I was listening to a BBC World Service story yesterday on the rise of obesity in America. The reporter showed how expensive it was in the US to make a meal from scratch with fresh ingredients and yet McDonald's, KFC and other such places are so inexpensive. Soda is the least expensive bottled drink you can find in the convenience store even cheaper, per unit, than orange juice, milk, even bottled water.
(No polemic today. I sometimes eat at fast food joints and diet soda is my drink of choice)
And I got to wondering. Why is it that healthy food in the US is so costly and bad food is so cheap? Yet in Africa, at least the western part, it's largely the opposite. Fresh fruits, vegetables and meats are fairly inexpensive; in my village, I remember once buying 10 oranges for the equivalent of a dime (in the cities, it was more like four for a dime). Fast food, where available, was pretty expensive. I have my theories but I'd like to sollicit thoughts from readers first and I'll post a follow up in a few days.
No comments:
Post a Comment