Posted on 05/12/2013 7:38:23 AM PDT by Sub-Driver
Pay People to Cook at Home By KRISTIN WARTMAN
THE home-cooked family meal is often lauded as the solution for problems ranging from obesity to deteriorating health to a decline in civility and morals. Using whole foods to prepare meals without additives and chemicals is the holy grail for today’s advocates of better eating.
But how do we get there? For many of us, whether we are full-time workers or full-time parents, this home-cooked meal is a fantasy removed from the reality of everyday life. And so Americans continue to rely on highly processed and refined foods that are harmful to their health.
Those who argue that our salvation lies in meals cooked at home seem unable to answer two key questions: where can people find the money to buy fresh foods, and how can they find the time to cook them? The failure to answer these questions plays into the hands of the food industry, which exploits the healthy-food movement’s lack of connection to average Americans. It makes it easier for the industry to sell its products as real American food, with real American sensibilities — namely, affordability and convenience.
I believe the solution to getting people into the kitchen exists in a long-forgotten proposal. In the 1960s and ’70s, when American feminists were fighting to get women out of the house and into the workplace, there was another feminist arguing for something else. Selma James, a labor organizer from Brooklyn, pushed the idea of wages for housework. Ms. James, who worked in a factory as a young woman and later became a housewife and a mother, argued that household work was essential to the American economy and wondered why women weren’t being paid for it.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
My grandmother would refer to this as "swill"....lower than litter, trash, garbage, refuse, waste, rubbish......
We do to and get the same funny looks.
Nanny-statism run amok!
It is none of your damn business whether someone cooks their own meal or orders from a delivery or goes to a restaurant.
If you nanny-staters have that much time on your hands, I can give you some suggestions to occupy your time.
BAM!! Well-played.
Once a divorced, single parent of three (6, 3, and 1), worked full time, and still sat down together with children for a home cooked meal every night. With a little organization and good time management, it can be done. My parents did it, I did it, and hopefully my now, young adult sons will continue...IMO it is very important.
We need your green bean recipe.
I can’t think of anything more fun or rewarding than putting plates of food on the table and watching friends and family lap it down and then head into the kitchen looking for more. When this doesn’t happen (and sometimes it doesn’t!), my evening is ruined.
But then they’ll need government inspectors to come in and see if the menu has any unapproved items on it.
This will be a great “make work” stimulus project. They can spend $250 million to hire 12 inspectors.
The first is that they are lazy.
This is true.. My friends are amazed that as a man I cook so much.(yes I am busy with work and family like everyone else) The reason why I cook most of the meals at my house is because, to me, it is FUN. (except for the dishes)
One of my aunt's and uncle have six kids (all grown now and married with families of their own). At the age of 4 or 5 my aunt would start teaching the child (including the boys) how to cook, simple things at first like toast, by the time my oldest cousin was 12 she could make Thanksgiving dinner including the best mile high apple pie on the planet, now that my cousins have kids of their own, they have done the same thing.
That said, I find it a struggle to work full time and cook. But retirement looms, so maybe I can do more then.
I take one weekend day, usually Sunday, and I cook all day. I make enough meals for the week that way all I have to do is just heat up what I want during the week. Saves a lot of time and everything is made fresh.
Maybe “they” should just pay people for not reading the New York Times.
Sweden does this. Ofcourse, it’s a pittance amount.
I am male. I do all the cooking in my household. I’m a good cook too. The only thing my wife knows how to make is reservations. Now where do I sign up to get my checks?
Agreed. I LOVE to eat out. But, I do it sparingly. I hate the feeling of wasting a ton of money on something so fleeting as restaurant food.
The truth is that older people are often both so tired that they have difficulty cooking for themselves. In combination with reduced sense of taste and smell, so they tend to eat crappy foods like TV dinners, and after a few years, this takes a toll on their health.
Even a small number of nutritious home cooked meals can extend their lives and health for years.
What bulls***-where did the NYT find these women so overcome with work that they can’t make choices at a produce counter, or cook a meal from fresh food? I managed to do that as a single mom working and going to college-no government cheese or housing.
And later, my husband and cub always had a fresh, healthy meal at the end of the day, and a mom/wife who shared it and interacted with them -I think too many of these women are lazy or ignorant. Paying them isn’t going to make a difference-their idea of cooking at home is warming the stuff from McDonald’s or Wendy’s in the microwave...
The savings of using fresh meat and produce do indeed add up fast, as do the health benefits-I grow a lot of my own veggies now, but when I didn’t, I knew how to shop the produce aisle. If we were supposed to subsist on processed junk, maybe French fries and mac-and-cheese would grow on trees?
Since when should the government the government pay for that?
Guess what, many of them are living in places with no cooking facilities.
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