The Cost of Healthy Food Excludes Many Americans from Eating Well

People are fighting a war against obesity in the US, and many think taxing and raising the price of fast food will solve the problem. Unfortunately, healthy food is still too expensive for most families.

The United States is waging a war on obesity, and its proponents are rallying for taxes and zoning laws that will make fast food harder to get and cost more. They're also advocating higher costs and taxes on soda and "junk" food. They seem to think that making bad-for-you food cost more will get people to eat healthier. What they don't seem to take into account or care about is the current price of healthy foods.

My husband and I are on a fixed income. We have to shop carefully to stay within our budget. This is pretty common for most middle-class families these days. We do our best to eat well, but due to the prices, it's getting harder and harder. Just a few days ago we went food shopping, hoping to get some healthier alternatives. What we saw was shocking and saddening.

On average, the TV dinners we buy cost $2-3. We do buy some LeanCuisine, mostly other brands due to larger portions and lower prices. We decided to look in the health food section and grab some brands we knew were good and healthy. We got to the freezer case only to find that the healthy TV dinners started at $4.95 and went up from there. Pasta, which normally costs us $0.99 per pound was $3.49 per pound. Cereal was $4-6 per box. Everything was outrageously expensive. We walked away, and had to settle for less healthy alternatives.

Raising the price of any food in our current economy is not going to be the answer to making people healthier. More likely than not, it's going to cause working-class families to have trouble keeping enough food on the table. What these healthy-lifestyle activists need to fight for is lower costs on healthy foods. Fast food and unhealthy microwave meals are all that many families can afford. They need food that is filling and inexpensive, and unfortunately, healthy food does not fit into the latter category.

If you look at my pasta example above, you can see how current costs of healthy food could really hurt working-class wallets. I can get a 1lb. box of pasta and feed 6 people from it at a cost of about $0.16 per person. If I want the rice pasta from the health food section (and I have gluten issues), those 6 servings would cost $0.58 each. It may not seem like a lot per serving, but it really adds up, and many families these days simply can't afford it.

Not only is there a cost issue, there's also the issue of availability. There's very little healthy food in most supermarkets, especially working-class favorites like Wal*Mart. Healthy fast food establishments are also nearly non-existent. There may be a few healthy options on the menus of the large chains, but no one's going to buy a salad when a burger costs less and is more filling. Perhaps someone should start a chain of cheap, healthy fast-food restaurants with drive-thru access.

If healthy foods cost less than or at least not much more than their unhealthy counterparts, and there was easy access, people would be more apt to buy the healthy option. It's not that people don't want to eat healthy, it's that they can't afford to. Whether it's fast food or supermarket food, raising the prices of the unhealthy products is only going to cause people to be unable to afford food at all, not shift them to the purchase of healthier items. Until the prices on healthy foods go down and availability goes up, eating healthy will be difficult for many families.