Whole foods, or minimally processed foods such as canned beans or tomato paste, are what’s referred to in the food business as commodities. They have such slim profit margins that they’re sometimes even sold at or below cost as “loss leaders” to attract customers in the hopes they’ll also buy the “value-added” products,153 the most profitable of which (for producers and vendors alike) are the ultraprocessed, fatty, sugary, and salty concoctions of artificially flavored, artificially colored, and artificially cheap ingredients, thanks to taxpayer subsidies.
