Healthier Food Culture in America

[Oldbill]

Ok, Ill say it again. Packaging. Pacific Ocean Gyre and other places, uncounted millions of pounds of plastic in one form or another, mostly from food packaging, is getting into the environment, and killing us. Attack this problem from the environmental angle. Tax plastic packaging, or ban it, leaving a narrow window of time before its outright illegal, to give business time to switch back to glass or some form of biodegradable packaging (wax paper, or wax paper made from industrial hemp),the fast food giants wont be able to keep their costs down, prices will rise. This will hopefully kill a couple birds with one stone, making the environment cleaner while getting people to start eating differently.
I'd add another thought. Can we lengthen the school day, to allow for two hours of PE, and make passing PE tests necessary to pass HS?

 

[Oldbill]

LOL, our childhoods were similar in some ways (heating an old farmhouse with a coal/wood stove, ice covered glass of water in the morning beside the bed) different in others. We ate Kale, in fact a lot of the greens that today seem to have been moved into the "Soul Food" category, hell I picked a lot of dandelion greens back then. Grew our own food, harvested what we could from the wild, had a good life. I still garden. Occasionally I'll go out and harvest a squirrel or three, fry them up with greens of some sort, fried cornbread, sliced fresh tomatoes and onions, mac and cheese. I went to college late in life, shocked the younger folks with the culinary tales of life. They don't know what they are missing.

 

[COMV99]

A lot of healthy eating has significant time inputs, and there are a lot more things people prefer to do, like browse internet forums. A lot of people miss sleep, because they lose track of time online. There's a sort of "I just want to relax" after work attitude, and since exercise is work no one really want to do it. The big stigma around blue collar are that it's paid less than white collar. Also with increasing automation and the layoffs that accompany them, most young people are not interested in something that seems to be dying, with some notable exceptions. Last in is first out hits younger people especially.

The USDA food groups were also heavily manipulated, so grain was at the bottom instead of vegetables because the grain industry was larger.

Kale was a thing back in WW2 when the British government encouraged it's growth because it's easy to grow and nutritious. It's actually one of the many forms of cabbage and was heavily cultivated back in the Middle Ages.
There does seem to be this weird cultural idea that eating healthy is "feminine" and eating meat is "masculine", or "liberal" and "conservative". Effeminate liberals eat prissy weak weird shit like quinoa while strong red-blooded Americans eat red meat. There's also the belief that healthy food is disgusting, "It tastes bad therefore it'll good for you". There seem to be elements of self flaggelation involved in eating healthy. Who can suffer more, who can sacrifice more is better than their peers.
In conjunction with the PE thing, more water needs to be procipro. Water fountains are weak and inefficient in terms of water use. There's also very little opportunity to drink water through the day, unless you bring your own. Providing a water cooler and paper cups would help.

Passing PE is a requirement for some High School diplomas, but I don't know how wide spread it is. And as it's not helpful for going to college or getting a career, schools will ignore it.

Extending the school day by 2 hours cuts into extracurriculars. These are being pushed as deciding factors on who gets into a good school and who doesn't. You wanna pile them on to be a "balanced" student. Admittedly, many of these extracurricular activities will be sports, but a lot of people drop sports when they enter college or the work force to focus on their studies or career.

 

[Joe Bonkers]

I never said eating kale or quinoa is unmanly. I said it's impossible, because both are disgusting. That's because both are disgusting. I stand by the truth of my statement.

 

[Oldbill]

I never said eating kale or quinoa is unmanly. I said it's impossible, because both are disgusting. That's because both are disgusting. I stand by the truth of my statement.

Hogwash! Yankee propaganda! Boil it up with a bit of fatback or bacon, give it a good dousing of apple cider vinegar and its tasty as hell. Pair it with some fried catfish, cornbread, oh man, heaven!

 

[Oldbill]

In conjunction with the PE thing, more water needs to be procipro. Water fountains are weak and inefficient in terms of water use. There's also very little opportunity to drink water through the day, unless you bring your own. Providing a water cooler and paper cups would help.

Passing PE is a requirement for some High School diplomas, but I don't know how wide spread it is. And as it's not helpful for going to college or getting a career, schools will ignore it.

Extending the school day by 2 hours cuts into extracurriculars. These are being pushed as deciding factors on who gets into a good school and who doesn't. You wanna pile them on to be a "balanced" student. Admittedly, many of these extracurricular activities will be sports, but a lot of people drop sports when they enter college or the work force to focus on their studies or career.[/QUOTE]

What about adding a physical fitness category to the graduation requirements?

 

[wcv215]

There's also the belief that healthy food is disgusting,

In my experience that one is completely true. Anytime someone has said that a food is "good for me" they are inevitably talking about something that tastes like crap.

 

[Manman]

Being healthy is not necessary at all in the modern world.

Exercise is a choice and unless you plan to work in a job that requires physical work you will mostly spend the time studying hoping you go to college.

 

[Roger II]

There's always "Cut back corn syrup subsidies" and "discourage driving Literally Everywhere".

 

[Arkenfolm]

What about adding a physical fitness category to the graduation requirements?

Far more useful than the vast majority of mandatory college classes.

 

[Jack Brisco]

Being healthy is not necessary at all in the modern world.

Exercise is a choice and unless you plan to work in a job that requires physical work you will mostly spend the time studying hoping you go to college.

Disagree. Why WOULDN'T you want to be healthy? We don't all need to be star athletes, but some level of physical fitness is important. For example, walking is a great way to get that exercise and keep the heart function strong.

Perhaps you are kidding, or are young, healthy, and feeling invulnerable. You trust you'll be healthy forever, and I hope that's correct.

From personal experience, being healthy beats the shit out of not being healthy. Having survived a life-threatening condition, I make very sure to get that walking in. Don't want to go through open-heart surgery again.

 

[Manman]

I mean that most people dont have to exercise at all to function in the modern world. It might not be healthy but it's possible. The jobs that require physical exertion is also going down and is unlikely to go up in the west.

I am agreeing with you it's just less needed to be fit than before.

 

[Don Corleone]

Ok, Ill say it again. Packaging. Pacific Ocean Gyre and other places, uncounted millions of pounds of plastic in one form or another, mostly from food packaging, is getting into the environment, and killing us. Attack this problem from the environmental angle. Tax plastic packaging, or ban it, leaving a narrow window of time before its outright illegal, to give business time to switch back to glass or some form of biodegradable packaging (wax paper, or wax paper made from industrial hemp),the fast food giants wont be able to keep their costs down, prices will rise. This will hopefully kill a couple birds with one stone, making the environment cleaner while getting people to start eating differently.
I'd add another thought. Can we lengthen the school day, to allow for two hours of PE, and make passing PE tests necessary to pass HS?

Not sure that will help. Fast food is already more expensive. I don't go to McDonald's anymore, but one if the women at my office sent me there to pick up lunch and I had sticker shock when i saw the prices. I even called and asked if she realized how much it was going to cost.

I can drive to Winn Dixie on my lunch break and get a salad for $2 (good) or a plate lunch with chicken tenders and greens or green beans (not great but not terrible) for $4. Or I could stop at Wally World on the way in and get a few packets of tuna or chicken, a bag of cheese sticks, and some fresh fruit or fruit cups. Week's worth of lunches for less than $20.

Cheaper and better than fast food.

 

[Masked Grizzly]

You could change the way school meals were prepared. Funding for full service kitchens in most elementary and middle schools might help, along with an actual chef in the schools, or at least given lunch workers more freedom to develop menus. Make this funding so integral to federal education spending (tie it into the national breakfast/lunch program) that it is endeared by the communities, and you might see a trend away from bad foods.

One of the grander issues of why we Americans eat the way we do is because of how we farm. I probably misquote this picture chart from the book Omnivore’s Dilemma, but American farms were much more diverse in what they grew compared to today. The soy, wheat, corn diets that are associated with today’s high calorie/high fat
foods is directly tied to the cheapness of grain and soy crops.

Is there any way to prevent or frustrate the popularity of Soy as a food product in the West, so they at minimum end becoming more of a fuel crop rather than a food crop?

 

[Jack Brisco]

Is there any way to prevent or frustrate the popularity of Soy as a food product in the West, so they at minimum end becoming more of a fuel crop rather than a food crop?

Most unlikely. Soy's been used in various food products for decades now.

 

[Anacostia Pol]

Is there any way to prevent or frustrate the popularity of Soy as a food product in the West, so they at minimum end becoming more of a fuel crop rather than a food crop?

I would think you have to change the research done during WWII and in the following years. If I remember correctly, research into alternative fuels, alternative sugars, and that sort of thing came as a result of wartime research. I don’t think you’re going to be able to avoid soy-based foods just for the simple fact that America needed to feed not only it’s own people on the cheap, but the world.

 

[hx87]

Doing away with the awful practice of boiling vegetables to death would do wonders for the acceptance of more vegetables in the American diet.

 

[Anacostia Pol]

Also if you could make being cosmopolitan cooking and eating acceptable earlier things might change health wise. Julia Childs made French cuisine more accessible to the American homemaker, and if we see more of that rather than the pre-prepared, easy prep foodstuffs of the post-war era then you blunt some of the problems we see today.

 

[marathag]

Also if you could make being cosmopolitan cooking and eating acceptable earlier things might change health wise. Julia Childs made French cuisine more accessible to the American homemaker, and if we see more of that rather than the pre-prepared, easy prep foodstuffs of the post-war era then you blunt some of the problems we see today.

Thing was, America did see Julia cook that way, and still bought Swanson TV Dinners

And as more Women started working outside the house, you will see less time for cooking in the home, as OTL
Convenience is hard to beat, esp. tied with low cost