***Please read this article published by the Washington Post at the end of 2014 in relation to this nation's food inequality:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/09/02/americas-growing-food-inequality-problem/
Another important issue included in the topic of food inequality in our nation is what we are feeding our kids in schools and how we are teaching food education in our nation. Annually, we pay over $30,000 per inmate in the federal justice system to incarcerate an individual, yet we spend less than $500 a year on feeding our children in public schools across the nation.
***Please watch this brief TedTalk about how we are dealing with food and food education in our school systems:
Discussion Questions:
1. Should there be a greater importance on eating local, sustainable foods, and what can be done to make these foods more accessible to the lower classes?
2. Should there be a greater importance on food education in our school systems?
3. Should we continue to support fast food companies despite the quality of food produced in relation to our nation's epidemic with obesity?
4. Let's discuss the prospect of subsidizing healthy, local, sustainable foods in our society -- yay/nay, why/why not.
I'm not sure how to feel about food education. I feel like however hard they pushed, at the elementary school level, healthy eating and exercise, it never really worked. Like, as a kid, if I didn't like how something tasted, I just wasn't going to eat it and there was very little you could say or do about that. So, I don't know how much that kind of thing helps.
ReplyDeleteI really like the idea of sustainable, local farming, if only for the fossil fuels argument, but again, I don't know how much that encourages or enables personal health. But I've also never lived in a food desert, and I really don't know what it's like to not have access to healthy produce (whether or not I actually consume it, it's always been there) so maybe it's just a matter of actually having that perspective from which to speak.
I think that having access to natural, sustainable, and local foods should be very important in our society. However, I do feel that the problem of production for certain states would pose a problem for growing certain foods. Oranges are a great source of Vitamin C that is essential for the maintenance of the human immune system; however, there's no way production in Colorado can ever match the production in Florida just because of how nature works. So in that sense, it makes sense economically (so Coloradan officials don't have to worry about the shipping of oranges from Florida) for officials to promote the idea of genetically altering the DNA from oranges to survive Colorado weather, and this theory can be applied to other food groups and products as well. I think the problem is whether we should have low prices so the lower class can eat even if they are at risk of eating not-so-healthy foods or raising the prices of foods to provide quality food and risk the backlash from the public about how they cannot buy food for their families even if they're healthier for them, if that makes sense.
ReplyDeleteYes, there should be a greater importance on food education, but it should be geared towards eating healthier rather than explaining the difference between eating locally grown foods and foods from abroad.
I think that we should continue supporting fast food companies. Eating fast food is a personal choice that the government has no business in making. It should up to the parent to ensure that their child is getting a well-balanced diet,so that the child can remain healthy and vigilant. Obesity just so happens to be a consequence of eating unhealthy and without exercise and I feel that with more exposure and importance to work out plans beyond school and in the daily lives of adults, there would probably be a decrease in obesity among Americans. We're actually already subsidizing our local foods; the government has a plethora of tax breaks it gives to farmers so that they can continue farming without the risk of going bankrupt; the government does this for the latter reason and to protect our nationally grown food from food grown and imported from the international community.
In the 21st-century there isn't much that isn't possible. And this problem of "food inequality" has an exceedingly simple solution, relative to the other problems facing us as individuals and as a nation.
ReplyDeleteSchool should definitely be a large piece in creating and guiding healthy eating habits. Kids are required to go to school until they're 16, and so school should accept the additional role of guiding them in their development through those 16 years. Extending the role from just math and social studies educator to almost being another parental figure.
The economics are there. $500 per kid is pathetic, especially compared to inmate or (again) defense spending. So divert some funds from the next stealth bomber.
We're a capitalist economy, fast food can do what they want so long as people are still buying.
I believe it is very important for the lower class to have access eating local, sustainable foods. One way I could think of is making this acceccable in lower public schools becuase I believe it is essential for especially kids in the lower class to get this nutrition they could be lacking in the house.
ReplyDeleteLike I meantioned before there should be a much greater importance in schools, because this could provide at least the children i the lowere class better nutriotion they could be lacking in the house.
I believe that us supporting fast food industries is a choice each individual should make, just how I believe most obesity is choice. People have a choice to which extend to support them.
Food inequality is a big problem because besides the obvious reasons, it generally tends in the United States to affect people of color, women, and people living in poor areas more than anyone else above all. There must be more outreach in schools as well as in societies to raise awareness of the issue. In addition to this, a lot of urban areas are food deserts, in that there is scarcity of food. This needs to solved above all.
ReplyDeleteThe fact that healthy food is not attainable to all socio-economic status in the US is an atrocities which continuously leads to large health gaps - particularly between different races in the US. Although life expectancy is projected to increased through 2050, the quality of the projected future lifespans has never been analyzed. What good is a longer life if it's riddled with diabetes and medications meant to keep a body functioning. The solution is to give a hoot. And people just don't yet. The food justice issue needs to hit a more dire tipping point, another DDT epidemic, before people will really listen to the actual impending health predicament associated with pesticides, hormones, antibiotics, etc.
ReplyDelete