The elitism of food

Epi-Log, the Epicurious.com blog, has an interesting post about the elitism of healthy food. It's an issue that comes up frequently, though a little reluctantly, among local foods/whole food devotees. The reluctance comes largely because there is significant overlap in the population who commits to food-based activism and the population who is interested in other kinds of social activism - it was no coincidence that the raise-the-minimum-wage activists were stationed outside the farmers' market to collect signatures for their petition. It's a group of people that is enormously uncomfortable with the idea that they might be acting in elitist ways.

But the sad truth is that unhealthy food is so artificially inexpensive - made so by corn subsidies which allows chicken nuggets to be sold for less than it costs to grow/raise its component ingredients - that healthy food is only available to those of us with a more comfortable standard of living. To make matters worse, a drive through East Greensboro will demonstrate that there are fast food joints on every corner and barely a single grocery selling fresh produce.

The solution is as Megan O. writes in her post:

I agree with Pollan that those of us who can afford to pay more for real food and support our local farmers need to do so... And we need to get behind legislation that will even the playing field between giant, heavily subsidized agribusiness companies making faux food and small farmers growing real food. Gussow added, "We need to learn that food costs money and then pay people a living wage so they can afford it."

Amen.