Check this out: Food Check-Out Day shows food spending trends

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BY ART HOVEY / Lincoln Journal Star

It’s one of the least celebrated holidays in the United States.

No turkey. No gifts under a tree. No day off from work.

Yet the observance of Food Check-Out Day on Tuesday marks one of the most important advantages of life in the United States.

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In just 37 days, the average American earns enough to cover food costs for the entire year. That’s the lowest requirement of any country in the world.

“Sometimes, you just see the upward price trend, and you think food is getting expensive,” said Cheryl Stubbendieck of the Nebraska Farm Bureau Federation. “But if you put it in perspective, food is very, very inexpensive in this country.”

The American Farm Bureau Federation has been using information from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to track Food Check-Out Day on the calendar for the past 10 years.

The annual calculation covers food and non-alcoholic beverages consumed at home and away from home. Also accounted for are food furnished to employees and food purchased with food stamps for the Women, Infants and Children’s program.

For much of the past decade, the percentage of disposable income spent on food has been hovering just under 10 percent, and the paid-up date has arrived in the first week in February.

Way back in 1929, the first year the USDA gathered the relevant data on food costs, those costs consumed 23.4 percent of the average disposable income. The same year, according to the USDA, the average consumer dined out 17 percent of the time.

Eight decades later, we eat out almost half the time, but the share of annual income spent on food has fallen below 10 percent.

The average working requirement to earn that much is about five weeks. “That’s incredible,” Stubbendieck said, “particularly when you consider the other countries in the world.”

A sampling of other nations’ spending on food ranges from 14 percent per capita in Japan to 18 percent in France and 55 percent in Indonesia.

Food in the United States also scores well nationally against other typical living costs. It now takes an average of 52 days to earn enough to cover health and medical costs, 62 days for housing and household costs and 77 days for federal income taxes.

One of the few dark spots in an otherwise bright picture is how many people go hungry in this country, even when food is so cheap.

Jen Hernandez of the Lincoln-based Appleseed Center for Law in the Public Interest said more working families in Nebraska are scrimping on groceries.

“I think what that would point out,” Hernandez said, “is that food is the most elastic part of the household budget. So whenever a family runs into trouble stretching its income, food is usually the first thing that gets compromised.”

Appleseed analysis suggests the typical Lincoln family of four spends about $550 a month on food.

However, the food-stamp allowance for a family of four for a month is $318, well short of enough to buy even the essentials listed in the USDA Thrifty Food Plan.

Cindie Sirekis, director of news services for the American Farm Bureau Federation in Washington, D.C., called the food situation in the United States “kind of a double-edged sword. Food is affordable and yet people are going hungry.”

It’s not a question of production, she said. In fact, since 1940, the average farmer has gone from producing enough food to feed 19 people to producing enough to feed 144 people.

“It’s maybe more of a question of getting it to the right people,” Sirekis said. “It’s something our members are concerned about, and they’re very cognizant of that.”

Reach Art Hovey at (402) 523-4949 or ahovey@alltel.net.