reSee.it - Related Video Feed

- Speaker 0: You know, Lunchables are $14 a pound. Wow. - Ultra processed food is not cheap. - If you take the ingredients for Dijarne O's frozen pizza, and and and make that yourself, you know, you can make it for way way less. - In the last fifty years of the average per capita per capita expenditure, household expenditure on health care has gone from 9% to 18% and the average per capita expenditure on food has gone from 18% down to 9%. - Those two numbers have directly inverted. Is it possible that there's a relationship between the two?

Reality hit hard when the general manager called to say the business was closing for good. The closure coincided with California's fast food minimum wage rising to $20 per hour, leading to layoffs. The plan to raise prices and cut shifts fell through due to financial constraints. Workers face challenges finding new jobs to cover college tuition and expenses amidst inflation. Both employees and business owners struggle with the impact of rising costs.

Consumer confidence remains low due to a significant drop in real income post-pandemic, causing Americans to feel behind. Private sector income, excluding government aid, is crucial for sustainable gains. Real private income has fallen short of pre-pandemic levels, impacting consumer outlook. The consistent decline in real income growth has led to a decrease in birth rates, reflecting diminished confidence in future financial stability. Despite stock market gains, Americans feel economically strained, evident in declining birth rates, signaling long-term economic challenges.

The cereal category is affordable and popular, especially during tough times. We're promoting cereal for dinner as a cost-effective option for families. Despite initial doubts, the idea is well-received, with over 25% of cereal consumption happening outside breakfast. This trend of having cereal for dinner is growing, driven by consumer pressure.

As a Starbucks manager at an airport, I was asked if the protests against Starbucks have affected our stores. Normally, protests don't impact us much due to the large number of international travelers. However, even we are feeling the effects. Our customer numbers are significantly lower than usual, especially during this time of year. The protests are definitely working, as our store is not even making half of what we usually make before noon. This is a clear indication that the protests are having an impact on airport Starbucks locations.

Businesses are trying to cut costs and are asking how to keep the food budget low. Some are also making food an attractive marketing tool, using beautiful pies and cakes and ice cream with frosty decorations to draw customers. While these approaches look great, they do not help improve health.

The top 10% of Americans own 88% of equities, while the bottom 50% are in debt. In the summer of 2024, Americans took record numbers of European vacations, but also used food banks more than ever before. Food banks are seeing working families who can no longer afford groceries. The speaker believes the bottom 50% of Americans are not "losers," but the system has failed them. They want good jobs, homeownership, and to pay down debt. The speaker claims that continuing to issue debt would be like a bodybuilder taking steroids: the outside looks great, but it's damaging internally. The economy looked great before the 2008 financial crisis and the dot-com bubble burst. The speaker suggests that his administration will have avoided a financial calamity.

Energy costs and gasoline prices are way down. Grocery costs are also coming down, and the country is finally getting costs under control. No one wants to talk about it because the news is so positive. The price of eggs has plummeted by 50%, but no one has written about it yet.

Everyday prices are too high, including food, rent, gas, and back-to-school clothes, which is called Bidenomics. A loaf of bread costs 50% more today, and ground beef is up almost 50%. There's not much left at the end of the month. Bidenomics is working. The price of housing has gone up, and it feels hard to get ahead. The speaker states they are very proud of Bidenomics.

Speaker 1 says our food today is largely artificial, what he calls shadow food. Soils are largely depleted for many generations, and without adding fertilizers (N, P, and K), crops do not produce hardly at all. There is a nonlinear response: if you reduce fertilizer by 10% on a high-fertilizer crop like corn, you get far more than a 10% reduction in yield—perhaps a 30% reduction for certain crops. This is why American farmers are switching from corn to soy, a legume that doesn’t need as much fertilizer. This shift will affect dietary habits as well, including more soy lattes and soybeans/tofu. He notes the bottom line: our food depends on a supply chain that comes out of the Persian Gulf, and few people realized that until recently. Speaker 0 asks whether the catastrophe is due to man-made causes (the war and its consequences) or a system that is too fragile. Speaker 1 responds: both. Population growth is strongly tied to low-cost food production and abundance. For a long time, the United States and other countries encouraged populations to eat more and have more children, reflecting the original USDA food guidance years ago. That era served post-World War II needs because malnutrition and stillbirths were higher then. Today, the problem is Americans overeating but undernourished—getting too many calories but not enough nutrition—because food has been transformed into shadow food. It looks like a head of lettuce but lacks the nutrition of wild lettuce or what US soils used to produce with trace minerals like selenium, zinc, and copper. Food results from turning hydrocarbons into something you can eat: gas makes fertilizer; oil powers tractors and transport to grocery stores. Cheap energy yields cheap food; scarce energy yields scarce food. It will hit some areas first and more severely than others. It won’t be as severe in the United States as elsewhere. US consumers’ ability to handle economic pain is limited because many families are living paycheck to paycheck, without a large savings cushion, unlike cultures like Japan that can weather famines more easily. Speaker 0 ends with “Bright videos.”

When people stop believing in the economy, they usually stop spending, and that's exactly what's beginning to happen. In March, the conference board's expectations index fell to 65.2, well below the recession warning threshold of 80. Meanwhile, the University of Michigan's consumer sentiment index kicked off April with a reading of 50.8, just barely above the all time low of 50 that hit in June 2022. Translation, people are nervous about what's next, and that matters. Sentiment drives behavior. And in an economy that relies heavily on consumer spending, fear alone can slow everything down.

Some people feel good about the economy, while others feel bad. Shelley believes that groceries and gas prices have increased compared to previous years. Despite low unemployment rates, higher wages, easing inflation, and a thriving stock market, she disagrees that these factors are positively impacting her day-to-day life. Another person, who retired three years ago, shares that they are not benefiting from the stock market's success and had to dip into their retirement savings due to the current economic situation. They feel they are not earning the same amount of money as before.

They changed GDP. I mean, all the government numbers are lies. They're trying to convince us that a weak economy is strong, by presenting numbers, that don't really, you know, tell the truth about the economy. So we have high inflation, high unemployment. We have a weak economy. In fact, we have a weak labor market. That's why you have record numbers of Americans who have to work two or three jobs now. They don't want all these jobs. They'd rather get by on one job, but they can no longer pay the rent or pay their utilities or pay for food or insurance with one job. They need multiple jobs. This is a sign of a deterioration in the standard of living here in America.

As food scarcity worsens, people will follow two paths to stay fed. Those less informed are expected to trend toward cheaper, more processed foods—shopping at dollar stores or lower-cost grocery options—downgrading their diets to processed, nutrient-depleted foods, resulting in poorer health. A second group, described as people with better knowledge, will either buy bulk raw ingredients to make more wholesome foods or grow more of their own food to consume more nutrient-dense products. The speaker argues that people’s response to food inflation determines health outcomes: most will choose cheaper processed foods, described as “shadow foods” (empty calories lacking nutrition), leading to declines such as higher rates of type two diabetes, cancer, Alzheimer’s, neurological inflammation, and other health problems. By contrast, the “pioneer style” approach is framed as using basic raw ingredients and producing food, including inexpensive at-home sprouting (rinsing seeds multiple times daily) to grow high-density nutrition. The speaker expects most people to take the processed-food route and then, when affordable food becomes insufficient, to demand government bailouts such as UBIs or food welfare systems designed to let people buy food monthly. The speaker claims such systems would cover processed junk foods. The speaker contrasts this with historical periods of war and famine, when populations turned toward traditional gardening and food production or lower-cost, less processed foods and reportedly became healthier. Examples cited include World War II, including among German people, where levels of type two diabetes are described as having plummeted. The speaker also references involuntary fasting and increased home cooking from bulk ingredients. Today, especially among youth, the speaker says people often rely on expensive food delivery from services like Uber Eats or DoorDash, which the speaker describes as typically unhealthy and high-exposure to seed oils and processed restaurant ingredients. The speaker portrays making meals from scratch—buying whole ingredients like beans, whole chickens, potatoes, quinoa, or lima beans—as “unthinkable” for many, but argues that traditional cooking skills learned in households become valuable during food shortages. The speaker then lists nutrition and preparation priorities. Suggested essentials include vitamin C (described as having a long shelf life), vitamin D, and vitamin E (described as not having a forever shelf life, with refrigeration preferred). For vitamin E, the speaker emphasizes whole-food sources such as nuts, seeds, and whole wheat berries, while also recommending supplementation. The speaker connects growing sprouts and plants (like broccoli sprouts) to obtaining nutrients such as sulforaphane and chlorophyll from sprouting alfalfa. The speaker recommends growing herbs—basil, rosemary, oregano, and others—as sources of natural medicine to increase food nutrient density. An extraction method is described using an ultrasonic cleaner (or jewelry-scale ultrasonic units): herbs are crushed, cut, and run in a 50% water/50% alcohol mixture, then filtered to produce a hydrosol; distilling volatile oils is described as possible but more work. The speaker also mentions foraging horsetail for silica, including making supplements from dried and ground plant material. Finally, the speaker argues that nutritional density matters beyond calories, warning that insufficient minerals and phytonutrients lead to nutritional deficiencies. The speaker recommends stockpiling full-spectrum fertilizer (including trace minerals, not just NPK), protecting it from moisture, enriching plants with minerals during the growing season, and using compost/“black gold” soil to support abundance. The speaker concludes by urging early action to prepare for a food supply chain that is breaking down and is expected to worsen over time, including planning for crops across seasons.

During the Trump administration, the speaker was able to grow his business and open more locations. Under the Biden-Harris administration, the speaker claims his business has been stagnant. He says he has been dealing with rising costs and battling for employee pay, and trying to raise prices to keep up.

The economy under Joe Biden is seen as the worst ever by some. They believe Trump would be better for the middle class. Retirement is tough now with high gas and food prices, living paycheck to paycheck. Change is needed.

Inflation has steadily cooled over the past two years despite seeing a slight stall in October and November 2024. Prices for items like gasoline, used cars, and energy have declined accordingly. But food prices continue to outpace inflation, increasing by 28% since 2019. Eighty six percent of consumers reported feeling frustrated with rising grocery prices, and over a third said they have resorted to buying fewer items to save money. That's one of the real gauges people have of their cost of living because it's an important aspect of their cost of living, and it's something that we have a lot of exposure to. We go to the grocery store. We pick up the different products. We look at the prices.