The answer is NO.
The “fact” that junk food is cheaper than real food has become a reflexive part of how we explain why so many Americans are overweight, particularly those with lower incomes. I frequently read confident statements like, “when a bag of chips is cheaper than a head of broccoli …” or “it’s more affordable to feed a family of four at McDonald’s than to cook a healthy meal for them at home.”
(via sunfoundation)
this bullshit fills me with a very specific kind of rage. so, TIME TO DEBUNK!
- that meal from mcdonalds takes virtually no time to acquire AND is available almost anywhere.
- the second meal? that “salad” is lettuce … with nothing else, not even dressing unless its just olive oil or some milk i guess? gross.
- also thats the price of each serving, not an entire loaf of bread, a bottle of olive oil, etc. that stuff adds up which means you have to have a lot of money at one time to buy it all.
- that meal probably took an hour and a half to make, which is a long fucking time when you work multiple jobs or are caring for a lot of people or dont have help! seriously, if you are a single parent of three who works, is spending an hour and a half every night preparing a meal a likely option?
- same with beans and rice! also, you know whats a fucking bummer? eating beans and rice every night because you are poor. ask any person who has done it and they will tell you (you can start with me).
- there is a “nutrition” argument here that lacks a follow up: poor people are more likely to be doing physical labor and need more than 571 calories per meal.
- you know who is less likely to know how to bake or prepare a chicken? people without access to the internet, or libraries, or who werent taught how to by their parents because their parents worked all the time. access to healthy foods is a classist issue and classism is cyclical, you fucking morons.
- seriously, these sorts of infographics make me want to fucking flip tables. do you know why people don’t eat more fresh fruits and vegetables? because fresh fruits and vegetables are expensive, because they take a long time to prepare, because they dont live near a grocery store that has a decent produce section, because they dont have reliable transportation to get groceries to and from the grocery store, because they dont have the energy to plan all of the shit that is involved in making healthy, intentional, filling, balanced meals. basically: poor people get fucked, and then we get BLAMED for being lazy.
- eating “healthy”, aka access to fresh fruits and vegetables, is a privilege, first, foremost, always. so fuck you new york times and your ignorant goddamn infographic.
- there are SYSTEMATIC REASONS that we do not have equal access to fresh fruits and vegetables. they are very REAL problems. besides, you know, systematic poverty in america, the total mis-distribution of farm subsidies is a perfect place to start. read about that, then either get bent or start working on the actual problem.
In which fad dieters forget about the dollar menu
the new york times, may 24, 2020
Okay. I mention my philosophy professor and the lesson I learned in one of his Ethics lectures a lot, but the world keeps giving it meaning, so….
He asked us one hot summer day how to measure an evil. How do you measure the Holocaust? the genocide of the Native Americans? American slavery? a massacre? We, a bunch of kids whose brains hadn’t finished growing in yet, were mildly stumped. It wasn’t the number of the dead, we were told. Instead, we were told to imagine the following:
You’re standing on a street corner. There is a line of people in front of you. One by one, they introduce themselves to you. One by one, you learn names and what they did, maybe a hobby, maybe how many siblings or kids or nephews they had. One by one, you hear about talents or what they did on their last holiday. One by one, you meet those who were lost.
This is how you measure an evil, my professor taught us. You measure not the number, but the individuals lost. Not just the names, but who they were, their connections to others. What is lost is an irreplaceable human being. The evil is measured not in the number, but in the who was lost. All of those whos matter. Every life listed above and listed on other pages mattered. Losing them hurts all of us. We lost nearly 100,000 irreplaceable human beings. This did not have to happen. That is the measure of the evil of “it’ll all just go away”.
May their memories be a blessing to those who knew them and mourn them. May they Rest In Peace. May we never forget they were living, breathing human beings whose lives were important and mattered. May we never allow negligence, nepotism, greed, racism, ageism, ableism, and incompetence to do this to us again.
It’s going to get worse before it gets better.
“When ‘Queer Eye’ came out, it was really difficult because I was like, ‘Do I want to talk about my status?,” he said. “And then I was like, ‘The Trump administration has done everything they can do to have the stigmatization of the L.G.B.T. community thrive around me.’” He paused before adding, “I do feel the need to talk about this.”
“These are all difficult subjects to talk about on a makeover show about hair and makeup,” he said. “That doesn’t mean ‘Queer Eye’ is less valid, but I want people to realize you’re never too broken to be fixed.”
Dr. Genevieve Guenther’s got it exactly right: climate change is real and it’s affecting communities around the world. Even one year later, news outlets are not giving climate change the attention it deserves. Media need to stop neglecting to inform the public about how the climate crisis is connected to extreme weather and so much else.
Google employees around the world are staging a walkout today, following the release of a New York Times report detailing Google’s mishandling of sexual harassment allegations including multimillion-dollar severance packages gifted to accused executives.
Employees are demanding more transparency and stronger anti-harassment policies. It is important that media focus on the stories and demands of the workers at Google — it is only when workers’ voices are magnified that real change can occur.