More Coq Au Vin?

While Little Matty is busy being stupid in China, one of his drones - in this case Jamelle Bouie - is busy being stupid right here:

Researchers at the University of Washington further illustrate the link between poverty and obesity:

The percentage of food shoppers who are obese is almost 10 times higher at low-cost grocery stores compared with upscale markets, a small new study shows.

[.....]

It’s not that healthier ingredients are absent or too expensive — even lower-priced supermarkets have plenty of fresh produce available — it’s that preparing those meals requires more time and energy than is available to most lower-income people. Cooking takes time, and after a long day of hard work in low-wage employment, parents want to relax, and the incredible ease of fast and processed food is a powerful lure. Indeed, if there’s any advantage to lower-income grocery stores Kroger or Wal-Mart, it’s that calorie dense foods — cookies, frozen pizza, Easy Mac — are cheap and readily available.

Whereas us middle-class folks come home from work rested and refreshed... Ready to tackle that seven course dinner we promised our children only that morning while preparing their sack lunches of leftover Beef Wellington,Yangshuo style eggplant and spiced applesauce cake with cinnamon cream cheese frosting.

Is there some sort of rule at Think Progress that every public policy issue it touches much be reduced to complete drivel for the benefit of its readership?

Comments

[Simon]

Orwell wrote something similar in 'The Road To Wigan Pier' -

And the peculiar evil is this, that the less money you have, the less inclined you feel to spend it on wholesome food. A millionaire may enjoy breakfasting off orange juice and Ryvita biscuits; an unemployed man doesn’t. Here the tendency of which I spoke at the end of the last chapter comes into play. When you are unemployed, which is to say when you are underfed, harassed, bored, and miserable, you don’t want to eat dull wholesome food. You want something a little bit ‘tasty’. There is always some cheaply pleasant thing to tempt you. Let’s have three pennorth of chips! Run out and buy us a twopenny ice-cream! Put the kettle on and we’ll all have a nice cup of tea! That is how your mind works when you are at the P.A.C. level.

But without the condescension, gimcrack sociology and hectoring tone.

[Randy Rager]

But of course it's the grocer's fault, for stocking those items and taking advantage of the poor person's lack of money!

I've made a lot of bad food-buying decisions in my life, and plan to make a lot more, but I'll never blame anyone else for my own case of the dumbass. It's called personal responsibility. "Progressives" should look into the concept.

[Tim]

What about fat people on welfare? Shouldn't they be all full of relaxed by supper time?

[oprah]

Even well-off people succumb to calorie dense comfort food and to being sedentary. If relaxing and not exerting physical effort for much of the day is associated with affluence, the American working classes are doing just fine. They drive cars instead of walking and watch TV instead of kitchen gardening, much as higher-income others do.

Maybe the difference lies in aesthetic values and conformity, and that's how "class" makes a difference. If everyone around you is overweight, then it's easier to dive into the pizza and give your children chips and soda.

Diet, exercise and weight are matters of priorities, will-power, genetics, environment, circumstances, emotional habits, blah blah, but NOT TIME and NOT MONEY.

I'm hungry now.

[Eric Blair]

Oh god, I just love this line of thinking. The free alt-weekly rags in Philly ran a couple of absolutely hilarious articles a couple of years ago--one was the 'food stamp challenge' (You were supposed to like, feed yourself for a week with whatever the food stamp allowance was at the time) and watching all the 20 something hipsters whine that they couldn't afford their lattes and power bars and cookies and eating out was pure comedy. They followed some representative poor black lady around and the first thing she bought was crab legs. Just fucking unbelievable.

The other was an article on only eating food produced within like 50 miles of Philly ("eat local") I wanted to know where they were going to get their coffee from.

All that said, there's something to what Orwell wrote--that's a great book.

[michelle o.]

I urge our nation to desegregate the Fat ghettos to combat uglism

provide tax credits for parents who buy pogo sticks instead of hip hip

label junk food in terms of how many carrots could be bought for the money

subject whites to weigh-ins at Walmart.

[michelle o.]

I'm told it's "hip hop."

[richard mcenroe]

First off: 'Coq au Vin' is why you never let Andy Sullivan tend bar. Ev. Er.

Second: "...all full of relaxed." Are you kidding? Feeling entitled is a fulltime job,buster...you have to work at it.

If obesity is based on poverty and hard work, how do you explain the wide-rides you see behind the counters at every gummint office that deals with the public?

[DonnieDarko]

I am rereading Atlas Shrugged (the book not the web site). Besides depressing the crap out of me it is weirdly dead-on in it's descriptions of brain dead liberal thought processes.

[mojo]

Not so much a rule as a guideline...

[David]

Oh, so let's add "bulkism" to sexism and racism as new paths to victimhood.

Tell you what, someone give me a grant of a couple million and I'll spend the next three or four years researching and documenting what we already know- that there is probably a higher, even far higher, incidence of obesity among those left unchallenged by the daily grind of work as a result of being on the welfare rolls than there is among the employed poor.

Cooking takes time, and after a long day of hard work in low-wage employment, parents want to relax

That sentence is so wrong and so offensive at so many levels. There's got to be a special place in Hell reserved for folks who promote crap like that as the result of objective inquiry.

David

[Eric Blair]

One can only hope, Dave.

[David]

"Cooking takes time"

Such a lie. Cooking in bulk on the weekends and feeding off that all week is very efficient in terms of both time and money. It takes planning and a bit of discipline, especially in purchasing decisions, but it's easy to do.

"if there’s any advantage to lower-income grocery stores Kroger or Wal-Mart, it’s that calorie dense foods — cookies, frozen pizza, Easy Mac — are cheap and readily available."

They're actually not cheap in relation to food cooked at home. They're expensive as hell on a per portion basis, as well as shitty-tasting, unless of course you don't know how to cook to your own tastes. Not sure our man in Paris knows this. Also, I wonder how many times Jamelle Bouie has costed a weeks' worth of groceries? I mean, all at one time?

Face-palm ignorance.

[Buck O'Fama]

Wish somebody would research the link between journalists and stupidity. I'm sure there is one.

[Firehand]

As I recall, a few months back some morning tv show had a segment on "How to feed your family of four a decent dinner for only $35!" Which caused everyone not
A: Living in NYEffing' City or
B: An idiot
to laugh like hell and wonder what kind of drugs the show producers were on to come up with that.

But for NYE'C liberals, they thought it was just WONDERFUL and INSIGHTFUL and HELPFUL...

[Christopher]

Wow, and to think my single-mom on a teacher's salary (this is small city Arkansas, in the late 70s-mid 80s, not f'in' California) cooked every night and even, gasp, planted a garden. Here we didn't know that as po' (couldn't afford the 'or) folk, we were supposed to be tired after a long day. Damn.

I'm beyond fed up with this kind of crap. Seriously.

[wayne fontes]

God knows there's a strong correlation between being poor and long hours worked.

[TmjUtah]

NARRATIVE.

There is only one, and it will rule them all.

It's like watching a bunch of Shriners on minibikes.

Shriners on minibikes that didn't put on pants.

Only difference is the Shriners set out to be foolish.

[Toni Le Tigre]

Read Amanda's post on this and the subsequent comments. They're grrrrrrrrrreat!

[bilejones]

And one would never know that the food channel has some bint (literally: Melissa D'Arabian) with a regular show about feeding a family of 4 for $10.

[Randy Rager]

D00d. Your website was inaccessible for a few minutes tonight. You alright?

[Christopher]

@bilejones- one would also never guess that there was (is? I don't have a tv right now) a show called 30 minute meals...such long times, such hard prep...sigh...what's a working person to do?

[Randy Rager]

I hate to say it, but I'm kinda tired of trolling Little Matty's comment section.

[Eric Blair]

I started to read though those comments. I stopped rather quickly. God, what a waste of time.

[bilejones]

Yo Peasant. What's up in Westerville?