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Call me crazy, but avoiding added sugar for a year struck me as a grand adventure. (Mind Unleashed)
It takes a Canadian to show Americans how to eat well on a food stamp budget. PS: Don't miss the link to the free cookbook! (NPR)
Related: Did Mayor Corey Booker Really Try With His Food Stamp Challenge?
Wait: processed foods aren't all bad? (LinkedIn, via Addicted to Canning)
Why are so many low-income people so overweight? (Pacific Standard)
Another study claims organic food is more nutritious--except it's flawed too. (CNN)
In defense of the serious Bucket List. (Raptitude, via Ombailamos)
Interesting price comparison of air conditioners in the 1950s vs today. (Carpe Diem)
Things you should know about introverts. (Playfully Tacky, via Climb the Rainbow)
"If you never leave the small comfortable ideological circle that you belong to, you'll never develop as a human being." (Farnam Street)
Investors! A simple cure for confirmation bias. (The Big Picture)
Ditch the elliptical machine and get a real workout. (Diet Rebel)
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2 comments:
The Pacific Standard article was interesting. Living in a big city where you can literally buy anything you might want at the price of - at most - a slightly inconvenient bus ride, I knew the "food desert" concept was sketchy. The scarcity analysis seems much more understandable given the epidemic quality of the obesity issue in the U.S. That is, it's not a matter of where you live because people are obese EVERYWHERE.
I do think our public schools could and should start teaching people how to cook, because if you show a teenager how easy it is to make a hearty meal for practically no money, that "it's hopeless so why bother" argument is harder to make.
And then we should start looking at other ways that our culture encourages people to think it's hopeless.
Yep. Another food blogger, Julia Shanks at "Grow. Cook. Eat." did a strikingly in-depth post showing that there were no food deserts in metropolitan Boston, for example. Also Slate wrote a post on this topic too, questioning both whether food deserts existed AND whether they even played a role in obesity at all.
And yet the "food desert" is in some ways an almost bulletproof concept. If you question whether the phenomenon exists you can easily be called out for it. After all, no one can speak for every single metropolitan location in the country. And worse, you leave yourself open to the critique of "failing to show sympathy for those less fortunate."
And so we build another emotionally resonant "reason" for obesity and poor dietary health.
Intriguing how that works, isn't it?
DK
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