Healthy Groceries in this country are reserved for the middle and upper class. The rest of us survive however we can.
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Americans are known the world over for eating to excess. Foreigners freak at the potions served in restaurants. At the same time our nation of fatties is obsessed with organic, raw, and none processed food. We are a culinary nutrition nightmare. Upper class women in our country maintain healthy and attractive bodies by diets, gyms, and surgery. We have national campaigns to get kids to move and grow are own,’ healthy food’. There are myriad of issues that Americans have with food are enormous and I will not tackle it here.
I am writing from my own perspective as a poor white fat middle aged women. I am writing from the perspective of a parent.
Rice is a staple of American poor folk , not just those in third world countries.
Being Poor and Poor Diet
My youngest son who just went away to college has pronounced food anxiety. I gave it to him. He is going to a school that provides housing but no food plan. His only employment is part time less than ten hours a week at a Subway he can walk to. He has to pay his own internet to have the access to use his computer to do school work. I stocked him up on food when he moved in with his roommates. The other parents and I decided that they could share food and so we got them different things. They had meat, fruit, vegetables, and dairy for the first few weeks of school.
I do not by any means have a livable income so stocking him up left my cupboards bare. I have an older son who contributes to household expenses while living at home. He works two jobs, and most goes to support his car so that he can go to work and school.
To make my tale short, my 20 year old son away at school wanted to move into his Grandmother. She lives a several miles away from where he goes to school. She feeds him when she can afford to pick him up. The problem, he would have to have a car and full time job to support the car, in order to live there. His anxiety about eating Ramen noodles to survive college is bound up in his childhood food anxiety.
Sodium and Carbs Are Us
He grew up eating what we called cheese and peas. It was rice of any sort, cheese food, and frozen peas. It was what I could afford when I could not have a garden. Sometimes meat made it into the mix. When there was money there was meat and real dairy. I have moved a lot over the years Being able having a garden when I could helped. Other wise my kids were raised on fattening processed food. Another old stand by was generic chucky soup on biscuits. My kids learned to like mashed turnips, because they were easy to grow. Sweet potatoes fries were made, and called Halloween fries. When there was money I baked. There were sweets. Still a lot of times there was nothing.
I got in discussion with my no processed food will pass my mouth sister. She and her family have dealt with a lot of cancer so I do not blame her. They have always been healthy and mostly vegetarian. She does not seem to grasp it,. Poor folks buy boxed dinners and canned meats from Aldi and not organic staples from Wholefoods. Prepackaged is usually cheaper then trying to make a casserole from scratch. It however, is not cheaper if you grow your own vegetables’. You just use pasta or rice and some sort of sauce. I usually did not have enough homegrown vegetables to last long. Many times we lived in apartments where you were not allowed to garden. Another point being poor means moving a lot to find work or just someplace you can afford. Urban gardening is great but it will not solve the nutritional food problem for the always moving poor.
My kids were healthy and not fat growing up because once free network TV was gone, we could not afford cable. They played outside and did sports that were cheap or free. The parks offered programs that kept them moving. I gave them cheap generic children’s vitamins. They survived. They however, now always fear the lack of food.
Gardening helps poor folk eat better , but it is not a solution.
The Attitude toward Food Only Economic Justice Cures
They are overweight now, because t too many carbohydrates set them up for to have metabolisms that never functioned the way it should. They do not have money to go on the low carb organic vegetable juicer detox diet food. . They can not even eat healthy by the old four food groups’ category. In this country health based on a healthy diet or maintained by a healthy diet is a privilege of wealth.
Lots of the recipes I make and post are from when I have the money to splurge. I try to be conscious of nutritional value. Still, it never will cease to amaze me in a house where there usually is not much how I can be fat.
I have never canned. I think it is time to learn. I was at a loss at what to do with all my tomatoes. My neighbors actually started making faces when I showed up with more free tomatoes at their door. I had more than I could use and if I could can I could have benefited from them longer. So if I can afford the canning jars and whatever else one needs to can I will do it. I am just sorry I was not clever enough to find away to have given my kids better eating habit and less food anxiety when they were younger
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