Thread: Eating Healthy in Inner Cities

On another forum that I frequent they're discussing health care and how much public funding is forwarded towards inner cities because of obesity rates...

Here are some pretty good points.

There isn't really a lot of extra cleanup. I mean, rinse off the stuff and put it in the dishwasher. It's more of an issue of being efficient.

And I didn't say we could cook a meal in 10 minutes, I said we could prepare a meal in ten minutes. If something needs to bake for 40 minutes while I surf the web or whatever, I don't count that.

And remember, there is the economy of scale: It's pretty much the same amount of work for six people as it is for one person, so if you are cooking for yourself, the ROI may or may not be worth it to you. But, when cooking for a bunch of people, there is nothing wrong with getting the kids involved either, and that can help out.

As for meals, like I say, my wife and I eat like we did when growing up for the most part. I mean, we eat a lot special meals too, and we like to cook, but we don't do it every day. Anyway, just off the top of my head, this is what I've cooked for everyone on the nights when I was in charge:

1. Fish Chowder; Slice and halve an onion, sear it in a pan with butter. Cube up a few potatoes (can be cold ones from yesterday too), and throw them in a double boiler. Cook until tender. Throw a pound of fish pieces in a kettle with enough milk to feed the people eating dinner, throw in the onions and potatoes, add some butter, salt, and pepper, and let it simmer for a few minutes. Serve with bread and butter. Actual time chopping stuff and stirring the chowder is no more than ten minutes.

2. Salmon Loaf; Get a mixing bowl, break up a few slices of dried out bread (adjust for the number of people eating). Add two or three eggs, a chopped onion, poultry seasoning, a can of the cheapest salmon on the shelf (smells like cat food, but is perfect for a loaf after cooking), maybe a handful of frozen peas. Stir it all together, add either another egg or more bread to get it sticky, put it in a skillet or loaf pan, and slide it in the oven. This takes just a few minutes.

3. Red Flannel Hash: (This is something you do with leftovers, so if someone is making something that needs boiled potatoes, always cook a few extra and keep them in the fridge). Take a few cooked potatoes and a can of beets. Mash them together with a potatoe masher just until it's coarse. Add a chopped onion. Add whatever you want for a protein: Salted fish pieces are good, corned beef, or any other cheap fishes or meats, or anything left over from before. Mix it all together and throw it in a big frying pan, and turn up the heat. I don't bother it a lot, and just let it brown on the bottom, and when steam starts coming out of the middle, it's ready to serve. I sprung this on my kids last week, and they liked it so much I had to make more.

4. Corn bread: I have timed myself, and I can have a loaf of corn bread in the oven in four minutes. Dig out the mixing bowl, put in a cup of flour, a cup of corn meal, two eggs, milk until it's the right consistency, backing powder and baking soda, stir gently until you see the little bubbles form from the soda reacting, pour it into a pan and stick it in the oven. It will be done in about the time it takes to make the fish chowder above.


Man, I could go on and on: Pea soup, corn chowder, carrot soup, boiled dinners, poached salmon, tuna cassarole. It just takes some planning- keep certain things in the same place, so all you need to do is reach in and grab it. Don't worry about being exact- go by consistency and taste, and who cares if it isn't the same every time. If you need a cookbook, you're doing it wrong.

We also cook a lot of stuff in bulk. When my wife makes bread (hand kneaded, from scratch always), she'll make four loaves. When we make donuts, we'll make six dozen, etc.

Don't get me wrong, we go all out on special meals all the time. But when I come inside and I'm hungry and the kids are whining, it doesn't take any effort at all to put a hot meal on the table.

Unless you believe that everyone's behavior can be "corrected" then the point is that you have to deal with them no matter what.

What happens when this stupid, lazy person who eats at Popeyes and spits out four kids needs medical care? They don't get it until it's severe enough due to lack of insurance. Then what, they hit up the ER where services cost more and cannot be declined. Due to her severe nature the costs are very high and she does not pay -- either she hits bankruptcy or is on a stupidly long payment plan or it's just written off/down (say, uninsured discount).

Great. Now what? The hospital compensates for this "charity" type care by jacking up YOUR costs because you will actually pay. Is that a happy outcome?

What should we do? Curb behavior through taxes and penalties (fat tax, etc)? Outlaw certain things (smoking, drinking, fatty foods, etc)? Demand proof of resources before breeding? Is avoiding the identifiable burden of publically insuring this person compelling enough to ignore the more hazy backdoor burden that gets placed on us by letting this person skip out on their bill?

Again, I am not in favor of this bill, but pointing the finger down at stupid poor people, blaming them for all our problems, and then thinking that not addressing the problem is going to help doesn't seem like the answer to me. Neither is free handouts, IMO, but that's why I am trying to understand better and not writing policy.

You hit the nail on the head.

When I did Teach for America in the South Bronx I was shocked by the lack of supermarkets/fresh produce in the area -- for blocks and blocks you'd have these little bodegas who only sell candy, chips and soft drinks.

One week, after seeing student after student walk into class drinking soda and a bag of Fritos as their breakfast I actually taught a few lessons about the importance of eating fresh food. I put a couple of pictures from Whole Foods in the PowerPoint I was showing in class and the kids nearly fell out of their chairs:

"Where is that supermarket, yo!? That's the nicest place I've ever seen!"

We started talking about it as a class, and I realized WHY these kids had never been to a halfway decent supermarket -- they live in the Bronx, so they don't have cars. It's tough to take a whole bunch of groceries on the bus, and it's too expensive to pay for a cab... so they often just don't go. Then you look at it the other way around -- Supermarkets take up an enormous amount of real estate and have a ton of overhead.

In fact, when we really got down into the issue, a lot of my teenage students were pocketing food in the cafeteria to take home -- the little plastic cups of fruit were the only fruit their family had access to sometimes. Sad stuff.

But you know why grocery chains won't move to these neighborhoods? Because the people rob them blind. That is what pretty much happens, and why so many stores moved out. Trust me, if they could make money, they'd be there. But when you can't have self-checkouts, and you can't put bags of rock salt out front for sale in the winter time because people steal it all, and where you can't sell deli foods because people eat it while they shop and leave chicken bones on the shelves, it just isn't worth it.

Grocery store chains care about one thng: money.

In many cities, community gardens and farmer's markets are becoming quite popular. I personally love what Michelle Obama did by planting a garden on the White House lawn. People have become really separated from the source of their food, and with higher fuel prices looming on the horizon, I think it's about time we rethink how we distribute food.

The fact is just purchasing the basics (nothing fancy, I'm not even including the cost of dressing) for a salad to feed four people usually costs more than $10 and for that amount of money one can buy 5 cases of ramen noodles.

In my area even WalMart is buying locally grown produce. That, along with the $4 prescriptions, has really changed my thinking about what giant corporations can do if they use their powers for something besides paying bigger dividends to their stockholders.

I live just east of the Fox Cities of NE Wisconsin. Our area supports a very heavy Hmong population and they are traditionally farmers. Large parcels of unused city and county property have been set aside for th free use of the Hmong community and the results have been nothing short of wonderful. The harvests have been so bountiful that many of the Hmong sell their excess produce at the Appleton Farmer's Market. Great stuff at outstanding prices.