We’re getting ripped off by the food industry producing these “low calorie” packages and charging us more.
Food is just Fuel. The Fuel for our body is expressed in “calories.” So you should want as many calories for the lowest cost possible. Calories are not bad. They often get a bad rap, but we shouldn’t confuse calories themselves with “over-eating” … we need calories to give us energy and sustain our life. Eating too many is bad in the same way eating too little is bad.
We all need a certain amount of calories each month to live (i.e. calories are energy/fuel), and giving us less of them while charging more, is like raising the price of gasoline to $20 / gallon but hiding it in the fact they are giving us 1 freaking OZ of fuel for $.15 … now that’s what I’d call creative marketing.
If you didn’t catch that, $0.15 / oz is the same as $20 / Gallon Ya’ll. And that’s literally what’s happening here.
It’s like the package that is only $2 … cheap you may say. But if it only has 50 calories, then I’d say that’s crazy expensive. If I keep buying things like that, and I consume 2,000 calories a day, that’s $2,400 I’ll spend over the course of a month.
Europe is ahead of us in this matter … instead of calories, they call it “Energy” on their food labels. Because that’s exactly what it is … Energy for our bodies.
When we see packaging that says “Only 100 Calories” — we’re being conditioned to think that less is more.
Are you with me so far? …
Now I will concede, some of us need self control, and portion control, and taking 10,000 calories of nuts and putting them into smaller packs that we can calculate is great … SO long as the price doesn’t double.
But that’s exactly what the health food industry has been doing to us for years… finding ways to give us “less but charge us more” … it’s crazy. Let’s look at these Nabisco Oreo Thins” – $20 on Amazon for a box of 2. Collectively, that’s 1,200 calories (6 packs of 100 X 2 boxes). At $20, that’s almost $.017 / calorie. Doesn’t seem like much, 1.7 cents… but if that’s all two normal sized adults ate for a month, they’d need to buy 100 of these and spend ~$2,000 to maintain their body mass.
Basically, they have to eat more, and BUY MORE, because they are getting less fuel.
I think we all know that not all things are created equal, and we always need to consider cost and quantity when making buying decisions … thanks COSTCO. 😉
But what happens when the quantity is hard to determine? How do you compare a package that has 200 calories / serving, and 14.5 servings, at $12, with one that has 280 calories / serving, and 1 serving, at $2.82?
People are generally not good at multiplying and dividing in their heads, especially if they have to multiply again. So I would propose that each package has an estimated monthly spend (if you just at that item) “using MRSP” so we can at least compare on a cost basis.
It should be mandatory for every food label to list how much you’d spend a month if you only ate that food
Let me give you some examples:
If you just ate Rice, you’d spend ~$100 / month on food
If you just drank Coffee for calories, you’d spend $15K / month
If you just ate Spinach, $4K / month
If you just ate Wild Alaskan Cod, $3K / month
If you just ate Amy’s Bowls Mushroom Risotto – $2K / month