RE: Great NYT Article: Obesity and farm prices

[Guest guest]

can you post the link heidi? thanks!

Suze Fisher

Lapdog Design, Inc.

Web Design & Development

http://members.bellatlantic.net/~vze3shjg

Weston A. Price Foundation Chapter Leader, Mid Coast Maine

http://www.westonaprice.org

----------------------------

" The diet-heart idea (the idea that saturated fats and cholesterol cause

heart disease) is the greatest scientific deception of our times. " --

Mann, MD, former Professor of Medicine and Biochemistry at Vanderbilt

University, Tennessee; heart disease researcher.

The International Network of Cholesterol Skeptics

<http://www.thincs.org>

----------------------------

[Guest guest]

>can you post the link heidi? thanks!

I thought I did? You might need to register to get it.

Here it is:

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/12/magazine/12WWLN.html

Here is the one about poverty and " old age " :

http://www.nytimes.com/pages/magazine/index.html?8dpc

Read 'em quick though: they put stuff in archive

and then you can't get them anymore without $$$$$.

-- Heidi

[Guest guest]

>>>>

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/12/magazine/12WWLN.html

Here is the one about poverty and " old age " :

http://www.nytimes.com/pages/magazine/index.html?8dpc

----->thanks heidi, both are depressing as hell. my experience in poor urban

neighborhoods mirrors the data in the second article...good luck finding

someone over 30 yrs. old (or late 20s) in an impoverished innner city

neighborhood who doesn't have a chronic or degenerative disease.

Suze Fisher

Lapdog Design, Inc.

Web Design & Development

http://members.bellatlantic.net/~vze3shjg

Weston A. Price Foundation Chapter Leader, Mid Coast Maine

http://www.westonaprice.org

----------------------------

" The diet-heart idea (the idea that saturated fats and cholesterol cause

heart disease) is the greatest scientific deception of our times. " --

Mann, MD, former Professor of Medicine and Biochemistry at Vanderbilt

University, Tennessee; heart disease researcher.

The International Network of Cholesterol Skeptics

<http://www.thincs.org>

----------------------------

[Guest guest]

>----->thanks heidi, both are depressing as hell. my experience in poor urban

>neighborhoods mirrors the data in the second article...good luck finding

>someone over 30 yrs. old (or late 20s) in an impoverished innner city

>neighborhood who doesn't have a chronic or degenerative disease.

>

>Suze Fisher

I grew up in an area like that, and I agree. What got me is that my

friends really had the same income, more or less, as us. I.e.

it was " poor " but there was more to it than income, more

like a state of mind. There were good jobs at the time

where I lived, at an airplane plant, and most people

seemed to work there.

At my friend's house, they drove

a really NICE car, had the latest stereo ... we wore hand me

downs and had one old car the whole time we grew up. But

they never had food in the house, and Mom always gave

us protein with a meal. I think some kind of classes or groups

could go a long way toward helping!

I'm not saying poverty

is just a matter of poor choices -- in LA the housing prices

are through the roof and " service jobs " pay less than they did

when I was a kid. But very few folks I've met

in any economic level have the " depression/war

era live off nothing " mentality my Mom had, and it is

a useful skill. It's easy to get suckered in by the commercial

" ya gotta buy stuff " message, and I think the commercials

hit the young, poor, and less educated the hardest.

But it's also a good test case. The docs keep saying things

like " well, you have to expect arthritis at your age " . If arthritis

hits a 20 year old, then it HAS to diet or lifestyle related.

Which means it is not inevitable!

-- Heidi

[Guest guest]

On Sun, 12 Oct 2003 09:54:29 -0700

Heidi Schuppenhauer <heidis@...> wrote:

>

>>----->thanks heidi, both are depressing as hell. my experience in poor urban

>>neighborhoods mirrors the data in the second article...good luck finding

>>someone over 30 yrs. old (or late 20s) in an impoverished innner city

>>neighborhood who doesn't have a chronic or degenerative disease.

>>

>>Suze Fisher

>

>I grew up in an area like that, and I agree. What got me is that my

>friends really had the same income, more or less, as us. I.e.

>it was " poor " but there was more to it than income, more

>like a state of mind. There were good jobs at the time

>where I lived, at an airplane plant, and most people

>seemed to work there.

>

>At my friend's house, they drove

>a really NICE car, had the latest stereo ... we wore hand me

>downs and had one old car the whole time we grew up. But

>they never had food in the house, and Mom always gave

>us protein with a meal. I think some kind of classes or groups

>could go a long way toward helping!

>

>I'm not saying poverty

>is just a matter of poor choices -- in LA the housing prices

>are through the roof and " service jobs " pay less than they did

>when I was a kid. But very few folks I've met

>in any economic level have the " depression/war

>era live off nothing " mentality my Mom had, and it is

>a useful skill. It's easy to get suckered in by the commercial

> " ya gotta buy stuff " message, and I think the commercials

>hit the young, poor, and less educated the hardest.

Heidi,

Poverty, particularly in the US, is not a question of cash but of

culture. (It is also a question of gov't regulation in terms of

skyrocketing housing costs but we have been down that thread before

dealing with other issues). Our particular culture influences our

prorities, and what you describe as a " state of mind " or mentality is

actually a " state of culture " and it really has very little to do with

being young, " poor " and less educated.

This is why the typical approach to poverty simply doesn't work, because

most poverty is not a question of money or education, and trying to

solve it that way isn't the answer.

[Guest guest]

:

>This is why the typical approach to poverty simply doesn't work, because

>most poverty is not a question of money or education, and trying to

>solve it that way isn't the answer.

>

>

I really agree with this to a large extent. Esp. when I was a kid. But

after confronting some of the issues in " nickle and diming "

I think a lot of it is the *overall* culture. The decks are really

stacked against some people, esp. the ones whose jobs can

be taken by cheap foreign labor. Now that some of us

higher paid folks are in competition with Indian programmers,

the issues hit home!

The current situation is very odd, historically. Historically

NO ONE had to work every day and leave their babies, to

pay for a house and food. People worked to gather or grow

food, and to build the house, but there was a lot of 'off' time.

My grandfather noted that some farmers did better than

others, because they worked harder so got better crops,

but he also complained about the current 'industry' kind

of jobs, because every second was accounted for. He said

he would work 16 hour days, but it wasn't nearly as bad

as an 8 hour day in a factory -- they would talk and polish

lamps for hours, for instance. Women worked the field with

their babies, but if they were sick they could stay home.

I think a lot of the cultures who end up " poor " are living

by the old rules, maybe. But if a person DOES work 8 hours

a day at a hard job, seems like they should be able to

live in a decent house and buy food, which isn't actually

true for a lot of jobs.

I'm not trying to proposee a solution here -- I'm not sure

what it is. But poverty is a weird state. A lot of those inner city

" poor " kids have great skills running drugs (a very difficult

job), and a lot of those underpaid Walmart workers could

be in other positions and have nice houses.

-- Heidi

[Guest guest]

In a message dated 10/23/03 3:42:31 AM Eastern Daylight Time,

heidis@... writes:

> I'm not trying to proposee a solution here -- I'm not sure

> what it is. But poverty is a weird state. A lot of those inner city

> " poor " kids have great skills running drugs (a very difficult

> job), and a lot of those underpaid Walmart workers could

> be in other positions and have nice houses.

They should get another job then. Truth be told, the few times I've shopped

at Wal Mart, I've never gotten the impression the people who worked there

could work anywhere else, but hopefully my experience isn't representative.

I come from a pretty moniless background, and grew up in one of the towns

that was featured in a gigantic series in the Boston Globe with some funny

overdramatic name like " The Unseen Dark Underbelly of Rural Massachusetts " or

something like that. I knew quite a few homeless people growing up, all of whom

were and are homeless because they choose to be. (I am well aware this is not

the case with many a hard-working job-seeking family-heading parent). Most

people got out of there if they were smart, went on to college, did something

with

their lives, and every single person who had any desire whatsoever to go to

college had all the opportunity in the world to do so. The ONLY two reasons

anyone didn't go to college were 1) they got pregnant or, usually, 2) they

didn't want to.

All of the poor people I knew who really fit the description of poor were

living the life they *wanted* to live. If they got their heat or phone shut

off,

it was because they chose to pay the cable bill instead. (not to mention buy

cigarettes, beer, pot, and some cocaine here and there). It continually

baffled me that my best friend had to heat his house by opening the oven and

putting it on high, that I couldn't call him and couldn't call out of his house

except by collect, yet the entire time they had cable. While there might be

some

areas and some reasons where people really have institutional obstacles to

heating their home, in THIS particular scenario, the reason I had heat and he

didn't had nothing to do with unequal access to resources, but had everything to

do with the fact that my mother wasn't stupid and his parents were, or, more

diplomatically, my mother chose to pay the pills, and his parents choose to

pay their dealer and the cable company.

I know people who are homeless now and knew people who were homeless growing

up-- they had a philosophical objection to being part of " the system. " I knew

people who went to jail once a year for years and years. There were no

gangs, there was no violence, they just choose to do heroin, get drunk and get

into

fights, etc. Lots of people did crack and cocaine and all of that, but it

was cyclical, so none of these people were addicted. It would come around once

every couple months and be around for a week. They knew enough about what it

was by the 20th time, and they weren't addicts, but they *choose* to do it

anwyay, because they simply had more interest it smoking crack and tripping out

than they did in, say, economic success or a college education.

They were not victims of anything-- the people I grew up around-- and they

were not incapable of anything, and they certainly weren't brain dead (many of

them were very, very smart). Whether they were throwing their life away is a

value judgment. To them, they weren't. To them, they were doing the opposite.

And then there were the folks who thought it more noble to cheat unemployment

and collect while skipping from temp job to temp job than to get a real job.

And the... etc, etc.

I know real people have real problems. But that's just my experience.

Chris

[Guest guest]

I do know people like that, and frankly I think there should be a place

for them -- people who don't want to be part of the system. I

also know people who really TRY to have a life, running

two jobs etc. What I'm saying is that our society is skewed ...

in a " tribal " life everyone could be cyclical, poor, happy, and

socially accepted. Or at least most people. Even people without

college or ability to read. If they were nice and willing to

cook and clean and gather food or go hunting, they were ok.

We've raised the bar a LOT for humans, now you have to

read, write, do math, attend a job daily, know what jobs to get

and hope your company doesn't ship your job overseas. Things

the average Okinawan just didn't worry about (now maybe they

are!).

-- Heidi

>They were not victims of anything-- the people I grew up around-- and they

>were not incapable of anything, and they certainly weren't brain dead (many of

>them were very, very smart). Whether they were throwing their life away is a

>value judgment. To them, they weren't. To them, they were doing the opposite.

>

>And then there were the folks who thought it more noble to cheat unemployment

>and collect while skipping from temp job to temp job than to get a real job.

>And the... etc, etc.

>

>I know real people have real problems. But that's just my experience.

>

>Chris

>

[Guest guest]

>>> both are depressing as hell. my experience in poor urban

>>>neighborhoods mirrors the data in the second article...good luck finding

>>>someone over 30 yrs. old (or late 20s) in an impoverished innner city

>>>neighborhood who doesn't have a chronic or degenerative disease.

>>>

>>>Suze Fisher

>Poverty, particularly in the US, is not a question of cash but of

>culture. (It is also a question of gov't regulation in terms of

>skyrocketing housing costs but we have been down that thread before

>dealing with other issues).

>

>This is why the typical approach to poverty simply doesn't work, because

>most poverty is not a question of money or education, and trying to

>solve it that way isn't the answer.

>

>

Found your suggested reading, Suze, Amazing Grace at a library book sale

last week. The author, Kozol notes, Mrs. Washington's only show of

indignation (in a long heartbreaking first interview) with the fact that

she cannot get the New York Times in the South Bronx. He can get it in a

Boston suburb. , housing is a determining and major issue, when

culture is segregated according to housing cost. In some areas like the

South Bronx skin color and homelessness are your only ticket to what a 12

yr, old child described in this book as like being put away in someone's

garage, knowing whatever it is is still there then forgetting about it.

Wanita