Page 206 - How to Be a Conscious Eater - Making Food Choices That Are Good for You

recommends Americans eat and what US farmers grow.
If everyone actually started eating the way experts sug-
gest—reaching the recommended servings of vegetables,
legumes, and whole grains—we wouldn’t currently have
enough supply. To reach our optimal diet quality, we
would need to increase the supply of vegetables by 70 per-
cent, double the supply of fruit (mostly whole fruit, since
we’ve got plenty of juice), and quadruple the fraction of the
grains that remain whole-grain, rather than get refined. As
researchers note, to tip the economic balance we need a
big “push” from government, agriculture, marketing, and
economic policies. Together, corn and soy make up half the
entire US harvest. Most of the varieties grown aren’t even
edible, because they’re used for animal feed, sugar, or oil.
Put another way: We don’t need farmers to produce more
calories, we need them to produce better calories.
Consumer demand can provide the “pull” that’s needed
in parallel. As a consumer, what does that mean to you per-
sonally? Vote with your grocery basket. If the rolled oats start
flying off shelves, for example, more farmers could become
incentivized to plant oats as part of their crop mix. The
same goes for manufacturers being compelled to emphasize
the more minimally processed options among their product
portfolios. For example, as we’ve already seen, consumers
have been buying less and less soda. In response, Pepsi and
Coke have shifted more of their focus to water. (We’ve still
got the issue of all the single-use bottles and cans to contend
with, but it’s a step in the right direction.) Solution: Eating
fruits and vegetables and legumes and whole grains is good
for your health and requires minimal natural resources to
produce; to free up more land to grow calories from those
types of foods, contribute to the economic pull by buying
ever more of them.

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