The age old stereotype of college students living off ramen noodles, stealing food from cafeterias and snacking on leftovers used to be considered a charming quirk of being young and in college. However, this dependence on cheap, unhealthy food is now a devastating reality for college students and many American families due to the expense of health foods.
Huffington Post shared an article stating that most people believe the inability to eat healthily is due to economic hardship, and science backs that up.
The article states that unhealthy food is approximately $1.50 cheaper per day, which adds up to about $550 cheaper eating per year, when compared to healthier food. While I agree with these articles for the most part, the math still does not seem to add up—health foods should not cost so much more.
I have a Flex plan here at Mississippi State University worth $350 per semester. However, just by trying to eat healthier on campus I have already spent $150 in just the first three weeks of school.
Recently, I was in the Colvard Student Union and came across a salad that looked delicious, but lo and behold it was almost nine dollars.
As I looked at the ingredients list, I became angry. I know that every vegetable in that salad costs approximately 99 cents at Kroger, just five miles away from campus. The salad was $8.29, and it should have been $4.50.
So what is going on, exactly? Why is a nutritious salad (that does not even come with dressing) almost nine dollars, but fried chicken, Diet Coke and fries cost a mere seven dollars?
Thetexastandard.org says that we need to forget the jokes about poor college students’ diets because things have actually gotten too bad. The article claimed that some Texas Universities have been spurred to open food pantries for their students.
A reporter at the Texas Tribune, Mathew Watkins, has been covering this story and claims that there are two main factors that contribute to this ongoing problem.
“It’s a relatively new thing, most of the ones in Texas have opened in recent years,” Watkins said. “The combination of the rising costs of college and also a kind of a stepped-up effort by universities to get more lower-income students into school means that there is just a higher number of students on campus that need this kind of help these days.”
Watkins makes a valid point and while I understand that this piece was targeted more towards the price of college overall, I still believe it helps my case. Select universities are opening food pantries for its students, but somehow people still are not opening their eyes and seeing the real problem. Healthy eating really does cost us more, no matter who you are, when it should not.
According to The New York Times, researchers at the University of Washington found that when they compared the prices of 370 foods sold at supermarkets in the Seattle area, calorie for calorie, junk foods not only cost less than fresh produce, but the prices of unhealthier foods are also not likely to rise due to inflation.
The scientists decided to take an unusual approach to this experiment by comparing the price of a calorie in a junk food compared to the price of a calorie in a healthier meal.
While fresh produce, like fruits and vegetables are higher in national value, they have fewer calories. However, food with a higher calorie density, such as baked goods and pasties, somehow cost less.
The survey found that higher-calorie, energy-dense foods are a better bargain for cash-strapped shoppers, like college students and young adults. The article claimed that energy-dense foods cost $1.76 per 1,000 calories while it costs nearly $18.76 per 1,000 calories for low-energy, nutritious food.
So, to sum things up: the fewer calories we consume, the more we pay, however the more calories we consume, the less we pay.
Anyone could go to the closest super market and compare the price of lettuce to the price of Oreos and see that one is cheaper than the other.
However, in my opinion, through research and personal eating habits, I do not fully agree that fresh produce truly costs more than unhealthy, processed foods.
I believe that we have been convinced to believe that fresher, healthier options cost more to keep us in a system that thrives off of our obesity.
As long as kale and spinach cost 99 cents, we should never have to spend nine dollars on a salad. As students, we deserve better. As moms, dads or guardians we deserve better for ourselves and our children.
We deserve to have a system that ensures we do not fail in keeping up our own health. We need a system that offers us an abundance of nutritious food, better health, and longer lives.
