138: Why Eating Cheap Is the Worst Financial Decision

The main argument I hear when I tell people to improve their diet is that healthy food is expensive or unaffordable even. And if you go to the grocery store and you look at a pound of grass-finished meat, grass-fed, grass-finished meat, and maybe compare it to a Happy Meal, the difference appears to be stark.

You know? Healthy food is just incredibly expensive, and that's why many people can't afford it. But in this episode, I wanna make the argument that cheap food is the most expensive thing you'll ever buy. Welcome to the Primal Shift Podcast. And I'm gonna explain you why and, and how that is. But before we do that, I wanna go back in time a little bit to the 1960s, where the average American spent about 17% of their income on food.

Today, we are spending 10%. That's the lowest on, of any country on Earth. And yeah, that sounds like a win, but let's look at the healthcare system over the same stretch of time, or roughly at the same stretch of time. In 1980, we spent about 9% of the entire economy on healthcare. Today, it's 18%, or over $5 trillion a year.

So food got cheaper, but healthcare doubled. Is that a coincidence, or are these trends maybe connected? You know, here's the thing. Together with the cheap food revolution, we've seen a chronic disease epidemic, and I would argue those are two sides of the same coin. But healthcare is only one of those factors, so stay with me.

It's not only that. So the thesis for today's episode is that cheap food is the most expensive thing you'll ever buy, and I also wanna make the case for encouraging you to opt out of the cheap food system if you have the means to, if you can afford it. I would argue that for those who can afford it, we have the responsibility to do exactly that, and it's not because the government should tell you or we need a new law or a mandate or we...

new taxes on junk food. No. I think voting for your dollars, a million votes, individual votes, by buying the proper type of food, real food, is one of the most effective, if not the most effective, way to fix a broken system without expanding the state. I don't want more laws, more government to control everything because, as we've seen, the government doesn't really do a very good job, in my opinion.

We need, we need grassroots movement, you know, by every individual who can afford it to opt into that real food system. So with that out of the way, let's look at how much food really costs. Let's look at all of the hidden costs associated with food. And here is the thing. When something looks cheap- The cost doesn't necessarily disappear.

It just moves off the price tag onto someone else's ledger. So where is the cost of cheap food actually hiding? Well, the Rockefeller Foundation did the math in twenty nineteen, and they looked the cost of food as we... you know, as far as the sticker price is concerned, and they concluded that across the US food system, we spend one point one trillion dollars per year on food.

That's what we pay for. That's what we pay in a grocery store. But the true cost when you factor everything in is three point two trillion, three times as much. It means we have two hidden dollars for every dollar I check out. And that was twenty nineteen data. You know, today that is-- that, that number is certainly higher or most likely higher.

So where do those hidden trillions land? Well, number one, as I already alluded to in the intro, is healthcare. One point one trillion dollars a year in food-related health impacts. So that means for every dollar you spend for food, you spend one dollar on healthcare to fix whatever that cheap food messed up as far as health is concerned.

And there, from those one point one trillion that we-- that are food-related health impacts, six hundred-plus billion are directly related to treatments for diet-related disease. You know, cancer, cardiovascular disease, hypertension, you name it. So we spend almost or we spend roughly as much treating the disease caused by our food as we spend on the food itself.

That is absolutely nuts. That's not a footnote. That's the entire story here. And number two is the environmental impact. You know, there are vast areas that are unusable. You know, just look at the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico or Gulf of the Americas if you wanna call it that, where there are thousands of square miles the size of Connecticut in a bad year where fish and shrimp cannot survive because of chemical runoff from conventional agriculture.

There are-- You know, aquifers are depleted. Texas loses one foot of water, groundwater every single year. There's topsoil erosion, antibiotic resistance from factory livestock. You know, none of it is on the burger receipt, i- but it shows up on the bill eventually. Very often, it's not our bill, but our kids'.

So the point here really is that cheap industrial food doesn't actually save you money. You pay for all of that three times. Once at the register, number two in your taxes, we're gonna talk more about that next, and number three with your health. You know, directly through medical bills or indirectly through insurance premiums.

Even if you don't get sick today after eating that happy meal- Eventually you will, but already today you're paying for that in our-- in the health insurance premiums, which are ridiculously high. And the obvious next question here is, you know, if, if real food is better and the externalized costs are this massive, why does industrial food still win, win on price?

Why doesn't the market correct itself? I mean, after all, we are in a, you know, free market economy. But the answer is, it is not a-- it's not really a market. It's a heavily distorted system propped up by our tax dollars, and I'm talking about subsidies. You know, in twenty twenty-four, the federal government sent nine point three billion in direct subsidies to commodity crop farmers.

Corn alone got three point two billion. Thirty percent went to a single crop. And that crop, that corn isn't going into steak and, and salads. You know? It's going into, into ethanol, into plastics, into packaged food. Yes, into, into grains fed to cattle that are not supposed to be fed grains, you know? And if you then add in all of the crop insurance and ad hoc disaster payments and other transfers, the total farm sector, um, this year in twenty twenty-six is projected to receive fifty-five billion of our tax dollars.

That is ridiculous. And according to the Environmental Working Group, the top ten percent farms collect seventy-five percent of all federal farm subsidies. Those are not our local regenerative farmers. You know, those are massive industrial operations that grow commodity corn, soy, cotton, and wheat that then ends up as high-fructose corn syrup and, you know, all of the things that w-we shouldn't really be feeding ourselves or feed our animals like, you know, feed lot grain.

Cows are not supposed to eat grain. They are ruminants. They need grass and forage and forbs and all of the things, but not grains, not seeds. So the cheapness at checkout, you know, was engineered through decades of taxpayer-funded support for the worst possible inputs, and we need to reframe this. And you cannot then go to the grocery store and say, "Okay, let's compare pastured eggs at seven bucks a dozen to industrial eggs for, you know, that you can buy for three tu- uh, bucks a dozen."

You're not comparing apples to apples. You know? One is a product with all of the externalized costs baked in, and the other one is not. You pay three times as much for those three-dollar eggs, nine dollars if you wanna do the math, versus then the seven bucks. I mean, obviously, you know, prices change all the time, but this is a snapshot where the, the crappy eggs produced in an environment that hens should never live in cost you more Overall, if you factor in all the externalized costs than the pasteurized eggs from a regenerative farm.

That's one product versus another product whose price has been artificially deflated by your tax dollars. And we have to stop that. Every time we grab the cheaper one and effectively pay twice for it, you know, it- this is not a free market anymore. It's rigged, and we need to stop that. We need to get out of this.

So what is the fix? Well, the short answer is I don't think more government. I don't wanna have junk food tax or, you know, subsidized health food or mandate new labels or build new programs. You know, I don't trust the government to fix what the government built. I'm a libertarian, and the answer to a problem caused by central planning isn't more central planning, you know, or subsidies or regulatory capture, you know.

We, we've seen it all from the government. The food pyramid, you know, none, none of it came from a free market. It came from policy. And adding more policy on top of bad policy doesn't really fix anything. And that's why I encourage you that if you can afford higher quality food from local regenerative farms, you should.

Not because anyone told you, not because it's trendy. Because every dollar at the local regenerative farm is a market signal that tells more farmers there is viable business in producing real food. So go out and do it. And I'm not saying that more demand magically then lowers prices because that's supply and demand in reverse.

But I'm saying that demand attracts supply. More producers enter, competi- competition increases, shared infrastructure develops, and economies of scale emerge. And economies of scale don't exist yet, not with regenerative farming at least, you know. Because the current system has been propping up their competitors for decades, and it's a very slow process to dismantle all of that.

And you just look at, you know, solar panels or electric vehicles, we've seen the same. You know, the early adopters paid a premium that funded the scaling curve. And we need to do the same with regenerative farming and with buying food that has been raised properly, so we don't pay three times for the same food.

We pay only once with all of the externalized costs baked in. And my hope is if we all do that, you know, if we-- the ones who can afford doing that right now, paying with our dollars upfront. Because ultimately, we, we all pay for the food, as I've, as I've told you. But, you know, cash flow is a real thing, obviously.

You know, if I only have five bucks to spend on food, then I'm gonna spend those five bucks today not worrying about that I have to spend 10 more bucks for the same food, you know, over the next 10 years. I, I get that. I get that idea. But for those of us who have the cash flow, who can front that money right now and pay for a product that is not gonna cost you three times as much over time, we ought to do that to bring the cost down for everyone else, so we can all enjoy proper and healthy food that is resilient, that is built by or manufactured and produced by a food system that is resilient and doesn't fall apart, you know, if one of the big processing houses suddenly goes away, if there is another epidemic or whatever, and, you know, and, and s- suddenly there is no food in the store because all of the meat comes from three meat packers in the country, you know?

Um, that is obviously all much slower than passing a law maybe, but I think this is the durable approach that doesn't expand the state, and it doesn't really require anyone to agree with my politics to work. You know, you just have to go out and vote with your dollars.

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 Now back to the episode. And so I wanna give you a couple of examples, real-life examples on, on how cheap food is not really cheap and how you can get healthy food for actually less.

Let's look at chicken as a great example because, you know, a lot of people like chicken. You know, I have my concerns about any chicken from the store, you know, for reasons I've, I've talked to in previous episodes and on my, on my channel. But if you look at the national average for a whole chicken, it's about $2 a pound.

If you look at the national average for boneless, skinless breast, it's over $4 a pound. So what does it tell you? Well, if you buy in bulk or the whole animal, you can buy it for significantly less. Now with chicken, it's fairly easy. You buy the whole chicken and then you, you know, take it apart yourself.

You actually get then the carcass which you can turn into broth that you don't get with the skinless chicken breast. You get some of the darker meat which has more fat-soluble s- vitamins. You just get more overall, more variety, and you pay significantly less. You pay half. You know, all you have to do is put in the work to Cut the chicken apart, and that's a skill you should be ha- you should learn anyway if you don't have it yet.

The same is true if you buy an entire cow. Well, now one could say, "Well, I have to... I don't have the freezer space," or, "I don't ne- eat as much beef," what have you. Well, share with a friend or with four friends, so everyone gets a quarter. Buying the whole animal in bulk has several advantages. Besides you buying the meat at a significantly lower cost, that then actually is very much in line with the cheap versions of meat that you can find at Costco.

But at the same time, you get different cuts of the animal that you can then learn how to prepare. So you learn another skill, and the farmer sells... Because the farmer ultimately raises an animal, not a rib eye, right? There's only so many rib eyes in a cow. What are you gonna do with the rest of the, the meat, right?

So we need to be consuming the whole animal for, for the sake of the farmer because it's very difficult to only sell rib eyes if you raise cattle. What are you gonna do with the rest of the carcass, right? And so it is better for the farmer, it is better for you. You get a lower price, and you potentially learn new skills in the kitchen.

You know, the same applies to, uh, really anything else. If you buy in bulk and then either store it if you have the storage capacity. The same goes with, you know, if you eat grains or if you eat whatever, you know, that's shelf-stable. Organic wheat, I don't know. What- whatever you wanna do. You know, buy a big 50-pound bag and store it somewhere.

It's way cheaper than buying, you know, small bags. And with the whole animals, obviously if you have the freezer space, the same, the same principle applies. You know, and then really eating that entire animal is also more in line with how humans have been eating for, for a very long time. So it's a whole nose-to-tail approach that I encourage you, um, embracing from a health as well as from a financial perspective.

And that's one way you can signif- you can save, and you don't s- suddenly that healthy food is not that s- expensive anymore. E- even if you take the whole externalized cost out of the equation. The second example is, you know, and it's comparing Snickers bars with grass-finished ground beef, you know.

Because one would argue, well, junk food is always less expensive, so, you know, getting, you know, two Snickers, you know, or whatever is... it costs me much le- mu- mu- much less than eating, uh, grass-finished ground beef. Well, here's the thing. A pound of Snickers costs actually twice as much as a pound of grass-finished ground beef from a local farm.

You know, that candy bar costs you twice as much per pound. So there is... And, and has less sign- uh, nutritional value. So don't tell me that junk food is, is less expensive. That's not the case if you really look at a per pound perspective The issue here often isn't really whether you can afford real food or, or healthy food.

It's how you're allocating what you already spend on food. That's another thing. You know, if you wanna buy, you know, cured, you know, salamis and, you know, charcuterie and, you know, and, and all of those things, yes, those things can be incredibly expensive. But if you take the same dollars that you spend on that and invest it into ground meat or a whole animal or a share of a whole animal, then suddenly you're not gonna spend any more, but you get significantly more for your buck.

So my four takeaways here is with externalized costs excluded or not part of the equation, even though that's an important factor in the equation. You know, number one, buy the whole animal. Number two, stop buying things that aren't really food. You know, soda, candy, packaged snacks, those are not really food.

Get in your kitchen. You know, real food at home-- prepared at home is dramatically cheaper than anything you can buy in a restaurant or in a store or anywhere else. And find local regenerative farms. You know, build a relationship because then you have direct accountability, something that we usually don't have.

If you buy a steak from Whole Foods, you know, you don't know who that farmer is. There is no accountability. If you buy from a local farm, you have the direct relationship. You can go out and say, "Hey, there was something wrong," or, you know, ask questions. You know, there is, there is just so much more influence you can exert when you buy directly from the source.

And with that, we gotta wrap it up. But the premise, I think, was pretty simple. Cheap food is the most expensive thing you'll ever buy, and the numbers are there to back that up. According to the Rockefeller Foundation, we are paying three times more than the receipts show. The healthcare data is ridiculous.

You know, just thinking about or considering that we are paying as much to treat diseases caused by the food that we are buying as the food cost itself, that's absolute-- That in itself should be reason enough to stop buying cheap food. You know, we did not get here in our, you know, state of health because food got expensive.

We got here because food was made artificially cheap by our tax dollars, you know. And we paid the difference in disease, in degraded soil, in healthcare system, you know, that's buckling under the weight of what we eat. And the fix is not another government program. It's not another tax. It's a million individual choices made voluntarily by people with the means.

You know, that's us in many cases. And if that is you, you know, the most powerful thing you can do is spend more on real food. Not because I'm asking you, but because it's the highest return investment you can make in your own health and the health of the next generation. And it's the most effective way to build a food system that eventually makes real food accessible to everybody And there was one phrase that I keep coming back to from the regenerative farming world and it's, and it says something like healing the land one bite at a time.

Well, I wanna add to that and saying healing the system one purchase at a time. That's ultimately the Primal Shift, and I hope I'll see you next time.