When I was young growing up in the Soviet Union, if you didn't line up to buy fresh milk from a milk truck at 6-7am, there would be no milk for the day by 9am in the entire city until the next day. Since tropical fruit would have to be imported from other countries and international logistics was more or less non-existent, bananas would be purchased completely green and kept under the bed for weeks at a time until they ripened.
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That's why it's often hard to relate to people in the US/Canada who are 'stressed out' in life but when you look at their day-to-day "problems"... :sneaky:
Of course even now there are millions of people without fresh water and proper sanitation facilities as well as a stable food supply. Even if we try to imitate living on $4 a day in a developed country, it's not going to ever come close to imitating a truly difficult life since all the other amenities such as a modern refrigerator, a large screen TV, Internet, electricity, hot running water, heating and AC during winter/summer, your transportation (vehicle, subway/metro) are still present.
Which makes a lot of immigrants even more shocked to see that Americans/Canadians who earn good/great wages have such a high propensity to eat processed frozen foods full of sodium and unhealthy fast food. Is it mostly because they are often too busy to prepare their own healthy meals or just don't know how to? Maybe a lot of it also has to do with lack of knowledge about how damaging many of the processed foods are?
Food security is something I struggle with as a concept because it is such a vast problem. I got into cooking & baking at home partly because I love sugar & partly due to food allergies and ultimately ended up with a solid education in food history. Watching documentaries on food taught me a lot about how good we have it in the U.S., but also about the traps that are set for us in a world of processed food. It blows my mind how bad other countries have it, but at the same time, it's an apples to oranges comparison (no pun intended). If someone from a country with less access to food actually grew up in America, they'd understand what a two-edge sword high food availability really is. It's not like anyone sits you down & forces you to watch videos about how other people life, without the choices available to us now, and thus downloads that perspective into your brain. To a lot of people, having to make food at home instead of getting pizza out once a week is considered poor. It's all relative, which is what makes the discussion difficult, and also crazy.
I have plenty of friends on food stamps, SNAP, and WIC, and I hate to say it, but I doubt any of them would follow the cooking guide posted above. Maybe there are some people out there who
would use it, and more power to them, but being in a difficult situation doesn't automatically force you to make the best choices for yourself or make you change your habits, and I think it's important to understand the multiple reasons for why that is. I know that immigrants can be shocked to see how different the lifestyle is, but the bottom line is that it is the way it is for a reason. This is a really good introductory read into the flipside of poverty & the stigma that goes along with it:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/post...n-i-drove-my-mercedes-to-pick-up-food-stamps/
For me personally, it really took getting diagnosed with food allergies for me to care remotely about food. Prior to that, I ate what I wanted, when I wanted, and pretty much bought whatever I could afford. I didn't have a reason to learn how to cook; cooking for me meant mixing up a boxed brownie mix. Having allergies forced me to re-evaluate my relationship with food, and thus took the cover off the big secret about food - how good we have it here in the states, and how deeply our food is manipulated in a variety of ways. But really, what it first boils down to is that we eat like kings. My standard example is that I can buy blueberries in the dead of winter...sure, they're six bucks instead of three dollars like they are in the summertime, but I can still afford them on a typical budget if I really want them. And because of this abundance, it's
really easy to take it all for granted. I was way more picky & definitely
not a foodie pre-allergy diagnoses!
I think what a lot of it boils down to is personal initiative. You have to
want to take control of your weight & your health in order to make any kind of lasting change in your life. It's far too easy to coast in a food coma day to day in America; the food is all programmed to be cheap & addictive. I think that food has an enormous influence on stress & energy levels as well; more ADHD could probably be managed even more successfully through dietary changes than pills. We consume ridiculous amounts of sugar & chemicals, and nobody really cares outside of the few who are athletic, diabetic, or otherwise want or have to care because really, why bother if you don't have to? If you can afford to eat out all the time or get packaged food for every meal & it doesn't make you sick or affect your health, where's the incentive to change?
I've gone through a lot of phases regarding food in my life, even looking at my own post history over the last 10 years, it's amazing how many times I've changed my opinion on food. In college, I swore off eating out for awhile. Then I tried to avoid anything with refined sugar in it. Tried "eating clean", as well as a variety of diets for fun (vegan, fruitarian, paleo, etc.). Dealt with food allergies. The bottom line is that food is not just required, but needed...it's cultural, it's social, it's joy & happiness in variety, it's just so many things. I mean really, if we wanted to solve world hunger, we could just manufacture Soylent meal replacement powder & pre-bottled mixes and air drop them all over the world. That would ultimately solve the problem of feeding the hungry, right? Sort of...but screwed-up food means a lot of other things in your culture are messed up as well, so it's kind of a flag for even things like political issues. One of the things that blew my mind learning about food was that we don't have a food shortage issue in terms of world hunger, simply a distribution problem...I'd grown up my whole life thinking there wasn't enough, when really there is a surplus, but we're just dummies in figuring out how not to be jerks to each other.
Anyway, this topic can spaghetti on forever (again no pun intended haha). There's just so many things that branch into the discussion of food. I have friends who are affluent enough & busy enough at work to literally eat out at every single meal (and do!), but then wonder why they struggle with diabetes & high blood pressure. I also have friends who are immigrants here who are shocked at the food situation, but yet also slide into this style of living because they're human too...it's not just a knock against Americans, but basic human psychology. Everyone has a different situation, and with each situation comes different pitfalls. In the U.S., we struggle with an overwhelming obesity rate. Nearly all of our medical energies go into treatment rather than prevention. Many of us are addicted to food & not only don't care, but will fight against changes that will make us healthier. Again...many topics. It's just crazy how centralized food is. I used to think it was a small thing, but I think the topic of food is gigantic & most of us don't realize how much of a core it is in our lives...it affects our mood, our ability to be productive, our energy level, our weight, all sorts of things. Going to stop rambling now; suffice it to say, food is a huge & complex issue.