Economic Eating Style

With so many choices of what to have for a specific meal or even snack, indecision has become, in today’s society, one of the most complicating contemporary food issues because of the exponentially increasing number of choices. This issue is so complicated because of the multiple economic groups it affects and the different implications for each economic class. As Pollan states, “The sheer novelty and glamour of the Western diet, with its 17,000 new food products introduced every year, and the marketing muscle used to sell these products, has overwhelmed the force of tradition and left us where we now find ourselves” (Pollan 15). With choices between fresh produce, which is expensively priced, and processed produced, which has been synthetically developed in a lab to be made at the lowest possible cost to the company, low income families are forced into positions in which their only choices are unhealthy, potentially dangerous, processed foods. 

These 17,000 choices in the supermarket are only available to a certain portion of the population and those who are not in this economic class that allows them to have all of the choices are forced into a certain style of eating consisting of mostly processed foods. With some people being forced into certain eating styles dependent upon their economic stability, others have given up the ability to think or eat for themselves and are basing their eating styles off of the popular news and or media diets that have flooded our culture today. Although some people are restrained to the type of eating style that their class permits, others who have almost an infinite amount of choices are being drawn in by popular culture and media food propaganda that defines the food that they choose to buy at the supermarket.