Let them eat BEANS

Posted Tue, 03/16/2010 - 10:40 by Melissa

No matter what your political opinion is of food stamps, if you stand on the side of real food, this article about buying "gourmet" food on food stamps and the comments are a bit incendiary.

Apparently people are having the audacity to buy food that tastes good and is appropriate for humans, like wild fish and rabbit. Egads, don't they know poor people should be eating beans? 

At nearly every food justice conference I go to I hear that. I'll go from one seminar on raising heritage poultry for fancy restaurants to another seminar on how we can save all the poor people from obesity by teaching them to cook dried beans bought in bulk. At the same conference where we talk in the livestock feed seminar about feeding cattle diets appropriate for their species, no one every questions whether beans are good food for humans. And while we talk about heirloom lettuce and fatty Ossabow pigs, we forget to acknowledge that desire for good tasting things is universal among humans.

Either way, the reason that wild fish and decent meat are out of reach from poor people is due to artificial distortions in our economy and how we live.

This weekend I went to Jackson Lander's locavore hunting seminar. He puts delicious nutritious wild meat on his family's table for just the cost of a gun and ammo. Just like my dirt poor ancestors did in Arkansas and Lousiana. They ate rabbit, turtle, venison, crawfish... the kind of food you get at gourmet restaurants these days. Back then poor people weren't obese and my ancestors lived into their 80s despite the tough conditions they endured.

I can tell you that campaigns to get beloved "veggies" and vegetable gardens into low income schools have their merits, but they will probably do little to alter the overall dietary makeup. Lettuce has vitamins and minerals, but little in the way of calories. Beans? With bacon they are pretty good, but most do gooders are advocating a vegetarian diet that would probably send most people with tastebuds back to KFC.

Teaching low income people to butchers, hunt (deer in particular are overpopulated in most areas), fish, and raise animals for food would go a long way in altering their diets as while as providing them valuable and in-demand skills for jobs.

But we already knew that...."teach a man to fish..."

Comments

Interesting challenge about

by Patrick McEvoy-Halston - 03/17/2010 - 13:51

Interesting challenge about beans turning people back to KFC. You could be right. Clearly the people doing this paleo bit are emotionally pretty healthy people, but I can't help but still believe that IF THEY WERE HEALTHIER, they just couldn't kill something sentient that strives to live on. "There's an overpopulation of deer out there, so out with our bow and arrows," has some of us wondering if going paleo means WANTING to kill things, rather than subside into some level of please-just-devour-me, beans-and-greens peasant passivity.

If we weren't picked on, mightn't the deer be spared?

I have a whole post on this

by Melissa - 03/17/2010 - 14:26

I have a whole post on this that I'm meaning to write, so keep your eye out. The idea of "wanting to kill" is a very narrow and artificial Westernized paradigm. In many of the native traditions I have studied if the hunter kills an animal it is because the animal offered itself to the hunter. The animal's death is not a tragedy, as it is reborn into ourselves and the Earth.

When I hunt I am proud to be part of the ecology. By the way humans have been predators of deer for tens of thousands of years and they have evolved because of it. Lots of misguided vegans tell me that if we just left the deer alone their populations would balance, but that's definitely not true.

Are wolves unhealthy because they strive to hunt? Is the desire to hunt unhealthy? I think it is human and giving it up leads to the unhappiness that plagues our culture. Hunting is very healthy ecologically, emotionally, spiritually, and physically. I strongly suggest Heart and Blood by Richard K. Nelson.

Hi Melissa. Thanks so much

by Gerry - 03/17/2010 - 11:02

Hi Melissa. Thanks so much for this post. I am one of the guys in that article. You have been a great resource for me and my "hipster" friends as we eat paleo for a month (I've been doing it for longer, but I'm trying to convert people). I've linked to our blog, which in turn has a link to you! Incidentally, my food stamp allotment is still less than what most people I know spend on food. I make do with a limited budget, and I'm still able to eat evolutionarily appropriate foods. Right now I am eating egg-drop soup made with broth left over from boiling a bison tongue. I've been eating this for days, so the $9 tongue has turned into at least six or seven meals so far, plus a few ingredients like the eggs and some cheap turnip greens.

LOL, I knew those meals

by Melissa - 03/17/2010 - 14:30

LOL, I knew those meals looked suspiciously paleo! Welcome to the club of people who have been in food articles that were snarky and got called a hipster because of it.

I also live on a ridiculously low budget and it's definitely possible.

WORD! I think you touched on

by Maggie - 03/16/2010 - 15:26

WORD! I think you touched on the next conversation to be had about socioeconomics and food. People might balk at my food budget each month, but it's important to me and I offset the cost by holding low-cost, high-deductible, emergencies-only health insurance. I consider my food choices to BE health insurance. My ex used to smirk and laugh when I said this, but on a visit to Norway I said it to some Norwegians we were with, and they all agreed passionately, like it was an absolute given to them. With all the health care debate going on in this country, I'm frustrated that food quality isn't a big part (or really, any part) of that discussion.

Cheap Primal Diet This

by Marc - 03/16/2010 - 12:42

Cheap Primal Diet

This blogger does a great job at building a Primal menu that is affordable for someone on food stamps (or food assistance) that meets the RDA.

http://donmatesz.blogspot.com/2009/08/nutritionally-complete-inexpensive...

Beans are poor people's meat

by emily - 03/16/2010 - 11:45

Beans are poor people's meat in every culture, as are grains. when i had food stamps and wic as a young single mom i bought organic whole dairy foods, local eggs, prepared sushi, fancy cheeses and organic produce. i certainly dont think poor people should have to subsist on cheap grains and beans and cereal. it's amusing and kind of sad that people are willing to pay 4$/3oz of crackers shaped like fish or bunnies just because they come in a box but same folks find the cost of real, grass-fed meat daunting. cost per pound on those crap in a box wheat bunnies? about 20$ per lb. cost of grass fed rib eye steak? 15$/lb. cost of grass fed ground beef 4-5$/lb here in MN.