Thursday, April 14, 2011

When Bill was an IT Developer, he had a saying that he used with clients - "Cheap, fast or good. Pick two." You can't have all three in the same product - something has to give. If you need it quickly and don't have a lot of money to spend, the quality won't be there. Want it tomorrow and it has to be high-quality? No problem. But it'll cost you. You get the picture.

My friend Barbara said something yesterday (as she often does) that really got me thinking. You can apply those same principles to food. (In this case, we'll define "good" as food with high nutritional value). If you want fast, cheap food: McDonald's or any number of fast food restaurants are on every street corner it seems and everyone has a .99 menu these days. If you want good food fast, you can go to Whole Foods. Good food cheap? Grow it yourself. Buy seasonally and preserve. Shop the farmer's market. Even chain supermarkets have decent deals on organic produce and pastured meats, but you have to search them out, wait for the sales, etc.

My two big thoughts about this:

1) When Bill and I were pulling down $200k a year, we hit Whole Foods without blinking an eye and filled the cart to the brim. If the spinach got wilted before we used it, I'd toss it in the compost crock. Sometimes we'd have an idea of what we were shopping for, but mostly, we'd go in and get whatever appealed to us that day. It was not at all uncommon for us to spend $300 a week on groceries. We both worked full time jobs. For a large chunk of that, I was in Grad School. The resource that was scarcest was time (or so it seemed).

Our lives are now organized in a different way. Since we got off the hamster wheel, the resource that we have to manage around is money. I have more time to shop around for deals. This year we will be growing more of our own food than ever before between our back yard crops and Bill's plots at the farm. I'll put up sweet corn when it's in season and 10 ears for $1. When the spinach goes limp, I'll toss it in to soup or pasta.

For us, changing the dynamic was a choice. Both of us wanted to slow our lives down, live more simply. We are both educated, skilled people who could, if we chose to, step back on that hamster wheel and before too long, we'd likely be back to earning the "big bucks" (though I suspect the longer we're out of Corporate America, the less true that will be). The point is, even though our household income is about 25% of what it was a year ago, we have a safety net that not everyone has.

2) For some people, the "pick two" choice has been made for them because paying more for food is not an option. And because we've bred convenience in to American DNA, people will likely opt for cheap and fast rather than cheap and good because, after all, you deserve it! You work hard! You don't want to spend so much time finding and preparing food! This is AMERICA for God's sake! Here's a meal that will feed your entire family in 30 minutes for $10. Processed food is cheap but devoid of any nutrients. They heap in the sugar and salt to make it taste like something, but it still is about the same to your body as eating cardboard. Your belly is full, but your body is starving. And I'm not just talking about people who are on Food Assistance here. This is your "Average American Family" food plan. Which leads to obesity, high blood pressure, high cholesterol. Which leads to astronomical health care costs. Which leads to more poverty. Which leads to crime, drug abuse and child neglect. Which leads to a national crisis.

I wonder.......

Food Education.

Sure, there would be folks who still ate off the .99 menu, just as there are people who still choose to smoke even though they know what it's doing to their bodies. But surely there are just as many people for whom understanding how their food choices affect their bodies would make even a slight difference in their choices. Maybe if just one kid doesn't grow up on chicken nuggets and EZ Mac, they would go on to have better eating habits. Maybe if we talked about it in grade schools the way we do hand washing and covering your mouth when you sneeze, kids would suggest dad shop "around the edges" of the grocery store where nutritional food is more likely to be. Maybe they'd ask for fresh peaches instead of Fruit Rollups.

It could happen, right?

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