The new Puritans: Food Bullies . . .

@Cycloptichorn,

Cycloptichorn wrote:

The fact that you can get unhealthy **** for cheap shouldn't be a reason to get unhealthy ****!

There's another dynamic in operation here, too. Because healthy eating is now trendy, the cost of many basic foods has just gotten ridiculous. There's a weekly farmer's market (so-called) in just about every one of the parks around here (different days of the week). You go there, and the prices make it highway robbery without the gun. Just across the street from the East Lynn Park where we sometimes visit the farmer's market there's a Chinese green grocer (the Chinese have bought up or newly opened just about every green grocer you see) who sells many of the same fruits and vegetables for half the price or less.

When you add to that that grocery store prices are already higher in poor neighborhoods than they are in other neighborhoods, and the cost of decent nuitrition becomes prohibitive for poor folks. If you add to that crappy school lunches because the school district has contracted it and met guidelines, so go f*** yourself, and it's a no win situation for the people who need good nuitrion the most.

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@wayne,

Making pasta is a snap, and so is making bread, for which you don't need a machine. I was raised on homemade bread--if i took a lunch to school, i knew were the bread came from (my grandmother), where the bologna or ham came from (our next door neighbor was the butcher), the milk came off the milk train, the fruit we picked ourselves at home or in the woods. It was all good. When i was very little, we got half pints of milk (in little glass bottles exactly like the quart and half-gallon bottles then sold in the stores) every day at school for a penny. There was universal complaint when they raised the price to two cents. Later on, when the school opened a cafetria, we knew all the "lunch ladies," and we already knew whether or not we liked their cooking. Times have changed considerably. We got healthy food because everybody got healthy food--you grew it yourself or you knew the people who did, you knew the butcher, you went fishing in ponds or creeks you trusted--hell, when i was a kid, the milk was so fresh that it tasted different in the Spring when the new grass came up. Different world.

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@Setanta,

Despite the fact that Im almost as old as the above participant, my outlook is forward and I dont dwell on subjects that portend the sunrize of my geezerhood.
Poor ole set, he used to be interesting before he embraced Walter Brennan movies .

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@Mame,

What makes people obese? I think lack of exercise is the main reason.
.
http://www.ncsl.org/default.aspx?tabid=14367

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@farmerman,

You gotta a real sourpuss problem, old man . . . if you don't like what i post, don't read it. It's really kind of pathetic how you react . . .

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@Setanta,

providing decent food for food banks is a big problem, for storage and convenience they want packaged supplies, this means a lot of tinned items, when you start comparing you see that the cheapest items have the highest sodium, no name beans are around 30% higher in sodium than name brands (President's Choice versus Heinz) and tinned pasta sauce (no name or name brand) can be as much as twice the sodium of brands in jars (of course the food bank tries to discourage jars because of breakage), so you try to do some good but you feel bad for possibly contributing to a potential health problem

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@Setanta,

Quote:

You gotta a real sourpuss problem, old man . . . if you don't like what i post, don't read it. It's really kind of pathetic how you react .

Oh, and I forgot to add how you splash a room with sunshine when you communicate in your eternally cheerful manner.

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@djjd62,

Precisely because of this kind of problem, the group Second Harvest was founded. This is from the "About Us" page of their web site:

Quote:

INA ANDRE AND JOAN CLAYTON, two Toronto women, founded Second Harvest in 1985 as a way to address the growing problem of hunger in Toronto. All they had was a hatchback and a vision - that nobody in our community need ever go hungry.

From these humble beginnings, collecting and delivering fresh food that would otherwise go to waste from the city's restaurants and small grocery stores to shelters across the city, Second Harvest has grown to provide enough fresh and frozen foods for over 16,000 meals every day.

Unlike a food bank, we deal primarily with fruits, vegetables, dairy products, frozen foods and meats. We collect this perishable food and distribute it to over 200 social service agencies in Toronto.

Each morning seven refrigerated trucks leave our Downsview warehouse and head to the four corners of the city, picking up high-quality, perishable foods that would otherwise go to waste. Our food donors include grocery stores, food manufacturers and distributors.

Second Harvest drivers pick up this fresh food and transport it within hours to the
front lines of hunger - to community centres, shelters, breakfast programs and drop-in centres. These social service agencies provide food to children in need, seniors on fixed incomes, women fleeing domestic abuse, homeless people, psychiatric patients and thousands of others who have fallen on hard times.

Second Harvest is a registered, Canadian charity that relies on donations from foundations, corporations and people like you. We don't receive ongoing funding from the government or United Way. And though we maintain a small, efficient paid staff that manages our daily operations, Second Harvest is led by a volunteer Board of Directors and supported by hundreds of dedicated volunteers.

I don't remember what it was called, but there was a similar group in Columbus, Ohio which was founded in the late 1980s, which is when i worked at a family shelter in the "charity industry." There was some embarrassment as a reporter from one of the local television stations began looking into the nutritional quality of some of the food being donated by restaurants--it was not always as healthy as one might assume from such a fresh food source.

Individuals can matter, too. There was a woman, then in her 60s, who drove her station wagon around from one supermarket to the other in Columbus, and picked up all the bread which they would otherwise have thrown out that day. She then delivered it to Faith Mission, the Open Shelter, our family shelter and the many, many churchs which provided meals each day. She worked hard, too. When she had emptied her station wagon, she went right back on the road. She once told me that she felt her day had not been used to its full potential if she hadn't visited every chain supermarket in Franklin County, which meand more than one hundred stores. She was literally at it from sun to sun.

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When I worked at the deli in Safeway, we threw out mountains of food every day; we were not allowed to give it to anybody or sell it at a discount, for fear of someone getting ill and suing. What a waste!

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@Mame,

Product liability is something i hadn't thought about. I wonder how that works for Second Harvest.

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@Setanta,

One supermarket I shop at gives all of their unsold fresh baked rolls and bagels, as well as their unsold prepared deli salads and prepared deli food items, and unsold fresh fish fillets and perishable bakery cakes to Second Harvest every day. The soup kitchens can use the items fairly immediately, so they don't need things packed for storage, the way the food pantries do. This supermarket is donating excess perishable food that just wasn't sold during the course of a day to their regular customers, so I'm not sure they worry about any sort of extra liability just from donating the food, and probably neither does Second Harvest because this is a reliable source.
It gives me more confidence when I shop in this store because I know that the items in certain departments are absolutely fresh, and haven't been standing around for days.

As for the food bullies...I've always ignored the food trends, like the low carb craze when the Atkins diet was popular, and I mainly try to eat a reasonably low saturated fat, well balanced diet, with as many fresh fruits and vegetables as possible, and whatever else tempts me, in moderation. I don't really deny myself anything, but I watch how much, and how often, I'll consume certain things. It works for me.

I am thankful to the food bullies who got better nutritional labeling on prepackaged supermarket items, and who got trans-fats eliminated from most of those items. I also appreciate nutritional info in restaurants. I'm perfectly willing to make my own choices, as long as I have the info I need to make those choices.

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@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

Product liability is something i hadn't thought about. I wonder how that works for Second Harvest.

I used to do a lot of volunteer work with a local theatre. When we had our fund-raising galas, we always ordered too much food. We tried to donate what was left to Second Harvest many times. They wouldn't accept the donations unless we could tell them in advance what we'd be donating. Well, since we didn't know what the patrons were going to turn their noses up at on a particular night, we never could donate anything to them.

We'd end up taking a dozen pizzas or whatever out to the nearest park where we knew the street fellas hung-out at night. Not the most effective way of sharing the leftovers but no other choices out there that we could find.

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@firefly,

I agree that the anti-carb thing seems to be dying off . . . and that's a good thing. What got me started were two ads, one on the radio and one online, and those were anti-gluten ads. The trans fat thing is a perfect example of why the bandwagons are so goofy. The transfats were actually introduced to replace hydrogenated vegetable fats (think Crisco, etc.) and on a claim that what we now condemn as trans fats were healthier than the saturated fats one gets in foods such a butter.

So yea, i'm glad that people pay attention to these things--but i have two reservations. One is that some of this is a rush to cater to a perceived market (such as the recent no carb craze) and the other is that replacing one product with another for reasons of health may evetually lead to another case of an unhealthy product (such as replacing hydrogenated vegetable fats or naturally occuring saturated fats with trans fats).

I guess my objection is the rush to do this or that, and the hype generated by the commercial market.

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"Food bullies?"

What is being imposed here?

I think Cyclo said it best, providing information to the consumer is what's important. They can choose to do anything or nothing with that information. I believe a person has a right to put whatever they like into their own body, but without product information it's really just defending someone else's privilege to put what they want into your body.

In other words, you have a right to drink poison, but you really only have that right if you're aware that it is poison.

I don't eat animals or animal products. This is my choice, and I've not imposed it on anyone. Vegans aren't food nazi's *nudges greenwitch*. I'm "bullied" more about not eating meat, than I've ever seen the other way. When it's "Chicken Day" at work (people order out on Fridays to get sesame chicken), I can not make it through the day without someone giving me **** about simply not eating meat. Perhaps someone will wave a fork around in my face or make their food talk (or cluck). I'm not amused, but if I say anything, then instantly I'm some "preachy" vegan. I'm sure their is someone at my workplace that finds me a "food nazi" because I dare to eat a veggie sandwich on Fridays, or because I request that one (out of the many) dish at the annual holiday party be vegan. Hell, just don't put the butter in the mashed potatoes. People can add it later.

If you don't want gluten-free pasta, don't get it. You'll have options. If you do want (or need due to allergies or diabetic concerns) gluten-free pasta, do get it. IF YOU CAN. The limited market and availability of these products hardly makes for food bullying on the large and robust market for the status quo.

Finding disgust or taking offense that these products exist is childish.

A
R
T

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@failures art,

Quote:

"Food bullies?"

What is being imposed here

We can start with the agitators who have bullied the food companies into lowering the amount of salt in canned and frozen food. This has already started, and the salt levels will drop over the next five years as they think they can do this slowly and our tastes will adjust. I have no interest in adjusting to low flavor food, I have seen more than enough of that in restaurants over the last few years to know that I am not interested.

There is of course the anti Foie Gras and anti trans fats crusades, and before anyone gets all militant about how we know trans fats are bad for us I remind you that we were told the same thing about saturated fat and dairy fat, and that this information is now iffy at best. The truth is that we have hardly the first damn clue about human metabolism ...how food impacts our sugar and cholesterol levels and what promotes health. I saw a study a few months ago that showed that tightly regulating cholesterol with drugs has zero positive impact on health, and there was recently another one that showed the same thing re blood sugar regulation with diabetes. What is bad for us, and how much of it we need to make it bad for us we really don't know, though their are loud claims to the contrary. Reading the latest health advice is not much better than getting advise on what we should do tomorrow from a psychic....it might be good advise, but dont count on it.

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Hell, just don't put the butter in the mashed potatoes. People can add it later.

Um No...make it right, and those who have weak constitutions or who are otherwise overly picky should be warned so that they have the opportunity to dine with informed consent. I am not interested in ruining food, nor in facilitating hypochondriacs.

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@hawkeye10,

So two people want corn and mashed potatoes. One wants the corn with salt and the mashed potatoes with butter. You can add butter and salt as desired, you cannot subtract them. By your logic, one person can be happy. By mine, both can.

It's not about making things "right" or being a hypochondriac. How about just being considerate and inclusive where we can be?

A
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@hawkeye10,

The anti-Fois Gras crusade has little to do with the fact that it's bad for you and a lot to do with the fact that it's a horrible way to treat an animal before you eat it.

Cycloptichorn

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@Cycloptichorn,

Quote:

The anti-Fois Gras crusade has little to do with the fact that it's bad for you and a lot to do with the fact that it's a horrible way to treat an animal before you eat it.

Unless you can show that the animal suffers you have no case, as the argument that it is not natural goes no where, as neither is the raising of any animals for for and neither is the farming of crops. Those who produce fois gras claim that the animal suffers not at all. My take is that if you have an ethical problem with fois gras then dont eat it, but your right to object ends at your stomach most of the time. We have a moral duty to raise our food in the most hurt free way we know how, but we need to eat, and there are a lot of us to feed......I am not interested in any changes that will greatly increase cost of production or that will limit our choices on what we have available. Humans come first.

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@hawkeye10,

hawkeye10 wrote:

My take is that if you have an ethical problem with fois gras then dont eat it, but your right to object ends at your stomach most of the time.

hawkeye10 wrote:

Humans come first.

Given how much feed, water, and other resources it takes to sustain your diet, does your choice to eat things end when it impacts the hungry of the world? Do humans still come first? There are a lot of cattle fed and watered in place of starving and thirsty people in the world.

Does your objection end when it impacts other's stomachs? I think you're right that humans should come first, and there are many human reasons why commercial farming is bad, namely resource management and the environment. You're welcome to make an argument why you should be afforded such luxury and abundance while others have empty stomachs, but don't preach that you believe "humans come first."

A
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@failures art,

Quote:

So two people want corn and mashed potatoes. One wants the corn with salt and the mashed potatoes with butter. You can add butter and salt as desired, you cannot subtract them. By your logic, one person can be happy. By mine, both can

On corn the salt and butter can be added after with no negative effects and with ease...with potatoes if you try to mash them with out fat the starch does very unappealing things, then when you add butter after the fact you can never get back to what you should have had in quality.

With salt often you can add it at the table and not suffer ill effect, but not always. With fats rarely can you add them at the end without ill effects. And it is rude to expect the diner to fix what the cook did not do..

Quote:

How about just being considerate and inclusive where we can be?

I am considerate also of what the majority wants, I want to bring the most good I can to the greatest number of people. I have no desire to ruin all that by catering to picky few. I see nothing wrong with taking preference in mind when picking a menu, or of sometimes making two versions of something, or on some things going light on the salt and having very good salts at the table so people can add their own....I do however have a big problem with making mashed potatoes with no butter...it will never happen when I am the cook..

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The new Puritans: Food Bullies . . .

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