April 16 Flashcards
What do our food policies do to markets?
- Changing supply with food aid (address availability) or new agricultural technologies
- Subsidize (artificially low, below market equilibrium) prices do to food supply and demand?
- Using income elascticities to target undernutrition.
Ways to change food supply
Draw graphs (s.7)
- Increase price so farmers produce more
- Increase in world prices
- Artificially set higher price (subsidized farmgate prices) - Increase quantity supplied/available for the same price
- New technology in agricultural production
- Food aid /subsidized imports on market
What happens when you set an artificially low price for baguettes?
- Increases demand for bread
- Reduces cost of nutrition for all people in France
- Distorts supply and demand equilibrium for baguettes
- Affects bakery+flour milling sector
- Affects the farm sector: wheat producers, etc…
How does government set this artificially low price?
Spends lots of money on subsidies for bakeries and flour milling sector
What does an artificially low price do?: Baguettonomics in a graph
Draw graph (s.9)
French ear more baguettes
Quantity demanded»_space; supplied
Gov needs to subsidize producers so they produce the amount demanded by customers
- CAN BE V $$$ !!!
Examples of subsidized foods in other countries:
- Malaysia subsidizes rice, sugar, oil, chicken, eggs
- 2024: subsidies for chicken and eggs cost $817M/yr, while total food subsidies in 2023 cosr $17.4B
- Q1: Why did Malaysia choose to subsidize these particular food items?
- Q2: What happens when world food prices go up?
- Q1: Hunger effects, nutrition effects (could be bad: sugars)
- Q2: Everything abt price goes up
How can income elasticities help us?
What about Engle curves/indices?
Can create self-targeting where poor people will select goods we subsidize while the rich will avoid them
Engle curves/indices: help us understand how money will be spent on food in household, or not
Incoem elasticities tell us to subsidize _____ goods, not ______ gods
subsidize inferior/normal goods, NOT luxurious goods
How does policies that increases calorie consumption do at targeting improvements in micronutrients?
not very well
________ provides a more targeted and specific effort at providing micro-nutrients to population
Fortification of foods
Fortification wants to target what in the diet?
target missing micro-nutrients
Fortification wants to target missing micronutrients in diet that are what?
- Hard to get otherwise
- Expensive to get
What are common foods fortified in the US?
Salt: iodine
Milk/diary: VitD, VitA
BReakfast cereals: many vitamins
Bread
Fruit juices
Some eggs, egg products
Is it legally mandatory for the US to fortify foods?
no
6 fortification rules in the US (1968 AMA guidelines)
- The intake of the nutrient, in the absence of fortification, is below the desirable level in the diets of a significant number of people.
- The food from which the nutrient is to be derived is likely to be consumed in
quantities that will make a significant contribution to the diet of the population in need. - The addition of the nutrient is unlikely to create an imbalance of essential
nutrients. - The nutrient added is stable under proper conditions of storage and use.
- The nutrient is physiologically available from the food to which it will be added.
- There is a reasonable assurance against intake sufficiently in excess to be toxic.
Why not just add all the vitamins when fortiying?
Expensive
Increased risk of over targeting
- not everyone needs all the vitamins
- better to target specific vitamins to specific populations that have deficiencies
Fortification guidelines in the rest of the world
- 97.5% of people in the group (whole pop, or specific groups: women, kids, etc…)
- But only of those “at greatest risk of deficiency”
- Without “causing risk of excessive intake”, so we care about targeting
- Problem: in poor countries people eat fewer processed goods -> processing foods = great way to fortify foods
-> Q: hwo to get fortified foods to the whole pop?
What kinds of foods will meet fortification guidelines (global at least)
- At least partially processed + relatively uniform ac time and space
- Staple foods that all consumes
- popular cultural foods
- fortify the substitues (fortify cow milk, then fortify other milks: oat, soy, …) - “Normal” food goods in an income elasticity sense
- No inferior/luxury goods - Foods with low price elasticity of demand
- If fortification raises the price, we don’t want people to switch to another good
Difference between “Fortification” and “Enrichment”
Fortification: adding nutrients to food that was NOT ORIGINALLY there or in DIFF AMOUNT
- Add iodine into salt
Enrichment: adding Vitamins/minerals to food ut RESOTRE those nutrients to ORIG. levels prior to storage, handing, processing
- Add B vitamins back into white bread/flour to make up for nutrients lost in processing
The story of VitD fortification in milk:
- VitD deficiency -> rickets
- Rickets = weak bones in kids from diet deficiency or genetics
- Bowed legs, stunt, bone pain, big forehead, trouble sleeping
- Most common in black urban people
The solution to story of VitD fortification in milk:
1921: Dr. McCollum found VitD cures rickets
1923: Dr. Steenbock found how to biofortify food with VitD by exposign it to UV light
- // VitD absorption through skin
Milk producers use what moniker to differentiate their product, sell more milk and gain market share from non-fortified milk sellers?
“Vitamin D Milk”
Vitex process appealed to what type of processing plants?
Smaller dairy processing plants
Why did WARF’s irradiation appealed to larger plants?
Cuz it was expensive to install, but tended to be cheaper to operate
