Yowza! This hurts!

[keithf 2]

Wasa - you're on! I just saw a divine recipe for duck in a port and orange sauce surrounded by pitted cherries on the Tour de France - any chance? But a bowl of lentils would be fine....

That.. sounds.. really.. good. :frown:~~~

Can't wait until I get back on solids. I'm getting plenty of different flavors, but I want texture back in my life.

[LindaD 3]

I beg to differ about poverty and its association with low-nutrition foods.

I was a teen mother and I spend a few years under the poverty line. I had two children and was pulling a single mother gig. I worked full time, didn't have my own vehicle for a period, etc.

I absolutely could not buy foods that would go to waste (ie fresh fruits and vegetables). The only market I could walk to was a Seven-Eleven convenience store (where price inflation is the norm). When I did get to the bigger market, I had to stock up on items that would go far - last long, cost little. We ate a lot of ramen Soup, pot pies, mac-n-cheese, Cereal, Peanut Butter and jelly (often on crackers as they were more durable than bread).

There is an UNDENIABLE association between poverty and low-nutrition.

It's not just because someone is too stupid or too lazy. In my case, I was doing it all alone with 2 kids, a full time job (6 days a week) and no vehicle. I was merely making the best decisions I could to get by. Fruits and vegetables were a BAD decision when I couldn't get to the market regularly and they would be likely to go bad.

We shouldn't over simplify it and act as if the poor are just lazy idiots - they have some very REAL challenges in the area of access to places to acquire "good" food and the costs the surround them. I buy TONS of fresh stuff now and to act as if it's not more expensive is an exercise of denial - at least in the US. Prices don't drop at the close of the market. If the items get over-ripe, they toss them in the rubbish and put new ones out but the price doesn't change - all of that is factored into the costs we pay. I could buy 20 packages of ramen or 8 pot pies for the same price I'd pay for a few bananas AND I wouldn't have to worry about loss due to spoilage on the ramen and pot pies.

[Jachut 487]

Ok Linda, I definitely agree there IS a link between poverty and poor nutrition but I think its for a combination of both what I said and what you said. I didnt mean to imply my simplistic comments were the entire answer.

but let me ask you this. How difficult would it have been to have bought a load of split peas - any supermarket, not a strange item at all - and a ham hock and made a pot of pea and ham Soup instead of noodles? Takes very little time, freezes well. I dont have a chest freezer, just the freezer at the top of my fridge, surely you had that? How difficult is it to save the ends and peelings of your fresh vegies and boil them up to make stock for your Soups? How expensive is plain, unprocessed oatmeal compared to mac and cheese? How difficult is it to prepare compared to mac and cheese?

Dont mix up lack of time from being a single parent with 2 children and poverty - that's a problem women of all socioeconomic levels face and many deal with it in the same ways - convenience foods. Poverty compounds that by restricting choices.

If you absolutely didnt have access to those foods, then that's really sad - that's why its not an entirely individual responsibility but also a policy one. Yet, if you could afford to pay the exorbitant prices of a 7-11, surely it would have been possible to travel by public transport to a supermarket where you had better choices.

Nobody is suggesting the poor should all be pulling their fingers out and eating mangoes and pineapple and fresh berries instead of crap food. But good food can be extremely cheap if you know how to buy it and what to do with it. I also dont mean to sound superior or moralistic about it, my main experience with not being exactly flush is being a student in share accommodation - after paying my rent, petrol, student fees etc, I used to have about $30 a week for food and I coped exactly the same way you did and by buying exactly the same sorts of foods. I wouldnt have known what to do with a haricot bean if it bit me on the bum. I didnt really care, I wasnt interested in spending my time cooking. The main difference for me is that was choice - i could have been living at home in comfort with my parents, I wanted the "experience". As it was I turned up on their doorstep a couple of times a week for a good meal.

My point is not to call anyone stupid, but more to make the observation that good cheap food is out there - but its not the same thing as having the money to buy loads of fresh food which is undeniably more expensive. Knowing how to access and use those sorts of foods is what takes education - needing access to information is not the same thing as stupid. Stupid is when you know better, could do better and make bad choices anyway.

Edited July 13, 2009 by Jachut

[LindaD 3]

I couldn't afford the exorbitant prices of 7-11 :lol but sometimes it's all I could get to. I got home from work at 6PM and the kids needed to go to bed by 8. If I had tried to take them with me on public transportation, it would have meant, what, giving up baths? Having NO down-time at all? A grocery trip with 2 young children in the dark of the evening on public transportation in the city where I've already compromised on where to live so I could afford the rent... Hmmm... Not a good idea.

Plus, as I said, I was a teen mother. I was young and certainly had not yet acquired a whole lot of wisdom on the ins and outs of cooking and nutrition. This - ignorance - is another thing highly associated with poverty. Not stupidity, but ignorance. I didn't have a subscription to Good Housekeeping nor time to read it.

It's all sort of inter-dependent. Shortage of time, shortage of money, shortage of knowledge, shortage of means/mode to seek better options. I'm quite sure my salvation was that I had grown up middle-class and I had the education of my childhood, which meant I always knew what I was striving for. Some people don't even have THAT.

No, I wasn't boiling up leftover veggies to make and freeze Soup. Perhaps I should have been. Being poor and trying to make ends me takes all one's energy. Something has to give, and sometimes corners are cut in certain areas just to get through the day.

Sure, the poor SHOULD do better, take the bus with the kids to buy the veggies and make the soup and freeze it. Perhaps they should use birth control better and finish school and take jobs with advancement instead of jobs close to home and and and....

I hear what you're saying. I don't mean to make excuses for poor choices (mine or others) but it's just easier to armchair quarterback it (as we say in the States) than to do it all right when you're in the thick of it.

I appreciate everyday that I'm no longer in such dire circumstances, but I also remember and appreciate the difficulty of them. (And lest I be viewed as over-dramatic, my 'dire' circumstances were not nearly so dire as those of others, nor did I have to endure them for very long compared to the many years others do... I was lucky, relatively speaking. My poverty was mild and fairly short-lived. I can't imagine how much harder it would be to live that year after year. It must stuck the hope and will to do better right out of you...)

[Jachut 487]

I'm talking about it more in terms of the type of support and education that needs to be out there tackling this problem, not about what people SHOULD do. I am only this resourceful with food and nutrition after years of not poverty but wanting to be able to stay at home with my kids - which was very hard on one income in the earlier days, and to have money for fun things, not groceries. I didnt know these types of things, I've had to learn them. I've learned to do big cookups once or twice a month in preparation for busy times - I have 3 weeks teaching round starting next week, and yep, there's 3 weeks of healthy dinners in the freezer. Preparation, effort, that's mainly what it is but its sometimes hard to make the choice to expend it in the face of tiredness, stress and pressure.

My point is not "you should have done better" at all, that would be unforgiveably rude and judgemental, its more how can we as a society gain this type of knowledge and provide people with the support to be able to change their choices in this way?

[LindaD 3]

I agree that education is the answer. When you know better, you do better. When you learn, doors open in your mind and then you know how to go open doors in your life, hopefully.

When you get down to core nutritional philosophy, though, I still don't believe we have a full consensus on what the right answer is. So many approaches look to maximize the nutritional potential of what we take in without really considering how well it satiates the appetite. Until we can help people quiet the roaring lion inside (and no amount of carrots will do THAT), they will struggle to follow an eating plan that leaves them constantly wanting.

This part is less about education, I think, and more about trying to find your way through a dark maze with many dead ends and a lot of frustration. At least that's what it has been for me.

[slimmap 1]

LindaD, I know a bit about walking through dark mazes and many frustrating dead ends. It sucked! Are you finding your way? Is there any "light"? Let me know because I have been there. I couldn'teven think further than just what needs to be done right now. I couldn't even deal with what comes next until next is here and then I dealt with it. I am hoping that things are a little better now? Do you have anybody who can help out even a little ?

[LindaD 3]

I'm finding my way. I feel like I have had the good fortune to have access to a short-cut map that many do not have. It doesn't mean I don't have to do the work to get through the maze, just that I have a much better chance of success than I did before.

Things are great for me. I believe there is WAY too much misinformation out there and I worry for other people who continue to struggle without the benefit of this tool that I have.

I wish that those who lead us in this area were more forthcoming with the truth - including all of the things they DON'T know and are just guessing on - rather than being driven by ego and money and patents and grants and such. I wish we could trust our government and research institutions on the topic of obesity and nutrition. I wish there wasn't so much crap information out there.

[slimmap 1]

I know. It is hard when we "grow up" and find out that everything isn't as we believed it to be. Unfortunately, most bureaucracies are driven by the "almighty dollar", which wouldn't be so bad if it didn't mean that people get hurt. I guess all we can do is research, research, research. Whatever it is that we need to know about, research. Access to the internet can be had for free at the local library. I don't believe a lot of what I read and hear until I have checked it out. Ask questions. Even then there isn't any guarantee that I have the "absolute truth". But at least I have given it the best I have. Also, sometimes we just have to listen to what our gut feeling, or instinct tells us.