Food is a basic need ... and enough food and the associated nutrition are essential to health and wellness.
The price of food is one dimension in the computation of the costs of living.
There are also environmental costs associated with the production of the food and getting it to the point of consumption.
There are further economic and environmental costs associated with the responsible handling of food waste.
In the case of meat, the environmental impacts are many times more serious.
Food is a basic need ... enough food and nutritional food.
The food sector in the global economy is one of the most important and has many problems that need to be addressed.
Some parts of the world are short of food and in other parts of the world, people are eating to much.
The technology for food processing has become more sophisticated in recent years, but the technology has been used in large part to optimize for profit rather than for better nutrition and better wellnss outcomes.
As population grows, and per capita food consumption grows. more and more natural tropical forest land is being cleared for mechanized agriculture. The cost of deforestation is being ignored in the conventional assessment of economic performance.
Everyone needs somewhere to live. Politicians talk about 'affordable housing' but don't seem to understand much about what this means. People with wealth and high incomes are able to afford housing no matter how much it costs, but people with modest means and low incomes are 'priced' out of the market. This has come about because most of the population is learning little more today than they were 40 years ago and the price of housing has increased substantially, whether it is house ownership or simply renting.
MAYBE USEFUL ... MAYBE NOT!!!!
The purpose of everything should be to improve quality of life ... for everyone. It is the essence of humanity ... and should be the main measure of success. This is not the way that economics and business is taught in the modern educational system, but the essence of life is much about about the quaity of life and not simply about the financial metrics of success.
An individual's wealth (financial capital) is only one contributing part of what makes up a person's quality of life and an individual's personal human capital, but it is only a part. Wealth can make a person's life a lot easier and may help enormously to reduce stress and thereby improve health... but wealth on its own does not result in the greatest happiness.
An individual's human capital in the present is a result in part of an individual's history … such things as parenting, nutritious food, good healthcare, good education, good surroundings, role models and so forth. Skills and experience are accumulated over time.
There have been costs to get the present point in time. The value accumulation represents an investment. Past earnings that are not spent but saved, factor into the human capital of the present.
Place also feeds into an individual's human capital. A place that has no violence and is supportive of an individual adds to human capital. A place where there is a future full of opportunity is also part of the state of human capital in the present.