Divided We Eat
As more of us indulge our passion for local, organic delicacies, a growing number of Americans don’t have enough nutritious food to eat. How we can bridge the gap.It's an interesting read, and I encourage our readers to check it out. Don't miss the link to the listing of the Ten Things That Changed the Way We Eat.
posted by Susan Schneider at 4:00 PM
1 Comments:
I haven't looked at the video yet but thanks for the article link, the point of which was spot-on.
As Raj Patel wrote in Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System (2007),
...[T]he United States has the highest number of people below the poverty line (12.7 percent) in the Global North. In the US, people of colour and the poor have access to environments that are more likely to lead to obesity, while their richer and whiter counterparts are more like to have access to foods that are fresh, nutritious and lower in salt and fat. Across a range of neighborhoods in the US, the poor ones are not only likely to have four times fewer supermarkets than rich ones, they're three times more likely to have places to consume alcohol. Even after adjusting for levels of commercial activity, the presence of highways and median home values, fast food restaurants are concentrated in neighborhoods of poor people, and people of colour."
And combine this with the fact that "Within the home and state institutions, particularly within schools, children are forced through a mangle of TV advertising and educational co-branding. Pizza Hut has 'Book It!,' McDonald's has the All-American Reading Challenge, Minute Maid/Coca Cola has the Minute Maid Summer Reading Program and, in Durban, the Wimpy beefburger chain has even managed to sponsor a Hindu school. These are topped off by a range of ingenious tie-ins and sponsorships, through which food corporations pitch for children's attention."
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