Junk Food County

I was absolutely incensed when I read this article. It explains how people living in rural America eat unhealthy diets BECAUSE THERE AREN???T ENOUGH GROCERY STORES!

???This is the real world of eating and nutrition in the rural United States. Forget plucking an apple from a tree, or an egg from under a chicken. "The stereotype is everyone in rural America lives on a farm, which is far from the truth," says Jim Weill, president of the nonprofit Food Research and Action Center (FRAC). New research from the University of South Carolina's Arnold School of Public Health shows just how unhealthy the country life can be. The study, which examined food-shopping options in Orangeburg County (1,106 square miles, population 91,500), found a dearth of supermarkets and grocery stores.???
Of course it???s true that in every part of the country- rural and urban areas- we have lost our connection to what we eat. And many people no longer grow any of what makes it onto their dining room tables. So logically one would expect the article to recommend a reconnection to the local farm fields that could feed us and offer the idea of stronger self sufficiency through some home grown produce. Nope. The answer apparently is more grocery stores and more food stamps.
???Nutritionists and anti-hunger activists know what rural Americans should eat. In an ideal world, says Weill, more people would take advantage of nutrition and financial education programs, like those offered by the USDA, that teach consumers how to make a food budget and use recipes. The 2007 Farm Bill would in??crease food stamp access and benefits and allocate an additional $2.75 billion over 10 years to buy fruits and vegetables for the USDA's nutrition assistance programs??????
I have no problem with offering help to people who need it. In fact I think human beings have a moral obligation to do so. But help should involve more than passing out food stamps. It should involve teaching people how to grow more of their own food themselves and cook with whole ingredients. It should include a farm bill that actually supports small scale sustainable agriculture that could offer healthy food to rural and urban communities across our nation. Pick you simile- treating the problem of unhealthy eating in rural America by building more grocery stores and handing out more food stamps is like putting a Band-Aid on a gaping chest wound. It???s also completely backward thinking.

Before everyone starts thinking that Fannie's situation is the rule, not the exception, let me chime in. I spent most of my life in rural Mississippi, and in my experience it's just not that way for the majority of people. True, not everyone lives on a farm, but families (mine included) usually will buy fresh veggies and meat from our farming neighbors relatively cheaply without bothering with a car trip to the supermarket, and small vegetable gardens and fruit trees are very common. And, with perhaps the exception of the extremely poverty-stricken, almost every family has a car, or at least access to one through family or neighbors.

Obesity is definitely an epidemic, in rural America and everywhere else, but I think that this has more to do with cultural eating habits of rural people (lots of meat and starches and few veggies and fruit) more than lack of access to nutritious foods.

This article is a crock of ***. It makes the completely unwarranted assumption that people in rural areas are too stupid to find sources of healthy food and that the government must help them in that effort. Idiotic drivel.

Here is another article that tries to blame "something else" for causing obesity, rather than just admit some people in the USA eat too much and work too little. I already said in a comment to a different article, that there are very few obese people in Africa (nobody can argue about the poverty there).
I partially agree with the author of the article about healthy food being more expensive. It sure is more expensive to eat healthy if you buy everything or most of the food prepared. But if one buys the healthy ingredients and cooks the food at home, it can be surprisingly affordable. Plain oatmeal cooked at home (for breakfast) is cheaper than sugary dry cereal, and a lot cheaper than egg-McMuffin. And you also burn some calories while you cook your oatmeal and wash the dishes.
I don???t think eating fresh fruits and vegetables is crucial for not being fat. For 30 years I lived in a part of the World where fresh fruits and vegetables were not available except when in season. But our chest freezer was our treasure chest. I learned at a very young age how to preserve and/or freeze all of the fruits and vegetables available, and also how to cook with that kind of ingredients.
I???m 37 years old, I have a postgraduate degree and I work, but I still cook most of the meals for my family from scratch. I breastfed my child for 13 months, and now I???m trying teach him to love all the good food. Unfortunately, I???m battling an unfair battle against the junk they feed the kids in day-care, because nobody thinks it???s worth spending some more resources to give the kids a good start and teach them from the beginning how to eat and be healthy. Later, a lot more will be spent to treat all the illnesses, but who cares about that?

I understand the problem of living far from a grocery store, or not having transportation to get there if you are poor or cannot drive due to age or medical condition. But there are solutions for these grocery store hurdles and healthy eating every day. Five cans of tuna are about $5 -- the cost of a fast-food burger, and they store for months. Vegetables of all sorts come in cans, protein powder in canisters, potatoes last for weeks if properly stored. A freezer can keep almost anything but leafy vegetables fresh for a couple months. The same for fruit juices, healthy bread, rice, etc. etc. Come on. With food stamps, friends, neighbors and community service groups, these obstacles don't have to get in anyone's way. My heart goes out to those who feel, or have been, "trapped." Yet I think there are solutions like these to get this burden out of your life.

This forum is cracking me up, especiallly any comment from William Demouth, comedy gold!

I can't believe how hardhearted and mean spirited the posts right above me are.

Did you people even read the story? It said that there aren't as many full-size supermarkets in rural areas as in cities and that people living below the poverty line sometimes don't have automobiles to get them to the store. I bet there are other reasons, too -- choosing between medicine and food, high heating bills, property taxes that continue to escalate and so on.

I live in a small , rural town and the average wage for many jobs considered good here is $7 to $40 dolars an hour. This town has a cheese factory run by the largest cheese producer in the world and jobs there start at $9 an hour. In a year a normal employee works a little over 2,000 hours, so that's a salary of about $19,000 BEFORE TAXES. After taxes, it's more like $15,000. That's $288 dollars a week to live on. And that's considered a good job here.

Really, people, get a heart.

You should vote for a government that removes subsidies for unhealthy food, like red meat. Also they should redistribute those subsidies in the healthy crop production.

WAKE UP PEOPLE FROM US!!! 350 BILLIONS SPENT ON THE WAR AGAINST IRAK!!! UNTIL DEC/2006. 2.75 BILLIONS IN 10 YEARS TO FEED THE HUNGRY??? ARE YOU NUTS? ARE YOU CRAZY? WAKE UP!! IT'S HAPPENING IN YOUR OWN COUNTRY. NOT IN AFRICA OR ANYWHERE ELSE. THE GOVERNMENT HAS SPENT 350 BILLIONS IN WAR, THAT'S AROUND 8 BILLIONS PER MONTH!! AND THE ARTICLE SAYS THAT IT WILL GET JUST 2.75 BILLIONS FOR FOOD IN TEN YEARS???? WAKE UP!!!

THis article is crazy. i live in a town of 500 people, in a county with a population of 22,000. not 95,000. I live in a rural area and i have high spead internet. everyone has a car. nobody eats snickers for supper. if people in south carolina took care of there neighbors like we do here there wouldnt be any problems. and the agriculture system is the most productive industry in america. dont fix something thats not broken. i dare anyone to find a corn field that yeilds over 220 bushels an acre outside of amereica, good luck!

ps. Never in the twenty years that I lived in South Carolina did I see obese, middle-aged women walking up and down the highway with grocery carts.

Many people in rural areas may not have cars or access to a vehicle, so they cannot drive 2 hours to the nearest large grocery store to stock up on healthier foods. What can they do? Walk to the nearest convenience store, where yes, they should make healthier choices than a snickers bar, but still, canned beans and white bread are not going to satisfy a person's nutritional needs. This article is important in exposing the common misconception that convenience store food is the plight of the urban dweller. Having just spent the summer traveling through some of poorest rural areas in the United States, I learned a lot about the way people live, and so much of it has to do with what's available to them, both in terms of actual food resources and education. One of the saddest things that is happening in this country is that so much of the land is being used for cash crops, so of course, there's no plucking the apple from the tree, or getting the eggs from the hens. Instead, it's harvest the wheat, corn, tobacco, cotton, soy, etc., ship it off, and go get processed, preserved food at the nearest convenience store. The system needs to be reexamined before people get blamed for their own food choices causing their obesity. Obese people in these situations are starving...they are starving for nutrients, to which they are not given access.