Why Do People Want Local Food?

That was the question motivating some research ​I conducted with a couple co-authors that is forthcoming in the journal Ecological Economics.  A lot of the previous research in this area had simply interviewed people at farmers markets and asked why local food was desirable.  This sort of approach is problematic for a number of reasons.  For one, people at farmers markets are not a random sample of the population and likely have different preferences and desires than the average consumer.  Another problem: we don't always know why we do what we do even though we're good at making up post hoc stories.  

To address these challenges, we conducted some research with a randomly recruited group of German consumers (located in Bonn Germany) who spend real money to buy real food.  ​Our research strategy was to pick two different kinds of foods for which freshness is related to distance traveled for one but not another.  The idea is that this would let us sort out the extent to which desires for freshness are driving desires for local food.  We picked apples (where distance traveled is related to freshness) and wine (where distance traveled is not related to freshness) and asked how much people were willing to pay (WTP) for different apples and bottles of wine that had traveled different distances.  

Here is our key result:​

These findings imply that ‘a mile is NOT a mile’. The data in Fig. 1 and Fig. 2 indicate that discounts for km traveled (especially in percentage terms) are higher for apples than for wine — a fact that suggests freshness is one driver of demand for ‘local’. In fact, comparing the change in bids across apples and wine suggests that of the total drop in WTP that occurs from moving from 20 to 1000 km, about 28.5% can be attributed to freshness (i.e., (1 − 0.35 / 0.49) ∗ 100 = 28.5%). In the following we will present additional evidence that people perceive freshness to be more related to distance traveled for apples than wine . . .

The (Not So) Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food

​The New York Times Magazine ran a feature story this weekend by Michael Moss entitled The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food.  There is really so much that could be said about this piece (and probably the forthcoming book by Moss), but for now, I'll just leave you with the letter I sent to the editors of the NYT:

Michael Moss’s over-wrought piece on the “Science” of addictive junk food misses some key facts.  Around the time the executives of Big Food were in their clandestine meeting, regular folk were voluntarily cutting back.  CDC data reveals that the average weight of 40-49 year old women fell 0.2 lbs over the last ten years.  In the last four years, the average weight of men in this age range went down 1.7 lbs (women’s weight fell by 3.3 lbs).  It seems that the addictions cooked up by nefarious food scientists are waning.  Or maybe they weren’t addictive at all.  I gave up regular Dr. Pepper in 2002 when my pants began fitting too snugly, and I can’t recall any withdrawal symptoms.  If Big Food isn’t in their lab trying to create new tasty treats I want to try again and again, I’m not sure why they exist.​

Sometimes It's Hard to Be a Woman

That was the opening lyric to the Tammy Wynette song Stand by Your Man (although I much prefer Lyle Lovett's rendition).  Not being one myself, it is a bit dangerous to weigh in on such matters, but when one looks at the data, the lives of many women - at least as far as housework goes - has gotten much better over the past half century (though, to be sure, lives today are probably more complicated).    ​

According to this study published in PLoS ONE from 1965 to 201:

The time allocated to [household management] [Lusk: these are duties such as time spent in food preparation, post-meal cleaning activities (e.g., dish-washing), clothing maintenance (e.g., laundry), and general housework] by women] (19–64 yrs) decreased from 25.7 hr/week in 1965 to 13.3 hr/week in 2010 (P<0.001), with non-employed women decreasing by 16.6 hr/week and employed women by 6.7 hr/week (P<0.001). 

​

Non-employed women have gained almost a whole day! ​I referred to similar statistics toward the end of my TEDx talk, where I discuss some of the positive changes that have resulted from modern agriculture and improved food technologies.  With today's widely available dishwashers, microwaves, and washing machines, not to mention easily available, convenient food, housework doesn't take the time it once did (it's also true that men help out more than the once did, which helps).  

The authors of the PLoS ONE article went one step further, however, and asked: what happened to all those calories women once burned cooking and doing housework?  ​Their answer is that, even though many women now exercise more, the result is that those calories haven't gone anywhere - they've been stored as extra weight, and as such, this technological shift is (at least partially) to blame for the rise in obesity.  They calculate that non-employed women experienced a 42% reduction in energy expenditure (30% for employed women) because of the change in time spend on housework. 

Here is their conclusion:​

From 1965 to 2010, there was a large and significant decrease in the time allocated to HM [household management]. By 2010, women allocated 25% more time to screen-based media use than HM (i.e., cooking, cleaning, and laundry combined). The reallocation of time from active pursuits (i.e., housework) to sedentary pastimes (e.g., watching TV) has important health consequences. These results suggest that the decrement in HMEE [household management energy expenditure may] have contributed to the increasing prevalence of obesity in women during the last five decades.

I made a related argument at the end of my talk on the politics and economics of obesity (see here).  ​It is almost impossible to sort out all the good changes that have happened since the 1960s (less smoking, more air conditioning, more driving, more convenient food, less housework, etc.) from some of the bad (e.g., higher prevalence of obesity).  It's probably human nature to want to have our cake and eat it too, but sometimes we may just want to accept the tradeoffs live presents us.  While there are probably a few women who wouldn't mind switching spots with their grandmothers, I suspect the vast majority would prefer their current lot in life.  None of this is to say that  we can't work toward a thinner and healthier present - only that it helps to have a bit of perspective before getting up in arms.

P.S.  As much as the story told in the PLoS ONE article fits in with the narrative I've weaved in some previous talks (and in my forthcoming book), there are some holes in the logic.  For example, why has the weight of men risen from 1960 to today?  Are men doing less housework too?  Or have their employed jobs also become less strenuous?  Another challenge:  women didn't start sitting on their duffs when they stopped doing as much housework - many started jobs outside the home, which presumably required some energy expenditure, though the current study simply lumps all "paid work" together as if sitting at a desk or digging ditches requires the same energy.    ​

Big Goverment and Small Potatoes

That was the tentative title of a chapter in my forthcoming book, Food Police, that ultimately wound up on the cutting room floor.  I spent a good portion of the book, and have many posts here on the blog, where I defend Big Food and Big Ag.  That's not because they are blameless or perfect, but because they are so often mischaracterized and are the scapegoats for many of societies perceived evils.  

But, it would be a mistake to think that food freedoms are threatened only by government regulation of Big Food and Ag.  In fact, one can often see the plain injustice at work when you look at the impacts of intrusive government regulations (and the crony capitalism sometimes promulgated by Big Food) on small potatoes - food trucks, farmers markets, and small operators just trying to make a buck.  I chose not to focus heavily on this in the book because they represent such a small part of our overall food economy, but I'm glad to see some attention being devoted to the issue.  

The American Enterprise Institute is hosting a conference title "Big government and big food vs. food trucks, foodies, and farmers markets."  Here's their promo:

If you like your food local, organic, or from a truck, government regulation might be your biggest obstacle. American restaurants lobby to choke off food trucks, and federal regulation of food safety leads to more consolidation in the industry. Moreover, farmers markets struggle to survive under the heavy hand of government.

What if food safety regulation is not about limiting the germs in our dinner, but is rather about limiting competition in America’s food industry? What if federal and local rules actually protect incumbent businesses instead of consumers?

​If you want to whet your appetite, I highly recommend this article from a few weeks back, entitled, Tea Party Libertarians and Small Organic Farmers Make Strange Political Bedfellows.  Here are some spinets:  

Laura Bledsoe didn't set out to join a political movement, she merely wanted to serve what she considered a sustainable meal.

In October 2011 she and her husband Monte decided they wanted to host what they called a "farm to fork" event in their home. They own a small farm 50 miles outside of Las Vegas.

then:​

Trouble began two days before the event was to take place. They received a call from the Southern Nevada Health District Office, who wanted to know if the farmers had secured a health permit for the event. "We didn't know we needed to," Laura says.

Then a health inspector came:​

The health inspector raised several concerns, but chief among them was the meat the Bledsoes were preparing to serve. Because the event was advertised as a "zero mile footprint," the meat hadn't been sent through a USDA processing plant, as is required for any meat purchased at a grocery store or restaurant, so the inspector deemed it illegal to serve.

The article tells several stories of a similar nature - check it out.​

Food Price Changes

I happened to run across this document put out by the USDA Economic Research Service about a month ago (see the associated spreadsheet). I occasionally get calls from reporters asking about changes in food prices, so I thought I'd put the data in a couple graphs for easy digestion.  

First, overall food prices continued to rise in 2012 (at a rate of 2.3% away from home and 2.5% at home).  However, the rate of increase in prices of food at home has fallen from 4.8% in 2011 to 2.5% in 2012, and exactly the opposite has happened for food away from home (going from 1.3% in 2011 to 2.4% in 2012).  

What about individual food categories at home?  The following shows the percent change price of various food types from 2011 to 2012.  Beef and veal, fats and oils, and poultry all experienced rapid price increases (all over 5%).  Interestingly, the price of fresh fruits only rose 1% and prices of fresh vegetables fell 5.1%.