How Many Calories Does $1 Buy?

The answer depends largely on what type of food you're purchasing.

As I was reading through the recent TIME Magzine cover story on the real price of cheap food, I came across reference to a study conducted by the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. The study examined how many calories, of certain kinds of food, one dollar can buy you.  They determined that:

A dollar could buy 1,200 calories of potato chips or 875 calories of soda but just 250 calories of vegetables or 170 calories of fresh fruit.

Yeah, you read that right.  A dollar can buy you almost 10 times more calories from potato chips than it can from fresh fruit.  Is it any wonder that obesity and food security are so intricately tied to income level in this country?  I think not.

This statistic has a lot to do with why many people who do not have adequate access to healthy foods are often unhealthy and overweight.  Really, it's all about the energy density of the foods we eat.  Let me explain.

Diets consisting of lots of processed foods, sugars and fatty meats are considered to be high in energy density, while diets primarily of fresh fruits, vegetables and whole grains are low in energy density.  People who rely on eating processed foods usually take in many more calories than those with low-density diets, but actually consume less food by weight.  The consequence is that individuals with high energy dense diets may very well remain hungry while taking in far too many calories, exacerbating the risk of becoming overweight.

If you haven't guessed where I 'm going with this, what I'm really trying to say is that far too many low-income individuals depend on diets with high energy density to survive.  The result is that the less money you have to spend on food, the more your health suffers.

And now, the USDA's Economic Research Service has come out with a new report that warns Americans to be ready for a 2 to 3 percent increase in food prices over the next several months, continuing on into the beginning of 2010.

Government and industry officials are claiming that as the economy starts to recover, and grocery chains can begin to justify increases in prices, we should expect the price of milk, eggs, beef, breakfast cereals, soft drinks and even fresh fruits and vegetables (to name a few products) to increase in order to help companies recover from "the negatives we're in right now."

Although the price increases will not be as severe as they were last summer when prices rose 6.4 percent percent (a twenty-year high), they will certainly have an impact on those living at or near the poverty line that already have difficulty fitting adequate amounts of healthy food into their tight monthly budgets.

Looks like over the next six months or so we're going to have even more people relying on the necessity of energy dense diets.

I really hope that the nation's food banks and food pantries are ready for another spike in clients this fall.

(Photo credit: iChaz on Flickr)