How to Be a Conscious Eater

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.

Stuff that Comes from Factories 195

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