That’s the topic of this thoughtful piece by Mark Bittman, but the point isn’t just the familiar fact of the hidden high (and highly subsidized) costs of processed food in America. Bittman reflects more generally on how regular ingredients can be bought cheaply and prepared easily to make healthy delicious meals at home (which, coincidentally, is this blog’s wheelbox). His overall point is that “the alternative to fast food is not necessarily organic food, any more than the alternative to soda is Bordeaux”:

The alternative to soda is water, and the alternative to junk food is not grass-fed beef and greens from a trendy farmers’ market, but anything other than junk food: rice, grains, pasta, beans, fresh vegetables, canned vegetables, frozen vegetables, meat, fish, poultry, dairy products, bread, peanut butter, a thousand other things cooked at home — in almost every case a far superior alternative.

Brought to my attention by the ever-informative Adam Conover’s google feed.