2023-06-23 04:51:00
Inflation hits the entire country and has an impact on what families can consume. In the shops of the Salta neighborhoods, they notice that there is a cut in healthy foods. There is also a tendency to buy lower quality beef cuts.
Fruits are selling less and the boys at the traffic lights know that until the end of the year they sold bags of any fruit for 100 pesos and now they are over 300 pesos. In a neighborhood store, the situation is worse because putting together a good fruit salad can cost up to 5,000 pesos. Before, fruits were eaten every day, today: “salteao salteao”.
The panorama is complemented by the disproportionate rise in nuts, avocados, olive and coconut oil, so everything suggests that we will have future problems related to poor nutrition. However, what is also consumed less are sweets, chocolates and soft drinks.
A butcher in the southern zone, on Avda. Ex-Combatientes de Malvinas, said that sales are not going down. What goes down is the quality of the cut they buy. Today the vedette cut is the armpit that costs 1,600 pesos per kilo and they use it for everything, for milanesas, steaks, sauces, locros, such as ground meat, etc. What is still valid is the increasingly marked habit of consuming pork. The pork breast has already replaced the traditional roast rib.
“Almost no one smokes,” said a newsstand in the northern zone. Cigarette packs of 20 have become inaccessible so many choose to assemble cigars with tobacco, paper and filter.
Soledad Sánchez, a renowned cook from the southeast area, said that the best cuts are those of pork; the shoulder and the ham are the most economical and profitable. With that she cooks all kinds of dishes. “Now I’m making a delicious lentil stew with pork leg and its little skin,” said the teacher.
What went down a lot is also the purchase of chicken. The salteño makes the relationship with beef and they are in equal values, so red meat is preferred for higher yield.
In the lower income ranges, up to fourth brands are already being consumed and many storekeepers already sell noodles, rice and loose flour.
In the last 5 years, a food basket in transition towards healthy and sustainable standards, in its most economical version, costs at least a third more than the consumption reflected in the basic food basket. The CBA, on the other hand, reflects an unhealthy eating pattern with a large amount of food of medium or low quality.
In general, people from Salta are leaving those little pleasures for the high prices. The coca, the butts, the fernet, a whiskey were things that used to be put on the table in meetings.
This is one of the conclusions of a report on “The systematic deterioration of the food economy and its implications for diet quality” published by the Center for Studies on Food Policies and Economics (Cepea) and the Diploma in Healthy Eating in Sustainable Food Systems (from the Faculty of Medical Sciences of the Argentine Catholic University).
Between January 2018 and March 2023, the prices of vegetables, fruits, legumes, milk, yogurt and fish (those that are least present in the CBA) grew more than those of red meat, bread, potatoes, flour and refined cereals. This, in up to 60% of the monthly measurements (almost 40 of the 63 months analyzed).
Between both time points (January 2018 – March 2023) surplus food prices increased 1,136%, a value practically similar to the variation in the global average for food and beverages (1,145%). However, deficient foods -which have less presence in the basket and are healthier- grew 160 points more (1300%) limiting the accessibility to the most nutritious foods.
This differential behavior, in the context of a highly inflationary economy and with increasing rates of poverty, implies that the healthiest foods, with the best nutritional quality, become almost systematically less accessible. The possibility of improving the unhealthy eating pattern that favors obesity -which characterizes the population in general and the poorest in particular- is limited by the greater accessibility (their prices grow less) of foods that are less nutritious, but They have greater power of satiety and caloric density.
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