The Future of Food, According to Silicon Valley ⇥ vanityfair.com

Maya Kosoff of Vanity Fair:

Venture capitalists can probably see themselves purchasing a Juicero and keeping it on their countertops, just another gadget in their toy chest. A single, working-class mom in the Midwest wouldn’t see the point. The median American household income is about $53,657; if you’re buying a Juicero for yourself and using it to make one $8 green juice seven times a week, you’re spending about 7 percent of your annual income on a juicer. The $700 Juicero does exactly one thing with its proprietary bagged fresh produce: juice those specific blends of fruits and vegetables. A $50 food processor does a number of tasks at a fraction of the cost. Starry-eyed venture capitalists may think they’re revolutionizing the agricultural business, but in reality, they’re providing luxury services to a sliver of the top 10 percent of people in a handful of cities.

According to Gallup’s polling in the past ten years, between 15–20% of American adults struggled to afford food. The groups disproportionately most affected were black, Hispanic, and women.

See Also: Keurig’s struggle to make an environmentally-friendly version of their gross single-serving coffee pods.