Mathematically Finding The Biggest Nutritional Bang For Your Buck
Studies have shown once again that when it comes to cost cutting, diets inevitably suffer. Researchers from University of Washington’s Center for Public Health Nutrition analyzed the USDA’s “Thrifty Food Plan” (TFP) and found it, well, lacking. TFP basically takes the USDA’s healthy eating pyramid and puts it on a tight budget. The researchers Adam Drewnowski and Petra Eichelsdoerfer count the ways in which the thrifty food plan fails:
Money saving food plans, created using computer optimization programs, typically lead to energy rich but nutrient poor diets. Whenever saving money was given precedence over good nutrition, the resulting food plans were high in cereals, sugars and fats. Simultaneously, these diets lacked lean meats, dairy products, vegetables and fruit. These food plans not only lacked variety, they were also low on taste and enjoyment.
They point out that, unfortunately, this plan is the way of life for all too many:
Not by coincidence, [these food plans] resembled the typical diets eaten by America’s poor. Perhaps the time has come to acknowledge that most people eat the foods affordable to them, that is, they make the best of the options available.
Drewnowski and Eichelsdoerfer have an answer to this. It’s another computer optimization program. However, unlike the USDA’s model, it is has a focus on nutrient content as well as calories. The program profiles 9 positive nutrients (protein, fiber, vitamin A, C and E, calcium, iron, potassium, and magnesium) and 3 that should be limited (added sugar, fat, and salt). In addition, it compares that ratio to market price data in order to come up with an “energy cost” or Nutrient Rich Food (NRF) index. Thanks to the NRF, the healthiest, biggest bang for your buck will be easier to define.
Focusing on revising the dietary guidelines to use the NRF index should be a short-term solution. It’s a bandage on the gash of the pricing realities that make processed foods more economical in terms of pure caloric intake.
Well, what would happen if those subsidies foodies are always harping about were removed? This is thought to be a good thing, but it won’t be pretty in the short-term. Processed food costs would go up and the average cost fruits and vegetables probably wouldn’t be effected right away. So, everyone would be screwed over in healthy eating. Ideally, in the long term, the lack of incentive to grow one thing cause farmers to branch out into producing more fruits and vegetables.
It would be best to roll back subsidies at the same time as going full force on advertising the Nutrient Rich Food index. It should be updated continuously, use local pricing data, interactive, and be available in the places people get food. If and when subsidies on the big five are dropped, the NRF would be a definite help to people of low to moderate incomes during the inevitable, tumultuous reconstruction of the food industry.
May 20, 2009
Tags: food, Health, innovation, nutrition, subsidies Posted in: Health, Science & Technology
3 Responses
“Perhaps the time has come to acknowledge that most people eat the foods affordable to them, that is, they make the best of the options available.”
….Yeah, no shit…I’m glad millions of dollars in studies and expertise have yielded this very obscure result….
Why has it taken them so loooong….
Actually, that’s the sad part of this story. A ton of studies have replicated these findings over the years. Sometimes a food writer or journalist happens upon the info and exposes the simplicity underlying the obesity problem–that healthy foods are more expensive these days and poorer people must choose the cheaper, less healthy foods just to get the calories they need. Yet, most of these findings just languish in academic journals.
The foodies and health researchers understand the problem, but the knowledge hasn’t reached a tipping point. I’m sure the industrial food companies (makers of all the cheap, unhealthy foods) try their best to keep this info under wraps and/or make legislators think it would be too hard to amend the food price gap. Yet, there’s a simple solution: GET RID OF THE SUBSIDIES!
But I’ve been hearing about “their findings” and “the research results” for a while now. Undoubtedly, so have legislators…so I def. agree with you that our current state stems from the “industrial food companies (makers of all the cheap, unhealthy foods)” have more funding to lobby.
Hehe…maybe I’ll lobby against them?
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