Sara Robinson linked to this fascinating photoessay of families around the world (chosen clearly for their “averageness”) standing by a table with a week’s worth of their food purchases on it. Sara displayed these two pictures that show the disparity in need between middle class Americans and refugees living in Chad.
I recommend Sara’s thoughts on the issue of worldwide hunger, and I have nothing to add to that. This post is about something else I noticed, in the difference between the average American diet shown here and the average middle class diet in other countries. See if you can spot the difference.
Italy:
Mexico:
Poland:
If your answer is, “The presence of fresh produce,” bingo. Not that the Americans didn’t have any, but only the British family really one-upped them in terms of relying on processed food. There’s another American family represented, and they have more fruit, but roughly the same issue.
But I come not to wag my finger at and shame Americans for their diets. My impatience with individualized guilt-based solutions grows daily, and this is no exception. Neil’s weekender post at Ezra’s points to a larger, social policy-based cause for Americans’ bad eating habits, within a larger post about the John Edwards plan to fight malnutrition and hunger in the U.S.
It’s hard for poor people to eat a balanced diet. While calorie-dense foods containing lots of fat and processed carbohydrates are cheap, fruits and vegetables are expensive. This is partly because we allocate 0.37% of farm subsidies to fruits and vegetables, compared to 73.80% for meat and dairy (much of which goes to subsidizing feed grains for animals). The results are predictable — in order to meet the USDA guidelines for a healthy diet, poor families would have to spend 70% of their food budget on fruits and vegetables. They actually end up spending about 15%.
This is why I tend to get red in the face when I hear some ignorant asshole bloviating about the poor in America are doing just fine food-wise, since so many of them (like all Americans) are overweight. That only makes sense if you think the only nutrient is calories, and if you think that, then you are being willfully ignorant, since we’ve all had the food pyramid and/or the four basic food groups pushed on us since preschool. You can both be fat and malnourished, actually. Edwards’ plan is to address the lack of balance in the diets of the poor by trying to get more affordable fresh fruits and vegetables into their neighborhoods, because right now even people who are able to spend more money on these items often don’t have access.
But the difference between the price of processed food and calorie-dense meats and dairy products and the price of fresh produce (which is going up rapidly due to rising gasoline prices) doesn’t just affect the poor, but also the middle class. I look at the picture of this American family and I see that they’ve got two teenage boys, and their food budget ($342 a week) reflects their needs. Keeping up with the calorie needs of two active and probably growing teenage boys will dominate the food priorities of any family like that, and so I imagine the temptation to load up on calorie-heavy processed foods, meats, and cheeses is nearly impossible to avoid.
But it’s not good for you. Now, I’ll admit up front that I’m a bit uptight about food. Not terribly so—I eat of the junk food, make no mistake—but I put a lot of effort into eating fresh produce and whole grains and restricting the animals fats. Over the holiday, I indulged in the bevy of Thanksgiving foods, the processed food casseroles, the refined-sugar-and-fat-heavy desserts, etc. and I laid around for three days, not getting any exercise. By the end of it (driving 7 hours a day for two of those days didn’t help), I felt like shit. My head and back hurt, I wanted to sleep 12 hours a day, and I had no sex drive to speak of. Returning to an exercise routine fixed me right back up, but all I could think was that my problems stemming from just a few days of poor diet and little exercise are probably the standard life of a good deal of Americans. And it bothered me, patriot that I am.
I think a lot of people would like to eat better, but it’s just expensive. Farm subsidies are a controversial topic on both the left and the right, but if we’re going to have them, why not transfer them to produce agriculture? Make those vegetables a lot cheaper, and let the price of stuff that’s bad for you inch up. We should look to social solutions for this issue not just for the poor, but for the middle class as well.
You hit the nail on the head. I was listening to the Tavis Smiley Show on NPR yesterday, and they were talking about hunger in the US. And one of said bloviating assholes said basically what you’d expect him to say — poor folks are fat, so they don’t need help with food, that food banks are lying about how many people really need their help, et cetera. *facepalm*
This goes for homeless people as well. I’ve spoken to a number of folks who provide meals for the homeless who say that American homeless folks get plenty of calories, but get very little nutrition. You rarely hear about homeless Americans dying of hunger in the streets, but many suffer from all sorts of health problems that come with a fucked up diet.
One of the other things I noticed—Soda everywhere except Chad. (reaches for morning Diet Coke).
It’s not just calories, it’s types of calories. From what types of foods are they coming? I’ve mentioned my enjoyment of preserving foods via canning. One of the reasons I like to do so is that I have more control over the ingredients than I would if I, say, bought a can of soup or stew. Indeed, here’s yesterday’s beef stew.My stew may not be the healthiest of the things I make, but my soups are much more likely to be healthier than anything you can pick up from Campbell’s.
I notice; when i focus on my own cooking I feel better than those times when I load up on junk food (and I loves me some flaming hot cheetos)
Good post.
Pam, everything you just said. As a father, I try to buy healthy foods (if it were just me, sardines would cover all my “health food” needs), but it’s God damned expensive. Really, you have to shop like a bleedin’ European, heading to Whole Foods for a certain array of items (meat, fish, produce, etc.) and then to a regular grocery store for more everyday food items (including the inevitable small complement of processed foods) and then to Target/Costco for housewares and the like.
I will add this observation: Great Jesus Criminy on a Biscuit, do ya think the Mexican family goes through a little Coca-Cola?
Oops sorry — Amanda, not Pam.
The soda thing is crazy. I gave up drinking it years ago, the stuff is gross. When I get together to play D&D with the very same people I did in highschool (it’s been a long time since highschool, but we all stayed near our home town with some trips away), we’re drinking tea and water. Used to be huge quantities of soda.
Our snacks still aren’t the healthiest, but I don’t really eat them. This whole diet thing really does boggle my mind. It isn’t that hard for me to get lots of cheap fruits and vegetables; in the mall is one produce stand that has better prices than the supermarket, and across the parking lot is another. Is the US really that much different than Canada? Granted this is out in the suburbs, but not affluent suburbs and downtown is largely the same (for that matter, it’s right along Skytrain, just about the easiest transit available).
Wow, someone in the Mexican family is a real coke-aholic. I’m sure that’s not representative of everyone in their area or economic bracket. I also wonder what the mystery beverage that the American family likes to consume is. Faux fruit juice of some sort?
Except for the coke, I admire the food choices being made by the Mexican family, but I also recognize that the prep time for their meals must be more time than I can generally spend. That’s a factor too. If you don’t have someone doing full-time homemaking, preparing healthy meals every day can be a daunting task. Frozen food becomes much more appealing as a result.
First off, I want to go eat in Italy. Yum!
I’ve had this argument with anti-fat folks a million times. I like to use myself as an example of how difficult it is to eat a balanced diet as I’ve lived on a tiny grocery budget and have no car. The only time it’s easy for me to have fresh produce is when the Farmer’s Market runs during the summer, and that’s because I work nearby. Otherwise, I’m dependent on mass transit and rides from friends/family to get my food. That means I tend to buy food that will last a couple of weeks because a) I don’t know when I’m going to get another ride to the store and b) I have to wait until my next paycheck to be able to afford it.
I’ve known one single working mom who cooked in a really traditional Mexican style, and the key is that Sunday is the big cooking day. You make the beans and some large amount of meat, and then the rest of the week, it’s reworking those items into various dishes, which is where the fresh produce comes in.
“Farm subsidies are a controversial topic on both the left and the right, but if we’re going to have them, why not transfer them to produce agriculture? Make those vegetables a lot cheaper, and let the price of stuff that’s bad for you inch up.”
I wonder if the preponderance of subsidies go the way they do because of climate issues combined with political considerations.
States like California, Florida, Arizona, Texas, etc. would benefit from subsidies on fruits/vegetables, while Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska, Texas (again), etc., benefit from a subsidized emphasis on meat and dairy.
Or maybe the the meat/dairy lobby is much bigger and more powerful (due to traditional subsidies) and can therefore fight off challenges to the current spending priorities more effectively?
Either way, it’s not a good situation…
MAJeff,
Yeah, I noticed all the soda, too. In some cases it may be due to concerns about water quality — people in the colonial US used to drink unbelievable quantities of beer, ale, and whiskey because it was all much safer than drinking whatever water was available.
Time is a big factor here, too. Not many people today have or make the time to cook good meals from scratch, and unless you spend huge sums of money nearly all the ready-to-eat foods you can buy are nutritionally iffy. I love to cook, and do all my family’s cooking, but I sorta have a thing about having a home-made family dinner basically every night of the week. If I didn’t like cooking, I’m sure we’d end up eating a lot more crap.
I totally agree about the feeling of switching from a good diet to a more typical American one. My family eats about like the American family in the photo. Last time I spent a few days with them, I came home and had to eat a giant plate of peas and a few raw carrots right away (even though it was 2 am). Of course, I’m sure if I could somehow make them eat like me for a few days, they’d be desperate for a cheeseburger by the end of it.
Make no mistake, I’m not “picking on Mexicans” — that could be any family in the North American continent, white, black, or, as they sometimes say, purple. That said, I’m absolutely floored. I count fourteen bottles and they’re at least two liters each. That’s two liters a day — their youngest child should not drink Coke, their second-youngest should only drink it rarely if at all, and the oldest child is already, well, frankly, fat. People, they go through four liters a day!
I drink about three 12-oz Cokes a month in the hot half of the year, and maybe one a month the rest of the year. So admittedly, my disgust is at least partly a matter of taste. If you could take every beer I’ve ever drunk and dump them in one place, they would easily fill six and one-third Olympic-size swimming pools.
Great post. It especially hit home to me as someone who lived for two years in a rural village in a developing country. When I lived there and would occassionally “treat” myself to some overpackaged American food bought in the supermarket in the capital, it turned out not be such a treat. I felt like I could actually taste the plastic. But now that I’m back in the States, I’m right back to eating that sort of food. I mean, I eat better than a lot of people and my weekly purchases would include a lot more vegetables than the American families pictured here, but there is plenty of processed food in my kitchen. I certainly “know better,” but there are a lot of social forces at play, with the biggest one for us being time - not getting home until 6 p.m. most evenings and having a little one who needs to be in bed by 8 p.m.
Re: agricultural subsidies and vegetables, does anyone have more information about that? I heard once that vegetables are much more profitable per acre than grains but require more work, but I’m no expert on it. I don’t know how all the economics shake out, but if anyone has more info on that I’d love to hear it.
One thing we can do is to go vegan. Stop supporting the meat and dairy industries, that shit is just plain bad for you, plus factory farming is a big contributor to global warming. Fruits, vegetable, grains, and beans are not difficult to find and you can usually find stuff on sale. I am a college student that works part time and I manage to get by just fine. I usually prepare two or three meals on Sunday to get me by through the week because I don’t have a lot of time to cook either. I have been a vegan for a few months after being a vegetarian for 1 1/2 years and I have never felt better. I have lost 17 lbs., my cholesterol has gone way down, and I have more energy than ever. Plus, I am living a live that is as cruelty-free as possible. Just my two cents.
And don’t forget the time costs. Eating macaroni and cheese out of a box takes maybe ten minutes, start to finish; making a vegetable stew takes a lot longer, not to mention you have to put in the time to learn the recipe. If you’re working two or three jobs, you have to be pretty committed to cook for yourself. Heck, I’m a student with tons of free time, and my idea of “cooking” is putting cottage cheese on baby spinach. Not unhealthy, but not lentils and wild rice, either. Throw in the costs of produce and there’s just no way a poor family can eat the way rich people say they should.
Many moons ago, in high school Spanish, I learned that all of Mexico has a love affair with Coke (this from a Puerto-Rican and later a Spanish-Italian-Mexican teacher). Current Mexicans feel free to correct me, but in the documentaries I saw, everyone drank Coke, and it was a major component of the Day of the Dead offerings as well.
The secret to eating a variety of fresh produce is being able to buy some every day. European cities have fresh food markets, with produce stands all over town. Grocery stores with fresh produce are near town centers, which are subway stops. When I was in Germany one summer, between my metro stop and home was an Italian cart owner with beautiful tomatoes, etc., and a shopping center with two supermarkets: a nofrills Aldi with a basic produce section, and a completely stocked store with such exotic gourmet options as American popcorn as well as a large produce section with an array of fresh greens. The only food I had trouble finding was beef, as Germans in that area subsist on pork with the occasional chicken.
Only fourteen comments in and the obligatory vegan appears. Is there a vegan bingo card?
Hector B, that is my memory of Germany too. Produce stands everywhere! It’s a victory that some inner city areas in the US are getting weekly farmer’s markets, but for most produce, you can only buy it a day or two in advance if you want it to be any good. Still, a couple days a week with fresh food is better than none.
Only fourteen comments before the obligatory vegan chimes in. Is there a vegan bingo card?
Paris was like that too. Between our subway stop and our hotel (which was a less than 10 minute walk) in the 15th district, there were 3 produce stands, 2 bakeries, and several cafes. It was amazing (and delicious).
I am most emphatically NOT being a finger wagging arsehole: I just want to say to anyone who might consider it, that you can get around the HIGH cost of produce, (especially organic) by having a garden (If you have a sunny yard, and YES I realize most city dwellers do not have one).
I could NEVER afford the vast quantities of organic vegetables in my diet if I didn’t grow them myself. Yes I think I am the only person with a vegetable garden in a mile radius of my house…maybe more!!! Having a garden DOES take time, but for the most part, once you plant them, the vegetables grow on their own.
Godmonkey: I will add this observation: Great Jesus Criminy on a Biscuit, do ya think the Mexican family goes through a little Coca-Cola?
Hey, if they still made Coke with real sugar in the US the way they do in Mexico, I’d probably still be drinking it. I can get it sometimes here in LA and it tastes MUCH better than that corn syrup crap they try to give us here.
Matthew: It isn’t that hard for me to get lots of cheap fruits and vegetables; in the mall is one produce stand that has better prices than the supermarket, and across the parking lot is another. Is the US really that much different than Canada?
You have produce stands in your malls? Man, I’ve gotta move to Canada. The best we do down here in Southern California — provider of produce to most of the United States — is weekly farmers’ markets, which are on a day that you can go if you’re lucky. There’s one near me on Sunday mornings, but I work until at least 12 noon and it closes at 2:00, so I can’t always make it in time. Otherwise, it’s supermarket or nothing.
One thing we can do is to go vegan.
Yes, it’s completely practical for someone living on a limited income in the inner city with little access to fresh produce — or, often, any produce — to go vegan. They have no fresh produce? Let them eat seitan!
Perhaps if certain localities with large numbers of poor wouldn’t fight tooth-and-nail to prevent vendors capable of selling fresh produce at very low prices from opening stores, more low-income people could afford to eat a more balanced diet.
Just saying, better produce would significantly benefit EVERYONE not just the lower and middle class. Even though wealthy people can afford expensive produce that doesn’t mean that they want to be paying higher prices. (Especially if they are busy people whose produce spoils before they can eat it or are, like some wealthy folks who gave birth to me, incredibly cheap.)
It seems to me the only people who would be hurt by more subsidized produce production would be the dairy/meat industry.
Mnem, it only took fourteen comments too. Is there a vegan bingo card? There ought to be.
What do you suppose the Italians are going to do with all those persimmons? I’ve always thought of them as inedible.
I disagree that the Coke in the Mexican family is non-representative. I’ve spent some time in Mexico and the amount of Coke consumed is huge. And it’s very cheap; usually sold in glass bottles, with the bottle deposit more than the price of the coke inside.
Amanda,
This was in yesterday’s Louisville Courier-Journal on how the lack of grocery stores in poorer parts of town combined with lack of good mass transit or cars means the only available food source is fast food or mini-mart junk food.
KMT:
Let’s see, hmm, well. The first summer I moved into my house I planted tomatoes, peppers, zucchini and herbs. The psycho squirrels knocked off every single tomato while tiny and green. They were also the prime suspects for the peppers that disappeared, but they left no evidence so I guess those tasted better. Rabbits came and munched off every bud that the zucchini produced so no fruit ever appeared. Squirrels even dug coriander seeds out of the herb planter. Japanese beetles ate the basil.
Tried hanging pie tins, cayenne-spray anti-wildlife preparations, tying the beagle outside during the day. No dice all around. I was left with chives and oregano, got about 5 tiny tomatoes, one teeny tiny green pepper and one jalapeño about a quarter of an inch long.
Guess who didn’t bother even trying summer number 2.
When I the first picture I thought this might be an episode of “Honey we’re killing the kids.”
I have three sons, a.k.a bottomless pits. When I was growing up my mother complained that I would eat all the fresh fruit in the house, to quickly, etc. She comes to my house and sees what the boys inhale and I try not to remind her. But it’s not junk food. Rarely do we have chips, unless it’s left over from one of my versions of Taco Salad.
I try to buy in season fruits, and I do look at the country of origin, and have plenty on hand. Cases of water bottles, fruit juice and a pitcher of Kool-Aid replace all the soda we used to drink (because when we were poor it was cheaper than fruit juice).
I buy better and leaner cuts of meat (sorry but the best I can do with these omnivores is one or two meatless days a week - but then that’s not much different from our days when we were poor.) But that takes $$$$$
We do have “processed” foods like the 90 minute microwave rice packets for snacking, and also the “everything in the bag” salad fixings for both meals and snacks.
Our moo cow fock milk is hormone free, organic and $$$$$ and so are our vegetarian feed, hormone free almost always free range chicken eggs, also $$$$
But it costs money which the poor do not have. Which we did not have at one time. . . a cheap can or two of diced tomatoes (which may have had a large piece of stem in it), a cheapest hamburger I could find (drained until there was probably more fat taken out than meat left), to boxes of cheap mac and cheese, cheap milk, margarine .. and viola a meal for us poor . . . loaded with fat, nothing good and fresh, but would fill our bellies (and give us heart disease later on)
We eat better and more healthier because we can afford to now.
I ‘m with the people who think it’s time in addition to (or even maybe instead of) the cost. Which is where americans are screwed by (on average) longer working hours, longer commutes, longer trips to grocery stores blah blah blah. The same structures that give us two weeks of vacation (in a good year) and lousy social services.
And it’s not just the prep time, it’s the education time. I can throw a decent meal together in 15 minutes, or prep fresh bread for the rest of the week in half an hour, but I’ve been in and out of from-scratch kitchen for 40 years now. If kids don’t learn this kind of stuff from elementary school age on up, it’s hell to teach them later.
I moved to a low-income neighborhood at the beginning of this year and at first I honestly did believe that it was still possible to maintain a healthy diet- I’ve changed my mind since. I noticed that I do eat more fruits and vegetables than many of my neighbors but it’s the quality of fresh produce that’s the problem. My eating habits may be healthiER, but it’s still been a step down from when I lived in a neighborhood with a farmer’s market or Trader Joe’s. The grocery stores in this neighborhood are small and end up stocking mostly canned goods, while the selection of fruits and vegetables are… well… I’ve grown to be very frustrated with it. I brought a salad to a potluck at my office last week and since I didn’t have time to take the bus out of the area, I spent a lot of time searching for lettuce that wasn’t brown and tomatoes that weren’t moldy and there were NO carrots, mushrooms, or cauliflower. I never thought I’d take fresh carrots for granted!
I’ve talked to a lot of people around here who are tired of hearing that they need to eat healthier, but don’t have the option of buying fresh, affordable ingredients.
Wow, $342 a week for a food budget.
I have an $80/month food budget. I can’t even get enough calories anymore, I’m down to eating once a day and filling my meals with as much white rice as I can tolerate. I’ve learned how to make a $1 box of saltines stretch to cover four days worth of meals.
But I’m fat so I must not be malnourished.
Yep, Mnemosyne. A two minute walk from my apartment gets me to a mall with a produce place and a bakery, I don’t live in a huge city but I don’t live in the sticks either. Produce is pretty cheap up here in Canada. My husband and I are vegetarians and most of the time it’s not expensive for us to eat, unless we buy lots of “fake” meat products. Tofu is way cheaper than meat and a couple bucks gets you a whole box of mandarine oranges. Soy milk, however, is much more expesive than cow’s milk, but I have a major grudge against the dairy industry so I am very glad I can afford it and stick it to the diary man.
Soy milk
Whoa there. No. There is no such thing. It’s “soy juice”. Soybeans don’t have teats.
Anyway, just remember that it’s not easy for some of us to get fresh produce and whatnot, what with us working shitty, $6-an-hour jobs and not living in cities where things are readily available. I notice this with lots of (presumably) well-intentioned moral crusaders of my political stripe - most seem to believe that since they can X, then all who agree with them can X. Life don’t work that way.
a whole box of mandarine oranges is only couple bucks?
Ya gotta be kidding me. A single mandarine orange around her probably goes for 60 cents. I know that’s the cost of one piece of fruit around here..
My two strategies for eating well on little money or time are as follows: live near a heavily immigrant area if possible, preferably heavily Asian, and cook something in a slow cooker on Sundays (buy one cookbook that has healthy slow cooker recipies - after a few weeks you can just eyeball it). Food in Asian markets is cheaper because it does not have to keep long - under-assimilated Asians tend to shop every day. Buy Jasmine rice in the big honking bags for a few bucks, ditto beans and such. Then buy whatever is fresh but going bad in a day or so and cook a big vat of slow cooker something. Freeze about 8 meals in containers. If you have to skip a week, you will have some from other weeks. This is also one of the most viable ways to go meatless because there are a lot of bean recipies. Your prep time can be less than 10 minutes.
Color me weird but the thing that struck me most was the sheer amount of packaging in the USAmerican picture. The total volume of the packaging alone is comparable to the volume of the Chadian food.
Those photos are so fascinating. I am really curious about the layout of the food in each photo. Was the family responsible for arranging the food? I feel that I am a bit biased towards the more aesthetically pleasing displays, and I wonder how the placement of the items reflect the relative importance of the food.
For instance to be fair to the British family there seems to be some vegetables trying to hide in a basket near the fireplace, and some of their packaged food is pet food which is endearing but the layout is remarkably wan.
Packaging is definitely problematic. I probably buy half of my food at the local farmer’s market here in CA, but the cheese and eggs, even the dried beans that I buy are required to be packaged. The woman selling lovely baguettes was told that she had to have them in plastic, they could not be exposed to open air!
The Italian family doesn’t drink wine?
I’m wondering though, if your tastebuds can be adjusted over your lifetime. If I don’t have meat at meal time, I feel unsatisfied…still rather hungry. Also, the fruit I can by up here in NoDak is DISGUSTING. We can get some decent strawberries in the summer, but that’s about it. It was much better in WA, and even better in Germany.
Those photos are so fascinating. I am really curious about the layout of the food in each photo. Was the family responsible for arranging the food? I feel that I am a bit biased towards the more aesthetically pleasing displays, and I wonder how the placement of the items reflect the relative importance of the food.
For instance to be fair to the British family there seems to be some vegetables trying to hide in a basket near the fireplace, and some of their packaged food is pet food which is endearing but the layout is remarkably wan.
Packaging is definitely problematic. I probably buy half of my food at the local farmer’s market here in CA, but the cheese and eggs, even the dried beans that I buy are required to be packaged. The woman selling lovely baguettes was told that she had to have them in plastic, they could not be exposed to open air!
The Italian family doesn’t drink wine?
Mnemosyne:
Actually, by swapping out one’s animal protein intake for proteins from beans, lentils, etc. one gains a ton of health benefits by upping your intake of fiber and vitamins and reducing your saturated fat, hormones and cholesterol, not to mention the fact that beans are way cheaper.
I’ve been vegan for almost 2 years now, and I’m not rich. I’ve also lived in extremely poor urban neighborhoods and although the produce options aren’t fantastic, they do exist.
Produce is pretty cheap up here in Canada.
That depends on where you are, really. When I lived in the Yukon produce was pretty expensive and the quality wasn’t always great, especially in the winter. In British Columbia and Ontario it was a different story, especially in Ottawa which is produce haven for broke students.
Damian, all I was meaning to do was illustrate how different things are in Canada. I never said that everyone should live near a produce stand or be vegetarian. I am fully aware that not everyone’s life looks like mine. My point was that in a mid-sized city in Canada, it’s cheaper to buy veggies than it is to buy meat.
I am also kind of sick of people giving me crap about soy milk. I put it on my cereal so I will call it milk if I want to. I never said you have to drink it, but I can’t drink cow milk so I’m pretty grateful for soy.
Tofu is way cheaper than meat and a couple bucks gets you a whole box of mandarine oranges.
I’m south of you, and my taco meat substitute costs as much as a pound of meat, and oranges here are frequently $10 a bag. You may have just made it worth it to drive to Canada to go grocery shopping.
Mrs Nice Guy here. My impression, from having met a fair number of people from other countries, is that every country values soft drinks way more than, say, I do. I’ll bet the family in Chad would be buying them if they could afford it.
As to why poor folks don’t eat better: a lot of the time there is no actual grocery in poor neighborhoods. There are “convenience stores” and they have produce, but very little, poor quality, and expensive. Poor people don’t get grocery stores because, y’know, they don’t have much money. US groceries are counting on selling a lot of packaging and other unnecessary stuff, or they don’t want to bother.
The dairy pushing onto kids is way out of control. My kids are both lactose intolerant and they have never eaten the kind of dairy loading that they are “supposed” to. Wondering if they were getting enough to eat, I did some digging. They eat about 2 servings of yogurt, cheese, and lactose-reduced dairy daily and that is more than fine. I’m plenty capable of evaluating health evidence and I know damn well that it isn’t as good for kids or necessary as it is being promoted to be. Who the fuck needs a quart a day from age 5???? GMAFB!
I knew a professor at Harvard named Walt Willett who quit the committee that built the food pyramid because they kept pushing away mounting evidence that dairy wasn’t as good for you as it is hyped to be, and cherry picking industry sponsored “research” to place milk much more prominently in the diet than the science says it should be.
Most of the population of the world can’t tolerate unmodified dairy anyway - how is it they are alive? It is because it isn’t necessary. I get so very extremely tired of the “they won’t get enough calcium unless they eat six pounds of kale” nonsense emitting from official mouths. How about a couple of corn tortillas, then, huh??? Puhleeze.
One thing that jumps out at me from the photoessay is that what you place in the front makes a huge perceptual difference. In the U.S. picture in your post, your eye is drawn to the two pizzas; in most of the other pictures you added to the post, it’s to the bread and produce, with any prepackaged foods set off to the side or partially obscured by other goods.
Wow, someone in the Mexican family is a real coke-aholic. I’m sure that’s not representative of everyone in their area or economic bracket.
Mexicans drink enormous amounts of sucre soda - more soda per capita than anywhere in the world, and nearly as much cocacola in total than the US!!! Mexican sodas don’t have corn syrup in them, though, they have locally produced sugar. Yummmmy!
So, yes, that is representative of the kinds of offerings I saw in Mexico. I like to visit grocery stores in my travels because you learn stuff like this.
Yep. If you’re college-educated with an internet connection that you can access during the workday, you have a lot more information at your fingertips than a high school dropout working two jobs to keep a roof over your family’s head. It’s not just about money, people — it’s social class, too.
I’m grateful that I have an office job that allows me enough independence that I can hop online and chitchat when I feel like it, but I’m under no illusion that someone working in a retail job has the same luxury.
Actually, by swapping out one’s animal protein intake for proteins from beans, lentils, etc. one gains a ton of health benefits by upping your intake of fiber and vitamins and reducing your saturated fat, hormones and cholesterol, not to mention the fact that beans are way cheaper.
Yes, assuming that you
(a) you have a pot to cook them in
(b) a stove to cook them on, and
(c) a refrigerator to store them in for a week.
Not everyone in this country has those things readily available. Take a look at Nickel and Dimed the next time you’re at the library.
Yes, assuming that you
(a) you have a pot to cook them in
(b) a stove to cook them on, and
(c) a refrigerator to store them in for a week.
One out of three ain’t bad.
BTW, that kid who somebody said is “fat” isn’t much more pudgy than my own son, who never drinks much soda (and it counts as part of his treat allowance), exercises regularly, and could out eat a fruit bat on the fresh stuff.
Some kids are just programmed to pudge, regardless of feed stock. Not everybody is northern European or Dinka.
Back when this photoessay was first making the rounds, some of us started a Flickr to keep track of a week’s worth of food. (We too noticed how the Americans had a lot of processed and fast foods.)
We’re thinking about doing a Holiday version sometime soon, so if anybody’s interested, feel free to join our Flickr group.
BTW, the day I had Burger King for lunch, I felt awfully ashamed of having to post it.
http://www.flickr.com/groups/a_week_of_food/
I also wonder what the mystery beverage that the American family likes to consume is. Faux fruit juice of some sort?
Based on the swirled shape of the bottle, I’m guessing Ocean Spray ™ cran-something juice. (The pink bottle on the left looks exactly like my Ocean Spray ™ grapefruit juice.)
Still, by my count that’s six bottles of cran-whatever and two of grapefruit for four people for a week. I’m partial to my grapefruit juice and all, but as one person I go through one bottle every two weeks, or about one-fourth the juice per person as this family. I’d guess they use fruit juice as their regular beverage, but that wouldn’t explain the stockpile of pop as well.
I have to wonder: just because this is what they purchased in a week, does this mean that this is what they get every week? F’r'ex, did they buy eight bottles of fruit juice this week, so that they don’t need to buy fruit juice for another month? Because a lot of the proportions for foods that “keep” seem out of whack.
Ms Kate, Mother of All Apple Pies -
A friend of mine says that it is not that people are “lactose intolerant” it’s that by in large American “tolerate” lactose longer than any other human population or any other animal for that matter.
The secret to eating a variety of fresh produce is being able to buy some every day.
That makes a huge difference. In my old apartment, I was one of the “walk to the grocery store every day” types of people. It’s a bit further now, and my schedule a bit less conducive, so I make far fewer trips, and I’m not eating as well as I was.
Mnemosyne you forgot one
(d) have people who will actually eat them
lentils are a non-starter for everyone in this family
beans, once it was one of those mainstays when we couldn’t afford much. When we could I was requested not to make them so much. I didn’t know they caused my husband so much physical discomfort.
Ditto what commenters said on the problems of time and knowledge re: cooking.
I’m solidly middle-class — despite at the moment being a “broke” student, I have enough money to eat well (thank you, scholarships!) — and most of my classmates are also middle and in a couple notable cases, upper class. Many of them are very health-concious, this being ‘the land of the fruits and nuts’, as they say. Even so, most of my classmates eat prepackaged and prepared foods — they just shell out lots and lots of $$$ for the whole grain-organic variety.
Why? Well, most of them can’t cook, and admit it freely. (Mind you, this is a master’s program, so we’re talking about people who’ve been living on their own for a few years now, not folks straight from Mom&Dad’s). Those who can don’t have the time. I love to cook, and have been doing so since I was old enough to climb on a chair and reach the counters, and if you look in my closets you’ll find a lot of rice and noodles and veggies, but you’ll also find boxes of mac&cheese and cup of soup and such, because I just don’t have time to cook some days — and compared to the average working American, I have a lot of free time — I basically have a 20-hour ‘work-week’. If I, with money and time, can’t manage it, how are families with two working parents supposed to track down the good food and prepare it? Much simpler to nuke a TV dinner and call it done.
(One thing that’s easier for families — quantities. It’s cheaper to buy in bulk… which requires storage space a tiny studio apt. doesn’t have.)
Pixelfish -
I had BurgerKing too, today .. a veggie burger
- but I did have onion rings (okay so a little bad) and then I drove over to the Dunkin Donuts for an ice tea.
My excuse . . . lots of appointments
The only way we’re able to eat even moderately healthy is that 1) we have middle-class resources 2) live within walking distance of a health food store, a produce market and a fish market 3) Rachael Ray’s 30 minute cookbook.
When I was broke, I ate a lot of pasta and packed on the weight. I’m still trying to lose it and that was more than 10 years ago.
One of the only tolerable things about the shitty little town Mrs. F and I are stuck in for the nonce is the farmers’ market five blocks away. Makes it way easier to eat well than it was in the big city.
Eating a healthy, balanced diet is not just expensive in terms of money, but also time. When everyone in the family is gone ten hours a day–some at work, some at school and extracurriculars and daycare–nobody has time to plan healthy menus, shop for fresh ingredients, and cook balanced meals. It’s much quicker to pick up a bunch of processed crap from the store and stick it in the microwave.
another (better?) pyramid:
http://thegarance.com/archives/1010
but the conclusion’s the same… the farm subsidies ARE out of whack
This all seems to be simple enough to understand, and I’m surprised that it didn’t get more play in the comments: Americans eat more grains and meat because they’re subsidized.
The reason they’re subsidized is pretty easy to understand, too. It’s partially because the Senate has a disproportionate number of Senators from agricultural states. Those Senators will fight tooth-and-nail for these subsidies because their jobs depend on them. And it’s also because THE key presidential primary state is Iowa, which grows a lot of–that’s right–corn. Most of that corn feeds America’s meat animals, and what’s left feeds America. It’s subsidized all down the line. We’re paying Americans to eat badly.
Take away the corn subsidies and move it to fruits and vegetables, and you’d be better off. Good luck with that.
Nice link, Hunter, backs up the corn problem really well.
Heather: I’m happy that going vegan has made you happier and healthier. Please don’t assume that it does the same for *everyone*. I tried that vegan diet for 90 days - supposedly that’s enough time for your body to adjust. Never. Again. By day 90, I was constantly grazing because I was always *hungry*. I was never satisfied; it was like living in a bad Chinese food joke - an hour later and I was hungry again. As far as I am concerned, people should eat the way that makes them feel best - whether that’s strict vegan or strictly carnivorous.
Marcyfight: I’m sure you love soy “milk”, but technically, it’s not “milk” since it does not come from any lactating female of any species. It is a soy-based milk-substitute, and a more accurate name would be “soy drink.” But common usage has made “milk” the preferred term, so why not? I personally find soy “milk” (and tofu) utterly disgusting. I would rather do without dairy products altogether than substitute soy (or rice) “milk”. I’m glad those products exist for people who cannot eat dairy products, but they’re not for me.
Ms. Kate: What food pyramid says that kids need a quart of milk a day? Last I checked, the equivalent of 3 8 oz. glasses a day was plenty (including other dairy products such as yogurt, etc.). That’s only 3 cups, and a quart is 4 cups, right?
Also, regarding “Most of the population of the world can’t tolerate unmodified dairy anyway - how is it they are alive?”, have you considered that the lactose-intolerant populations come from where cows were *not* raised for food? My own ethnic background is from Northern Europe (Scots-Irish), and I am not and have never been lactose-intolerant to cow’s milk. The Mediterranean peoples are fine with goat and/or sheep’s milk, many Arabic peoples drink camel’s milk, and the Mongols did just fine with mare’s milk (although the thought of drinking fermented milk - kumiss - gives me the heeby-jeebies). I think you’ll find the Asian people who are lactose-intolerant (the vast majority of your lactose-intolerant population are Asian) are the same ones whose main sources of animal protein were (and are) fish, poultry, and pigs, none of which are conducive to dairy production (only pigs actually produce milk, and pigs are not known for their sweet tempers so milking them would not have been worth the risk).
As I stated above, people should eat the way that makes them feel best. Obviously, milk products make your kids feel like crap - therefore, they shouldn’t eat them. But please don’t deny the delights of the dairy world to people like me, who have no problem with them. Okay?
Speaking of time, can I just say how annoying it is to hear people go on about how you “just have to find TIME to excersize!” As though the single parents working 2 jobs are just lazy. As though they have any kind of flexibility in scheduling their work hours. It’s just so classist to talk about scheduling in time to work out, IMO. It says to me “I have one single desk job with flexible hours and not much to do once I get home.” Which obviously isn’t the case for everyone.
Sniper: you are so wrong, persimmons are delicious. The trees grow beautifully even in our cold climate (northern regions), they have been the mainstay of my family’s winter-time diet, and my parents in particular are big fans of them
Mnemosyne: that’s ridicolous. You can cook canned beans straight from the can, and you can get dried beans, lentils, etc. that will last you months without a refrigerator - and can, again, be cooked from a goddamn tin can. I have eaten tons of the stuff
“When everyone in the family is gone ten hours a day–some at work, some at school and extracurriculars and daycare–nobody has time to plan healthy menus..”
yet
“According to the A.C. Nielsen Co., the average American watches more than 4 hours of TV each day”
Television viewrship climbs as income level falls. There is clearly plenty of time for meal planning and preparation. In fact, most of it could take place while this tv viewing was occurring. Some of this has to be laid at the feet of the individual. Availability of healthy food in lower income neighborhoods and expense of healthier food is fair. No time is untrue.
Mnemosyne: that’s ridicolous. You can cook canned beans straight from the can, and you can get dried beans, lentils, etc. that will last you months without a refrigerator - and can, again, be cooked from a goddamn tin can. I have eaten tons of the stuff.
So, just checking, you ate tons of beans when you didn’t have a pot, cooktop/microwave, or refrigerator available?
Or are you assuming that because you found it easy to make beans when you had all three of the above that it must still be easy to make them even if you don’t have them? After all, if you’re going to soak and then cook dried beans, you need to either (a) have a pot to do the soaking and cooking or (b) wash and save a tin can to soak and cook them in, hoping that it hasn’t been weakened by being re-used several times and doesn’t burst while it’s set over the hotplate.
Oh, and you of course were feeding yourself and a child or children on beans, correct? You certainly weren’t a single person cooking for yourself, because that would be a lot easier than trying to feed a family on dried beans and wouldn’t be a very good comparison to someone feeding his or her family.
Those damn welfare queens.
Since I think it may be needed in this thread, once again here’s John Scalzi’s litany of what it’s like to be poor. Not college-student poor, but actually poor.
Note: Dr T is now offering a custom time management consultancy.
Please submit your schedules to Dr T and your life will be remodeled to accommodate all those time conflicts we only imagine exist…
Whose doing the watching and when. . . a latch key child who cannot play out side because 1)there is no adult home, they are working 2)it’s not a safe neighborhood so that’s not an option
sure they are watching tv
do you honestly think a parent, working two jobs, coming home to feed kids, make sure clothes are ready for tomorrow, check homework, deal with kids, whatever came in the mail, yada, yada, yada, has the mental ability to deal with “time to make” much less figure out a meal???
Or do you suppose they come home and after getting everything else done, colapses infront of the tv because it’s all they can mentally do?
Eliminate farm subsidizes–the vast majority of which go to big agribusuiness, not the small “family farm–and eliminate tariffs on foreign produce and you go a long way towards helping people eat a more balanced diet. And pay less for it, too.
And don’t think subsidizing even more is the answer. Sure, it sounds like a good idea to subsidize healthy foods–but interference in that market can lead to over-production leading to all sorts of nasty side effects. Why do we use corn syrup instead of sugar? Because corn subsidizes cause farms to produce way, way more corn than we could ever consume without it being processed into some kind of chemical goup.
“Why do we use corn syrup instead of sugar?”
Very little agricultural land in the US is good for growing sugar cane, but will produce corn well. Sugar beets are not necessarily a good alternative. The sugar/corn syrup thing comes down to economics - the beverage producers would have to import sugar (at higher prices) if they didn’t use corn syrup.
Sooner or later, it always comes down to money…
Very little agricultural land in the US is good for growing sugar cane, but will produce corn well. Sugar beets are not necessarily a good alternative. The sugar/corn syrup thing comes down to economics - the beverage producers would have to import sugar (at higher prices) if they didn’t use corn syrup.
Sugar would be as cheap, of not cheaper than foreign sugar if we didn’t tax foreign sugar imports. Using corn syrup isn’t a function of the market so much as it is the market being distorted by government subsidies.
Its the same thing with ethanol. It make much more sense to use Brazilian sugar instead of corn. But, you see, the first Presidential caucus isn’t held in Ceara, Brazil. Its held in Iowa.
Whoa there. No. There is no such thing. It’s “soy juice”. Soybeans don’t have teats.
It’s “soy milk” - those bloody estrogens in the environment again…
Mike, you left out the part about heavy subsidies to corn growers making the prices drop and favor the use of corn as a sweetner. It’s been a sweet deal for ADM, as their machinations and corporate welfare conspire to permit them to now buy that corn at well below the production cost.
I love how people seem to think that by using the words “soy milk” I am laboring under the assumption that somehow it comes from a lactating animal.
I am aware that soy milk is not real milk, thats sort of the point.
And honestly, since why is mentioning that you consume diary or meat substitutes tantamount to telling everybody that they must too? I am not trying to take away anyone’s precious dairy (I love yogurt, myself), but more commenting on the fact that dairy products are unnecessarily pushed on us all the time when there are plenty of other (non-soy as well) foods that will meet your needs.
It’s been a sweet deal for ADM, as their machinations and corporate welfare conspire to permit them to now buy that corn at well below the production cost.
ADM–Welfare Queen to the World.
We’ve had social welfare reform in this country. Now I think its high time for corporate welfare reform.
“We’ve had social welfare reform in this country. Now I think its high time for corporate welfare reform.”
Right there with you…
You can cook canned beans straight from the can, and you can get dried beans, lentils, etc. that will last you months without a refrigerator - and can, again, be cooked from a goddamn tin can. I have eaten tons of the stuff
You are welcome to come over and cook them for the four of us while my husband and I are at work.
Oh. I forgot: we don’t have a stove. Sorry.
Maybe you will be able to get the side burner on the grill to work in the cold and snowrain? For long enough not to use all the gas?
(and yes, we did try doing beans in the crockpot - handfuls in stew work, entire pots of them do not)
@AtomicFruitbat:
Spot on with the corn syrup. Have you ever tried to find a pack of Skittles or Starburst in Europe? *MAYBE* in on of the larger international airports on the continent, otherwise forget it. The European (esp. German, Swiss and Italian) junk food is chocolate. It’s everywhere. I’m in Italy right now and haven’t seen anything that wasn’t chocolate in a vending machine or small shop in 3 weeks. You have to go to the large supermarkets to find the fruit-flavored “gelees” and “morbidas”. Even then, it’s all got sugar rather than corn syrup in it. Coke and Pepsi all have sugar.
I’ve been making this particular trip once a year for about 5 years now(I’m teaching) and can’t remember when I saw anything that had HFCS in it. It probably exists somewhere, but I haven’t found it, and that’s with being here 3-4 weeks at a time.
You know what else they have over here that we don’t in America? —Portion control. There is such a thing as a meal where you don’t roll yourself away from the table. Even in Northern Italy.
Americans on the other hand, cannot be convinced they’ve eaten until they’re absolutely stuffed and/or pass out in a food coma.
The two biggest things we can do in the US for our nutritional health is get back to some sense of portion control and cut out the HFCS.
So, just checking, you ate tons of beans when you didn’t have a pot, cooktop/microwave, or refrigerator available?
You know, you can’t exactly cook or store meat without those things available, either, so you’re hardly making the point I suspect you think you’re making. But really, all but the most poor will have some kind of cooking facilities, even just a hot plate — including people on some kind of food assistance, so that’s kind of a non-issue.
What *is* an issue is that various agriculture and food-industry lobbies have such a stranglehold on food policy in this country. Because corn is grown in Iowa and both parties start their Presidential campaigns there, corn is heavily subsidized. But you’ve got to have a market for all that corn, so it’s fed to cattle, for example. But cattle can’t digest corn well, so they get sick and are injected with antibiotics as a matter of course. Then there’s HFCS, which is in absolutely everything and apparently does weird things to our bodies, too.
The dairy industry is heavily subsidized as well (lots of cows in Iowa, too). But the problem is getting people to buy it all. Enter the Got Milk? campaign, and the push to promote dairy as the single-best source for calcium and a necessary part of one’s diet. And if there’s surplus cheese and milk, no worries! WIC requires you to buy vast quantities milk, cheese, sugary cereal and juice drinks (boon for the sugar/cereal and beverage lobbies), and only recently started allowing the use of WIC checks for fresh produce. And if there’s still cheese leftover, it goes into the federal school lunch program, along with surplus meat.
And even though kids are being fed high-fat, high-calorie food in school because the school nutrition standards are written by the agriculture lobbyists rather than actual, you know, nutritionists, and even though they no longer have recess or gym classes in a lot of schools because they need to test-prep, the government is going to start screeching about the obesity epidemic and blame the individual kids and their families for eating crappy.
Ms. Kate: not having a refrigerator or stove makes you fairly unusual. Are you living off the grid?
“Food coma.” That’s good. Where I was raised, Dillo, we called it “itis.”
Anyway, this comment is mainly valuable to anyone living in the Bay Area who has access to the Museum of the African Diaspora. There they have the full exhibit that accompanies the pictures in this post.
I was in SF last week and saw this exhibit; the only thing of value I can add to this discussion is that the exhibit details the cost (including U.S. dollar values) for each family’s weekly diet. I found the wildly disparate costs for similar food items to be noteworthy. Also, it bears mentioning that the Revis family (the ones at the top with the pizzas) made a conscious effort to combat the deleterious effects of their unhealthy lifestyle. They first started a family exercise program, but found that time spent at the gym (added to work and school hours) left little time for procurement and preparation of healthy eating (they wound up getting fatty, starchy takeout, which counteracted the fitness program). So they started working out at home and preparing healthier meals. Still, access to fresh produce was a challenge.
I reckon the message I took away from the exhibit is that the planet offers us all healthy dietary options. Our food production and distribution schemes are the problem. If only the unfettered market offered magical solutions to this (snork)…
The whole corn-syrupization of the American Diet is well covered in The Omnivore’s Dilemma
He also does a good job looking at the real costs of the Whole Foods type of organic food.
This is really interesting.
I recently tried doing the nutrisystem diet and I discovered I preferred REAL food!
Some healthily helpful things came from that though.
I don’t (or crave) as much sweets and I genuinely desire fruits, nuts, and vegetables. I realize how junk food and soda make me feel wiped out, so I am now very reluctant to eat them…but when you work from 7:30am-3:30pm on the weekends with only 30 minutes for lunch, combined with the fact they won’t let me work more than 16hrs a week, some times (especially for breakfast) I have to.
If only the unfettered market offered magical solutions to this (snork)…
Theres nothing “unfettered” about our current agricultural and food distribution systems. They heavy hand of the Feds–whether through subsidization of agribusiness or protectionist trade policies–is very much present in both.
Exactly.
I am broke not poor. HUGE difference.
Pretty fucking disturbing comparison.
My daughter goes to the largest university in Iowa and has much better access to organic/imported foods than we do here in Capitol City. Pricey, but she swears by it.
Actually, now that I’ve clicked on the link theres a second American family that has some pretty healthy choices.
zuzu said “The dairy industry is heavily subsidized as well (lots of cows in Iowa, too).”
Not to get in the way of your Iowa-bashing, but there’s very little dairy farming in Iowa. It’s corn, soybeans, and hogs. Most of the cattle being raised there are being raised for beef, not milk. California is the #1 dairy state, with Wisconsin coming in at #2 (much to their chagrin).
Iowa may have a disproportionate amount of clout due to the caucuses, but I hardly think it is the main controlling factor in our current system of farm subsidies. Money trumps all, and subsidies benefit large agribusiness, not Iowan family farmers.
(Yes, I am originally from Iowa, so my response may be heated for that reason.)
Somebody said something above about Coke being a substitute for clean water in Mexico. I’m afraid it’s more insidious than that. Coke is such a large producer in Mexico that they are actually decreasing the amount of clean water available. One liter of Coke uses something like two liters of clean water. They are also tied to the increasing privatization of land and water resources in Mexico, further decreasing the ability of poor people to support themselves.
I’m sure there are better sources out there, but a quick google search came up with this article, (http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2840/ )which contains:
Ms. Kate: not having a refrigerator or stove makes you fairly unusual. Are you living off the grid?
I do have a refrigerator. It is taking up a rather large space in the corner of my dining room right now. We sold the stove 2 weeks ago. I finished tearing out the walls this weekend in the once and future kitchen.
Meanwhile, we are experimenting with various ways of not eating out or eating pre-prepared food as the New England winter closes in, which means we are eating a lot of rice from the electric rice cooker.
In about a month I will have a large double oven range and nearly double the usable counter space, conveniently located. I am very fortunate, indeed.
Who the fuck needs a quart a day from age 5???? GMAFB!
Ms. Kate, I had to laugh.
I needed/craved a gallon of skim milk a day from probably about the age of 5. Seven years ago, at the age of 41 and getting progressively sicker and sicker with strange, weird symptoms, I was diagnosed with hyperparathyroidism - very very rare. I’d had a bit of a high calcium count on all my blood work during my adult life, but everyone just wrote it off to “she drinks so damn much milk.” Turns out, if you’re functioning correctly, doesn’t matter how much you drink - your count is never supposed to be high.
In other words, a huge (non-malignant) tumor on my parathyroid glands literally sucked the calcium right out of my system. My doctor figured I’d probably had it for most of my life - once removed in emergency surgery, I’ve not had that craving for milk. Still love it, just don’t physically crave it. I do, however, fully expect to get run into by a bumblebee and have it break my leg at some point.
My 46 year-old sister, on the other hand, probably has never swallowed an entire glass of milk in her life, can’t stand the stuff and has hardly been sick a day in her adult life.
So, who knows. I’m at the age of being worried about osteoperosis, but guess I can be like Sally Field and remember to take “just one pill a month.” I may have enough menopausal brain cells left for that! Maybe.
Three hundred and forty bucks a week for four people? Does everyone else pay that much for food?! I’m hardly starving, and yet two people get by on roughly fifty bucks a week here. Do I have access to some kind of magical grocery wormhole which your typical American doesn’t?
I apologize for the insensitivity of this question, but my curiosity has gotten the better of me. Sometimes I see these single electric stove burners at the ‘Mart or its local equivalent. (Apparently they run around fifteen to twenty bucks, but I’ve seen one as low as eight.) Do those not work well enough to cook with?I’d like to emphasize that I’m not trying to blame you for being in a tight spot or implying that if you clipped a few more coupons, you’d be happily middle class. Having recently had my work status updated from “employed” to “working odd jobs”, I’m trying to cut every expense that I can to stretch things a bit further.
ADM- Arch Demonic Monopolists.
I will never say that I make all the best choices and I do know better but time, availability and finances are all factors to be considered. Anyone who thinks making a healthy meal is easy should try tracking one down in some of the poorer neighborhoods where the nearest store with less processed choices can be an hour away by public transport. If you haven’t a car or share one, it may not be possible to make that trip. So now you have to work with what your neighborhood has to offer. If that is highly processed or fast food, at least you eat. You have just sunk more of your budget into a meal than if you could have prepared it youself but you ate and tomorrow is another day.
I am lucky that vegetables are actually a priority for our municipal government. We have a local farmer’s market, during the warmer months many of the metro stations have fruit and vegatable stands beside them. Most malls are anchored by a food chain and many have specialty food markets nearby. That was one thing that bothered me on a recent trip to the States, none of the malls had a real food store attached to them. You could find a Walmarts with packaged stuff, a Sam’s Club that required a membership but no simple grocery store. You actually had to go out of your way to find real food. People should petition their city councils, that is truly outrageous and the local politicians should have their feet put to the fire for allowing it to happen.
Maybe I’m misreading the degree of dismay about not being able to buy fresh produce daily. I love it fresh, but most of it doesn’t go bad after only one day, and face it, if you buy from a grocery store, it was probably harvested last week and then sitting in the warehouse before arriving and waiting on the shelves for a day or more.
And if you grew it yourself, you wouldn’t necessarily harvest every day, either, or sell it on harvest day.
Apples and pears last easily for a week in the refrigerator, and most root vegetables last two. Bananas that are ripe can go in the fridge, too; they get dark skins, but don’t ripen any further.
Leafies and stuff like tomatoes are more vulnerable. You want to make sure you get the freshest stuff when you buy it. Still, you don’t have to use it the same day.
This all presupposes the refrigerator, which not everyone has. Without one you’re going to have trouble with long-term storage of anything other than potatoes and onions and apples. And there is always the question of availability, especially in a city with no grocery store nearby, or only the cruddy grocery stores.
If you’re lucky enough to have a farmer’s market, they’re great, but if not, you may have friends, family, co-workers or neighbors who grow extra.
Want to see something really scary? Rickets is making a comeback, because kids aren’t getting enough calcium, sunshine and outdoor play.
You know, you can’t exactly cook or store meat without those things available, either, so you’re hardly making the point I suspect you think you’re making.
I think you missed my point — not having important prep stuff like pots and stoves and fridges is why people eat fast food. No need to store, no need to cook, enough calories to keep you going even though it’s not actually nutritious.
I had some healthy fast food for lunch (yes, it exists). Cost me about $9. For that $9, I could have fed four people at McDonald’s. Which was, again, my point.
If you’re doing all (or even most) of your cooking at home, it probably is just as easy to make a big pot of beans. But if you’re not, saying “just make beans!” is about as practical as saying “just buy grass-fed beef!”
Maybe I’m misreading the degree of dismay about not being able to buy fresh produce daily. I love it fresh, but most of it doesn’t go bad after only one day, and face it, if you buy from a grocery store, it was probably harvested last week and then sitting in the warehouse before arriving and waiting on the shelves for a day or more.
It was very hard for my best friend to get used to eating fresh produce when she was in college, because her family was fairly poor. Each kid got one (1) piece of fresh fruit a week, because when you’re feeding 8 people (6 kids and 2 adults), that’s about all you can afford to get at the grocery store. Especially when you’re shopping at a crappy inner-city grocery store where you’re lucky not to get mugged for your groceries on the way home (yes, that happened to her and her sisters at least twice).
And these were people who had a house and both parents had jobs, so not even close to the poorest of the poor here. Just too poor to follow the rest of the white-flighters to the suburbs.
Spot on with the corn syrup. Have you ever tried to find a pack of Skittles or Starburst in Europe?
You’ll get them in any corner shop in the UK and Ireland. I’m pretty sure they’re not made with corn syrup here.
Not that this detracts from your point; the diet in the UK and Ireland is pretty dire, and I think UK obesity rates are the highest in Europe.
And I can’t talk at all because I’m a total sugar addict, but I am nonetheless shocked by how much soda everyone in the world drinks. I might have one can a month; and even that is only because the vending machine at the DART station doesn’t sell bottled water. I am really grateful to my mum for discouraging us from having that stuff, and for never buying it. I’ve seen how even a small amount, if you take it on a regular basis, can play havoc with your metabolism and blood sugar regulation.
“Why do we use corn syrup instead of sugar?”
The government.
In order to protect out uncompetitive domestic sugar industry from foreign competition, Congress enacted large tariffs on imported sugar. The result is that you pay almost twice as much for sugar as the rest of the world. Anyone who needs sweeteners in very large quantities will quickly determine that cane sugar is just not an economically viable, and that corn syrup is much more attractive.
Want the cane sugar back in your Coke? An end to agricultural subsidies and (gasp!) free trade is the answer.
I think you missed my point — not having important prep stuff like pots and stoves and fridges is why people eat fast food. No need to store, no need to cook, enough calories to keep you going even though it’s not actually nutritious.
I had some healthy fast food for lunch (yes, it exists). Cost me about $9. For that $9, I could have fed four people at McDonald’s. Which was, again, my point.
If you’re doing all (or even most) of your cooking at home, it probably is just as easy to make a big pot of beans. But if you’re not, saying “just make beans!” is about as practical as saying “just buy grass-fed beef!”
Which would be a fair point had you mentioned McDonald’s at all in your responses instead of simply shooting down the idea that beans are cheaper than meat because some people don’t have stoves or refrigerators. But you were responding specifically to someone who’d said that it was cheap, and possible, to swap out plant proteins for animal proteins in one’s cooking.
Absolutely, some people don’t have stoves or refrigerators and wind up having to eat crap from places like McDonald’s. But McDonald’s didn’t grow to a multibillion-dollar-a-year industry just because poor people who can’t afford anything else eat there. Plenty of people of all income levels eat there, and they do so frequently.
Don’t underestimate the power of a huge market player like McDonald’s to affect the prices of commodities like potatoes or ground beef. These cost savings come at the expense not only of the consumer, who gets a lower-grade product, but also of the farmer, the agricultural worker and the slaughterhouse worker (the cows don’t do all that hot, either). Then you have the incredibly powerful agricultural and food-industry lobby, which distorts what is seen as necessary to eat in order to get their products subsidized.
I read not too long ago that African-Americans went from having on average the healthiest diet of any group (lots of greens, vegetables, beans, very little meat) to having the least healthy (high in fat, salt, sugar, simple carbohydrates, heavy on meat and low in vegetables). A lot of that had to do with what was cheapest at any given time, and before agricultural subsidies and food-assistance programs driven by Big Ag’s needs, vegetables and beans were cheap and readily available. Now, the price of vegetables has gone up relative to subsidized meat and cheeses, white flour and sugar are cheap, and packaged foods are convenient. Not to mention, Big Ag spends a lot of effort making sure Americans keep thinking that Real Men Eat Meat and that dairy is vital to bone growth and health.
The picture of the British family was pretty depressing (although the inclusion of the cat food made me smile).
On a related note, I was reading an article the other day that said that here in the UK on average we throw out about 1/3 of all of the shopping we buy. To me this was shocking (generally I only throw food away if it’s on the verge of climbing out of the fridge and joining me at the dinner table), but thinking about it further, it might be another symptom of the gradual erosion of time that everyone seems to be experiencing. As someone who lives on their own, within a five-minute walk of both work and supermarkets, it’s pretty easy for me to buy whatever food I need on the day I cook it, which means that the food is generally fresher and virtually nothing gets thrown away. For families where the adults need (or want) to work full-time in addition to the unpaid work of raising and caring for dependents, though, the food shop gets done weekly, which almost inevitably leads to more fresh food being thrown away and more processed stuff that keeps better being bought in the first place.
I think I prefer that thought to the idea that we’ve all become wasteful layabouts, anyway.
I haven’t had a soda in bloody years.
Maybe I’m misreading the degree of dismay about not being able to buy fresh produce daily.
Two reasons: convenience and economy. First, being able to buy fresh produce daily means being able to buy it whenever you want. if you have to make a special trip to the store with the produce, you are less likely to buy any. Second, produce does deteriorate with age. By the time the distribution chain gets it to you, its shelf life is fairly used up. If you can buy just what you’re going to eat over the next day or two, you don’t have to worry about it spoiling. Throwing produce out is literally throwing money away, which can be prevented by buying only what you will use over the next day or two. Again, the temptation is to buy heavily processed foods, which have shelf lives measured in months, not days.
I might have one can [of soda] a month; and even that is only because the vending machine at the DART station doesn’t sell bottled water.
And it may never sell bottled water. There is some environmentalism-flavored movement to shame people into not buying bottled water. We are all supposed to tote tepid aluminum bottles of tap water around with us — there is no movement to put chilled water fountains on every street corner. I’d like to preserve the right to buy a cold refreshing drink that is filled with neither sugar nor industrial chemicals.
My question would be is fresh fruit really more expensive than comparable junk food? I think bananas usually cost between 20-40 cents a pound; surely that’s less expensive than a hot pocket or a bag of chips. Canned veggies cost maybe 60-70 cents. A huge thing of fresh carrots is $1.50. Potatoes are very cheap. Canned fruit isn’t the best, but it’s under a dollar. Normally chicken, ground beef, and pork chops are 3-4 bucks a pound.
I am not saying that food is free or even cheap, but it seems that fresh produce, and healthy food in general, is far cheaper than the processed crap at the store. Moreover, almost anything you buy at the grocery store (apart from steak or seafood) is cheaper than fast food, even McDonald’s.
Tonight I brought home enough stuff for about eight servings of chili. I spent $9. Again, my argument is not that food is cheap, especially if you are poor. My point is that healthy, homecooked food is much cheaper than crap junk food or fast food.