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. 

What is "processed food"??

Inspired by Scott's post about dinner last night:

Although I should be eating processed foods less (WSJ article) I still can't resist a delicious italian sausage or brat every now and then. 

Sometimes I think that the "processed food" argument is as vague as a food label claiming its product has "no preservatives." Does it have salt? Yes? Then it has at least one preservative. I get that there are a lot of artificial preservatives out there that can generally be bad, but food preservation is practical for reasons which should be all too obvious. (Well, they should be obvious, but in a world populated by meaningless (but probably effective) marketing slogans like "all natural" and "no artificial flavorings," I'm cynical about people's awareness of the food they eat.)

Anyway, back to processed food. Most food has been processed in some way. Whether it's the "fresh" tomatoes in the produce section (that have been ripened with chemicals) or apples coated in wax, or flour that was milled from grains, most of the "whole" ingredients we think of are not free from our industrial food supply. Sausages are processed by combining various cuts of meats and seasoning in a grinder.

So it really comes down to: what level of processing are you willing to accept in the food that you eat? I'm at ease with most old-world processing techniques, like sausage-making. Contrast that with a bag of M&Ms, which start with corn that is macerated in some esoteric manufacturing process, some of whose by-products are then transformed into a syrupy concoction, which is then used by Mars to sweeten their cocoa, which is then coated with more corn syrup and God-knows-what kind of coloring. And along the way, there are various preservatives, stabilizers, and flavorings added as well.

The lines we draw for ourselves are iffy at best, and our rules are regularly broken. I try my best to avoid "processed foods" as well, but I mean it in the sense that I'm going to avoid those M&Ms, and have myself some fresh sausage.