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?

Kid Climbs on Sculpture, an Excuse to Mock Art

My friend Dave posed for this photo as a joke because he 

doesn't share my love for Mark Rothko paintings. That said, 

despite not being into this one piece, he values and respects 

art and would never let his toddler touch it.

Earlier this week, gallery owner Stephanie Theodore tweeted a photo she took of a child climbing on a Donald Judd sculpture on display at the Tate Gallery. For those who don't know who Donald Judd is, he's one of the most famous American artists from the 20th century, and his sculptures are worth millions.

Before I go further into the meat of this post, let me respond to the original tweet. I wasn't there and I certainly can't know whether the parents were knowingly dismissive toward museum/gallery etiquette, or merely ignorant. Mistakes happen. I won't go as far as calling them "bad parents." However, they would have been very sad parents had the child done any damage.

I share Stephanie Theodore's shock, and I would have done exactly what she did: first she told the parents why the kid shouldn't be doing that, and when they ignored her, she told the guards. And of course she also snapped a photo and tweeted. Of course she did - because it's a friggin' kid climbing all over a Donald Judd in the Tate! As a gallery owner who makes a living in the arts, Theodore would have been an idiot to not tweet that.

Now on to the real bee in my bonnet.

The photo tweeted by Stephanie Theodore.

Unfortunately, I stumbled on this story on Gawker, and made the horrible mistake of reading the comments. As I've come to expect when certain types of art (in this case from the Minimalist movement) are brought to the attention of the general public, Philistines come out of the woodwork to call the work junk and mock the art establishment that gives it value.

Many of the comments go so far as to morally denounce Judd for his success, such as this gem:

If your shelf-looking sculpture sells for millions of dollars, and you don't donate at least half of that to charity, you're fucking horrible.

That would be difficult seeing as Judd's been dead since 1994. Although I do wonder if this person is equally outraged by anyone who, against the odds, ends up producing something worth millions of dollars.

By the way, at least according to one study, the median salary of artists is $43,000/year. While this sounds comfortable, it is a far cry from millions (especially when you take the student loans into account.) More importantly, this median only represents the people who succeeded in turning their artistic aspirations into a career. The vast majority who study and practice art, especially fine art, work day jobs or live off spouses for years, and never make a living solely off our work. But by all means, piss all over the giants in our field.

The award for irony goes to the countless people who mocked a Judd sculpture for looking like shelves from Ikea. Not only was Judd an actual furniture designer as well as fine artist, but I guess they don't know that the Minimalist movement in art was a driving influence in design across the globe, including the aesthetics of Ikea.

As a working (and struggling) artist, as someone who values art, and as a parent who aims to raise kids to appreciate the arts, I'm so sick of this shit. 

We artists and art dealers, collectors, curators, critics - everybody who makes up the art world - are basically a subset of nerdom. To quote today's wikipedia entry on Nerd:

Nerd (adjective: nerdy) is a descriptive term, often used pejoratively, indicating that a person is overly intellectual, obsessive, or socially impaired. They may spend inordinate amounts of time on unpopular, obscure, or non-mainstream activities, which are generally either highly technical or relating to topics of fiction or fantasy, to the exclusion of more mainstream activities

Indeed, we spend an inordinate amounts of time on unpopular, non-mainstream activities. We tend to be intellectual. We often have our own, unique social quirks. The mainstream tends to not "get" what we do. And while some who don't share our interests still respect us and acknowledge that our creations/writings/purchases have value, others mock us and insist our activities are nothing but pretense.

I don't get sports fandom. What I mean is, I've watched games of basketball, baseball, football, soccer, and I feel bored. However, when I look around at other spectators and see expressions of deep emotional engagement, when I overhear people going into very detailed debates and discussions about strategies and plays, when I notice that there is an entire establishment of writers, historians, and museums constructed around sports, and when I see how sports have widespread appeal across nations and class divides, I recognize that this is a valuable, meaningful part of the human experience.

So while most people don't get Judd's work, it's important to acknowledge that the reason it's worth millions is because there's actually a lot to it. In its full context, to enough people, Judd's work evokes as much passion as Paul "Bear" Vasquez's reaction to a double rainbow: