Becky;
As you are in the states please check out AngelFoodMinistries.com it is a food coop that has GREAT prices on EXCELLANT quality meat and fruit and veggie options. It is a monthly distribution and you have to plan your budget for the right time. They do accept food stamps for those that are eligble for them. It truly is a great deal and the quality can't be beat. My husband likes their steaks better than Omaha steaks which are three times the price.

Yes, I have heard of Angel Food Ministries, and it looks like they do have good deals. I've thought about trying them, but there always seem to be a few items I don't need, and I have gotten to be pretty good at shopping sales and using my freezer to stock up when items are cheap. I am lucky to have plently of storage space so I can really take advantage when items are on sale.

The biggest money saver I have found is avoiding buying "convenience" foods such as boxed potato, stuffing, or mac and cheese mixes, things like canned ravioli and spaghetti, etc. All of these are almost always high in calories and "bad" carbs (ie, highly refined grains and not whole grain carbs), and they are much more expensive than the same item made from scratch. The more heavily processed a food is, the more it will cost you, and the worse it will be for your health.

I make as much as I can from scratch, and believe it or not, it does not take a lot more time. When I am cooking, I almost always make a double batch and freeze half for a quick meal later. It is healthier, because I control the quality of the ingredients and the amount of fat, and eliminate all those artificial preservatives and colorings. So, it's healthy AND cheap -- a home made tastes better too! (And I'm no gourmet chef, I'm just making ordinary comfort foods like meatloaf, spaghetti, grilled chicken or steak, salads, simple sides.)

I think your reasons for being poor in the first place could have a lot to do with your difficulty getting good food -

Poor school performance - can't read labels or budget easily
Poor social skills - can't co-op for food or defend boundaries in eating
Dysfunctional broken families - can't get organised for cooking or shopping
Poor housing - always renting, no stability means no vege garden
Poor transport - can't get to better shops
Poor in time - both parents working shiftwork, no time to cook wholefoods or shop frequently for perishables
Addictions - including to wheat, sugar, caffeine, alcohol and nicotine, so good food isn't even wanted.

All the above keep you poor, keep you unemployed/low paid, and keep your diet poor.

In my experience, poor people with the determination to eat healthy - eg students who go vegetarian - don't
stay poor for long. They usually have brains, social skills, and/or family on their side and the
poverty is just a temporary glitch.

Can people be addicted to wheat? I assume you mean processed wheat products such as white bread. I know people like such products and, historically, have preferred them to whole grain or other type of grain versions, but can they actually be addicted to them?

I take on board and agree with the points about poor school performance, poor social skills, and dysfunctional broken families. I disagree about rented housing necessarily being poor housing. I live in France where renting is the norm. Yes, people buy houses, but many people rent and, as far as I can tell, it doesn't influence what food they buy.

Poor transport may be a problem, but then, the quality of the shops reflects the quality of the community. A poor area will attract poor quality shops. These shops, however, would change what they sell if people demanded healthier food. I have never heard of poor people demanding that shops in their neighbourhood provide them with fresh fruit and vegetables.

Poor in time relates to people's parents, but one has to ask if, as adults, with all the information freely available, do these people even try to chose healthier options?

You left out poor cooking skills. Those who can't or won't cook have little choice but to eat processed foods, takeaways, and such like. While part of this is related to dysfunctional families, part of it is related to the lack of cooking classes in schools, a large part of it is down to motivation. There are plenty of cookery programmes on TV these days and plenty of newspapers, magazines have recipes, not to mention web sites and forums...

In the end, it all comes down to individual responsibility. If an individual wants to eat healthy foods, he will. If he isn't interested, doesn't care, or is hostile to the idea, he won't. If people are going to make such bad choices, then they are. I can, however, see no reason, as a society, to fund those bad choices.

Your point about cooking skills is very important.

When I went to university I was stunned by the number of people who could barely boil an egg. Sadly here in the UK we don't teach cooking in schools particularly well, which means that if your parents don't cook then you don't learn it from anyone. They insist on teaching things like "Food Technology" rather than genuine life skills like how to make a healthy balanced meal. However I think more schools are trying to make an effort with that as people are realising that it is such a significant part of our increasing obesity problem.

I think the thing about rented property is much more a US/UK thing. We have a big hangup about home ownership (especially suburban homes). In continental Europe rental is (I believe) a much bigger part of life.

I agree with eveything you said, la joggeuse. My meaning wasn't that this should be funded, in fact
I think it is a waste of time. I think the poor can be divided into two groups -
those on the way up, and those on the way down. I don't think you can humanly change which
group someone belongs to, or give a useful blanket response.

I don't know for sure that wheat and grains are addictive, but there are some people
who do feel sure. I was surprised when I first read it somewhere, and thought it
was "off the wall". But I know they give me a problem.

You are right, I did leave off "cooking skills" silly me, it's important.

Renters here have to shift every year or so, so its harder for them to have vegetables growing
that are worth eating - it takes time to improve the soil for example. And the plots of
lawn are so tiny! I didn't know that renting was more of an institution in Europe, that is
interesting thank you Paul.

The cooking thing may be an issue but I was involved in a program at a local food bank to try and get some of the users to eat better and learn to prepare healthy meals. We set up a time, provided day care, provided all the food and hired a chef/nutritionist to come in and teach the classes. The participants were guaranteed to be able to take home a few servings of the foods as well as eat while there.

Out of 600 families using the food bank 2 people showed up and I'm not sure why other than they could dump their kids with the day care. We tried it 3 different times with the same type of results. Our results may not be typical but working at the food bank certainly opened my eyes to the way a lot of people are willing to live.

Mokey41
What a great thing for a food bank to attempt to do. I may have to suggest that in our area, though I suspect we might have the same results. Though I hated "Home Economics" when I was in middle school I guess I likely benefitted from it greatly. I don't think that is even an option in our middle schools now and is only an elective in high school. Oddly though back in the 70's girls were required to take Home Ec and boys had to take shop. It was highly unusual for the opposite sex to be allowed to take one of the classes.

The problem today, I think, is that luxuries have become common place. They are too easy to obtain. They are so easy to obtain that people don't even see them as luxuries. Luxuries such as chocolate, crisps, processed foods, takeaways, etc, are not necessities. In the past, poor people were thin. The poor starved. Now they get fat.

I have read that in some countries, in South America, I think, that people on benefits are given vouchers that can only be spent in government shops and these shops only provide healthy food. If people want to eat junk food, then they have to get a job and earn the money for such luxury. I think this is a great idea. Your food bank experience shows that if you want people to eat healthy meals, if they are asking the taxpayer to pay for their food, then, basically, you have to give them no choice but to eat healthy meals. Great motivator for them to go out and find work, too.

Sorry for the misunderstanding. I didn't think you meant you wanted this to be funded. Not at all. I agree, there are the poor who are trying to do something about their condition, and there are the poor who think that it is someone else's responsibility.



I know that bread will put weight on me like nothing else, but I don't think it is addictive. I have read that in the past, Victorian times, I believe, that when workers were given anything but white bread, they claimed that it made them ill, but well, it was in their interest to say that, so who knows.



I have lived in rented accomodation all my adult life, and, from time to time, while I have had to move a bit more frequently than I would have liked, it hasn't stopped me from eating healthy food. I'm not really into growing my own vegetables, so even if I had my own house, I wouldn't have had a vegetable garden, but, as I said, it doesn't make any difference. The shops are full of vegetables at a reasonable price. It's just a matter of motivation. I gained weight not because I was overindulging in junk food, but because I had health problems that led to inactivity and I didn't adjust my eating habits to allow for this.

I'm a British ex-pat living in France, by the way. Even in the UK, though, I rented. I never bought into all that 'property ladder' stuff. It has its advantages, too. Get a neighbour from hell next to property you own and you're stuck because no-one will want to buy the place. Get a neighbour from hell next to property you rent and you just move at the end of the rental period.