leaking pen wrote: > The obese problem will go away? No. A good portion of the obesity > problem in the us is becuase cheap food is unhealthy food. Its not > just overeating, its that some people can only afford crap to eat.
And here is an irony, indeed an incomprehensible situation -- incomprehensible, that is, if you ignore the government subsidies and taxes which have led to this situation. To wit, a vegan diet is *far* less energy and resource intensive than a meat-based diet, and it's generally healthier. It's absurd to say that, globally, people "can't afford" to eat healthy food; in fact it's the other way around: As a species we can't afford to eat as unhealthfully as we have been eating (at least in the U.S., Canada, and Europe). We just don't have the resources to support such a diet across the whole globe. The trouble is the free markets aren't all that free and prices are extremely distorted by a range of factors. McDonald's beef, from steers fed on and corn and soybeans and fish (yes, fish), should *not* be cheaper than a mess of potage made from the corn and soybeans, with the rare and expensive fish left out. Yet, it certainly appears to be. Post processing vegetable food by running it through a cow is not an efficient way to prepare it for market, and it sure shouldn't make the end result *cheaper*. Dig far enough into the tax structure, grazing subsidies, transportation subsidies, water subsidies, and I think you'll eventually dig out the answer to this conundrum, but I don't think the explanation is simple.
