Let Them Eat Cake (and Corn)

Is healthy and sustainable food only for the privileged?

BATAVIA, Ill.—In the food deserts of America, the place to shop for groceries isn’t the local supermarket (there aren’t any); it’s the corner liquor store.

There’s a two-tiered, class-based food supply in the United States, and access to food that is healthy for both body and environment is far from democratic.

In most areas, a mother can use food stamps to buy a bag of Cheetos for her children but not a bag of apples from a farmers’ market. Thanks to our nation’s agricultural policies and generous subsidies for corn, a heavily processed, health-busting, environment-destroying meal of burger-fries-and-soda is now plentiful and cheap—cheaper oftentimes than a pint of simple, pesticide-free berries (if you can find them). Even in areas where fresh produce and organic options are available, how many have the luxury of choosing, say, a $6 quart of organic strawberries at a place like Whole Foods?

Those were some of the barriers to the sustainable food movement discussed in a lecture given by Chicago Tribune food and investigative reporter Monica Eng at the Batavia Public Library earlier this month.

“Who is looking out for some of the sickest, who are also the poorest, among us to make sure that this isn’t just a movement for the well-off? Eng asked. “How do we make it a movement for everyone to help create a healthier nation in general—healthier soil, healthier air, healthier kids?”

That’s one of the biggest themes emerging in a sustainable food movement centered around foods that are healthy for consumers, animals and the environment, Eng says. Only 1-3 percent of the U.S. food supply is organic, and the premium for organic can be steep: anywhere from 20 to 40 percent more (or even six times more, Eng has found). For those without the access or means to buy organic, the main option available is food produced by conventional, mostly industrial, agriculture—what Maria Rodale, author of the book “Organic Manifesto,” calls “chemical agriculture.”

Industrial agriculture yields a supply of food that’s plentiful and cheap, but loaded with hidden costs and ticking hazards. Not just for the poor, but for us all.