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Mark Bittman’s piece in the Sunday New York Times, “Is Junk Food Really Cheaper?,” is generating a lot of comments and controversy. Bittman compares the cost, for a family of four, of a dinner at McDonald’s versus two home-cooked meals (chicken, potatoes and salad or pinto beans and rice with bacon and peppers, both washed down with milk). His tallies: $27.89 for the McDonald’s meal, $13.78 for the chicken and potatoes, and $9.26 for the rice and beans dinner. Ultimately, the issue is not one of price, Bittman concludes, but of myriad other factors, like convenience, taste preference and lack of ability or desire to cook at home.
This issue is one that’s near and dear to me, as I think the myth that eating healthy is a luxury most Americans can’t afford is one of the greatest contributors to this country’s weight and health problems. Just last week, I heard a family friend say he was a vegetarian when he “could afford it”—since when are vegetables and grains more expensive than meat and seafood? Bittman’s article does a good job of attempting to dismantle this myth, and he makes several very important (and often overlooked) points:
• That the opposite of fast food and junk food isn’t all-organic produce and free-range, grass-fed beef; conventional produce and meat, rice, grains, pasta, beans, frozen vegetables, canned vegetables, peanut butter and “a thousand other things cooked at home” are “a far superior alternative” to nutritionally-empty fast foods.
• That lack of desire or ability to cook is a major impediment to eating at home, and more needs to be done to change the culture around cooking, to move it from something defined as work, drudgery or something requiring fancy skills and equipment to something people see as “a joy, or at least a part of life.” More than encouraging consumption of organics, or any particular type of food, we should encourage cooking more in general.
• That we tend to use the low-price rationale for fast foods as a stand-in for a lot of things that aren’t as acceptable to say, like that we’d rather eat it than a home-cooked meal, that it’s easier, more convenient, pleasurable.
And yet … articles like Bittman’s always rub me the wrong way, and I’ve been trying to pinpoint why. His gratuitous mention of “Brooklyn hipsters and Berkley locavores” bugs me—I know it’s an attempt to distance himself and his arguments from these people, but I think it only serves to reinforce the connection. More bothersome to me is his equation of fast-food consumption mainly with low-income folks. In my experience, eating crap is one thing that crosses class, geographic and educational-attainment lines. Middle-class suburban families live on fast-food. PhD students eat fast food. Young professionals eat fast food. And, yes, even New York hipsters eat it, too. Fast food is not a low-income problem, it is an American problem.
And, ultimately, I don’t think folks like Bittman go far enough in condemning it. Oh, sure, they’re fast to lay the blame on fast food companies and marketers. But progressives like Bittman don’t want to be accused of being elitist, or get lumped in with the mockable Brookyn hipsters and Berkley locavores, so they’re careful to couch any arguments about personal choice in sociological ephemera and resist saying anything too radical. Conservatives, meanwhile, are too reactionary, and too in bed with the idea that criticizing fast food is somehow an affront to business and a slide into ‘nanny statism’ to apply the same sort of harsh tactics to what we do at the table as they do to what we do in the bedroom.
And yet, honestly, maybe what the fast food debate needs is some good, old-fashioned stigma and shaming, a la smoking over the past 50 years. We can talk all we want about so-called food deserts, ‘evil’ fast food marketing, the addictive properties of fatty food, etc., but none of these are really doing anything to stop individual consumption of fast food. We need to make eating fast food ‘bad’ in the same way we’ve ostracized tobacco users. People should feel bad about eating fast food regularly. People should know that in doing so, they are inviting myriad health problems on themselves. We coddle the fast food industry, and its devotees, because it’s so politically/socially volatile not to—and I think this is the root of the problem.
Eating fast food is a choice. Every time we eat at McDonald’s, we are choosing that over other options. And it is killing us. I don’t think fast food should be banned, I don’t think fast food advertising (even to kids) should be banned; people should have the choice to eat fast food. But it is a choice.
The only really viable excuse for continuing to eat a diet high in fast food is lack of awareness—which is a big issue. I don’t think anyone, regardless of socioeconomic status, thinks a burger and fries is good for them, but many don’t know how truly bad it is. Let’s make that clear. Let’s make that so clear that everyone knows it. And then let’s stop making all these other excuses.
Photo: New York Times
Jenna and all,
I rarely eat fast food because I am poor. I used to smoke but I don’t anymore. Where I live I rarely see any fat, let alone obese, children at all. The nearest fast food place is over 10 miles away. I spent years in medical squadrons, worked hypobarics and trained people in survival. I am old enough to remember manners and polite behavior; shaming and stigmatizing members of a society never ends well, not does it solve the problems that it supposes to control. All those behaviors do is increase agression between fellow citizens and display a sanctioned form of bullying. It is not that these behaviors are good or bad but what my comment was about is how the person who chooses to shame another automatically places themselves in a position superior to others. Positive reinforcement, role-modeling will work as well, or better, than shaming and stigma. If you truly love someone and really want to help them, it is possible but you can never turn another person into someone they’re not and to try and do so is the least loving thing I can think of; it’s called abuse.
To the author–with utmost respect–please, all I ask is simply that you read Michael Pollan’s article “You are what you Grow.” I partially agree with your article–but think that your judgements might be slightly different if considering some different elements of the wider issues. All I ask is that you read the article–that’s all. It may or may not influence you; you may have already read it or heard all of its information before–all I ask is that you think about what he presents.
Yes, people of all socioeconomic statuses eat fast food–nobody ever said they didn’t–but for low income families, cheap food is often fast food. I agree with you overall, but your tone came off somewhat condescending; the way you say “so called ‘food deserts’” implies that you think that concept isn’t really much of an issue, when indeed it is. Ask the many sociologists who study these trends and see if they don’t confirm for you that there are definitely cases of low income, inner city folks whose few options for cheap meals is fast food.
A very big, very real issue here is the FARM BILL. Our government’s policies help determine what products are cheap to produce (and therefore cheaper for the consumer) and why healthier produce items will be expensive. Our government subsidizes production of corn, which is why so many processed foods contain some sort of corn-derived ingredients. Corn is so cheap to produce, food manufacturers have figured out ingenious ways of working it into hundreds of food items that are bad for our health. Have you heard of the obesity researcher at University of Washington, Adam Drewnowski, who conducted his own little test a few years back to see how many calories he could buy with a theoretical dollar? His hypothetical dollar could purchase 1,200 calories of cookies or chips but only 250 calories of carrots. For a drink, his dollar could purchase 875 calories of soda but only 170 calories of orange juice.
First of all, I didn’t read anywhere in that artice where the author judged people for wanting to eat fast food occassionally and from the sound of how personal you took this article, I would be willing to bet you are one of the many that eat fast food way too much! I feel the author’s message was more of accountability and awareness of our eating habits and health than a condemnation on people’s decisions to eat fast food. Obesity in this country is out of control and a major contributor of why that is the lure of the fast food industry. Just as tabacco industries are being singled out for contributing to America’s poor health dynamic so should the franchisers who sell this slop they call food. Have you never seen the movie, ‘Super Size Me’ by Morgan Spurlock? If you haven’t allow me to educate you on a few quick facts of that movie. He is a very healthy American who wants to document how badly eating frequent fast food can ruin our health so he eats McDonalds every single day for breakfast, lunch, and dinner and records what it does to his overall health. He packed on an enormous amount of weight, his blood pressure and cholersterol accelerated to dangerous heights and so on. Face it, fast food when consumed to the extent the author is referring to is very bad for people’s health and she’s not afraid to say so. I agree with her that more should be done to offer the public healthier fast food options if people don’t want to or do not have the time to cook at home. I think this is a positive message on how we can improve life. You took it to a negative place! By all means have another cheeseburger!
Nobody is arguing that fast food isn’t bad for you. In fact, I would argue most people know that. The point is that, unlike smoking, there’s already a huge amount of stigma applied to people who are overweight. The reason the shaming tactics were used to such ane xtent with smoking was to coutneract decades of advertising, marketing, and entertainment designed to make us think how cool smoking was. Is there a single show, or movie designed to indulge in the glamour of the Big Mac? While advertising obviously works to try to entice people towards these products, the overall cultural assumptions about obese people in general and constant fast food consumers specifically as lazy, uneducated people who don’t care about themselves are far more pervasive. Fat shaming has been proven not to work to create results. It’s not a good way to fight obesity, or to fight McDonalds.
“We need to make eating fast food ‘bad’ in the same way we’ve ostracized tobacco users. ” The author doesn’t say that we needed to demonize tobacco, she specifically talks about ostracizing tobacco USERS. Given the ostracization ALREADY faced by obese people, this feels misguided. Think of the recent comments about Chris Christie by pundits wondering whether someone so fat could actually lead the country. There’s no need to increase that societal presure, especially not under the guise of trying to make people healthier. Again, it’s been proven repeatedly that the kind of pressure based on societal ostracization and self loathing doesn’t work.
That being said, the rest of the article has some great points about socio economic status and fast food consumption. But those last few paragraphs just rubbed me the wrong way.
“And yet, honestly, maybe what the fast food debate needs is some good, old-fashioned stigma and shaming, a la smoking over the past 50 years”
That’s what’s wrong with the whole debate! Who are you? Are you perfect that you feel you should be judge and jury in the public square? Honestly, why aren’t you turning your shame and stigma against meth or heroin? Oh wait, that’s because it doesn’t work against things that are real problems. The problem with junk-food, health-food, organic food and any other named sub-group is that people don’t trust science any more. The media runs with every scare it can find and after decades of inconsistent information people just don’t care what anyone has to say because they flat out don’t believe them. People eat fast-food for a myriad of reasons, are you going to really jump down the throat of someone because they have a hamburger? Until you are perfect maybe you spend some time telling people what they’re doing right when you see that, instead of focusing on what they’re doing wrong.
http://blisstree.com/look/our-bodies-our-health-why-we-need-to-stop-telling-people-what-they-want-to-hear-797/
Amen.