I ran across a cite for this just this afternoon – but it’s at the office. I’ll try and retrieve it and post it tomorrow.
The answer is that Americans spend an extremely low amount of their disposable income on food – IIRC about 10%. Hence “cheap food.”
And here’s the cite (warning: pdf)
The comparative tables start at page 91.
Bad food is cheaper to make. See high fructose corn syrup and partially hydrogenated soybean oil. Generally - more bang for the manufacturer’s buck, more shelf life for the product, more poor lardasses.
Just an input: One thing you have to keep in mind when talking about food prices is that these prices are influenced by a number of factors, but supply and demand on a free market is one of the less important ones. Both the U.S. and the European Union heavily subsidize their farmers, both directly and indirectly, and usually these subsidies have the effect of pushing prices up. Intervention prices which trigger public purchases of produce which nobody needs, quota regulations, etc. In the industrial nations, even high-quality food would most likely be cheaper if the agricultural markets were free from state intervention.
Hmm, I wonder if the rest of the country has this? Or is it just a New England thing?
I’ll probably forget by next Passover, but I’ve heard the Mexican markets carry the little bottles hecho en Mexico with real sugar.
Mmmm, real Coke…
It’s been almost 30 yrs since I lived in London for two years, but there was a very different culture of shopping that I think makes a difference. In that day, most people shopped for food daily and fresh foods predominated. I made a daily run to the butcher or fishmonger and a stop at the open air fruit and veg market for my food. I rarely bought processed foods at all and I think most Brits did the same. Even the convenience foods from Marks and Sparks were really fresh foods preparred daily and packaged ready to go for convenience.
Contrast that to the average American MegaMart with row after row of processed and packaged foods with just a relatively small area devoted to fresh foods.
I was at the market last weekend and there was a woman who had to be pushing 400 lbs in the line in front of me with her overweight little girl and she was buying boxes of sugar coated cereal and bags of candy. I remember thinking that little girl is doomed and it’s mom that’s teaching her poor food choices from the get-go. A shame, really.