True Cost Accounting: The Real Cost of Cheap Food
Source: PBS
By considering all the external costs factored out of the cost of food, an economic principle called true cost accounting helps consumers understand the real cost of the food they buy.
Food Terms
True cost accounting
A practice that accounts for all external costs—including environmental, social and economic-generated by the creation of a product.
– Douglas Gayeton, LOCAL: The New Faces of Food and Farming in America
External costs
A cost or benefit that results from an activity or transaction and that affects an otherwise uninvolved party who did not choose to incur that cost or benefit.