You can purchase a cheeseburger at our local McDonald’s for $4.19. It’s something of a miracle — given how far it’s traveled and how many hands have contributed to making it.
There’s the cashier and the cook. Then whoever drove and flew the patties to 2285 Trout St. Plus the farmers who raised the cow, and whoever slaughtered it. And we can’t forget the Iowan corn farmer who grew the feed.
That’s only to name a few. Somehow paid and satisfied at $4.19 a burger.
It’s possible only because the true cost of our food lies elsewhere — in our tax dollars, in the environment, and in our health.
All that burned gasoline — moving corn to feedlots, cows to slaughterhouses, and beef to Juneau — costs real dollars in catastrophe relief that aren’t included on the receipt. Economists call this “implicit costs.”
Another misnomer of that $4.19 price tag the U.S. government pays in hundreds of billions of dollars in agricultural and oil subsidies, which artificially lower the price of a McDonald’s cheeseburger and make it harder for unsubsidized, local farmers to compete.
Whether or not you pull off Glacier Highway and step through those French doors, you’re already paying McDonald’s your tax dollars.
There are health costs too. The U.S. spent $306 billion on the treatment and management of diabetes in 2022, an increase of 66% since 2000. A McDonald’s cheeseburger packs a punch, no matter how policymakers rebrand nutrition guidelines.
What we should be eating, according to decades of nutrition research, broadly agreed upon by nutritionists, is more nutrient-rich food — which a McDonald’s cheeseburger is not.
So what is?
In June, three friends and I gathered in Gustavus and began gardening, fishing, hunting, and foraging all our food for eight months. It’s an imperfect experiment, but a revealing one.
From the sandy succession of 19th century glacial deposits, our quadruple of twenty-somethings harvested 700 pounds of potatoes, 95 pounds of beets, 400 onions, and 6 garbage bins of carrots. Our freezers hold 70 pounds of strawberries and more salmon, halibut, venison, and moose sausage than I’d like to count. Our shelves sag under hundreds of quarts of salmon, venison, and moose stock, plus 80 quarts of juice.
All of it we’re eating — or giving away.
It’s a peculiarity of the 21st century that we no longer need to pay attention to our food. You might think cheeseburgers live and breathe on laminated floors, if all you ever did was shop at McDonald’s.
None of this is to say you shouldn’t buy fast food, or that you need to eat locally. Fred Meyer doesn’t exactly advertise its supply chain either, and local food isn’t always accessible.
I’m asking what your food is worth — and I don’t think the answer shows on a price tag.
It shows in dirty fingernails.
The author’s garden is pictured in summer. (photo by Ari Romberg)
