{"id":249,"date":"2010-03-10T11:27:52","date_gmt":"2010-03-10T11:27:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/roddreher\/2010\/03\/why-is-a-big-mac-cheaper-than-a-salad.html"},"modified":"2010-03-10T11:27:52","modified_gmt":"2010-03-10T11:27:52","slug":"why-is-a-big-mac-cheaper-than-a-salad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/2010\/03\/why-is-a-big-mac-cheaper-than-a-salad.html","title":{"rendered":"Why is a Big Mac cheaper than a salad?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It has a lot to do with the federal government badly skewing the market with subsidies. Look:<br \/>\n<span class=\"mt-enclosure mt-enclosure-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"pyramid.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/199\/import\/pyramid.jpg\" width=\"500\" height=\"356\" class=\"mt-image-center\" style=\"text-align: center;margin: 0 auto 20px\" \/><\/span><br \/>\nIf the government is going to game the system via subsidies, why not subsidize the production of fresh fruits and vegetables, to make healthy food more accessible to poorer families? Government also supports the market by buying up surplus meat and dairy products, and distributing them to public schoolkids in their lunches. As the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (whence the chart above) points out, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pcrm.org\/magazine\/gm07autumn\/health_pork.html\">the government is not required to buy fresh fruits and vegetables. <\/a> As a commentator cited by Andrew Sullivan <a href=\"http:\/\/andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com\/the_daily_dish\/2010\/03\/chart-of-the-day-4.html\">observes<\/a>, people who object to the government using tax policy to encourage people in our obese nation to eat healthier diets ought to realize Washington <i>already<\/i> manipulates the price of food &#8212; but in a way that encourages us to eat things that are making us fatter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It has a lot to do with the federal government badly skewing the market with subsidies. Look: If the government is going to game the system via subsidies, why not subsidize the production of fresh fruits and vegetables, to make healthy food more accessible to poorer families? Government also supports the market by buying up&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-249","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-food"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Why is a Big Mac cheaper than a salad? - Rod Dreher<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/2010\/03\/why-is-a-big-mac-cheaper-than-a-salad.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Why is a Big Mac cheaper than a salad? - Rod Dreher\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"It has a lot to do with the federal government badly skewing the market with subsidies. Look: If the government is going to game the system via subsidies, why not subsidize the production of fresh fruits and vegetables, to make healthy food more accessible to poorer families? Government also supports the market by buying up&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/2010\/03\/why-is-a-big-mac-cheaper-than-a-salad.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Rod Dreher\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-03-10T11:27:52+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/roddreher\/files\/import\/pyramid.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Rod Dreher\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Why is a Big Mac cheaper than a salad? - Rod Dreher","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/2010\/03\/why-is-a-big-mac-cheaper-than-a-salad.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Why is a Big Mac cheaper than a salad? - Rod Dreher","og_description":"It has a lot to do with the federal government badly skewing the market with subsidies. Look: If the government is going to game the system via subsidies, why not subsidize the production of fresh fruits and vegetables, to make healthy food more accessible to poorer families? Government also supports the market by buying up&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/2010\/03\/why-is-a-big-mac-cheaper-than-a-salad.html","og_site_name":"Rod Dreher","article_published_time":"2010-03-10T11:27:52+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/roddreher\/files\/import\/pyramid.jpg"}],"author":"Rod Dreher","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/2010\/03\/why-is-a-big-mac-cheaper-than-a-salad.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/2010\/03\/why-is-a-big-mac-cheaper-than-a-salad.html","name":"Why is a Big Mac cheaper than a salad? - Rod Dreher","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/2010\/03\/why-is-a-big-mac-cheaper-than-a-salad.html#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/2010\/03\/why-is-a-big-mac-cheaper-than-a-salad.html#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/roddreher\/files\/import\/pyramid.jpg","datePublished":"2010-03-10T11:27:52+00:00","dateModified":"2010-03-10T11:27:52+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/#\/schema\/person\/0eb55fec41ac37c5cdc76396861852db"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/2010\/03\/why-is-a-big-mac-cheaper-than-a-salad.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/2010\/03\/why-is-a-big-mac-cheaper-than-a-salad.html"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/2010\/03\/why-is-a-big-mac-cheaper-than-a-salad.html#primaryimage","url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/roddreher\/files\/import\/pyramid.jpg","contentUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/roddreher\/files\/import\/pyramid.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/2010\/03\/why-is-a-big-mac-cheaper-than-a-salad.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Why is a Big Mac cheaper than a salad?"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/","name":"Rod Dreher","description":"","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/#\/schema\/person\/0eb55fec41ac37c5cdc76396861852db","name":"Rod Dreher","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/2e1\/2e1e526772cb318f0168aec327715d02x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/2e1\/2e1e526772cb318f0168aec327715d02x96.jpg","caption":"Rod Dreher"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/author\/rdreher"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=249"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}