on my mind: affordability of nutritious foods

Monday is Piata Day or Market Day for our little family.  After work on Monday, I head over to the bustling piata, chat up my favorite old piata guy and get a load of fresh local seasonal fruits and veggies for the week.  It’s one of my favorite things about Romania.  This week, I took note of exactly what I bought and what I spent — as an experiment of sorts.

Above are pictures of my bounty from today’s trip (well, minus the cat). Isn’t it beautiful? Below is a table of what I purchased today and what I paid.  Then I headed over to the website for the Harris Teeter in Cary where David and I shopped when we lived there.  I priced each item, approximating varieties, eliminating organics (although produce here is organic). Using those prices, I figured out what I would have paid for the same quantity of fruits and veggies. Note that 1 kilo = 2.2 pounds.  Of course, more comparable would have been to look at prices at an NC Farmer’s Market, but those aren’t available online.

	Quantity purchased	Paid at the piata	Would have paid in the US
Tomatoes	1 kg	3 RON	$3.98
Potatoes	1 kg	1 RON	$1.76
Cucumbers	1 kg	2 RON	$3.30
Peppers	0.50 kg	1 RON	$3.07
Onions	0.25 kg	0.50 RON	$0.90
Pears	1 kg	3 RON	$3.94
Peaches	1 kg	5 RON	$3.94
Lettuce	4 sm. heads	2 RON	$3.98
TOTAL		18.50 RON ~$5.50	$34.87

Um….  woah….. In Romania, I paid $5.50 for the bounty and in the US I would have paid almost $35. This $29.50 difference surprised the heck out of me. I expected there to be a difference but not that significant.

To level the playing field a bit and because I’m a curious dork, I did some math. Here in Romania, David and I budget about 150 RON/week for food, meaning that 18.50 RON we spent on fruits and veggies is about about 12% of our weekly expenditure.  In the US, we budgeted $150/week for food, meaning that the hypothetical $35 for fruits and veggies would be double at 24% of our weekly expenditure. Am I crazy or does that seem a big difference?

And it got me thinking about the affordability of nutritious foods in the US. No wonder the poor in the US have a diet full of fast and/or overly processed food — getting real produce is crazy expensive.  Not that my data is iron-clad, but it points towards the idea that fresh fruits and vegetables are for the upper class in America.  Are we Americans cool with that? Here in the poorest region of the EU, people can afford or can (and know how to) grow fruits and vegetables that provide real nutrition.  It’s cheaper than buying the overly processed foods or buying imported produce.

So now’s the time when I should propose or explain or justify, right?  There’s a lot to understand in this situation — business, agriculture, culture, law, environment.  I haven’t wrapped my head around all this; actually I understand only a thimble-ful of it. What I do know is that nutritious foods should be more affordable in the US and it’s a travesty that they are not.

Any thoughts or answers on this out there?? While I contemplate further, I think I’ll enjoy a peach….