I've linked to this or something like this before, and I'm essentially stealing this post from Paul Rosenberg, but everyone should see this. This is from respected economist Mark Zandi of Moody's: “The Economic Impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act”.
Look, the best way to stimulate the economy lines up very well with liberal priorities. You can complain that food stamps don't deliver permanent, lasting value to the economy, but they are stimulative. If you want that money to get spent fast, give it to hungry people to buy food. Not rocket science.
Please share widely!
Because you’ve linked an interesting (original) source that got me reading more about what works for stimulus (consensus: immediate, but temporary spending) so thanks for that, but…
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p>Food stamps?
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p>I mean, seriously?
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p>Now, I’m fortunate enough not to have ever needed food stamps and so I’m certainly speaking from some degree of ignorance here. But aren’t all the people who are – as you say – “hungry”, already receiving food stamps in sufficient quantities to feed themselves?
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p>If we e.g. double the amount of foodstamps would that mean that twice as many households would partake? (quickly?)
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p>Or would that mean that the existing households would eat twice as much? (quickly?)
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p>Forgive me, but it seems to me that a very significant portion of US poor people are already obese.
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p>e.g.
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p>http://www.sciencedaily.com/re…
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p>http://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dnp…
Look into the congressional food stamp challenge if you’re interested. The minimum benefit is $10 a week, but the usual benefit is more like $20. Try living on that for a little while.
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p>(Just FYI, the average monthly household income for those receiving food stamps is $640. Not exactly a lot of disposable income in there.)
I write with a little more experience.
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p>I remember when my mother started going to the grocery store the next town over when I was a kid, instead of the local ShopRite or IGA. She didn’t want our neighbors to see we were on food stamps. My brother and his family are on food stamps now.
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p>Well, not exactly since the allocation depends on number in the household, disability benefits, health benefits, pension benefits, pregnancy, housing status, income, etc. But, there’s clearly demand. Google around for the recent surge in “customers” at food banks and soup kitchens.
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p>No, but you’re falling in to a common mistake…
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p>And there’s that mistake. It’s true, poverty is often correlated with obesity, particularly when not in old urban cores (in which walking and mass transit are legitimate options). Healthy food is more expensive, and harder to prepare. This is the challenge. If you’re poor, many of the following apply:
* Your food budget is very small. Processed food like Mac & Cheese and Pork & Beans start looking like good options.
* Your time budget is very small. Working odd hours, juggling kids, single parent. Microwave dinner starts looking like a good option.
* Your stress level is through the roof. Creditors, balancing food and medicine and the needs of your children and your failing car. That bag of Doritos starts looking like a good option.
* Your stove/refrigerator doesn’t even work. McDonald’s starts looking like a pretty good option.
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p>Exactly how much aid to give per week is a complicated formula, but I do know that my brother makes sure his entire family is fed on that card. If he got another $20 a week, he’d spend it. They wouldn’t eat more — they’d eat better. They’d have salads or fresh fruit. The baby would still get her formula and the two other girls their lunches — but my brother and his wife would eat better, and they’d be teaching my three Goddaughters good eating habits. They can’t do that now because their income is reserved for their mortgage, car payments, utilities, diapers, etc.
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p>I really want to emphasize this. Poor people tend to be obese because they don’t eat enough good food, not because they eat too much food. The difference is that their situation is making that decision for them.
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p>There used to be a program where people on food stamps would get coupons to farmer’s market. You’d take your book of 20 $1 coupons and buy fresh produce. It was brilliant — it helped ensure that the poor were eating better (the obesity issue) and helped ensure that local farmers could hold on to their farms and not sell them to suburban sprawl. I think it still exists, though I’m sure it’s funding has ebbed and flowed. I’ve always felt that this program was a home run and ought to get more funding, both for the food itself and programatically, so that more people who were eligible would learn how to use the benefits well.
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p>Unless you’ve invented new physics, that statement is so blantantly wrong you should be embarassed. People are fat because they i) eat too much ii) exercise too little or a combination of the two.
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p>Further, whoever is suggesting food stamps as stimulus is a pretty hard hearted bastard.
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p>Given that the targets, the poor, are more likely to spend given the uptick in food stamps do you really think it’s a good idea to shower them with food stamps, ramp up their consumption on more expensive calories, then, after the stimulus has done-its-thang, snatch them away?
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p>And, if you don’t after the stimulating is over, DONT’T snatch them away, then you’ve effectively, permanently increased the level of welfare in the US – something the Republicans have been accusing the Democrat leadership of, and the Democrats have been loudly denying.
one of my former managers was probably the most jacked individual I’ve known well. He had basketballs for biceps. He also ate McDonalds almost every day. I asked him how he was healthy, and he said to me “Joe, when you work out like I do, I could eat grease for every meal and look this good.” So yes, you are correct that having excellent activity habits could easily stem the fat tide.
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p>However, I would note that the stress and time issue makes it difficult for poor people to make it to the gym, not to mention finding 20+ dollars a week to pay for the gym that they could have going to something else in a limited budget.
I ran from 2 to 4 miles per day on public streets. Then, back in my living room, a couple of dozen sit-ups, some free weight curls, and a few other things which kept me trim. No gym, no fees. One can exercise with no or only small expense.(I think the weights were $15.00).
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p>I would also add that processed or pre-made meals like Mac and Cheese, Stouffers, bags of pre-mixed salads, etc, are more expensive than healthy foods. Want to save money on your grocery bill? Buy a five pound bag of rice, buy whole chickens, buy lettuce, and tomatoes. The list offered by stomv to me is a list of bad choices made by people for whatever the excuse. There’s always an excuse. If your stove is broken, get it fixed or fix it yourself. If you’re busy (as is my family), prepare meals in advance and refrigerate them. Make smart choices and take some responsibility for your situation.
I can eat a whole box of Mac & Cheese. 89 cents (sometimes 75), plus a splash of milk — I skip the butter. 89 cents buys me a tomato. Or a Bell pepper. It sure as heck doesn’t buy me a salad that can fill me up.
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p>I agree, rice is cheap and healthy, but lettuce and tomatoes are expensive and healthy.
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p>Processed food is both cheap and filling, and easy to prepare. Healthy food tends to be more expensive, not as filling (less grease for starters), and requires more prep time. Sure there are exceptions, but this is an accurate rule of thumb.
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p>With more food stamps, people won’t eat more food. They’ll eat more (expensive) healthier food and less microwave food. That’s the idea anyway.
boil some water and it’ll cost less per serving than pre-made.
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p>”Pre-made are way cheaper”
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p>When I research ways to save money on food invariably the list contains something like the following;
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p>from bankrate.com
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p>or this from WebMD
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p>or this
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p>Seems to me healthy doesn’t cost more money, just more effort, so is it laziness which is the problem here?
Less per serving is different than less. It may be cheaper per serving to buy $50 worth of baked beans from Costco, but if I don’t have $50, I’m SOL.
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p>In order to realize the savings from buying fresh produce, you have to spend a certain minimum amount. To use stomv’s example, you can make a meal out of $.89 of Mac & Cheese, but not out of an $.89 bell pepper. You can’t get a box of elbow macaroni and a hunk of store-brand cheddar for $.89 either. And of course, if you wanted the whole-wheat macaroni and the low-fat cheese, you’d be paying even more.
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p>Now, I don’t know what that minimum amount is, or whether food stamps cover it, but it’s not quite as straightforward as you’re making it out to be.
$50 worth of beans at a wholesale club? C’mon, how about a 5lb bag at Market-Basket.
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p>Are you really trying to convince me that a meal consisting of Stouffers or Hungry-man(or some other pre-made meal) is cheaper than making it from scratch? I go back to my question about laziness being part of the problem issue.
Start from nothing. Make a single hamburger or anything off of the dollar menu from McDonalds for less than a dollar and from scratch. Show your work.
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p>All I’m saying is that it is easy and cheap to eat poorly. It is much less easy to eat well and it is often more expensive either on a per-serving (for some items) or total grocery bill basis.
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p>”less easy” is what prompted my ponder about lazy.
“often more expensive”…not always more expensive, and often not more expensive. Hardly definitive.
The guy who eats whatever he wants, doesn’t exercise, and stays skinny? I’m pretty sure I’ve known a few dudes like that, so the corresponding, inverse scenario must also be possible: people who can’t do anything right vis a vis weight control.
Not that this bears directly on the discussion, which is about median weights, rates of obesity, etc.
Define “Eat too much”. It’s not quantity of food, it’s quantity of fat and calories. You wouldn’t seriously suggest that eating 15 carrots is the same as eating 15 carrot-sized candy bars. The point stomv is making, as I understand it, is that cheap, processed foods are generally worse for you than more expensive fare. What people eat matters just as much, if not more than how much they eat.
They’re convinced poor people are lazy and stupid, so therefore any fact which might challenge that conclusion is discarded.
I said uneducated. The link between poverty and lack of education is compelling. You disagree?
You also tried to link “poor” and “South.” I’ll agree if you go with “Southie.”
I said people who choose to eat premade food versus those who make from scratch MIGHT be lazy. It was a question.
There, I said it.
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I make my meals from scratch to save money.
The quality of a diet is a function of price. Of course the market prices are distorted by subsidies.
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p>More here, here, here, and here
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But that is freaking disturbing.
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p>I was listening to this On Point, with Mark Bittman, the food guru guy. It’s an awesome show. One of the reasons Bittman changed his dietary habits was the fact that eating fruits and veggies and grains and nuts, versus eating dairy and meat. You see, meat (and by extension, dairy) takes a LOT more energy to produce than the base of the food chain (grains, fruits, veggies, anything plant). You lose energy going up the food chain, so let’s say one unit of grain can feed a person for a meal, it takes a LOT more units of grain to create the meat of whcih one unit makes a meal for one person.
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p>Some facts and quotes from the Bittman interview (GO listen to it!):
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p>A UN Report “Livestock’s long shadow”: about 18% of all greenhouse gases are produced by industrial livestock production, also reported in Scientific American
– Which is “second after only energy production”
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p>50% of all antibiotics are given to animals in the US, antibiotics are now being found in the soil.
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p>List of top 10 foods in calories in the US:
1. (by a long shot) Soft drinks. (7% of all calories Americans take in)
2. Cake
3. Hamburgers/Cheeseburgers
4. Pizza
5. Potato chips
6. Rice
7. Rolls
8. Cheese
9. Beer
10. French Fries
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p>Quotes from Bittman:
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p>”Just like oil, there’s a very, very finite amount of this stuff we can produce and if we’re at peak oil, we’re probably also at peak animal products, because right now we are slaughering, eating…60 billion animals worldwide. 10 billion of which by the way are consumed in the United States, so 1/6th of all animals…”
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p>”That 60 billion worldwide number is projected to grow to 120 billion by 2050 and I think the newer numbers will show that that…at the rate that it’s growing now it’s going to be more like 2030 or 2040. … BUT, it’s impossible for us to produce that much meat, because…there’s no more efficient method of producing meat than the one we’re doing now, and we’re already using 70% of the available land…705 of the world’s farmland is directly or indirectly involved in producing meat.”
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p>”If we all ate the equivalent of three fewer cheeseburgers a week…let’s say it’s a small meal of meat…if we ate three fewer servings of that kind of stuff per person per week, it would be the equivalent of taking all the SUV’s in the United States off the road.”
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p>The ONLY reason meat and dairy is cheap enough for the median income family to buy is that the feed and the land to raise them on is HEAVILY SUBSIDIZED, completely distorting the price points for meat versus veggies and fruits, as well as making such things as high fructose corn syrup so cheap, you are practically paid to put it in your processed products.
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p>But, blame the poor people, if that’s your thing, Republicans…
This On Point. And really, GO LISTEN!
Also, 705 was supposed to be 70%…I was transcribing while listening and forgot to proofread.
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p>Right, because God knows you certainly can’t expect a person to actually blame himself for eating poorly or being fat. Why else did He make 8 fingers if not for pointing.
Like “dollar meals” at McDonalds. They are loss-leaders.
McDonald’s biggest markup is on soda. I remember reading somewhere they could give away the basic burgers and still make money on the soft drinks, etc.
Here’s a great program that The Food Project, a group I work with, utilizes to double the impact of food stamps for needy families seeking healthy foods (the program is principally funded by the City of Boston and Project Bread):
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p>”Boston’s Bounty, a new program for Food Stamp and WIC program participants!
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p>Starting in August 2008, you can double your food stamp dollar at farmers’ markets with Boston Bounty Bucks. If you spend between $5 and $10 on your EBT card, you will receive an equal amount of Boston Bounty Bucks to spend at the market.
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p>You can now use your EBT card to purchase food at these farmers’ markets in Boston:
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p>Allston – Wednesdays, 3-7
Boston Medical Center – Fridays, 10:30 -1:30, (August only)
Dorchester/Bowdoin St. Health Center – Thursdays, 3-7
Dorchester/ Dorchester House – Wednesdays, 1-6
Roxbury/Dudley Town Common – Tues. & Thursdays, 3-7
East Boston – Thursdays, 3-6
Mattapan – Saturdays, 10-2
Mission Hill – Thursdays, 11-6
Dorchester/Revision Urban Farm Market – Thursdays, 1-5
Roslindale – Saturdays, 9-1
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p>WIC program participants can also receive additional farmers’ markets coupon up to $10 through participating WIC programs.”
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p>If you could use federal funds to expand this program, more Massachusetts farmers would come into low income neighborhoods, they would hire more market managers, they would put more healthy food in neighborhoods struggling with issues of poor health and obesity and they would keep the food stamp dollars circulating in the state economy.
It’s a utopian goal to circulate food stamps, fetch local producers and scatter a healthy food pyramid throughout the poverty soaked masses, but it’s just dreaming, not FISCAL STIMULUS. Isn’t that what this is about?
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p>Poor = uneducated. Correlation is huge. The death rate from heart attacks and cancer so high in the poor South; a Popeye’s Chicken or KFC density is thick in poor urban areas: it’s because people eat fat and don’t know that it’ll eventually kill them.
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p>There was an article in WSJ years ago; a woman was living on a staple diet of corn starch – right out of the box. Apparently, she liked it, was oblivious that it had no nutritional qualities – oblivious even what a nutritional quality was!
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p>So you pass out the coupons. The extra stimulative coupons. How can anyone imagine that the people who’ve eaten corn starch, ho hos, fried chicken and candied lard all their life, will suddenly start eating arugala and seared Tuna or will take up membership at the local gym.
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p>AND, even if they do, by some miracle adopt better eating habits, because the package is stimulative, it’s temporary by current definition, and the Feds will whisk it away having given them a taste of the good life.
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p>Thanks for the Stimulus fatty, now off you go.
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p>First, you bust out the “uneducated south” mantra, then you suggest that they don’t know that KFC is unhealthy. Are you joking? To top it off, you completely ignore Church’s, Bojangles, and Chick-fil-A, all of which are more common than KFC down souf’.
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p>Here’s the scoop — people, even those uneducated poor Southerners of yours — know that fried chicken isn’t healthy. They know that burgers clog arteries. They also know that other habits more popular in the south (smoking and relying on autos for 100% of transit) aren’t healthy either.
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p>But…they also know it’s cheaper to buy a bucket of chicken than it is to buy the ingredients for a healthy meal for the family. They know it’s faster to buy the chicken than to shop for the healthy ingredients, even if those healthy ingredients magically cooked themselves. They also live in a culture completely dominated by the automobile — even cities like Atlanta and Charlotte are car cities — which makes it oh so easy to just pull in and get food.
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p>You’re right, adding money to food stamps for regular and farmer’s market programs should be done all the time, not just now.
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p>But really — you do sound like a …
… from poor to not-so-poor I can attest. Just think about how you ate in college. 😉
FOR PREVENTING THE CHILDREN OF POOR PEOPLE IN AMERICA FROM BEING A BURDEN TO THEIR PARENTS OR COUNTRY, AND FOR MAKING THEM BENEFICIAL TO THE PUBLIC
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p>It is a well established truth that “a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout.”
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p>Beyond a year old, a child may get a little tough, but that could perhaps be taken care of by raising them in small boxes like veal. There are other agricultural tricks we now have up our sleeves that could certainly help with processing their meat.
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p>Poor children may be obese these days, but it’s quite possible to remove the fat from meat, and even then, a little fat never hurt anyone. As an occasional treat, like a good filet mignon or a fish caught in one of our more industrialized rivers or lakes, eating a fat child can still provide an excellent meal. As has already been amply demonstrated, we don’t care what they eat as long as it’s cheap.
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p>Given the direction of the economy, opening up a new market that lowers the welfare rolls and keeps criminals the poor of the street has a lot of potential, though since the GOP doesn’t have a veto proof majority, it’s likely to be blocked by the Democrats.
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p>Mark
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I think that’s what really killed us (and caused much the health problems we have had).
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p>You shop in the “center” of the grocery store, as my nutritionist once pointed out, when you are poor. The canned goods, the pasta, the mac and cheese.
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p>When you have money, you shop the “outside” of the grocery store aisles…the produce, the dairy, the meat…
So it’s your theory that people who frequent the fast food joint, the KFCs, eat fatty foods do so, not because of lack of education that it’s bad, but rather because they’re poor. PC typical, but ok, let’s go with that. Under your reasoning, a lavish supply of food stamps ought to remedy the problem.
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p>I maintain, it’s education, and not poverty that creates the basis for a bad diet, although the two are strongly linked and that more food stamps will do little toward ‘fixing’ the diet.
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p>An aside, you seem to concede my point that food stamps, even if stimulative, is a cruel stimulus, if temporary, to say the least. No?
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p>To my theory:
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p>First, I’m certain that I’ve spent considerably more time than you in rural Appalachia, NC, SC and the deep south enough to know that pork, poultry, corn and saturated fats (i.e. lard, butter) were the historical basis of a southern diet and still are.
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p>Now imagine, if you will, generations who have enjoyed (not suffered) pork, fried food, hominy grits, cornbread, bacon, most prepared with saturated fats.
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p>How many individuals know that that diet is unhealthy? That strikes me as an education issue.
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p>Now, how many of those individuals who know it’s unhealthy know how to prepare alternatively? That strikes me as an education issue.
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p>Also, how many people know that the processed foods are calori dense and low nutrient dense? That strikes me as an education issue.
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p>Also, how many people know that the advertisements in the KFC or MacDonalds window that say “FRIED IN ALL VEGETABLE OIL” simply means it’s a plant that will kill them and not a pig. That strikes me as an education issue.
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p>And last, how many people know that their parents lived to an old age on a fried diet, but did so not because of their diet, but in spite of it and because of the greater work. THAT strikes me as an education issue.
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p>So, IF you successfully educate people of i) their unhealthful diet ii) educate people how to eat/prepare alternatives iii)educate people of the difference between calorie dense and nutrient dense iv) educate people of the health value of exerise/work, THEN you still have the issue of convincing people to give up the Southern recipes to which their taste is accustomed or to give up fast foods which yield a fast alternative.
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p>Or, you can just lather out the extra food stamps and tell them to shop local and around the edges of the supermarket and not in the middle.
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p>You claimed it was because they were uneducated. I say bullsquash to that claim.
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p>Consumption of fast food is inversely proportional to income, for a variety of reasons.
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p>I’m not sure how you’re so certain, but I am sure that rural Appalachia is a small percentage of the southern population. The metro areas of I-40, Atlanta, etc are getting you far more people than the I-81 towns. Deep south, same story: metro areas have the people, not rural areas.
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p>I’m also sure you left out two key parts of the Southern diet — greens (collards, mustard, turnips, etc) and lentils. Of course there’s also local fruit and nuts (pecan, etc)., but I digress.
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p>All of them. The educational issue is that of educating gary.
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p>But if you were right, then you wouldn’t see blacks or whites eating in Taco Bell, McDonald’s, BK, Wendy’s, Pizza Hut, Dominos, Papa Johns, etc. After all, none of their foods stem from southern culture. The cultural argument is a weak one if we’re talking about fast food because the majority of fast food in the south isn’t traditional southern cooking. We’re not talking about Country Kitchen or other cafeterias — we’re talking about drive through.
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p>If they were eating traditional southern recipes — including the rice and beans, the greens, the corn, the potatoes in addition to the pork and chicken and lard — they’d be much better off.
Question: How many individuals know that that [a fast food] diet is unhealthy? That strikes me as an education issue.
Your answer: All of them.
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p>Well, the CDC, with regards to the unhealthfulness of Southern cooking and taste seem to think it’s an education issue, because they’ve been trying to educate about the high fat diet.
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p>In polls, visitors of fast food haven’t a clue about what’s healthy there and what’s not, in California.
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p>In 2003 it seems 75% of American adults knew fast foods were not a healthy choice. I guess 25% didn’t. That pretty much wrecks your 100% answer. Math! So fickle. And that’s adults. How many kids know fast food is unhealthy.
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p>Education is huge with respect to diet, and it’s just stubborness that causes you to acknowledge otherwise.
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p>Further, you cherry picked my response:
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p>So, IF you successfully EDUCATE people of i) their unhealthful diet ii) EDUCATE people how to eat/prepare alternatives iii)EDUCATE people of the difference between calorie dense and nutrient dense iv) EDUCATE people of the health value of exerise/work, THEN you still have the issue of convincing people to give up the Southern recipes to which their taste is accustomed or to give up fast foods which yield a fast alternative.
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It would be interesting to do a comparison chart…
This animated map gives a stunning picture not only of the escalation of obesity rates over time, but also the geographic distribution…
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p>And it does seem that more red states are more obese…
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p>IS THIS ALL A LIBERAL CONSPIRACY TO FATTEN US INTO SOME KIND OF DEPENDENCY ON THE DEMOCRATS, OR WHAT? STOP FATTENING OUR BASE WITH YOUR ACCURSED FOOD STAMPS!
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