Over the holiday weekend, I spent some time with friends one afternoon, and we decided to Netflix a movie.   Netflix is a verb now, right?

In any case, we decided on Food, Inc., a documentary about our country’s agriculture system.  For those of you familiar with Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, this is basically a movie version of the book.  For those who are unfamiliar, the system goes something like this:

1. Government subsidizes corn production, causing prices to go below production costs.
2. Cheap corn!
3. Farmers feed corn to cows, pigs, chickens, fish, and after lots of mysterious alchemy, to people in the form of High Fructose Corn Syrup and other interesting byproducts.
4. Cheap food!
5. Profit!
6. Pay some lobbyists to take us back to step one.

Along the way, animals get sick, E. coli evolves into a super mutant, and 2/3 of Americans are classified as overweight.  Diabetes skyrockets.  Healthcare becomes expensive.

Was corn the gunman on the grassy knoll?  I can’t rule it out.

All joking aside, our food system causes serious problems, and these examples are just scratching the surface.  Who’s responsible, and what’s to be done?

I may not have posted on this topic if I hadn’t spotted the following infographic:

You’ll notice that in 1901, the average American spent about 40% of her income on food.  Now, it’s more like 10%.

You could argue that this is a huge boon for society, giving us the ability to feed the world at low prices.  No one needs to go hungry.

But I think it comes at a price;  instead of starving, we’re going bankrupt on medicines to treat diabetes, heart disease, and strokes.  And even though we’re fed, we’re not nourished.  There’s a big difference.

It looks like we’re devoting greater proportions our income to the transportation and “other” categories, and I’m left wondering – can transportation and “other” really replace what we’ve lost by eating cheap food?

At the end of the day, when I ask myself “Who is responsible for this?” I think the answer is, “all of us.”  We’re the ones that demand cheap food, that ignore the farm bill, and vote with our dollars.  I’d love to point to a foreign enemy or infectious disease as the culprit, but the paper trail on my credit card statement points squarely at the perpetrator:  me.

Can't get enough? Try these related posts:

1. Food Pyramids – Supply and Demand
2. Candy Bars Cost 100 Grand!
3. The Quest for Cheap Food
4. Michael Pollan and the Sun Food Agenda
5. Why does organic food cost more?