Comments on: But Would You Eat It?

By: Bright Wings

Bright Wings — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 07:56:35 +0000

One of the benefits of education is the ability to research ways of providing nutritious, tasty, inexpensive food.

For instance, I can make a delicious, nutritionally balanced soup with red lentils ($2.50), a carrot or two, maybe some pumpkin or potato, and source the rest from garden weeds – onion weed, chickweed, puha, nettles, dandelions, etc.

I know I can do it because I’ve spent a lifetime extending my culinary boundaries because I can read recipe books and can grow and identify garden plants – and weeds.

Because I’m educated I know many of the claims made in food advertising are misleading. There are entire aisles in the supermarket I don’t go near – the soft drink, potato chip and processed food aisles – for example. I know they are laden with sugar and sodium, and various other additives, which are likely to have serious health impacts.

Because I’m educated I can make homemade pizza that is far better than anything I could buy at one of the pizza chains. I can make KFC-type chicken with minimal salt and fat, and no sugar, for a fraction of the cost of the bought variety.

If I had no recipe books I know I could borrow some from the library.

If my only source of information was television I might well conclude that my life might indeed be better if I took advantage of the family pack of KFC for only $29.95 and I would indeed be cool if I washed it down with a 2 litre bottle of Coke.

Each week I read the supermarket catalogues and struggle to find basic nutritious food among all the softdrink, processed food, biscuits and booze which the supermarkets need you to buy to make money. The top selling item in supermarkets is softdrink.

Local DHB staff say they have to work hard to convince patients presenting with various preventable disorders that they need to stop drink 3 x 2 litre bottles of softdrink per day.

I worked briefly for a high school in a lower decile area in the days before they tried to improve school canteen menus. Children with the greatest learning and behavioural difficulties seemed to have endless money to spend on sweets and soft drink at morning break. Late morning, their blood sugar having dived through the floor, their behaviour presented huge problems for teachers and prevented other students from learning. For many of them the parents simply didn’t know how to parent.

Is it poor literacy, a poor grasp, as you say, of short term pain for long term gain (it’s benefit day so we’ll all go to MacDonalds and not think there’ll be no money for food for the rest of the week), or a mindset that says life is so dreadful we might as well live for the moment?

And it isn’t just beneficiaries. There are plenty of employed people eating like this as well.
Bright Wings´s last blog ..Fine performance ends annual organ music series

By: Sinner

Sinner — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 07:23:00 +0000

I think that the fortunate should count their blessings and not look down upon those less fortunateWhich part of “NZ needs change its attitude if it is to work its way back up to being an independent country” don’t you understand?
The biggest problem here is clearly the benefit and Dole. Stop that and the problem goes away. Frankly the idea that we need to stop the poor starving is one of the biggest attitude problems NZ has. In Singapore you work or you starve in the gutter. In NZ you just go on a benefit. that single fact explains most of the economic differences between Singapore and NZ over the last 50 years!

By: nickle

nickle — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 22:54:18 +0000

It is also interesting when you see programmes on obese people who will eat a lot of takeaways, but moan about a weeks worth of healthy groceries costing $200 – “It’s too expensive to eat healthy”. But they appear to worry more about the amount of money changing hands in a single transaction, instead of calculating how much all those pies cost over a week. A lot of these people really do need some education in budgeting, and their perceptions.

An eye-opener for me many years ago, was working in KFC and benefit days were set in stone, DPB day every 2nd Tuesday, and Dole every Thursday – we had to roster extra staff those days. A lot of the people coming in would fit the stereotypes, and would spend a small fortune on that one meal ‘treat’. When you’re on the breadline, you need to apportion your treats appropriately, blowing 10% of your income on one meal is ridiculous. Treats don’t need a monetary value attached, my kids love a picnic, or going to the beach.

Not having seen foodstamps in action, I quite like the idea of them. It comes across as incredibly interfering, but really if you’re relying on handouts, should we not ensure that you meet your needs before your wants?

By: andrei

andrei — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 22:07:51 +0000

The problem, well described in journals, is the lack of ability to forgo short-term pleasure for long-term gain. It should be no surprise that this (although present in higher wage earners to some extent) is endemic in the poorer population.

This is where I have a real problem – it is all well and good for well heeled academics to come to this conclusion as they fly to conferences business class and discuss these matters over a sumptuous meals accompanied with fine wines.

Perhaps the poor live lives devoid of many opportunities for “pleasure” and take what little crumbs they may when the opportunity presents.

Ironically, I find that view strangely academic and far removed from reality. Poverty is nowhere near as desperate and dull as that.

By: MacDoctor

MacDoctor — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 20:12:22 +0000

Andrei: Or we could go down the poor pig out on big macs route to explain it.

This is a bit simplistic, Andrei. I have purposefully not tried to explain away the poverty/obesity link with a silly “big mac” observation. The problem, well described in journals, is the lack of ability to forgo short-term pleasure for long-term gain. It should be no surprise that this (although present in higher wage earners to some extent) is endemic in the poorer population. This is one of the major reasons why they are poor. Obesity is far more strongly linked to this than any other factor.