The Flawed Definition of Value.

Duane Hanson's Shopping Lady Sculpture

Fat shoppers lean against their carts of cardboard and plastic packaging as they fall forward incredibly slowly, scanning the shelves and throwing in the items marked on sale, or those with the words Value or Only preceding the price.  Do they not price compare? No. Because Walmart has marketed its brand smartly. If the little bouncy smily face says something is good value, the shoppers believe and flock to get the deals while they last (as if they would ever stop the rrrrrrrrrollback days!). The transitory yellow sale stickers promote a sense of urgency. It’s better to buy three jugs of Sunny D now because it’s better value, the sign suggests. Big name shops know that their clientele are flocking to their store under the pretense of affordable food. The shop thrives because it earns huge profits by selling high quantities of low quality food, under the guise of value.

Unstable paychecks lead to erratic shopping, especially when it comes to food. Marketing teams exploit the flustered shoppers, encouraging them to stock up while they can. The non-perishables take the cake and are considered part of the budget. Soon, pantries are filled with sugar and salt-filled snacks and the fridge is barren of greenery. When there’s just a little money in the bank, the mentality becomes like that of a squirrel - get busy collecting food now that it’s on sale so that during harder times, one can start digging into the non-perishables.  Historically, cultures with little money also relied on non-perishables like whole grains, and canned and pickled vegetables. These are valuable, and proven to be affordable, nutritionally high foods that have since become lost stapes. Nowadays “value” carries little significance, yet the term has substantial gravity in every aisle other than the fruits and vegetable section. 

Something  of real value is unique (heritage food, for example), hand-crafted ( or nurtured a human, with love), and would be long-lasting in its use. In short, when we ascribe value to food, the definition should be : most nutrition for a low to reasonable price.  An organic apple these days may run you $1  but your body can use 100% of that apple, so you get a $1 return in nutrition (vitamins, fiber, energy).  Please appreciate that the cost also supports the farmers who are relentlessly laboring at less than minimum wage to keep healthy options affordable. Why aren’t there ever ‘value’ sales on whole foods? 2 for 1 apples; Buy one pear, get one free; Perfectly ripe yellow bananas, get them before they blot!, etc. There aren’t because there isn’t much profit for the business. It’s a whole different ballpark when the a box of cookies that took $1 to make is lowered in price from $2.99 to $2.50. Still, there are ways to make fruits and vegetables more attractive to shoppers looking to be told what to buy. Some grocery store flyers are now capturing the market for those who want easy access to healthful suggestions, but more needs to be done to slant the shopping and eating habits of North Americans.  

Instead of the nutrition panel on the side of the box, shoppers search out the “value” stickers to weigh their options. Those chicken strips, although 5 for $2 does seem like a deal are actually FAR more expensive than going to a butcher shop and buying 1 large chicken breast for $4. But Jennifer! you say, That’s double the price plus the work to prepare it!  To which I say, GOOD GRIEF! I feel like I’ve had this discussion a million times in the last 5 years. Using the nutritional percentage again quickly discerns that real chicken is better value. Your body can digest and absorb 100% of the nutrition it has to offer. On the other hand, one frozen chicken finger contains an orgy of meat, diluted with cheap wheat fillers and preservatives. Maybe you’re body will only absorb 40% of it because the rest is “junk” (my dad’s favourite word when relating to processed food). To calculate the value of chicken fingers, simply multiply 40% with $2. You paid 80 cents worth of long term nutrition and $1.20 on fleeting fullness, before flushing your money down the drain.

‘Fullness’, most often caused by bloating, high salt or sugar content is often equated with value, as in the case of parents justifying a kid’s meal at McDonalds. The meal may fill up a child for $3, but his body may only be able to use 20% of the meal. His growing brain suffers this neglect of nutritional value. The other 80% of the meal is so processed that once the child eats it, his body shoots it through to the other end, without absorbing much nutrients at all. Thus, the kid’s meal gets you only 60 cents worth of nutrition and the rest ($2.40) literally goes down the drain.  When you think about it in terms of nutrition, it’s hard not to scoff at the alleged “value” signs. If fruits, vegetables and other whole foods were marketed as valuable nutritional sources as eagerly as zealous competitors slap on claims to otherwise processed garbage, then we would all be wealthier in health. We will look back and think that these value signs are as preposterous as doctors recommending cigarettes. 

The further you get from the original ingredients, the less your body is able to recognize the food as food, and in turn the less nutrients (if any!) you absorb. “Value” has been marketed to those who seek instant, easy gratification. It attracts a personality type that went to Walmart because it’s a one stop shop, because it’s easier and admittedly, a time saver for those juggling two jobs and a gaggle of kids. It’s painful to see these kids, overweight, trailing behind their fat mothers, gathering boxes sugary snacks, packages of packages of Lunchables and frozen dinners - because their parents  send them out like troops to seek out those infamous stickers. Then, at school, depleted of nutrition, these children become hyperactive or comatose and are unable to learn. They grow up and out, and their education is barely absorbed due to a malnourished brain. This leads them into adulthood fat, unhappy and unhealthy. Now does that value sticker look different? 

My dad used to spew rhetoric about junk food to me and my sister long into our teens,  to which we rolled our eyes but did absorb in the end, if not hesitantly. It’s going to be work to convince shoppers that while they feel satisfaction from saving money, in the long term they are putting in money towards an early death. If you want your body to glow with health, vitality and stamina, don’t even go down those middle aisles of packaged food. You can and  will save money eliminating packaged foods. Reject the notion of value, or at least, what it has become. When someone mentions their valuable find, ask them to specify what they mean and correct them if they are following a marketing teams idea of value. When prescribing value to food, there could be a whole list of why the packaged cartons of this and that should not be included. There is a golden rule I follow: The more packaging, the less healthy.  When consumers start favoring whole foods, we will all be wealthier. 

Tips for Healthy Kids

Tips for saving money on whole foods

The Toronto Food Policy Council's 20th Anniversary: Together at the Table

Below are the inspiring, informative and educational notes I wrote furiously during the wonderful Together at the Table event, held at 157 King Street East on October 20th, 2011. Sustaining communities and sharing knowledge was the medium and the message at the event.

Welcome, 9am:

• Joe Mihevc boasts that “ organizations have been mushrooming” 
• Debbie Field is the Director of FoodShare
• City counsellor Joe Mihevc is proud to have both Wychwood Barns and Not Far from the Tree in his ward and explains, “ We as city counsellors need to learn to be facilitators”. 

• Helen St.Jacques began working with the Toronto Food Policy Council through FoodShare. She urges anyone who is interested to sign up as a “friend” to the TFPC, and attending the monthly meetings ( which alternate week to week from formal to informal). Also of note is that the meetings are audio recorded at City Hall.
• Currently there are 4 standing committees representing the TFPC.
• Lauren Baker is a member of the food strategy team at Toronto Public Health

How Now Brown Cow: Milky Science for the Public Good, 9:30am:

• Rod MacRae was the 1st full time health food advocate embedded in government.
• MacRae suggested a number of articles including: Reducing Urban Hunger in Ontario: Policy Responses to support the transition from food charity to local food security, and Efficiency, Substitutions and Redesign. 
• MacRae illustrated how the TFPC took its first big leap in establishing itself as a sturdy force driven by a mantra of transparency, holistic thinking and community involvement. In the 1990’s, When the TFPC challenged the r.B.H.G. case, the government chose to head the advice and reject the drug ( which had at that time, already been approved in the United States), and instead work with the Health Council and Agricultural Sector. For the first time a municipal body - functioning as subcommittee to Toronto Public Health - had an impact on the larger provincial and federal government, directed through Health Canada. To this day, MacRae reminds us that it is a big challenge in food policy to intersect and interact with governing bodies at decision-making levels. 

Policy by Participation, 9:45am: 

• Acting as moderator is Catherine Mah, who works at the Food Policy Research Initiative at the Centre for Metal Health and Addiction. She is also an assistant professor at the Dalla Lana school of Public Health at U of T. To Mah, ‘policy’ is a statement of “who eats what, when and how”.
• Nick Ferri is the Farmer and Chair of the GTA Agricultural Action Committee, a provincially started organization which developed a strategy/ “action plan” for “horseshoe agriculture” ( from Toronto to Hamilton).
• Tracy Phillippi began as an intern at the TFPC in 2009 and shortly after founded the Toronto Youth Food Policy Council (TYFPC). She is currently an apprentice at Black Oak, as an aspiring Brew Master. 
• Barbara Emanual works with Toronto Food Strategy (Toronto Public Health), managing international development, social development and policy. She adds, “ public health policy is the full spectrum”: from health to the environment. 
• Anan Lololi has been a TFPC member for 15  years. As executive director of the Afi-Can FoodBasket, Lololi supports urban agriculture and the adversity of food grown and sold in Ontario. 
• Author of The Tyranny of Rights, Brewster Kneen begins by explaining that he was awakened to how humans are related to the world when reading The Economy of Sugar. In 1971 he farmed in Nova Scotia, where he remained until 1986, learning about how and why the metropolis benefits from reaping and rendering farms dry. In the 1980’s he acted as Food Chair, a precursor to the TFPC and appreciated how the community had to come together, forming “unforeseen alliances” during the Real Milk Campaign.
• Asked about a spectrum of participation, and whether citizens can really make an impact, Emanuel points out that many communities don’t have the proper information that is accessible, transparent and easy to understand. Once the communities demand - as they must, she adds - transparency from the Food Policy counsellors, they will have the means to move forward and participate.
• To the same note, Brewster adds that even if the government does issue information, it is to the tune of their agenda. For real facts, the structure should be more grassroots, including the statements and concerns of communities and farmers. 
• With more inclusion during the decision making process, we are more likely to come to results that benefit each tier and their respective platforms. Ferri gives the example of the Greenbelt. While Toronto boasts a green nest on maps, farmers feel their voices have not been heard and worry about the implications of being told what to do with their land and fret about their retirement money being taken away. 
• To help our farming neighbours, many Torontonians have taken to voting with their dollar: buying local produce to support local farmers who are forced to compete with companies south of the boarder who don’t have to face the same strict regulations and labour costs and can thus sell their product at a cheaper price. 
• There are lots of ways to become involved: Phillippe suggests collaboration; entrepreneurship; simply asking organizations what they are missing; becoming an expert or by reciprocal mentorship. 
• Lololi explains that the more people involved, the more food security attained. The government grants mobility to community ideas through the support of non-government organizations (NGOs). Emanuel discusses that in giving a small community the means to fund a community-driven food project the project was able to thrive and become highly successful, impacting council and policy making. The constant creative focus at the TFPC is fueled by events such as Together at the Table, where issues large in government scope are brought forth, discussed and solved city-wide.