Food: It's not just price that matters
Issue date: 2/18/09 Section: News
Editor's note: This is the first of a three-part series looking at the broad subject of food. In this piece we look at how the food system affects the environment and health. The next part will look at the local food movement in Indiana. The third will look at how it all affects the SMWC community. What do you want us to include? Email creeder@smwc.edu.
By Danya Long
Staff writer
The title of a video shown at Focus the Woods last month at Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College poses a question that leads to some ugly answers: what is the true cost of food? Is it the price we pay at the grocery store or restaurant? Is it the effect food can have on our health? Is it the environmental impact of everything that goes into growing or making the food and having it arrive on our plates?
Journalist and author Michael Pollan brought the food crisis to a wider audience when he wrote an open letter to the next president that was published in October 2008 in the New York Times. Reforming the food system, he wrote, ties to three key platform issues of the 2008 presidential race: energy independence, climate change and health care.
Still, the crisis of the food system is not new. For decades people have warned that though food might be more affordable because of changes to farming during the Nixon administration, there is a greater cost, such as quality and nutritional value of food. And now, food prices are going up overall, not just for the "healthy" stuff.
In the "True Cost of Food" video produced by the Sierra Club and shown by Tammy Tintjer, SMWC assistant professor of biology, a mom is running out of time to prepare dinner for her family and her parents. She rushes to the equivalent of a Wal-Mart. The lines are long, her cart overflowing with groceries. One line is glowing, no customers waiting - and it's the "true cost of food" line. She rushes over to it.
But, in this line, a single pound of beef costs $815. The mom gasps. A tomato costs $374. How can this be, the mom asks. A gruff-sounding cashier explains to her just how this can be in the Sierra Club produced video that makes viewers laugh and sometimes wince. It steps viewers through some of the problems of the food system such as effects on the environment, subsidies for monocultured grains, factory farming and more.
By Danya Long
Staff writer
The title of a video shown at Focus the Woods last month at Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College poses a question that leads to some ugly answers: what is the true cost of food? Is it the price we pay at the grocery store or restaurant? Is it the effect food can have on our health? Is it the environmental impact of everything that goes into growing or making the food and having it arrive on our plates?
Journalist and author Michael Pollan brought the food crisis to a wider audience when he wrote an open letter to the next president that was published in October 2008 in the New York Times. Reforming the food system, he wrote, ties to three key platform issues of the 2008 presidential race: energy independence, climate change and health care.
Still, the crisis of the food system is not new. For decades people have warned that though food might be more affordable because of changes to farming during the Nixon administration, there is a greater cost, such as quality and nutritional value of food. And now, food prices are going up overall, not just for the "healthy" stuff.
In the "True Cost of Food" video produced by the Sierra Club and shown by Tammy Tintjer, SMWC assistant professor of biology, a mom is running out of time to prepare dinner for her family and her parents. She rushes to the equivalent of a Wal-Mart. The lines are long, her cart overflowing with groceries. One line is glowing, no customers waiting - and it's the "true cost of food" line. She rushes over to it.
But, in this line, a single pound of beef costs $815. The mom gasps. A tomato costs $374. How can this be, the mom asks. A gruff-sounding cashier explains to her just how this can be in the Sierra Club produced video that makes viewers laugh and sometimes wince. It steps viewers through some of the problems of the food system such as effects on the environment, subsidies for monocultured grains, factory farming and more.
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