Another excerpt from "Animal Vegetable Miracle," Barbara Kingsolver's 2007 book:

Nobody should need science to prove the obvious, but plenty of studies do show that regularly eating cheaply produced fast food and processed snack foods slaps on extra pounds that increase the risks of diabetes, cardiovascular harm, joint problems, and many cancers. As a country we're officially over the top: The majority of our food dollars buy those cheap calories, andd most of our citizens are medically compromised by weight and inactivity. The incidence of obesity-associated diabetes has more than doubled since 1990, with children the fastest-growing class of victims. ... One out of every three dollars we spend on health care, by some recent estimates, is paying for the damage of bad eating habits. One out of every seven specically pays to assuage (but not cure) the mulitple heartbreaks of diabetes — kidley failure, stokes, blindness, amputated limbs. [Page 116]

This paragraph, coming a just a few words after the previous one, underlines the false economy of choosing what we eat based primarily on cost. If it were any other commodity, that might be more defensible, but food is by far the one commodity that determines health, vigor, longevity. It is just staggering to realize that this obvious fact has become so undervalued: You can get a pretty good deal on a truckload of sawdust, but you wouldn't eat it just because it was cheap.

Come to think of it, I do believe that if the processed-food industry could doctor it up with enough fat, salt, and refined sugar to mask sawdust's essential unpalateability, I do believe it would. These are, after all, the same forces that fed ground up offal to animals that would become our food until it was proven it caused Mad Cow Disease.

I don't say that economy mustn't be a factor in food choices — I just made clear that I still give cost great weight, in spite of myself. But I do say that it can't be the only factor, or even the dominant one. It's quite obvious that if we do, we'll end up paying quite a lot more, in doctor's fees and hospital bills.