If I had a dollar for every time someone said that they don't buy fruits and vegetables or "healthy food" because it's too expensive, I could feed a small town all organic food for years! But, of course, it's true -- when you look at the prices of so-called "conventional" junk food compared with local, organic fruits and veggies, on a calorie per dollar basis, the junk often wins. Many people assume that it's the produce or organic foods that "cost more" than highly processed, shelf-stable ubiquitous and cheap junk food, but what if the price tags that we see don't tell the whole story?

When I was a kid in the 80s, my Mom would tell me to eat everything on my plate – because kids were starving in Ethiopia. There came a time when that argument started to seem ridiculous because my understanding of global geography was wide enough to know that my left-over food was never going to feed Ethiopia’s hungry children.