Have you noticed what has been happening to the cost of food? If you haven't you should, it is going up. Way up. Along with energy and fuel costs, and related to it (how does that artichoke get from California to Michigan if not for fossil fuel?) the American consumer is finding out what it means to live in a world that depends on fossil fuel to transport its food an average of 1500 miles, and has had a steadily declining value to its currency (the value of the dollar has halved in relation to the Euro in the past 6 years). In the past 12 months the cost of food has risen 5.1% the worst inflation since the early 1990s. For example in the past years increases include:
- Milk and dried legumes are up 17%
- Cheese 15%
- Rice and pasta 13%
- Bread 12%
- eggs 25% (and 62% in the past 2 years)
- chicken up 10%
- apples up 11.7%
Click on
image to enlarge
So what's a person to do? Well, many of us have been doing this for a long time already - grow a garden (also in the Freep on 3/14/08). It has always made a lot of sense. No more cardboard tomatoes, and a bounty of fresh fruit and veggies with nutrition intact.
Now many people are going to turn ever more toward the cheapest foods-processed foods, but be wary - they are part of the problem, not part of the solution. Processed foods lack nutritive value, made with the cheapest ingredients, and preserved with chemicals that shouldn't enter one's body unless they are interred (and I even question that). Processed foods have all kinds of bad fats (they are cheaper) and are filled with sodium and or sugar(to enhance boiled out flavor). They travel thousands of miles to sit on your store shelves. AND eating processed meats or red meats are an established source of cancer (reduce your meat consumption).
It is just more sustainable to eat what you grow (and have control over), reduce fossil fuel transport that is not necessary, and have a healthy nation (less obesity, less cancer, less diabetes). Don't you think?
