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You Are What You're Tricked Into Eating
Rambo Tribble (1273454) writes "Two prominent nutrition experts have put forth the theory that the current obesity epidemic is, in large part, the result of processed foods tricking our appetite control mechanisms. They argue that evolution has given humans a delicately balanced system that balances appetite with metabolic needs, and that processed foods trick that system by making foods high in fats and carbohydrates have the gustatory qualities of proteins. As the researchers put it, 'Many people eat far too much fat and carbohydrate in their attempt to consume enough protein.'"
Our diet contains more meat than any other point in history, even before factoring in the abundance of nuts and beans.
While much fast or junk food is low in vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients, our protein intake is far from deficient.
Humans are anything but carefully balanced, besides. Living organisms are very adaptable and self-correcting - if they weren't, we'd all be long dead.
The food industry didn't need to conspire for that. It was just that the food that was cheaper while still tasting nearly as good sold better than the high quality one, and with enough processing and flavoring, the cheaper food actually tasted even better. If you want success in the market, you have to offer the prices and the tastes only processed, flavored food can offer. Providers of high quality foods with low processing just got outcompeted. That's the invisible hand of the market, combined with thousands of years of cooking experience: selling shit for food.
"Eat Food. Mainly Plants. Not too much"
catch (ModDownException mde) {post.modUp("Interesting")}
Yes, the parent post is trolling, but it's the best kind of troll - the truth. Too many people want to blame others for their faults. If you want to lose weight, eat less, eat better, and get off your ass more often.
The experiment you mention is irrelevant. The TFA does not discuss how much protein is good for your health. You can surely reduce your protein intake and have no ill effects, as long as your caloric intake/outake are balanced.
The TFA simply says that our bodies are tuned to crave for protein. Overprocessed foods have been tweaked to contain less protein because protein is expensive to produce.
So, if your diet consists of overprocessed foods, you need to consume a disproportionately large amount of calories to satisfy that craving. This led to an obesity epidemic.
A definite no. But then, I was not raised on industrially processed food; you tend to like the sort of food you were raised on.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
That's it. Humans with exactly this strategy were most likely to survive the periods of hunger that were very much normal until a few decades ago.
Of course, this strategy fails completely if food is always available and hunger periods never occur. Constant availability of food is a relatively new phenomenon, too new for humans to have adapted to it.
what about fruit and vegetable rights. you can just hear them scream as you rip the fruit from tree's. and the sound is soul-curdling as you put potatoes in boiling water.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
That can be good advice for individuals, but as health policy it's terrible. Humans are largely unable to resist their instincts for long by willpower alone - that's why abstinence-only education fails.
Add to that the fact that basically you have the choice of buying raw food, processed food or paying someone to cook for you. Properly cooked food, starting with raw ingredients, without fail tastes better. The problem is either you have money and can dine out or you need the skill to cook. If you where raised, like me, on the concept of buying raw food and cooking it, you will have learnt how to actually cook. But as it turns a good few people's cooking skill stops with scrambled eggs and as a result they buy processed food.
Processed food in itself is not bad and you can buy quite good quality food, but that costs. Competition in the food industry means sacrificing quality for profit/lower price and they will continue to "optimize" until the product stops selling. The interesting bit is that in recent decades there is a gap between the sensory experience of the food and the actual nutritional quality.
If people would realize how easy it actually is to cook...
It's not even good advice for individuals. On the basis that very few people who are overweight manage to make any lasting change to their weight with that advice.
... food companies have scientists working 24/7 to hack human tastebuds for profit.
Much of this problem simply comes down to the fact that bad food is engineered to taste better than natural food we found in our environment over evolutionary history. The problem is our bodies aren't designed to deal with this new food environment and hence obesity. The environment that kids are raised in by clueless over stressed parents and shitty school environments doesn't help either.
Last but not least, human beings are not free. Probably one of the biggest myths that go along with the myth of responsibility.
Sam harris on free will
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Also known as Banting.
The LCHF Paleo Primal Banting community, the people who have been reading Taubes' review of the literature going back pre-war, and so on, and who have tried this stuff for themselves, the basic insight is that it is the carbohydrates that are the problem.
The grain growers wanted to mass produce and sell the stuff, and some politicians liked a "heart healthy" message (despite scientists protesting that more research was needed before jumping to conclusions) and so the whole "heart healthy" movement was born, which emphasised high carb foods like cereals, by demonising fat.
Well after some decades, and people trying it for themselves, people are now realising that it was pretty much completely wrong. And manufacturers, because fatless food tastes of cardboard, knew they had to increase the sugar content to make up for the lack of taste. Low fat yoghurts loaded with sugar. Healthy smoothies, loaded with sugar.
The carbs create cravings, signal the body to store fat, and overwork your insulin production until it breaks.
But dietary fat? Good natural fats are good for you. They are good for the guts, the heart, and the brain. Well, you can read books and various docs on this, and try it for yourself. See if their claims seem to work out. It isn't a short term diet, it is a lifestyle.
The problem for vegetarians (and more especially for vegans) is not getting enough proteins, it's getting all of the required amino acids (for some reason, the term 'a whole protein' is used to mean 'all of the essential amino acids'). For future reference, by the way, you need around 25g of protein per day, but it has to be balanced among 9 amino acids that the human body can't synthesise (the other 11 can be synthesised from those 9). It's not particularly hard to get all of them - in fact, if you're meeting your calorific quota and not starving then you probably are. Unfortunately, a lot of hippy-vegan recipes that seem to be closely associated with vegetarianism have a terrible mix, so you end up with 3-4 times RDA for some amino acids but only a small amount of others. This led to a lot of vegans in the '60s suffering from amino acid deficiencies, which has led to a belief that it's hard for vegetarians to get enough protein.
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The CDC recommends 56g of protein for adult males, and 46 for females. The British Nutrition Foundation's RNI is 0.75g per kilogram of body weight. Proteins in diet provide essential amino acids which cannot be synthesized by our organism. Most people get more than enough protein, but getting too little is very very bad. See also. Now show us what you've been reading.
I agree, no one should claim that our diet is deficient in protein. But the idea that increasing the proportion of protein in our diet might help with appetite regulation does not sound outlandish.
This has been found out over and over again, but the food industry will always lobby against anything which would reduce their market. They even lobby against labels. In the EU, there was an initiative which wanted to color code the amount of fat, sugar, salt and other carbohydrates with (green = low, yellow = medium, and red = high) together with numerical values. It was stopped after massive lobbying. So now these labels are all white or black, require reading, and the values are distorted in different ways.
So this is an uphill battle. What helps, is buying at a local market instead of a supermarket. And do not watch TV adverts.
Scientists have addressed this problem years ago by developing plants with no vocal chords.
Almost everything you said there is wrong. Broccoli has more protein per calorie than steak does, and there are plenty of plants with tons of fat. In fact, healthier fats (mono and poly unsaturated) mostly all come from plants. Try some nuts or an avocado if you don't think you're getting enough fat. This is exceedingly unlikely though, since you don't really need much fat to get by. The recommended minimum is 15% of your calories, but it's not like you're going to die within three months if you don't eat any fat - this guy didn't consume any calories at all, including fat, for 382 days with no ill-effects.
Your statements about carbs are a little difficult to deal with, "one of the main contributors" is a hard statement to disprove. Really, type 2 diabetes is (mostly) caused by obesity and certainly you can get fat by eating carbs. But you can get fat by eating too much of anything. It's how much you eat (calories), not how you eat it, that determines how much weight you loose. Fad diets, like a low carb diet, do work, but they work by restricting your calories, not by some special voodoo.
well, the meat that has as much fat as possible
I don't think you understand what processed food is. It's not the same thing as food that's naturally high in fat.
That's basically the deal here: It's way cheaper to squeeze out kibble made of carbs and fat rather than creating something that contains protein. Protein can be found in animal based food (fish, meat, eggs, cheese) or a few vegetables (mainly certain nuts and pulse). And neither of them is easy or cheap to cultivate in large quantity.
It is, though, fairly cheap to produce fat, especially since we found out how to turn dirt cheap crap fat into shortening. And carbohydrates are a staple for pretty much any culture in existence anyway, and we managed to perfect its production.
Fat and carbs, carbs and fat. We excel at producing them and we can do it for cents per ton. Ain't that easy for protein. So processed food will contain as much fat and carbohydrates and as little protein as we can get away with.
But our bodies are not fooled that easily. They know what stuff should be in our diet, and if you don't eat what you're "supposed" to eat, you'll stay hungry. Now the vicious cycle starts because we're hungry, so we eat. The wrong crap again, so we stay hungry.
A solution is probably only possible if we simply forgo processed food and actually start cooking and eating sensibly again. But, and this is the next problem, can we still afford that? You, me, we probably can. We have money to "waste" on internet access, obviously. But how about people who're not as well off? Can they?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It's fairly easy to say that, but it gets a bit more complicated when you look at it closely. Your argument follow the logic "if people don't want to be drug addicts, they just need to say no to them". Hey, I remember even that there has been a campaign for that!
And? How well did that work out for your country? You don't have any drug addicts anymore now that you've explained to your people that drugs are bad for them, right?
Of course, we're looking at a different underlying problem here but simply saying "it's their own fault if they're so dumb" is a bit easy and shows very little insight into the core of the problem.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The problem is that we metabolize bread just as fast as sucrose. Even Coca Cola gives less of a 'sugar rush' than bread (because Coke contains fructose).
So, if you are big, fat and lazy, just stop eating wheat, potatoes and rice products and you'll be pleasantly surprised at the result. This is otherwise known as the Caveman diet, Paleo diet, Atkins diet, High Protein diet, or any number of other names. It works and there is no need to buy and read a book about it, though it won't hurt if you do.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
It's sedentary living. You will never get millions to eat so little that they avoid obesity while watching screens 16 hours a day.
And then again ...
It's true that sitting still in front of a screen all day long means we burn less calories, just as it is true that we get fatter because we eat more than we need. There is a long chain of causes and effects, and perhaps there is no real, fundamental reason; but if we want to fix the problem, I think the best place to start is by removing the very powerful, economic incentive that certain industries have to produce a lifestyle in which everybody are passive consumers of light-weight entertainment and heavy-weight food.
And don't give the tired old crap about "nobody forces you to overeat" etc, because it is hardly the whole truth. You just try to work up an appetite, then go to any average supermarket; what are you most likely to buy? The healthy options, which are generally a bit grey, tasteless and expensive (and difficult to find), or the cheap, sugary and fatty stuff that you can find easily and wrap your face around quickly?
90% or so of what is on offer in most shops is unhealthy, and a lot of the things advertised as healthy are just as unhealthy, so how much of a real choice does the average consumer have? The only real solution is to stop the production of crap food at its source.
The word is ketosis. It is spelled totally different from voodoo. http://www.medicalnewstoday.co...
If you restrict carbs, you force your body to process fat, which is the whole idea.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
I'm sure the leftists will have us proles all eating insects and vegetables eventually..at least until the aspca gets around to defending insect rights. Of course, the party elite will still be dining on the few cows and fish that are left..
Amusing. Trying to derail a thread about how capitalism is fucking up people's diets by blaming "leftists"?
The problem for vegetarians (and more especially for vegans) is not getting enough proteins, it's getting all of the required amino acids
What problem? Rice and beans in combination contain all the amino acids you need.
Well no wonder we don't know the recommendations. The CDC is dabbling in metric.
Cooking is more a test to your capability of organisation and laziness than having the time.Many meals are simple to cook, or then take your ipad or TV to the kitchen, and cook while you watch idols or Game of thrones. The problem with cooking real food is that many are lazy, and others the parents already didnt do that, and they dont really are not used to do it. The culture of buying everything already made is very pernicious when we are talking about what we eat.
....used to be made with paper and tobacco leaf. That's it. That is how it was grown and manufactured for hundreds of years.
Today's cigarette contains hundreds of ingredients. And they sure as hell weren't added as flavor enhancers.
Anyone "tricked" over the concept of addictive chemicals being added to fast food that make you want to crave more of their product is rather ignorant of the world we live in, and the greed and corruption that built it.
Same here. Tried it and found it works really well. Closer to hunter gatherer ancestors 300,000 years ago who ran down a large animal and then ate practically the whole thing, supplemented with berries and tubers or whatever. Lots of meat, lots and lots of fat, very little carbs.
Actually, it was the right balance of carbs, as was found before agriculture, and later, the vast industrialised agribusiness, made carbs so cheap you could fill half the plate with them, and then a long advertising campaign convinced everyone that this was the "right balance".
You only have to do low carb for about 3 days to realise what a massive public health shot in the foot we've had. And that's before we even get into any of the various other chronic conditions people may be suffering due to a unnaturally high carb diet combined with an unnaturally low fat intake.
You're a fool. Once I realized that "willpower" is a metabolic state, not moral success or a moral failing, and I learned how to manipulate that metabolic state, I lost 150 lbs.
But go ahead, haters gotta hate!
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
Ever cooked food before? Ever ground anything into a powder before doing something else to it before eating it? In either case, congratulations, it's processed. This also includes *any* kind of oil or milk alternative, which are very heavily processed extracts from different kinds of plants. *ANY* kind of soy that is actually edible is also heavily processed.
This whole article is bullshit. I first tried dieting by avoiding processed foods (namely, the kinds that tend to be higher in sodium, carbs, fats, etc) and it didn't work for shit. Know what did work? Just watching the caloric intake. Already lost 60 pounds over the last year, and it mainly just involved getting proper perspective on what an actual serving is. I still eat fast food, indeed all kinds of junk foods. I've also lowered my cholesterol and triglycerides in the process, while eating burgers, fries, and pizza no less. The trick is eating portion sizes that an actual human would eat instead of what a rhinoceros would eat.
A plain old hamburger at mcdonalds has about 360 calories. Contrary to popular belief, these hamburgers have been around since way before the obesity epidemic. Know what hasn't? Big triple stacked burgers globbed with mayo and ranch dressing. Another thing that hasn't is eating cereal in the large quantities most people do, which is actually primarily a result of the vegetarian movement (before that happened around the 60's, most people used to eat what we today call a "heavy" breakfast, e.g. eggs, bacon, which IS mostly protein and possibly small amounts of grits or toast.
Cereal (any variety) is mostly carbohydrates on the other hand and you also tend to crave higher amounts of calories worth of vegetarian breakfasts than you do traditional breakfasts; note how cereal bowls used to be tiny, and now they're about three times the size of what they started at mere decades ago.) The following is unscientific, but when I watch most people eat breakfast, I typically see most of them eat 750 calories in the cereal alone (that's typically 5 oz of cereal; it's uncommon to find cereals with less than 150 calories per 1 oz serving.) In fact to be honest, I'm pretty sure the whole vegetarian movement is bunk:
http://www.cholesterol-and-hea...
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
Yes. If we have been tricked, it is that we think we need so much protein. Meat consumption in the rest of the world is a luxury, and if you look at the places that eat less meat, they have way less chronic metabolic diseases than we do. I'm not saying they have no disease, I'm saying they have less.
We have also been tricked into thinking that carbs are bad...when in fact, lots of places in the world eat carbs all their life and are still healthier than we are. The difference is that there carbs are way less processed.
We have been tricked into thinking that soy is good for us, when the way they eat soy in the rest of the world is way different than the highly processed soy crap that we eat here.
We have been tricked into thinking that milk is good for us, when in fact it is not (but may help if you have a really crappy diet).
Yes, we have been tricked, all right! If you want to live, take a world map and throw a dart at it. Anywhere it lands outside of the US, adopt their diet. You will live longer and healthier than we do here in the US.
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
Actual non-diet industry research using tests with mice has shown it is heavily processed foods with about equal amounts of sugars and fats that cause issues. You can live quite easily and not get huge on high fat foods that are not processed. You can also live on a high sugar diet on foods that are not processed. Though either one is not a good long term choice. Our bodies are designed to eat certain amounts of both.
Tests on rats shows they will nearly OD on something like cheese cake and yet high sugar foods are simply nibbled on and high fat foods are eaten in moderation.
So no. Eating 'lard' itself is not going to do you severe harm.
we are all invisible unless we choose otherwise
Properly cooked food, starting with raw ingredients, without fail tastes better.
Flour, sugar, stock, milk, butter, baking soda, baking powder, cheese,... require processing to make. While I agree that fresh foods taste better then the same out of a can it's complete and utter nonsense to think that only using raw ingredients will yield a better meal.
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
All the pseudo scientific bullshit that fad diets come out with on top of this is just that - bullshit. Paleo pretends that it's a diet that our paleolithic ancestors followed (it isn't), that our bodies aren't accustomed to eating certain food items like grains (they are), and that if we live like cavemen we'll lose weight. What it boils down to is that it simply bans high carb foods containing starch, sugar and oil and a natural consequence is lower calorie intake.
So pretty much like every other diet although some diets are probably easier to stick to than others. I hear the nothing-but-gluten bread and water diet can also work wonders for people trying to drop a dress size.
...is also a major culprit in this story, in part due to the "low-fat" orthodoxy that developed in the 1970s. When you take out the fat, you lose a lot of the flavor, so sugar was used to make processed foods more appealing. Even worse, hydrogenated vegetable oil was used as a fat replacement. (Turns out that saturated fats are not as bad as they thought back then.) Another problem with processed foods is that they contain far less fiber, since removing the fiber is an easy way to extend shelf life. But this affects the way they are digested and absorbed, exacerbating the bad side effects.
Dr. Robert Lustig has an excellent lecture about sugar and how it is the single most important change in our diet in the last few decades, and the chief cause of rising obesity and diabetes rates. (The above link is a TED Talk, he also has several long format lectures available on YouTube.)
The author Michael Pollan has a simple set of 3 rules for managing your nutrition: 1. Eat food*; 2. Not too much; 3. Mostly plants.
* What he means by this is "real" food, rather than the "edible food-like substances" that constitute the bulk of the American diet. He has a simple rule for identifying real food: If you've ever seen it advertised on TV, it's probably not real food. Also, for various reasons, there is an inverse relationship between the "realness" of food and the distance it travels from its source to your plate.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
tree's
This made me scream.
Of course it doesn't, that page compared 357grams of broccoli with 34grams of beef.
Worked out from the figures on that page:
100g broccoli = 3.1g protein
100g beef = 23.5g protein
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Because dude, sorry, lots of 3rd world countries, ex soviet countries have open markets, with fresh food sellers everywhere.
Who cant get fresh food? People in tip of alaska?
Heres a tip of Mericans, go to your local asian or ethnic food store to get fresh food or snap frozen goodies.
Cant cook? Ask google or youtube.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Genuine paleolithic people would have eaten anything edible that was worth the effort / risk of obtaining around them - animals, bugs, reptiles, fish, birds, eggs, shellfish, seeds, nuts (incl chestnuts), roots, starchy tubers, berries, fruit, fungus and even grain. Presumably their physical activity was higher than ours too and thus their calorific intake would have been higher to maintain the same weight. There is evidence of that they ground up grain and other starches, presumably because they were nutritious.
Maybe paleo "works" but only the same way other diets work.
all you need is a big pot or pan with fire, cheap gas burners are well.. cheap, or just burn some wood like the old says, are you a cave man? jeez, what poor are we talking about? average walmart workers, or refugees in african camps, which btw do cook.
So who are these noncookers ? Gen Z facebookers? Homeless ? If you are THAT poor, you are probably thin from starvation.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
You are correct. It literally takes 10 minutes to season a chicken breast and throw it on a grill while you steam some fresh broccoli and make a little pasta for a side. There you go, fresh and healthy dinner for less than $5/plate.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
There is an excellent book about this: http://www.amazon.com/Salt-Sug...
The modern processed food industry, OK the American processed food industry, works hard to make processed foods appetizing by tweaking formulations and experimenting with salt/sugar/fat ratios.
I think the book does a balanced job of presenting the info without blaming the industry (too much). They do make the point the food industry targets convenience and cost, which consumers respond to. It isn't all the food companies fault that their customer base is kinda lazy.
The food industry has tried a few times to make their stuff healthier by reducing additive amounts, trying new tech - one very interesting thing for example is trying to use a different salt crystal, one ground into a different shape that absorbs quicker. It gives the same "pop" with less, due to its different shape. That's pretty cool!
Amusing. Trying to derail a thread about how capitalism is fucking up people's diets by blaming "leftists"?
THAT is what this thread is about? :)
I guess to a hammer, every problem is a nail... and to a sickle, every problem is a stalk of wheat.
Dark Reflection
>When I dropped sugar a decade ago, I raised my fat intake. My weight went down by 10 pounds and has stayed down.
It's only been a couple of years for me, but I did the same, lost 35lbs, and feel fantastic. Sugar was VERY bad for me.
what about fruit and vegetable rights.
Plants produce fruit to be eaten, so that the eater will spread the seeds. The fruit wants to be eaten. That is its purpose. So eating an apple is ethically different than eating a carrot, which of course kills the carrot plant. People that eat only fruit are fruitarians.
You're being funny, but the fact of the matter is that there are websites out there (aimed at kids for fuck's sake) that literally say "dying is the best thing you can do for the planet Earth!" and I don't think they are being funny when they say it. Of course all the tree-hugging ecological extremists all spout crap about how bad us Humans are for the planet and how we should at least give up our technology and civilized ways and go back to nature, then they get in their Prius and drive home to blog about how bad Humans are for the Earth on their Apple Mac and Twitter on their smartphone.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
No way.
I live in Uruguay, we grow some fruit here, but also import a lot. Local fruit usually looks like you picked it up from a tree.
Imported fruit looks more uniform, and more colorful, and usually has some kind of wax to protect it. They also have small labels in each piece, some times.
Also, local fruit smells like fruit, imported fruit has no smell, in comparison.
Of course, YMMV, but the closer you are to the source, it's easier to get fresher produce.
No, you have to read carefully. He said per calorie.
The CDC recommends 56g of protein for adult males, and 46 for females. The British Nutrition Foundation's RNI is 0.75g per kilogram of body weight.
The CDC is whey off, follow the British standard. Most people do not get enough protein, you know when you've eaten enough protein because your body stops craving food. Without protein intake you die fast, faster then simple calorie starvation, protein is one of the major reasons why your body triggers a hunger response. For a week try intaking 1g/kg of protein a day and you'll understand what I'm saying. The whole point of this article is that processed foods typically exchange protein for fat and carbohydrates, the problem with that is fat and carbohydrates are fuels; protein is a biological building block.
You also need to live somewhere with access to those ingredients, have a high enough income that you can afford the ingredients, and a high enough income that you can afford to be not-working long enough to cook and eat them. There are thousands upon thousands of people too poor for all three.
Yeah, umm, that problem is that if you're really poor, cooking for yourself is actually significantly cheaper. I lived for several years on a very small budget and had friends with even smaller food budgets (on the order of $20/week... yes, that's the entire food budget for the week for a person -- about $1/meal), and we not only survived, but ate rather healthy food that we cooked ourselves. Try living on a $1/meal by eating off the McDonald's Dollar Menu or something -- it's doubtful you could even get enough calories for an adult to survive.
Let's take your objections in turn:
They don't live anywhere with access to fresh food ("food deserts"), can't afford to travel to where they could buy fresh food,
During the years when I had very little income, I lived a couple blocks from the cheapest supermarket in town -- the local newspaper did a study and found that you could literally buy about 40% more groceries at this place, even without taking into account special sales, than almost anywhere else in the area. They just decided to make money off of volume sales rather than jacking up prices like crazy. The store was a zoo most of the time -- food flew off the shelves.
And you know who shopped there? Lower class and poor people, who often came on the bus and took taxi cabs to take their stuff home from that store, because the amount they could save from buying their food their more than made up for the price of a cab ride (obviously, they couldn't afford cars).
You know what else was in this store? Lots of cheap, fresh food. Fresher than almost any other supermarket in town, because it flew off the shelves. Most of the people I knew who had higher salaries refused to step in the door, because the place had a reputation as the "dirty supermarket where poor people shop," but I spent years buying fresh food there, while my friends spent more money to shop for rotting food at the normal supermarkets.
But the thing is -- even if you couldn't afford to buy fresh food there (and my friends on their limited budgets certainly couldn't), they still could buy relatively nutritious options, like big bulk packs of frozen veggies that are on sale, etc.
Everyone is always concerned about the lack of "fresh food" (which usually means lack of a decent produce aisle) in these urban "food deserts," but it's still possible to get nutritious meals from relatively unprocessed ingredients which are frozen or canned or minimally packed in some other way.
The poor people at these stores would not generally be helped very much by a more extensive produce aisle. Instead, they just need to buy less processed (and generally CHEAPER) food that's already available, and then combine it in simple dishes by cooking themselves (and saving money).
couldn't afford the food itself even if they could get there, can't afford to take the time out of their multiple jobs to go even if they could afford it,
Nope. As I noted above, they CAN afford the food -- in fact, it's the ONLY way to live healthy (and in fact sometimes the only way to survive) on a very limited budget. The 2-for-1 special on take-out pizza may sound like a good deal, until you realize you can probably make the same pizza at home with better ingredients for half that sale price. Volume discounts for fast-food places and such only go so far... they still have to pay for labor, equipment, etc. costs, which means you're paying a premium to eat that food over what you could generally do with your own ingredients at home.
Same thing for processed "TV dinners" and frozen pizzas and such. Skip 'em, and buy some simpler ingredie
If you don't eat the seeds and crap them out somewhere random, in an environment similar to the one the fruit tree was growing in, you're breaking your contract with the tree. Not very ethical.
If you don't eat the seeds and crap them out somewhere random, in an environment similar to the one the fruit tree was growing in, you're breaking your contract with the tree. Not very ethical.
Whereas with livestock, we fulfill our side of the contract by providing them with food, water, protection from predators, and ensuring the survival of their offspring. They fulfill their side by being docile and delicious.
Completely bullshit. I am sorry, the pineapple I get from the store tastes NOTHING like the pineapple I had fresh picked an hour earlier when I was in Chile. The strawberries I pick fresh from a local farm taste heavenly, the ones I get from a supermarket are extremely bland. It's because they pick the stuff when it isn't ripe (they have to), and it ripens either in delivery or on the shelf of the grocery store. It loses a lot of flavour when it doesn't ripen naturally on a tree. When you go to the produce section and see all green bananas that take a day or two to ripen taste nothing like a banana picked fully ripe off a tree in Ecuador.
This is not "Flamebait", but I think it is a naive view of poverty in the US. Do poor people make poor choices? Yes, naturally. Some make poor choices so often that it could even be the reason that they are poor.
So you can stand there and point at them and blame them for their condition. It's reasonable. You give them healthcare, you give them education (of some sort), you give them food, you give them money - and what do they do? They stay poor, make bad decisions, and raise poor kids who do the exact same thing.
I suggest that you take on a more proactive mindset. These poor people and the poor kids they raise are your problem, too. Poverty drags down the economy, it drags down our schools, and it costs us a fortune. It undermines democracy as you increasingly have an electorate dependent on the government that can vote themselves benefits.
If you want to improve their lives, and thus to some extent your own life, you need to make the better choices more attractive. No, you are under no moral obligation to do so - but I do think it is in your own self interest. That is why I disagree with the point you are bringing up, even if I also disagree with the mods who are not helping in having a constructive discussion about this topic.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
We need better understanding of food science by the average joe, some 'healthy' foods are only healthier for you when properly prepared.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.