What goes into the price of our food? Multiple elements make up the number we see on our grocery store receipt—such as the price of farm inputs, the materials used for packaging, and transportation to grocery shelves. But the price tag doesn’t include the cost of healthcare for the millions who fall ill with diet-related diseases, nor the food system’s contributions to water and air pollution, reduced biodiversity, or greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. These are just a few of the hidden costs of our food, and though it doesn’t show up on the till, we’re all paying for them.

In the United States, that true cost of food is triple what consumers currently spend. The U.S. as a country spends US$1.1 trillion a year on food. However, according to The Rockefeller Foundation’s recent report, which uses the True Cost Accounting (TCA) framework to quantify the food system’s external costs on human and environmental health, the true cost of food in the U.S. is US$3.2 trillion.

As The Rockefeller Foundation President, Raj Shah recently laid out to Fortune, “Only by understanding what our food actually costs us can we understand—and have the incentive to—change the system in ways that avoid breakdowns like those from the pandemic.” Tackling the hidden costs of food systems around the world is a cross-cutting solution that would improve global nutrition, save billions in healthcare expenses, and help tackle the climate emergency.

Cultivating a better food system first requires facing hard facts. If left unaddressed, the true cost of food will continue to rise, with a large part of the growing bill accounted for in the part the food system plays in fueling the climate emergency. To prevent catastrophe for future generations, we need to transform how we produce food and fundamentally change how capital flows throughout the system. For example, by applying true cost to public programs like school meals, we could discern the value of serving more nutritious and sustainably produced products and compare that to the costs of less healthy and sustainable current alternatives. This type of analysis makes a powerful policy argument to reveal the actual cost savings of some programs.

Read the full article about climate action by Danielle Nierenberg and Roy Steiner at Food Tank.