Food, Politics, And Hidden Costs
I’ll keep food out of politics when politics stay out of my food. (nonhipster mom)
I came across this NYT food blog (hat tip to Kitchenbeard for the link.) The comments are the most instructive part of the piece, don’t skip them.
As someone who delights in (you might almost say, is obsessed with) food, I think about this issue a lot. Food accounts for a huge bit of my budget, and I’m supporting three other people. Right now things are pretty easy, because there’s a supermarket within walking distance, a Trader Joe’s ten minutes down the road, and a working car at my disposal. Not to mention a few bucks from the writing to keep us fed and warm.
Things were not always so good. I remember being poor and I suspect, the vagaries of the writing career being what it is, that I will again confront the problems of the hidden costs of food at some time. Those costs include time, transportation, storage. I’ve invested in a secondhand freezer (dude, twenty bucks for a working freezer? Plus delivery to my house? You bet your sweet bippy, neighbor!) and I have high-quality cookware that is going to last a while. Still, the two huge things necessary for “cheap” home cooking are transportation (got to get the food home) and time. The investment of energy is also a function of time. If you’ve worked for fifteen hours and spent two hours on a bus getting home, you’re not interested in cuisine. You’re interested in cramming something in your mouth and getting to sleep. There’s also the problem of keeping the electricity/gas on.
On the NYT piece above, the commenters seemed largely split between: Those who thought being poor automatically means you’re lazy and obese and so, your food problems are your own concern, quit whining; those who thought a year at college eating Ramen meant they were qualified to talk about what being poor really means; and those well-meaning souls who wanted to help the poor by suggesting they find the time to make beans and rice.
In the course of this I came across the Nonhipster Mom’s analysis of the whole thing.
I think we should have a real discussion about the politics of food in America’s poorest communities, but I think that when the focus of this discussion is about why America’s poorest communities aren’t growing their own microgreens or baking their own bread, we are missing the point so massively that it makes me sick. I want to talk about why there aren’t incentives for major grocery stores to move into neighborhoods where accessability to fresh, affordable food is a major roadblock. I want to talk about the correlation between food and education, especially early childhood education. I want to talk about why people whose food budget exceeds $1200 a month think it’s okay to tell someone who doesn’t own a car that they shouldn’t eat junk food and only does so because that person is stupid.
I want people to understand something about modern poverty: the solutions to this problem aren’t fixed by organics. They’re fixed by understanding what the problem really is.
The problem is the deck is stacked. The deck has ALWAYS been stacked in favor of the rich, and even in countries with social safety nets the game is still rigged. (Incidentally, we like to pretend America has a HUGE social safety net. Thanks to well-fed conservatives dismantling a ton of programs from Reagan’s time to today, we really don’t.) The rigging of the game happens in various ways–John Scalzi wrote about what it’s like to be wrenchingly poor, and Barbara Ehrenreich wrote about the hidden costs of being poor. There are hidden costs everywhere when you’re trying to live on $8-$10 an hour.
The problem is manifold, and it includes (but is not limited to):
* The idea we have that in America, if you’re poor it’s your own fault. Against-all-odds success stories do not prove this any more than spending a dollar guarantees you a lottery jackpot. We have (from most conservatives) the idea that the poor are all lazy, shiftless assholes and (from some liberals) a woolly-headed “Noble Poor” thing, not to mention (from other liberals) the idea that organic or microgardening is the solution. Sound bites like this don’t help, and our social habit of sound bites over reasoned, nuanced analysis doesn’t help either.
* A prohibition against safe, cheap, effective birth control for all women. Don’t even get me started on this. Plenty of people who go on and on railing against abortion and birth control don’t give a damn once the baby’s actually born and needs to be fed and raised. And then there’s the Mommy Tax.
* Decades of corporations and the top 1% of the wealthy systematically throwing money at their interests in our government, and getting concessions to make them richer and the rest of us poorer. Money well spent for them, reasonable to expect them to spend it, not so reasonable for the rest of us to roll over and let them buy the advantage.
* The idea that it’s filthy to organize for better working conditions, and that it’s just “natural free trade” when corporations outsource to countries where worker protection is even more dismal, because it improves their bottom line in the short term. Don’t even get me started about this, either.
* Complete and utter separation from, and ignorance about, how most of our food is produced.
* A collection of junk-food and huge agribusiness lobbies that throw a bunch of money at Congress to make things more comfortable for themselves, and consumers who, due to the above separation and ignorance, don’t see how they can begin to protest.
That’s a very short list. I could go on and on. I have ranted about this many a time in the privacy of my home. I’ve struggled with my weight and with the cheap junk that was sometimes all I had energy for, sometimes all I could “afford” because I didn’t have the time to cook cheaply. I’ve also been poor enough to have a bag of flour and that’s IT, to somehow feed myself and another person on. Right now I’m staying up late at night, going over and over the fact that I have the money now, but if I get sick and can’t work…or if someone in the house gets sick and we get medical bills…or, or, or. Right now this is only a passing fear, one I save against.
I’m goddamn lucky it’s not a reality. I know what it’s like to feel that fear every day, to have it gnaw at your vitals. I understand both that I am in a position of privilege now, and that I may not always be. I’m lucky to have decent cookware, access to the raw materials for cheap cooking, and a freezer. I’m lucky that I don’t have to make those choices. But that does not mean I think those who don’t have all those things are lazy, or stupid. I think the majority of people are doing the best they can and looking out for their own interests. The rich just have more money to throw at their interests, and in our world that speaks louder than altruism or justice most of the time.
But it doesn’t have to, and the solution starts with you and me.
Like I said, I could go on and on. But I’ll content myself with offering a couple of links about cooking on a budget, even though it largely doesn’t approach the problems I’ve been ranting about here. And a couple links about hidden costs:
* CookForGood. If you’ve got access to the raw materials, this is a good site about cooking cheaply.
* The BrokeAss Gourmet: Advice on how to stock a “pantry” and then make meals for under $20. The pantry-stocking section is great.
* The hidden cost of cheap food.
* Nickel and Dimed. Really, if you haven’t read this and you think poor people are “just lazy”…please, please consider reading.
Now I’m going to go hug my kids. Over and out.
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Tags: foodening, pennyworth advice, questions from the edge, shooting from the hip, we are not amused
June 1st, 2009 at 9:39 am
thanks for posting the article.
Food has an immense emotional value too, not just economical value. Aside from having 2 year old muffins in the freezer, I dont have food hoarding *issues*… grin.
Food still represents Love.
June 1st, 2009 at 10:47 am
Excellent post. I tried to read the comments in the NYT piece, but gave up after grinding my teeth down to stubs. And that is a Poor Healthcare Practice since nobody here has dental insurance.
Our bad years (teenagers with a baby and no family support) featured a lot of government cheese, sacks of rice, and those black and white tins of salmon. We got through it, mainly through luck and because our parents eventually forgave us for screwing up our futures. But I can’t take the well-meaning people who are convinced that the solution to poverty is so simple. That the poor are just big children who need to be guided toward the Light. That the ways the poor have found to cope with extremely difficult lives are hopelessly wrongheaded.
I’ve often wanted to survey others who’d survived periods of food insecurity. Do we all have the same weirdnesses about food? Do we have trouble passing up food abandoned on restaurant tables? Do we have the same health problems?
June 1st, 2009 at 11:26 am
Up until about 3 years ago when my husband’s job situation drastically changed, both of us had been poor for our entire lives (and we’re now in our mid 40′s) I can totally, completely relate to every single thing in your post and Scalzi’s. I’ve been there, I’ve done all that, and I know it as well as I know my own eyes in the mirror every morning.
I have food issues, definitely. Now that we’re ‘middle class’ I cannot sleep if the cupboards and freezer aren’t full. We could survive months on what I’ve stored. Every payday I go back and buy more to fill ‘er up again because you just never know when the money might dry up. We rarely throw out leftovers because they get eaten and I will make a single hunk of meat stretch through six or seven meals (fried rice, anyone?)
We were lucky because we always had a home, and I learned how to cook (and scrimp) when I was a kid. I think that a lot of credit for that goes to growing up rural as opposed to urban, and always having extended family nearby. Grandparents can teach a lot when your parents work multiple jobs just to keep the lights on.
Thanks for the post. {{hugg}}
June 1st, 2009 at 12:14 pm
This is an excellent, intelligent, and very thoughtful post.
J.C. and I have been so poor at times that after paying the rent, there wasn’t much left. During our undergraduate college years were the hardest.
And I absolutely agree about transportation. We had our car break down one winter during this time period (in Northern Idaho), and we could not afford to have it fixed and there was no grocery store within walking distance.
I do not think people can fully understand what this situation is like unless they’ve faced it.
I used to bring a calculator with me to the grocery store so that I could add up what I put in the cart and make sure I was not going over the money I had in my wallet.
Like the woman who posted above me, I too was lucky to grow up rural, so I learned how to cook early, and that has always been helpful.
Now . . . I never even think about what I’m throwing in the grocery cart as long as it’s on my list. But my heart goes out to anyone who has to face the “food or rent” choice.
June 1st, 2009 at 3:35 pm
Conflating ‘poor’ with ‘lazy, undeserving and low class’ is my experience a peculiarly American thing. When I was younger I believed in America, the free land of opportunity and ‘The Constitution’ and I railed at the iniquity of the monarchy and the shallow facileness of social judgements made on accents and behaviourisms.
However, one of the things I did while travelling, was work as a summer camp counsellor for three years. (The travelling had to be paid for – they pay your ticket over and you work it off over the summer.) It was based in the Blue Ridge mountains in WV. Beautiful, beautiful country, but so poor. I’d lived in a crappy inner city and had council housing all around me and I’d never seen anything like it.
I had to bite my knuckles till they bled one evening in order not to rip up at one girl with teeth that had cost her family in excess of $10,000, as she extolled the virtues of a market based health care system and made jokes about taxes and waiting lines in British hospitals, comparing them to her health care provider who had recently seen her within fifteen minutes.
Why? Because earlier that day one of the camp ‘background’ staff (god forbid the kids see the washer-uppers) was struggling with a bag of rubbish and I’d helped her carry it to the dumpster. As we heaved it up, I saw why she was struggling – there was an obvious badly healed break in her wrist. She caught me looking and shrugged – told me that her family hadn’t insurance and that they hadn’t qualified for Medicaid either.
America does too have a class system, and it’s based on the almighty dollar. I blame the petroleum lobby myself.
June 2nd, 2009 at 2:00 pm
The game is fixed against poor people when it comes to food.
Drewnowski concluded that the rules of the food game in America are organized in such a way that if you are eating on a budget, the most rational economic strategy is to eat badly — and get fat.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/22/magazine/22wwlnlede.t.html
Not only are the unhealthy things cheaper, but most lower income people don’t live near grocery stores and buy at the corner market, where a loaf of bread costs 2 to 3 times what it does in a middle class supermarket.
And if you do live near a supermarket in a lower income part of town, the prices are higher than they are in the suburbs because the cost of doing business in that part of town pushes up the prices as well.
I’m lucky enough to live in the place where 70% of the food in the country is grown, so I spend about $20 a week on fresh, organic fruits and veggies because I have the ability to go right to the farmer’s stalls.
I read a lot of Michael Pollan’s stuff since I picked up the Omnivore’s Dilemma in an airport and completely changed my eating habits.
June 3rd, 2009 at 12:06 pm
Sorry, forgot to link to Michael Pollan’s site so you can read all of his articles. The man is brillant. He has done a lot of research and suggests a lot of good ideas.
http://www.michaelpollan.com/write.php