The Washington Post recently published an article called “America’s Growing Food Inequality Problem” by Roberto Ferdman. He explains how the food gap between rich and poor Americans is widening; wealthy people are eating better, while poor people are eating much worse. The Journal of the American Medical Association Internal Medicine recent published a study that showed how closely related one’s socioeconomic status & the quality of their diet is and how much this relationship has changed over time. The  American diet has actually improved from 1999-2010 due to nutrition education efforts and shifts away from certain things like soda. But, this is not true for the entire society. Obviously, Americans in the top socioeconomic tier are becoming more responsive to nutrition education while the Americans in the bottom tier are stuck in a rut. The authors of the study developed “The Alternate Healthy Eating Index”, which is a measure of how healthy foods are based off their relative nutritional values. This is where the study showed the gap; the median index value rose from 5.7 to 7.3 in a matter of 11 years. Ferdman explains that one cause of this is the price of foods. Health foods are very expensive, and people within the low socioeconomic class cannot ford this “fancy food”. Another cause is the America’s growing income gap; in 2013, the income gap was the highest its been in 80 years. The most important cause, in my opinion, is education. Americans in the low socioeconomic tiers usually have little knowledge on how unhealthy their food choices are and what the consequences of these choices may be. Low-income people have very limited access to transportation and do not have access to a variety of affordable food, so they take what they can get. Even if there are affordable good meals out there, which there definitely are, education & transportation prevent people from getting to them, which is no fault of their own.

The growing food inequality affects everyone. Obesity and diabetes, both diet-driven diseases, have a huge impact on our economy. Ferdman criticizes how federally funded food programs spend money. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program spends so much money on benefits, food stamps, vouchers, etc., so why are they not doing more to nutritionally educate these people to limit junk food purchases? I thought this article was very interesting because I never really thought of food as a way to mark socioeconomic class in America. But, it is true; we are all partially defined by the food choices we make. Clothing, fashion, expensive cars, homes, etc. have always been an indicator of socioeconomic class in our society. But, as the gap between the rich and poor continues to grow, food will start to be a critical indicator as well.

One question I had while reading this article is if healthier, “fancier” foods have always been more expensive than junk food, why is the inequality increasing? Are healthier foods getting relatively more expensive? It would be interesting to see how healthy food prices have risen compared to unhealthy ones over the past 10 years.  Although the author seems judgmental, I do not think this article is meant to criticize people of low socioeconomic class. Rather, it is to point out that the gap is growing & education is essential to making good food choices and with growing income inequality it is inevitable that consumption inequality will follow-suit.