The health costs of high food prices

Sharply higher food prices are not making headlines as much as the high price of gas and oil, but are squeezing working people’s budgets all the same. Making ends meet is harder than ever and higher food prices can mean flat-out hunger for millions with the lowest incomes.

Food pantries and meal programs report many more people requesting help, but with lower donations, smaller budgets and higher costs, the pantries cannot make up the difference.

Elderly people with inadequate food are at risk of wasting, meaning they are more likely to get sick or even die from infections like flu and pneumonia. Infants and young children are also at risk for illness as well as long-term impact on physical and mental development.

Those with the lowest incomes are forced to live in the most polluted neighborhoods with the fewest services and have the least access to medical attention.

The missed or inadequate meals will have both immediate and long-term health effects on the most vulnerable people. In addition to the anxiety and pain that many feel right now, the long-term health impact could become an even greater crisis.

Those with low- or even middle-income jobs are also feeling the need to cut back on what they spend for food. Ironically, for some this will increase their risk of obesity, which means an accumulation of excess fat on the body.

Although obesity may seem to be the opposite of hunger, because the individual is over the average weight, it is really another type of malnutrition. Obesity does not arise simply from eating too much food. It is often about the type of food.

If one compares the amount of calories per pound of food, those with more calories per pound, called calorie-dense, tend to be cheaper and at the same time often less healthful. Industrialized agriculture and the economics of agribusiness make grains like corn and wheat cheaper than fruit and vegetables.

The long-term health effects of obesity are well known. Obesity is a major factor in the development of diabetes, which in turn is the single biggest risk factor for heart disease and stroke. Obesity has also been linked directly to heart disease, some cancers and other chronic conditions.

A recent report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) showed a continued rise in obesity, including among adolescents and younger children. Some media outlets noted that the states listed with the highest levels of obesity were primarily in the South and Southwest. What they did not note, however, was that those states with the highest rates of obesity are the states with the highest proportions of families living in poverty.

Nutritionists have long pointed to the widespread use of high fructose corn syrup as a contributor to the obesity epidemic. High fructose corn syrup along with refined wheat flour, animal fats and palm oils are very high in calories per pound but low in other nutrients or fiber.

Even though fast food is not really cheap, because it is loaded with high calorie sugars, fillers, fats and oils, the cost per calorie is lower. As people try to keep control of their spending on food, they will be pressured to choose the cheaper, calorie-dense foods over the healthier whole foods.

Similarly, schools providing lunch programs and other institutions providing meals, many of which had been trying to improve the nutritional quality of what they serve, will now be under cost pressure to return to the high-fat, high-sugar/carbohydrate offerings.

The high price of oil has pushed up food prices by increasing costs of transportation and fertilizers. Transporting the heavier whole foods like fruits and vegetables is making these costs go up even higher.

But perhaps a larger part of the price increases is based on the rise of biofuel, which in the U.S. is primarily ethanol. Ethanol is a type of alcohol, like whiskey or vodka, which is fermented and distilled from corn sugar.

Biofuel is very expensive to produce and actually consumes more energy, primarily coal, than it yields. It was developed by agribusiness giant Archer-Daniels Midland as a way to get the government to subsidize corn prices and to give ADM huge contracts to produce ethanol to achieve “energy independence from foreign oil.”

So for years ADM funneled money to politicians who in turn bought more and more ethanol and just warehoused it. But there was too much to store and ADM got the government to “mandate” that gasoline include ethanol even though it actually increased the cost of gasoline. As oil and gas prices went through the roof, ethanol and other biofuels became economically more attractive.

More and more corn is being diverted away from food processing and more and more land is being devoted to corn for ethanol. Similar diversions of land and crops for biofuels are taking place in Brazil and elsewhere, leading to less available food and higher prices.

A United Nations report recently called biofuels a “crime against humanity.”

Even though the price of corn, and therefore high fructose corn syrup, has jumped up, it still is cheaper relative to other, healthier foodstuffs, which have to compete with the cheaper foods for land and transportation.

As a result, hunger and malnutrition are climbing side by side in the U.S. and around the world. The long-term health consequences for millions here and billions worldwide will be severe.

Agribusiness, the oil monopolies and the banks that control both will make ever greater profits at the expense of everyone else until people are able to take back control of the natural produce and resources now in private hands.

Hillel Cohen is a Doctor of Public Health.