Do the poor eat badly because #realfood is too expensive?

Ahh ... the age old question.

On of my Twitter Tweeps (@keithnorris of Theory to Practice thank you for the link! *mwah!*) tweeted a link to this article: "eating nutritiously a struggle when money is scarce".

In it they highlight a family in PA who live "well below the poverty level" and have $600 in food stamps to feed 5 people. They go on to talk about the 8 year old boy, Alex, and how he's "one of 17 million children who live in U.S. households where getting enough food is a challenge."

I call total boolsheet on the whole affair.

(For the record, we here at the Secret hidden Lair make just a hair's bredth above the 2010 federal poverty line for a family of 7)

Let's take a look at some items in the article:

Oh, before we start, number one, the 8 year old pictured can't be too hungry; he's overweight. (He's also fishbelly pale. Probably never goes outside and plays and is severely vitamin D deficient but all that's just conjecture on my part.)

Go back and take a look at Alex.

Now here's my own son, Boy, also age 8 (notice the base tan - he's very fair skinned normally):

Here's all my boys just in case you're unfamiliar with my blog and think I'm hiding a chunky one:

(Apologies for the severe croppage - both baby boys were buck arse nekkid!)

OK, on with the debunking.

"Alex's mom, Connie Williamson, says she tries to give her son healthy food but doesn't always succeed.

"When he gets up on his own, he'll go find what he wants," she says. "He'll get a hot dog bun, or get a piece of bread. He'll get an ice pop or something."

And that's exactly what he did early one morning, before his family headed out to the local food pantry. Alex ate a blue ice pop for breakfast."

OK, uhm ... mommy FAIL.  Why is Alex getting up on his own?  I make it a point to wake up before any of my family so that breakfast is getting started when they wake.  Perhaps his mom works nights. Fair enough. Does dad, as well?  Also, my children have been taught by me to NEVER get food without asking first. Even if I did sleep late, my 8 year old would never dream of grabbing a chunk of frozen sugar as his first meal!  My kids get out of bed and begin getting set up for a healthy day by getting out plates, peeling bananas, passing out daily vitamins, etc, whilst I'm checking my email!

Oh and if the family got up to go to the food pantry why didn't mom make her son a good breakfast?  If you can afford hotdog buns (HFCS white bread bundles of death) and ice pops then why didn't you buy some FOOD instead?

"Connie Williamson says it's not easy on a tight budget. She spends hours driving around each month looking for deals."

Well that's a huge waste of petrol.  Wouldn't that petrol be better spent on food?  If you watch the sales papers and plan your trips you don't HAVE to do this. hey, better yet, since she has a car, why doesn't she go to one of the eighteen Wal Mart stores in her own town?!  They match prices so you don't have to shop anywhere else.

""You can get leaner cuts of meat, but then they're more expensive," she says. "You can get fresh fruit every couple of days and blow half of your budget on fresh fruits and vegetables in a week's time, easy.""

... says mom.  "Oh, horseshit!", says Blue.  Get the cheap, fatty chunks of meat - they are better for you. Buy produce in season, buy locally (o hai, howzabout the Carlisle Farmer's Market?)  The family even has a garden for Cthulhu's sake:

"For example, the Williamsons have a garden behind their apartment in downtown Carlisle. They grow lots of healthy food — zucchini, peppers and Brussels sprouts. But when Alex was thirsty after a walk, his mother gave him a plastic water bottle filled with orange soda."

FAIL much there, mom?  What's wrong with, oh, WATER?  Oh sob, sob, I have to feed my baby boy orange soda and make him fat and unhealthy because I am soooo pooooooor and can't afford ... tap water?

It gets better (or worse):

"Elaine Livas, who runs Project SHARE, the local food pantry, says she sees it all time.
"A gallon of milk is $3-something. A bottle of orange soda is 89 cents," she says. "Do the math.""


Do you have kids, Ms Livas?  No human over the age of 2 needs milk!  We do need water and ... wait for it ... it's FREAKIN' FREE!

"(in)the Williamsons' kitchen in Carlisle ... contradictions swirl about like stew. The refrigerator and pantry are often filled with food — but the family sometimes has to go to the local soup kitchen to make ends meet."


Oh!  Oh!  I can answer this conundrum: it's easier to spend your 600 quid of food stamps on junk like popsicles and chocolate and then get your 'real' food at the local food pantry and soup kitchen.

"Alex ... admits he has enough to eat. It's just not always what he wants. He says he especially doesn't like it when his mother makes Brussels sprouts for dinner.

His 14-year-old sister, Beanna, tries to explain.

"He more or less just worries about if there's going to be enough food that he likes or if we have something that he likes," she says. "He's really picky about what he wants."

As Beanna talks, Alex goes to the refrigerator for some chocolate. He gets upset when his sister tells him he can only have one piece."


He's picky about what he eats?  Uhm, hungry people are not picky about what they eat.  They are grateful to have food.  


So I find this whole article bogus and not a little enraging. Do I think there are no hungry people in America?  Absolutely not.  I know there are.  There are kids who really don't get anything to eat before school because there is no food in the house either due to poverty or because mom bought drugs, cigarettes, or alcohol instead.

Do I think that all this poor health should be blamed on poor moms? Absolutely not. There are good women out there who are forced to work 2 and 3 jobs just to pay the bills.  They have to leave their kids in the charge of others, or worse, on their own for hours a day.  For some of them this state of affairs in not their fault and they are doing the best they can.

But people like the Williamsons?  I can't be absolutely positive given the info in the article but they sure seem to me like the dozens of families I've known in my life who choose to lounge about and live off the system and then cry "poor" for every handout they can get giving NO thought to the health of their children.

I work very hard every day.  I am a self employed graphic designer, I keep my house, do all the grocery shopping, laundry, dishes, cleaning, etc for all 7 of us, plus I work on our small farm. Yet I manage to cook three good meals a day because it is so important for my children's health.

How do I do it?  I can't afford grass-fed beef or organic vegetables but we have fresh eggs, put  pig in the freezer each year, plus I buy most of our produce from local farmers. I take leftovers and extras from anyone who's willing, I dumpster dive, never pass up garden overflows, and even trade if I can.

I feed my family whole, real food three times a day and I do it on less than $600 per month - the amount of foodstamps the Williamsons get.

For seven of us.

Oxymoronic

A thrifty quickie I just HAD to share with you:

My new Van (V for Van-detta) doesn't have a CD player in, so one day (apparently my brain had nipped out for a bit), it dawned on me that it did have a radio.

I've not listened to radio for over 5 years (same reason I don't watch telly - 90% is idiotic drivel and the adverts drive me mad.  Don't get me started on the inane chatter.)

ANYway, before I came to my senses and switched it off with an alarmed cry, I sat through an advert by Harris Teeter.  This is a local grocery chain, BTW;caters to upscale folks; and stores are generally found in posh neighbourhoods.

The gist of the advert was "buy our paper towels, they're cheap, you'll save money in these tough financial times."  Completely disregarding that a large number of the folks in question drove there, alone, in enormous SUVs, for a bottle of obscure wine and the ingredients for that night's supper, and will be back tomorrow, and the next day, and the next ...

Sorry, where was I?

Oh, yeah.  So this soothing narrator chick goes something like: "We want to help you save money during this bad economy thingy that's going on, so we started with the must-have basics, like paper towels. Everyone needs paper towels!"

I beg your pardon?

I haven't used a paper towel, plate, or napkin in my home in 20 years.  And you know how I feel about plastic zipper bags, lol.

We prefer this nifty thrifty stuff called CLOTH and CERAMIC.  And we WASH them and - brace yourself - use them over and over again! *gasp*

You want to save money AND help save the planet? Give it a try. srsly.

EDITED to add: Hmm ... it may have been Publix and not HT.  Can't recall now.

Empty gestures

So, yeah, Earth Hour.

CHICAGO - "From the Sydney Opera House to Rome's Colosseum to the Sears Tower's famous antennas in Chicago, floodlit icons of civilization went dark Saturday for Earth Hour, a worldwide campaign to highlight the threat of climate change.

The environmental group WWF urged governments, businesses and households to turn back to candle power for at least 60 minutes starting at 8 p.m. wherever they were.
The campaign began last year in Australia, and traveled this year from the South Pacific to Europe to North America in cadence with the setting of the sun.

'What's amazing is that it's transcending political boundaries and happening in places like China, Vietnam, Papua New Guinea,' said Andy Ridley, executive director of Earth Hour. 'It really seems to have resonated with anybody and everybody.'

Earth Hour officials hoped 100 million people would turn off their nonessential lights and electronic goods for the hour. Electricity plants produce greenhouse gases that fuel climate change."

Right. Now, I have no problem with this gesture in theory. Any conservation is good and I suppose it could have 'raised awareness'. But here's my thing. What good is raising folks's awareness of anything: pollution, wildlife endangerment, climate change, cancer, etc if the people in question do nothing about it?

How many millions of people read the newspaper every single day, about things that they themselves could help change with almost no effort, and say: "Wow, that's a damned shame" then take another bite of toast and turn the page?

To me, Earth Hour is like a person who knows she's too fat so she says; "I'm obese! It is affecting my health! Today, I shall not eat ANY fast food!"

This sort of thing is tailor made by the ineffectual activist ("sign the online petition!") for the self-indulgent ("My plastic water bottles and disposable diapers ARE stuffing our landfills full, but I carry them to my SUV in an unbleached hemp tote!") to make them feel better about themselves. A way for the normally wasteful to balm their wee consciences with an hour of darkness before switching back on every telly in the house and firing up the Wii and anxiously checking the temp on their wine refrigerators.

So, no, I didn't turn my power off. I had no intentions of doing so.

Oh, Blue, aren't you concerned about the environment? About the polar bears?!

Hah.

I do three times more conservation of energy than the average person. This isn't a brag. If you read this blog regularly, you know it's just my chosen lifestyle.

Emphasis on chosen.

Why? I dunno. It just makes sense to me. I have an almost pathological loathing of waste. Why would you throw perfectly good clothes away when you can donate them? Why would you buy individually packaged food when you can divide up large packages? Why would you uses a clothes dryer so everything has that slimey softener feel and sickening fragrance? Why would you buy a monsterous SUV for your family of three? Why would you want to build a 400k McMansion 3 feet away from two almost identical McMansions in a neighbourhood where they tell what sort of post box you are required to put up? Why would you use snack sized ziplock bags, period?

These and other questions ...

But, seriously, it comes down to choices. We choose to do or not do, and that's cool. For myself, I'd MUCH rather spend my cash buying Zesto's ice cream cones and eating them in the park with my children than spend my cash for plastic nappies that will still be yucking up this planet when my grandkids have kids. I'd rather mush up the peas we're having for supper to feed to my baby than spend 50c on a ridiculous wee jar of the exact same thing from the store.

We all decide what sort of lifestyle we want to live and if yours is making you feel guilty about the environment then bloody well do something about it. Not some empty, quick gesture, but Some. Actual. Thing. Turn the heat down. Wash some dishes in the sink. Combine trips into town. Take your lunch. Recycle those newspapers and cans.

Conservation is no different from saving money or losing weight or supporting a cause like curing cancer or feeding the poor. You must actively participate. Sensational gestures without follow-up lifestyle changes amount to no more than signing online petitions. They soothe the guilty conscience and otherwise do ... nothing.

Low impact

So, I found this cool article on a family that went 'deep green'.

They don't use electricity (washing clothes by hand - w00t!), ride on transport that depends on fossil fuels (planes, trains, automobiles), or buy anything new (ala The Compact). The bloke calls is 'no impact living' and blogs it here.

I find this fascinating - being a thriftychik - and inspiring. I also plan to wander back through his blog and see how they cope with having a child while doing this (their daughter is two). I maintain that people, mostly women, waste a STUNNING amount of money, energy, time, and resources on their kids.

What do YOU do to 'be green' or 'reduce your carbon footprint' (I already hate that trite phrase, taken up by pseudo-conservationists who pat themselves on the back for ordering in bulk; organic, non-bleached, hemp-waste-fiber-lined, disposable nappies for two bucks a piece) if anything, as a parent?

Do you do what you do for the environment? To live more simply? To save money? To be healthier? To reduce consumerism? To reduce waste?

Do you find yourself being less thrifty/waste conscious since you had kids (buying convenience foods, snack-sized ziplok bags, name-brand clothing) or more so (buying food in bulk and freezing, cooking more/packing lunches, yardsale shopping)?

I think I'm getting thriftier and thriftier, lol (and my motivation, btw, is mostly financial. I'm trying to save money and live as simply as possible. I think improving the environment and personal health will follow). I constantly search for ways to save money like buying washable containers for juice and snacks so that I can pack those things from out of bulk containers into lunches and snacks-on-the-go.

So please share your 'style'!



Right now I:

-Buy food in bulk, divide and freeze.

-Cook/prepare several meals at once and freeze/refrigerate.

-Cook from scratch as much as possible.

-Try never to use plastic cling film, aluminium foil, storage bags, baby wipes, paper plates/napkins. I also save what little aluminium foil I use, wash plastic storage bags (unless they've contained raw meat), AND disposable baby wipes (yes, you can launder them several times before they fall apart). I use one small box of plastic wrap and foil per year, have the same box of store brand ziplok bags I bought when we moved here 5 years ago, and don't have paper plates in the house.

-Cloth diapered all 5 children (same nappies, too, but *whew* some of them are falling to bits!)

-Buy all clothing and furniture at yard sales, thrift stores, via local buy-and-trade list, or free off of Freecycle (or hand-me-downs and freebies). Exceptions: mattresses and underpants.

-Use all compact florescent bulbs. The only incandescent lights I have are ones in the barnyard for heat (over baby animals for instance).

-Hand wash dishes and hang all clothes to dry.

-Do all household and automotive repairs possible myself.

-Scavenge!!!

Of course, I also:

-Farm, and so run a tractor and a pick-up truck for hauling.
-Drive a huge full-sized van.
-Have an online business and so run a desk-top, laptop, and many peripherals all day, every day.
-Am addicted to films which means a huge telly, DVD player, VCR, and hundreds of films which come in those ridiculous packages with all the plastic on (and don't forget the sticky bits!)
-Ditto Diet Coke which I consume in insane quantities and wonder why EGH is not actually COMPOSED of, like Hydro-Man, (Except he'd be, like, Diet Coke Man, LOL). I do recycle every single can, though.

-----

Technorati Tags:
no impact, low impact, no impact man, deep green, living green, reducing carbon footprint, thrifty, conservation, frugality, children, kids, parenting, t-shirts, tees, dumpster diving, trash picking
Add to: Technorati Digg del.icio.us Yahoo BlinkList Spurl reddit Furl

Boob tube spendthrift?

Check out this interesting article (the correct title should be 'How to earn 1 million by giving up your telly'). It talks about the cost of having a telly. It mixes in gaming and film viewing with actual TV viewing and so the title is misleading, though.

Anyway, it's pretty eye opening. There's this stunning fact about commercials and how well they work: Economist Juliet Schor estimated that for every hour of TV a person watches each week, he or she will increase his or her annual spending by about $200. (emphasis mine)

And coupled with this, which left me speechless: Nielsen Media Research reported that the average person watched approximately 4.5 hours of TV a day, or 31.5 hours a week, they concluded that the average person spends an extra $6300 per year under the influence of telly, a suggestion that most telly-viewing-diehards would angrily deny, I'll bet.

Four and a half hours a DAY?! 31 hours a week? That's almost equal to full time employment! Who has time to waste like that? Am I just insanely busy? Or is it that I'd rather read a book - or read a book to my children - than sit gape-mawed in front of the idiot box for the six minutes a day I have free?

And I do watch films. Y'all know I'm a movie fanatic. I have a DVD collection that would make Netflix moist-eyed with pride, but we manage, maximum, an hour (on a good day) after supper*. Often we don't watch any at all. I don't think I've ever in my life sat in front of a television for over four hours in a day.

I personally don't watch TV because I find it dull and annoying. Obviously not all of it is. There are a few shows that I loved (Star Trek et al, X-files, and Firefly spring to mind) but I HATE commercials and I hated the demanding nature of telly; you had to be home to watch a certain show on a certain day at a certain time (yes, I know there's TiVo now, LOL, but I hear folks lamenting that they have to rush and watch something they TiVo'd so they can TiVo something else).

I also stand by my opinion that the lion's share of telly is just plain crap. The entertainment equivalent of celery: something for your brain to chew that has no nutritional value and not much taste. The yap, yap, yap of those awful talk shows and the 'news', tinned laugh-tracks, commercials, ugh!

Do you watch telly? Why do you watch? Do you feel that you watch too much? Do you let your kids watch it? What about films? Or games? Were you startled at the amount of money the article claimed was spent?

*Please bear in mind that the 'we' here is me and EGH. The Brood get to watch a film (like a Pixar animated film) or a documentary (we can Netflix us some David Attenborough!) about twice a week.


Technorati Tags:
television, TV, TiVo, kids, thrift, commercials, spending, consumerism, saving money
Add to: Technorati Digg del.icio.us Yahoo BlinkList Spurl reddit Furl

Ewwww!

(a weird tale in two parts.)

My middle son, the Incredible Bulk, has learned a new word.

"Ewww".

It's funny and charming when he holds up a minuscule smear of peanut butter and exclaims: "Ewww!"

We also have the words: "bleh", and "crud", and "nasty", to describe yucky stuff.

Bleh is like those dark spots on a banana: nothing horrible, just needs to be trimmed off.

Crud is like what you might have on your face after eating: "Here, come let Momma wipe that crud offa you." It can also be on inanimate objects, like our refrigerator's Patch of Nameless Crud.

Nasty is reserved for really icky stuff: pet or livestock poo; things found on the tarmac in a parking lot; food that has fallen on the floor, been hiding behind a table leg, and discovered a week later.

Ewww, was coined one day by Boy, who stepped, barefoot, on a strawberry top that I missed and Bulk had tossed onto the floor.

Bulk loves it, bless him. He says it about everything; when his nappy wants changing, when he spills yoghurt and then puts his elbows in it, when he discovers a muddy patch in the walk outside.

Even I got to use it yesterday (thankfully, after they were in bed).

So, I'm making breakfast yesterday, and I go in the 'fridge for something and I notice that the rubber seal on the door is unusually warm. I puzzle over it for a second then move on - I'm busy - EGH has to get to work, babies are clamouring to be fed.

Fast forward to suppertime, which is a lot less hectic, and I realize that the door seal is very warm. I feel around. Nothing else seems warm, both the fridge and freezer are cooling.

Then I touch the metal front of the partition which separates the two sides (it's a side-by-side). It almost burns me it's so hot. WTF?

I hustled the babies into bed and dragged EGH in to verify I wasn't losing my mind. Nope. Front of Fridge Freakin' Flaming hot. So I unplugged it to cool down and give myself time to think.

Now, this fridge is a nice one, a top-of-the-line Kenmore (from Sears, natch) and a gift from Father-in-Law and his Wife (and v. much appreciated) when we first moved in. It's only four years old. It also has, in big letters on the inside, a toll-free number to call for repairs. 24 hours a day.

How much do you think they charge for a service call plus repairs at 8pm to a rural home 45 minutes from the nearest Sears? My guess is that I could buy a new freakin' refrigerator a Lowe's for that mystery amount.

So I pondered it for a bit.

See, I never just ring repairmen. I always try to fix it myself. I don't care if it's the car, an appliance, a lamp, or myself, I just hesitate to call in a professional (and shell out the money). It's NOT that I feel that I'm as qualified as they or more capable, but repair people these days have positively extortionistic tendencies. Fewer and fewer folks know how to do basic repairs to their homes and cars, people have less time, and everyone seems to be armed with a credit card burning a hole in their pocket. Repair people can charge what they will and the helpless masses just curse, shrug, and hand over the money saying; "well what can we do?"

Everyone just rings the repairman, takes their car in, runs to the emergency room. It's like we've become a society that doesn't realize that it's even possible to fix our own stuff.

But I digress ...

So the only two things that obviously come off my fridge are a panel low in the back, held on with screws, and the little vent thing in the front at the bottom. I grabbed a torch and the Shop-Vac and (don't laugh) got my gargantuan self onto the floor and set about investigating the front. It was dusty and there were a myriad of things dropped and pushed under by babies, but nothing really looked amiss. I cleaned out all the dust bunny warrens and went for the back panel.

As soon as I pushed it away from the wall i noticed something. A weird smell. A sick/sweet odour and a kind of burnt machinery smell. Hmmm.

So I wedged myself and Fiver back there and took that panel off. As soon as it was removed that odd smell came wafting out. I was instantly glad I'd eaten before attacking this problem. It was gagging me and I recognized it now; it was the smell of something dead.

It had to be rats*. Have I mentioned how much I hate rats ... and fleas and fire ants?

With EGH stoically holding the torch for me, I (after glaring accusatorily at the cats) poked around and hoovered, sucking up a huge amount of nesting material. The compressor was burning hot to the touch as was the 50 year old hardwood floor underneath because they'd chewed up the insulation for their nasty little nest.

After I got all the stuff out I still couldn't figure out why everything was so hot. Then I inspected the fan.

In a very Stephen King meets Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH (the book not the rather more cutesy film) moment I discovered not one, but three dead mice. Two were lying on the floor under the wires, one was actually jammed in the blades of the fan, it's wee skull providing an effective chock that had the thing frozen.

Bingo.

Oh, and ewwwww!

-----

*again, I'm talking about mice, not actual rats. Doesn't matter - horrible little blighters.

PS: in case you start thinking; "OMG, the woman has vermin in her house! I thought she was kidding about being a horrible housekeeper!" I assure you it's not me. The Burrow is simply 130 years old. There are hundreds of places for a mouse to get in. It comes with owning a vintage home.

PPS: the first commenter to post: "Oh, poor wittle mousies!" will get a suitably withering glance from me. Withering! You've been warned!