One of the paradoxes of modern life is that only those who are rich can afford to buy healthy foods while others who are not able to buy good nutritional foods due to economic reasons end up consuming calories and fat rich foods offered by the food industry at lower costs. How the industry is able to make processed foods containing costly ingredients cheaper is any body's guess. No wonder that most people coming under the obesity group hail from lower income segment of the population in rich countries.
"Professor and obesity researcher, Dr. Adam Drewnowski set out to determine why income is the most reliable predictor of obesity in the U.S. To do this, he took a hypothetical dollar to the grocery store. His goal was to purchase as many calories as possible per dollar. What he found is that he could buy well over 1,000 calories of cookies or potato chips. But his dollar would only buy 250 calories of carrots. He could buy almost 900 calories of soda… but only 170 calories of orange juice. If you are poor and hungry, you are obviously going to buy the cheapest calories you can find. And in today's world, the cheapest calories come from junk foods – whether those foods are found at the grocery store, the gas station, or in the fast food restaurant, conveniently located just down the street".
Fortunately in India it is the other way. In the name of value addition, processed foods are priced exorbitantly to the extent of 100 to 500% that of the input material. While corn flake cereal preparation costs more than Rs 250 per kg, the raw material maize is available to the consumer at less than Rs 15 per kg. Probably there is a relationship between the scale of operation and the consumer price. Larger the size of the manufacturer higher seems to be the difference between the cost of input materials and the product price.
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