We already do. If someone wants to buy nothing but chips and snack cake with their EBT benefits they can do that already, yet they can’t buy a salad from the salad bar or from the deli. But the fact is that most Americans eat like shit. This isn’t a poor people phenomenon. It’s an American thing.
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Here in Germany far more “long life” UHT – “ultra-high-temperature processing” – milk than “fresh” milk. It comes in 1 liter (recycleable) Tetrapak boxes and lasts quite a long time (weeks to months) on the shelf.
You probably have seen UHT packs in your supermarket with soups and other stuff, but not realized what they are. It’s been around since the 1960s and is excellent where you have limited refrigeration. Lasts quite a long time and would be absolutely perfect for food banks and so on.
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seen this many times in the grocery where i shop…they buy junk foood i can’t afford, every thing that comes into my house has to have nutrional valueand we eat everyhting. except the ‘wrappers’; the grocery store has entire aisles of chips, cookies and ‘cereals’…
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I think there are a lot of reasons many folks live on “crap convenience food” – if you are working 2 jobs to keep food on the table, it is hard to imagine coming home and chopping fresh veggies to make a healthy stew. Which brings me to point nr 2: fresh veggies and fruits are expensive, as are good meats. If you have a limited budget, these items are often completely out of reach.
And point number three is, a number of the folks who are living in or near poverty grew up in or near poverty. Their parents had the same issues to deal with with regard to food and food preparation. If your parents were not in the position to provide fresh veggies or fruit or fish or other “healthy” foods, you may not think about them and/or you may have no idea how to prepare or even have developed a taste for them.
I am not making excuses – poverty is often a generations-long Catch-22, a cycle that is difficult to break.
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An example is here:
Natrel Whole Shelf Stable Milk, 32 oz, 6 Pack - Walmart.com
I’ve sold some of these at Target, but they’re available in standard grocery stores as well. They’re packaged much like some of the small boxes of chicken or beef stock you see on the shelves.
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Glad you pointed out the enormous cost of being poor!
I am in wealthy Silicon Valley that also contains shocking poverty (exacerbated by the high cost of living). Every year on school registration day, staff would pressure kids to take the free- & reduced- lunch* application because they knew many kids were missing out. Often due to the bureaucratic barriers. The forms are long, confusing, & intrusive. There are language barriers. Fear of “the government” is also discouraging, as well as simple pride/shame.
Thanks to current funds, our schools now simply serve lunch to all who want it. Staff is much happier & more students are getting fed!
Sadly, the yakkers on NextDoor constantly complain about this. “In my day, mom made our lunch”… “people shouldn’t have kids if they can’t afford them”… [These are the same folks making the national news for raising NIMBY barriers to more housing]
*kiddo’s high school was about 1/3 identified as eligible .
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But how am I going to collect on my stock options if I don’t squeeze worker pay?
/s
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@marknc
@emjayay
@lizzymom
@becca656
All new to me. I heard shelf stable milk was out there, but did not realize it was so pervasive now. All I could think of was the small cafeteria milks we would get at lunch time. When we were not able to get fresh milk, we used powered. Which I never got a taste for.
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Thank you for that list. I see several mistakes I’ve made over the years.
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As have we all…
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Ok I have a question inspired by the article and @becca656 above. If I’m going to try to help on a personal level is giving cash to groups like Harvesters a good use of resources?
Thank you for the informative article. I’m sure I’ve been a part of the problem in the past simply because I’ve not paid enough attention.
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The UHT milk tastes just like “regular” milk (basically, just pasteurized in a different way). In the Wikipedia link I included above, they list the percentage of UHT milk sold in a variety of different countries. Here in Germany it’s over 66% – Hubby and I buy only UHT.
BTW, in France it’s over 95%. Which tells you something about taste and quality, as the French are pretty picky about their food. 
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There ought to be some provision for frozen dinners and stuff that could be heated in a hotel microwave or portable hot plate by a person who can’t afford their own rental unit with appliances. But don’t be springing for potato chips and candy.
Many of these locations get some serious benefits in purchasing power. It is better to do cash - I have been doing a location in CT called Foodshare; several years ago, they said that a $ 60 donation feeds a family for something like a month.
They get a lot of stuff at cost, too, so the dollar goes a long way. And that’s beyond the donated products that some organizations contribute. I worked briefly at a food shelter in MN, and that’s how they operated.
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Michael Pollan famously stated “Don’t eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food.* This notion has recently been updated by James Nestor, who has on book on the benefits of nose-breathing and chewing, “Don’t eat anything your great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food.* The pre-Industrial chewing-intense diet is good for our organism. There is nothing wrong with government dictating food choices that promote health and longevity, nor is there any shame in admitting that some healthy foods don’t provide the same immediate stimulative experiences that sugar, salt and grease-frying do.
We could promote some better choices (IMO) by ending subsidized sugar production. Wouldn’t that be better than trying to create a list of which foods you decide someone else should be able to choose?
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Probably the biggest gains would be to teach children from a young age how to cook. Notably, simply learning how to eat is a factor in social mobility. Obesity, especially in women, is a hallmark of poverty in the US. Swedes for example have a relatively lean and fit population, a feature that benefits the society as a whole. Kids participate in meal prep at school from the youngest age. My mother was blown away when she visited a Finnish daycare decades ago and saw the small children eating foods they themselves had plated, sitting at tiny tables eating with real but diminutive glasses and silverware. Somehow the Americans inherited the god-awful British canteen system, and it’s been downhill ever since.
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Sigh, don’t get me started about the superior attitude toward school & teachers in Finland! Schools & funding was my volunteer passion for many years.
I have seen kids in France sitting at a proper table w/ (what French folks consider to be) a proper meal using utensils & linens, taking proper time to eat. Of course, the kids are also in school all day, so they have the time.
By contrast, kiddo’s elementary could not afford the loss of ‘instructional hours’. So they had something like 25 minutes for lunch. But the line took so long that many of the kids only had 5 minutes to eat. I watched them swallow one or two bites, then dump the tray of food into the garbage.
An intersection of so many different problems!
ETA, many of our folks are homeless. They don’t even have microwaves in cars!
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I think giving to food banks and food pantries is always a good idea if you can afford it. Cash is especially welcome, as it allows them greater flexibility with where to allocate it.
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Uh, this is garbage. I live in NYC and, to this day, there still pockets that could be called “food deserts.” I can only imagine that opening new supermarkets is expensive in general but in the inner city, it must cost a fortune. Hence, the reason we’ve had so many bodegas spring up to fill the void. There are very small vendors who sell fresh fruits and vegetables and they don’t appear to be on the losing end of their endeavors. Not “a bust.”
People eat food that’s marketed to them and lo and behold, a LOT of junk food is marketed to low income people. And this is regardless of whether they’ve been educated about better foods.
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