Health Facts: Is Cheap Food Worth It?

by Dan Allgyer, Amish farmer

We live in a world in which that which is fast and convenient is seen as most important. Not surprisingly, much food in America is consumed in vehicles.

Food is also often something many people don't want to spend money on. Most of us dream about buying that car, horse, shed - or going on that next dream trip. We save money and work extra hours to achieve it.

But who wakes up in the morning and dreams of buying food? We usually buy food because we are hungry, and because we need it to stay alive. Most of the time, we grudgingly part with the money we spend on food, and we don't spend more than we have to — because it feels like the money we spent on food is taking money away from what we really want to buy.

This can be a mindset that is hard to overcome, as our minds are now geared to think this way. Most people (including me) who are sourcing food directly are doing so because of health issues. This puts food in a different category, because now we're buying it for safety reasons, and not just for physiological reasons. This makes it a little easier to justify paying the extra price and going the extra mile, but it still goes against our learned instinct - an instinct not to put a lot of time and money into something we don't even really want to deal with (food).

I think this is the number one reason our food has become fast, cheap, and convenient. In my opinion, it is not the government, drug industry, or whoever else I hear getting the blame all the time. I think the issue is that this is what consumers asked for, and like any good business, the food industry responded to it, and did the best they could to supply what the customer was asking for.

Around the early to mid 1900s, most of the food inspection and food safety rules and regulations were written and put in place. This was because it was the beginning of mass scale food production, and a lot of very dirty games were being played. Food was being processed and handled in large volumes in very dirty and unsafe environments. People started getting sick and dying from these things. Most people did not want to spend the time and effort to source their food. They wanted it cheap, convenient, and safe. So they complained to the government, and that is how all these regulations came to be. This was also in the government’s best interest at that time, because, not only were they making the people happy by taking control of their food safety, they could also control the food dollar this way.

This was a real win-win situation for the government, and it did not take them long to figure out that they had the “bull by the horns”. This is around the time that factory poultry, pig, and dairy facilities started to pop, and “get big or get out” became the cry. Since the government had this fantastic food safety program in place, no one bothered to question any of these practices. It made everyone happy that they could buy cheap food conveniently and did not have to worry about the food being safe to eat.

This all made everyone's life easier, as now they could spend more time and money on the things in life they really wanted to spend time and money on. What a great system they thought this was - so different from the way it used to be in the old days, when they had to find a farmer that could grow it for them, and then they also had to make sure it was processed in a clean safe environment.

Most of you reading this were born in this era, and this is the way we grew up and were taught to think. As humans, we often will not change our mind until we are forced to. This forcible change of mind is exactly what is now happening to a lot of people because of health issues. Most of you know that since this original big food system was put into place, a lot of things have changed — GMOs, antibiotics, herbicides, and a whole host of other things have been implemented since then. These things were all tested by the food safety people, and we are assured that they are perfectly safe. By now, we are around 100 years into the regulatory system, and it has come so far off track, it’s not even about food safety anymore. The dollar has become the driving factor behind it all.

When I look at this story of our history, I see several things. The first point I want to make is that the reason the regulations got put in place to begin with was simply because of a problem we still have. People did not value food enough to want to spend time and money sourcing it. I htink that if we don't learn to value food, we will forever struggle with the idea of spending the extra time and money it takes to buy clean, healthy food. I also pose this question: Where are you going to live if you wear out your body putting cheap, convenient food into your body (which you did because you had more important things that needed to be done)?

The second thing I want to bring up is problem we still have today. Instead of getting upset, going to the government, and complaining and raising a big fuss about the way food is getting handled, everyone should just quit buying that food. Those places would then go out of business, and all the dirty players would be out of the game. With that, I just want to encourage everyone to look on the positive side of things.

We can't help that our food isn't safe to eat and that the government got way off track. We also can't help that animals are raised in a factory and getting mistreated. We can get all worked up about this, raise a big fuss, and loose lots of sleep, but we probably won't make a hoot of difference, and we will only harm our health even more because we're being negative. Or, we can just roll up our sleeves and get to work and by getting to work I mean, even if it sucks and we don't have time and money and we just simply don't feel like dealing with it, we can quit giving those guys money and buy our food local! If everyone would do, this small family farms would once again dot the country side. More children would grow up in a family farm setting with happy memories of farm life. And unsafe food would disappear.

It’s not that we couldn't grow enough food to feed the world this way, its just we couldn't grow it in a way that people don't have to go to any bother thinking about how and where their food is grown. Meals would also have to be planned and prepared in advance.

We may not be able to change the food system, but we can change how we eat.