Living in Junk Food County? (Read 1462 times)

If the people who lived in these places 100 years ago could see the present inhabitants, I bet they would consider them lazy and ignorant.

What about the people that are there now and look around? Can't they consider them lazy and ignorant too?

How much time does it take to grow 6000 lbs of food off 1/10 acre?

In order to understand the problem, it is necessary to look at how this 'laziness' is produced (in concrete ways; it didn't just "show up" as moral failure), whose interests it serves (there are many), and how to undo it (the hardest question).

The first thing we do, we kill all the philosophers. - Shakespeare

produce way more eggs than we can use ourselves.

I'll get you my address. I used to garden for years and we had bushels of tomatoes. Summer squash crops never did well in our yard. Now we live on the edge of the woods with clay soil and a big hill. The combined effects of the poor soil, the lack of sunlight, the slope and this year's drought made it hard to get even a single tomato. It breaks my heart, but we did subscribe to a CSA to compensate. But I loved to garden and I loved to eat tomatoes that I grew myself. I agree, the time investment for a Summer garden is not great; for 3 tons it might be.

sorry to hijack the thread Ed, but have a look at my log and comment on my maf runs, and tell me how I am doing and how long yo uthink I should keep doing them. I ultimately want to break 20 mins for 5k. How do I know when I can try it?

This Newsweek article annoys me: http://www.newsweek.com/id/76929 It's about how people in rural areas are overwhelmingly unhealthy and obese because they don't have easy access to healthy food and they're often poor and underemployed. Look, these people have access to land and free time. That's all it takes to produce healthy food. Once upon a time Americans knew how to do this -- especially poor rural Americans. If the people who lived in these places 100 years ago could see the present inhabitants, I bet they would consider them lazy and ignorant.

The first sentence is fact, I have no problem with that . I do have a bit of a problem with the editorial judgements made here unless you have lived in these areas. As usual I will only talk about my area but the area would fit the profile described although dw and I probably don't fit and our area is not the extreme as was described in the article. Health care, dentistry etc., I think you will find many more out here without health insurance or trying to pay for it out of their own salaries. If self employed don't get the rate advantages of group coverages. Very little dental included. Most small communities are vastly understaffed in physicians that just try and fix the big things with little time to encourage lifestyle changes. Many in my area drive 30 to 60 miles for simple health care and 200 miles for anything complex, although there are some specialists that visit once a month from large metro hospitals. Around here most everything revolves around agriculture whether growing or servicing agriculture so during the growing season there is not alot of time to plant and tend a garden. The best times to plant your gardens are when the farmers and service industries are putting in 100 hour weeks to get the crops in. Around this place we don't even mow the lawn until our crops look good. While I have the skills to grow a garden many in the service industry do not nor do they have access to land and water resources to do so. While described as rural poor I would hazard a guess a small percentage of them actually live in the country but more small isolated little towns. Even these towns have zoning and few would permit raising food animals inside city limits unless rover or kitty would count. We do actually have supermarkets out here. The type and variety of fresh goods is rather limited as we are at the end of the distribution chain. I can certainly buy the food needed cheaper than grow it in my backyard garden and maybe thats a failure of modern agriculture, food is too cheap and plentiful. Working moms and dads find their food dollars to feed a family will go much further if they put in a few more hours or work a second shift somewhere than spending the daily requirements raising a garden and livestock and canning, pickling etc etc needed to go through the winter. The work ethic around here actually gets in the way of health and fitness. When my neighbors see me out running early in the mornings they see that as wasted time that I could be working. In todays farming it means long hours in the drivers seat be it tractors or 18 wheelers or sitting at an office chair staring at a computer screen marketing, budgeting or doing finances. Where as when my grandpa started farming out here it was mostly physical labor. Yes they were self sufficient and I'm sure he would call most all of todays society as lazy rural or urban but they also had a great deal more free time and life was alot simpler. While the cities continue to grow the outward migration from rural areas like mine is explosive for all the reasons I described. For me if I can't spend the money for good food (and yes I BUY most of my food from the store) and spend a few hours a week on fitness I need to find another job and I have the education and skills to do so if I moved but many don't have good choices. J .....profarmer and very average amatuer runner (most would call me slow)