> The food available to them, in both grocery stores and restaurants, is of generally poor quality. Alice Waters, the famous Berkeley chef and fresh-food guru, claims that anyone can eat good food, anywhere in the country. I’d like to see her do this while living in Ely, Nevada, with a crappy job and not enough money. There is one grocery store, and what is available in it won’t tickle Alice’s palate. We did see organic red peppers in the produce section; they were $6.99 apiece. What would you do if you were a mother with three kids and a husband---feed the family red peppers or the forty-four servings of Kraft macaroni and cheese she could buy for the price of a single pepper? There is a good chance that, given the poor education she likely endured, she might not know how to shop efficiently by comparing unit prices. She might not know which ingredients in what she buys are good for her and which are not. She and her family have been subjected to such massive amounts of advertising for fast food (and this is what is probably served in the school cafeterias) that it is not surprising that they eat many meals at McDonalds and Taco Bell.
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One criticism: Ely, Nevada, AFAIK, is not in a significant agricultural region. Poor people in the Midwest have more options.
A criticism of the Alice Waters crowd: It's expensive to start a garden or operate one every year. You have expenses that add up for seeds, starts, soil, fencing, tools, water and so on. I've been gardening in Kansas City for years and this year have been helping with two other gardens. Our weather is so extreme here that anything you grow in the garden supplements what you buy from the stores.
I was talking recently to a friend who works for the state and who works with many poor people. My friend tells me that many of these people are totally ignorant of where food comes from. These are adults and they don't understand that meat comes from animals and vegetables come from plants. Wouldn't be surprised if some of them don't know about vegetables, given that you can eat a totally processed diet and never eat a regular vegetable or fruit.
> U.S. capitalism is vicious and inhumane. It is the model of a dog-eat-dog world, nasty and brutish. It produces physically and mentally unhealthy human beings. No wonder we are fat. As the country enters a prolonged period of economic and political stagnation, look for matters to get worse."
I'm always trying to get my brain around the fact that so many leftists and anti-capitalists out there spend so much time sitting on their hands. Is this because of "analysis paralysis"? Smugness that we have the right answers and believe that nothing can be done? Or are we like many of these people, simply struggling for survival. It's kind of hard to be involved with any kind of activism if you are working several jobs or are unemployed, looking for work and money.
Chuck