Ideas about poverty and obesity

[hornblower]

Soaking & changing the water removes most of the gas producing tendency in beans. 

also see this about how our bodies adapt to legumes in the diet.  (did you know there is academic research on flatulence? LOL)   Beans & Gas: Clearing the Air 


 

[Murphy101]

My experience with dried beans is that they require skill to soak/ cook properly and even more skill to make them taste good. I've tried it a few times and they are always so much worse than canned beans or fast food beans. I don't know why.

 

Maybe others have had that experience too.

I'm sure they have bc I know I did.

 

Simple foods are simple to make but people who have been cooking them their whole life seriously underestimate how much finesse they are actually using bc it's just what they do.

 

This is true for so many simple foods, not just beans.

 

Cooking not the one minute kind of rices, homemade bread or biscuits and pancakes...

 

All of these are cheap and easy to make from scratch. Pending how you do it, it doesn't have to take too long either.

 

But it does take accumulated knowledge and practice to perfect it.

 

I bet if I asked you to tell me how you make rice, lentils, beans, bread, every one of you would forget or assume some detail bc it's just not something you even really think about. I know I would. I know I have when teaching my kids.

[LucyStoner]

Recent posts remind me of one of our meals as a kid: "bread and gravy." Bread that's getting stale covered in gravy from some past meal. My mom used to talk it up like it was gourmet. :P

My mom's version on that was sh!t on a shingle. It was "sausage" gravy (the actual presence of sausage in the gravy being highly variable, lol) on toast.

Edited March 31, 2016 by LucyStoner

[Murphy101]

We used to eat beans and rice, but not in the same meal. :)

 

I discovered brown rice and black beans as an adult. I love it. Unfortunately, one of my kids won't come within 10 feet of a bean. :/

I cannot eat pinto beans. I think they taste like dirt.

 

But then we discovered black beans! It's the ONE food every single person in my house likes. Our fav meal is Costa Rican black beans and rice with either scrambled eggs or sausages.

 

Canned beans alas bc I suck at making dried beans. I have no idea why but so far I've proven incompetent at dry bean making. *shamefaced*

 

ETA: and I share the texture issue with lentil. Also quinoa.

Edited March 31, 2016 by Murphy101

[LucyStoner]

I used to love eating mac'n'cheese. I would make it for my kids at least weekly, except they don't like it. :/ Buttheads. :P

 

As for lentils - I think they are gross. I have had them at least a couple dozen ways. The texture is gross. Except in sambar, where you don't actually get lentil texture, or some foods where the lentil is more crunchy than soft.

 

But if you can like lentils, more power to ya. They are an excellent choice in every way except being able to stomach them. :P

I love lentils but you need to know what you're doing with them. And I especially like them with Indian spices.

 

I can't eat boxed Mac and cheese. I just can't. Too much of it as a kid and I'm done. :P

[Murphy101]

I was grown and married when I realized I don't actually like Mac and cheese. It was a staple at my house growing up. I ate what was put in front of me.

My dh was married before his parents discovered his hates gravy. He is diabetic. He took his injection and sat down to eat and whatever was on his plate he had to eat so he did.

[maize]

Yep. You will also note that most high altitude directions apply to 6500 feet. At 9500 ft, I guess they figure you are on your own! As regentrude said, it has to do with the boiling temperature of water. My friends that make beans regularly all have pressure cookers. I just buy canned beans.

When we lived in La Paz (Bolivia) we used a pressure cooker for everything. The boiling point of water is way lower at 12,000 feet.

 

Beans and rice were very much staples in my home growing up.

[eternalsummer]

I'm sure they have bc I know I did.

 

Simple foods are simple to make but people who have been cooking them their whole life seriously underestimate how much finesse they are actually using bc it's just what they do.

 

This is true for so many simple foods, not just beans.

 

Cooking not the one minute kind of rices, homemade bread or biscuits and pancakes...

 

All of these are cheap and easy to make from scratch. Pending how you do it, it doesn't have to take too long either.

 

But it does take accumulated knowledge and practice to perfect it.

 

I bet if I asked you to tell me how you make rice, lentils, beans, bread, every one of you would forget or assume some detail bc it's just not something you even really think about. I know I would. I know I have when teaching my kids.

 

 

Put bag of beans in pot of water according to package directions (water a few inches above beans).  Boil for 5 minutes.  Let stand 1 hour.  Pour out water.  Put in new water (amount according to package directions, or again above beans 2-3 inches.  Let boil 1 hour or until soft (this depends on location, type of beans, age of beans).  Guidelines are on package normally.  Add salt.  Eat.

 

Cook rice exactly according to package directions.  I've never done anything different.

 

Lentils according to package directions; much easier than other beans since you don't need to presoak.

 

Bread is hard!  And time consuming! I only did it when I wasn't working in some capacity.  Followed instructions exactly from back of yeast package.  Still usually a disaster (but often edible).

 

 

My parents taught me exactly zero about cooking, with the sole exception of salmon croquettes.  

[Murphy101]

Yep. I don't know what is missing from the package directions but making them according to that does not result in beans my family will consume and I don't blame them.

 

ETA:

Just to be clear of my list, dry beans are my one failure. I can make homemade breads, rices and so forth no problem. 🙂

Edited March 31, 2016 by Murphy101

[eternalsummer]

Weird!  Are you really high elevation?  We moved from MO to Colorado Springs this summer and my beans have sucked since then (lentils are mostly fine); I didn't realize until I read regentrude's post a few pages ago that I was high elevation now!  It doesn't feel high because I can see the mountains from my house and I am definitely not in them :)  

 

Anyway, mine have been edible here, I just have to cook them for much longer.  We are simple beans people, though - we don't do spices or onions or bacon or whatever, just beans.  DH puts dill and thyme in lentils, though.

 

[LucyStoner]

I think most of it is about time though. I mean how often have one of us thought, "I'll put this (beans or whatever) in the crockpot so dinner will be ready when we get home." And forgot? It's not like we are super humans and the poorer someone is the less able or intelligent they are. They do the same "dumb" crap we do like fall asleep or run out the door for work/school and forget to make the crockpot. The difference is, I am now fortunate enough to be able to just make something else or speed up the cooking in the oven. But the poorer one is, the more severe any lapse or minor issue is. They can't just go buy something else. Or the oven doesn't work. Or they are only home for 45 minutes before they have to go to the next job. And the majority of these people are on their own. They aren't married with someone they can count on to help haul the load of getting through life.

 

So they carefully plan their menu around quick and easy and nearly guaranteed to have no problems. Who could reasonably blame them or argue that isn't the smart thing for them to do?

Definitely time, and the physical exhaustion and mental stress that comes with struggling THAT hard is a big factor. That said, when part of my job was delivering supplies and grocery vouchers to low income families, I really saw the no or inadequate kitchen thing up close. Many families had less than what my family had in that motel. A toaster and a microwave and a dorm fridge was not uncommon. So if they go to the store and buy a lot of things that are shelf stable or can be microwaved who can blame them. This is why I have to resist the desire to slap folks who take too much interest in the cart contents of someone shopping with an EBT card. Edited March 31, 2016 by LucyStoner

[Murphy101]

Weird! Are you really high elevation? We moved from MO to Colorado Springs this summer and my beans have sucked since then (lentils are mostly fine); I didn't realize until I read regentrude's post a few pages ago that I was high elevation now! It doesn't feel high because I can see the mountains from my house and I am definitely not in them :)

 

Anyway, mine have been edible here, I just have to cook them for much longer. We are simple beans people, though - we don't do spices or onions or bacon or whatever, just beans. DH puts dill and thyme in lentils, though.

Nope. Like almost no elevation. For comparison, there's some hills nearby and I can see I'm not in them. Lol 😉

 

I wonder if our water is the problem. I think it tastes "off" bc since we moved here, I can't drink ice water from the tap. It's cloudy and tastes metalish even with the filter. The kids don't seem to care or notice though.

 

When I switched from using just water to a mix of water and broth or just broth to make rice, that was tremendously improved. Of course that's an added expense, but we can manage it now.

 

I wonder if using broth instead for the second part would improve it and what broth I should use....

[Joyofsixreboot]

Let's not forget that if the fridge, oven, stove breaks there is no money to fix it. I've had only a cooler and only a small, nothing fits in it microwave a time or two. It made it hard to get through a couple weeks. If it was a permanent situation I would have given up too.

[Carol in Cal.]

That house I mentioned?  SRO, but with a couple or family in each room?  The kitchen had one stove.  4 burners.  And one fridge--kind of a largeish single family one, not an industrial one.  Each room 'owned' one locking cabinet in the kitchen.  That was it.  So, no storage really, to speak of.  No opportunity to buy in bulk.  No reasonable way to cook ahead and store leftover with certainty.  A dorm fridge would have been a great improvement.  Actually, I've started to think about how to get those for people in that situation.  Still have not figured it out, but I'm keeping an eye on the neighborhood garage sale lists for postings of free ones.  I have a theory that late in the school year they might all be donated somewhere from the students going home for the summer, but have not found out where yet.  Salvation Army gets tons of really beautiful bicycles that way, but I haven't been able to find out what happens to the dorm fridges.

 

You might think that a group like the SRO families would end up with someone cooking for everyone but I have never heard of it working out that way except in homeless encampments, where if someone scores a box of bacon they have to cook it all right away and pass it out to all their friends.  And I don't blame people for not cooking together, because hardly anyone knows how to do that and meet dietary restrictions, tastes, timing, etc.  It's a conundrum.

[Murphy101]

Definitely time, and the physical exhaustion and mental stress that comes with struggling THAT hard is a big factor. That said, when part of my job was delivering supplies and grocery vouchers to low income families, I really saw the no or inadequate kitchen thing up close. Many families had less than what my family had in that motel. A toaster and a microwave and a dorm fridge was not uncommon. So if they go to the store and buy a lot of things that are shelf stable or can be microwaved who can blame them. This is why I have to resist the desire to slap folks who take too much interest in the cart contents of someone shopping with an EBT card.

I think we are going to seeing more, not less of this bc current appliances are seriously pieces of crap. None of them last more than maybe five years. If you buy them all at once, which is common, it's not really a surprise when they start to die in a domino effect. We have replaced ALL of our appliances TWICE or more in less than 7 years. Thankfully we are buying replacemen warrantee for all of them, so it's no big deal to replace them. But even so, that's an added expense many don't have to safeguard against future problems.

 

And oh my lord. Stress seriously affects the ability to function and energy level. Long term stress is brutal. Especially bc after a while they and those around them start to think this is just life and they don't even understand they are living in constant stress mode. They are and it's doing physical damage. They've just gotten used to it. We get used to the pain we are familiar with living with to the point that we start to actually think we aren't even in pain anymore. And stress is a form of pain IMO.

[LucyStoner]

I think we are going to seeing more, not less of this bc current appliances are seriously pieces of crap. None of them last more than maybe five years. If you buy them all at once, which is common, it's not really a surprise when they start to die in a domino effect. We have replaced ALL of our appliances TWICE or more in less than 7 years. Thankfully we are buying replacemen warrantee for all of them, so it's no big deal to replace them. But even so, that's an added expense many don't have to safeguard against future problems.

 

And oh my lord. Stress seriously affects the ability to function and energy level. Long term stress is brutal. Especially bc after a while they and those around them start to think this is just life and they don't even understand they are living in constant stress mode. They are and it's doing physical damage. They've just gotten used to it. We get used to the pain we are familiar with living with to the point that we start to actually think we aren't even in pain anymore. And stress is a form of pain IMO.

Another factor in the kitchen access thing is that many people will not complain to their landlord or ask for repairs because they are afraid of getting kicked out facing a rent hike. Some slummy landlords will even issue veiled threats to that effect. So appliances die in the rental and the tenant either replaces it themselves by getting something used or they just live without. I know families who have moved into places with broken stuff because they have such limited resources or bad credit that they don't have any other choice. Here, if one is in tax credit or subsidized housing an inspector comes around before you move in and annually thereafter to make sure it meets minimum requirements and the landlords can't just not fix your stove or replace a dead fridge. But there are plenty of places to rent for (not all that) "cheap" where, by getting tenants with few other options, landlords are get around the law.

 

Most landlords aren't like that, but poor people will put up with a lot more crap than a middle class renter. And the bad landlords know that. In some cases the landlord is not bad or slumming it and totally would replace if the knew but based on a prior bad experience with a landlord or rumor, the tenant just will not ask. This is especially common in households with some undocumented family members. They don't was ANY trouble.

 

One of my brothers replaced the toilet in this terrible rental a few years ago because he was convinced that reporting it would get them kicked out. Turns out the landlord had given them, on moving in, a bottle draino and a note admonishing them to never call her about plumbing issues. The plumbing was in crappy condition at move in and the need for replacement was not their fault.

Edited March 31, 2016 by LucyStoner

[Zinnia]

My family loves beans and eats a lot of them, but whenever I mention that to people, they are very surprised.  It started with a experiment of extreme couponing as a newlywed.  I got 100 cans of black beans for free.  We didn't really like black beans, but free...so we learned ways that we liked them.  :)  And from there, we just fell in love.

 

Growing up, we only ate baked beans, chili (with canned chili beans), refried beans from a can for our once yearly tacos, and red beans and rice once a year.  But these days, we eat them about 5 or 6 days a week.  My children love beans way more than meat.  Go figure. 

 

And......I think that I would lose more weight if I cut out the beans.  So they aren't some sort of magic. 

[Joker]

I ate a lot of beans, especially pinto, growing up and I just can't make them more than a few times a year. Oldest dd loves beans and rice, though.

 

Fast food can be seriously cheap. I'm sure they're horrible but I can eat two tacos for $1 at Jack in the Box and be full for hours. So, often dh and I run through that drive thru for lunch and we both eat for $2 (we eat them at home with water). I can make healthier tacos at home but it's just not worth it since only dh and I like them.

Edited March 31, 2016 by Joker

[Ausmumof3]

Yeah they do actually if they can't afford anything else.

 

Making the food they can afford unaffordable won't make the healthier food in their budget. It just means then there's nothing they can afford. I suspect unless the tax was crazy high like cigarettes, we'd quickly see a black market spring up. Because people gotta eat.

 

I'm fine with taxing the heck out of all beverages not water. No one needs any other drink, including juices. I'm less inclined towards taxing milk bc tho we almost never drink it, it is necessary for a lot of cooking to most people.

But then I think of all the municipalities being discovered to have contaminated water and question my decision all these decades to never waste money to drink calories.

 

I already think fast food is very very expensive. I don't understand how anyone in poverty can afford it. You might be able to get a taco for .99 but who only needs to eat one taco? No one in my house I can tell you. But sure tax fast food I guess.

 

I still don't understand how that would make healthier food more affordable.

 

It just makes what they could afford as unaffordable as everything else? How's that going to help them? I guess starvation does prevent obesity, but I'm not okay with that either.

I guess there's different types of poverty. For a student alone without much to live on the 99c taco makes more sense than the money to buy store and prepare large quantities of healthy food whereas for a family with lots of people to feed it makes sense to buy what works out cheapest on a per serve basis.

[Scarlett]

I guess there's different types of poverty. For a student alone without much to live on the 99c taco makes more sense than the money to buy store and prepare large quantities of healthy food whereas for a family with lots of people to feed it makes sense to buy what works out cheapest on a per serve basis.

Actually .99 tacos don't make sense even for a student living alone. A pound of hamburger for $4 a package of tortillas for $2 could make about 20 tacos.

[regentrude]

Weird!  Are you really high elevation?  We moved from MO to Colorado Springs this summer and my beans have sucked since then (lentils are mostly fine); I didn't realize until I read regentrude's post a few pages ago that I was high elevation now!  It doesn't feel high because I can see the mountains from my house and I am definitely not in them

 

CO Springs is at 6,000ft, right?

Boiling point of water lowers by 1 degree F per 500 ft, so it would be about 12 degrees lower than at sea level, 200F rather than 212.

[Pam in CT]

OK, I am feeling very foolish re all this talk about how elevation affects the cooking of beans, because....

 

I don't get it.  What difference does it make what temperature the water boils at?  It boils, I turn it down.  How would I even know what the boiling temperature is, for beans or anything else?  Talk to me like a kindergartener, please.

 

 

Thank you,

Pam (in CT, not too far from the coast, where I too can see gentle rolling hills but am not in them... and where we actually eat a lot of beans, particularly black but I'm partial to chick peas as well... but I confess to cans.)

 

 

[eternalsummer]

I think, and I am not 100% sure about this, that because the water boils at a lower temperature, the whole time you are cooking the beans you're cooking them at a lower temperature than you would if you were at sea level.  You can't make the temperature higher by turning up the heat on the burner because you're boiling them - the hottest the water can possibly get is the boiling point, which is a lower temperature here than on the coast.

 

Regentrude, it just seemed, driving across Kansas and western Colorado, that we were more or less going on a flat line :)  I know in my head that Denver is a mile high, but I never really connected that to the Springs, somehow; I knew we were at a higher elevation but didn't realize we were that high, I guess!

 

Also I forgot about the high elevation cooking thing.

 

Can't wait to tell DH when he gets home - he thought my bean cooking skills had just disappeared!

[eternalsummer]

re: the ovens for poor people issue; ours died for a week (we have a terrible landlord in this way) and it was a pain.  I would definitely support putting fresh+canned food on the food stamps requirements, if they were changed to function more like WIC - canned beans, peanut butter, and apples are still cheaper and better for you than chicken nuggets, or whatever.

[Ausmumof3]

Actually .99 tacos don't make sense even for a student living alone. A pound of hamburger for $4 a package of tortillas for $2 could make about 20 tacos.

But if you don't have the fridge to store the hamburger you just wasted $3.00. It makes sense if you don't have the capacity to adequately store or prepare food to only purchase what you can eat right then. That's what I'm getting at.

[Laura Corin]

Yes.The boiling point of water  decreases with altitude; at high elevation, you simply don't reach a high enough temperature. 

You have to adjust cooking with most foods at high altitude, but legumes are especially bad.

I imagine it would not take quite as long if you soaked them overnight beforehand. A trick for high altitude cooking of beans is to add baking soda which is supposed to considerably shorten cooking time since it breaks down the shell, but I have not tried that myself. It's supposed to be miraculously quick even without soaking.

 

When I lived in China the last time we were a mile above sea level.  You had to add more water to rice because it took longer to cook at the lower boiling temperature and more water evaporated during the process.

 

[Laura Corin]

Re: the research, I didn't read it super carefully, but I am unsure whether they controlled for cause vs correlation?  They concluded that poverty causes you to crave unhealthy foods (presumably because if you feel food-insecure, biology tells you to stock up on calories whenever you can, as poverty used to mean that you might actually starve to death), right?  If they tested/interviewed the same people both during poverty and after or before poverty, that makes sense.  I wasn't entirely sure whether they did this, though - if they failed to control for that, then you could conclude not that poverty causes poor decision making, but that there is something in the personality or decision-making process that contributes both to poverty and to poor food choices.

.  

 

These were all young students, so I think that the control was that they came from poor families, rather than having made choices themselves that led to poverty.

 

[Laura Corin]

OK, I am feeling very foolish re all this talk about how elevation affects the cooking of beans, because....

 

I don't get it.  What difference does it make what temperature the water boils at?  It boils, I turn it down.  How would I even know what the boiling temperature is, for beans or anything else?  Talk to me like a kindergartener, please.

 

 

Let's look at steak.  You could either cook it fast at a high temperature or slowly at a low temperature.  In both cases the steak would get cooked, but the low temperature would take longer.

 

Now imagine that your cooker was broken and the burner wouldn't go on high.  You wouldn't have a choice as to how to cook the steak: it would have to cook long and slow.

 

Now back to boiling water.  If water boils at 100 degrees C at sea level, then your beans will cook fast.  If you are at high altitude, and your water boils at 90 degrees C, then it will take longer for your beans to cook.  It's as if your burner was broken and wouldn't go to 'high'.  You can't make the water hotter than boiling point without using special equipment, so you have to add to the time.

 

[Joyofsixreboot]

Why is it 'not great'? I think it is pretty darn good.

Probably not the healthiest meal. You know like salmon, broccoli and quinoa but very tasty[emoji2]

 

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G900A using Tapatalk

[HomeAgain]

My husband and I both grew up pretty poor.  What each of us considered food when we married varied greatly.  I grew up in a very warm, fertile area, and gardening was no problem.  Neighbors swapped produce.  A flat of bruised peaches (not good enough to sell) was $5.  We ate a LOT of beans.  I had a mom who worked part time and spent the rest of her time making sure we had food on the table with canning, baking, dehydrating...it was a lot of work.  She went grocery shopping once a month for staples like milk, oatmeal, margarine, peanut butter, all the absolute cheapest (you've seen LOST?  The packages looked like what they got on the island.)  If it wasn't used that week it had to be shelf stable or go in the freezer.

My husband had two parents who worked full time.  Cooking beans all day?  That wasn't going to happen.  His meals had a lot of canned vegetables, hamburger, hot dogs, pasta, white bread, from the discount store....things they could throw together quickly to feed a big family because nobody got home before 6pm.  There wasn't the option to put in hours of work to eat better.  There was only the option to survive on what you had.  And this is where a lot of the working poor is - putting in so many hours at 2 or more jobs at minimum wage, living in food deserts, and not being able to make the choice to put up 15 jars of applesauce for the year instead of buying the $1 jar of sweetened applesauce from the Dollar Tree each month. 

It's no different for companies buying in bulk.  The children receive nutritionally cheap food at home and get served the same at school.  "Chocolate milk" that you can buy for half the cost of white in the store because it's not really milk, but milk + water, HFCS, chocolate flavoring, is also given to the children at school.  The processed food is abundant, requires little to no prep, and cheap.  It is rationalized by deciding it's better than empty bellies or food that they know will be thrown away at first because it is unfamiliar. When taste buds are used to having oversalted, over sugared carbs, it requires detoxing.  Detoxing is a luxury.
 

There is no real solution to obesity until we focus on raising minimum wage, bringing fresh food back to people, stop subsidizing corn and soy crops, and put better rules in place for chemicals added to our foods.

[regentrude]

OK, I am feeling very foolish re all this talk about how elevation affects the cooking of beans, because....

 

I don't get it.  What difference does it make what temperature the water boils at?  It boils, I turn it down.  How would I even know what the boiling temperature is, for beans or anything else?  Talk to me like a kindergartener, please.

 

Anything you boil in water gets heated to the temperature at which water boils. Whether you boil it vigorously or simmer - it's the same temp.

You boil food so it gets heated and changed so that it becomes edible.

In order for beans (or other food) to break down so that we can eat it, the food needs to reach a certain temperature because that is when the changes occur.

If the temperature is not high enough, these reactions cannot take place.

So, if water boils at lower temperature, the boiling water is not hot enough to heat the food to a high enough temperature so that the beneficial changes occur.

 

You can know the temperature if you use a thermometer or look it up in a chart. Normally you don't need to know what the temp is for cooking - all foods that are boiled are cooked at that same temperature. It only becomes an issue when you move to elevation.

Edited March 31, 2016 by regentrude

[eternalsummer]

My husband and I both grew up pretty poor.  What each of us considered food when we married varied greatly.  I grew up in a very warm, fertile area, and gardening was no problem.  Neighbors swapped produce.  A flat of bruised peaches (not good enough to sell) was $5.  We ate a LOT of beans.  I had a mom who worked part time and spent the rest of her time making sure we had food on the table with canning, baking, dehydrating...it was a lot of work.  She went grocery shopping once a month for staples like milk, oatmeal, margarine, peanut butter, all the absolute cheapest (you've seen LOST?  The packages looked like what they got on the island.)  If it wasn't used that week it had to be shelf stable or go in the freezer.

My husband had two parents who worked full time.  Cooking beans all day?  That wasn't going to happen.  His meals had a lot of canned vegetables, hamburger, hot dogs, pasta, white bread, from the discount store....things they could throw together quickly to feed a big family because nobody got home before 6pm.  There wasn't the option to put in hours of work to eat better.  There was only the option to survive on what you had.  And this is where a lot of the working poor is - putting in so many hours at 2 or more jobs at minimum wage, living in food deserts, and not being able to make the choice to put up 15 jars of applesauce for the year instead of buying the $1 jar of sweetened applesauce from the Dollar Tree each month. 

It's no different for companies buying in bulk.  The children receive nutritionally cheap food at home and get served the same at school.  "Chocolate milk" that you can buy for half the cost of white in the store because it's not really milk, but milk + water, HFCS, chocolate flavoring, is also given to the children at school.  The processed food is abundant, requires little to no prep, and cheap.  It is rationalized by deciding it's better than empty bellies or food that they know will be thrown away at first because it is unfamiliar. When taste buds are used to having oversalted, over sugared carbs, it requires detoxing.  Detoxing is a luxury.

 

There is no real solution to obesity until we focus on raising minimum wage, bringing fresh food back to people, stop subsidizing corn and soy crops, and put better rules in place for chemicals added to our foods.

 

 

It's been a while since I was in school, but then, and I suspect now, kids are given a choice of milk or chocolate milk or juice.  I would be fine with serving just milk (or ideally just water, and using the milk $ to provide something else).  

 

Detoxing is not a luxury.  Having the $ to purchase convenience foods and not have to detox is the luxury.  If money is really truly limited, cooking beans for an hour (which is all the time beans take, esp. faster ones like lentils) is cheaper than buying fast food, and if you only have $3 to spend on a meal to feed 4 people, a bag of beans and a bag of rice is almost the only way to do it.

 

White bread is not cheaper than wheat bread.  Sweetened applesauce, from what I've ever seen anywhere, is not cheaper than unsweetened applesauce - and neither of those things are cheaper by weight than bananas, imo (we never bought apples or applesauce when we were poor, unless they were very in season and super on sale, like 59 cents/lb or something).  Canned or frozen vegetables are fine, generally, and canned beans too, if you really don't want to cook.  It's cheaper than fast food and more nutritious. 

 

In any case, a lot of it is family culture/habit/education (certainly my dad was a big fan of frozen tv dinners, even when we were poor, because he wasn't all that keen on cooking and he could see all the little portions on the tray and feel like we were eating well enough).  But we weren't poor enough for him to not buy frozen dinners (more expensive by far, even the very cheap ones, than cooking rice and beans) or poor enough for him not to buy cigarettes.  If there had been a tax on frozen dinners, he might eventually have bought frozen veg. and a can of beans instead.  If there were a tax on the little packaged cookies he liked to buy, he may eventually have stopped buying them and redirected that money to something healthier - or he might have just bought the little packaged cookies and made it up in the budget somewhere else; I have no idea.  We were working poor when I was a kid, more or less.

 

As far as things like food stamps go, I see no reason not to run them like WIC is run now.  

[Pam in CT]

re high altitude beans (sorry for the hijack Laura!): Thanks ladies.  So the bottom line is, the higher I am, the longer it will take for the beans to soften because I'm actually cooking them at a lower temperature?  My problem, the handful of times I've tried (at my nearly sea level elevation) has been by the time they're soft, they're also broken, which is unattractive although OK for something like chili.

 

 

re OP issues - I totally concur with many of the micro-level issues raised that affect individuals (limited time, kitchen access, and produce access and food storage access; role of stress and parental desire to "treat" their children; allure of comfort food associated with childhood, etc).  But the macro-level role that agribusiness subsidies particularly in corn and soy have had in shaping the structure of food -- what we eat, how it's processed/disguised/labeled, how it's distributed, how it's marketed -- in the US is to me the overwhelming big picture driver.  

[eternalsummer]

Yes, I agree that starting with subsidies is probably a good idea (and also the push for more more more dairy everywhere is questionable, imo).  

 

On the whole, I don't see anyone making really significant progress with regard to obesity until overeating and junk food and processed food and etc. are treated with the same scorn that cigarette smoking is treated now.  We may have some sympathy for addicts (my dad was a 1 or 2 pack a day smoker his whole life, pretty much, and I loved him, so I have sympathy for addicts for sure) but until the behavior is socially unacceptable I doubt people will really start to change their habits.

 

Taxing the product might help with that shift but I think the social aspect hits people a lot harder than money.

[pinkmint]

I just want to say I think it's not one or the other. I wish it were that simple. Sometimes poor people's diets are true victims of circumstance and sometimes it's bad decisions and sometimes one more than the other and sometimes a mix of both. It varies a lot from person to person, family to family.

 

 

It's a hard, complicated thing.

 

Growing up I experienced the "bad choices" kind of poor a lot. My (single) mom bought department store makeup and we often had no food. No policies would have helped in a situation where the supposedly responsible adult would not make good choices even if they were assisted to make them.

 

So I don't know what the answer is.

Edited March 31, 2016 by pinkmint

[HomeAgain]

It's been a while since I was in school, but then, and I suspect now, kids are given a choice of milk or chocolate milk or juice.  I would be fine with serving just milk (or ideally just water, and using the milk $ to provide something else).  

 

Detoxing is not a luxury.  Having the $ to purchase convenience foods and not have to detox is the luxury.  If money is really truly limited, cooking beans for an hour (which is all the time beans take, esp. faster ones like lentils) is cheaper than buying fast food, and if you only have $3 to spend on a meal to feed 4 people, a bag of beans and a bag of rice is almost the only way to do it.

 

You miss the point.  A lot of these families don't have an hour before dinner.  They have an hour total.  They pick up kids, hurry and get something on the table, and then do bath/bed.  Get off work at 6, home by 6:30, dinner at 8 if you're cooking quick beans...and forget prepping on weekends when you're working 6 days a week.

 

White bread is not cheaper than wheat bread.  Sweetened applesauce, from what I've ever seen anywhere, is not cheaper than unsweetened applesauce - and neither of those things are cheaper by weight than bananas, imo (we never bought apples or applesauce when we were poor, unless they were very in season and super on sale, like 59 cents/lb or something).  Canned or frozen vegetables are fine, generally, and canned beans too, if you really don't want to cook.  It's cheaper than fast food and more nutritious. 

 

I don't know where you live, but I genuinely live in a food desert.  Everything is trucked in.  White bread is $.59 at the discount bread store, "wheat" (white with mostly caramel coloring added) is $.79, and real bread ranges from $2.50-$5 per loaf, that has half the number of slices as the white bread.  With Bountiful baskets, it brings it down to $2/loaf for wheat.  Quick bread at home (artisan refrigerator loaves) brings the cost down to $.30/loaf for white bread.  Sweetened applesauce is $.20 cheaper on a good day than natural. Canned veggies are often loaded with salt.  We spend $700/mo on food, shopping sales, discount places, and buying whole whenever possible, freezing or putting up when we buy in bulk.  Your claims are out of touch with my reality.
A taco stand here does a special every Tuesday for a plate: $2 for rice, beans, and two handmade tacos.  It's a huge plate of food.  A lot of families will line up for it because it's as cheap, if not cheaper, than eating at home here.

 

In any case, a lot of it is family culture/habit/education (certainly my dad was a big fan of frozen tv dinners, even when we were poor, because he wasn't all that keen on cooking and he could see all the little portions on the tray and feel like we were eating well enough).  But we weren't poor enough for him to not buy frozen dinners (more expensive by far, even the very cheap ones, than cooking rice and beans) or poor enough for him not to buy cigarettes.  If there had been a tax on frozen dinners, he might eventually have bought frozen veg. and a can of beans instead.  If there were a tax on the little packaged cookies he liked to buy, he may eventually have stopped buying them and redirected that money to something healthier - or he might have just bought the little packaged cookies and made it up in the budget somewhere else; I have no idea.  We were working poor when I was a kid, more or less.

 

As far as things like food stamps go, I see no reason not to run them like WIC is run now.

 

 

You're right, it is. And it's backing people into corners.  They have to work to eat, but food is expensive.  Proper food requires time, which they don't have, because they have to work to eat and aren't paid a living wage.  Families who might be able to have an adult home, don't, because they have to work to eat, at a wage that only benefits their employers.  Neighborhood markets close, discount stores become main shopping areas.  People have to pick to feed their children for a month, or for 3 weeks, because they need food they can cook quickly, cheaply, and easily.  No.  It's not easy.  And we can't blame all that on habit.

[Scarlett]

I just want to say I think it's not one or the other. I wish it were that simple. Sometimes poor people's diets are true victims of circumstance and sometimes it's bad decisions and sometimes one more than the other and sometimes a mix of both. It varies a lot from person to person, family to family.

 

 

It's a hard, complicated thing.

 

Growing up I experienced the "bad choices" kind of poor a lot. My (single) mom bought department store makeup and we often had no food. No policies would have helped in a situation where the supposedly responsible adult would not make good choices even if they were assisted to make them.

 

So I don't know what the answer is.

The answer is for individuals to take a look at themselves and decide to do better. Sure there is always a hard luck story of people not having stoves or refrigerators through no fault of their own. .but just as often people are making very very bad choices.

 

The culture has changed significantly too. People used to have family to fall back on when times got rough. Now I often see people who have no one to help.

[eternalsummer]

Shaming has changed behavior with cigarettes (imo). 

 

I totally agree about subsidizing the costs of poor health decisions through insurance; people who smoke cigarettes should pay more in insurance and people who eat junk food should pay more in insurance.  The latter is much harder to control for, however.

 

 

[SproutMamaK]

Yes, that's the problem, there's not enough shaming of overweight people going on in our society. If they were more thoroughly scorned for it, they'd make better choices. :blink:

 

I feel like I just stumbled in to the comments section of a Gamergate article or something.

Edited March 31, 2016 by SproutMamaK

[Scarlett]

But if you don't have the fridge to store the hamburger you just wasted $3.00. It makes sense if you don't have the capacity to adequately store or prepare food to only purchase what you can eat right then. That's what I'm getting at.

This is where a person needs to stop and look at the big picture. Getting a refrigerator should become top priority. I think a lot of the problem is that people aren't being given the skills to think through a little bit longer term.

 

And short term? Get an ice chest. I remember traveling cross country with my mom....i was 10 my brother was 4 /12. We did not eat any fast food. We ate out of an ice chest.

[Scarlett]

LOL that's another thing for sure. The times I've made homemade beans especially, it's like explosions in my digestive area.

Just an FYI.....a persons body becomes used to beans if eaten more regularly.

[Mergath]

This is where a person needs to stop and look at the big picture. Getting a refrigerator should become top priority. I think a lot of the problem is that people aren't being given the skills to think through a little bit longer term.

 

And short term? Get an ice chest. I remember traveling cross country with my mom....i was 10 my brother was 4 /12. We did not eat any fast food. We ate out of an ice chest.

 

When it comes to the kind of poverty we're discussing in this thread, they can't just run to the appliance store and pick up a refrigerator. And a family sharing a tiny apartment with another family, or living in an extended stay motel, might not even have a place to put one.

 

They probably also can't afford to buy bags of ice every day. Around here, a bag of ice is several dollars.

[maize]

Just an FYI.....a persons body becomes used to beans if eaten more regularly.

This varies from person to person, some don't adapt.

[itsheresomewhere]

Just an FYI.....a persons body becomes used to beans if eaten more regularly.

Not everyone does. For some, the internal fireworks continue and get worse.

[kewb]

Shaming has changed behavior with cigarettes (imo). 

 

I totally agree about subsidizing the costs of poor health decisions through insurance; people who smoke cigarettes should pay more in insurance and people who eat junk food should pay more in insurance.  The latter is much harder to control for, however.

 

How does the insurance company define people who eat junk food?  I would venture a guess that even healthy people indulge in an unhealthy meal and/or snacks.  Will there be random spot checks of your kitchen?  You have to submit your dining out receipts with an explanation of your choices?

 

How would an insurance company enforce that?  Just by weight?  There are plenty of people who are overweight for reasons other then junk food.  Is it simply overweight people have to pay more?  Skinny people get sick.  They get cancer.  They get autoimmune diseases. They have heart problems, thyroid problems.  Bad knees and shoulders from athletics.

 

Forcing people to smoke in designated areas so I don't have to suffer the ill effects of their smoke is different from forcing people to eat junk food in a designated area.  There food choice does not impact my health.

[Carol in Cal.]

You have stumbled into a group sharing knowledge and brainstorming solutions, as the status quo is so expensive that our communities are impacted.

 

I am over weight. I found out why from this group - a genetic reason- shortly before I finally found a knowledgeable doctor and genetic testing pricing became reasonable out of pocket. My insurer wont pay for it. My govt wont remove folic acid from store bought food, so I cant eat bread. Fixing the destruction that prenatal vitamins wrought on my body has given me my life back. It costs me 5 a month...cheaper than a loaf of bread, to overcome my genetic variation. If Joanne hadnt pressed for other reasons for obesity, I doubt anyone would have shared the issue with me in real life...Doctors would rather tell you it's diet and inactivity. Fitbit and myfitnesspal told me otherwise, but the knowledge pool had a solution.

Can you please tell me more about this?

What gene, and how does folic acid play into this?

What is the treatment?

[bolt.]

This is where a person needs to stop and look at the big picture. Getting a refrigerator should become top priority. I think a lot of the problem is that people aren't being given the skills to think through a little bit longer term.

 

And short term? Get an ice chest. I remember traveling cross country with my mom....i was 10 my brother was 4 /12. We did not eat any fast food. We ate out of an ice chest.

So, the "long term plan" involves making a multi-hundred dollar appliance purchase the "top priority" of the family. That "top priority" slot... Above paying rent? Above transporting self to work? Above transporting kids to school? Above buying necessary medications? Above the grocery budget for a month? Two months? Three months? Above diapers? Above the laundromat? Above toilet paper? Dish soap? Above school costs for activities?

 

I think you probably meant to say "fifteenth priority below everything that is actually completely nessisary" -- which, obviously, gets zero dollars if/when the other 14 more important priorities are already running at zero dollars by the end of most pay periods.

 

And the "short term plan" is to spend food money for 3 to 5 days on camping equipment (meanwhile, no eating for anyone for 3 to 5 days at month's end!) and to continue to service that equipment for half the cost of dinner on a daily basis... All so that you can finally buy 2 days' food for the cost of 1.5 days' food and have the privilidge of cooking it up blandly and listening to your family complain about the taste for two days in a row. They can get better for $1. Then your spouse correctly identifies that you spent *more* money on ice and groceries for tonight than you would have put into burgers and sodas, or instant (processed, shelf-stable) meals. And there was cooking. And dishes.

 

I don't think that actually helps people without a hand up -- starting funds are important.

[Scarlett]

So, the "long term plan" involves making a multi-hundred dollar appliance purchase the "top priority" of the family. That "top priority" slot... Above paying rent? Above transporting self to work? Above transporting kids to school? Above buying necessary medications? Above the grocery budget for a month? Two months? Three months? Above diapers? Above the laundromat? Above toilet paper? Dish soap? Above school costs for activities?

 

I think you probably meant to say "fifteenth priority below everything that is actually completely nessisary" -- which, obviously, gets zero dollars if/when the other 14 more important priorities are already running at zero dollars by the end of most pay periods.

 

And the "short term plan" is to spend food money for 3 to 5 days on camping equipment (meanwhile, no eating for anyone for 3 to 5 days at month's end!) and to continue to service that equipment for half the cost of dinner on a daily basis... All so that you can finally buy 2 days' food for the cost of 1.5 days' food and have the privilidge of cooking it up blandly and listening to your family complain about the taste for two days in a row. They can get better for $1. Then your spouse correctly identifies that you spent *more* money on ice and groceries for tonight than you would have put into burgers and sodas, or instant (processed, shelf-stable) meals. And there was cooking. And dishes.

 

I don't think that actually helps people without a hand up -- starting funds are important.

I am not being intentionally unsympathetic. But some of the things you listed are just extreme poverty to the point they should be getting food stamps and wic and government housing. And these situations do need a case by case analysis which just doesn't happen because if there are no government funds for refrigerators then there certainly aren't any for life coaches.

 

And then there are people who refuse any and all good advice and always have an excuse why it won't work in their situation, sometimes getting out of poverty is REALLY difficult. I just don't buy that it is impossible.

[SKL]

I know fat people who are poor and fat people who are rich, and they will say they are fat because they are fond of fattening foods.

 

Except for one guy, who used to be very active until he severely injured his knee (still in his 20s), and then couldn't exercise for a long time.

 

I think we overdo both the shame game and the blame game.  So what if someone wants to eat food that they know is fattening?  Maybe if people didn't treat this as such a terrible thing, there would be less "need" to shift the blame to someone far away from the eater.

 

Also, psychologically, the more people think about what they shouldn't eat, the more they eat it.  Dieting makes people fat!  We need to have a better emotional relationship with food.  The current policies aren't helping that.

Edited March 31, 2016 by SKL

[SKL]

This guy had it together.

 

http://smile.amazon.com/Golden-Happy-Buddha-Laughing-Wealths/dp/B00KQ1B8E0/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1459439955&sr=8-3&keywords=laughing+buddha