Just yesterday I posted about the new report by the IPCC on diets and climate change. Remember? Nature says "Eat Less Meat." The Guardian says, "We can't keep eating as we are." That article contends that eating a kilogram (about 2.2 lbs) of beef is associated with as much carbon emissions as driving a new car for a year or for one passenger to have a round trip from London to New York. (Wow. I'm not sure about that, but that's what it says!)
Another part of the costs is the place where the goods are produced and how much it costs to get them to the market. For example, do you think it costs more or less to buy an egg in say Sub-Saharan Africa than it does in the US? If you guessed that the price of eggs is about 7 times more expensive in SSA than in North America, you guessed right!
Virtually all foods are much more expensive there. The only one that's even close is sugary snacks- not exactly the best news for the world's diet. So, the upshot: "most nutritious foods are expensive in lower-income countries....[and] the relative cheapness of unhealthy calories is an important explanation of the obesity epidemic in higher-income countries" (Headey & Alderman 2019, linked above). Although we have made huge strides over the years in production technology, not much of that has translated to the poor.
Another example is fruits and vegetables. In order to eat healthy, we all need them, but right now most people literally cannot get enough access to be healthy.
Imagine putting climate change on top of all of these problems. Wow. I'm pretty sure it won't work to the advantage of the poor....
