Posted on 02/11/2014 6:49:46 AM PST by SeekAndFind
It turns out that you can bring produce sections to poor neighborhoods, but you can't get poor people to eat healthier food. This comes as a shock to liberals who believe in the comprehensive theory of victimology -- that all problems afflicting people who fall into ethnic, sexual, or other identities regarded as victims are due to external factors, not to their own choices.
Patti Neighmond writes for NPR:
In inner cities and poor rural areas across the country, public health advocates have been working hard to turn around food deserts - neighborhoods where fresh produce is scarce, and greasy fast food abounds. In many cases, they're converting dingy, cramped corner markets into lighter, brighter venues that offer fresh fruits and vegetables. In some cases, they're building brand new stores.
"The presumption is, if you build a store, people are going to come," says Stephen Matthews, professor in the departments of sociology, anthropology and demography at Penn State University. To check that notion, he and colleagues from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine recently surveyed residents of one low-income community in Philadelphia before and after the opening of a glistening new supermarket brimming with fresh produce.
What they're finding, Matthews says, is a bit surprising: "We don't find any difference at all. ... We see no effect of the store on fruit and vegetable consumption."
The deranged premise behind the entire "food desert" theory was that crass corporations were bypassing the opportunity to sell healthy foods to poor people out of malice, or at best ignorance. The idea that local people weren't interested in buying healthy food, and that led to low demand, and hence low supply, was unworthy of consideration. These people did not understand that demand creates supply in a free economy
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
The only fresh vegetables were collard greens.
The goal in this culture, for the women, is to grow the fattest hips possible by gorging on this sugary crap. I heard it numerous times, from such a variety of piglets, that I learned that this goal was ubiquitous among them.
I guess the pork chops were for the men.
As a bag clerk, I'd load their welfare-purchased hauls into their Cadillacs and Lincolns.
Your point made in your post #20.
Liberals are idiots. Period.
Not the “obama period’ with is to push a lie... I mean ‘period’. It’s like liberals have never met a black person who didn’t go to Harvard - being half white. And from a totally middle class family...
Liberals live in unicorn land...
“I know this might be unpopular on here but I think there is definitely a place for life skills being taught in school. Just because someone’s parents make bad choices doesn’t mean that their kids should be locked into the same pattern. Show the kids that there is a different way to live.”
Like most things taught in schools. Good intentions got turned to crap. It’s who will be teaching and what the content is. Remember, they are teaching anal sex and Keynesian economics in these schools. How do you think life skills will work out?
I used to work in a school with a sweet (very) overweight woman. One morning, I saw her fixing a hot chocolate for her sweet (very) overweight daughter. After pouring in the chocolate powder and hot water, she added about 4 packs of sugar to the cup. I cringed. Isn’t hot chocolate sweet enough?
I didn’t know she was nutritionally ignorant, or didn’t care.
I am also a foodie and love to cook and I have been shocked by my middle class friends who can’t cook. Feminists have made the ability to cook a delicious meal from scratch akin to a form of female indentured servitude.
I had an RN neighbor across the street who couldn’t boil water ( really) and just a couple weeks ago I had one of my sons friends over and he had never tried tomato soup!
I was having lunch with a vendor from Boston last summer and we were talking about this.
He said up there, the users were so lazy that one of them even shut down one of those cash for aluminum can machines by feeding unopened cans of soda into the machine. I was incredulous until he told me where to look up the newspaper article.
At least here in Pennsylvania, our slackards will drink the soda first.
Thank you.
It would be a good idea for Comrade MO to focus on this matter.
Instead of just arbitrarily (and I think, disingenuously) foisting her idea of nutrition on to HS students.... (kids ALREADY compromised) she ought to propose that some basic instruction on general health issues and basic nutrition is re-introduced in schools.
You can’t take grown children who are on the verge of adulthood and try to reverse the decades of bad examples and improper eating habits they are accustomed to.
It’s TOO late to help THEIR parents... but a great deal can be done in the grade schools and High Schools for the young people MO pretends to worry about, so much.
She is SO certain that SHE can make a difference… why doesn’t she admit the obvious and use her position to help where and HOW it matters!
It’s such a simple move because the children are ALREADY in the schools and the educational infrastructure is ALREADY in place… why NOT take this very small step that will go so far in demonstrating proper health choices for kids??
I suspect that Liberals would hate to admit that their approach to this in the schools up to NOW has been absolutely wrong. ‘Home Ec’ and ‘Health’ classes should NEVER have been taken out of the curriculum to begin with!!!!!!!!!!
Ahhh, a core truth about their 'plight'.
Vegetables take time to clean, peel, cut, prepare, and clean up after.
Potato chips is rip, feast, toss.
For Stephen Matthews' (professor Penn State University) second experiment he should open a liquor store that sells beer by the quart. At the same location... The place doesn't have to be shiny new and attractive - just a run down store competing with liquor stores on every other corner in the ghetto and VOILA he'll be overwhelmed with sales.
The 'food desert' myth is one more example of liberals living in unicorn land...
Here's one that's dangerous and the same liberal type monsters like Stephen Matthews will believe ... this is the one they'll use to put innocent conservatives in concentration camps...
http://mediatrackers.org/ohio/2014/02/10/ohio-national-guard-training-envisions-right-wing-terrorism
That’s true; supermarkets are very low margin businesses, and fresh produce is the lowest-margin product they sell. What supermarkets there are in high-crime areas literally can’t afford to waste shelf space on produce.
The Trader Joe’s grocery chain has withdrawn plans to build a store in the heart of a predominantly black neighborhood after a black leadership group fought the move.
The Portland Development Commission was set to give the grocer a large discount on property that had been vacant for years, pricing it at just over $500,000, down from an appraised value of $2.9 million, according to The Oregonian.
The Portland African American Leadership Forum sent a scathing letter in December to city leaders, saying the plan would price residents out of the area and the group“remains opposed to any development in North/Northeast Portland that does not primarily benefit the black community.”
Trader Joe’s would increase displacement of low-income residents and “increase the desirability of the neighborhood,” for “non-oppressed populations,” PAALF wrote.
This decision reflects the city’s overall track record of implementing policies that serve to uproot, displace and disempower our most vulnerable community members,” the letter said.
Trader Joe’s bowed out amid the controversy.
“We run neighborhood stores, and our approach is simple: If a neighborhood does not want a Trader Joe’s, we understand, and we won’t open the store in question,” a company spokesperson said in a statement to The Oregonian.
But not everyone is happy about the outcome.
“There are no winners today,” Adam Milne, owner of Old Town Brewing Co., told The Oregonian. “Only missed tax revenue, lost jobs, less foot traffic, an empty lot and a boulevard still struggling to support its local small businesses.”
You can lead a horse to water but a pencil has to be lead.
(I know, but graphite doesn’t work in the pun...)
Kinda like giving someone who has never worked on a car some parts and some tools, but no instructions/training. If they don’t know how to cook (even buying raw fruit/veggies), or do anything but order food, or open a can of something and nuke it, how the heck do you think they’re gonna make meals out of real ingredients?
I despise Diet Pepsi. I find it tastes like soap suds. That said, I no longer drink Diet Coke or any other diet drink with aspartame, which means in public I mostly drink water and unsweet tea (with a touch of lemon).
By the way, that little store had no diet drinks of any kind.
Healthy food is so expensive. Looks at the cost of Asparagus. I pay $4.99 and fruit is also very expensive.
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