A Poached Chicken Breast in Every Pot
Branching off of the comments on Mo's last post, how much are taxpayers willing to pay to prevent kids from getting fat? According to a Cornell study, a LOT. New York taxpayers surveyed are willing to put their money where their mouth is, to the tune of $700 million or $50 per taxpayer, in order to reduce the incidences of childhood obesity by half.
The reasoning from the survey is that taxpayers are driven by the avoidance of potential cost of obesity-related health problems in the future. However, according to a report by economist Susan Lee on NPR's Marketplace, this is twice the amount of money actually spent by taxpayers on obesity-related health problems. From the commentary,
I would think it would be enough to understand that the status quo of fried chicken sandwiches and milkshakes in our school lunches is not acceptable and that we want our kids to be healthy by making sure they have low fat nutritious lunches, healthy snacks and lots of physical activities, but apparently not. Maybe the answer to why really comes down to Lee's closing statement, where she sneers "Why else would people be willing to pay extra to make sure that no kid looks like a tub of lard."
Tub of lard? Really? We're going there? Just...wow.
The reasoning from the survey is that taxpayers are driven by the avoidance of potential cost of obesity-related health problems in the future. However, according to a report by economist Susan Lee on NPR's Marketplace, this is twice the amount of money actually spent by taxpayers on obesity-related health problems. From the commentary,
One explanation is that people wildly overestimate the cost of eliminating childhood obesity. Or they grossly overestimate the amount of savings in lower health care costs. Or maybe, as the study argues, they are driven by the spirit of altruism.
I would think it would be enough to understand that the status quo of fried chicken sandwiches and milkshakes in our school lunches is not acceptable and that we want our kids to be healthy by making sure they have low fat nutritious lunches, healthy snacks and lots of physical activities, but apparently not. Maybe the answer to why really comes down to Lee's closing statement, where she sneers "Why else would people be willing to pay extra to make sure that no kid looks like a tub of lard."
Tub of lard? Really? We're going there? Just...wow.
11 Comments:
Lee's interpretation seems like a stretch to me. I mean, the whole premise of the study seems pretty silly...it's hardly a surprise that people would have no idea what their individual tax burden would be to reduce childhood obesity by half! It might be somewhat meaningful if they asked about multiple public health issues and looked at how people prioritized spending on them, but at least by my reading of this article, the study doesn't really seem to say much of anything about anything.
I agree with the school lunches! I don't know if you watch The Biggest Loser or not, but this week's episode went into the schools and showed a lot about what they are serving kids... bad news. And the justification is "well, if we put healthy food out there, they don't buy it -- and we have to make money."
Niiiiiiiice.
It's true that school lunches in this country are a disaster, but it's not the schools' fault. They are typically budgeted $2-3 per student per lunch, and in order to stick to that budget, schools rely heavily on the USDA surplus food they get for free. The trouble is, that surplus is surplus for a reason. To make healthy food appealing, you need to use fresh, high-quality ingredients. To make USDA surplus food appealing, pretty much your only choice is to add fat, salt, or sugar. A handful of school districts have taken the initiative to improve school lunches through private fundraising, but it's not cheap...the Berkeley, CA school district loses almost a million dollars a year serving healthy, organic foods to its students, an amount which is covered by a foundation started by chef Alice Waters. They get NO federal or state funding for this program. And obviously, not every school district has the philanthropic base to support such a program.
So once again, we're back down to poverty being linked with childhood obesity. If the schools can't even afford to put healthy stuff in school lunches, how can a single mother working at Wal-mart afford to feed her healthy food when a pound of apples costs more than a pound of hotdogs and doesn't go as far?
From a personal anecdote, my lunch in middle school was a fried chicken sandwich, tater tots and a milkshake. I could have had an iceberg lettuce salad (with nothing on it but a single cucumber slice and an anemic tomato wedge) instead of the sandwich and potatoes, but the salad was so tiny that I'd be starving two hours later. So of course you opt for what's going to get you through the day. And sadly, the fried chicken sandwich was the next healthiest option on the menu after the salad. Honestly, though, one would think there would be a middle ground between the fried chicken and the Waters-supported organic lunches.
Veering off topic a bit, when I was very poor in college, I always had this wish that food would cost a penny per calorie rather than what seems to be the inverse. Then a trip to McDonalds would cost $40 while grilled chicken breasts and green salads would only be a couple of bucks.
I don't necessarily agree with taxing the unhealthy foods. They tax cigarettes for the same reason and the only result it has is that the smokers end up having to cough up (pun intended) more cash. I am not a smoker, but my father is. If they get to be $10/pack, he'd go without lunch but he'd never go without his smokes.
Having said that, I kind of like weetablog's idea of having a "penny per calorie" price. Those who are intent on eating like crap will eat like crap no matter how much the food costs. But those people who would like to eat better but whose strict budgets only allow for beans-n-franks would benefit.
Don't even get me started on how disgusting it is that our public schools can't even get enough funding to cover healthy meals (and HOW much are we spending in Iraq?!?!?!?).
"So once again, we're back down to poverty being linked with childhood obesity. If the schools can't even afford to put healthy stuff in school lunches, how can a single mother working at Wal-mart afford to feed her healthy food when a pound of apples costs more than a pound of hotdogs and doesn't go as far?"
DINGDINGDINGDINGDINGDINGDING
Ladies and gentlemen, once again we have a winner. Mo, show Weetablog what she's won.
"Veering off topic a bit, when I was very poor in college, I always had this wish that food would cost a penny per calorie rather than what seems to be the inverse. Then a trip to McDonalds would cost $40 while grilled chicken breasts and green salads would only be a couple of bucks."
This is BRILLIANT. I don't care that we'll be shot down by the agriculture lobbyists -- where's the petition?!?
But the schools can afford to make healthy lunches inexpensively. Its easy. So can someone from wal-mart. The trouble with the school doing it (something that the working mother doesn't have to deal with) is that the children have choices. If they don't want to eat the healthier food (for social, habitual reasons or just because we as a species find fat and sugar quite tasty), the school can offer all it wants and it won't make a difference.
I'm actually starting a "cheap food" experiment where I'm going out of my way to see what kind of meals I can prepare for less than $5 a person. I'm probably going to break it into lower price categories as well, to match up well with things like a big mac.
But its not that hard to eat well if you're cooking yourself. Heck - just going down to my local supermarket gave me some great sandwiches (2 large fresh rolls, one avacado, greens (just a little from the by-weight mixed green bin), a tomato, 2 mushrooms, and some brie) and chips, all for under $7 for two people ... most of which was for the brie, most of which was left over. Dinner for two at Taco Bell could easily cost more than that.
The challenge as shown is in creating healthy food that people will choose for no more cost than unhealthy food. The easiest solution to implement would be to lose the unhealthy food as an option, but that's not given as an option here. A huge part of the problem is that we're in the habit of seeing veggies and bread, etc, as "free" or valueless foods, and measuring the "value" of an entree purely by the number of grams of meat (pref. red) that you get per dollar. Until that mindset changes, making healthy meals attractive to a value-seeking customer is necessarily difficult.
But Richard, the point is that schools don't have $5 a pupil, or even $3.50 a pupil. I think this article provides excellent insight into the HUGE challenges faced by school districts trying to implement healthier lunches, and this is in a district that has supplemental funding!
While I agree with Jen--the budget's not there--and with those who point out what insanity that is, Richard's point that one can make relatively healthy food somewhat cheaply is somewhat accurate; it's just contingent on cooking it oneself. If you have the know-how and the time...yes, you can. Dried beans are quite cheap. Lentils are cheap. Fresh vegetables? Not so much on the lettuce-and-avocado end, but not too bad on the potatoes-and-carrots end, especially if your grocery store has a scratch-and-dent rack for wilty vegetables. I don't agree that five dollars a person is thrifty, but I do agree that it's amazing what money one can save when one does one's own cooking. For instance, hams locally went on sale for $1.39/pound. Not great, compared to HoHo's, but way cheaper than all but the cheapest of processed lunch meats (which kids will eat.) A ten-pound ham, while requiring an initial investment, offers not only three dinners and reams of sandwiches, but a bone which makes a great vat of dried-bean or split-pea soup. Ditto for turkey, in season (sixty-nine cents a pound at the height of the sale): if you've got a freezer, sale turkey makes not only dinners and sandwiches, but carcass stock (the base of many another cheap meal), turkey noodle soup, cheap rice soup, and even gravy to replace margarine or butter (okay, gravy on toast will not help the obesity crisis, but it is cheap and does taste good.)
Problems with actually doing it at home: a whole lot of people don't have the know-how, the time, or either one, which brings us back to, yes, poverty again. The single mom working overtime at Wal-Mart is going to have trouble exercising an ideal European-peasant-style thrift that uses every scrap, relies on creative use of the cheapest foodstuffs, and turns them all into food kids love to eat. She may not be able to find bulk lentils. It can be done, but it's not easy, especially if no one's ever educated her about how to do it (it does take some training and practice, both difficult to come by in that sixty-hour week.) And we're a culture which promotes the easy and convenient while simultaneously forcing our poorest members to work so long that the convenient becomes almost the only choice.
But the schools. Damn it, the federal funding COULD be allocated to buy bulk lentils and potatoes, as in seriously bulk, and could hire a chef to teach Lunch Lady Doris how to prepare them. Working mom at Wal-Mart may or may not be able to do what Richard's talking about, but the fact that a huge government institution that can buy whole grains at government prices is too cheap to do it...that's just bad prioritizing. Which is no surprise, and which brings us back to what Heather said. We'll fund endless wars to make the rich richer, but damn little to feed our kids.
--Cat
Right, although they're not paying retail either. But my point was that its not terribly hard to have cheap, healthy food - but it is hard to sell cheap healthy food when you're competing against cheap unhealthy food which, for whatever reason, is seen as more desirable. The extra cost to make the healthy food "competitive" in appeal to people who don't want it is too high. But without the cheap unhealthy food you can easily pay the same amount and get healthy food, if you want to.
However, since most school kids would, at the moment, rather have a $2 fried chicken lunch than a $2 healthier lunch, its a moot point that the latter can be done.
You know what? I'm a New York tax payer, and I say your kids are your problem.
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