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Transcript:
I know that the re-election of Donald Trump has a lot of people very worried about things like more people dying due to lack of abortion care, more LGBTQ+ people dying due to rampant bigotry and lack of medical care, all very real concerns. But today I want to talk about something I don’t see mentioned enough: food! If Trump moves forward with all his stated plans when he takes office, just getting food is about to become a lot harder for a lot of people. So in honor of Thanksgiving this week, let’s get into it.
For a start, let me briefly point out that due to deregulation, food in the US is probably going to get more dangerous. That’s an important point but I’m going to go into that in another video. Because today I want to focus on how in 2025, food is almost certainly going to get more expensive. Trump stated that he wants to institute a 10% tariff on all imports, plus a whopping 60% on imports from China. Every economist and economic organization has pointed out that this will cost average Americans a tremendous amount of money–for instance, back in May the Peterson Institute for International Economics found that “A lower-bound estimate of costs to consumers indicates that the tariffs would reduce after-tax incomes by about 3.5 percent for those in the bottom half of the income distribution; tariffs would cost a typical household in the middle of the income distribution at least $1,700 in increased taxes each year.”
The tariffs will raise the cost of most of the things we shop for, and that includes food. Third Way, a liberal think tank, teasing out what we can expect at the grocery store next year: they estimated that the average family’s grocery bill will go up by about $185 per year, though it’s worth noting that they only looked at eight commonly purchased items, and they assumed the typical family is chugging an entire bottle of olive oil every week, but only six beers.
$185 might not seem too bad if you’re one of the lucky folks living above the poverty line, but it’s worth noting that that’s just what the tariffs would do. There’s another thing that will likely increase the cost of food next year: Trump’s plan to deport all of the people who farm our food.
Let’s be honest: Trump’s threat to deport every undocumented immigrant in the country (an estimated 13.3 million people) is unlikely to happen, at least not right away. According to this report the American Immigration Council released in October, even if he manages to deport a million people next year, it’s going to cost Americans $88 billion.
A part of that bill is going to be groceries. According to the USDA, about 42% of farmworkers are undocumented, and when they’re gone, crops will die. We know this not just because it’s an obvious cause and effect, but because we just watched it happen in Florida.
In May of 2023, Florida enacted a law cracking down on undocumented immigrants, requiring businesses with more than 25 employees to screen new employees for their immigration status using a federal E-Verify system, forbidding undocumented immigrants from driving, forcing hospitals to ask about immigration status before giving care, and making it a felony for anyone to knowingly or unknowingly bring an undocumented worker into the state and for an undocumented immigrant to obtain work using a fake ID.
Before it even went into effect, immigrants fled the state in fear. As a direct result, entire towns emptied out and crops were left to rot in the fields. The state lost BILLIONS of dollars in revenue in just one year and the price of produce skyrocketed. According to a USDA report back in May of 2024, “lemons are almost 50% more expensive than they were last year. Limes have also seen a small price increase, as well as blueberries, strawberries and oranges.”
I just checked the same report for this week and oranges are also now 50% more expensive than last year. Thanks, Ron DeSantis and Florida Republicans!
Who could have possibly seen that coming? Oh, Florida should have, because the EXACT SAME FUCKING THING HAPPENED TEN YEARS AGO when Georgia tried the same shit: they made employers use E-Verify to prevent any undocumented immigrants from working, which led those immigrants to flee the state, at which point crops died and rotted in the fields and the state’s economy crashed. That’s why whenever other states try this, they make a carve out for “essential” jobs like farming and construction. Because they may hate immigrants but they know they get the jobs done that keep our country going.
Trump doesn’t know that, or doesn’t care, because he’s going to make American Florida again. And that means that yes, the cost of everything at the grocery store is about to skyrocket.
Okay, so, the stuff in your grocery store that comes from outside the country will cost more because of tariffs. The stuff that comes from inside the country will cost more because of mass deportation. What’s all this have to do with the title of this video?
Well, let’s go back to that Third Way report on how tariffs will increase grocery costs. The biggest expenses on their average weekly grocery bill are meat: shrimp, that they expect to move from $34 to $35, and beef, which they expect to increase from $27 to $28. Turns out, meat is already expensive as hell.
All of that brings me to a new study published this month in the Journal of the American Medical Association Network Open: Food Costs of a Low-Fat Vegan Diet vs a Mediterranean Diet
A Secondary Analysis of a Randomized Clinical Trial. Researchers asked 30 omnivores to try a vegan diet, and 32 more to try a “Mediterranean diet,” which prioritizes plant-based food but also allows dairy, a bit of fish, and occasional red meat. They found that the vegan group spent about 20% less than a baseline American omnivore, and 25% less than the Mediterranean group.
There are some caveats to that study: they relied on self-reporting, and they didn’t consider the average number of calories consumed by each group (though I don’t think anyone’s too worried about the average American dying of starvation any time soon). Also, the study was funded by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, which is a vegan advocacy group. Pretty big conflict of interest, there, but it’s worth noting that this latest study is in line with previous research: two years ago, researchers at Oxford published this massive study in the Lancet comparing seven different healthy and sustainable diets with a standard diet across 150 countries, finding that the most affordable diet was vegan, which on average cost about 30% less than a standard diet, with vegetarian diets coming in as a close second. Flexitarian diets with reduced intake of meat and dairy were about 14% cheaper. Pescetarian diets were the most expensive, costing 2% more than an average diet. Because meat is expensive, and seafood is particularly expensive. In fact, they found that in high-income and upper-middle-income countries, meat makes up the greatest proportion of grocery costs, at over 30%.
And yeah, it’s about to get even more expensive. So with Thanksgiving around the corner, I wanted to let you know that turkey is dry and bland, and side dishes are where it’s at. I’m talking roasted brussels sprouts. I’m talking mushroom gravy over mashed potatoes. I’m talking biscuits and stuffing, and then pies and pies and pies. You can make all that vegan if you want, but even vegetarian will save you some money just by skipping the turkey that nobody really likes anyway. At least, according to the meat eaters I know. I remain agnostic on the topic.
If the traditional Thanksgiving meal is too sacred, that’s okay. Try meatless Mondays! Look up some recipes that use tofu and mushrooms and legumes. As I pointed out last year, the research shows that doing that will help your health, the environment, and the welfare of animals in agriculture. And now you know that it’ll also help your wallet as a fun bonus.
