Give Me Liberty, Or Give Me Freshly Picked Arugala!

Ezra's not quite right when he writes about the effect of subsidies on how and what we eat.

Obviously, he is right in saying that the subsidies have a big effect on keeping down the price of American meat and dairy products, without concomitant effects on the prices of fresh produce. And I would be completely in favor of shifting some of these subsidies around so as to use price signaling to encourage healthier eating habits.

However, absent some sort of confiscatory or punishment-oriented tax scheme, it's always going to be the case that a good salad costs more than a Big Mac. Or most other processed food, for that matter.

Fresh food is hard to deal with, as a seller. Produce, in particular, has a very high water content, so the food is big, and heavy, and takes up a lot of space on a per-calorie basis. Fresh produce is tender, sensitive to bumps, bruises, and doesn't generally come in convenient square packaging so that it can be stacked on a shelf for maximally productive use of space (although there are exceptions.)

Processed, packaged foods, on the other hand, can be prepared in mass quantities, packaged conveniently, and shipped under any conditions. McDonalds is just the epitome of this system, preparing fries basically in the potato fields in Idaho, then freeze-drying them and sending them off to be reconstituted into food-like items by your friendly neighborhood high school dropout.

So let's not kid ourselves. Almost no matter how we try and build subsidies, it's always going to be easier, faster, and cheaper to eat processed foods. If we're going to change that system, it will have to be through education, not easy economic tricks.