Affordability of Healthy Food

I quote from today's news as follows.

"When shoppers are struggling to pay the bills, they are understandably going to opt for a 2-litre bottle of soft drink at $2 rather than milk at $4."

Why don't these people give their children water to drink and spend the $2 they have on something that actually has some useful nutritional value? We are very fortunate in this country in that we have safe drinkable water available to all at very little cost so it makes good sense to use it and spend the available grocery money on actual food. Anyone got an opinion to share?

The push to have GST free "healthy food" was destined to fail from the start. Apart from corrupting what is a very simple tax to understand and collect with exceptions and inequalities, the definition of "healthy food" is an absolute minefield.

For example who is going to decide where bread products fail to be 'healthy" - wholegrain, wholemeal, brown, white, gluten free, croisants, burger buns, doughnuts, ...???
Milk products; Unpasteurised, homogenised, A2, UHT, milk powder, condensed milk, trim milk, flavoured milks, ice cream, butter (unsalted?), hard/soft/processed cheeses, yoghurt (frozen?), ...???
Meats; fresh, preservative treated, flavour enhancer added, sausages, smoked/dried, 'trim' cuts, mutton flap/pigs' trotters, offal, ...???

And as one politician argued, what about the health benefits of red wine?

There will always be people out there who are too stupid and/or lazy to eat what is good for them and taxation changes would make very little difference [!]

They do it in a big country like the UK, so why would it be more difficult to do here?

Good point, Organix, about the GST. When I began working in a supermarket many years ago we had varying rates of sales tax according to what category the item concerned was in. The correct category was sometimes difficult to determine. When GST was introduced, replacing the existing sales tax system, it all became simple.

i think also, that as we are all in some sort of rural setting we have access to milk, eggs, fruit, veg and at times alot of it, so we are having to be creative in how we use this produce and tend to cook well..unfortunately many younger people now havent a clue how to actually cook.. if it doesnt come out of a packet or tin, they seem totaly confused..realy good meals, filling, hot, nutritious can be had very cheaply.. with just a few veg and some rice...
i work in auckland city but live rurally.. and it amazes me the people i work with still buy their veg from supermarkets ( twice what it costs from a country fruit shop ) they will drive miles for a cafe breaky and coffee, why not a trip out to the country ( 30 mins ) and get good produce once a week..maybe i'm weird.. after all i am working my way thru a 1930's agricultural cookbook.. boy have we had some strange dinners .. if anyone has wallaby tail out there i have a recipe..

We also come from a country with different Gst. percentages. Even books have a reduced Gst. in Germany. But is this the right way? I don't think it is. Because it doesn't really have a big impact. Let say you only pay 7% on healthy food. Do you really think that this would make it 7% cheaper? Would the industry pass it on? And even if they pass it on, the difference of 8% from a $3.99 for a kg of tomatoes is 32 cents! So you have organic tomatoes for $3.99 and you have conventional tomatoes for $1.99. With a lower Gst. the healthy option would then cost you $3.67. What would the consumer buy?

I think Igor you already think into the right direction when you put soft drinks up against water. Food is one of the only products sold purely on price. Who would go and buy the cheapest TV set in the store? Or the cheapest washing machine. Without even thinking about functionality and price. But we go and buy the cheapest cheese, milk, bread, tomatoes etc.

The other thing is that the people who can't afford healthy food can afford Sky TV, mobile phones (multiple per person sometimes), gaming consoles, iPods, internet ... do I have to go on? I find that strange.

So what is the best way? Educating people? Reward them if they are healthy? I haven't seen a doctor for the last 5 years (not counting my hip replacement which wasn't really based on nutritional issues).

Not sure, who has ideas?

Cheers

Peter

Try buying Lactose fructose or Gluten free products.The price sucks.

Initially I supported the GST fresh fruit and veg idea but as you say Organix where do you draw the line. As an interesting side story I was buying corn on the cob one day at the supermarket and the teenage checkout girl had to ask what they were before working out the price!
Education is definately needed if a person can't recognise corn in it's husk!!!

Stephclark, my wife cooked a whole baby lamb for Sunday dinner for eight people last weekend. Is that in your book? Maybe someone on here will have access to wallaby tail if you ask.
The dream, I was buying fresh yeast a while back and the boy at the checkout asked me what we use it for. Education is definately called for.

thanks Igor.. i think i may give the wallabie a miss.. whole lamb roast wow! spectacular dinner i must say.. no this book seems to have very strange things in it.. like what to do with left over kids school lunches and how to turn them into a hot ( and realy yummy ) souflee thing..that can be served cold next day ..all good, stretch stretch stretch

igor and PeterNZ - yes the whole coke vs milk is an interesting one...and as you point out PeterNZ, sometimes people who supposedly can't afford healthy food have more mod cons than you can poke a stick at. I think it comes down to peoples priorities or what they perceive as priorities - I must admit though, that I can fall into the "can't afford" or "bad priority" category sometimes by choosing to still afford my bottle of wine [:0][])

Stephclark - the way my kids left over school lunches come home they are only suitable for the pigs [!] I've taken the tough approach now and one son only gets a sandwich and a piece of fruit because I'm so sick of wasted food [}]

igor - what did you wife cook the whole lamb in??? Do you have a huge oven? I'm not a huge meat eater so am a bit ignorant in cooking meat - especially lamb...in fact I cooked my first lamb cut last week and apparently it tasted good - I didn't try it.

Knowing what the wholesale prices are for quite a few products - conventional versus organic for instance - I would suspect that the retailers would pocket the lower GST rate anyway. It is so unfair that healthy alternatives are so much more expensive.

However, when I see certain people who squeeze 25 tomatoes before putting one into their trolley I can understand - there is so much waste because who wants to buy a squishy tomato that has been fingered by 100 people? Much easier with tins they all look the same.

We drink water and all our kids drink water, too. There is no point in telling your kid to drink water or milk if you drink coffee or beer and no water.

The savings are phenomenal. We live on 1 income and we live better than many of the people we know who have twice that money coming in. But - I cook from basic ingredients which I often buy directly, we grow a lot ourselves, I bake - both bread and cakes - and we don't have fancy gadgets. If we can't afford it we don't buy it. It's as simple as that.

If we want to buy something we want but don't really need we save the money until we can pay cash for it. If there is an unexpected bill - we have to wait a bit longer. It works - I can vouch for that. That's one thing my parents taught me I really think was useful.

Thing is we can discuss this here as much as we like. I think it is rather pointless. Because most people here are here for the good life. It is people who live in cities and eat at McD and other such places who need to change. And you won't reach them.

Where we lived before they started a course on gardening and planted a community garden. Nobody was picking the vegies. Asking people why they walk past free food every day they answered "We wouldn't know what to do with it"

The way we eat is driving up the health cost. If people would eat properly we wouldn't have that many sick people. It is in the millions we could save in health cost.

To be honest I know how to solve this problem for myself. And other people know this as well. The people where it would be more important do not know and even worse, they do not care. What difference does it make if we people here eat healthier? For us it makes a big difference, for others it doesn't.

We would need something like Jamie Oliver's Ministry of Food in New Zealand. We need a food revolution! We need to tell the system we are all sick of the crap they feed us. We need to stop buying that shit. Then something would change! But we won't do it because - see above - food is sold via price. The cheapest is the best! But the best can't be cheap. That's the Rock - Hard Place situation we are in.

Cheers

Peter

Agree, Peter.

It has a very interesting twist, too: Feed your population with shit and they won't have the energy to protest against what the government is doing - at times.

And another downside is that a population that largely doesn't have the knowledge, ability or energy to feed itself from basic ingredients is pretty much helpless (and very quickly militant) when the food supply line is stalled by a disaster. Supermarkets carry only 3 days' stock so it doesn't take much []