What if Price isn’t the Sole Arbiter

William Bruce Cameron once said, “Not everything that can be counted counts. Not everything that counts can be counted.”

That said, what if price isn’t the sole arbiter determining food value? What if we took nutrition into the equation? Environmental footprint? How about human health?

Let’s look at these three individually.

Nutrition –

In the US, food science has become a fragmented field of study that has little to do with the honest study of nutrition. This, unfortunately, is influenced by the fact that the majority of food science is government controlled, as well as collaboration between the food industry and its regulators.

Since the inception of the food pyramid in 1992, the true study of food has been largely channeled to accept only foods—and nutritional measures such as the caloric measure—that are government approved. This does not broaden far enough to include such foods as raw milk, free-range eggs, pastured meats, and other traditional cuisine such as fermented vegetables or cultured raw dairy.

Interestingly, one common thread these foods enjoy is that they’ve been around far longer than USDA Guidelines. Another shared strand is that they’re older than refrigeration, and were founded on methods of natural preservation due to the historical lack of artificial energy driven preservation.

The rise of the organic food sector has resurrected—to a degree—certain traditional foods, which is good. But many such foods are not available in these venues because the USDA oversees and controls the organic sector as well, which, I believe, is not good. For example, unpasteurized butter simply is not available outside of “rogue” farms who have sidestepped government oversight by catering only directly to consumers.

That said, some studies have been performed in the private sector by the likes of the Weston A. Price Foundation, among others. However, the lack of funding for complete double-blind studies is often an issue, the study results are usually not very well published, and certainly are not peer reviewed.

Therefore, it comes down to who we will trust. The work of less credentialed studies conducted privately, or that coming from the industry (conflict of interests?) who refuses to look at the aforementioned foods. Will we trust food coming from our neighbors, or cast our lot with a nameless faceless industry from afar?

Environmental Footprint –

Wendell Berry once said, “We Americans are not usually thought to be a submissive people, but of course we are. Why else would we allow our country to be destroyed? Why else would we be rewarding its destroyers? Why else would we all — by proxies we have given to greedy corporations and corrupt politicians — be participating in its destruction? Most of us are still too sane to piss in our own cistern, but we allow others to do so and we reward them for it. We reward them so well, in fact, that those who piss in our cistern are wealthier than the rest of us.

In the past seven decades Americans have considered it progress to have universally cheap food. Our farmers and Departments of Agriculture have prided themselves in our agricultural prowess. We discovered synthetic fertilizers, chemical herbicides and pesticides, growth promoter antibiotics, and genetically modified organisms. As Americans left their kitchens, the food processing industry rose to the occasion with a host of delicacies touting lengthy ingredients lists (plenty of unpronounceables, BTW). As a result, we saw phenomenal agricultural yield increases, unbelievable food animal performance, unprecedented industrial scale farming, and an ever-expanding processed food area in the center of our supermarkets. Not to mention ever-expanding waistlines and ever-increasing doctor’s visits for the American people.

We encouraged the gap between the farm and the eater, degraded the menial work of farming and food production, gladly accepted the Twinkies and Pop-tarts the industry gave us, and applauded all of it in the name of progress. Departments of Agriculture—at the behest of the food processing industry—subsidized certain crops to create an aura of cheap food for all (while the true costs of production were hidden, but paid for with tax dollars).

Conveniently hidden from our senses is unprecedented rape of the natural resource called agricultural land. And not only land resources, but water, air, and people resources. When the average age of the American farmer is 60 years old, over half of the privately held agricultural land will change hands (by necessity) in the next fifteen years, and the next generation has neither the skills or the interest to carry on, we have a problem that should give all Americans pause. And by the way, this is not merely a rural America problem. We all eat.

In essence, we (you and I and all Americans) have allowed the married interests of Big Food and the government/military/industrial complex to piss in our cisterns (all across the USA). And it will not reverse until we disenfranchise them with our buying habits.

As you can tell, I’m very passionate about this subject. And we should be. We (along with our children and our children’s children) will be picking up the tab for the usurpation of our food and farming resources for a long time. All while the true cost of modern-day food production is still being swept under the rug via government programs as well as the news media. Governments cannot spend this problem away. Real grassroots responsibility and ardent effort from society are paramount.

And as Forrest Gump would say, “That’s all I have to say about that.”

Human Health –

While I could spend a good deal of time and words on this subject, I believe we can agree that we have a human health epidemic in our society (even prior to Covid).

That said, allow me to point out that in America we are so prosperous, yet compared to rest of the world, we spend the lowest portion of our expendable income on food. You might say we enjoy this phenomenon because our government is successful in assuring that food is affordable. Yes, that’s one side of the coin, but it doesn’t answer the question of how to rehabilitate our natural resources so that we can continue to enjoy cheap food. When our agricultural resources are exhausted, food will become unbelievably expensive.

We weigh the price vs. value equation in every other purchase, be it building materials, clothing, cars, or electronics. Why not food? Food is the only thing we buy that becomes part of us. That becomes bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh.

On the world scale, America ranks quite high in rates of disease—especially auto-immune disease, and super high in cost of medicine. Again, as Wendell Berry says, “People are fed by the food industry, which pays no attention to health, and are treated by the health industry, which pays no attention to food.” If that doesn’t spell disconnect and disaster, I don’t know what does.

In any given situation, if a person or society strays from what was the norm—say human health, how does she find the way back? I suggest one must return on the same path on which we deviated from true health, and we lost our way somewhere in the disconnect with our food production, which we then handed (by tacit neglect) the responsibility of our food to corporate America. And I believe, my friends, the greatest victim of this is our collective health (physically, morally, and spiritually), along with that of our children and grandchildren. Together, let’s find the way back.