With the new cuts in food stamps scheduled, this is what someone is supposed to survive on in a week:
How is that in anyway healthy? If unseasoned potatoes, rice, and oatmeal is all I ever could eat, I’d probably sell my food stamps and buy liquor and cigarettes, too.
James K. Polk, Esq.
I bet you can buy a lot of cake mix for the price of all that food…
jacy
Just put it all in a blender and can it in jars in your root cellar like the pioneers did, then I bet it would last even longer than a week. Damn ingrates.
Is this the first wave in the vaunted belt tightening I’ve heard so much about? I think for a lot of people, if their belt gets any tighter, it’s going to slice them clean in half.
freelancer
Yeah yeah, but how much Bachelor Chow will it buy?
wmd
There’s onions in there. One could say that’s seasoning.
No crushed tomatoes, lentils or pasta – that’s what got cut from previous 5 day menu.
Hunter Gathers
How much Soylent Green would that buy?
ruemara
hm. I don’t like to recall my food stamp days but it’s much worse than this. Many have no access to cooking resources, so all that healthy goodness is O U T-out. No stove, no burners, no microwave or toaster oven, so you have to buy what you can carry and eat. Then, many people have no cooking skills. I can make several meals from what’s up there, toss back the chicken, grab some bulk beans or tofu and I can make more. But I can cook. Glad I don’t have to eat lettuce and butter sammies any more, just don’t know why we have to punish people for being poor like this. We’re fucking wealthy, we spend more than enough on bombs don’t we?
beltane
There are plenty of people in Washington, politicians and media people, who should be forced to live on that for a few years. So much sympathy is shown to the “working poor” who make only $450,000 a year, and so little to the millions of people who go cold and hungry all because some people are too f**king greedy.
freelancer
@ruemara:
We don’t spend enough on bombs, donchaknow?
trollhattan
Cripes, how are they ever going to get enuf corn
syrupsugar shopping like that?Also, too, California Republications have just the answer for our horribly screwed up state budget: special tax breaks for the cable and oil industries!
http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2010/09/republicans-seeking-tax-benefi.html
Merde such as this, one cannot make up.
Glidwrith
I’m sure I’m going to get creamed (pun intended), but that stuff does look healthy. The picture also says it’s for five days, not seven. There’s nothing fried in there. There is protein (egg and chicken), oatmeal and brown rice are supposed to be heart-friendly, there’s fresh veggie in the form of onion, potato and broccoli (yes, I do count frozen as fresh as opposed to salt-loaded canned food). Kinda sucks there are no bread-like substances, though if you look in the “old” bread section, a loaf can be had for $1.50. It looks a lot like what I get at the store, though obviously I can afford a little more variety. Presumably one would have the most basic of seasonings like salt and pepper. What did the previous food stamps allow you to buy?
Ah, I see wmd@4 answered my question: crushed tomatoes, pasta and lentils.
beltane
There is a line in a Bob Marley song that goes: “Them belly full, we hungry. A hungry mob is an angry mob.” We shall see, but I suspect that people who are hungry and protein deficient are unlikely to have the energy needed to present much of threat to the Powers That Be.
Cat Lady
Well everything I know about these issues I learned from The Wire, and the food in that picture can’t be bought by poor city folk without a car. Most poor rural folk either. America, Fuck Yeah!
ruemara
@Glidwrith:
I’m not gonna cream you, I understand your point. However, make note of what’s there and try to live on it for 5 days. Just that. 5 days, 3 meals a day, 2 snacks. There’s no milk in there either, or tea. Bone up on your urban wildcrafting. I’ve been there.
Ekim
Too?
Glidwrith
@ruemara: Yeah, I had just noticed the lack of all dairy products, then the edit window closed on me. Moo juice is a major part of my diet and a protein supplement to boot. I won’t talk about my serious, snobby tea habits.
General Stuck
I was fixing to blame wingnuts, but it seems all that is needed is for the House to pass the extension proposed by Michelle Obama. since it already passed the senate. Wtf? am I missing something?
Cathy W
In fairness, Eggland’s Best eggs are 2 to 3 times the price of other eggs; you could free up about $1.50 by buying store brand, which would get you a couple cans of vegetables or a brick of frozen spinach. Store brand or generic oatmeal is probably also cheaper.
That said…that’s pretty pathetic.
Ethan Epstein
You’re assuming that most on food stamps have no other source of income – aka money with which to buy food. That’s exceedingly rare: most on food stamps also receive other benefits (i.e. unemployment insurance) or have jobs.
Also, Cole does not seem to realize that people are free to buy any cold food they want with food stamps. There is no mandatory oatmeal. So if the pictured food looks “unhealthy,” . . . um, one can buy something else.
srv
The hungry will at least be comforted by their granite countertops.
They don’t give a number, but I’m wondering how much pasta and Totino’s pizza that would buy. Covered all the major food groups in college.
LT
What is wrong with rice, potatoes, oats, and eggs? That’s good food right there. I love eating plain rice.
Makewi
@ruemara:
The idea that giving people food for free, even if it’s not enough food, is a punishment is a real special way of thinking.
WyldPirate
ah, quit yer fucking whining, Cole. Don’t you know all of those poor folks are fucking overweight, lazy fucks? That have color teevees and cell phones, too?
USA! USA! we’re #1!
freelancer
@Makewi:
Eat a bag of a thousand dicks.
water balloon
Add peanut butter and protein shakes and that’s pretty much what I eat.
WereBear
I don’t see much in the way of nutrients.
Protein from the chicken, the eggs are actually better for that, and with some omega 3s… though maybe not much with bargain eggs. And the broccoli is a cruciferous veggie, which is good.
But where’s the b vitamins, the vitamin C? The antioxidants from green leafy and deeply colored?
And this is a disastrous tack for any diabetic to take. Cheap carbs like oatmeal and brown rice are better than white bread and white rice, but they don’t have much in the way of nutrients, and all that starch would just make me hungrier and hungrier.
srv
See, I knew it was possible. I could have this and still have enough for a 24-pack of PBR on $4.50 a day.
debit
Okay, now picture taking your foodstamps and trying to buy any of that at your local 7-11. The oatmeal, maybe. Possibly there will be eggs and a handful of dessicated potatoes. All of these will be at three to four times the price of a grocery store. You may spend what’s left on soup and Chef Boyardee. Many inner city people on food stamps cannot get to a grocery store and so must buy food at the local corner store. Try that as a challenge and I dare anyone to tell me they could live on it.
Makewi
@freelancer:
Get a job loser.
Just Some Fuckhead
You can buy all this delicious food or get some allergy meds and a bottle of cough syrup.
Mark S.
@General Stuck:
It appears so. I followed one of the links in the article and it seems two months ago the plan was to use it to offset payments to teachers and Medicaid. I guess there weren’t any tax cuts that could be used to offset this.
This is some of the most depressing shit I’ve read in a long time. Even at my wingnuttiest, I always thought food stamps were a great idea for the main reason that I didn’t like the thought of people living in the richest country in the world being hungry. But people saw a picture of a guy with a cellphone in a soup kitchen line so there isn’t any poverty anymore.
Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther
This is a fly-by to say:
This is a great opportunity to mention:
If you’re going to donate to a food pantry, donate money, rather than food. They can buy a lot more with your $5 than you can.
As one of the managers of my local food pantry (and a good friend of mine) once put it:
http://wednesdayjournalonline.com/Main.asp?SectionID=1&SubSectionID=1&ArticleID=12442
For a photo illustration of this fact, check this out (if the link works – it doesn’t always for me): http://www.oprffoodpantry.org/donate/
D-Chance.
Yes, because God knows one person can only buy a 5-day supply of potatoes and rice and onions and the like in big-ass 20-pound bags…
Jesus, Cole, you can’t be this fucking stupid by accident. This post had to be purposeful spoofery.
Mark S.
@Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther:
That’s a good point.
freelancer
@Makewi:
Getting paid while telling you, twice now, to eat a metric fuckton of cock.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Mark S.:
If I had a cellphone, I’d have my soup delivered.
jibeaux
@D-Chance.:
What does the wind sound like as it whips through your hollow, deserted soul?
John Cole
@D-Chance.: You itinerant douchebag. One of the major problems facing the poor is access to grocery chains. We’d be lucky if they were buying the boring ass food pictured there.
daryljfontaine
@freelancer: Neither the bag of dicks nor the cock (any quantity, metric fuckton or otherwise) are covered by the food stamps program.
D
arguingwithsignposts
@jibeaux: word.
Violet
That food doesn’t look all that bad to me. I agree, you could probably get some food cheaper by going to store brands, but overall it’s not a terrible diet. Assuming someone has access to cooking and refrigeration to cook and keep the things like chicken.
I keep meaning to try the Eating on $1 a Day method of shopping. This guy did it for a month and I think is continuing to do it. It’s pretty hard core, but he made a point of trying to eat healthily. Plus he donated extras to his local shelter.
Chyron HR
@Makewi:
Michelle Obama is just like Marie Antoinette also, too.
Comrade Dread
Well, if they were only a bit more industrious, they could do fine.
For example, there are plenty of protein sources in the wilds of cities. You can hunt possums. Or rats. Or scrounge for ants.
They should demand an end to this free meal program at schools and the repeal of child labor laws so they can start sending their kids to the factory to help earn more money. The ones who survive will learn some valuable life lessons.
If all else fails, there’s always prison. God knows that while Americans may balk at feeding the poor, we’ll never balk at locking them up and then giving them free food, housing, sometimes even television, a fitness program, and some shop classes where they can learn a trade, like making shanks. Or how to earn the maximum number of cigarettes by selling their bodies.
If the poor would just work a little harder, I’m sure they’d be living the high life in no time.
Carol
@John Cole: You tell em, John! Not to mention that that 10 lb bags are hard to carry, and the contents will mold or spoil long before you reach the bottom of the bag, making it a waste unless you have a big family or share a lot of the food.
I’m lucky to live near a low-cost grocery, but not everybody has the opportunity. I read that in Detroit there is not one single major grocery chain, so urban agriculture has become a mainstay. There are community gardens now to supply the produce that help keep folks living there healthy.
This is where localvorism and social justice intersect. When there are local farms selling local food, it’s possible to have places that will sell to poor people without gouging them. And with community gardens, food can be given away or traded for work in the garden for the neediest and most vulnerable.
beltane
@Comrade Dread: We don’t even have factories anymore. But since the teabaggers are so in love with the 2nd Amendment, maybe they wouldn’t have a problem with poor people being organized into armed militias. I bet they and their corporate owners would be totally supportive of this.
Makewi
@freelancer:
Not caring what you say, you being a douche of the highest order.
stuckinred
@Carol: Yea and gardens are really great in Michigan in March!
Linda Featheringill
I looked at the pictures and decided that, like several of the group, I could do a better job of shopping with the 4.50/person/day. But it is still pretty dreary.
Food pantries can help but they tend to give out 3-days-per-person-per-month. In some cities, geographic location of residence is monitored pretty tightly to keep people from hitting several of them during a given month.
Meals programs exist. Most of those places hate to turn anyone away. But you have to be present to get the meal.
And it is all not fun at all.
Not getting to eat is worse, of course.
If you have an older person in the household or a youngster, then things can get bad quickly.
What can I tell you. It’s a bitch.
Ailuridae
I’ve been messing around with eating as cheaply as possible for a while. First off, if you are not a meet eater and are not in a food desert and have access to a stove (three big ifs) you can eat pretty damn well for 4.50 a day.
That being said here is what 4 days of food ends up looking like for me at ALDI
4 19 oz packages of ground turkey = $10
8 15 oz cans black beans = $4.40
8 15 oz cans of tomatoes with jalapenos = $4.80
4 onions at 69 cents/lb = ~$2
2 heads garlic = $0.50
Cumin = 1.20/3 = $.40
Chili powder(same as cumin =$.40
1/2 16 0z packafe of grated cheddar cheese = 1.50
So about 6 dollars a day. And that’s eating more healthily than about 90% of Americans. But I’m in an immensely walkable urban area and have two mega markets, 3 Aldis, two world class cheap produce places and about two dozen bodegas within a half hour of me on foot in any direction. I can’t imagine doing this in the slice of the rural Adirondacks where I grew up.
So yeah, its doable but does it make any sense? Ignoring the social justice aspects of providing for the poor what about the economic sense of cutting food stamps which nearly all analysis suggests to have the largest multiplier economically of any use of government funds (i.e its the most “stimulative”)?
Comrade Dread
@beltane: Well, okay then. No factory work. But we could bus the kiddies out into the fields to pick crops. That would employ the layabouts and keep the illegals out of the country.
Who knows, maybe they could even barter with their employers to keep some of the vegetables at the end of day, or get a small plot of land that they and their families can farm and pay the land Lord in a portion of their crops?
Makewi
@Chyron HR:
Democrats only pretend to care. This is just proof of that. In any case, the “Supplemental” in SNAP (or as you know it, food stamps) actually means something.
That said, I wouldn’t have cut this particular spending program.
Linda Featheringill
@beltane:
France. 1789.
stuckinred
My wife works with the WIC program and told me a while back that WIC applications had fallen because of the increase in food stamp allocations. She expects them to rise shortly.
Linda Featheringill
@Comrade Dread:
Jesus! How far back do you want to go? 1870? [North and South for poor, hungry children.]
2wrongs
At the risk of putting my hand in the blender that is to come.
This is actually what I do eat on a weekly ( and a bit ) basis but without the potatoes/rice and with more beans and cauliflower and no eggs. Though eggs are a bit of a treat for me so I have them sometimes.
I realize however that I have access to a stove, oven and fridge and cooking utensils which might not be available to the average person.
So flame away.
freelancer
@Makewi:
Only way to talk to you, babe. [blows kiss]
joshers
It’s called “Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.” It’s not designed to provide the recipient’s entire diet for the week.
Corner Stone
Dirty fucking firebaggers! How dare they cut SNAP?
newhavenguy
Fish sauce, rice and stolen vitamins go further. Rice and beans works, too. If you can steal meat now and then, better yet. But it still sucks.
Don’t cry for me, Argentina.
Coming from a middle class background, the brief periods in my life when I was food insecure (ie, “Am going to get 1,000 calories today or am I not?”) were…
Words fail me here. “scary” almost touches the surface of it. “Time consuming” and “incredibly stressful” help too, but it sucks worse than that, honest.
And that’s being young, with ample support networks via family and friends, if too far away to bum meals and smokes from. Also, having good reason to believe (and hope) that these were probably going to be temporary situations.
That was character building, illuminating, an interesting experience— the War on the Poor is not. To compare them would be as obscene as likening the occasional late lunch to starvation at Belsen, and I am not that guy.
What I’m saying is that No one— no one— should have to live that way in this country. Period. Not for more than a few months, anyway.
Am I a Bleeding-Heart Liberal? No, more like a Boiling-Blood Liberal. I can’t even pretend to be surprised anymore, but neither can I stop being outraged by it.
(Obligatory reminder:
We’ve got to get our people out to vote this November, unless we want to find out just how fast this experiment in democracy can slide down the bowl.
Two years might be enough time, but if not (R) Governors will be able to gerrymander Congressional districts just right for the next decade. That’s a BFD in its own right, but it’s also another subject entirely.
Cheers,
Corner Stone
@Just Some Fuckhead:
That really wouldn’t be very cost effective. In fact, the delivery cost would probably be more than the soup!
Oh…wait.
Phoebe
@Cat Lady: You could get it with a bike w/a basket.
Yes, I’m one of the annoying people here who says: I could do that! I lived on less for some periods of time in my 20s. And yeah, I’d be buying beans instead of meat. And today fresh veg cost less than they used to and collard greens are insanely cheap and insanely good and super good for you.
But all of this DOES presuppose a kitchen or at least a hotplate.
harlana
Mmm, the moo factor is definitely missing there.
Maude
Eggs are a luxury on food stamps.
Would people please stop telling poor people what to eat?
If the food stamp amount gets cut, families are going to run out at the beginning of the fourth week.
Food prices have been rising, not going down.
It scares people on stamps when they hear that the amount is going to be cut.
Bread and peanut butter is still a good deal if you get the peanut butter on sale. At a small store, not so much.
It’s kids who are going to suffer ala ketchup and Reagan.
I am writing like a grocery list, but it fits the topic.
btw, I don’t see Obama going for this. His mom was on stamps and he knows what it is like.
uila
@beltane: Conveniently omitting the rest of that stanza… a free pony ride to anyone who can translate it into english.
Comrade Dread
@Linda Featheringill: Yes. Back when men were men, and women were women.
The little tykes can learn what it means to be a real American. That if they work hard, pull themselves up by their own bootstraps they can die of cholera deeply in debt to a rich bastard at the ripe old age of 33.
Allison W.
Poor people, being one of them myself, know how to stretch a dollar. We don’t shop at 7-11 and we know how to make something out of nothing. We either learned it from years of being poor as adults or learned it from our poor parents.
The newly poor will have a serious challenge though, like the people who chose those items in the cart. I’d purchase more protein and fats (chicken, peanut butter) and my fiber/carbs would be rice, frozen veggies and beans. You’d be eating the same dishes over and over, but you’d be eating.
Linda Featheringill
Is stolen food considered a supplemental nutrition program?
ItAintEazy
You guys are just eating too many times a day. Do it like some prisons do: two squares a day.
There’s your solution right there.
Mister Papercut
@debit:
There was a really interesting (and disheartening) article about the food desert that exists in a particularly low-income area here in Richmond. The area and people really need a proper grocery store (the article mentions “two Family Dollars along 25th Street and Nine Mile Road”, but it’s worse than that: it’s actually “two Family Dollars within half a mile of one another”), and it would bring jobs and improve the quality of life there, but no one is willing to invest in it, and the area stagnates, at best.
Clearly, though, the answer is bootstraps for everyone. Also, too.
hilzoy
@John Cole: I love the idea of an itinerant douchebag — waddling over the earth, from continent to dusty continent, pausing every now and again to deliver a single mournful spritz …
In all seriousness: if you have a car, and if you don’t have any dependents, and if you have access to a stove, it is possible to live very cheaply. At least, if you don’t mind eating a lot of dry beans. I saw the brokest time in my life coming and bought a 10 lb bag of lentils so that whatever happened, there would be food. At first it was lentils with a little tomato and plain yogurt on top; then no yogurt; then no tomato; then no salt or other spices. And 10 lbs is a lot of lentils. Lasts for a while, but gets boring very, very fast.
Nutritious, though, especially with the yogurt to balance out the protein.
That said, the idea of trucking one home from a distant supermarket is pretty unpleasant, even without any other groceries. And, of course, without a stove this wouldn’t work at all.
Likewise: I will never forget the time I went grocery shopping by bus with one of the women from the battered women’s shelter and her — three? four? small and rambunctious kids. Trying to get all the groceries home without somehow misplacing one of the kids, by bus, in Arizona, was quite an experience. It took hours. (Tucson’s bus system left a lot to be desired — though not as much as Phoenix’s.) And we weren’t trying to carry ten pound bags of anything — just bread and milk and stuff. (Though milk does get heavy…) If I had to do this all the time, I would definitely trade value for portability.
That we can’t manage enough money to pay for the tomatoes and lentils in the original picture — and, for that matter, for better public transportation — should make us ashamed.
(That said, here in Baltimore we have a wonderful program whereby people can place grocery orders and pick them up at the library. I think this is a great development.)
Art
@freelancer: Care to try an insult that doesn’t involve eating or sucking genitalia?
If your knuckles aren’t bruised or battered too much from dragging the ground, maybe you could crack open a thesaurus or at least feign an intelligent reply?
Litlebritdifrnt
Could I make a suggestion to all the folks who can afford to go to a regular grocery store? Suggest to your store manager that they do what my local Food Lion does. At every check out there is a stock of whatever they are going to donate that week to the local food bank, homeless shelter etc., when you go through the checkout the cashier will say “would you like to donate a can of beans to the food bank for $.79?” Its cheap, its a quick and painless way to give. The store then delivers all of the donated goods to the relevant center. The guy behind me in the checkout line once said to the clerk “how many you got (clerk said 20)” guy said “I’ll take them all”. It really is a painless way for people to donate and it will do some good to those in need. If every major grocery chain in the country did this the food banks would be permanently fully stocked.
khead
That’s the Mountaineer spirit!
You could also buy a big tub of lard at the beginning of the month like a lot of other folks. My grandma thought it was one of the four food groups.
PurpleGirl
That may work for someone who has no food allergies or sensitivities but suppose you have something like Crohn’s disease or a non-specific problem…. there’s stuff you might not be able to eat. Don’t judge what someone else can eat by what you can eat.
Ailuridae
@Litlebritdifrnt:
Seconded. I just assumed that all mega markets did this (Jewel/Albertson’s and Dominck’s/Safeway) have done this as long as I can remember.
Somebody mentioned upthread about food banks and depositories. Good ones get amazing deals because of buying power. Donating to one can do an awful lot of good.
Tractarian
This may the only thing Makewi has ever said that I agree with.
Besides, did anyone actually look at the picture? By the looks of it, there’s a couple dozen potatoes, couple dozen onions, a pound of rice, a box of oats, a couple pounds of meat, some frozen veggies and a dozen eggs. That’s for one person for five days. Doesn’t sound so unreasonable to me.
I don’t think even our esteemed bloghost could blow through that many groceries in a single workweek.
morzer
Someone should tell al-Qaeda what being American and free does for you when times are hard. They’ll just leave the GOP and the Blue Dogs to destroy us and not waste any more time on the project.
ruemara
@2wrongs:
Anyone flames you, I’ll kick their ass. I cut most everything to buy flour instead of just rice, so I could make bread. Poverty taught me how to really be an iron chef. The issue is more, why do we force people to live like this and ignore the facts about food insecurity to give wealthy types another tax cut.
debit
@Tractarian: Why not try it for a month and tell us how it goes?
El Cid
I don’t want to sound insane, but I don’t think I eat anywhere near that in 5 days. I’d probably substitute the giant bag of onions for a few more green / orange veggies, and generics for the brand names.
I thought this was for a family of 4 or something.
Of course, without cookware, heat or microwave, clean and hygienic preparation areas, proper refrigeration, and necessary cooking ingredients (oil, butter/marg, salt, pepper, sugar, flour), it’s all pretty meaningless.
freelancer (itouch)
@Art:
I reserve my brainless poison for Makewi only. She’s immune to wit, creativity, and irony. Much apologies if I offended you, but this troll has it coming.
mclaren
$4.50 per person per day is tons of money. Oceans of money. Extravagant beyond description. I typically spend $2.50 per day.
The key is to cook your own food. Tuna noodle casserole costs $1.75 per meal, leaving plenty for fruit juice or dessert or snacks — like rice pudding. Dirt cheap, delicious. Ramen makes a great snack: 15 cents per meal.
For $4.50 per day, you can really go to town. French dip sandwhich with swiss cheese — 2 of ’em, plus bottled au jus sauce, and a soda. All that comes to $4.25 per day, so you have money left over.
Beef stew from the local big box store? $2.39 per can, and it’s really good. That leaves you a whole $2.11 cents, nearly an entire days’ worth of food cost, left over.
Anyone who can’t live on $4.50 per day for food needs to learn what poverty _really_ is. $4.50 per day in food is ridiculously extravagant, you can bake your own cherry pies with that kind of money, you can enjoy fruit and lemonade in addition to delicious staples like meatloaf ($3.25 per day) and lasagna ($3.75 per day) and cheese enchiladas ($2.95 per day). Chicken a la king, with a whole chicken and the rice and skim milk for the sauce, costs a whopping $1.95 per day. Beef stroganoff costs $4.25 per day. This is not “unseason potatoes,” folks, it’s first-rate food better than anything you’d get in an expensive restaurant.
Seriously…what the hell? Can’t you people cook?
PurpleGirl
@Tractarian: Not a couple of dozen potatoes or onions. Maybe a dozen, dozen and a half.
People need time to figure out what to buy, plan the shopping trip and watch how the food lasts.
parsimon
Indeed, it’s true that the photos shown of sample food haul for a 5 day period represent what one might buy rather than what one must. Lentils are, after all, cheap, and I’d go for those over the potatoes, and the onions would last longer than 5 days. Etc. etc.
That all misses the point, though, which is that in a nation this wealthy, we should not have to be cutting such a program at all.
Thanks for the post, John Cole; I hadn’t heard about this.
debit
@mclaren: Just about everything you mentioned is loaded with sodium. Ramen, seriously? And you assume everyone has access to a big store, access to a stove, etc. I repeat my challenge: go try to live on $4.50 a day with your only shopping source being the local 7-11.
freelancer (itouch)
@mclaren:
Omar sure do like them Honey Nut Cheerios.
PurpleGirl
Another point of the article was that each month the food stamp benefit is going to be reduced to some very minimum amount. Food prices are going up but the resources are going down.
parsimon
@mclaren:
__
Oh dear.
Art
@freelancer (itouch): After reading your vacuous blog in which you rarely have anything extra to add to any discussion other than “check out what someone else did,” you should take some time and enrich yourself.
Seriously. You got that dick joke down, but what else do you offer?
Martin
@mclaren:
You gonna tell that to the military families on food stamps? Effectively single mom handling the family, trying to also work and send things to Afghanistan, and maybe doesn’t always have time to prepare a meal?
It’s easy for me to say that $4.50 is a lot. I cook. My wife cooks. She doesn’t have a regular work schedule to keep. We get by on $4.50 with no problem. If we needed to do more prepared food to make a busy schedule work, I’m not sure – it’d get pretty tight then – particularly if you have kids with food allergies.
Oscar Leroy
@Ethan Epstein:
LOL.
Yeah, they have unemployment payments, too! And don’t have other expenses, I’m sure. And even if they do, medical care=so cheap! And who needs a home when there are so many places to pitch a tent! Electricity is a luxury and clothes last forever!
Oscar Leroy
@mclaren:
You are a fool. You can’t even tell the difference between “per day” and “per meal”.
An entire day’s worth left over? You can live on one can of beef stew a day???
Dumbass.
General Stuck
@mclaren:
McLaren, fix yer Thorazine drip and relax with a nice manifesto of DOOM to Ted in The Supermax. You know how down he gets when you don’t write.
PurpleGirl
Many people on UI don’t get or can’t get food stamps. Food stamps are paid for by the feds but the rule-makers for eligibility are local.
So, in NYC, as a single adult female on UI, unless I gave the city volunteer time and took a Work Readiness class (because Bloomberg thinks anyone who is not currently working must be a career welfare client and never worked before) I couldn’t get food stamps, also getting the maximum benefit meant I had too high an income for food stamps.
Schad
As another of the people who, as I approached my loan cap in university, has been there (and even a little bit beyond; getting by for a couple weeks on nothing but brown rice and tomato sauce really opens one’s eyes to the effect a little bit of malnutrition can have), no person should ever have to decide their budget such that they’re forced to choose between getting sufficient calories and nutrients, and that ration essentially does that.
From the looks of things, a person could make healthy, even moderately enjoyable meals on the allocation…for about three days. But to stretch it through the week, you’re looking at portions that simply aren’t viable over any period of time.
freelancer (itouch)
@Art:
WTF? Lighten up, Francis.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but MOST blogging is “Hey, check out what someone did or said, and yeah, I’ve been a little lax on the writing side of it, but you could chalk that up to laziness or I just got a small promotion and so my focus has shifted. But whatever, I don’t need your validation, and though was I said to someone else was ugly, I certainly wasn’t weilding it at you. I said I was sorry once, very clearly, now you can do with that what you will.
General Stuck
@Art:
Scarlet has a fan. Diddly goddamn.
El Cid
This reminds me of a story a relative recounted.
He was reading or listening to a discussion about the health care given to prisoners, and how much better it was than what regular Americans and in particular poor people receive.
Suddenly it struck him that the American reaction was to demand that prisoners should receive worse healthcare, instead of asking themselves “Why do ordinary Americans get worse medical care than prisoners?“
mclaren
@Oscar Leroy:
Yes, I can and do live on one can of stew per day. That plus a snack of ramen. That’s what I eat per day. Or one meal of tuna noodle casserole, 3 cheese enchiladas, whatever.
Of course, I don’t weigh 450 pounds like you, lardass. I’m not morbidly obese. Like you.
Americans eat way too much food per day and way too much food per serving. That probably started at the fast food golden arches sludgeburger places, but, seriously, folks, America is pathological when it comes to how much food we eat.
Have you ever met any foreign students? They can’t believe the grotesque quantities of food they’re expected to eat the first time they go to Burger King. These foreign students burst out laughing and take pictures of themselves with these ridiculous portions of food. They can’t believe it.
Stop eating like pigs, get some exercise. I bike everywhere for my groceries. So don’t tell me you need a car to cook good food and live cheaply. One can of stew per day is plenty.
parsimon
mclaren is making me laugh.
morzer
@mclaren:
Just a touch unconvincing tonight, Mc, in your holier-than-thou posture. Your skin must be pretty awful as well, with all the bad nutrition you are inflicting on yourself.
Mark S.
For just thirty cents a day, you could feed a mclaren.
And each month, you’ll get a letter from him. A very long letter.
debit
@mclaren:
And you asked if we could cook? Good god.
mclaren
@morzer:
Bad nutrition? What are you talking about? Are you drunk?
People all over the world eat enchiladas. Doesn’t do ’em any harm. I grew up eating meatloaf and mashed potatoes and corn — what’s wrong with that? What’s bad nutrition about that?
Tuna noodle casserole is vastly healthier than some McDonalds sludgeburger loaded with fat.
You people sound like you’re wacked out on hard drugs — the kind of fast food goop you people eat is unhealthy. Homemade apple pie and cherry pie is not unhealthy. Homemade chicken a la king on a bed of rice with some home cooked carrots and peas is not unhealthy.
A whopper with cheese…now that’s unhealthy.
morzer
@Mark S.:
Presumably he’d expect you to pay for the postage as well.
debit
@morzer: But you could eat the stamp for a snack. Very filling and good for you.
Chris Grrr
@Mark S.:
Best laugh I’ve had all day. Salute.
morzer
@mclaren:
Judging by your list of suggested menus, I’d say you are more or less in the “ketchup is a vegetable” school of nutritionists. Here’s a hint: something may be better than McDonald’s nutritionally and still be bad for you. As for hard drugs, and my diet, I eat plenty of fruit and vegetables, whole wheat bread and brown rice, and am so far from drugs that coffee is the nearest thing I have to a controlled substance. Now, why don’t you try and build an argument without shrieking abuse, committing logical fallacies and.. oh, but then you wouldn’t be mclaren, would you?
morzer
@debit:
Some people go for days just eating stamps. Ask mclaren, and he’ll explain how letting people have more than a 5 cent stamp per day is just indulging them, and anyway, don’t you know how to cook?
parsimon
It is possible that mclaren has some kind of attention deficit disorder.
mclaren
@debit:
Hey — fool…wake up. I cook most of the time, but not all the time. A couple of days per month I eat canned beef stew. A couple of days per week I eat a frozen entree. The rest of the time, I cook.
Did you go through the express lane at birth? 15 IQ points or less? Do you not understand that cooking your own food 25 or 26 days does not mean you have to cook food every day? A couple of days per month of canned food for variety, and that means I don’t cook 90% of my food 90% of the time? How stupid are you people?
Sheesh.
It’s been clear from the git-go that you folks aren’t too bright, but tonight you’re really pushing it. Next you’ll claim I don’t bike everywhere because I walk to some places too.
You people need to replace your forks with the rubber versions. You’ll hurt yourselves. Get back on the short bus, make room for the people who can count to ten.
morzer
@parsimon:
Or he could just be a fuckwit.
morzer
@mclaren:
Is this the point where you explain that the front seat next to the window on the short bus is reserved for you?
mclaren
@morzer:
What does that even mean? You’re gibbering drivel.
Chicken a la king means “ketchup is a vegetable”? What the hell? That’s classic American food. Meatloaf with mashed potatoes and gravy and corn means “ketchup is a vegetable”?
Whaaaa…?
Here’s a news flash, genius: people in America have been eating this kind of classic American food for 75 years. Macaroni and cheese, meatloaf and mashed potatoes, chicken a la king, enchiladas with spanish rice…if you’re trying to claim this is bizarre food or that people can’t live on it or that it’s unhealthy, yeah, you’re either drunk or brain-damaged or on hard drugs. Because people in America have been living long healthy lives for 75 years and more eating exactly this kind of home-cooked food.
Homemade rice pudding is “unhealthy”? What the fuck are you talking about, fool? No saturated fats (make it with skim milk). No nitrites (like in cooked bacon).
Homemade apple pie is “unhealthy”? Tell that to the 300 years of Americans who’ve thrived eating it.
You’re either grotesquely stupid, or a troll.
debit
@mclaren: I think all the sodium in the ramen has affected more than your blood pressure. You were the one who said none of us knew how to cook, then rattled off a list of prepackaged sodium laden, carbohydrate soaked crap that I would eat only if I was camping and had no other options.
Look, I can say that you could live on a food budget of a dollar a day by eating nothing but ramen seasoned with floor sweepings, and it would certainly be lower in calories and cheaper than McDonalds, but I wouldn’t call it healthy.
parsimon
@morzer: Well, that’s possible as well. I’m kind of new here: do we feed the trolls or not? I imagine it depends on mood.
General Stuck
I ‘m reading way too much personal information about Mclaren on this thread. Movie time.
Ash Can
All right, who put a quarter in the mclaren? The damned thing won’t shut off now.
morzer
@mclaren:
Does the word “starch” mean anything to your mind, Mclaren? How about “food groups”? “Balanced nutrition”? No, apparently not. And, for your information, roadkill possum is classic American food too. Got a recipe for that as well? Or are you too busy sprinkling holy water on vegetables in case they rise up and come for you at night?
I will say this: no-one in America deserves your repulsive diet quite as much as you do.
Anyway, talking to you has reminded me that I have some rather nice bananas to enjoy. Have fun storming the castle!
Dream On
“or they could eat dog food or Hungry Man dinners…”
morzer
@parsimon:
Well, the question is how much money we allocate to feeding them. By and large, I’d say that once you get to the mclaren and cheese stage, you’ve shown enough compassion.
El Cid
@mclaren:
C’mon. Whatever the world-comparative practicality of that remark, c’mon, you got to admit that particular statement sounds pretty bizarre.
“I can and do live on one can of stew per day.”
Very 19th century. A story of a hero’s journey from poverty up to a rich industrialist committed to retaining the diet he acquired in the private school to which a wealthy but unknown benefactor sent him.
I can and do
Live on one can of stew
Each and every day.
As every sun rises
The beef tenderizes
And thus I control what I weigh.
mclaren
So you people are ignorant as well as stupid. Medical studies have shown that sodium intake has no effect on blood pressure. None.
I get it now…I’m dealing with a bunch of New Age kooks who’ve bought into bizarre myths like “remove salt from your diet.”
You crackpots obviously think you’re not eating healthy food unless you consume $10-per-pound arugula or “organic fruits.” Guess what, idiots? Studies prove that “organic” fruits and vegetables have just as many pesticides as regular fruits and vegetables from the local supermarket. “Organic” foods: certification does not protect consumers. That super-expensive arugula is no more healthy for you than regular lettuce, and studies have proven it.
“Consumers who opt for organic foods often believe they are improving their health but there is currently no strong evidence that organics bring nutrition-related health benefits, a new research review finds.”
Source: “Buying Organic? You May Be Wasting Your Money,” Reuters news service, 24 may 2010.
As for the claim that the food I cook is “loaded with carbohydrates”…bingo! Now I know we’re dealing with a classic Atkins Diet crackpot. That carbohydrate crap isn’t backed up by any nutritional studies.
In fact, clinical nutrition studies show that a low-carb diet increases the “bad” version of cholesterol, the LDL variety (as opposed to the “good” HDL cholesterol).
Source: “Lack of suppression of circulating free fatty acids and hypercholesterolemia during weight loss on a high-fat, low-carbohydrate diet,” Teri L Hernandez, Julie P Sutherland, Pamela Wolfe, Marybeth Allian-Sauer, Warren H Capell, Natalie D Talley, Holly R Wyatt, Gary D Foster, James O Hill and Robert H Eckel, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Vol. 91, pp. 578-585, 2010.
Go argue with the scientists, you ignorant fools. A low-carb diet is unhealthy and the peer-reviewed scientific journal literatures proves it.
grumpy realist
We’ve already mentioned that unless you have access to cooking facilities most of the food pictured is unusable. Also remember the risk that poor people have of getting the electricity turned off (because of lack of ability to pay the electricity bill) or the wiring/fridge zonks out (because they’re in crappy housing with twenty-year old equipment.)
And if you’ve just spent N hours working at a nickle-and-dime job and have three kids under the age of 5 to take care of…and now we’re demanding you spend 2 hours or more on a series of buses plus lugging a lot of groceries to stuff into a fridge that you just cross your fingers on and hope it won’t go kaput this week, PLUS the time spent in cooking and then putting all this well-cooked food back into the fridge that we still are hoping doesn’t break down, wasting all–well, I understand quite well why McD’s is looking better and better.
morzer
@mclaren:
Yes, those same nutritionists who so enthusiastically said that a can of beef stew a day was all that man required.
*rolls eyes*
debit
@mclaren: You know what would make your diet even better? Lard! Lots of yummy lard and maybe some sugar! Put some together on your Wonder Bread for a treat after you eat your tuna casserole. YUM.
Hedges Ahead
To be fair, un-hydrogenated lard doesn’t have any trans fats. Fat-back on toast, maybe a slice of tomato, there’s a fine traditional North Carolinian breakfast.
parsimon
mclaren, dude, nobody’s insulting your mother’s cooking.
morzer
@debit:
Careful, debit. You’ve just revealed that you are one of those classic South Park diet crackpots! God only knows what will happen if you explain to mc-maniac that meat is protein, not carbohydrates. He’ll probably accuse you of forcing soc.ial.ist vegetables down his throat.
mclaren
@El Cid:
“Pretty bizarre”?
What the hell???
What are you people talking about?
What in the world is bizarre about eating a can of stew as your main meal and then a snack 6 to 8 hours later (maybe some homemade chicken soup, maybe ramen, maybe a homemade quesadilla…whatever).
Wow, people. You have revealed yourselves. It’s now perfectly clear to me where the morbid obesity in America gets its foothold. You people obviously think that eating a reasonable bowl of beef stew and one small snack per day is too little to live on. You think that’s some kind of prison diet.
Wowie zowie, no wonder Americans are michelin-tire-man waddling fatrolls. No wonder studies show that most Americans are grossly overweight. You crackpots obviously think you’re living on a “prison diet” if you eat a daily amount of calories that was considered luxurious and filling 60 years ago.
No, you people think you’re starving unless you gorge your fat faces with fried mozarella sticks and a 64-ounce Supersized soda chock full of corn syrup and then stuff a KFC Double Down into your bulging craws.
You people probably subsist on chicken fried bacon and pork rinds and popcorn dipped in sweet and sour sauce in between gulps of Mountain Dew.
What a bunch of kooks. You think normal healthy food is some kind of prison diet. Boy oh boy oh boy, no wonder people visiting from Europe think Americans are lard-encased mutants waddling around with grotesque wattles of fat on their arms and throats, like creatures out of The Dark Crystal.
morzer
@Hedges Ahead:
Could we render down mclaren and get the unhydrogenated goodness we need? Of course, we’d have to remove the lithium before consumption.
Mayur
@El Cid: You win the discussion for the day.
Oh, and fuck you Makewi. You have absolutely no idea what government is or what its structure and responsibilities are or should be, and my guarantee is that I or my own would be putting a machete through your skull right now if you didn’t have the high and mighty protection of the USA.
morzer
@mclaren:
You spend an awful lot of time obsessing over high-fat foods, don’t you? Do the cool kids torment you at school by eating drumsticks too loudly?
El Cid
@mclaren: Actually, when studies were combined into meta-studies, in similar conditions high carbohydrate diets were somewhat more likely to lead to weight loss than low carbohydrate diet, but the mean failure in weight control is that people exert very little control whatsoever over the total caloric intake they achieve every day and often believe that reductions in one ingredient or other have an impact greatly outside its truly possible impact.
In short, the main problem with obesity is that people eat too much, but this may be a manifestation of other and deeper things going on with other factors affective how the body tends to prefer and desire certain foods and food flavors and how it stores and processes calories and fats.
Any suggestion that the linking of salt / sodium with higher than otherwise expected cardiovascular disease has been disproven is choosing positions in a scientific debate rather than in any way describing the consensus of medical research and clinical experiments.
freelancer (itouch)
@Mayur:
Careful there, Art is lurking, and he may get concerned for you.
El Cid
@mclaren: First, please go outside your diet and take some sort of prescribed or natural tranquilizer.
If in your fevered interpretation you thought I suggested that one needed greater quantities or elite ingredients, you’re flat out wrong and stop being such a hypersensitive nincompoop with a martyr complex.
Sure, there have been plenty of weeks in which I have made a large beef stew or pot roast and eaten on it as lunch or dinner (or sometimes both!) for a week or more. Or pasta. Or stir-fry with lots of vegetables and lots of rice and a little meat. Or scrambled eggs and cheese. I.e., large preparation in advance and eating for days.
The way you wrote it it sounded not that you were saying that you ate ‘something akin to’ a can of beef stew per day, but that every single day of your life your main meal was a can of beef stew.
Do you?
Do you eat a can of beef stew each and every day? Every single day? Week in, week out? Month in, month out? Year in, year out?
Because that would be saying something interesting.
Hedges Ahead
I’d probably use the same caution as when rendering down a hippy; sure a vegan diet will give a consistent product, but tuna mercury, THC, certain neurotoxin, all sorts of crap we humans ingest is fat soluble and bioaccumulates.
Just Some Fuckhead
Soup is good, yes it’s true.
Because soup is mostly water
And water’s good for you!
mclaren
@El Cid:
Sorry, you’ve cited one peer reviewed journal article in the New England Journal of Medicine with very dodgy wording. Notice the NEJM author’s claim: he said salt was “associated” with CVD, not causative. Not even correlated. He used that weasel-wording because his correlation coefficient for sodium intake and cardiovascular disease was so low it didn’t pass mathematical muster.
Here’s a reference to a peer reviewed journal article debunking the claim that high sodium intake causes heart disease:
Source: “High salt intake health risk debunked?” scientific blogging website.
James K. Polk, Esq.
@mclaren:
Dinty Moore Beef Stew
One can = 400 calories.
How many calories do you consume per day while “biking everywhere”?
El Cid
@mclaren: Jeesus fucking cripes! What did I fucking say?
Do you even have the capacity to read what someone fucking said?
I clearly stated that no medical research consensus had emerged clearing salt / sodium intake from increased CDV disease risk.
This means there can and are debates.
Then you post a peer reviewed article purporting to establish the lack of such links. Peer-reviewed not meaning that any such published article can disprove other peer-reviewed articles which it disputes. It might, but that it’s peer-reviewed does not imply that.
And, poof, done, there is no link. It’s gone, clearly, because in one study it appears not to be associated with risk.
I did not take the position that salt / sodium are either proven or disproven from being risks at some levels of intake for many people regarding CDV.
That you have chosen to take a side for completely unscientific reasons — i.e., you’re not part of the actual scientific community undertaking this research and these debates — is your own undertaking, and not the responsibility of others.
My personal opinion based on no claims of participation in monitoring clinical experiments and meta-analyses of epidemiological surveys is that salt is not a horrendous risk but would probably better to avoid in some measure of ‘excessive’ qualities, and in general should be limited in processed foods so that salt could easily be added by the consumer to taste and thus exert more consumer control even over highly processed foods.
morzer
@James K. Polk, Esq.:
Well, mclaren generates abundant hot air from his posterior, so expends no actual energy while biking…..
mclaren
@El Cid:
Now we know we can dismiss everything you’ve said, because you can’t even understand the English language.
READ WHAT I WROTE, KOOK.
Here’s what I wrote:
For $4.50 per day, you can really go to town. French dip sandwhich with swiss cheese—2 of ‘em, plus bottled au jus sauce, and a soda. All that comes to $4.25 per day, so you have money left over.
From this, a person able to read the English language would reasonably deduce that I eat a wide variety of foods including tuna noodle casserole, fruit juice, rice pudding, ramen, french dip sandwiches, beef stew. Mentioned later on, cheese enchiladas, chicken a la king, chicken soup, meatloaf, and so on, all homemade, all of which I obviously said I eat.
A reasonable person could not deduce from the above quote that I eat only one can of beef stew every day, day in, day out, 24/7/365.
Only a nut job or someone completely unable to read the English language would conclude from the above quote that I eat only one can of beef stew every day, day in, day out, 24/7/365.
Which are you?
Demented?
Or dyslexic?
I eat everything from homemade pahd thai (hint: substitute homemade rice balls for shrimp now that the Gulf has filled with toxic corexit) to homemade tandoori chicken to homemade tomato and rice soup. None of it costs more than about $4.00 per meal, and in most cases much less. This is the food the world eats. People in India and France and Germany and Japan have much lower blood pressure and much less cardiovascular disease than Americans. The food I eat is clearly and obviously far healthier than the McDung you people stuff into your slobbering mouths while slurping down toxic “non-dairy” milkshakes.
morzer
@mclaren:
Shame it still leaves you 50 IQ points behind the average and several grades off-track when it comes to reading comprehension.
parsimon
@James K. Polk, Esq.: That is a bit of problem, isn’t it? To hear mclaren tell it, he/she is not taking in anything approaching, say, 1500 calories per day, much less the 2000 or more he/she’d need if biking and walking everywhere. Hm. But then, there were conflicting reports from him/her upthread: on the one hand, apple pie! meatloaf and mashed potatoes and peas and gravy! on the other hand, a can of stew and a ramen noodle snack.
It’s absurd to argue about this with someone who’s unclear to begin with on his or her claims.
James K. Polk, Esq.
@parsimon: I would like him to answer, though…
@mclaren: How many calories do you eat per day, on average, would you say?
El Cid
@mclaren: In the one comment I joked about, you said this:
And that is what I found amusing. Sure, there were other comments which highlighted a greater diversity.
We all say some odd things at times. That sounded odd.
Of course I couldn’t understand this because I’m currently trapped on the couch under a thousand pounds of chocolate nacho flavored bacon lard salt bricks, and I have to eat my way out.
morzer
@El Cid:
Do you need assistance? I might even be able to waive our usual fee.
Corner Stone
I’m not sure but I seem to think someone is telling me I should be ok with feeding my 6 yr old a can of beef stew, tuna noodle casserole and ramen for a snack.
Well. I am not ok with that.
El Cid
@James K. Polk, Esq.: As has been pointed out, once you get through all the literary spasmodification, the actual description of mcclaren’s diet is one which is quite reasonable in quantity and diversity of nutrients and which combines economically prepared meals from basic ingredients and some pre-packaged processed foods.
In other words, neither an American stereotype of a Big Mac gulping, Spaghettios-as-dessert slurping, chocolate bars dipped in chocolate sauce breakfast type person nor as a ghost wafting about an eco-yuppie grocery store picking up a $1,000 turnip fresh flown in from the Italian farmer who led in the turnips education and fine arts training.
An economically possible thing to do which need not me fetishistically ‘correct’ in some fashion in each and every meal or meal component but which sanely balanced and budgeted foodways planned for use time in advance.
morzer
@Corner Stone:
I think that just proves you are an Atkins diet obsessive and weigh over 1000 pounds. At least, that’s the usual mclaren blarting in response to any challenge.
parsimon
@James K. Polk, Esq.: He appears to have answered at least that the “one can of beef stew, plus ramen, per day” was an overstatement.
El Cid
@Corner Stone: You may have to blend and strain it. Make sure and dab a tiny bit on your forearm to test for temperature, doneness, sticking, and beautiful protein peaks.
TenguPhule
I would just like to say that mclaren would starve to death in Hawaii based on their budget without food aid or simple theft. Probably most of the other “that’s plenty” people as well.
That being said, it was not an offer to accept them here to see it work.
El Cid
@TenguPhule: I would be happy transferring many of the people who think that welfare and unemployment and work programs are far too generous out to large deep ocean islands.
Not as some learning exercise about how expensive it is to bring in food from other locations. I just would rather have them out there instead of here.
morzer
@El Cid:
Where does mclaren depress local property values anyway? Anyone know? Do I need to move?
Comrade Mary
@Mark S.: Beautiful.
mclaren
@James K. Polk, Esq.:
Bicycling on flat ground takes very little calories, typically around 38 to 45 calories per mile. I seldom bike more than about 10 miles per day, so I probably burn no more than 400 calories per day biking around.
And the big box store brand of beef stew is much better than the Dinty Moore stuff and gives you more in the can, so I’d guess 600 to 700 calories per day from beef stew. For a large serving of tuna noodle casserole, probably about the same. Somewhat more from meatloaf and mashed potatoes because of the gravy, I’d guess, maybe 800 or 900 calories for that meal. Add in some ramen or a quesadilla plus some dessert like a slice of apple pie, and you probably get around 1200 to 1500 calories per day from food, on average.
That’s a reasonable daily intake. For reference, a Big mac with supersize fries clocks in at 1230 calories — for just one meal. Multiply that by 3 for three meals per day, and it’s obvious that the average fast-food-eating Americano probably gobbles down at least three times as many calories as I do. Plus, your typical Americano does not typically bicycle everywhere: your typical Americano drives, burning far fewer calories.
So my claims are based on hard cold fact. The typical Americano lives a much less health life while pissing away vastly more money than the diet I’ve cited (typical cost for fast food AFAICT is around $6 to $7 per meal compared to my cost of $2.50 to $4.00 per day for home-cooked food) .
The obvious conclusion here is that the government should teach cooking classes to low-income people at no charge. Cooking is easy and fun. Plus, if you spend the weekend cooking up large batches of food and then freeze it to store it for later, you can save incredible amounts of money. Cook in bulk every Saturday or Sunday, cook multiple meals at once, freeze your home-made meals, and you’ll never have to rush down to the supermarket to buy something because you’re hungry. You can wait for those once-a-month sales to buy food, and that’s when you really save money.
No, people, $4.50 per day is a ton of bucks for food if you cook your own meals and do it smart.
Corner Stone
I’ve been fucking poor. For the better part of 25 years.
My mom used to buy pork chops as they aged past the sell date at the store. And we’d eat pork chops and spanish rice every day for a month. I don’t mean for “dinner”, I mean for my “meal” for that day.
I watched my mom try to take $1.29 and somehow feed the 3 of us. I remember the day I got a chocolate frosty from Wendy’s when I was a very young teen. It cost a fucking dollar and at the time I thought I should sit down and start crying I was so happy about it.
The fuck I’m going to tell my son he can’t have fresh fruit because it costs some amount per day to buy it.
morzer
@mclaren:
Provided that you are happy to live on protein and starch. What you are proposing is nutritional idiocy. Next to no vegetables, no fruit… and yet you have the nerve to bleat on about Big Macs!
parsimon
@mclaren:
mclaren, for fuck’s sake, I have no fucking idea why you’re arguing that the only alternative to home cooking is a McDonald’s diet, such that it’s incumbent upon you to argue in favor of the former, as though anyone here has argued in favor of the latter. For god’s sake.
Nor has anyone argued in favor of comparatively expensive organic argula as the basis for the only diet that might be called nutritious.
No idea why you’re so defensive on this, but seriously: you’ve constructed strawman after strawman, failed to actually read, and made deeply insulting assumptions about the eating behaviors of people here. It is annoying.
El Cid
@Corner Stone: Those experiences are what helped to make you the good person you are to day. Thus, you should subject your children to the exact same things.
morzer
@parsimon:
You’ll get used to it. Mclaren’s modus operandi doesn’t change much. The best response is just to giggle as he goads himself to ever greater feats of rhetorical flatulence.
mclaren
@morzer:
Spoken like a true piggish Americano. Unless you splurge daily with conspicuous consumption, why, you’re just not living at all.
Heaven forbid Americanos should actually be frugal. That’s a sin in our Church of the Holy Shopping Mall consumer culture!
What a pathetic example of American greed and arrogance. The idea that spending less money, cooking your own food, eating healthy, and avoiding roasting the planet by biking instead of roaring around in some giant gas-guzzling deathmobile is somehow bad….oooohhh, ooohhh, spending less money is bad because it depresses property values…
That’s just sick and twisted and pathetic.
Guess what, people?
You’re all going to have to learn to spend less money and take a bike or public transit. It ain’t hard. It won’t impact your life very much. But there’s a big change a-coming, I can guaran-fucking-tee you, and when oil hits $175 per gallon, you will learn exactly how frugally you can live, and you will get an education in just how far you can travel on a bike every day.
morzer
Just as a benchmark for mclaren’s vile slop of a diet:
bananas $0.46/pound
broccoli $0.99/pound
But hey, you can always live on canned beef stew!
El Cid
Every single one of you in here has insulted my nearly monklike devotion to pursuing mild amounts of exercise in transportation and quite common approaches to food health and budgeting, and this means that every single one of you here eats at 14 different fast food restaurants their biggest 3 item combo with milkshake at least 7 times a day while you drive a land-converted Carnival Cruise ship burning a million gallons a minute, and, oh, but you will be sorry you didn’t listen to me when oxygen costs 130 rapes per breath and your fat asses will have to get by eating tree bark and flatworms.
morzer
@mclaren:
Can’t you shake off the veneer of gentility and tell us what you really think?
parsimon
@morzer: Ah. I had a feeling that this wasn’t unusual; I let myself be baited.
morzer
@El Cid:
Just so long as I don’t have to become a Jets fan, I am cool.
morzer
@parsimon:
Don’t feel bad. Poking a stick through the bars of mclaren’s cage is a very respectable late-night amusement, and costs practically nothing.
El Cid
@morzer: Well, it’s either the 130 rapes for a breath of oxygen or being a Jets fan. You know no one chooses the latter.
mclaren
@parsimon:
Not very big on logic, are we?
If you don’t cook homemade food, what’s the alternative? Walk outside and wait for manna to fall from the sky?
Either you cook your own food or you have to eat at a restaurant. Exactly which restaurant is matter of choice. Some people eat at Mickey D’s, some people eat at Subway, some people eat at local Mom ‘n Pop restaurants.
Whichever restaurant you eat at, I can guarantee you it will cost a boatload more money that cooking your own food. We’re talking $6 to $9 per meal, and multiply that times 3. That’s a huge wheelbarrow full of money for food, that’s $650 to $800 per month just for food. Just for food. Holy crap! That’s between $7800 and $9600 per year just for food.
If that’s what Americans think it’s reasonable to spend on food, welllllll, no wonder Americans can’t make ends meet. Cook your own food and spend $100 to $125 per month and you eat very very well and you’ll save between $6500 and $8500 per year just on food. Switch to a bike or public transit and you’ll save even more by cutting your gasoline bills down to zero, you’ll save another $1500 to $3000 per month easy. That’s a cumulative savings per year of $8,000 to $11,500 just by eating smart with home-cooked food and using public transit or a bike.
And you’re complaining about this?
You’re calling me a “hippy” because I eat smart and help save the planet by biking around? Well well well well well. Thanks for telling us all about yourself, Miss Piggy.
That crackpot morzer was talking about expensive organic stuff. I’ve seen the organic food at the local co-op, and you can easily burn through $200 a week on nothing but super-priced organic lettuce and organic apples and blah blah blah. That stuff costs its weight in gold, it’s no more healthy for you than regular fruits and veggies,and the scientific studies prove it.
Also — you people have no idea how energy-efficient bicycling is, do you? Turns out a human on a bike is the most energy-efficient form of transportation, bar none. 38 to 45 calories per mile is probably high. And you seldom need to bike, at the absolute most, more than 15 miles or so. For longer trips, you take public transit (obviously). So that’s a caloric expenditure of no more than 500 calories per day for bicycling even if you bike 15 miles per day. For reference, 500 calories is less than one half of a typical large meal — probably closer to 1/3. Eat just one large 1200 calorie meal per day plus a snack with another few hundred calories 6 or 8 hours later, and you actually have to worry about gaining weight.
Morzer gibbers:
I don’t list everything I eat, you fool. Obviously there’s carrots and peas and corn and salads and apples and oranges and raspberries and watermelon slices in the summer and pumpkins in the fall and so on. As for “protein and starch,” there’s only protein and starch and carbohydrates and fats. That’s it. That’s all food, everywhere — protein and starch and carbohydrates and fats. Claiming that food like tuna noodle casserole is unhealthy is so stupid it needs a new word in the English language to define that level of stupidity. Go away, you’re embarrassing yourself.
morzer
@El Cid:
True. Jets fans are simply those poor souls who lost the evolutionary lottery. They probably eat beef stew every day and spit when passing McDonalds….
morzer
@mclaren:
Ah, the desperation strikes. Show me one place where I mentioned the word organic or recommended organic food, or admit that you are a sad little ignoramus with the reading comprehension of Dubya and the nutritional wisdom of Cheney.
mclaren
@morzer:
Yes, home cooked apple pie is “a vile diet of slop.”
Keep talking. And remember, those people aren’t laughing at you, they’re laughing with you.
parsimon
@mclaren:
I had no idea. Thanks! And restaurants are more expensive, you say? I see.
morzer
@mclaren:
Mmm no, mclaren, actually, they are laughing at you. But thanks for playing.
morzer
@parsimon:
Our mclaren does love these complex intellectual understandings of real life.
mclaren
@El Cid:
Show me where I said anything about being “monklike.”
The entire point is that you can eat very well cheaply. Just cook your own food. Not monklike. It was what Americans used to do for hundreds of years before Wendys and Carl’s Jr. and Taco Bell came along.
“Mild exercise” is also the point. Biking takes very little effort. It’s not hard. That’s why you should do it.
You people are really living in lala-land. Someone who doesn’t sit his lard ass down in an SUV and rumble through a Burger King drive through is “monklike.”
Wow. No wonder the rest of the world looks at America and recoils with disgust and horror.
You think you know something about real poverty? Take a look at rural Thailand, bubba, take a look at rural China where the factories haven’t yet arrived. That’s poverty. That’s living on less than a dollar a day.
You people have no concept what real poverty looks like. No concept whatsoever. The slums of Chenai — that’s real poverty. Living on $4.50 per day just for food alone ain’t poverty, not compared to that, buckaroos.
morzer
@mclaren:
You mean Chennai, perhaps? And I’ve done research in rural China, which is a damn sight more than you can say, Mr Starch and Protein.
Luthe
And here I was going to say that as a starving grad student, I could probably live on that for a week, but then, I have a stove and a fridge and a slow cooker.
Of course, if I were to say such a thing, mclaren would probably attack me for daring to be a grad student and eating at the same time.
(I’m a grad student in urban planning. Fixing food deserts is one of the things we do. In theory, at least.)
morzer
@Luthe:
Give it time and he’ll denounce you as a right McDonalds splittist.
mclaren
@Corner Stone:
You’re new at parenting, aren’t you?
News flash, guy: your 6 yr old eats crayons and paste and silly putty. If you’re worried about your precious little darling’s health from the food he eats, you’re a little late on that score. 6 year olds eat the damndest things, including cat food if you don’t watch out (they want to see what it tastes like).
morzer
@mclaren:
Well, I can see where your problems began. Eating all that catfood was very selfish of you.
mclaren
@Luthe:
You think you’ve got it bad now as a grad student? One of my friends who got a doctorate in molecular biology back in the day used to tell me stories about eating the lab rabbits, he was so poor.
mclaren
@morzer:
In your case, it was obviously lead paint…and lots of it.
morzer
@mclaren:
Very labored, mclaren, very labored. You really can’t transfer your unimpressive biography to the rest of us like this.
parsimon
@mclaren: Do I detect an actual sense of humor?
Good. ‘night all.
morzer
@parsimon:
G’night, parsimon. And no, sadly, you don’t.
freelancer (itouch)
Jesus Christ this whole thread could only happen on BJ.
kdaug
This makes me really angry. Grrrr, Grrrr!
El Cid
@mclaren: I called you “monklike” in exaggerated mockery of the quite self-martyring verbiage you’re using on the hallucinatory presumption that the rest of us here are bacon triple steak burger consuming electric scooter riders and you’re some sort of exceptional magical figure who cooks for himself.
God, damn, I used to think that you were some sort of leftist, and that I am some sort of leftist, but whether or not that’s true you’re first and foremost a scatterbrained narcissist.
El Cid
@mclaren:
Fuck you, you petty ignorant ass.
You think you’re the only one in the fucking universe with ties to and experience in or close friends or family in desperately poor 3rd world areas, where people would love the caloric and nutritional content of a Dinty Moore’s can?
I’ve lived and worked alongside indigenous communities that survived on no more than tortillas and if they were lucky, beans.
God, damn, you’re a fucking shallow, self-involved fuck.
Stupid ass. You really have some sort of notion of yourself as a magically insightful cross-cultural revolutionary.
And most of this because people joked about you mentioning you ate a can of beef stew a day.
You have problems. You keep arguing that all of ‘us’ are attacking you for eating moderate amounts of nutritious food prepared at home combined with regular mild exercise because we’re all endorsing eating a million pounds of day of Wendy’s Frosty’s while driving around in our Queen Elizabeth II SUV’s.
Jeesh, you’re a repetitive, neurotic fuck.
PurpleGirl
@freelancer (itouch): (If you are still reading….)
I’ve seen a similar degeneration of food threads at Pandagon. Probably happens at other blogs. And it does usually happen to food threads. There is always one person who decides to insult the whole thread. May not be a troll but acts like one in discussing food.
Ailuridae
@El Cid:
Jeesh, you’re a repetitive, neurotic fuck.
This. It is amazing that mclaren makes more sense in HCR threads (where he basically makes no sense) than in other threads.
Kat
It looks a helluva lot better than what’s in my kitchen right now.
It got so bad a couple of years ago, I took to buying bags of Little Debbie frosted mini-donuts, and calling each one by the name of some fruit as I was eating it.
Then things got worse, and I took to eating them three at a time on a plate, while referring to them as veggies and meat.
My friends thought I’d gone daft — talking about eating an apple whilst eating a frosted mini-donut. But if you can’t afford to buy apples, hey — you just invent metaphoric apples, and you keep right on going.
As everyone in our country well-knows, thinking about what you eat is a highly overrated waste of time — it just makes you gag and waste good money already spent.
freelancer (itouch)
@PurpleGirl:
Lol I just learned that any religious vs. non-religious thread at LGF now, inevitably devolves into a pizza snob thread because they are awesome at self policing nowadays. This atheist kind of wishes that was a new meme or thing all across the web. And I’m one of those militant atheists whose fervor has driven me so far as to…read moar books.
Triassic Sands
@Ethan Epstein:
Yeah, and everyone knows that unemployment insurance is more than enough to pay rent or the mortgage. So, is your plan that people become homeless so they can eat better?
Also, where’s the money in your plan for health care, vehicle maintenance and fuel, utility bills, etc. Apparently, your grand design begins with a family moving into a deluxe refrigerator box and then embarking on a non-stop party.
Steaming Pile
RTFA, or more importantly, read the articles linked to by TFA. I did. I must have missed the part where President Obama was ready to sign this food stamp reduction into law. Looking at the article being referred to in the first paragraph, this is what I do see:
Nowhere in that article does it mention which Senate Democrats, whether it’s all of them or just certain ones like Ben Nelson or Mary Landrieu or CFL Sen. Joe Lieberman. More importantly, it does state that the White House is opposed. The Wash. Independent is getting all hysterical about stupid shit without doing its homework first.
Corner Stone
@mclaren: The 6 yr part should have been a good starting point.
I’m not sure what cartoon version of Dennis the Menace you get your childcare information from, but it’s wildly off the mark.
Corner Stone
IMO, as usually happens, the point of this thread has gotten lost.
People doing what they have to to survive is one thing. The argument about what you *can* get by on, or maybe even *should* get by on is a different topic.
Corner Stone
Food insecurity, in America, is a topic that pushes my buttons I’ll admit. And I get very disenjoyable when we start arguing about gluttony as opposed to asking the question of, “Why, in America, are we supporting policies that allow an individual to be scared they do not know where their next meal is coming from?”
Being frugal has nothing to do with this essential debate.
Mark D
Sweet fucking lord … there truly are some petty, disgusting, sheltered, clueless, heartless fucks on this thread.
No wonder our nation is so fucked up: We have an inordinate number of people who have decided that, in the richest nation in the history of all of mankind, food is some sort of luxury, and one should be happy with their meal of Top Ramen cooked with nothing but hot water in a roach-filled apartment with no utilities simply because someone in some other country has less.
Just … fuck the likes of mclaren. They’ll be some of the first against the wall anyway.
jim
For many poor people, that picture is completely meaningless: they don’t have any access to cooking facilities & thus have to subsist on ready-to-eat fast-foods. Without such access, teaching them how to cook good meals is about as useful for their daily lives as a class in particle physics.
Also worth noting that a lot of poor (& not-so-poor) people overeat to try & compensate for a low quality of life overall. They need a good job, hands-on community projects & a decent local rec-center a lot more then they need a slightly bigger CARE package.
Three squares a day is essential for growing children or adults who do physical labor – but for relatively sedentary adults, it’s downright deadly (cf. cancer/diabetes/heart-disease rates over the last 20 years). The rich diet that was needed in a low-tech rural culture just doesn’t fit most peoples’ lifestyles today, but the people who market food love it, so it isn’t going to go away. Many now think nothing of buying sodapop by the gallon – & the only larger size left to sell is by the keg. Average portions at most major fast-food chains have doubled – or worse – in just the last couple of years. The paybacks from all of this are going to be ugly, to put it mildly.