This Holiday Season, It’s Time For The Government To Stop Dictating The Food Choices Of The Poor | Talking Points Memo

TPM Article Topics
#41

Why on earth would anyone want a late-17th century diet? Do these authors realize that the food needs of the vast majority of people back then was met by bread? And that those same people were one misstep from literally starving to death?

Or are they referring to a fantasy of 17th life, based on the lives of people who didn’t have to grow their own food or wonder where their next meal was coming from?

Which reminds me: which ancestors? I have obviously well-off ancestors from one-line of my family tree, and lots of not-well-off ancestors in the others: which diet gets precedence? The well-off ancestors are French and English: which cuisine do I follow?

Do we use era-appropriate cooking techniques? Techniques which are dependent upon the work of women and/or servants? I highly doubt that any of my ancestors, of whatever social class, would begin to recognize food from an Instapot, for example.

No sushi? No pasta (unless you are Italian)? No Ethiopian food for me, because my ancestors didn’t eat it?

Also? The well-off ate a metric fuckton of sugar beginning in the Middle Ages, so these authors realize that sweets of all sorts are going to be on the menu, yes? Incredible, fantastical sweets?

Didn’t Pollan once proclaim that Democracy is dependent upon wives and mothers producing hot, home-cooked dinners every night?

Reactionary, much?

5 Likes
#42

This. although I disagree with a couple of statements in the article. Barbara erinreich in Nickel and Dimed to Death tells of how she tried to cook one big pot of stew to last the week - but couldn’t find a big enough pot and her stove top was tiny, as was her fridge. There are all sorts of obstacles to eating well on a budget. But I’ve never seen boxed milk in my life. Suggesting what people need and want is very good, but donors also give what they think will last on the shelf or in warehouses. Shaming the well-intentioned is a pretty crummy thing to do.

4 Likes
#43

Or this:

It seems our ancestors did not suffer from crooked teeth to the same extent we do today. Fossil records indicate that crooked teeth developed in humans over time. Evolutionary biologist Daniel Lieberman notes the pattern in his book, The Story of the Human Body , “Most of the hunter-gatherers had nearly perfect dental health. Apparently, orthodontists and dentists were rarely necessary in the Stone Age.”

Fascinating stuff. A comparison of 146 medieval skulls from abandoned Norwegian graveyards with modern skulls indicated a trend toward bad bites as the world industrialized, but evidence of malocclusion in still earlier human fossils is rare. “The jaws of hunter-gatherers nearly uniformly reveal roomy, perfect arches of well aligned teeth, with no impacted wisdom teeth—a movie star’s dream smile, 15,000 years before the movies!” say Kahn and Erlich.

3 Likes
#44

There’s a chance you’ve walked past “boxed milk” in the supermarket and never noticed — because you are not expecting milk on a shelf rather than im a refrigerator case.

Oh, yes, and since our eggs are not scrubbed within an inch of their lives, they are also stacked on shelves in the supermarket, not in the refrigerator case. The washing removes the natural protective outer coating, making the shells more permeable — the eggs I store on the shelf actually last longer than the ones you keep in your fridge.

3 Likes
#45

That supermarkets in low income areas will be subjected to excessive violence and theft is highly presumptive, I think. I think it’s more that other kinds of business are more profitable to operate in them. Government has the power to change that.

And $40 is nothing.

3 Likes
#46

These are great! However, in the periodic food drives in my area, only canned goods (or boxed) are accepted. Glass breaks. Perishable stuff perishes. Which does it for meat, fish, milk, vegetables, fruits and most definitely eggs…

I’ll keep in mind the “no can opener” thing. I recall a cartoon from a century back where a cat was left at home with lots of catfood to tide him over… and the mouse stole the can opener.

4 Likes
#47

The boxed milk thing will also work in that case.

1 Like
#48

Also subsidized corn and grains, which largely go for cattle feed, corn sweeteners, and assorted chips and pastries.

4 Likes
#49

Are you saying they “served themselves”? What’s with this cheffie “plated” nonsense?

1 Like
#50

These annual “food drives” never made much sense to me. Either you find that old can nobody ever ate (hearts of palm, anyone?), or you use money to purchase stuff. In either case, the food bank ends up with a hodgepodge to sort through. Much more reasonable for the service center to order & stock based on client need & price opportunities.

Our local community service centers include shopping pantries. Clients in need have the opportunity to ‘shop’ for what they need. Much more humane & dignified.

4 Likes
#51

I was thinking of this too. I must say I’ve never met anyone without a can opener. And I’m betting the food pantries have some spares to give out.

1 Like
#52

The local food bank provides a list and gives it to the local grocery store, which reduces the prices of many of the items. I try to buy healthy choices, some cooking oil, detergents, lots of canned goods, pasta, spaghetti sauce, cereal and oatmeal. It can’t be perishable, so we’re limited there.

I buy what I would want to have if I were in that situation. Hope it helps.

1 Like
#53

It’s hard to get kids to eat their vegetables and if you.have grown up without vegetables, how would you know how to make them.palatable?

I’ve heard of families where strawberries were a suspect object rather than a treat.

#54

It is also available as chocolate milk and I would freeze them for my son so he could have cold milk for lunch and it served as a cold pack too

3 Likes
#55

We used to call this “The soft bigotry of low expectations”.

The higher up the economic ladder you go the better your overall health and nutrition are. I simply cannot buy that rich and poor eat alike. The wealthy are also not being subsidized by public funds to eat poorly, so we can’t pretend that’s not a thing.

I know anecdote is not data, but I’ve lived in two of the poorest areas of NYC for forty years. I see how one’s personal economy affects nutrition. I’ve even been pretty poor myself. It has been informative.

1 Like
#56

Classes in nutrition early on might help/ Kids have to learn somewhere and at an early age. If it’s not at home, can’t schools help here? We used to watch movies in home ec in junior high or earlier. The earlier the better. Even some cooking classes. How about real life skills being taught again?

1 Like
#57

Nonsense. These initiatives have already been tried right here where we both live and over time reality has supplied data to those trying to solve the problem. People will eat what is cheap, fast and filling. Period.

Many if not all of these ideas are outdated and have been disproven. They just make people uncomfortable to admit. Proximity to healthier food options does not change how people eat.

https://www.nyu.edu/about/news-publications/news/2019/december/what-really-happens-when-a-grocery-store-opens-in-a--food-desert.html

#58

So many nasty comments about how poor people eat and yet the aisles full of junk food aren’t there because poor people have so much excess cash. They are there because middle and upper middle class people eat at least as much garbage as working class and poor people.

Also give money to food banks, not canned goods. Your money will go a lot further that way because the food bank can purchase what they need for their customers at much better prices than you will pay at the checkout for your donation.

2 Likes
#59

That study has way more holes than a piece of swiss cheese.

#60

There are many behaviors which make and keep people poor. This is just a corner of that.

Most poor children eat only two meals a day, both provided by school. The Pandemic Relief plan of spreading the child tax credit out over six months has done more to help food insecurity for children than anything recently.

Both of my parents taught public school in a big poor city and reported that for many kids the only food regularly available was breakfast and lunch at school.

4 Likes
Comments are now Members-Only
Join the discussion Free options available