WSJ reports decrease in fruit and vegetable consumption correlated to unemployment. Come on, we’re always hearing how the ‘poor’ in the US can’t afford fruits and vegetables, because crappy meat and junk food is cheaper. The hell it is. It’s cheaper by the pound for garbage meat, but not cheaper per food value delivered. And junk food isn’t cheaper by any standard. But the heart of the problem isn’t the price of food, but how people insist on eating. I know tons of people who think it’s not a meal without meat and potatoes – without, in fact, being dominated by meat and potatoes.
One mother told me her family treats vegetables as basically a garnish. Maybe they’ll have a can of green beans or corn between them (the lowest grade veggies there are), but that’s window dressing for double helpings of pork chops, mashed potatoes, and bread – fat, starch, and starch, garnished with only starchy vegetables, in other words. Lots of single men I’ve spoken with, who might as well be sounding off their eulogies, say they don’t eat vegetables at all. They cry like little urchins cowering in the corner from onions and broccoli. “Ew” they say. Anyone who’s looked at it knows the meat at the center isn’t meat, and the potatoes aren’t potatoes, not in the sense they once were, anyway. And if you’re dumping “ranch” all over it (primary ingredient is MSG), you might as well be eating fast food.
So don’t be a complete dip about diet – if you’re struggling, economically, choose foods with highest real food value for the buck, and dump the inbred “I gotta have meat and potatoes!” and then eating crap that anyone with taste wouldn’t call ‘meat’ or ‘potatoes’. Let go of your terror of plant life and start stoking your diet with disease-fighting foods (because you can’t afford health care, and you don’t want the government to give it to you – though apparently the unemployment line isn’t ‘socialism’), and stop sitting in that flattened-out couch munching Doritos and bean dip.
The best investment any entrepreneur, unemployed job-seeker, contractor, freelancer, or free agent can make, is in his health and the health of his family. And if your food bill looks like your housing bill, get the soda pop out of your cart, and grab those extra bags of carrots and apples. Otherwise, it’s going to be a relatively short, soon to be uncomfortable, and quite expensive (in the end) life for everyone involved.
