This is from a U.S.-centric viewpoint, though insights from other countries are appreciated.
Nearly every article on the topic says healthy food is 1.5-2x+ the cost of UPFs and other foods generally viewed as unhealthy. That hasn’t been my personal experience at all, bit clearly there is more to the story – because every source on the internet contradicts my opinion.
Groceries are pricey and it’s hard to budget as a single person because of portion sizes. Even so, foods like poultry and vegetables are far cheaper to cook at home than to buy at a restaurant or (from a nutritional perspective) the frozen foods section at Kroger.
Some foods – like certain kinds of beef or fish – are either similar to or slightly cheaper to get a restaurant or frozen food item as opposed to making healthier types at home.
I guess some fruits are kinda pricey and eating healthy is a challenge in a food desert, but otherwise I’d spend so much more on UPFs as opposed to buying whole foods.
What part of the story am I missing?
In: Economics
In the 1970s, to combat rising food prices, the US government started subsidizing corn. To incentivize growing corn, they offered to buy any unsold corn for a set price. This worked great to lower grocery prices during a time of inflation (sound familiar?) but it created perverse incentive to grow more corn than needed. The end result was scientists figure out ways to process corn into cheap ingredients for other foods. The quintessential processed corn product is high fructose corn syrup, which finds is ubiquitous in the ingredient lists of processed foods.
For more information, read the first section of In Defense of Food by Michael Pollen
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