its not going to matter how much organic, locally sourced, gmo free, cage free, gluten free, all natural, whatever you have, if you have $31.74 to last your family the week youre only going to be concerned about the most calories per dollar. There is a lack of information about food choices that is the biggest problem. The idea of food desserts are real, but if someone doesnt know about how to cook healthy foods or doesnt have the money then none of that will matter. When I was a kid I had 40 cent reduced lunch, we were on food assistance for a while, and in general we knew that at Aldi you can get 2 loafs of bread, a bag of potatoes, 2 dozen eggs, and some frozen sausage for $9 that can feed a family of 5 for a while, until mom had some good tipping tables at work or dad got some extra side work fixing TVs in the garage. It was not always the healthiest option, but it was what was going to keep us full. As years passed and myself and my parents became more middle class some of those habits still lingered because they die hard, but now theyre in an opportunity where theyre able to put quality as a factor above calories per dollar, but that would not have been easily done 20 years ago. When confronted between having either factory farmed beef for or grass fed, gmo free, organic, free range beef everyone would prefer the latter, but when the its $5.99/lbs. instead of $1.99/lbs. people cant afford to do the better thing. I think the problem with a place like Whole Foods coming into a neighborhood is even when theyre doing some level of outreach and education to people who are wanting help in getting healthy, they ultimately have a for profit incentive to push their brand, and their products. The best way to make healthy food accessible for people in poor areas is not to offer up organic beef at $5.99/lbs instead of $7.99/lbs. like in the suburbs, but to educate people about brown rice, beans and legumes, oats, bananas, carrots, greens, and tons of other simple and cheap foods, and teaching people how to make delicious meals from them. Whole Foods isn’t too preoccupied with finding a market among shoppers like Ruff and Williams, for whom the pitch that cage-free and genetically modified are healthier than other food doesn’t merit the markup That quote sums it up, while its good that Whole Foods Market Detroit does have 5x the usage of SNAP benefits as their average store, at the end of the day they make way more selling $6 cupcakes to Wayne State University students and commuters working at Detroit Medical Center on a lunch break before heading back to their homes in Oakland and Macomb counties.
Posted on: Fri, 21 Nov 2014 18:43:53 +0000
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