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rules supreme despite the efforts of the administrators to 

 prevent it. 



Rising Food Prices Do Not Mean Malnutrition 



Since prices guide the consumption of individual foods, 

 most persons jump to the conclusion that rising prices of 

 food in general curtail the consumption of all food. If this 

 were the case, there would be a striking relation between the 

 death-rate or the amount of sickness and the retail prices of 

 food. No one has yet presented a chart to show that in this 

 country they now are or ever have been associated. The ex- 

 planation is clear. If food prices rise faster than income, food 

 consumption is maintained at the expense of drastic reduc- 

 tions in the consumption of articles other than food. If the 

 prices of various foods change relative to one another, con- 

 sumption shifts from one food to another and total food con- 

 sumption changes but little. If prices of all foods rise to- 

 gether, total food consumption changes but little and the 

 consumption of many non-food items declines. This is a 

 necessary reduction in time of war. 



A rising scale of prices of cars from the Ford to the Cadil- 

 lac automatically reduces the consumption of the higher- 

 priced cars. A rise in the price of different qualities of beef 

 from hamburger to T-bone steak automatically curbs the 

 consumption of the higher-priced cuts. This simple principle 

 is ingrained in the thinking of 125 million Americans. From 

 these observations millions of them generalize and convince 

 themselves that a rise in the price of food is accompanied by 

 a diminution in its consumption. This is an erroneous gen- 

 eralization. Many able public-spirited persons hold this 

 view, and it was an important reason for the country's efforts 

 to stabilize the cost of living. The rising cost of living has not 

 caused malnutrition. With even a greater rise, food consump- 

 tion would have been maintained by absorbing a larger pro- 



