Back in Our Day, Health Cost Nowt
Some of you have acknowledged that I cleaned up a nice bit of writing that’s been around on the internet for a while and posted it here in the blog section. There was reasoning behind it, flawed or otherwise: it made a nice introductory lead in to this, which otherwise may not have held its own in the intriguing stakes. Frankly, it probably won’t anyway.
Health and Diet Versus Price and Cost
66 years have passed since the end of the Second World War. Many advances have been made in technology, medicine and health during that time, but in some ways we have regressed.
During World War II, it has been clearly demonstrated that people in general actually lived healthier lifestyles. This is contrary to what one might initially think, but rationing meant that luxury products (particularly fattier and sweeter food stuffs) were in short supply, so most people ate rather less of them. For that matter, most people ate considerably less food overall and obesity was not so... er... widespread. In relation, however, more fresh vegetables, fruit and wholemeal produce were consumed.
The availability of white bread was scarce because it required more processing, ingredient extraction, time and expense. Therefore most people rarely had alternative bread-based options to full wholemeal brown bread, which was cheaper and easier to produce.
Somewhere between back in them days and now, marketers shifted the value perception of healthier food and we generally pay more for wholemeal or brown bread than the previously more expensive to make white loaves. Right now, I don't know the cost breakdowns of brown versus white because they are more related to factors such as long-term economies of scale, overall unit sales and popularity. One thing is for certain, though: pricing strategies have caused a mindset shift in the population to such a degree that we now expect to pay more for healthier food, regardless of whether it actually costs more to get it on to store shelves and sell it.
What really gets me worked up is the wider picture of profiteering from healthy or environmentally friendly products and practices. In general terms in the UK, the more educated section of the population are more likely to want to be healthy and/or green. Or at least be seen to be. Education also correlates with wealth. Wealth correlates with an ability to pay more for things. So, for the most part, marketers set pricing strategies to deliberately take advantage of this, and their companies make tidy profit margins out of selling a healthy lifestyle.
It means that we pay a premium if we want to be healthy or green. And it means that the less well off are priced out of the market, whatever their intention. Frankly, I find it immoral. And in a time of imposed austerity, that goes double.
19 Comments
But in my opinion all food has gone up- healthy or not. I can't believe the price of meat these days so whenever I see chicken breasts or similiar on offer- I buy a few and freeze them.
But Steve, can you define what you mean by 'healthy food'? Because often what is touted as being healthy - and I am thinking in particular of supermarket convenience foods - isn't the healthiest option when you read the small print. It may contain masses of salt or sugar. Or palm oil - a curse of our modern age, because it goes into so many different products (which don't need it), with the result that forests are being felled at an alarming rate in order to increase the harvesting of the trees. To me, the healthiest foods are those that are unadulterated and bought in their unmucked-about state, such as vegetables and fruit. And buying these loose (especially in a decent greengrocer) can be a lot cheaper than buying them in a supermarket. Comparing the cost per kg of a pack of carrots with their loose equivalents on a supermarket shelf can be quite an eye-opener. Sometimes you can pay double for the so-called convenience of having something sealed in a plastic bag - which also means, of course, that you can't check all its contents to ensure they're fit to be sold. And you are buying the quantity that the supermarket wants you to buy, not the quantity that you want to buy.
I think one of the main problems with all this is that so many people in the UK haven't been taught to cook, so they haven't got a clue what to do when presented with a raw parsnip or a pack of stewing steak. So all the while they remain in ignorance, they will have to pay through the nose for ready meals. And their children won't be taught to cook either, so the problem continues. To me, all those cookery programmes are really nothing but food porn. :)
As for bread, I heard quite a lot about this on a bread-making course last week! And it seems that, to a large extent, you get what you pay for when buying bread. A cheap loaf of supermarket sliced bread (whether white or brown) is made in 45 minutes, from start to finish. That allows absolutely no time for the flavour to develop, for the yeast to work, or for any decent texture to develop. And it uses unmatured flour, because it costs money to store it while it does mature (at which point it has more flavour and reacts better when turned into bread). It is still doughy at the end of the process, as anyone will realize if they scrunch up a slice in their hand - it goes to a stodgy lump. Which makes it indigestible - you can't chew it, because it sticks to the roof of your mouth, so you have to swallow it before your saliva has got to work on it. (And if you read the ingredients, you will discover what you're eating, including preservatives.) More expensive bread - and I mean more artisan bread, not simply an unsliced supermarket loaf that is apparently better than its sliced cousin, but isn't even though it costs more - is made using mature flour, has a longer proving time (so the flavour develops), may have added seed or oats, and may even taste nice. The cheapest and most delicious bread is often the bread you make at home. I can make two organic loaves (containing only flour, yeast, sea salt and water) for £2. Try buying them for that in a shop!
I don't think I can take any credit for this, Jill. But can I also echo ;) x
Jill and Gels - if just one person here finds a piece of mine interesting or timely, then I'm chuffed.
Gerilyn - you're not wrong. In my professional writing capacity I've been looking into and tracking economic indicators. Major governments of the world (UK & US particularly) have been buggering about with various important numbers. With clear evidence I have been able to demonstrate that published inflation figures, for example, are falsified in the most laughable of ways. When we're told annual inflation is, say, 4%, but you feel like you're paying way more than 4% more for things like food and petrol, you're absolutely right and the true figure we should be told is often something closer to 8 or 9%. It doesn't sound like very much expressed as a difference in small numbers like this, but it has a huge impact on the budgets of families who can't work out why they can't make ends meet anymore when they have always been careful, AND it lets governments get away with making statements about the wider economy that are completely untrue at a fundamental level, but make them sound like they're on top of things.
I guess my overall imperfect definition would probably be more of a rule of thumb - the closer you can obtain food in it's naturally available state, the more likely it is to be healthy for you. The more something has been processed, the more likely its contents are to contain things that aren't so healthy for you in the long term. Stupidly high quantities of sugar, salt, MSG, etc. added for taste, particularly.
My overall point is that healthier foods often cost more because of business strategies, not necessarily because they cost more to produce and sell. A tin of cheap supermarket branded beans, for example, costs about 20p. The beans themselves are very good for you, but an extraordinary amount of sugar has been added. Yet despite the costs of all the additional aspects of the process of getting those beans into that less healthy state and onto the shelf, a few aisles away there will be the same beans in their natural unprocessed state. But because of the healthfood label on the packet and the overall perception they're a rare and special superfood, the price is over a pound for an equivalent (dry) quantity. If your family is on a tight budget, you'll almost certainly go for the processed beans. And that kind of example multiplies up across many different food categories that end up in supermarket trollies.
Although the case of the poor baby starved to death by its misguided parents is desperately sad (and the parents sound bonkers to inflict a vegan diet on a newborn baby), as you say it is an extreme. I know vegans who are thriving on their chosen diet, meat-eaters who thrive on theirs, and vegetarians who are also thriving. To return to my earlier point, if the consumer knows how to cook, they are less likely to be taken in by clever marketing policies that are encouraging us to spend more money on a product even if there is no benefit from doing so and the cheaper version is exactly the same, other than its packaging.
I was recently fascinated to read that the own-brand packs of aspirin and ibuprofen sold for pennies by supermarkets and chemists contain exactly the same ingredients as the premium brands that we see advertised on television, which sell for a couple of quid. But in tests, the people who took the own-brand products reported a much lower degree of pain relief than those who took the more expensive products. Yet there was no difference in those products at all. The conclusion was that the people who took the cheaper products had convinced themselves that they wouldn't be as effective because they didn't cost very much, and so they weren't.
When I was young, morbid obesity was rare and considered a sickness of malfunctioning glands - a problem for the medical profession to wrestle with along with small pox, diphtheria, tuberculosis, scarlet fever, polio etc ... ... or gluttony. Certainly nothing the National Government needed to concern itself with. In those days, a woman who could not cook a wholesome meal for her family from fresh, locally sourced ingredients was either an aristocrat or a disgrace.
Spangles' reference to supermarket convenience food touted as 'healthy' says it all. How can a mass-produced, assembly-line-packaged concoction of chemically enhanced and irradiated ingredients from God-knows-where-in-the-world be honestly labelled healthy? It can't if you take a moment to think about it. But a child weaned and grown to teen age on pre-packaged food knows no better and as a student will happily tuck into a big Mac or even a plastic pot-noodle (just add boiling water) and think that a belly filled with such is enough to go out and get pissed on.
I was born to a mother who was a professional cook in aristocratic houses and knew her way around every device from the coal-fired range to the halogen hob. I watched her lay on banquets for the rich and yet she never taught me to cook anything more demanding than a Sunday roast. That at least she thought I should know. Mother was jealous of her position as number one in the kitchen but she was also a frustrated singer with a pure coloratura soprana range. She was determined that I would be what she was not allowed to be by her Victorian father (Don't put your daughter on the stage, Mrs. Worthingon!) a classically trained singer.
I grew through a variety of phases in my life. Through show-business as a singing youngster - exciting in it's time but not the career path I wanted to follow - through graphic design and screen printing which suited me better and then on to 'business proper'. When I spread my wings; left my father's house to rent a place of my own I really missed my Mum's cooking. I thought beans on toast would do but quickly discovered that a starved brain doesn't work too well. I set out to learn how to cook and thought it an amazing discovery that my electric oven was programmable!
Today I am an old lady - invisible to the young but still cooking freshly-sourced, locally grown ingredients and enjoying my dinner every day.
I have recently been looking at and discussing the medicines and pharmaceutical industry. Human perception of what is good for them is a powerful psychological phenomenon. And it is indeed sometimes exploited by the drugs companies. Artificially increasing the price of an off-the-shelf drug (along with other marketing) is known to be a factor that can increase the perceived benefit of the drug by the users, even though the chemical content is precisely the same as cheaper, unbranded versions. There is much debate about what it is that causes a placebo or sugar pill to have so much positive effect. An injection of inert solution tends to have an even greater perceived effect.
I'm fascinated by what you say about your mother and her attitude towards your career. And her attitude towards teaching you to cook. My mother taught me to cook and sometimes I'd make supper for us all when I wasn't drowning in homework. Interestingly, my brother refused to cook anything - he thought it was a girl's job - but now he's a fantastic cook and frequently cooks for his family. My first long-term boyfriend was a classically trained chef, and I learnt a lot from him too. I remember when Delia Smith was ridiculed for wanting to teach people to boil an egg, but I think she was dead right.
Steve, I have to warn you that I have several hobby horses. Food and nutrition is one, the pharmaceutical industry and the medical profession is another. :))) I've recently been reading a lot about licensed drugs and their effects, and the effects of placebos. It's gripping stuff, isn't it, especially when you read of the cases where the placebos have a longer-lasting effect than the licensed drug. Or even that that the placebo brings about a complete cure while the licensed drug only blocks the symptoms. (Blocking symptoms rather than curing them is another hobby horse of mine! As is the notion that licensed drugs are safe or have been thoroughly tested on hundreds of people with no ill-effects. Wrong!) I think I'd better ride off into the sunset at this point rather than rant on any longer.
Guilty of a tin of coke and a mars bar for breaky but at 5:20 in the morning while driving my van through London at cutting up Wrathy's bus.....
Sometimes bad times inspire great thoughts. Not in my case, but I know it happens.
OFP
I can also barely eat processed foods now, [It's probably psychological] But I tend to feel horridly nauseous and I become fatigued. I agree with Spangles on a coke and crisp for breakfast! [Vom!!] Breakfast is the most important meal of the day!! Like they say - Breakfast for a king, Lunch for a queen and Dinner for a pauper ;)
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