Dear friends, I'm so excited to share with you the trailer of the documentary that we've been working on for the past year.
While I object to US corn subsidies, the truth is that food that is considered healthy is often more expensive. And a lot of what is considered healthy and unhealthy is largely arbitrary.
I also think that costing food per calorie is disingenuous. Calorie dense foods are usually considered unhealthy. Low calorie foods healthy. So to compare price per calorie and then complain about how dear healthy foods are (per calorie) is just prejudicing your claim. Celery will never be cheap per calorie. And water will always be infinitely more expensive no matter how cheap it is.
Right-on, cost per calorie is really a bad metric. However even using that metric if we compare twinkies to bulk (retail) rice or beans the twinkies will look expensive. Bulk rice or beans run around 2-4,000 callories/dollar, twinkies are around 500 calories/dollar at best.
And you could live on nothing but bulk beans for months if required… twinkies not so much.
It means just feeding them combinations of fats (oil, butter, tallow etc.) Sugar (HFC, white sugar, molasses), with some amount of fiber and crude protein. They werent mixing them into delicious (or not so delicious, but somehow compulsion inducing) comestibles. The use of MSG, spices, malliard reactions through heating and browing, all of tha stuff effects the way we (and rats) encounter food.
I doubt people would become obese if you gave them all they could eat of white sugar, butter, bran flakes, and chicken breasts. But with the lineup of Hostess, Little Debbie, Coca-Cola, and Frito-Lays many will.