Is Food In America Cheap?

Perhaps you have read, as I have on several occasions, that in the USA, "food is cheap". At least compared with both our nation's past and to other nations when we look at what percentage of Americans' household expenditures pay for food.

According to the latest numbers from the USDA, Americans spend about 10% of our disposable income on food, and this is the lowest in the world. If you do your own Google image search for "percent of disposable income spent on food by country" you can find lots of similar charts such as this one from the Economist and articles with data from the last few years repeating similar data.

When I do the math based on Americans spending 10% of disposable income on groceries, I find that an individual with an annual gross income of $30K (twice minimum wage) is spending about $40/week on food - which seems barely manageable, even for just one person.

Also according to the US Department of Agriculture, an American family of 4 must spend between $147 and $289 per week on food to meet basic dietary requirements for good health. That seems about right since I have a family of 4 and we spend about $150 per week on food. I've tried to get it below that, but I can't without resorting to buying junk food instead of healthy food.

With a weekly grocery bill of at least $147 a family of 4 that spends that as 10% of their disposable income on food must have a gross income of more than $90,000 - that's a hell of a lot higher than the median gross income of just below $70K for an American family of 4.

Additionally, median incomes only can tell us so much when income disparity in America is so pronounced. 15% of Americans live in poverty (that same percentage, according to the USDA, received food assistance through SNAP in 2013.) Many more live in the gap between being eligible for government food assistance and actually earning enough to be spending merely 10% of disposable income on adequate nutrition.

The reality is, many American families are being forced to choose between adequate nutrition and junk food, or worse yet, between food and other expenses, such as heat. Or student loans, as millions of borrowers are now in deferment for financial hardship or default.

So regarding this claim that American food is cheap, what gives? Because it seems to me that in reality, either food is too expensive, or... ooooooooh. Wages for most Americans are just too low.

Fruit! Eat As Much As You Can (Afford)

For many families, easier said than done.

One of the most basic things I do for my kids as a parent is provide them with fresh fruit. As much as they want, every day.

We all know that fruit is great for health. The message has been drilled into our minds by posters in doctor offices and schools, ads in magazine and on television. The links between eating more fruit and avoiding a whole host of health problems is well established. Fruit is high in fiber, provides many nutrients, and is low in fat and calories. Filling up on fruit means being less likely to fill up on junk. The FDA says it. The American Cancer Society says it. The American Pediatric Association says it.

Simple: eat more fruit. But is it?

I decided to write this post because I'm starting to notice the financial consequences of encouraging my kids to eat as much fruit as they desire. I only have two children, and they are only 2 and 4 years old. And yet I find myself spending nearly a third of our grocery budget on just fruit. I try buying the fruit on sale, but it spoils more quickly and often tastes past its prime. Luckily, my family can afford to make cuts in other areas of our budget to make room for all that fruit.

My eldest is enrolled in a state subsidized preschool program which offers free breakfast, lunch, and snack. After seeing the menu, and because we can afford to, I turned down the free food. The main reason? Fruit. Regulations require a certain number of servings of fruit. But they also allow the fruit to come in the form of fruit juice from concentrate, sweetened applesauce, and sweetened fruit cups. Since the price of fresh fruit is so much higher than for these processed, sugar-added alternatives, guess what gets served for more than half of the requirements? I wanted to do better for my kids.

But shouldn't we as a society want to do better for all kids?

The FDA recommends 1.5 daily servings of fruit for kids, and 2 for adults. Half a cup is generally one serving. One serving is one small apple or banana, an eighth of a cantaloupe, or a couple handfuls of grapes. It's not a lot of calories, maybe 30-100 per serving, depending on the fruit. Considering that kids need anywhere from 100-1800 calories per day, fruit should account for about 20% of our caloric intake. The average price of one serving of fresh fruit costs 28 cents. To achieve the minimum number of servings a day for everyone, a family of 4 would spend about $14 a week on fruit (That's assuming that everyone actually eats their share and nothing goes bad. Those of us with young kids know why that's funny.) According to the US Department of Agriculture, families of 4 are spending between $147 and $289 per week on groceries. If those families spend $14/week on fruit, then fruit accounts for about 10% of their bill. So that works out, if a family of 4 can afford at least $147 per week (over $7,000 per year.)

For a family of 4 straddling the poverty line, $7,000 per year is about a third of their gross income. Which explains why so many Americans are on SNAP benefits (food stamps) and why school breakfast and lunch assistance programs are so common.

Looking at the numbers and the failure of government-subsidized programs to provide 5 servings of fresh fruit to school children, I consider the 1 in 5 American children living in poverty, and I wonder how often those 21% of American children even see a fresh piece of fruit.

A poster at my daughter's preschool.

*Take a step back*

This is a small issue compared to many others impacting poor children. Beyond just fruit, millions of American children are food insecure.  Insufficient early childhood care and education take a huge toll. So does violence, as 60% of kids are exposed to violence or crime in their homes, schools, or communities.

This blog post isn't actually about advocating for the inclusion of more fresh fruit in government food assistance programs. I wish America were at the point where that sort of advocacy could be a reasonable priority.

This post is really about putting things in perspective. Middle and upper class American parents like me are worried about making sure our kids are offered a wide range of fresh fruit on their plates, daily, while children who might live just miles or even blocks from us are skipping whole meals.

And while the majority of households receiving government food assistance include children, conservative media demonizes them as freeloaders, and politicians are yet again cutting already insufficient SNAP funds.

As a society, can't we do better than this? Or will we who are lucky remain content and complacent, so long as we can serve up a bowl of fresh blueberries for breakfast to our own kids?

Just Shut Up and Hand Over Your Credit Card

Art by Banksy

The "War on Christmas" is a media fiction. Most people don't care whether cards or store greeters say "Merry Christmas" or "Happy Holidays". It doesn't make a difference to most people if the statehouse holiday display includes a nativity, or if it does that it also include a menorah and whatever else religious minorities and secular folks want to throw in there.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying these issues are totally insignificant. If we minorities are being marginalized, if the Establishment Clause is being violated, that's a problem. But a lot gets overblown and misrepresented in the TV shouting matches.

What does have a major impact on peoples' lives is money. Making it. Spending it. We're especially focused on it this time of year, as it flies out of our bank accounts and into the hands of retailers for products mostly produced by large companies with overpaid CEOs, and manufactured by underpaid workers in factories overseas. 

'Tis the season to be jolly! And broke. 

Shoppers' passion over Black Friday (a "holiday" that now overshadows the sedate, food-and-family-oriented Thanksgiving) has come to be associated with violence as much as sales.

Finding the perfect gifts is widely regarded as stressful. The stress caused by feeling obligated to buy good gifts for everyone perhaps explains why shoppers feel entitled to buy so much for themselves, too.

A recent survey by Lexington Law found that 57% of parents were willing to go into debt to buy presents for their kids. Even worse, the families with lower incomes were willing to go into deeper debt: 

Those with a household income (HHI) of less than $35,000 are willing to accrue an average of $700 worth of debt in order to make their children happy for the holidays. Interestingly, that number is significantly higher than the average amount of debt those with a HHI of $75,000 or more are willing to accrue ($300) in order to make their children happy for the holidays.

Actually, I get that. If a parent or parents only have $35,000 a year to pay for food, housing, utilities, health care, clothing, and anything else that comes along, they're already underwater. So what's another $700 of debt if for at least one happy day you get to see your kids squeal with joy over getting an xbox.

Of course charitable giving goes up around the holidays, but it pales in comparison to spending on stuff-we-don't-really-need. Food banks are still stretched too thin, especially since the federal government cut SNAP benefits (food stamps). And a third of Americans' charitable donations go to religious organizations, which means it could pay for proselytizing as much as it goes to feeding the needy.

Screw Jingle Bells or Deck the Halls. Here's a song that really gets to the heart of the holiday season:


What's way worse than an atheist kid being compelled to sing "Silent Night" at the school holiday concert? A kid living in poverty. Unlike the atheist kid, the poor kid can't just shrug it off, saying, "It's just meaningless tradition." The poor kids' problem isn't one of legal and philosophical debates. It's that his stomach is empty, he's surrounded by stressed out adults, and he's hoping nobody on his block gets shot this year.

In the United States, one in every five kids lives in poverty. How big of an injustice is that? This year the results of a 25-year-long study that followed 224 children revealed that being a "crack baby" is less harmful than growing up poor.

The children were examined every six months to every year, testing everything from intelligence to emotional development, achievement, and brain scans. When searching for effects of crack smoking mothers, what they really discovered was the impact of being born into poverty. Both groups — the control and those children who were born to crack smokers — scored lower than average on IQ and other tests.

In the light of such rampant materialism alongside such horrendous poverty, I marvel in wonder at the enduring popularity of Charles Dickens's novella A Christmas Carol and the film It's A Wonderful Life. Both are clear indictments of capitalism run amok, a call for the rich to share their wealth with those just barely getting by, but in the year 2013 does American society abide by these messages?

I mentioned the cuts to SNAP, which will impact one in seven (over 47 million) Americans. We now have the Affordable Care Act, which is a pathetic compromise, a failed attempt at universal healthcare, that will help many, but is a far cry from a real solution to America's soaring health care costs and unequal access to quality health care.

So I'm sitting here at my computer typing this, and once again thinking, I should do more to help my fellow humans! But when I think of donating more than a token amount to worthy causes, I remember that I have a ton of student loan debt and that we don't even make enough to save for the kids' college, much less our own retirement. When I think of volunteering my time, I remember when I volunteered with a group at a local food pantry, and we were told by the staff that what they really need is more donations. When I think about how we could cut back, I realize we already live rather frugally, and even cutting back where we could wouldn't free up that much money, but it would considerably reduce our quality of life.

The six minute film Wealth Inequality uses stirring narration and simple charts to reveal the shocking differences between what a survey of 5,000 Americans thought wealth distribution should be, what they thought it is, and what it actually is.


The narrator points out, "the middle class is barely distinguishable from the poor." We can't act like reformed Scrooges if we're really Bob Cratchits in denial of just how close we are to the edge of poverty ourselves.

If middle class Americans are truly just getting by, then those of us who attempt to live the example of George Bailey in Its a Wonderful Life are likely to end up like George, but without Clarence's intervention. After all, angels don't exist. 

What we need is change.