Why Bother?

What's the point of having a substitute thing, when the real thing is (a) cheaper, (b) better?

I remember once hearing a woman in a radio interview (I think it was on the show "To The Best Of Our Knowledge") say that she loved white bread and didn't see any reason to eat wheat bread, since the white bread was fortified with all the nutrients that had been taken out of the wheat to make the bread white. My question is, why bother? If you are eating bread for the nutrients, why go to all the trouble of taking the nutrients out, then putting them back in? Why not just leave 'em where they are and eat them that way?

And now yet another study has come out supporting breast milk as a superior food for babies-- in this case, it suggests that breast milk in infancy reduces levels of heart disease in adults. There are times when formula use is inevitable, usually due to illness of either mother or baby. But why on Earth would women, particularly poor women, bother to spend hundreds of dollars a month on inferior food for their children, when their bodies will make free food that is better?

We have now raised an entire generation of kids to middle age, most of whom were formula fed. These are now fueling our "national epidemic" of obesity and its related diseases-- and it appears that the formula may have had a hand in it, not just lack of good diet and exercise. And still we persist in saying, "Let's all eat this substitute food-- we can always take pills later, and we'll be just as good as new!" It's like taking out the nutrients and then putting them back in. We're just making work for ourselves. Why bother?