>> striking correlation between wellness and food investment. Studying U.S.
>> trend lines over the past century shows a direct link between cheap food
>> and poor health.
>>
>> While historical meal price comparisons can be tricky due to changing
>> exchange rates, inflation, or even currency availability, finding a
>> consistent unit of value can help our understanding. For the sake of
>> discussion, let’s use the value of work as that unit. We’ll measure the
>> value of food in hours worked and real prices – prices adjusted for
>> inflation. While this comparison may not be perfect, it can help us
>> understand historical food prices in today’s context.
>> For example, if workers today earn about $15.59 per hour (Census Bureau’s
>> average per capita annual income statistic of $27,915 divided by the OECD’s
>> average annual hours worked per US worker of 1,790) and spend an average
>> of $1.75 on each meal (based on the fact that Americans now spend only
>> 6.8% of their income on food according to a report by Washington State
>> University), we could say they spend about 7 minutes working for each
>> meal.
>>
>
> I can't be sure of and won't argue the exact numbers, but yes, food is
> cheaper today. They are basing the percentage on a $15.59 hourly wage so
> the percentage will fluctuate according to your actual wage too. Using
> their percentage, I come up with $2205 per year. Assuming that is "per
> person" and not family, I guess it can be done.
>
> Low income people are buying the cheapest they can find, but some foods
> will always be the same, regardless of income. A gallon of milk or head
> of lettuce is not going to vary at the same store. The higher income
> person may eat steak while others struggle to put hamburger helper on the
> table.
>
> I don't know what I spend on food. When we go to BJ's we get paper goods
> and stuff so while I can tell you exactly what I spent thre, only a
> portion is food. They get about $300 a month from us, but that may
> include a dozen pairs of socks and laundry detergent. I pay cash at most
> other places so I don't really track it.
>
> I'm willing to pay more for better food and do so when I have a choice.
> Not everyone can though.

One big problem with a lot of low income people is that they often live in
an area where they can not get good, fresh produce. If they live in the
inner city and have no vehicle, they are limited to buying what they can get
by foot or on a bus route. They may not have a proper grocery store that
they can get to or even a produce market. Heck, even in this area in the
suburbs there were pockets of people in such a position.

Wal-mart put one of their grocery stores in a lower income area of Lynnwood.
I hadn't realized it but many of the people who lived around that area might
only have been able to get food at a Quickie Mart type place. There is a
large Asian market that is in the same parking lot but it is far back from
the street and there is no sign near the street announcing that it is there.
It's a large store but not (AFAIK) one of the well known ones like 99 Ranch
or H Mart. In fact I drove by it many times not even knowing what it was.
So I don't know what they have in the way of produce but my experience with
most Asian markets in this area is that the produce is not fresh. Uwajimaya
is the exception. They are in Seattle proper. You don't go there for cheap
food though. It's not one of those places. But it is exceptional.

I can remember many times, particularly in the winter when I lived on Cape
Cod or Staten Island where I had to make do with no fresh produce at all.
Either because I was snowed in and couldn't get out to the store, or
following being snowed in and the stores hadn't been restocked. We did have
a grocery store on the base on Cape Cod and while the produce was good, they
only had one small aisle and they were frequently sold out of what I wanted.
Any other store was so many miles away that if I had not had a vehicle, I
would have been stuck. The cost of a cab was far too high and there was no
bus there.

On Staten Island, the better grocery stores that did have good produce were
a good many miles from where we lived and it wasn't always convenient for us
to go there. Traffic is so heavy there that it could take 5 times the
amount of time you'd think it should to get somewhere. We had a lot of
little delis and mom and pop places nearby. Once in a while I'd get lucky
and find good produce there but mostly not. The nearest big supermarket was
known for selling food far past its prime. The health depart mart was
constantly in there. Sometimes you could get good produce but mostly not.
Then there was Family Fruit. Far enough away that we couldn't get there
over once a week if that. Hit and miss there too. Never knew what they
would have and never knew if it would be fresh. But cheap prices!

In article > ,
says...
>
> In article >,
> says...
> >
> > I beg to differ with the article's author on the percentage of income spent on food, I know I spend way more than what they say, ( I don't buy adulterated food) but this article makes you take a good long look at our society and our food etc.
> >
> > I suspect this article might generate some lively discussion too !! :-)
>
> "As a culture, we?re now accustomed to spending only about 6.8
> percent of our income on daily nourishment"?
>
> That's not the figure given by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics
> in their Consumer Expemditure news release for 2013.
>
> Janet UK

oops

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/arch...n_09102013.htm

ImStillMags wrote:
> I beg to differ with the article's author on the percentage of income
> spent on food, I know I spend way more than what they say, ( I don't
> buy adulterated food) but this article makes you take a good long
> look at our society and our food etc.
>
> I suspect this article might generate some lively discussion too !!
> :-)

I think the basic idea is right - beginning roughly 100 years ago, we
started getting mass-produced food that was poorer in quality and
cheaper in price. If we'd have known precisely what we were getting
ourselves used to, we might have chosen otherwise.

This is why putting down Whole Foods because of their prices only goes
so far. I choose to pay extra for their locally grown, grass-fed ground
beef for my own burgers. My money, my choice, and I'm glad to be able
to make the choice.

-S-

On Tuesday, September 24, 2013 2:51:00 PM UTC-7, Steve Freides wrote:

>

>
> I think the basic idea is right - beginning roughly 100 years ago, we
>
> started getting mass-produced food that was poorer in quality and
>
> cheaper in price. If we'd have known precisely what we were getting
>
> ourselves used to, we might have chosen otherwise.
>
>
>
> This is why putting down Whole Foods because of their prices only goes
>
> so far. I choose to pay extra for their locally grown, grass-fed ground
>
> beef for my own burgers. My money, my choice, and I'm glad to be able
>
> to make the choice.
>
>
Thanks Steve. I think you got the real point of this article. We mass produce and import cheap and adulterated food but what does it cost us in health and ultimately wealth spent on disease and illness.

Steve Freides wrote:


> ImStillMags wrote:
>
> > I beg to differ with the article's author on the percentage of income
>
> > spent on food, I know I spend way more than what they say, ( I don't
>
> > buy adulterated food) but this article makes you take a good long
>
> > look at our society and our food etc.
>
> >
>
> > I suspect this article might generate some lively discussion too !!
>
> > :-)
>
>
>
> I think the basic idea is right - beginning roughly 100 years ago, we
>
> started getting mass-produced food that was poorer in quality and
>
> cheaper in price.


Yeah, but check out what the "average" person was eating 100 years ago. And back then peeps often spent a large percentage of their income on food. US households now spend less as a percentage on vittles than in any time in history.



If we'd have known precisely what we were getting
>
> ourselves used to, we might have chosen otherwise.


Believe me, a hundred years things were not as bucolic food-wise as you paint them...unless you were rich.


-
Best
Greg

On Tuesday, September 24, 2013 5:23:20 PM UTC-7, Gregory Morrow wrote:
> Believe me, a hundred years things were not as bucolic food-wise as you paint them...unless you were rich.
>

I don't think the point is that all was bucolic and rosey, just that the food we ate was fresher and cleaner and not processed and filled with chemicals. Yes it probably cost more in comparative dollars for food but what are we really getting for our cheap eats?

On Tue, 24 Sep 2013 18:33:12 -0700 (PDT), ImStillMags
> wrote:

>On Tuesday, September 24, 2013 5:23:20 PM UTC-7, Gregory Morrow wrote:
>> Believe me, a hundred years things were not as bucolic food-wise as you paint them...unless you were rich.
>>
>
>I don't think the point is that all was bucolic and rosey, just that the food we ate was fresher
>and cleaner and not processed and filled with chemicals. Yes it probably cost more in comparative
>dollars for food but what are we really getting for our cheap eats?

Well you're just plain wrong, in fact you couldn't be more wrong.
There are more chemicals available today (more potent too) and far
more are used than were at small local mom n' pop truck farms that
supplied each immediate neighborhood, plus the planet itself is about
a zillion times more polluted now... anyone who believes there are
organic foods believes in fairy tales. Foods were fresher because
they were harvested locally every day, no long journeys from distant
places. Foods used to cost a lot less too, eliminate costly
advertising, packaging, and huge modern markets and it's patently
obvious... wasn't all that long ago I purchased fresh produce, fresh
seafood, fresh meats, fresh dairy, and all manner of fresh foods from
horse drawn carts that hawked their wares up and down every street.
Very few people owned automobiles so there was little pollution other
than the free fertilizer left by the horses. In the '40s-'50's nearly
half of Brooklyn was farm land, countless small truck farms. Naturally
there were no prepared foods so folks worked harder and longer
preparing foods... most everyone primarily ate only home cooked meals,
in many ways food was better.
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/20...f-an-era/?_r=0

"ImStillMags" wrote in message
...

On Tuesday, September 24, 2013 5:23:20 PM UTC-7, Gregory Morrow wrote:
> Believe me, a hundred years things were not as bucolic food-wise as you
> paint them...unless you were rich.
>

>I don't think the point is that all was bucolic and rosey, just that the
>food we ate was fresher and cleaner and not processed and filled with
>chemicals.

Upton Sinclair : "The Jungle", 1906.

Gregory Morrow wrote:

> Yeah, but check out what the "average" person was eating 100 years
> ago. And back then peeps often spent a large percentage of their
> income on food. US households now spend less as a percentage on
> vittles than in any time in history.

That's the point - spend more on food and you get better food. That's a
choice I make, and I'm sure my percentage of income spent on food is
higher than it otherwise would be as a result. I'm just back from Whole
Foods - 2 deli meats and organic apples, and all three could be had for
less at the Stop 'N' Shop which is also in my town and also a walk away,
a shorter walk, in fact.

Let's see - better food, less money spent on going to the movies? I can
live with that.

-S-

bhigh wrote:
>
> "ImStillMags" wrote in message
> ...
>
> On Tuesday, September 24, 2013 5:23:20 PM UTC-7, Gregory Morrow wrote:
> > Believe me, a hundred years things were not as bucolic food-wise as you
> > paint them...unless you were rich.
> >
>
> >I don't think the point is that all was bucolic and rosey, just that the
> >food we ate was fresher and cleaner and not processed and filled with
> >chemicals.
>
> Upton Sinclair : "The Jungle", 1906.

Good book!

G.

On Wednesday, September 25, 2013 8:15:55 AM UTC-7, Brooklyn1 wrote:

Nothing I said disagrees with you Sheldon.