Striking Back at the Food Police

[Tess]

You're wandering into a parallel argument here.  Yes, things are often more expensive in poor neighborhoods (though prices in my local merkados, which cater to a largely low-income immigrant population, compare favorably to the Safeway).  But the added expense applies equally to healthy food and to junk,  there is no economic advantage to buying high-fat foods, so other factors must be involved.

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What do you mean by a "parallel argument"?

Junk food will still be cheaper and easier to procure and carry, require no storage or preparation.

[Pan]

You're wandering into a parallel argument here.  Yes, things are often more expensive in poor neighborhoods (though prices in my local merkados, which cater to a largely low-income immigrant population, compare favorably to the Safeway).  But the added expense applies equally to healthy food and to junk,  there is no economic advantage to buying high-fat foods, so other factors must be involved.

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What do you mean by a "parallel argument"?

Junk food will still be cheaper and easier to procure and carry, require no storage or preparation.

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And cheaper for the customer to purchase than high-quality fresh fruit and vegetables, in general, right? Which would be a relevant point.

[Tess]

You're wandering into a parallel argument here.  Yes, things are often more expensive in poor neighborhoods (though prices in my local merkados, which cater to a largely low-income immigrant population, compare favorably to the Safeway).  But the added expense applies equally to healthy food and to junk,   there is no economic advantage to buying high-fat foods, so other factors must be involved.

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What do you mean by a "parallel argument"?

Junk food will still be cheaper and easier to procure and carry, require no storage or preparation.

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And cheaper for the customer to purchase than high-quality fresh fruit and vegetables, in general, right? Which would be a relevant point.

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Absolutely.

[Busboy]

You're wandering into a parallel argument here.  Yes, things are often more expensive in poor neighborhoods (though prices in my local merkados, which cater to a largely low-income immigrant population, compare favorably to the Safeway).  But the added expense applies equally to healthy food and to junk,   there is no economic advantage to buying high-fat foods, so other factors must be involved.

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What do you mean by a "parallel argument"?

Junk food will still be cheaper and easier to procure and carry, require no storage or preparation.

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Junk food accrues the same advantages in terms of price and convenience whether you buy it in the outer suburbs or the inner city. Your public transport point is well taken, but families everywhere face the similar time pressures when it comes to preparing meals. And I don't know where you shop, but junk food is rarely, if ever, cheaper than non-prepared food. The relative cost of healthy and unhealthy food simply isn't the reason diets are poorer in poor neighborhoods.

On the other hand (the parallel argument part) food, and other goods, is often more expensive in poor neighborhoods. This is a significant and long-running sore point -- if you read Martin Luther King speeches from 40 years ago, it shows up in the litany of grievances he was working to have redressed. This is a valid concern, but not, to my mind, an explanation for the relatively unhealthy eating that are far too common in poor communities.

Given the health problems in poor neighborhoods, looking for real underlying causes -- lack of consumer savvy, poor cooking skills, poor nutritional information, traditional diets that are heavy on starches and fried food -- seems more effective than throwing up your hands and saying "what can you expect, have you seen their grocery stores?"

[Bux]

. . . .

Given the health problems in poor neighborhoods, looking for real underlying causes -- lack of consumer savvy, poor cooking skills, poor nutritional information, traditional diets that are heavy on starches and fried food -- seems more effective than throwing up your hands and saying "what can you expect, have you seen their grocery stores?"

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Busboy's points seem to be ignored by too many here. Just as it's easier to lead a horse to water than it is to make him drink, it's one thing to get the raw materials to the right neighborhood at the right price and another to break bad habits that are ingrained and to compensate for a lack of knowledge about food and a lack of education in preparing food. Cooking takes not only some training, but equipment. Can you buy pots and pans with food stamps? I don't think so. Answers such as it's the poor people's own fault for eating fast food are as simplistic and insensitive as the arguments that malnutrition and obesity are the fault of the agribusiness industry. If is odd that obesity and malnutrition can go together. In one way they are opposites, but in another they can be, but are not necessarily, related. Equally simplistic is the argument that it's society's fault as if that sort of blame is meaningful.

[Tess]

I, for one, am not ignoring Busboy's points; I just don't buy what seems to me to be the sum of his arguments. Yes, countering ignorance about food is important-- at all socioeconomic levels, I think. (I can't believe what many middle-class people think they should do to lose weight, for example.) And I agree that blaming "society" tends not to be very effective. But there's a lead-a-horse-to-water argument here that seems to presuppose that the water is there. I think improving the food options people have in poor communities is as important as education on an individual level. Probably neither will work without the other.

[Bux]

. . . .

I also find the belief that "poor folks don't have the same freedom etc" to be well meaning but also demeaning. Poor folks are plenty capable of making good (or bad choices). --I know a lot of fat wealthy gourmands who are "addicted" to fois gras! (I could be one) Is that ok as opposed to a poor person who eats too much MacDonalds?

. . . .

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Actually, foie gras is far towards the healthier end of the spectrum in terms of saturated fats. Thus I'd say yes, foie gras is better than a big Mac. Then again there's lettuce and tomato on a big Mac.

[Grub]

Mein Gott in himmel, ain't it like, a breach of the patriot act to oppose an organization with "Freedom" in its name?

[JohnL]

Geez has this thread 'wandered" all over the place.

Interesting though.

There are all kinds of "poor" people. They live in cities, suburbs and rural areas.

Here in New York there are all sorts of "poor" neighborhoods.

From Chinatown to Little Italy to Harlem and Bed Stuy. There are poor neighborhoods in the suburbs as well.

Middle class and wealthy people live in many places.

There are very few places in this country where someone can not access healthy food at all. (we probably can debate what the def of healthy food is too)

I don't think access is really the key issue or availability or cost.

It can be boiled down to personal responsibility.

Raising kids and being responsible for them.

The two oposing sides that sparked this debate:

One side wants to make a case that people (especially the poor) are incapable of deciding for themselves therefore the government needs to "save" them by reducing their choices.

The other wants to protect those whom the first group wants to control or ban. Folks who are interested in selling stuff that may not be "healthy or "good" for us. (rich or poor).

It is probably not good for kids to watch too much TV the answer is not to ban TV's.

I say we can decide for ourselves. All we need are some facts!

By the way--the middle ground is "moderation".

But there is no middle ground if there are no extremes!!!

[DTBarton]

It's not surprising that there are more consumer outlets with more choices in areas where the local consumers have more money. You must also factor in the increased costs of doing business in depressed neighborhoods such as security, insurance, maintenance and clean up, lost shopping carts, etc. This leads to a disincentive to businesses locating there.

It is a very complex issue, but it seems to me that the only "solutions" that could be offerred are getting the government to tell food merchants where and what they can sell and tell food buyers what they can buy. That is not a road we want to travel.

As for education, I know that I was drilled in the food pyramid when I was in public school in the 70s, I can't imagine that kids aren't getting even more information about nutrition 30 years later (possibly at the expense of their math and language skills!). The recent media coverage of the revamped food pyramid was hard to miss.

Many factors (social, economic, cultural, the decline in cooking skills and the increased availability of packaged foods, ubiquitous microwaves) all go in to this.

[Pan]

[...]It is a very complex issue, but it seems to me that the only "solutions" that could be offerred are getting the government to tell food merchants where and what they can sell and tell food buyers what they can buy.[...]

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Why propose only a simple, extreme, and wrong solution for a complex problem? If there's a complex problem, the solution isn't to throw up an extreme, unacceptable "solution" as a straw man but to deal with the problem in a whole series of different ways. One idea that I believe has been tried is subsidies. Someone who's studied the results may be able to comment on whether and to what extent that's helped to encourage businesses to locate in and serve poor neighborhoods.

JohnL, there is no doubt that personal responsibility is important for the poor and rich alike, but I'm very uncomfortable with any implication that the only reason that people are poor is because they're irresponsible, not because they were laid off, got sick and were fired, got burned out of their houses, got abandoned by their husbands or boyfriends, had no medical insurance to pay for a sudden health emergency, etc., etc. I don't know if you do mean to imply such things, so this isn't meant to be personal, and I apologize in advance if it comes across that way. But I think it's an issue that needs to be addressed. My viewpoint on this is affected by my experiences as a professor at community colleges in New York. When I was at Bronx Community College, there was one terrific student I had one semester who stopped showing up a couple of weeks before the midterm exam. I ran into her on campus a week or two after the midterm, told her I had been worrying about her, was glad to see her, and asked her how she was. She told me that her boyfriend had left her and her little daughter, she had been laid off from work, and she had been evicted from her apartment, and as a result, she was on campus to withdraw from all her classes. She also told me that she hadn't eaten for two days. I took out my wallet and was going to give her $5 so that she could get the roast chicken special at the local Dominican restaurant, but she told me to put my wallet away and said that there was a shelter downtown that would feed her and her daughter. This woman was doing straight-A work in my class, participated well, and was in every respect a model student. The story does have a happy ending, in that the following semester, she had a new apartment and a new job and was able to register for my course again and earn an A for a final grade. But the point is, even very responsible people can be hit by combinations of disastrous events that leave them homeless, jobless, hungry, and reeling. And as a matter of fact, there but for the grace of God (or whoever/whatever) go all of us. Think about it: The property you own can all be destroyed, the insurance companies could go belly up, the Stock Market could crash, the monetary system could collapse. Do these things sound extreme? They are. But even more extreme things can and have occurred throughout the world. Consider some of the people caught up in the tsunami in the Indian Ocean, for example. How wealthy do you think the formerly rich people in coastal Aceh and Sri Lanka are today? Now, reduce such extreme events to more prosaic individual disasters, and that explains a lot of the poverty in a country like the U.S.

[JohnL]

[...]It is a very complex issue, but it seems to me that the only "solutions" that could be offerred are getting the government to tell food merchants where and what they can sell and tell food buyers what they can buy.[...]

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Why propose only a simple, extreme, and wrong solution for a complex problem? If there's a complex problem, the solution isn't to throw up an extreme, unacceptable "solution" as a straw man but to deal with the problem in a whole series of different ways. One idea that I believe has been tried is subsidies. Someone who's studied the results may be able to comment on whether and to what extent that's helped to encourage businesses to locate in and serve poor neighborhoods.

JohnL, there is no doubt that personal responsibility is important for the poor and rich alike, but I'm very uncomfortable with any implication that the only reason that people are poor is because they're irresponsible, not because they were laid off, got sick and were fired, got burned out of their houses, got abandoned by their husbands or boyfriends, had no medical insurance to pay for a sudden health emergency, etc., etc. I don't know if you do mean to imply such things, so this isn't meant to be personal, and I apologize in advance if it comes across that way. But I think it's an issue that needs to be addressed. My viewpoint on this is affected by my experiences as a professor at community colleges in New York. When I was at Bronx Community College, there was one terrific student I had one semester who stopped showing up a couple of weeks before the midterm exam. I ran into her on campus a week or two after the midterm, told her I had been worrying about her, was glad to see her, and asked her how she was. She told me that her boyfriend had left her and her little daughter, she had been laid off from work, and she had been evicted from her apartment, and as a result, she was on campus to withdraw from all her classes. She also told me that she hadn't eaten for two days. I took out my wallet and was going to give her $5 so that she could get the roast chicken special at the local Dominican restaurant, but she told me to put my wallet away and said that there was a shelter downtown that would feed her and her daughter. This woman was doing straight-A work in my class, participated well, and was in every respect a model student. The story does have a happy ending, in that the following semester, she had a new apartment and a new job and was able to register for my course again and earn an A for a final grade. But the point is, even very responsible people can be hit by combinations of disastrous events that leave them homeless, jobless, hungry, and reeling. And as a matter of fact, there but for the grace of God (or whoever/whatever) go all of us. Think about it: The property you own can all be destroyed, the insurance companies could go belly up, the Stock Market could crash, the monetary system could collapse. Do these things sound extreme? They are. But even more extreme things can and have occurred throughout the world. Consider some of the people caught up in the tsunami in the Indian Ocean, for example. How wealthy do you think the formerly rich people in coastal Aceh and Sri Lanka are today? Now, reduce such extreme events to more prosaic individual disasters, and that explains a lot of the poverty in a country like the U.S.

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where is it that i said the "poor were responsible for being poor?"

i don' t even think that is part of this thread.

"personal responsibility" as used here involves eating habits and choosing what to eat.

in fact--my point has always been that there are irresponsible people regardless of income levels. (and responsible people regardless of income levels).

just as being wealthy does not necc equate to being smart or hard working neither does being poor equate to being lazy etc.

instead of generalizing we should look at individuals--there are eight million stories in the......

[Andrew Fenton]

where is it that i said the "poor were responsible for being poor?"

i don' t even think that is part of this thread.

"personal responsibility" as used here involves eating habits and choosing what to eat.

in fact--my point has always been that there are irresponsible people regardless of income levels. (and responsible people regardless of income levels).

And yet, the fact is that poor people in the US are, on average, fatter than rich people. If, as you say, poor people have as much access to healthy food as rich people do; poor and rich alike have sufficient education to make decisions about eating habits; and, therefore, obesity is wholly a matter of personal choice, then it stands to reason that you are indeed saying that poor people are less responsible than rich people.

[JohnL]

Oh now were on to obesity.

Well define what exactly you mean by "obese" then define what you mean by "poor".

actually the medical braintrust is debating what obese is at the moment and how to correlate it to bad health.

as for the poor being obese i can say that according to recent data--the fastest growing group in terms of obesity are people making over $60K per year.

and i never really thought about one socioeconomic group or other in terms of obesity.

in fact--i am less concerned with "groups" and more concerned with treating people as individuals.

you should too!

[PassionateChefsDie]

Does it really come down to money, surely it's just simply that 6 chocolate bars equal our daily quota of calories, obesity doesn't come down to diet but eating too many calories, we're not talking about malnutrition!

We now live a much less physical life(Computer games and TV!) now on eitherside of the Atlantic, a lot of the manual work has been taken on by the developing countries, meaning we need less calories and with generations before us teaching us our eating habits we will eat more than we need!

The freedom of choice and the fact that too many children dictate what they eat at the table rather than the adults(The real ? is why)! When I was growing up my parents didn't ask me what I wanted for tea and then go ask my brother what he wanted for tea, we were given it and told to eat it and be grateful(But Bobby wont eat this or that what are our children becoming?)!

I believe this is true for this side of the Atlantic and as someone said to me along time ago America sneezes and we catch the cold!

Just a UK perspective we're starting on this subject

[Pan]

And yet, the fact is that poor people in the US are, on average, fatter than rich people.  If, as you say, poor people have as much access to healthy food as rich people do; poor and rich alike have sufficient education to make decisions about eating habits; and, therefore, obesity is wholly a matter of personal choice, then it stands to reason that you are indeed saying that poor people are less responsible than rich people.

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Well, poor people certainly have less access to a decent education. Would we all agree on that?

[Pan]

where is it that i said the "poor were responsible for being poor?"

i don' t even think that is part of this thread.

"personal responsibility" as used here involves eating habits and choosing what to eat.

in fact--my point has always been that there are irresponsible people regardless of income levels. (and responsible people regardless of income levels).

just as being wealthy does not necc equate to being smart or hard working neither does being poor equate to being lazy etc.

instead of generalizing we should look at individuals--there are eight million stories in the......

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Your point about overgeneralizing is well taken.

And I did offer a disclaimer. It's not that you're implying that the poor are responsible for being poor, but that they're responsible for being malnourished, and the case history I offered was of a very responsible person being hungry, having been reduced to pennilessness and not having eaten anything in two days (and this was in any case a slim woman). I doubt that's the most extreme case one can find. Hunger does exist among plenty, both in generally well-to-do countries like the U.S. and much poorer ones in Africa and so on. As you said, we shouldn't overgeneralize: Personal responsibility on the part of the poor is only part of the issue, though I agree it's important.

Edited June 14, 2005 by Pan (log)

[JohnL]

first--the story was nice i liked it.

moving on--

There are some interesting points you raise.

There is hunger in the US (and in many places to numerous to name around the world).

Hunger is a result of poverty of which there is much in the world.

Unfortunately, a lot of undefined terms and statistics are being thrown around here and elsewhere to support one position or another.

Let's not even begin to compare what poverty is in this country to what it is in sub saharan Africa say.--it is bad enough here!

We have as a country been spending billions on eradicating poverty government and private funds.

The money/programs (not all programs) is obviously not working very efficiently. I am simply not going to get into a discussion of poverty here it is complex and i nor anyone i have encountered here has enough grasp of the real statistics....

So--

getting back to the topic of this thread:

The food police--i say no!

why because --and here's my point:

those representing the point of view that the government should regulate foods deemed unhealthy by them (i am never really sure exactly who they are) are "using" statistics and annecdotal evidence and their own definition of terms to advance their cause.

I don't really buy the opposition argument beyond their call for free choice either it is also self serving.

However--

makers of fast food will respond to public pressure and make healthier foods --MacDonalds has salads these days and they are looking into better methods of creating fries etc (the last time i ate there was years ago though).

However if they are sued or legislated out of business who wins?

That's it for me--in a large nutshell!

[WHT]

makers of fast food will respond to public pressure and make healthier foods --MacDonalds  has salads these days and they are looking into better methods of creating fries etc (the last time i ate there was years ago though).

However if they are sued or legislated out of business who wins?

That's it for me--in a large nutshell!

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In eating some of the salads you take in more fat and calories than the Big Mac. Again for reasons mentioned in other posts, some of the ingredients in the dressing are to blame; HFCS and Hydrogenated vegetable oil come to mind. Check the company web site for nutritional information some of it is not at all a wise choice.

[JohnL]

You get my point!

Don't eat the salad--don't eat there at all!

you can eat there once in a while.

You have a choice.

You have some facts.

You can make an informed choice.

[Bux]

In eating some of the salads you take in more fat and calories than the Big Mac.  Again for reasons mentioned in other posts, some of the ingredients in the dressing are to blame; HFCS and Hydrogenated vegetable oil come to mind. Check the company web site for nutritional information some of it is not at all a wise choice.

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This is key. My guess is that most college educated professionals are close to clueless about the latest information regarding health and food. Most of them are unaware of the level of transfats in the canola, soy, corn and peanut oil they may be buying in the supermarkets and which is found in most salad dressings. What's good for you and what's not is again, not a simple issue. Even low fat is not the simple solution as all fats are not the same and lots of salad dressings are loaded with sugar, or worse yet, corn syrup. The soy oil lobby was a very successful one for the soy oil business but not necessarily for the consumer's health.

I would seriously question that McDonald's shift to vegetable oil has made their fries any healthier, but that's the public perception.

Organizations that make information available are one thing. Organizations that seek to shift blame are not necessarily better than those that seek to keep us confused.

[PassionateChefsDie]

If we are to take the economic view surely it simply comes down to the middle classes having more time to prepare food nothing to do with education! The families from poorer incomes both HAVE to work or single parents have to, giving them less time for preparation of food.

It's far easier and quicker to open the pre-packaged meal and put it in the microwave, and if your looking for speed of preparation the only criteria is whether it tastes good not its nutritional or calorie value and whether your family will eat it.

Reading this thread back you could be left believing that America's poor are obese and malnourished, now I personally dont believe this.

The point has been raised its more expensive to purchase fresh food in the poorer areas, surely it comes down to consumer demand? These stores stock what sells, whats the point of having 3 aisles of fresh fruit and veg when 2 of them are going to get thrown away?

[Tess]

If we are to take the economic view surely it simply comes down to the middle classes having more time to prepare food nothing to do with education! The families from poorer incomes both HAVE to work or single parents have to, giving them less time for preparation of food.

It's far easier and quicker to open the pre-packaged meal and put it in the microwave, and if your looking for speed of preparation the only criteria is whether it tastes good not its nutritional or calorie value and whether your family will eat it.

Reading this thread back you could be left believing that America's poor are obese and malnourished, now I personally dont believe this.

The point has been raised its more expensive to purchase fresh food in the poorer areas, surely it comes down to consumer demand? These stores stock what sells, whats the point of having 3 aisles of fresh fruit and veg when 2 of them are going to get thrown away?

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When I see "simply" this much it makes me antsy. Surely nothing (economic or otherwise) is that simple. Certainly, there's no one-way street between "consumer demand" and what stores in any given area stock. They stock what they find profitable to stock, which may well not be what the customers would ask for in an ideal world.

[TPO]

I agree that personal responsibility should play a part in food choices. However,

there are very few personal consequences for those personal choices. Thanks to Lipitor and Prilosec and the like -- people don't have to suffer any pain or discomfort from these personal choices. And when these choices cause more serious problems, all of us bear the burden of those healthcare costs.

But rather than having the food police come to take my cheese curls away, I'd rather see the other factors that influence bad food choices fixed -- by increasing nutrition education in schools, by demanding more jobs that pay a living wage so families can get by on one or two jobs and have more time for food preparation, and so on.

[Tess]

But rather than having the food police come to take my cheese curls away, I'd rather see the other factors that influence bad food choices fixed -- by increasing nutrition education in schools, by demanding more jobs that pay a living wage so families can get by on one or two jobs and have more time for food preparation, and so on.

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I agree. Address it on every front. Turning certain specific foods into the enemy is going to be less effective than looking at overall food, activity and other health choices.