Word: cheaping
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...simply don't have to. During the Depression, the government began subsidizing commodities like corn. Today, against all logic, the subsidies continue, and corn-derived snacks and Cokes are so cheap and convenient that, as University of Washington epidemiologist Adam Drewnowski argues, it's perfectly rational, on a dollar-per-calorie basis, to buy them. (Fresh fruits and vegetables aren't subsidized, and by nature they cost more to store and ship.) Drewnowski estimates it would cost 100 times as much to get the same amount of energy from fresh raspberries as from a typical packet of cookies...
Still, there are hidden costs to cheap calories. Environmental damage is one--in the postwar race to the lowest possible price, farmers applied oceans of pesticides and fertilizers--but obesity is the most obvious. A common objection to ending subsidies is that people will go hungry, and indeed some Americans can't afford to eat: in 2005, according to the USDA, 2.9% of households had at least one member who went hungry at least once the previous year. But the U.S. has a bigger problem with overnutrition. More than half of us are overweight; we spend something like $94 billion...
...translated Slow Food Nation (Rizzoli; 262 pages), agriculture has become "completely detached from the lives of billions of people, as if procuring food had become a matter of course and required no effort at all." But one way or another, we will pay for all that we're eating. CHEAP EATS Percentage of disposable income Americans spend on food [This article contains a chart. Please see hardcopy of magazine...
...began showing up with the phrases "Actually, I Am a Plastic Bag," "I Am Not An Anya Hindmarch Bag" and from marissav.com a tote that proudly declared, "I Am Not A Smug EXPLETIVE". Then The Evening Standard revealed that the so-called green carriers were made in China, using cheap labor, and that the bag was neither organic nor fair trade...
...years, garment unions in the West have hemorrhaged jobs to China, with its cheap, non-unionized workers. After Beijing won the '08 games, the unions banded into an alliance, called Play Fair 2008, to spotlight conditions in plants where the right to organize is denied. The report concluded: "The Olympic games is both a symbolic and practical opportunity to ensure that these global sporting events live up to the ideals enshrined in the Olympic charter and that people who enjoy the games can also know that the souvenirs and garments they wear are produced in factories where basic human dignity...