Speed and Soda, We're All Glutons (UPDATED)

According to a new study:

In the Seattle area, a region with an average obesity rate of about 20 percent, only about 4 percent of shoppers who filled their carts at Whole Foods Market stores were obese, compared with nearly 40 percent of shoppers at lower-priced Albertsons stores.

That’s likely because people willing to pay $6 for a pound of radicchio are more able to afford healthy diets than people stocking up on $1.88 packs of pizza rolls to feed their kids, the study’s lead author suggested. 

“If people wanted a diet to be cheap, they went to one supermarket,” said Adam Drewnowski, a University of Washington epidemiology professor who studies obesity and social class. “If they wanted their diet to be healthy, they went to another supermarket and spent more."

This doesn't surprise me. It's an achievement, in a sense, that food scientists have been able to make calories as cheap as they are, meaning fewer people starve. But those cheap calories make people fat and sick.

But this graf caught me as bizarre:

Instead, he contends it’s because healthy, low-calorie foods cost more money and take more effort to prepare than processed, high-calorie foods. In a separate study two years ago, Drewnowski estimated that a calorie-dense diet cost $3.52 a day compared with $36.32 a day for a low-calorie diet. 

$36/day for a "low-calorie" diet? I don't question that cheap calories are as cheap as they claim, but I'd be curious to know what they consider a low calorie diet, and why it costs so much. I contend that it's entirely feasible to eat healthy for $10-20/day, possibly less. That's still prohibitively expensive compared to a calorie-dense diet, but you don't actually have to shop at Whole Foods to not be fat.

UPDATE

I could only track down the report's summary, which doesn't mention how they arrived at their figures for diet costs. However, I did come across this interesting infographic:

But the averages for the higher-end stores is because they carrier more high-end products. How do costs of their low-end products compare to the costs of low-end products at Safeway or Albertson's? In my experience, Safeway tends to be hideously overpriced. But purchasing from the bulk food sections of nicer supermarkets can be very economical for some products.

I'm getting off topic. But glancing at the chart again, notice how, not including Fred Meyer, fruit and vegetables prices don't vary to highly at many of those stores.

On another interesting note, the study also finds evidence that "food desserts" are not necessarily to blame for lack of nutrition. The study reports that people chose a supermarket based on price, not on proximity to where they lived.