Feeding Myself In Kansas

[garote]

I went shopping for food at a store called Aidi. I have now shopped at enough stores in Kansas to reveal a pattern. The easiest way I can describe the pattern is by saying, "I have been totally spoiled by living in California."

To me, many supermarkets in Kansas are have an atmosphere of resignation and sickness. Everything is jarred, canned, or wrapped in plastic, and most things are either frozen solid or have a suspiciously long shelf-life. There is absolutely no such thing as a fresh vegetable in these Kansas supermarkets. The closest I have found was vacuum-packed unwashed lettuce, and when I read the labeling I discovered that it had been trucked out from Salinas, CA. The only thing that stands a chance of being fresh is the beef, and that depends on where you shop. You will not find the word "organic" used on any label anywhere. I think it's actually a curse-word in this part of the country, like "democrat" or "Colbert".

Today I examined every shelf of the Aidi market twice, in search of something I could eat that wouldn't just widen the nutritional crater that Kansas is digging inside my body. I found a bag of tiny "Ocean Spray" oranges that had been shipped from Chile, coated with wax and sprayed with thiabendazole, and the vacuum-packed lettuce from Salinas. I opened the lettuce in my motel room and carefully washed it in the sink, and that is how I am enjoying my first real salad in two weeks.

Actually, "supermarket" is the wrong word to use for these places. A more accurate description would be something like "junk-food warehouse and butcher's shop". More than half of Aidi's floorspace is taken up with pancreas-destroying sugar snacks and bleached-flour milk-chocolate crap. You could eat a different "food" from this section for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, for a hundred days... But by the end of the first month you'd probably be dead. Sure, there are stores like this in California. But in Kansas, in many small towns, this is all you get. When you are planning your meals for the week, for yourself and your kids, this is what you work with.

Walking around here, I tried to imagine what it would be like if I was a local, with limited travel range, trying to improve my eating habits. Would I have the knowledge to categorically dismiss so many of the things in this store as harmful? Would I have the guts to, since it runs counter to the eating habits of my friends and family? The only things we could all agree on would be meat and perhaps a few of the dairy products, and even then we'd have to argue about quantity. Assuming I made enough money to choose where to eat, how would I even be able to locate fresh vegetables? Decent oil? Eggs that didn't come from some tortured wastrel of a factory chicken? These things are just ... not here. At least, as far as I know. Perhaps it just takes some determined searching.

But compare this to where I come from. In Oakland, the supermarkets are loaded with produce. Then, for an appreciable number of residents, it's not of sufficient quality, so they shop at Whole Foods (and moan about the price - I know I have). But that's not enough either, because they also raise a stink about how far their food travels, and who owns and manages the outlet, so they have places like Berkeley Bowl and Rainbow Grocery. But that's not as direct as it could be - so Oakland itself has at least FOUR Farmer's Markets that assemble every week, rain or shine.

Back in Oakland, I live five blocks away from a store that ships gourmet chocolate from Europe and Africa, and I won't buy most of it because I'm not impressed with the flavor. Here in Topeka, if I want dark chocolate, I choose between the large bar that tastes like wax, and the small bar with the oily texture.

Is it really just geography causing this? California gets the fancy weather, so it gets the fancy food? Is it the farm bill? Is it just what people are willing to put up with - a cultural thing?

Some optimistic part of me wasn't expecting it to be true - but as I rove around these cities, I am lost in a sea of people "living and partly living", as T.S. Eliot would put it. Planted behind desks, browsing Facebook. Arguing about high-school football over dinner. Sitting inert in bars. Kicking around in back lots, doing nothing. How much of this is boiling up from their physiology? How much of this is happening because they don't feel right, in a way they can't explain, for a reason that would never occur to them - to most people? Everyone is too busy trying to get any kind of food at all.

Perhaps I'm taking this all to seriously. However, an hour ago I finished all the lettuce in the box - enough for three salads - and my stomach and intestines are feeling better than they have in weeks. My head feels clearer too.

Comments

[mommadona.livejournal.com]

thanks for this post... reminds me we are indeed lucky to live in the bay area, in a state that has one of the largest agricultural economies.

let's not forget the CSA box in addition to all the markets, stores, grocers, and farmer's markets we enjoy.

looks like there are some CSA options for that region, but only apr - dec
http://www.localharvest.org/csa/M11802

[juan-gandhi.livejournal.com]

Weird but true. My wife lives in Kentucky, and she notices this kind of problem there too. She's kind of lucky to be close to Cincinnati, so it's not as desperate.

I myself find that about 90% of the stuff in our (South San Jose) Nob Hill is unedible for me - same kind of sugary, floury, corny stuff... but they still have fruits and vegetables and broccoli.

But they sell what people buy, right? It's not evil MacDonald poisoning our citizens, it's our citizens poisoning themselves with the help of MacDonald.

[maggiedacatt.livejournal.com]

People can only buy what is offered to them.

[dennisgorelik]

Businesses can sell only what people are buying from them.

[maggiedacatt.livejournal.com]

Do you really believe that people in different parts of the country (/world) are fundamentally different from one another, and that's the reason for their different circumstances? Because that's the fundamental "logic" behind racism, and just because the people in this particular instance are white doesn't make it any less flawed.

In diffusion of innovations theory, there's a term individual-blame bias, or the tendency (of people trying to spread an innovation, mostly) for people to blame individuals for their non-adoption without considering systemic factors or reasons other than stupidity, laziness, what-have-you.

Why might it be especially hard to find fresh produce in the midwest? Because big, government-subsidized agribusiness is using all that prime farmland for grains, meat, and food for the meat. Thus, they have to truck in produce from somewhere else, which adds to its cost both because of the transportation costs AND because there is no competition from more local sources (as 'expensive' as it is to buy organic/local at Whole Foods or the farmer market, the fact that we have those options in our fancy-schmancy coastal cities means that the stuff shipped from Chile has to be cheap to get purchased at all). Fresh produce has a short shelf life, so it's tough to experiment with stocking different options and with price-setting. Because of all of this, it's considerably more expensive to feed people with fresh produce than with packaged food. People in the rural midwest tend to have pretty low incomes, so this matters a lot. Add in the fact that packaged food is faster and easier to prepare than fresh food, and now you have a lot of barriers to eating fresh produce. Then, it's just a self-reinforcing cycle. If people have grown up NOT eating much fresh produce, why would they think they need it?

[dennisgorelik]

I see you noticed that people have different income. Does that make you a racist?

[garote]

An observation is not the same thing as an explanation. What is your point?

[maggiedacatt.livejournal.com]

*blink*

No. Different income is circumstance, not something that is fundamentally different about them. I'm not saying that they have different income because they're too lazy to have high-paying jobs, just as I'm not saying they eat a lot of crappy food because there is something about THEM in particular that makes them not want good food, and just want crappy food.

[garote]

I think that of people became aware of how much their own federal tax dollars were subsidizing the production chain of McDonalds, they would demand a change. Whether that would actually happen, with state senators protecting their federal subsidies like dragons guarding treasure, is a different question.

[juan-gandhi.livejournal.com]

Right. You are opening my eyes. Shit, it's too late for occupying anything... but yes!!! omg.

[saccovanzetti.livejournal.com]

potatoes + A&D fortified milk is pretty healthy diet, actually, as evidenced by generations of Irish farmers. You can microwave potatoes easily to eat at a motel, too.

[glocka.livejournal.com]

За что Вы его так не любите? Ну, не хочет мужик metabolic syndrome заработать, не хочет!

Potatoes == carbs
Milk == carbs

[garote]

Historically, Irish farmers - including my own ancestors on my mother's side - have not exactly broken records for their longevity. Also, my little diatribe is not just about produce. It is about the quality of every food in the store.

[maggiedacatt.livejournal.com]

Aldi?

[maggiedacatt.livejournal.com]

I love the image on this article: http://www.pcrm.org/good-medicine/2007/autumn/health-vs-pork-congress-debates-the-farm-bill

[garote]

I enjoy it, but I can't love it, because it's got that damn food pyramid on it. After all I've read I'm not sure why we should use oil "sparingly" and make the majority of what we eat "grains", and treat fruits and vegetables interchangeably. >:)

[maggiedacatt.livejournal.com]

True, but the food pyramid is outdated anyway. If anything, the farm subsidies are even more out-of-whack with current knowledge of nutrition.

[garote]

Of definitely. It's pretty hard to believe that they have any motive but state and corporate profit, at this point.

[maggiedacatt.livejournal.com]

Reading this comment over a lovely breakfast of fortified milk over fortified cereal. Mmmm, farm subsidies.

[glocka.livejournal.com]

А бывают любители и ценители не-еды! Коллега во время круиза приговаривает по 8 кг в день, не забывая воздать хвалу перестраховщикам, облучающим все и вся перед погрузкой на борт до полной инертности. А на суше не может и килограмма свежих продуктов осилить - живот заклинивает.

[maggiedacatt.livejournal.com]

Almost forgot why I came back here. It's not because I can't let someone be wrong on the internet (though I do have that problem). It's because I got this timely email.

[dennisgorelik]

1) That's an important and useful video. It makes you to vote right thing (abolishing government food subsidies) even though that video relies on immoral motivation (blaming own problems on big corporations).

2) You not letting me be wrong on political topics is somewhat fun.
But wouldn't it be more fun if you not let me be wrong on the topic about what you personally do wrong with your life?

[garote]

Personally, what is wrong with our lives, is that we do not agitate for enough accountability in large corporate entities run by people who blame anyone but themselves for their complicity in our collective destruction.

If we all personally did more of that, we would all, personally, create a better world.

It does not strike me in any way as "immoral". Quite "moral" indeed, actually.

[dennisgorelik]

What you call "Personal[ly]" in this comment - I call "political agenda".
"Political agenda" is not necessarily good or bad.
But in this particular case it's bad.
These are reasons why:
1) Typically you know much better what you personally need than what other people need.
2) When instead of taking care of yourself you focus on taking care of distant others - at best you are wasting your personal resources (time, effort, money). At worst - you hurt people, because you have no clue about what they need.
3) Example: your "noble" propaganda for "more accountability" have pathetic unintended consequences: "red tape".
Red tape makes organizations far less efficient. That means these organizations cannot pay as much salary anymore. That means that salad cost more than it could be otherwise. In the end it means people live worse, not better as you originally intended.
4) Blaming others for your problems is well known pitfall that hurts both individual people and societies, and therefore I consider such practice immoral.

But let me reiterate the importance of the video that maggiedacatt linked to:
it pushes even people with immoral believes (blaming others for their problems) to do the right thing - drop government subsidies.

[garote]

If you think a political agenda is bad in this particular case, then you need to list why this political agenda in particular is bad. You are attempting to refute a specific political agenda by listing up a bunch of general principles. That doesn't make sense.

However, I am glad to see that you and I agree that drastically changing government farm subsidies is the moral action to take.