Many of my colleagues think that subsidizing fruits and vegetables would be a major step toward increasing vegetable consumption; I disagree. This turns me into a little bit of an outcast– I had the conversation last night with some first year MS students and today at lunch with my research buddies– but it strikes me as wrong on several levels for a number of different reasons. From the practical analysis to theoretical philosophy, I’ll explain why the subsidy approach is weak and would have little influence.
First, the pragmatic: it doesn’t really work. Economic models generally reveal that people are not responsive to minor long-term price decreases. 10, even 20 percent, decreases only lead to very small bumps in consumption. People are much more responsive to price increases. And, honestly, basic fruits and vegetables in most of the country aren’t incredibly expensive. Fancy things like mixed baby greens, fennel and red peppers can be pretty pricey, but your sweet potatoes, cabbage, turnips, carrots, and frozen spinach are generally reasonable.
Second, we are choosing foods literally designed to make all sorts of fun chemicals in our brains run wild with pleasure. Fat, salt, and sugar are mildly addictive. They taste good, and your brain is wired to seek them out. Choosing otherwise is literally fighting evolution. To make vegetables more appealing, we need to reduce the competition. Why is there a whole aisle of salty chips, and another of sweetened cereal? Most grocery stores only carry 3 or 4 types of apples, and maybe two kinds of cabbage if you are lucky. Let’s even the playing field by upping the produce options and decreasing those processed foods that people buy instead of whole foods.
Third, vegetables have got to get their “sexy” on. If people don’t know how to cook it, or when it’s ripe enough to taste good, they won’t enjoy them and vegetables will be a burden rather than a pleasure. Making them cheap, or even free, will not lead to increased consumption if people lack the skills or interest. Let’s make carrots and apples and parsnips what your average 14 year-old wants to eat. Currently, there’s too much media in direct opposition to it and the grassroots movement is shattered into many pieces. Let’s come together to create a country where produce markets are once again in every neighborhoods and that’s where people meet to gossip, not the local mall.
Finally, if you make some thing cheap, people tend to devalue it. Specialty crops like fruits and vegetables typically requite a lot of labor, inputs (irrigation systems, soil amendments), and are perishable. We should really pay our farmer workers decent wages and support efforts to grow produce sustainably. As it is, a shocking portion of our national food supply is wasted: spoilage, cosmetic damage, prices to low to pay for harvesting, etc. We don’t need to further devalue our produce; we need to build a culture that favors it without popping it up on a pedestle with a crazy high price tag.
We can build a food system that favors healthy choices that prevent chronic diseases. Will making vegetables cheaper be a major puzzle piece in the effort? Unlikely. Other keys are more integral to our surroundings and the way we think. Overcoming them is more important than making your bag of carrots cost $0.20 less than it currently does. However, there is the potential that reaching out with cheaper prices to certain populations could be helpful. Targeted programs can combine information and skills-building with access and affordable or free produce; low-cost vegetable stands or trucks can reach out to neighborhoods in need. In the end, though, it will be a shift in the national mindset that will prioritize nutrition and health.
Sustainable Cooking for One 
Good points. We also need to END subsidies for meat and dairy and corn and put a “luxury tax” on them. Once the actual cost of those products reflect the real cost to society of heart disease and diabetes, we’ll start getting people’s attention.
Perhaps. I mean, right now, the extent of our national health costs that are based on diet-related disease is incredible. I don’t know the statistics offhand, but it’s already billions and billions of dollars annually in addition to the toll that disability takes on lives and communitties.
Very interesting post. I was at our community center today and saw a vending machine, filled with junk food. I thought about putting packets of carrots in instead, but then realized there’s a spoilage factor. But what about dried fruits instead of potato chips, and bags of nuts and seeds? And maybe we should be thinking about ways to dry vegetables so that they’re crunchy and fun–think of what people are doing with dried kale. I think you’re right about people not working at making vegetables delicious and also having all sorts of bad memories of being forced to eat things. Anyway, thanks again.
Definitely! Cooking vegetables well is essential. I had a college friend who thought she didn’t like asparagus because she had only ever had it in a cafeteria until I flash steamed some and tossed it with a little garlic and butter.
There are many better options, and we need to push for actual better options rather than “healthy” junk food. Dehydrated green beans, vegetable/whole grain crackers, cups of applesauce or cooked pears, and unsweetened tea in addition to nuts, seeds, and dried fruit. In my last job, unfortunately, all the “healthy” vending machine options were based on wheat!
Your argument is persuasive … to me, who already understood the poor showing produce gets in supermarkets. There are so many vegetables not available – sunchokes (Jerusalem artichokes), for one. None of the produce managers I talked to had even heard of it. There are some ethnic vegetables available in some stores, but unless I look them on the internet, I don’t how to use them. I remember than 1 is poisonous raw. The stores must think that only people who know the vegetable will buy it! That’s a bad assumption and could be dangerous.
As for cereals (are there any without sugar?), the variety is stunning but I see little to distinguish them, not even a variety of sizes to suit differently sized families. Of course, I am being disingenuous as even if only one child wants the sugar cocoa puffs, s/he will want the largest box because portion sizes are also out of control.
We have some ethnic produce markets but I don’t know what things are or how to use them. I asked an owner of an Asian store if he would consider giving tours explaining what items are, how to use and how to store. He was all embarrassed and said no, he couldn’t do that. Maybe I will approach him again and ask if someone will teach me and then let me give tours. I would like to use a handout with photos, recipes, storage, etc. Imagine the potential increase in his business and people’s expanded experiences.
I like both previous comments. In my area, schools are no longer allowed to provide junk food either in the cafeteria or vending machines. I am interested to see the results.
Exchange subsidies for a luxury tax – BRAVO. However I foresee lobby groups up in arms and greasing palms. Pagh … politics, special interest groups!
Do I call you Cherry? I would like to use some of your points with some of mine (or just your entire article if you prefer) in a letter to the editor of my local paper. No guarantee it would be published.
Please let me know your thoughts.
Offhand, I remember working on a project with a CSA put together from a group of immigrant farmers learning to grow in the Northeast that may have some helpful information (http://nesfp.nutrition.tufts.edu/ethnic_crops/crops.php and also see the newsletters). Certainly, handouts should be easy to find. In addition, there are a number of helpful webiste like Foodista and then there is always Wikipedia. But we could always create a blogger group with enough posts to do a virtual produce tour… a bit of a take the mystery photo and create a recipe deal.
Other people you could approach to set up tours would include nationality or ethnicity organizations, like a local Chinese or Vietnamese civic club, extension agents, cooking schools, or cookbook authors.
BTW, the most common poisonous vegetable (beyond mushrooms) is cassava. The variety that has the highest conentration of the cyanide compound is not sold in the US, although I don’t know about Canada or Europe. The sweet varieties of cassava just need to be boiled/cooked well to be safe.
I’m flattered you would be interested in adopting some strategies. Please do! I’m also in the process of working on a series of posts about the food environment and levels of engagement in widening spheres from the home to the world so keep an eye for more strategies.
Stephanie works pretty well… I haven’t mentioned it very often!
Great topic Stephanie. I am firmly on both sides of the fence. I agree with Nancy that the current subsidies being paid are driven by something much more primal than nutrition (aka greed) and that they have promulgated health issues which have resulted in exorbitant health care costs. But I do look to energy efficiency as a model that is working. Where I live, energy efficient measures such as higher SEER air conditioning units, sun shades, low e windows, audits, duct work, etc.. are all subsidized deeply. The result is that it’s moving the market and causing more people to take these measures resulting in less energy use. That was the goal. The downside is that the cost of these subsidies are socialized amongst almost all (low-income are exempt) so that if you don’t take advantage, you don’t get the benefit. The next question is the persistence factor – meaning that if you have subsidized costs in order to encourage consumption (or lack of in the case of energy), will the behaviors change once the subsidy is gone. That’s where education comes in and change management. It’s a complex issue.
I agree that produce should not be subsidized. I agree also that subsidies for corn, etc. would also be best done away with. There are cereals without sugar — oatmeal and rice puffs, for instance, but obviously not many.
It seems to me that to effect greater consumption of produce (and I presume you’re after its replacing less healthful things in the diet, not simply being an addition), people in our society need to fundamentally shift 2 major mindsets.
1. Recognition that we are what we eat, and those few things listed on nutrition labels only begin to describe what we eat, and eating healthier makes one healthier. I think one challenge with this is that how you are is your normal, and it’s hard to convince people even intellectually, much less emotionally, that they would feel enough better on a good diet that it would be worth the “sacrifice”. Part of this is getting people to take responsibility for their health and getting them to do something other than schluck another pill for whatever may ail them.
2. Shifting our value system, both time and money. We are just cheap! Our shopping is too impersonal. We no longer shop as a member of a mutually dependent community. When we shop at a grocery store, there is no hint that what we are buying has any connection to someone putting food on their table or shoes on their children’s feet. Food is so important, and producing it well should be rewarded, and in the long run, I think we will pay a much larger portion of our income for food and back off on STUFF, because our rate of consumption just cannot possibly be sustainable.
And we are lazy. Yes, many people have no idea how to prepare some vegetables, but carrots and apples are hard to mess up. Oranges and tomatoes, ditto. You’re right that there needs to be more education about how to cook well, but there are all those videos on YouTube, so help in learning to cook is much more accessible than just a decade ago. Families need to all pitch in and cook their own food and singles need to get over thinking it’s too time-consuming to cook just for themselves.
On the other hand, as a German teacher, I always fed students fresh fruit and vegetables, and invariably they devoured every bit and asked where I bought those apples and carrots (they were always organically grown), so if we can convince the shoppers of the superiority of produce, in my experience, your average pre- and teenager will eat fruits and vegetables.
And here in WV there is a program of $20 produce vouchers for senior citizens, which I think is a viable alternative to across the board subsidies, although $20 a year has always struck me as laughable if you’re truly trying to help people afford enough produce to affect their health. But it’s better than nothing.
From the ag perspective….those first-years haven’t yet learned the difference between counter-cyclical payments, direct subsidies, market loans, export subsidies, crop insurance, etc. 😉 I agree that fruits and vegetables should not be subsidized with the goal of making them cheaper. Definitely no long-term consumer-level subsidies. But at the farm level, specialty crop farmers should be supported and protected by the government. Until the market does that by itself, some subsidies to ensure they can make a living might not be a bad idea. We certainly don’t want any more small/medium fruit and veggie growers going out of business.
They were public health students though, who probably won’t ever learn various tangled webs of federal ag subsidies. I do agree, though, that production subsidies are quite different from the type of consumer price support I was discussing above. Great catch!