The United States spends half as much of its national income on food as Europe, but spends three times more on healthcare.
Posted by The Joe Rogan Experience, Checked
- Sources
- 4 contradict1 context
- Said
- 1 time·
- Confidence
- 70%
The Joe Rogan ExperienceNov 6, 2026
Neither half of the claim holds in the sources. Food: the ERS/USDA data puts the US food share of household spending near 13.8% against an EU average of 17.4%, a ratio of about 0.8, not one half. Healthcare: OECD and HealthSystemTracker data show the US at roughly 1.8 to 2 times peer averages, not three times.
This claim is about the present, so it is judged as of the day it was checked.
What was said
… By some measures, we use 20% of the world's glyphosate and herbicides and pesticides, so our system is addicted to these chemicals. It's also interesting to me, when you look at us versus other countries, we actually spend half as much of our national income on food than Europe. They spend double the relative amount on food, but we spend three times more on healthcare. So we've got this real issue: we're eating, we have these incentives for the cheapest possible food riddled with these chemicals, and that was a big issue. You know, Tony Fabrizio did a poll: 92% of Republicans want to regulate pesticides. …
The Joe Rogan Experience · · from the transcriptPost →What we found
Contradicts. The USDA/ERS comparison reports US consumers spent 13.8% of household expenditures on food versus 17.4% for the EU as a whole, a ratio near 0.8 rather than 0.5. Germany (13.9%) was about equal to the US.[2]
Contradicts. The BLS 2014 comparison shows US food spending at 13.9% of expenditures, against 16.7% in the UK and 23.2% in Japan, which also does not support a halving relative to Europe.[3]
Contradicts. The OECD reports US health spending near 17% of GDP in 2019, about 8 percentage points above the OECD average, and roughly twice the other G7 average per capita. That is about 2x, not 3x.[4]
Contradicts. HealthSystemTracker puts US healthcare spending per person at 1.8 times the average of comparable countries, which again falls well short of a threefold figure.[5]
Context. The healthcare direction is correct: the US spends substantially more on healthcare than peer nations. The food direction is also correct in that the US share is lower than Europe's, but the magnitude is far off. The food data is household expenditure, not share of national income, a measure difference that does not rescue the claim's ratios.[1][2][4]
Sources
5 sources: 1 fact-checker, 2 primary, 2 not rated
- 1Americans spend the most on health care, get worst outcomes?politifact.com · fact-checker · cited for: context
- 2U.S.-EU Food and Agriculture Comparisonsers.usda.gov · primary source · cited for: contradicts, context
- 3How do United States consumer expenditures compare ...bls.gov · primary source · cited for: contradicts
- 4Understanding differences in health expenditure between the United ...oecd.org · not rated · cited for: contradicts, context
- 5How do healthcare prices and utilization in the United ...healthsystemtracker.org · not rated · cited for: contradicts
Where this claim was made
Said in 1 published post
Related claims
- The United States spends three times more on health care than any other country.Mixed
- 17% of the United States GDP is spent on the healthcare system.Mixed
- Healthcare spending accounts for 25% of the United States economy.False
- The United States spends more money on school lunches than any other country.Can’t tell
- The United States spends six times more on every person over 65 than on those under 25.Mixed