In this country, when it comes to food, there are several groups of people. There are those at the top with the money and the inclination to buy only the best—organic, local, free range, no hormones, no antibiotics, grass fed. They can rattle off types of cheeses the way a kindergartener can rattle off the alphabet. When a high-end restaurant opens, they are the first ones there, and if the food is very good, then the menu becomes a sort of Holy Grail.

To those people I say, good for you. There are a lot worse ways to spend money—oh, so many worse ways—and affluent people who care about food and shop locally are supporting farmers and artisans who usually need every bit of support they can get.

Then there are the people who are not quite as affluent, the ones who must budget and plan to provide healthy meals for their families. They buy organic when they can—when the price is right and when there are sales. If they are lucky, there is a Trader Joe’s nearby where they can shop. However, often times they buy conventionally grown food because there simply isn’t enough money in the budget for the extra cost of organic. They know, of course, that in the long run, organic is better for the planet and for their health. But in the short run, bills must paid, the children need new sneakers, and the washing machine just broke and has to be replaced. There are a lot of people in this category, including Clif and me.

Finally, there are the people at the bottom—those who earn extremely low wages, those who are disabled, seniors living solely on Social Security, students, and those who have lost their jobs. Often they receive food stamps and rely on food pantries and soup kitchens to help them get through the month. Organic and local are seldom considerations for them. Just getting food on the table is enough of a challenge, never mind where it comes from or how it was grown. Unfortunately, there are far too many people in this category, and their numbers are growing.

I have lived long enough in Maine to have seen many food trends, from the days of casseroles made with cream of mushroom soup to quiche to granola to the advent of vegetarianism. But I have never seen such a fevered interest in food that corresponds with the huge gap between what those at the top eat and what those at the bottom eat. I suppose it should come as no surprise. As inequality becomes more pronounced in this country, it manifests itself in many ways, not the least in what we eat or how we regard food.

Tonight, President Obama will be giving his State of the Union Address. Political pundits are predicting that the president will talk about inequality and how bad it is for this country. This is all very well and good, but talk is cheap. Will action follow? Will this large ocean liner of a country at least veer in the right direction?

I remain hopeful, but I am not overly optimistic. To continue with the ocean-liner analogy—there are many, many icebergs in the water, just waiting for that ship.

Time was, not that long ago, when Clif and I ate out on a regular basis. During the week, I cooked dinner, but on the weekends we would eat out at least twice and sometimes more. We did this for a variety of reasons. As a food writer, I liked to check out various restaurants, and even though we limited our culinary adventures to an hour or so from Winthrop, Portland was included in our food travels. We would eat out socially, with friends and family. Finally, we ate out for the sheer fun of it.

But then the Great Recession happened. The salary went down, and the cost of food and fuel went up. Suddenly, it seemed that lunch prices had jumped to dinner prices, and dinner prices had correspondingly increased. In Maine, before the Great Recession, lunch was always well under $10, even in decent restaurants. Now, $12 and $15 are the norm. This means that lunch, including a soft drink and a tip, can easily come to a third and sometimes even half of our weekly grocery budget. (I do realize that fast-food restaurants such as McDonald’s or Burger King are significantly cheaper, but the food is of such poor quality that it still feels like a waste of money to eat at one of those chains.)

So we had to ask ourselves, is the price of going out to eat worth it? With some reluctance—we did enjoy eating out—we had to concluded it was not worth the money to eat in restaurants, and we have cut way, way back. While I am not a great chef, I am a decent home cook, and the meals I prepare are tasty, nutritious, and much, much less expensive than even lunch at a restaurant. Pasta dishes, soup, bean dishes, chicken in a Crock-Pot—I vary our meals so that in any given month there aren’t many repeats.

Nowadays, when I cook, I always plan on having leftovers, which means I only actually cook a few meals each week. (Thanks, Shari Burke, for encouraging this!) This week, for example, I had leftover cranberry chutney from a potluck at the home of our friends Margy and Steve. On Sunday, I put four large chicken breasts in a Crock-Pot, smeared the leftover chutney on the chicken, and let it all cook on high for about four hours. I served this with rice and corn, and there was plenty of leftover chicken and a tangy sauce from the drippings and chutney. The next night, we had wraps using the rice, some of the chicken, and the sauce. Still, there was enough for another meal, but on the third day, for variation, I made a pasta dish with broccoli, garlic, oregano, red peppers, chicken sausage, and a lovely lemon olive oil. Naturally, I made enough of the pasta dish for leftovers.

Occasionally, perhaps twice a month, we still do eat out. Most of the time it is when we meet friends, and we keep it inexpensive by going to a pizza place or to a Mexican restaurant, where we reluctantly pass on the Margaritas.

Would we eat out more if our budget suddenly increased? Perhaps a little, but only once a week because there is one other very good reason to eat mostly at home—the health benefits of home-cooked meals. From portion size to ingredients to the amount of salt I use, very few restaurants can match, health wise, what I cook from scratch.

So from now on, at home we will mostly eat, regardless of our salary.

Today in the New York Times, I read a piece by Mark Bittman in which he wrote about the correlation between money and food. “With a lack of money comes either not enough food or so-called empty calories, calories that put on pounds but do not nourish.” No argument there. Healthy food does indeed cost more than junk food, and if the intent is to buy as many calories as possible when the budget is tight, then that huge bag of store-brand potato chips certainly fits the bill.

The fact that good, healthy food is so abundant in the United States makes the situation even worse. Bittman continues, “In fact, it’s hard to imagine having a food supply as abundant as ours and doing a worse job with it.” Again, no argument. The United States is the land of plenty. Why should good food be out of reach for so many people?

In his piece, Bittman also writes about social justice, the marketing of junk food, and the lack of emphasis on food education. Bittman concludes that what this country needs is a national food and health policy, “one that sets goals first for healthful eating and only then determines how best to produce the food that will allow us to meet those goals.”

As I read Bittman’s article, two questions came to mind. The first, which I have written about in other posts, is this: Why was obesity the exception rather than the rule when I was growing up in the 1960s? I realize that my neighborhood in North Vassalboro can hardly be considered a broad sample of the times, but there was only one obese family on the road where I lived. Most everyone else was in pretty good shape. And here’s the thing: While gardens and home-cooked meals were the norm, we did not hold back with salty snacks and sweets. As I noted in a previous post, we ate sugary food with a gusto that would have made Shakespeare’s Falstaff proud.

We did play outside a lot—children, all the time, and adults when their work allowed. Could this be the difference? Could eating out also be a factor? Families today eat out much more than they did when I was child. Perhaps today’s families really do take in more calories than families did in the 1960s, despite the abundance of  salty snacks and sugary sweets available to us back then.

Anyway, I don’t have an answer to this one. Only the question.

The second question is even more complicated than the first and needs a bit of a backstory. We evolved on the savannahs of Africa where salt, sugar, and fat were very hard to come by. Therefore, it is no surprise that we have also evolved to crave salt, sugar, and fat. But the problem is that we no longer live on the savannahs. To borrow from another writer—I can’t remember her name—we now live in Candy Land where there are many, many temptations.

And this not just a problem in the United States. As wealth increases in countries such as China and India, so does obesity. Overeating is a human problem, not a Western problem. So how do we combat that? How do we overcome our natural tendency to gorge on fats and sweets? (For myself, I have developed a regimen where I eat healthy, low-calorie foods six days a week and splurge on the seventh. This approach helps, and I am more or less maintaining a healthy weight. )

Even though I don’t really have any answers, I feel as though these two questions must be asked: Why wasn’t obesity such a problem in the 1960s, and how can we deal with the natural tendency to gorge on salt and sweets?

And just for fun, we can throw in a third question: How does money and status affect obesity?

If we can address those questions, then we will go a long way toward addressing the problem of obesity.