WHAT IS IT ABOUT FOOD?

I was googling around the other day––because we have Internet and I can just kinda do that now––and saw a strange trend: jobs in food are consistently among the lowest paying jobs. Not just stateside, but worldwide. In one study, I found that 30% of the 75 lowest paying jobs were food-based––cooking, serving, farm labor, etc.. All this, of course, led me to the obvious question of: What gives?What is it about food that makes it such a financially rough industry to be a part of? This fact seems counterintuitive to some extent. People have to eat several times a day, do they not? And if that food costs money, which it does, then A plus B should equal C-notes. But it doesn't. At least not for most people. Food is cheap, perhaps that explains part of it. However, food is also something you can sell lots of, so you'd think it would make up for itself somewhere. But, again, it doesn't.Naturally, this led me to wonder: if food is consistently on the low end, what are the highest paying jobs? So I looked into that. And kind of regret it.Over fifty percent of the top 25 highest paying jobs––that aren't just being Lebron James, Bill Gates or [insert relevant actor]; you know, normal people jobs––are medical. Dentists and assistants. Surgeons and anesthesiologists. Psychologists. The list goes on.Hm.Obviously, we need all of these jobs no matter what diets we follow. Eating good food will not stop you from a car wreck. It will not stop you from needing therapy (though the reason I included psychologists is the link studies have found between the gut and mental health). But it seems at least a little ironic, no? Because although I've heard it for years––"You can pay your farmer now or your doctor later"––that is actually what we've chosen to do. All that money we save buying cheap food, we are just reserving to give to our doctors in bulk.If humans share one common illness, it's chronic short-sightedness. It's not being able to look into the future and see how the decisions we make now, every day, will affect us later. This goes for our own health and it goes for the environment. And that food is at the bottom of the financial scale while medicine is at the top, illustrates with disturbing clarity how far we are willing to let it go. Then when our children get older we tell them to go be doctors because that's where the money is.I don't think this will ever change fully, but the beauty is that it's not law for doctors remain on top of the pay scale while the people who grow, cook and serve our food remain on the bottom. It's a choice we make as individuals. So I guess that's what we need to think of three times a day––we can pay our farmers now or our doctors later. And maybe I'm partial, but I'll take a good tomato sandwich over an antibiotic any day. That's not such an, ahem, hard pill to swallow.-Jesse.