The Vote With Your Dollar Argument + Why Nutrition Education is Key to Making Informed Food Choices
I reposted a story on IG a while back that sparked some pushback.
(Which, by the way, I welcome with open arms. I want to hear views that are different from my own, especially from peers in the industry.)
The Tea:
The original story was from Mona Sharma, a Nutritionist whom I deeply admire and respect in the wellness space. She posted a collage of photos of the aisles of ultra-processed food in grocery stores.
The caption said:
This spoke to me, so I decided to screenshot and shared it on my store and added to the conversation by saying:
My intention behind reposting it was to get people thinking about the role we play in the food system and the products that are made available to us.
The “Vote With Your Dollar” Argument Explained
In a democracy, we have the right to vote for the change we wish to see in the world based on our core values and belief system. When it comes to food, it’s the same idea—every dollar we spend at the grocery store is a vote for the food we wish to eat.
Spending your dollars on ultra-processed foods is a vote for cheap, highly addictive foods that are made from nutrient-depleted grains, sugar, and artificial ingredients. Contrarily, spending your dollars on fruits, vegetables, meats, eggs, whole grains, nuts, seeds, and legumes is a vote for WHOLE, real, nourishing foods.
We Have The Power to Move Markets
Big Food is always listening. They invest in what the people want because, ultimately, that’s what’s going to make them the most money. So, if we buy real foods over ultra-processed foods, the more likely Big Food will make that real, nourishing, whole foods readily available.
We’ve seen this play out with the low-fat movement of the 90s and with the explosion of gluten-free, dairy-free, vegan, and plant-based product sales in the last decade. The gluten-free products market, for example, is expected to be worth $10.96 billion by 2029.
The Challenges with the “Vote With Your Dollar” Argument: Modern-Day Life Gets in the Way
Our fast-paced, on-the-go modern-day lifestyle has put cooking our food at home on the back burner. We’ve replaced it with low-cost convenience foods that take little to no effort to prepare. This might seem like a fair trade, but alas, it is far from it.
It has come with a great sacrifice—of us completely losing connection to our food and where it comes from.
Busy, working parents have so much on their plates that the thought of grocery shopping, preparing, and cooking food for themselves and their families on top of everything else seems overwhelming.
And, in a capitalist society, when there’s a problem, the industry tends to step in with a quick-fix solution. With food, the answer was to remove the major hurdles: the amount of time and thought it takes to cook a meal.
They did this by making super cheap, highly addicting processed food products that can sit on the pantry shelf for months without spoiling. I don’t think food companies knew it at the time, but now the evidence is clear. These food products wind up hijacking our biochemistry, creating inflammation, and causing chronic disease.
The worst part? The majority of Americans don’t make this connection. We have no idea that we’ve fallen victim to this system. We have become so disconnected from what makes us human that we can’t even identify the relationship between what we eat and how we feel. So, of course, we opt for convenience because in our mind, there’s no other way.
Addressing The Push Back and My Stance on the “Vote With Your Dollar” Post
Here’s the pushback I received from the “vote with your dollar” post:
“What do you tell families who rely on these foods because it’s what they can afford and their working 2 jobs just to keep a roof over their head?....I think there’s more we can do then blame companies who make convenience foods.”
I have a lot of empathy for people that are in this financial situation, and I hope that this would be a case where the government would step in with SNAP or WIC assistance.
However, although these are extremely difficult life circumstances, I do not think it's fair to assume that this population does not have the power to make healthy food choices, because there are better options out there.
To say that lower-income of individuals have to figure out how to safely rely on eating cheap, ultra-processed food is, in my opinion, part of the problem.
Everyone deserves access to good, healthy, nourishing foods—and they’re out there.
Don’t believe me?
In the SMILES trial, a randomized controlled trial of dietary improvement for adults with major depression, participants instructed to eat a Mediterranean diet spent, on average, $26 less than their cohorts who ate a Standard American Diet—AND 32 percent of the people in the intervention group achieved full remission.
Pretty crazy, right?
Breaking The Stigma
There’s a stigma that you have to buy organic, grass-fed, or pasture-raised in order to eat healthily, but that’s simply not the case.
Eating conventional whole foods is astronomically better for you than eating ultra-processed foods. And if you’re a resourceful shopper, it will cost about the same amount of money—maybe less.
Saying that poor people need to be able to work with what’s available to them, and if what’s available to them is a spectrum of disease-causing junk food, is disempowering. It’s feeding into this vicious cycle that gives permission (and money) to Big Food to keep producing ultra-processed junk that is making us fat, sick, weak, and depressed.
And it's not just poor communities buying these foods, it's the majority of the American people. People of all races, classes, and socioeconomic statuses. The rich and the poor.
Money may open the door for more options, but with a lack of education, the decision will remain the same. Our innate biology naturally craves sugar, carbs, and fat—and processed food contains all three–the temptations are just too strong to override.
The Solution is Education
How do we fix this? Education.
Just like we have gym class, reading, and math in grade school—we need to be educated about nutrition. We need to be educated on the impact that processed food has on our physical and mental health long term.
We need to be taught about the nutrients in our foods and how they power our biology.
We need to be taught that food is more than just energy.
We need to be taught the basic skills of how to cook and prepare our own food.
We need to be taught how to read ingredient labels and how to identify problem ingredients.
These are our fundamental rights as human beings. Without education, there is no awareness and with no awareness, there is no democracy. We can’t choose when we don’t know the consequences. We are blindly spending our dollars (votes) on foods that are slowly killing us.
Education is empowerment. People are smart. If they understand the way that food affects their health and the damage that sugar, refined wheat, soy, and oils cause, I can assure you they would be more willing to choose the healthier option.
And if they don’t and still choose to eat processed foods, that’s okay. At least they have all of the information they need to make that decision for themselves.
I’m not trying to demonize processed foods, but we do have.a responsibility to tell the truth about them.
It’s The Dose, Not The Poison.
We can enjoy processed food from time to time without having immediate consequences. It’s when we eat them as the bulk of our diet—that’s when we start to run into problems. The human body is resilient and can handle processed food now and then, it’s the dose, not the poison.
And if we are still choosing processed convenience foods, maybe we need to dig a little deeper and examine our relationship with food. There could be factors like trauma, fear, eating disorders, or food addiction getting in the way of nourishing our bodies with the nutrients they deserve.
Does Avoiding Processed Food Mean You’re Orthorexic?
The other pushback I received from this post was that not leaving room for processed foods and sugar can put a lot of pressure on people and lead to orthorexia or obsessions over eating healthy food. That may be true for populations that are vulnerable to obsessive tendencies and should be monitored.
However, I would like to question the notion that eating a healthy diet and cutting processed foods out entirely is a bad thing. Does wanting to take care of your body mean that you have an eating disorder?
I think there’s a problem with calling following a healthy eating approach a diet, it’s a lifestyle.
It’s Not So Black or White… Or Is It?
In my opinion, whether or not a food is good or bad for us is black or white. It is objective. However, the decision of whether we want to eat a particular food is gray. That is where our freedom lies. In a perfect world, we, the people, have the autonomy to make our own food choices, and that can change from day to day.
Do I eat processed cookies and pastries? No. But if I were to walk past a local bakery selling homemade chocolate croissants, that might be worth it. Locally handmade made ingredients are worth the indulgence more than processed sugar, so I make the decision to partake and enjoy every bite. No guilt. No pain afterward. Imagine that! Consciously making a food choice and owning it. After all, life is all about balance.
Final Thoughts
At the rate we are going, we are on the fast track to disability, sadness, and sickness.
Processed food is the cornerstone of chronic illness, and the more we accept it as part of our culture without question, the more we are headed in a scary and powerless direction.
We need to take our power back. How do we do that? Through education. Through voting with our dollars. Through understanding the foods, our unique bodies need to thrive and what makes us sick.
Making foods black or white gives us the freedom to live within the gray. It gives us the freedom to decide for ourselves, to vote with our dollar, and to shift markets in a more health-affirming direction.
We all deserve to live a long, happy, disease-free life.
Every dollar you spend is a vote. What will you choose?
Sending love and kindness,
Taylor
