Thursday, June 03, 2010

Po'Folks

It must be terrible to be poor. All the poor folks are eating wrong and getting fat.

That's what this idiot wants you to believe.
That said, if there’s anything I’ve learned from watching my friends attempt to navigate the kitchen, it’s that cooking isn’t obvious. Unless you’re familiar with the basics of preparation and cooking, the act of taking a few ingredients — some cornmeal, a bushel of greens, an egg — and making a meal is mystifying. Poor people are simply less likely to have access to that kind of knowledge.
I don't know whathtehell he's making with cornmeal, a bushel of greens, and one egg, but I'd love to see it.

I've known poor folks who were raised in the country, doing the best on what they could raise in the backyard, either pork, or poultry, or beef. Plus what the family garden produced. Wonderful meals, prepared lovingly, with little or no money involved. One dear woman of my acquaintance, Mrs. Conde, lived about a half-mile from us when we lived in the country. The Conde's were po-folks but knew how to cook. When Mrs. Conde was making biscuits on a early morning, you could smell them all the way to our house. Lots of times my kids would hop on bicycles and pedal down the road when the smell of biscuits wafted down the road. I fed her kids, she fed mine. That's the way poor folks take care of each other.

Here's where he really gets it all wrong.
In my own shopping, I’ve noticed that people shopping at Kroger (the cheaper grocery store in the area) tend to be heavier than those shopping at Harris Teeter, and their carts tended to be heavy on processed and prepared foods. But that isn’t a surprise; the poorer you are, the more likely it is that your diet will be high in calorie dense but nutritionally poor foods, which is a recipe for obesity.
It's got nothing to do with poverty, it's all about lifestyle and genetics. Diet and exercise. My own appreciable girth started about 1999 when I retired from the Guard and stopped running. I'm a fat boy for lots of reasons, but poverty doesn't have anything to do with it.

Hat tip to Dennis the Peasant.

3 comments:

Bob S. said...

For the most part, I say that people are poor -- financial or health wise -- because they continue to make bad decisions.

There are exceptions for disease, medical problems, etc but overall if you are over weight and continue to buy the same foods -- that is a bad decision. Not the worst but it is a decision made by the individual.

The simple fact is that everyone is capable of deciding "I don't want to be this way/look this way/ not have money, etc".

That is the first decision, then comes the decision(s) to do something about it.

You are right, it is about lifestyle -- and too many people try to blame the food instead of their own choices in maintaining that lifestyle.

Termite said...

Well,

Cornmeal and an egg are a start on a pan of cornbread, but you need a little flour, salt, sugar, buttermilk, and a bit of baking powder.

As for being poor & fat, a local Cenla doctor from India once told me: "America has the fattest 'poor' I have ever seen."

Anonymous said...

Both Bob, Termite and Dennis are right about folks being over weight. But when I go to the food store I see a "ton" of folks with overloaded food baskets paying with food stamps. These baskets are loaded down with sodas, cookies, chips, etc. Things many of us have to pass up because of the high cost. Just my thoughts.