Reply #52: "Meat is cheap by comparison" isn't a valid statement.

[Igel]

You have to find pretty cheap ground meat to rival the per-pound cost of some vegetables.

I think what you mean to say is that the cost per calorie derived from meat is lower than the cost per calorie derived from vegetables. Veggies aren't nearly as calorie-dense as meat, and the cheaper cuts of meat tend to be even higher in calories than the more expensive ones because they have more fat.

Then again, oil calories are cheaper yet.

On the other hand, there's more. I notice that most of the postive fruit/veggie references are to high-sugar or high-starch plants. Oranges, strawberries are cited as high-price alternatives to meat (when there are cheaper, but less sugary, alternatives); we also see winter squash cited (with added fat). Starch is readily converted to sugar, even beginning in the mouth, so it tends to taste a bit sweet after a few bites or a bit of chewing.

And one person says that veggies taste bad.

So, let's see: We have taste receptors for sweet and umami, and tend to regard excitation of those as "good." Many veggies have a bitter taste for many (esp. for "supertasters" and such), but tend not to have basic tastes that are sweet or meat. Fruit and meat, flavorful; veggies insipid. We fix veggies' insipidness by making them sour or salty or fatty, if you like sour and salty things (most people like salty, and it's an open question among many physiologists, although not among most dieticians, as to whether that's really bad for most people).

As to fat, that tends to make us feel sated. Eat a pile of fat-free leaf vegetables and you're likely to feel stuffed but not full. Add a cup of butter and it's fine.

Now, our brains mostly tell us to consume salt, sugar, fat, umami. Because in the wild those are a lot harder to come by than leafy things--which are, in any event, likely to be bitter as a warning to many animals. We've faced a lot more starvation and near-starvation as a species than we have obesity.

That meat and grain and sugar production are subsidized makes sense: It's what people want. This makes it cheaper, and in many cases a lot cheaper. Subsidizing broccoli makes a lot less sense, politically.

As for the actual price of veggies, when I have a chunk of land that I'd otherwise cover with grass I find that they're really cheap. $1 in seeds and $2 in water nets me a lot of spinach. That $3 tomato plant and $1 in water gives me absurdly cheap tomatoes. A lot of neighborhoods poorer in diet have houses with yards but with crabgrass. Crabgrass, even with kielbasa, tastes yucky (I suspect).