Practice Babies

[DanieMarie]

Re: Practice Babies

[quote author=Deseret link=topic=1346.msg27702#msg27702 date=1294599404]
Hmm...that sounds like socio-economic issues, too, Danie. I mean, I *know* what is healthy for my kids to eat, but the last week of December, we lived on ramen and pancakes. I can only imagine what a teacher will think if we're not in a better spot by the time I need to pack Allie lunches next year.
[/quote]

To be honest, it's political in the US. Here we have subsidies for fresh food and it's ALWAYS cheapest to eat veggies.

I really urge you (and anyone else that has a problem with the cheapness of processed food vs fresh food) to write to your representative and stress the issue! It's not fair how things are done in the US. I was recently reading Fast Food Nation and saw Food Inc and I was really interested in the claims raised in the book and the movie, so I did some research and it's very much political. Big business has a lot of political interest and they're usually making processed food and growing stuff like corn and soy, but ultimately, reps want to get elected so your voice does count! If enough people speak up, maybe there'll be some change at some point.

Granted I'm single, but I don't have a lot of money either (at one point when I first moved here I was even living off 700 a month), but I've always been able to eat healthy on the money I have because of the EU subsidies.

[Ophidia]

Re: Practice Babies

[quote author=DanieMarie link=topic=1346.msg27723#msg27723 date=1294608186]
To be honest, it's political in the US. Here we have subsidies for fresh food and it's ALWAYS cheapest to eat veggies.
[/quote]

It's also based on location. I know from experience that produce is less expensive in California & Washington, and the southeastern states. But the only place I can find good-paying work is in the middle of the desert. Where heads of lettuce (I'm not even talking greens, I'm talking iceberg lettuce) are $3 and tomatoes run $3.99 a pound.

In jr. high, during a pre-algebra class, on Fridays our teacher would give us the inserts from newspapers, a grocery list and have us design a budget around a set amount of money. I learned so much from that project. Sometimes, you can't be picky about what brand of toilet paper you use, or diapers or formula. You'd like to be able to use the best things, but all too often you just can't afford it. You have to learn what you can cut back without sacrificing too much of your health and comfort for, and all too often food is the sacrifice because it's easier to say "I'll just buy Ramen for the next two weeks" than it is to say, "I'll just sit in the dark & use candles for light for the next month". A lot of kids have no idea what it's like for their parents to have to make these kinds of decisions, so any kind of education they can get in that area is good education.

[Hawkfeathers]

Re: Practice Babies

I've been on a soapbox lately about the "cheap vs. nutritious" food issue - I hate when people complain about the gov't. wanting schools to serve more nutritious food and cut back on junk. The gov't. allowed Big Business to create/sell fake food in the first place and NOW they are dealing with all the resultant health issues (translation: COSTS) and trying to fix things to a degree. Back in the Great Depression, cheap food was often the most healthy - people made their own bread, meat was not filled with hormones, etc., veggies were not genetically modified, etc. Now kids eat macaroni and cheese made with powdered cheese. WTF is that, anyway? LOL Margarine is only one molecule different than plastic. Everything is loaded with corn syrup and partially hydrogenated vegetable oil. Yum.
It is sad how far we've removed ourselves from what we were given on this planet.

I never heard of practice babies! Interesting concept. I had a home ec. class in junior high (early 70's) where we baked brownies and sewed a simple seam, etc., while the boys took auto & wood shop.

[DanieMarie]

Re: Practice Babies

[quote author=Hawkfeathers link=topic=1346.msg27778#msg27778 date=1294632229]
I've been on a soapbox lately about the "cheap vs. nutritious" food issue - I hate when people complain about the gov't. wanting schools to serve more nutritious food and cut back on junk. The gov't. allowed Big Business to create/sell fake food in the first place and NOW they are dealing with all the resultant health issues (translation: COSTS) and trying to fix things to a degree. Back in the Great Depression, cheap food was often the most healthy - people made their own bread, meat was not filled with hormones, etc., veggies were not genetically modified, etc. Now kids eat macaroni and cheese made with powdered cheese. WTF is that, anyway? LOL Margarine is only one molecule different than plastic. Everything is loaded with corn syrup and partially hydrogenated vegetable oil. Yum.
It is sad how far we've removed ourselves from what we were given on this planet.

[/quote]

Yeah it really bugs me. I can't eat a lot of that food because it's full of soy and I'm allergic. I'm almost thankful I'm allergic. Also in the EU there are stricter standards with meat and dairy (regulations say that you can't use much hormones and antibiotics in the production of either), and any meat or dairy products from the outside that don't meet those standards are banned (so we still get US beef, for example, but they're really picky about it). Also, feeding animals to farm animals is banned (since the animals we eat are herbivores), because of the mad cow scare, and meat has to be tested for dangerous bacteria. They're starting to try to make laws about GM veggies too, not to ban them but to inform people that they're GM...this makes me happy because when something is genetically modified with something else, the protein structure can change and when you have allergies, the protein is what you're allergic to. And mostly, thanks to subsidies, healthy food is the cheapest.

My big soap box is Canada. Canada is still stuck somewhere in between. Food in general is REALLY expensive in BC, but healthy food is still cheap if you know how to do seasonal shopping and plan your meals properly. But a lot of people -think- that the crap is cheaper because they just don't know. So when I talk about food education, it is coming from there, where this is the case, and also here in Europe where it is DEFINITELY cheaper to eat from fresh ingredients, but a lot of people still eat crap because of low education, or because they feel they don't have "time" to cook (so many recipes I know take about as long as cooking a frozen pizza!)
Also with Canada, I'm starting to get really pissy. They have similar laws as the EU regarding meat and dairy and farming is HUGE in Canada, but unlike the EU, they don't ban any outside stuff that doesn't meet Canada's own standards. So you get this crap from the US that's cheaply produced but shouldn't be sold there because it's full of hormones (you should see a chicken breast....they FREAK ME OUT!) And the Canadians can't compete with that. It's not fair. They have to do what the EU does. Canada produces enough meat and dairy (dairy is still mostly coming from inside the country at least) and grain to feed the country. Veggies in the summer could do it too if we didn't have to compete with stuff like those giant, monster strawberries from California. I remember when I was a kid, in the summer strawberries came from BC (usually the Okanagan where the climate is good for growing fruit), but when I went back to visit this summer, they were ALL from California. It used to be that stuff from Cali just came in the winter when we didn't have as much of our own produce (because Canada is cold), but now it seems to be taking over. And we can't compete with the prices unless we have subsidies, because Canada actually hires legal workers at minimum wage (as opposed to illegal migrants).
Canada has to change its laws. It has to subsidize its own farms so that they can compete and we don't have our farms shutting down because we keep importing food from outside the country, and it has to ban products that don't meet Canadian standards.

[Hawkfeathers]

Re: Practice Babies

The US gov't. is also regulating what kind of seeds farmers can get - they are manipulated so the resulting crops do not produce seeds of their own. Self-sufficiency is becoming history. That's pretty scary.
I know what you mean about the chicken breasts - they all look like they came from Dolly Parton's personal farm LOL and the taste is so very different than a real farm-raised chicken!
Here in the US, some pesticides like DDT have been banned. BUT - if you read the fine print on a carton of orange juice, for example, most say "made from oranges from Florida AND BRAZIL" - well, guess what? They use DDT in Brazil. So it's like an endless loop.

[DanieMarie]

Re: Practice Babies

[quote author=Hawkfeathers link=topic=1346.msg27849#msg27849 date=1294673534]
The US gov't. is also regulating what kind of seeds farmers can get - they are manipulated so the resulting crops do not produce seeds of their own. Self-sufficiency is becoming history. That's pretty scary.
I know what you mean about the chicken breasts - they all look like they came from Dolly Parton's personal farm LOL and the taste is so very different than a real farm-raised chicken!
Here in the US, some pesticides like DDT have been banned. BUT - if you read the fine print on a carton of orange juice, for example, most say "made from oranges from Florida AND BRAZIL" - well, guess what? They use DDT in Brazil. So it's like an endless loop.
[/quote]

Yeah I did hear about that! And also farmers that use traditional seeds still can't totally avoid cross-pollination with the GM stuff, and if it doesn't reduce their seed yield for the next year (because if they're doing it that way, they're getting their seeds from their own crops) they often get in trouble with the companies that own the patents on the GM veggies. It's really unfair because you can't control where the bees go!

A lot of this stuff really bothers me. I'm pro-business and I'm even pro-corporation, but I think that there need to be rules and boundaries that protect the best interests of a population. That's what the government is supposed to do, no matter what party they come from. People also want to get on this as a "leftist" cause, but Teddy Roosevelt stood against the Beef Trusts (hence earning the name "the Trust buster) and he was a Republican, and Michael Porter, one of the most influential Corporate Strategy writers of all time, was against deregulation (he claims that regulation forces businesses to come up with more innovative, sustainable ideas).

(PS Porter is still alive but this piece that I'm referring to, Competitive Advantage of Nations, was published in 1990. Though, I'm torn about using past tense because his more recent work still seems to hold to this view).