Why is Obesity a Problem in the U.S.?
Conspiracy(?): Food manufacturers want to raise the price of healthy food.
That might sound a bit weird, because nowadays healthy food doesn't seem to cost that much. (I mean healthy enough, not extremely healthy like everything organic.)
I have another conjecture... Read only if you're interested. It's long.
I think that delicious food in this country is more unhealthy than delicious food in some other countries because local ingredients aren't suitable for making tasty & (somewhat) healthy food due to geographical factors. Good ingredients must be imported, but the import process is so complicated, and that raises the price of final product exceedingly.
Maybe it's more like I'm complaining, but ... yes, I'm actually complaining. This is the export situation of Thailand. Many types of produce aren't allowed to be exported to the U.S. unless they go through some expensive processes which can't be done without buying expensive machines. Of course, these machines must be imported, either from the U.S. or from some European countries. If we were to build these machines in Thailand, they must pass a whole bunch of tests. This is reasonable, but again, in order to pass these tests, materials used to build these machines must pass certain requirements, and the whole process of building these machines must also be certified. As a consequence, we must import these materials into Thailand and hire certified workers and inspectors. For sure we don't have enough certified workers and inspectors in Thailand, so most of the time they have to come from ... "developed" countries. Maybe it's easier to just import the machines. Whichever way we choose, it's more likely that we lose more than gain, and that explains why very few kinds of food are exported from Thailand to the U.S.. I believe this same situation happens in other "developing" countries also.
So, what happens here is that good-tasting food is either costly or unhealthy. Equivalently said, healthy food is either bad-tasting or overpriced. According to my one-year experience in the U.S., a bowl of cereal should be considered palatable among semi-healthy food.
I think this makes some sense in explaining why a large number of Americans prefer junk food. It's cheap and tasty.
That might sound a bit weird, because nowadays healthy food doesn't seem to cost that much. (I mean healthy enough, not extremely healthy like everything organic.)
I have another conjecture... Read only if you're interested. It's long.
I think that delicious food in this country is more unhealthy than delicious food in some other countries because local ingredients aren't suitable for making tasty & (somewhat) healthy food due to geographical factors. Good ingredients must be imported, but the import process is so complicated, and that raises the price of final product exceedingly.
Maybe it's more like I'm complaining, but ... yes, I'm actually complaining. This is the export situation of Thailand. Many types of produce aren't allowed to be exported to the U.S. unless they go through some expensive processes which can't be done without buying expensive machines. Of course, these machines must be imported, either from the U.S. or from some European countries. If we were to build these machines in Thailand, they must pass a whole bunch of tests. This is reasonable, but again, in order to pass these tests, materials used to build these machines must pass certain requirements, and the whole process of building these machines must also be certified. As a consequence, we must import these materials into Thailand and hire certified workers and inspectors. For sure we don't have enough certified workers and inspectors in Thailand, so most of the time they have to come from ... "developed" countries. Maybe it's easier to just import the machines. Whichever way we choose, it's more likely that we lose more than gain, and that explains why very few kinds of food are exported from Thailand to the U.S.. I believe this same situation happens in other "developing" countries also.
So, what happens here is that good-tasting food is either costly or unhealthy. Equivalently said, healthy food is either bad-tasting or overpriced. According to my one-year experience in the U.S., a bowl of cereal should be considered palatable among semi-healthy food.
I think this makes some sense in explaining why a large number of Americans prefer junk food. It's cheap and tasty.
posted by Tunococ at Sunday, July 01, 2007
2 comments
