All right. So since I've lived here, I've had the idea that healthy foods (fruits, vegetables, and lean meats) are much cheaper in Brazil than in the US. I've explained the price difference as the reason why Americans eat so badly. So today, I decided to do some research to prove just how much cheaper everything healthy is in Brazil.
I went to our local non-chain grocery store. Most of the fruits and veggies are organic by default, but that doesn't necessarily reflect a stronger economy or healthier-minded people (it instead reflects a small family farming economy). I bought all of our fruits and veggies for the week, plus a couple of cleaning supplies (laundry detergent, dish soap, toilet paper). I didn't buy meat because we didn't need any. My total was 70 reais.
To be realistic, this food is going to cover all of our breakfasts and lunches (because we never eat out for those), and about 4 dinners (we eat out a few times a week, and when we do, it's always for dinner). It also includes our snacks (fruits, crackers, cookies, and top ramen (miojo)). I also bought some oranges, a pineapple, and fresh mint to make 2 juices this week (gotta counteract the top ramen, right?).
It's really hard to calculate average grocery store purchases, because some weeks you need expensive things (like olive oil) and some weeks you don't. But our purchases average about 70 reais a week for the two of us.
So then I came home and tried to make a spreadsheet to compare the prices of the products I bought today to the prices of these same products in the US. This proved to be pretty much impossible. This comparison was hard to calculate because...
1. Pounds vs. Kilos. I'm terrible at math.
2. Dollars vs. Reais. It's not enough to just say "oh, right now, 1 dollar is 1.80 reais." It's a little more complicated than that.
3. Price per unit vs. price per pound/kilo. Lots of fruits and vegetables are sold by unit, not by weight. And we all know that produce in the US is super mutant-sized. So it's hard to get an accurate comparison with those.
4. Online prices vs. in-store prices. I tried to use Safeway's online shopping site to do a fake shopping trip, but they have this arbitrary "units" system for the prices of their products and the units don't correspond to like, one piece of fruit or one vegetable (but even if they did, it wouldn't be of much help because of the aforementioned mutant produce). I also don't know if online prices are higher than in-store prices.
So you can imagine that I got frustrated pretty quickly, and it's not even something that I need to do for money or a grade or something. So then I decided to just do some Google searches for average prices of veggies in the US.
I found this very informative site from the USDA that showed me something very surprising. The price per pound for fruits and veggies on this site are almost equal to what I pay here in the Sao Paulo countryside. (For example, 1 paid R$1.25 per pound for carrots, and the price on this site was US$1.28 per pound.)
As I said above, the dollars vs reais thing is kind of complicated. But I can tell you that an English teacher at a private school in a big city in California earns almost the same salary as an English teacher at a private school in a relatively small town in Sao Paulo. (i.e. my salary was the same in dollars and reais, but that's not true for all jobs and between all cities, and other cost of living factors, like rent prices, are very relevant).
So basically, according to the numbers on this site, it seems to me that prices of produce aren't that different between the US and Brazil.
Shocked? I was, too. Of course, this won't be true for every Brazilian compared to every American. Both countries have regions with higher costs of living, regions that are closer to the sources of different produce, different prices in different seasons, etc. But the American site shows national averages, and I live
So Alexandre and I got to talking. If fruits and veggies are about the same price between the two countries, why do Americans eat so badly? When I was living there, I ate terribly, too. Here's what we decided:
1. Even if produce is the same price, junk food is still cheaper. The alternative to cooking well at home is eating out. In the US, that can be a cheaper alternative if you stick to fast food chains. In Brazil, the same American fast food chains are very expensive. We just got a Burger King in town (BIG NEWS), and Alexandre's burger combo (with small fries and a small drink) was 18 reais. So basically, in Brazil, it's cheaper to eat at home than to eat fast food. In the US, the opposite is true. It's also faster, more convenient, and delicious.
2. When do Americans have time to learn how to cook, let alone to cook? We tend to move out of our parents' homes much earlier than Brazilian twentysomethings. We don't spend our twenties watching our mother cook and learning from her. We also don't get 2-hour lunch breaks (try 30 minutes), which is not uncommon for Brazilian jobs. So if you're Brazilian, you live at home, and your mother is a housewife, you can get a home-cooked meal for lunch and dinner if you want. I'm not saying Americans are victims. We have set up our economy and formed our values and priorities in such a way that food and healthy eating is just NOT important. Independence is. Competitiveness at work is.
3. Eating at restaurants is the social default in the US. Ok. Imagine it's your 28th birthday. You want to celebrate with a bunch of friends. What do you do?
(a) invite everyone to a party-oriented restaurant for dinner
(b) invite everyone to your parents' house for a lunchtime barbecue and ask your friends to bring fresh bread and/or fresh salsa, while you and your parents cook fresh meat. (You might ask your friends to chip in a few bucks each for the meat if there are a lot of people.)
If you're American, you'll likely choose (a). If you're Brazilian, you'll likely choose (b). For American twentysomethings, the first idea of where to celebrate something is in a bar or restaurant (anyone disagree?). Bars and restaurants = much more fattening food.
------------
All of this isn't to say that Brazilians have perfect diets. Low-income people in Brazil also have health problems as a result of poor diets-- they're just different problems (i.e. they eat only beans and rice instead of eating only Mc Donald's). I've also had a couple of students that married young and moved out of their parents' houses early, and so they also have the problem of having to work more to pay their own bills and not having the time or skills to cook. The Brazilian equivalent of eating out on the cheap is lanches - super greasy street-corner sandwiches.
----------------------
That's all we've come up with so far. I'd love to hear everyone else's thoughts. I know my calculations and my statistical logic isn't flawless. What other factors are affecting the prices between the two countries? If you're not an economist, tell us about your life! If you've lived in both countries, what was your diet like? How did prices/your schedule/your social life affect your eating habits? I know that some of you went from small town to big city, instead of my opposite situation. How do the prices compare?
I don't know about you guys, but all this food talk has made me hungry. I'm gonna go make a cake. Old habits die hard!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
This was really interesting. I usually compare by getting a friend to buy approximately the same that I have just bought and we then compare prices. So far, for me, Brazil has come out more expensive by far (and my friend shops at upmarket supermarkets). There's a good reason for that. In the USA, she's small town, the way you are. Here, I'm big city. São Paulo is terrible for pricing (and quality).
ReplyDelete*sigh* I think I need to move to a small town for sooo many reasons!
I think if you stick to the basics shopping in the grocery store will save you a bundle. But if you want to recreate Thai food, or authentic Mexican food, or delicious Turkish food it will be very expensive.
ReplyDeleteI was very spoiled living in San Francisco. Grocery stores had EVERYTHING! Here... good luck.
But I focus on the undiscovered Brazilian foods rather than the missed ethic foods of yesterday.
Go vegetarian and food is always cheaper!
ReplyDeleteI think it is that fast food is so cheap. I noticed this in Mexico City too as I was forced to eat McDonald's one day for breakfast (since they don't stock bagels at Dunkin' Donuts and I only had a few minutes before I left for the airport).
A Big Mac with fries and a Coke was like $2!
Obviously food this cheap is not healthy--it's highly processed and made using the most environmentally unfriendly practices ever (factory farming with pollution and severe overcrowding and stress on the animals, cheap illegal labor (at least in the US it's mostly illegal immigrants who work at slaughterhouses)--whatever your feelings about illegal immigrants, you know there's no health or safety standards in these jobs and who are illegals going to complain too?
This food is cheap in the short run but the long-term health effects are horrific.
Corporations also don't put grocery stores in the ghetto, so a lot of these people buy "groceries" from the local Korean/bodega.
There's a whole movement to get farmer's markets in low-income areas.
There's something about US culture though that doesn't embrace fruits and veggies.
Even me (lifelong vegetarian) thought it was weird when I was in England and my English friend brought along some watermelon to share on a car ride.
If he was American, he would have brought a super-size bag of Doritos. Sigh.
Danielle,
ReplyDeleteThis is a great subject, and we always have heated discussions on the topic at my house.
You are correct, prices are almost the same in Brazil and the US, I compare often, off course I am not comparing Whole Foods with your corner Hortifruti in Brazil, but a typical Rhode Island grocery store such as Dave's or Stop & Shop comparing to a typical grocery store in Sao Paulo such as Pao de Acucar or Extra.
I have found very few exceptions, for example, New England ( Boston and Rhode Island) gets most tomatoes from Canada, mostly greenhouses between Toronto and Montreal, they are great looking/tasting tomatoes but come at a hefty U$2.99 per pound, just as a reference, 1 pound equals 1/2 a Kilo, so 2 pounds equals 1 kilo, you do the simple math, 2 pounds times U$2.99 is roughly U$6.00 per KILO, and almost R$12.00 ( Reais ) per KILO, that is insane and outrageous but it is an exception.
By the way, this year, We had a SUPER production of Tomatoes in the US and we are paying .99 cents per pound, total exception.
We are also seeing a reduction in prices of meat, just bought some great Rib eye Steaks for U$5.99 a pound this week, that is very cheap, also due to the lowest demand with the economic crisis in the US, prices on high end cuts of beef are down.
I totally agree with you that in general, prices are very similar...so, my humble conclusion...long story short...
Our bad eating habits in the US started during WWII when most men went to war and most women went to work in factories to replace the men who had gone to war...
When that happened, the habit of cooking at home started to die and even after the war when things went back to somewhat normal, women were working and most people did not have a habit of cooking at home from scratch.
People still cooked at home, but they cooked very practical meals, you can find instant mashed potatoes in a box, canned soup, frozen dinners, microwavable everything...easy and quick to prepare stuff...mostly not healthy, because SALT and FAT prolongs the shelf life of prepared foods.
The rule in the US is food has to be semi prepared, no one wants to be washing, slicing and peeling fruits and vegetables to prepare a meal.
In Brazil this process happened in a much smaller scale and is ( unfortunately) happening, but at a much slower pace.
When we lived in Sao Paulo, at the city, we never cooked, we ate 90% of the time at restaurants, but we had great choices, we mostly ate at per Kilo places ( by weight ), which offer great healthy options.
Due to cultural habits, Brazilians usually will not accept canned beets, carrots or green beans, they are just not used to it, so restaurants can't get away with the canned stuff, they have to buy fresh and prepare it in the restaurant.
American restaurant chains such as Apple Bee's or Outback receive all their meals FROZEN in cardboard boxes from 2k miles away and they are microwaved on the spot for your delight, people love it here, it is a great success, but again, to preserve these frozen meals thru all the distribution step, it is load with salt and fat.
I can buy dinner for 2 at A- McDonald's for about U$15,00 and start eating it in 1 minute, or B-I can go to Stop & Shop and buy some steaks, a bunch of broccoli, some tomatoes and some escarole...for the same U$15.00 and be eating it in 1 hour.
Depending how tired and or hungry I am by dinner time I will choose option A or B, this is a very common predicament at dinner time at our house.
Truth of the matter is that in the US, if you want to eat healthy at a restaurant will be much harder and expensive than in Brazil, at least when you compare the Boston area with Sao Paulo city where you can find a lot of great healthy per Kilo restaurants and it is worth to mention that Boston options for restaurants are very similar with the rest of the US and Canada for that matter.
Cheers
Great topic by way!
I agree that food prices are roughly equivalent. That was my experience, anyway. We eat totally unprocessed and as organic as possible, especially for animal products--rice, beans, meat, veggies, fruit. Meat (especially beef) is much cheaper in Brazil. But my husband is a public school teacher here (private school there), so salary is much higher here. I found food relatively expensive in Brazil.
ReplyDeleteGreat article! I have often done a lot of thinking about this myself. But I have one question what do you mean that you make almost the same salary in dollars and reais? As in $30,000 per year in the US and say $30,000 per year in Reais in Brazil?
ReplyDeleteAny anycase MSN just had an article about the obesity problem in the US today and this definately ties directly in. The fact that most people don't cook at all or don't cook from scratch definately plays a role. Certainly the time factor is the biggest issue. I work so much that I don't have time to cook but I usually cook on Sunday for at least 3 days to make up for this.